by Violet Duke
“All right. If you think it’ll save us some money, and time, let’s go with your idea.”
He grinned. “I feel like I need to take a photo to record this moment. You coming around to my way of thinking without arguing about it for an hour.”
She huffed and shot him an exasperated look. Before doing that thing he loved whenever she dug one of his ideas. All the woman had to do was flash him that nose scrunch and deploy her freckles out in full force up on her cheekbones, and he’d get hit with a big bolt of stupid from head to toe.
He was sure she had no idea that she could probably get him to build an entire bakery from scratch for free just by supplying more of those scrunching, freckled smiles.
While they were on the category of things that turned him on, the daily double for him definitely had to be that bossy tone she used sometimes to try to regain control of a runaway situation (that he was usually the one messing with the brakes on). Her bossy sass was also damn effective at making him want to hang the moon outside her bedroom window for her.
“It’ll look great, sweets—I promise.”
Her expression went still for a second, and he frowned, wondering what had just happened.
Her brows stitched together in consternation, even though a contradicting crooked smile was peeking through.
“Something wrong?”
“No,” she said in a soft tone to match her smile. “It just occurred to me that no one ever really calls me anything but Emma, or Em.”
He blinked through a mental transcript of what he’d just called her.
Sweets. It hadn’t been intentional. The word had slipped out without him even thinking about it. Probably some subconscious thing. The woman was all sweetness and goodness.
“I’m sorry. That was unprofessional. I’ll make a point not to do that.”
“No, no.” She tempered her voice down to casual and breezy. “I like it. You don’t have to stop. Like I said, folks don’t usually call me by any nicknames. Especially guys.”
He gave a silent growl over the idea of any guys calling her anything, period.
“Everyone here is really . . . I don’t know, careful? With me and Megan. Which is good. Great really. Plus, nearly everyone treats me like I’m their sister. Again, especially the guys.”
Best news he’d heard all day.
The clanging of the front door stopped him from accidentally spilling the beans on how he was definitively not in the group of guys in town who intended to treat her like a sister.
Probably for the best he kept that spoiler alert to himself.
Megan poked her head into the kitchen a second later. “Hey, Em! I’m just here to raid your closet for tonight. I know neither of us has anything really fancy to wear, but I was thinking we could try to mix and match some things to get close to a night-in-the-city outfit.”
She flashed a broad grin at Jake. “Oh, hi, Jake. I meant to ask, since the art gallery is near your place, are you going to meet us there or come down with us from here?”
Ah, damn.
Jake looked up to study a crack in one of the drywall tiles on the ceiling, all but whistling innocently when Emma held up a hand to interrupt Megan. “Hang on—Jake hasn’t even decided if he’s going yet. We were just talking about it.”
“That’s weird. Jake was helping Blake and his girlfriend fix some of the display stands for her art exhibits, and when they invited him to the show, he told them he’d be there—”
The rest of Megan’s sentence came to an abrupt halt.
Most likely because Emma was now chasing him around the kitchen.
“You freaking ass! You were already going to come out tonight! You were just messing with me this whole time!”
Emma got close enough to double whack his arm. He juked to the right, and then to the left, and then did an impressive Matrix move to avoid the smack she was aiming for his head.
With the passageway out of the kitchen and to the front of the bakery in sight, he made a dash for it. “I think I’ll finish the floorboards tomorrow. Big date tonight. See you girls at seven,” he called out, ducking to avoid the spare paintbrush Emma sent whizzing past his head. Good thing he didn’t leave his hammer behind.
A peek behind him revealed Megan forcibly holding Emma back.
The woman was spitting-nails pissed at him. But that was undeniably a tiny smile he could see her doing her damnedest to hide.
Clearly Megan saw it, too, because he overheard her say, “I swear—watching you two with these bizarre mating rituals is like watching Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner go at it.”
Chapter Fourteen
The man was a menace to her sanity.
