by Robin Kaye
“Oh, I don’t. I just like cooking, and it helps me think.”
He waited until she took a seat and then joined her. “Should I be worried?”
She thought he’d meant it as a joke, but when she went to pass him the almond-sliver-covered French toast, she saw he was honestly worried about something. “Why would you think that?”
He shrugged and filled his plate. “It just occurred to me that we haven’t really talked about stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Relationship stuff.” Jack had filled his plate, but he wasn’t attacking the food, and that alone was unusual.
Kendall watched him roll his sausage to the side of his plate, trying to avoid the syrup.
“Do you want another plate?”
“Huh?”
“You have a thing about your syrup getting on your bacon and sausage.”
“I don’t have a thing.”
She raised an eyebrow and hid a smile. “You totally have a thing.”
“How did you know that?”
“I noticed it when I made pancakes that first morning. It’s kind of cute.”
“I’m not cute.”
“I never said you were. I said the fact you don’t like your breakfast meat to touch the syrup is cute. Cute like quirky, not puppies-and-kittens cute.”
He didn’t seem at all appeased. Actually, he looked a little nervous.
“What kind of relationship stuff do you want to talk about?”
For someone who brought it up himself, he didn’t look like he wanted to talk about it at all. No, he looked more like a kid who was forced to do something he found very distasteful, like eat vegetables. “I haven’t been in many relationships, but I’ve heard enough contemporaries complain about the relationship talk. Although it sounded as if most of the talks were initiated by women.”
“You haven’t had many relationships?”
He took a bite of his French toast and shook his head before his eyes shot open. He probably didn’t notice the slivered almonds in his haste to protect his bacon and sausage from the offending syrup. “This is . . .”
“Way better than Wheaties?”
He nodded and took another bite.
“Why?”
He looked up, confused. He finished chewing, swallowed, and took a sip of coffee. “Why what? Why is it better than Wheaties?”
“No. Why haven’t you had many relationships? I mean, you’re in your thirties, right?”
“I just haven’t had time. I graduated from high school early, started college as a sophomore, and was in a five-year BA/MBA program, but I got out in three and a half. I’ve been working since just before I turned twenty.”
“What are you, some kind of genius or something?”
He shrugged, “I never paid much attention to labels. It was just easier to blow through college—I was younger than everyone else, and I couldn’t drink—at least not legally. And with my . . . my family, I couldn’t afford to get into any trouble. Besides, I had responsibilities.”
“Still, you’ve been out of school for a while.”
“That’s true. And until the accident, I’ve been working crazy hours. No time for relationships.”
“Weren’t you lonely?”
He shrugged again. “I was too busy to think much about it. Besides, it was no different from my life in school. I took an insane amount of credits to get out as soon as I could. I wanted to be settled so that when my sister graduated from high school, she could come live with me. Our family is a bit of a nightmare.”
“A lot of families are. So, did your sister move in with you?”
“No, she’s kind of a free spirit. She wanted to study music, so she ended up following her own dream and going away to school.”
“That must have been hard for you. But, then, I don’t know of many older brothers who would really want their little sister living with them and cramping their style.”
“Not much of a style to cramp. If anything, it would be the other way around. My sister is forever telling me to get a life. Now, it seems, I have no choice. I guess when you come close to losing your life, you realize time is not something you should waste, even if you can’t really account for it.”
“It’s a little after eight in the morning.”
“That’s not what I was getting at.”
“I know.” She didn’t really know what to say. For some reason, she felt like a consolation prize. Lose your ability to add and get a girl. She took a bite of her French toast and then ran a piece of sausage through her syrup before she ate it. When she looked back at Jack, he was watching her and cringing a little. “It’s good.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree. Years of eating cafeteria food makes you either not care if the food-service worker piles everything on, not bothering to separate it, or it makes you care. A lot.”
“I take it you’re the latter.”
He nodded.
“Okay, I get why you’re weirded out about syrup on your breakfast meat, but I still don’t understand why you’re initiating the relationship talk when you look as if it’s the last thing you want to do.”
“I was kind of hoping you’d do the honors. You’re the one with all the relationship experience, not to mention a master’s degree in the damn things.”
She laughed at that. “Being able to see the problems in other people’s relationships and psyches in no way makes me an expert on my own relationships—obviously. You know enough about my disaster of a past relationship to glean that. What makes you think I’m in a hurry to figure out or put a label on whatever it is we’re doing here?”
“Maybe I was hoping you’d want to.”
“Jack, it’s not that I have an aversion to it; I just don’t know what to call this. I don’t know how much this attraction has to do with our close proximity. I mean, if you put two straight people of the opposite sex on a deserted island, don’t you think they’d eventually get together?”
“We’re not on Gilligan’s Island, for goodness’ sake. Hell, if either of us wasn’t interested in the other, I would hope we would be strong enough to say thanks, but no. Or, at the very worst, one of us could have left.”
God, she felt her face flame like a Bunsen burner. “You did say no, remember?”
