by Amy Andrews
Chapter Nine
Ethan was woken by the sound of the shower starting up the next morning. He glanced through bleary eyes at his watch.
Six-thirty.
He’d lain awake until at least five, images of JJ playing like an old movie reel in his head—touching herself, letting him watch, crying out against his mouth as she’d come.
Impossible to sleep with all that going on in his head. When he had a hard-on that wouldn’t let up.
His dick stirred again and he sat up to distract it, swinging his legs over the edge. His back protested where a particularly persistent couch lump had jabbed him in the kidney all night long, but he was grateful for something else to focus on.
Something other than a wet, naked JJ.
He rubbed his hand through his hair, groaning under his breath as he jerked his mind out of JJ’s shower.
How were they ever going to get this back in the bag?
Because it had to go back. It had to. Lust and sex and libido were all well and good, but when it all went wrong what was left then?
Another woman who couldn’t stand the sight of him? Who spent her nights sticking pins in some policeman Ken-doll look-alike? Who was either shrieking at him or screwing around behind his back, trying to fuck up his life in every way possible?
No. He knew JJ wouldn’t be like that.
But there were worse things. Like some awful kind of strained co-existence, never again to return to the ease and comfort of days gone by. To be able to just plonk himself down at the bar and shoot the breeze. Or to drop by and pick her up when he and Connie went out to the springs. Or to bring her home a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts—plain glazed—on his infrequent trips to Brisbane.
He shuddered at the thought.
JJ had made his transition to small-town cop bearable. When Delia’s pregnancy had ended his dreams of becoming a big-city, hotshot detective she’d been the only one he’d been able to talk to about it. Just like she’d been the only one in high school he’d been able to talk to about Delia.
And she’d known just when to let him wallow and when to pull him up by the bootstraps.
Good cop, bad cop. That was JJ.
The taps shut off and Ethan reached for his jeans, climbing into them. It was possible to put it back, he told himself as he headed to the kitchen and the coffee.
It had to be.
A couple of minutes later he was staring out the window, absently stirring a coffee when he sensed rather than heard JJ’s presence. He took a moment to find his centre before he turned around, to prepare himself for what had to be said.
He picked up her mug and turned, a smile firmly in place. “Morning,” he said, passing her the coffee.
And he tried really hard to not think about her lying on her bed last night, naked, legs spread, fondling her breasts.
But failed miserably.
She was all scrubbed and clean, in standard jeans and a T-shirt, her hair hanging in damp curls round her face, not a single scrap of make-up. But all he saw was her naked and pleasuring herself as the wild aroma of aroused woman, still in his head from last night, obliterated the smells of clean woman—soap, shampoo and toothpaste.
JJ murmured a thank you, her gaze not quite reaching his, as she accepted the cup and bowed her head over it, blowing on the milky liquid. She took a sip, but Ethan could still see her cheeks going a cute shade of pink. It was only brief though, completely gone when she raised her head a couple of moments later, visibly squaring her shoulders as she eyed him.
“About last night …”
Ethan held up his hand to halt her. “No. Let me go first.”
She shook her head. “No. You see—”
“No,” he interrupted again. “I appreciate that this is a … awkward topic but I have to say something first. So please just let me say it and then you can have at it.”
She regarded him with solemn eyes but nodded her approval. “Fine.”
“I’m sorry about the … watching thing last night. I hope you don’t think I stand in your doorway every night perving on you.” Although if she did that every night it could be something he could get used to. “I was lying awake and I could hear you tossing and turning and I just wanted to … I don’t know, talk to you about what had happened and then you were …”
Touching yourself. Enjoying yourself.
Getting. It. On.
JJ swallowed, clearly uneasy. “Yes. About … that—”
“No. I don’t need to know about that. I don’t care about it. I just … couldn’t stop watching. I couldn’t look away …”
She bowed her head again to cover her cheeks warming again. He’d never seen her blush this much in her life—not that he could blame her. Talking about what had happened, what he’d witnessed, was making him squirm too. He doubted he’d be showing his face so soon had it been her who had sprung him with his hand on it.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her downcast head. “I don’t want to embarrass you.”