It was bad enough that he was ridiculously handsome, and criminally sexy, but to top it all off, he was also an unbelievably great guy. A prince among men.
As Emma had discovered at the art show a few nights ago, Jake hadn’t just helped Blake’s girlfriend with her art exhibit display stands; he’d stayed there till sunup to make sure all the students’ display stands were perfect.
And today? He’d started work just after dawn and worked through lunch so he could take off a few hours early to help out old Mrs. Taylor, who needed to get a ramp installed at her house since she’d recently broken her hip and couldn’t get up and down her porch steps.
Not long after sunset, Emma finally couldn’t take all the quiet. She’d gotten used to having Jake around all the time. It wasn’t just the lack of construction sounds, either. The space, and her entire day, felt emptier without Jake’s idle whistling or his off-tune singing to old-school country. Not to mention the way he’d tease and flirt with her innocently but mercilessly.
To take her mind off the big lug, she decided to at least fill the space back up with some construction noises. She could kill two birds with one stone by tackling the new hardwood floors in the front of the bakery so they could get ahead of the repairs a little. From what she’d heard from Paul and Megan, the library project was running right on schedule, so Jake would need to get started over there soon.
Since she’d handled the installation of the hardwood floors in her apartment dining room, this was nothing new. Granted, the space she’d worked on was only about a tenth of this size, and the wood she’d used upstairs looked more like big rulers compared with the walk-the-plank pirate pieces Jake had ordered for the bakery, but still she wasn’t worried.
Not knowing how Jake felt about other folks using his tools, Emma erred on the side of caution and dusted off the old table saw she’d used on her own floors. After a few trial runs with some old plywood, she was ready to rock and roll.
Measure, cut, glue, position, tap into place. Repeat. Easy peasy.
It was actually kind of soothing.
A few hours later, she was about a quarter of the way done. And her correlated mission of not having Jake on the brain nonstop was also proving a success as a result.
Emma was finishing up laying down the adhesive for the final pieces in the two rows she was working on—her last ones for the night—when her phone rang with Megan’s ringtone. If she didn’t answer, Megan would just come on over. Standard small-town sister protocol. And when she saw Emma working on the floors, she’d rat her out to Jake for sure. Not just because the two had gotten chummy lately, but because Jake had specifically told Emma to stop doing construction work when he wasn’t there in the name of safety.
When it came to that sort of thing, Megan had no sisterly loyalty whatsoever.
Not wanting to deal with a protective, worried Jake this late at night, Emma managed to sprint over to the counter to grab her phone before the final ring, but on her dash back, she tripped on her tools and took a sprawling tumble.
Ouch.
Crap, was it possible to bruise your ass? Sure felt as if it was. Even with the extra padding she had back there to soften the blow, it still smarted.
“Oh no! No, no, no,” she cried out when she saw that her smartphone had fallen onto the hardening adhesive
. Crap! Using the hem of her shirt, she quickly wiped off as much as she could. She wasn’t a cell phone warranty expert, but she was pretty sure they might be opposed to covering any repairs when they saw the phone was completely covered in a tarlike glue.
It took a while, but she was finally able to scrape most of the sticky gunk off before it got too hard. And, thankfully, her touch screen appeared unaffected. Whew. Crisis averted. Emma immediately hit the “Redial” button to call Megan back, only to see a text from her waiting in the in-box.
Babysitting for Dennis tonight. I’ll call you later.
So she’d been worried for nothing. Double whew.
Just as she was celebrating sidestepping a land mine, however, Emma discovered one very belated, very important detail that hadn’t registered for, oh, the past fifteen minutes or so.
She was still sitting in the flooring adhesive she’d landed in earlier.
And now she couldn’t move an inch.
Irony of all ironies, while she had been focused on making sure the industrial-strength glue didn’t dry on her phone, that very same glue had been drying underneath her. Which meant that the back of her jeans, from the seat of her pants straight down to her ankles, along with the back of her boots, was firmly adhered to the now fully dry flooring adhesive she’d slathered down earlier.