“I was trying to be a fuckin’ gentleman, Kendall. Do you have any idea how badly I wanted to rip your clothes off? I could barely control myself. I was afraid I’d lose it completely and take you up against the wall like a freakin’ animal.”
She swallowed hard. “Against a wall?”
He nodded. “Against the wall, in the shower, over the counter, on the table. Damn, I don’t think there’s a spot in the cabin I haven’t pictured—” He stopped speaking and looked away.
“Pictured what?”
He shook his head as if to erase the images he saw flash through his mind. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters! What the hell are you trying to say, Jack?”
“I care about you, okay? And I’ve never cared about someone the way I care for you and still wanted to . . .”
“You wanted to what? Remember, I’ve only been with one other person. Sexually, there’s no comparison—hell, on every level there’s no comparison. So you’re going to have to spell it out for me.”
“I never wanted to have a relationship outside of bed with anyone but you.”
“Really?”
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Really. I like you. I respect you. I want more than just sex.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kendall, I want to make love to you.”
“That’s what I thought we’ve been doing. So we’re good there, right?”
“Oh yeah, we’re real good there.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” He stuffed his last piece of bacon into his mouth and picked up his plate. “Thanks for breakfast. It was great.” He looked at her plate. “Are you finished?”
&nb
sp; “Hell, no.”
“Well, I’m just going to get back to work. Call me when you’re done, and I’ll help with the dishes.”
“So, that’s it? You’re just going to run away?”
He walked backward, slowly. “I’m not running away, I’m going into another room to rip the shit out of the ceiling.”
“Okay, if that helps you sleep at night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. You’re running away—not far, mind you—but away.”
She let him go. She’d watched House of Cards; she’d seen people have sex up against the wall. And while Kevin Spacey didn’t do it for her, Jack did, and the thought that he could be so desperate for her that he couldn’t make it to the bed had her rubbing her thighs together. So if he wanted her and she wanted him, what the hell was the problem? There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the cabin except fix the ceiling, cook, eat, and make love. And, really, it’s not as if the ceiling was going anywhere.
The door was closed, but she still heard the muffled sound of male grunting, the splintering of wood, the crunch of plaster beneath behemoth boots. The man really did have big feet.
She got up from the table and went to the bedroom, grabbed Jack’s phone, and dialed Erin. “Erin, it’s me.”
“Hi, me. How’s it going?”
“I don’t know. I just had the strangest conversation with Jack. I just don’t get it.”
“Okay, explain.”
Kendall recapped the conversation.
All Erin did was laugh. It took a while for her to stop. “Kendall, so when you were with David, how was your sex life?”
“Boring compared to what I’ve been doing with Jack.”
“And what, exactly, have you been doing with Jack?”
“Nothing boring, I assure you.”
“Different positions?”
“We’ve only been together that way for less than twenty-four hours.”
“And did he make you crazy?”
“Yes. What are you getting at, Erin?”
“Just that when guys get crazy, it tends to get a little kinkier, a little dirtier, more intense, more physical, more urgent, and sometimes the control—or lack thereof—scares them. It’s the difference between making love to you and, well, for want of a better term, fucking your brains out.”
“Erin!”
“Now, just hear me out. There’s nothing wrong with letting a loving relationship get a little crazy. Don’t you ever want to feel out of control?”
“I feel out of control every time Jack touches me—heck, even sometimes when he looks at me.”
“Oh, my.”
“Yeah, and he’s turned me into—”
“A nymphomaniac?”
“How did you know?”
“I thought the same thing when Cameron and I first got together.”
“Does it calm down?”
“God, I hope not. Of course we have Janie, so there’s no kitchen-table sex until after bedtime. But Cam is horrible; he starts teasing me as soon as he gets home. It’s like hours of foreplay. By the time Janie’s asleep, we’re so hot and bothered, we rarely make it to the bedroom for round one. Thank God Janie’s a heavy sleeper.”
“So, this is normal?”
“I don’t know about normal, but with Cam and me, it’s always been this way. But, then, maybe I’m just easy.”
“I know that’s not the case. How many men did I fix you up with?”
“Way too many. What did you expect? They were all carbon copies of David, and not to stereotype or anything, but firefighters are hot, whereas financial analysts . . . not so much. And before you break your arm patting yourself on the back, you never fixed me up with Cam.”
“It was a fix-up. You two just didn’t know it. When I recommended you for the home–health care position, I had a feeling you’d be perfect for Cam and Janie in more ways than just caregiving.”
“No, it was worse. I seduced my boss, or maybe he seduced me. But, then, it could have been Henry.”
“Henry?”
“Henry the Eighth. We started watching The Tudors. Who knew history was such a turn-on?”
“Erin, I feel as if I’m missing stuff.”
“Explain.”
“Well, David wasn’t very—”
“Good?”
“No, not good. Not very interested. He was mechanical at best.”
“And that’s all you know?”
“Well, except for what Jack and I . . . and what I’ve read. But I didn’t think it was real. Not until now. I just thought, it was . . . you know . . . fiction.”