JJ snorted and looked at him. “You embarrass me? You weren’t the one caught in flagrante with a … sex toy.”
“It’s okay, JJ,” he frowned. “You think I’m going to judge you over that? I know you have … needs. And I didn’t exactly help defuse the situation between us last night when I kissed you …”
“Damn right,” she muttered, hugging her coffee to her chest and Ethan was left in no doubt that his actions had been, in some way, the catalyst for hers.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
JJ looked at him impatiently. “It’s fine. It’s just been …” She paused for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip as if she was weighing up her words. “… A really, really long time for me. And what with the … sex and the kissing and the … near sex, I thought it would … you know … take the edge of a little …”
Ethan held up his hand again. JJ stumbling over her words was not making the conversation any more comfortable.
“It’s okay, trust me, I know all about taking the edge off. I’m a single father and a cop in a small town. I pretty much have no life and certainly no-one to take the edge off for me. So I get it.”
She nodded and returned her gaze to her coffee, her bare big toe tracing patterns on the lino beneath her feet, obviously still finding eye contact difficult. He knew how she felt. Being an adult didn’t necessarily make having adult conversations easy.
“Still,” she said after a moment or two, peeking a look at him from under her fringe. “I didn’t mean for you to … become … involved.”
Ethan shrugged. “Well I did owe you one,” he said, trying to lighten the horribly embarrassing subject matter. “And you looked like you were having so much fun.” JJ cringed at his joke and he chuckled. “Too early?”
“Oh God, Ethan, I don’t know if I’m going to be ready to joke about this for a while.”
“Fair enough.”
“In fact, I think if we never mentioned it again it would be too soon.”
He saluted with his free hand, a small smile on his mouth. “Roger that.”
She returned his smile with a relief-laced one of her own and it was the first time she’d looked at him like the old JJ. The one he had never caught in flagrante with a vibrator.
“I think, going forward, it might be handy for us to make some ground rules, though. Shane is still hanging around and in just over a week Connie will be back. We have much bigger things to worry about now. We have to leave all that stuff behind us and get ourselves back on track.”
A small frown knitted JJ’s brows together. “Okay …”
Ethan paused. “Problem?”
“Do you think we can … get back on track?”
“Absolutely,” he nodded. They had to.
JJ frowned again and his belly clenched. She had to be on board with this. “We seem to have crossed a lot of lines these last few days …”
Ethan put his mug on the sink and folded his arms across his chest. “I know that,” he s
aid. “But I don’t think we’ve come too far to uncross them.”
“You … don’t?”
No. They can’t have. “Not if we say we haven’t.”
“Okay.”
Confusion coloured her voice. Did she want something else? Did she think last night was the beginning of a thing between them?
God. He couldn’t do that. Not with JJ. He wouldn’t risk losing such a close friend if things went pear-shaped.
“Look … JJ, before all this,” he waved his hand back and forth between the two of them, “we had a good life. We’ve been friends for thirty years—our mothers were friends. They used to push us in our prams to the park together every day. Those kind of connections don’t come along often. Do you seriously want to blow all that history by bonking each other’s brains out for however long that lasts?”
Although, Ethan had to admit, from the small taste he’d experienced so far, there were worse ways he could spend his time than in bed with JJ.
“But, we’ve already gone there, haven’t we?” she said. “We’ve … tasted the fruit so to speak. The history is already blown, don’t you think?”
“No, see, that’s just it,” he said, warming to the subject matter. “That’s just sex. Just a couple of … slips. That’s ground that can easily be regained. But if we go down the other path towards … feelings, it’ll be too far to come back then. And what happens when it doesn’t work out and then you and I become Delia and I? Christ, JJ …” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I can only cope with one Delia in my life.”
And that there was the crux of it, JJ thought. He was still so poisoned by Delia and her death by a thousand cuts that he was ruined for all other women. JJ knew better than anyone how deeply Delia had hurt him over the years. And how that hurt had sworn him off relationships for life. But he should know that whatever happened between them she would never be a Delia.