“This is not happening. Tell me I didn’t just glue my ass to the ground.”
Don’t panic.
She calmly placed her phone down and tried unzipping her jeans. If she could just get out of her boots, she could then slide herself backward out of her clothes to get free.
It didn’t take long for her to figure out that was a doomed plan. A few hours ago, using her old knee-high winter boots today had seemed like a good idea since she never wore them anymore and had planned to just chuck them after she was through with the flooring. But with the long zipper completely inaccessible under the legs of her jeans, she couldn’t get her boots off, meaning she couldn’t get her legs out of the jeans.
Okay, maybe now is a good time to panic.
Emma then proceeded to spend the next five minutes exhausting every muscle in her body by trying to forcibly pull herself straight up—gymnastic pommel horse style. But all that did was give her two possibly torn triceps and what felt like two bruised breasts. Criminy. She was stuck, plain and simple.
“I’m not going to call Jake. I am not going to call Jake.”
Emma began examining her options. Calling Megan would be the same thing as calling Jake so she went ahead and filed that as terrifying plan B. All the other shops around had been closed for a while now, so no help there. Holy moly, is it really almost midnight?
She supposed she could call the sheriff’s office . . .
Yes, that would absolutely be less embarrassing than going to plan B.
Emma plopped backward onto the last set of hardwood planks she’d laid down just before this whole mess and covered her face with both hands.
Then she started cracking up hysterically.
“Emma!”
“Jake?” She popped back up at the sound of his worried, growling shout, and nearly got a charley horse in her abs. Or was that a cramp? That had probably been the first noncheating sit-up she’d done since high school gym, so for all she knew, it could’ve been both.
Holding her now-throbbing stomach, she swiveled around as best she could and saw Jake sprinting across the street toward her at a dead run.
He flung open the front door of the bakery with a wall-rattling bang.
Emma cringed when six feet of heaving muscles, topped with a thunderous scowl, greeted her from the door. She waved casually as if she weren’t the biggest idiot in the room. “I promise—I was just about to call you.”
He gave her a look that said he didn’t believe her one bit before he stomped over. “Dammit, sweetheart, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“Are you hurt?” He crouched down and started scanning her head to toe.
She thought it best not to mention her bruised ass or various strained muscles. Her ego had gone through enough tonight. “No, I’m okay. I’m just stuck.”
He grabbed the tool she’d been using to spread the adhesive and tapped the tar-covered ground between her legs. Discovering it completely dry, he scowled at her. “Christ, how long have you been sitting here like this?”
This was one of those best-to-feign-ignorance situations; she just knew it.
She gave him a big shrug.
“Woman, you could test the sanity of a saint. I told you to leave the construction work to me.” He released an exasperated grunt and kneeled down beside her to try to yank her up off the ground.
“I tried that already. I think I might’ve sprained my boobs in the process.”
“No being cute,” he groused, though a flicker of humor did twitch at his lips. But then all humor fled his features as his eyes darkened suddenly to a deep, intense forest green.
She followed his gaze to see what had brought on the drastic change.
Oh, right. She’d unzipped her jeans earlier.
And apparently she was wearing her superfrilly pink panties today.
She slapped her hands over herself to cover up just as Jake slammed his eyes shut like an iron drawbridge almost at the exact same time. He remained like that for a few seconds, his unsteady breathing sounding more reckless by the second.
Sure, it wasn’t particularly evolved of her, but it was flattering to see him react like this.
When he eventually opened his eyes again, she saw that the ego-boosting flare of lust she’d caught a microsecond glimpse of earlier was now gone completely. In its place was something else entirely. Something raw with emotion. “Baby, your front door was unlocked. Someone could’ve come in here while you were stuck like this. Someone could’ve hurt you—”
A dark, stricken look overcame his features.