“It’s not. Kendall, we read the same books, and I can attest to the fact that it’s all very real. The only things that might be exaggerated are the length and girth of the hero’s erection, and his staying power, but I do like to try to make Cam lose control.”
“How do you learn to do that?”
“You experiment. Believe me, he’ll enjoy it. Good luck, and call me later and tell me how it goes.”
“Wait . . . I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Kendall, you’re such a lady. Jack’s not going to see you as anything else unless you take matters into your own hands and show him.”
“But what if he doesn’t want that?”
“Believe me, Kendall, all men want that.”
“David didn’t.”
“It’s like that famous Jerry Hall quote: ‘My mother said it was simple to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, and a whore in the bedroom.’ You just need to show him you’re not always such a lady.”
*
Jax ripped the rest of the plaster and lath off the ceiling and, with Kendall’s help measuring, together they cut and installed the furring strips perpendicular to the ceiling joists.
He thought Kendall would take off as soon as the measuring was done, but she stuck around, and she stuck tight. She even helped him hold up the large sheets of drywall as he hammered them onto the furring strips.
He had to hand it to her: the woman had some serious upper-body strength, and he already knew she had strong legs. Visions of her riding him had left him hot and distracted all day.
Kendall wasn’t averse to getting her hands dirty either. She was great with a pencil and a drywall saw, and she had a blast helping him mud and tape the joints. By the time they finished up for the day, they had the drywall installed, the first coat of mud was drying, and they were covered with dirt and dust.
He folded the ladder and rested it against the wall and turned to her. “Thanks for your help. I think it would have taken me three times as long to get it done alone.”
“You’re getting better, you know.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant, and it must have showed on his face.
“You just said it would have taken you three times as long to do this alone.”
He shrugged. He used to be the king of hiding his thoughts, but either he’d lost the ability, or Kendall just got really good at reading him.
“I spent the day asking how many of whatever it was you needed, and you told me. And except for a mistake or two—which I think is completely normal—you were able to calculate small numbers pretty well.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
She obviously had, and the look of pride on her face made him want to kiss her, so he did. She tasted like drywall dust and Kendall—he never thought he’d find dirty, dusty, and sweaty sexy, but she rocked it.
Even after a hell of a kiss, she still beamed at him. Damn, he hadn’t had anyone look at him like that since his mother watched him make the Olympic Trials. “When was the last time you tried to do anything math-related?”
“Before you came here. I got so frustrated looking at things and not being able to make sense out of them, I stopped.”
She pulled the damp T-shirt clinging to her chest and abs away from her skin in a vain attempt to cool off. “I think after we get showered and fed, we should pull out th
e cards. I also bought a few books when I was at the store. They had a pretty good selection of grade-school math primers.”
Shit, looking at children’s math books was the last thing he wanted to do—except maybe have that discussion he had been trying to have during breakfast. He’d never had to have a Where Is This Relationship Going? talk, and his first try failed miserably. Still, he didn’t have to know how to do algebra to know his window of opportunity was closing at an alarming rate. And, for the first time, he wasn’t looking for a relationship escape hatch. He was looking for just the opposite, although since he’d never wanted a relationship to work before, he didn’t hold out much hope. Still, he had to try, didn’t he?
He couldn’t take his eyes off Kendall—she was a mess. She had a big dollop of drywall mud on her shirt right above her left breast, and her hair was covered with so much dust, she looked like she wore a powdered wig. He reached over and peeled the clump of mud off her shirt. “Close your eyes.”
Kendall closed her eyes and raised her face to his, her mouth tipped into a secret smile.
“Keep them closed, okay?”
The smile got bigger, and he stepped closer, her body warm against his. She smelled like drywall dust, clean sweat, and wildflowers. He couldn’t help but kiss her again while he ran his hands through her hair, trying to dislodge most of the dust. When the kiss turned deeper, he wrapped her long hair around his hand and tugged her head back to get better access to her mouth and swallowed her moan. All thoughts of cleaning her up were replaced with thoughts of stripping her out of her clothes.
“I’m getting in the shower.” She slid out of his arms and stripped off her T-shirt on her way out the door and looked over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”
No, but he planned on coming right after their shower.
She had her jeans slipping down over her hips before she made it out of the room, and kicked them off in the hall on the way to the bathroom. The bra came next, and then she shimmied out of her panties.
Jax followed her lead, wondering where this side of Kendall had come from. Sure, the first time they’d kissed, she’d taken off her top—he’d just about lost it when she had—but he also remembered the uncertainty and doubt he saw in her eyes even before he pushed her away. It didn’t help her confidence any when he told her to put her shirt back on. Yeah, he probably could have handled that better, but, damn, he’d just wanted to get her covered up before he started listening to his little head instead of his big one. The way he’d wanted her scared the crap out of him; he’d never felt the urge to possess someone before. He’d always liked sex—who didn’t?—but what he’d felt for Kendall went way beyond lust. It was animalistic. He’d wanted to rip the rest of her clothes off and grab her by the hair and take her. He had to get a grip. Right now, he figured all the blood in his body was racing south, and there wasn’t enough blood in his head to even think.