“I can’t be the boyfriend, JJ,” Ethan said and she could hear the desperation in his voice. “I don’t know how to do that. Not anymore. Nor do I have the time or the energy. I have Connie to think of—she’s always been my number one priority. And if I have a custody battle to prepare for …”
JJ forced a smile even though her heart was breaking, as all the crazy glue she’d used over the years to keep sticking it back together dissolved in a puddle of warm goo. Those pieces were never going to go back together and she resigned herself to the fact that she would always be a little bit broken.
Because he was right—there were more important priorities than her and them and what they’d done.
Connie would always be a priority for Ethan and that was just one of the things she loved about him.
“Of course,” she reassured, the smile on her face feeling stiff and unnatural. “Of course. Ground rules, huh? Let’s hear them.”
“Well, clearly we can’t … be intimate again.”
JJ nodded. “Clearly.”
Any other time she’d have found Ethan’s choice of word hilarious. Normally he would have been blunter and simply said no more fucking. It was an obvious sign of his unease and discomfort but she liked that intimate elevated what they’d done above everyday, common, down-and-dirty sex fuelled by alcohol and desperation between two people who should know better.
Intimate conjured connection and, despite the down and dirty-ness of it, they had connected.
“So … no sex. Which means no touching, no kissing, no lusty sideways glances.”
Ethan checked each point off a finger as if they were federal offences instead of mere sexual misdemeanours. It drew attention to the fine musculature of his arms and JJ immediately transgressed. How could she possibly not go the quick perve when he wandered around her home with no shirt on and oozing enough testosterone to keep her in a permanent sexual stupor?
Even now his naked chest and the way his jeans fit his hips beckoned to be explored. There was so much of him she hadn’t touched with their two rather frenetic couplings.
And now she never would.
“I’ll stick with the couch and—”
“You know you can just go home, right?” JJ interrupted. Being a couple may just be easier from a distance. Where his abs and testosterone couldn’t seduce her. “I’m sure Shane got the message loud and clear, and he’s not going to do anything to get into trouble again so soon after his parole. Even Shane’s not that dumb.”
Ethan eyed her with his uncompromising cop gaze. “No.”
JJ knew better than to argue when Ethan got that look. Lacey called it his don’t-fuck-with-me look. And, if she was honest with herself, it was a relief to have him watching out for her. Sure, she was fiercely independent—but she wasn’t stupid. Not since Shane had shattered her previously unshaken sense of security with his fists, anyway.
Did she honestly think that Shane would be a problem? No. But she couldn’t discount the prickle at the back of her neck that had taken up permanent residence since her ex had waltzed into town.
Rule number four, however, might be difficult to uphold given that she’d been perving on Ethan Weston for pretty much the entirety of her natural life.
“So, as I was saying,” he continued. “I’m going to keep my butt on the couch unless you have another unexpected nocturnal visitor, and we keep the public displays of affection to an absolute minimum.”
JJ remembered the kiss he’d laid on her in front of everyone in the bar the other night. She had to agree to that. PDAs were only going to screw with her ability to keep the other ground rules.
Ethan rested his ass against the sink and curled his fingers around the edges either side of his hips, emphasising the broadness of his chest and shoulders and the way they narrowed down to the very fascinating area behind his fly.
“Would you like to add anything?”
JJ gripped her mug harder. No lusty glances. No lusty glances. God, he was so damn casual and clear-headed after last night and she felt completely on the back foot, as her brain was hijacked by hormones.
“Yes, actually,” she said, beating back the lust with a good dose of pissed off. “You really need to start wearing a shirt around here.”
Ethan frowned a little at her request and looked down at his unclothed torso as if he was just realising he wasn’t properly dressed.
He looked up. “You’ve seen me without a shirt a thousand times.”
Yes, idiot, I have. And each time I do I want to lick you a little bit more.
She folded her arms. “I’m a thirty-five-year-old woman in the prime of my sex drive. That edge we took care of last night? It’s going to build again pretty damn quick and you being shirtless is only going to … what do you cops say? … aid and abet.”