Fist flexing, jaw clenched, erratic breathing. Within a blink of an eye, he looked ready to slaughter these nonexistent assailants his imagination was conjuring.
Alarmed, she tried to calm him down. “Jake. I’m fine. Nothing happened—”
“Hold on, sweets. Give me a minute. I just . . . need one minute.”
Jake was doing his best to slow down the rushing adrenaline that was making him crazed, but he was going to need a little more than a minute.
When he’d first driven up, he’d almost had a heart attack. All he’d been able to see was Emma lying on the ground, hands over her face, with her body shaking as if she was sobbing.
And he’d plain lost it.
It had brought him right back to that night. The only time he’d ever seen her cry. He’d barely been able to keep it together then. Now? Strangely it was even more difficult.
After a few more seconds, now that his brain wasn’t overloaded with panic, he managed to calm down enough to peer over his shoulder to make sure his truck was still outside and not halfway down the street. Seeing as how he hadn’t even bothered to put it into park before rushing in here and all, he considered that an important win.
“Sweetheart, why were you crying?” he ground out in a rumbling voice he had no way of making less intimidating at the moment. “Are you sure you didn’t injure yourself?”
“I was laughing, Jake. Not crying. Because of how ridiculous the situation was. I swear. I’m absolutely fine.”
Her soothing voice helped stop the blood rushing in his ears some. But his veins were still ice cold with dread, his muscles all locked in fury and fear. A dozen different horrifying scenarios, each worse than the last, continued to run through his head. What if some predator or psycho had come in and attacked her while she’d been in here defenseless, unable to move—
A gentle squeeze on his forearm stopped another wave of terrifying what-if thoughts from crashing into him.
“Jake, stop. Nothing happened. I just fell and got stuck. And now you’re here to help. So everything is fine.” Her hand rubbed his gently.
“I’m fine.”
Finally feeling more human than beast, he looked down and saw Emma gazing at him with concern. Damn woman was too sweet for her own good. Didn’t she know that all that sweetness was worse than kerosene for a man running on pure adrenaline? He leaned over and placed a kiss on her forehead. “I’m glad you’re not hurt. Okay, hang tight. I’m going to figure out how to get you unstuck. So I can start yelling at you.”
She smiled. “Sounds like music to my ears.”
He looked down and tried to determine the best way to get her free, all the while keeping his eyes away from the vicinity where he had seen a sexy pair of pink panties peeking out of her unzipped jeans. “Did you already try to drag yourself out of your jeans? That didn’t work?”
“I’m wearing knee-high boots, and they’re stuck, too. So I think you have to cut open my jeans so I can get to my boot zippers.”
Shaking his head, he blocked all the lusty images that one sentence provoked, then hustled over to her utility drawer to grab a pair of scissors. Dropping back down to his knees beside her, he sighed. “All afternoon something in my gut told me you were here doing something like this, even though you promised me you weren’t going to.”
Her cheeks colored, and he only just barely checked the impulse to brush his lips over her heated freckles.
He settled for using the back of his knuckles, under the pretense of wiping away a bit of sawdust. “I actually would have been here sooner, but I was helping the Taylors install other safety measures inside the house after I got through with the ramp.”
This time it was Emma who looked worried. “Were you able to get those done? I know Mrs. Taylor can be stubborn. If you need to go back tomorrow, no worries here. I can—”
“Stop talking,” he commanded, feeling positively primal all of a sudden.
At her stunned expression, he gentled his voice and went with the bare and bold truth. “If you bring up working in here again while I’m away, the long and short of it is that I’m going to play dirty to make you take it back. ‘Kissing’ would be a paltry, wholly inadequate description of what I’d do to your mouth in an attempt to obliterate the mere thought of doing anything like that again from your brain completely. Then later, much later, I’m going to feel guilty for seducing the lips off a woman whose ass is glued to the ground, so, please, save us both from the inevitable pandemonium and don’t say what you were just about to say.”