“Oh …?”
JJ almost rolled her eyes at his confusion. Jesus, could the man really be that clueless? “Would you like it if I pranced around here topless?”
JJ felt some satisfaction at the slow bob of his Adam’s apple. “Point taken,” he said.
“Good, let’s make that ground rule five, then. No skin.”
He nodded. “No skin.”
And JJ tried to pretend there wasn’t a little part of her that was supremely disappointed.
The time went by without any further incident. In fact they barely saw each other. Apart from an hour in the evening, after she finished work and before she fell into bed in her usual exhausted heap, they barely said a word to each other. Ethan was gone the moment she woke and pretty much seemed to keep out of her way, throwing the gossips only an occasional crumb or two to keep them happy.
True to his word, he’d kept his shirt on, hadn’t kissed her again—not even in public—and had gone out of his way not to be close enough to touch her. And if there were any sideways lusty glances then they were all hers.
Ethan was, as per usual, in control.
Which made one of them. Because clothed or unclothed he was majorly irresistible.
Before JJ knew it, it was the night before Connie was due home and sudde
nly Ethan did want to talk. The talk she knew they had to have, but she’d been trying not to think about.
He was waiting for her when she got in from the pub, with his serious-police-business face on. It was a mark of its seriousness that Ethan was sucking on a beer at two-thirty in the morning. Apart from sporadic Delia-induced drunkenness, Ethan wasn’t much of a drinker. Even in social situations.
“Connie’s home tomorrow afternoon,” he said, no preamble, just straight to the point.
JJ nodded. “It’ll be good to have her back.”
“Yes.”
JJ wasn’t fooled by the brevity of his answer. Ethan and Connie had Skyped, texted and emailed and yesterday a postcard had arrived, but as a full-time Dad to Connie for virtually all her life, JJ knew that Ethan’s understatement hid much deeper emotions.
She kicked off her shoes and headed for the kitchen and a coffee as Ethan took a swallow of his beer. “Shane’s still in the area,” he said to her back.
“I know,” JJ said as she flicked on the jug. “Ron Williams was in tonight, he told me.” The Williams farm was another sheep grazing property in the area.
“So you’re going to need to move in with me. With us,” he said as he moseyed over to the opposite side of the kitchen benchtop, bending at the waist to place his elbows atop it. “I don’t want you here alone while he’s within cooee.”
JJ didn’t want to be alone either, but the hole they were digging was certainly getting deeper. Now they were going to be dragging Connie into their deception too. “But moving …?”
“I can hardly uproot Connie from the only home she’s ever known to move in here with you.”
JJ nodded. “I know. I know.”
“If you want to pack a bag I’ll take it over to the house tomorrow sometime.”
“What are we going to … tell her?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said.
JJ just bet he had. This ought to be good.
“I think we tell her that we’ve had feelings for each other for a while, but we’ve been keeping it a secret because we didn’t want anyone to know until we were sure.”
He was looking at her for approval of his strategy but JJ was too frozen inside to respond for a moment. If only that was true.
Talk about strumming her pain with his fingers.
“I don’t know, Ethan. I don’t like the idea of lying to her. She’s a pretty smart kid, and this will be a pretty big deal for her.”
Ethan gave a rueful grunt. “That she is. But she’s also pretty easygoing and you’ve been in her life forever.”
JJ wanted to disagree about the impact of such a huge change in his daughter’s life, but Connie was possibly the most laid-back child she’d ever met—she took much more after her uncle Marcus than her father. That was partly her nature, partly her rearing in a house full of a large, noisy and loving extended family, but mostly the sense of security Ethan’s calm constant presence in her life had always provided.
“Hell,” Ethan continued, “you’re like part of the furniture. I doubt she’ll bat an eyelid.”
JJ shouldn’t have felt the off-hand remark as such a body blow, but she did. Good old JJ—just like the ancient old squatter’s chairs that sat on the Weston’s shady veranda overlooking their backyard.
She pushed the hurt aside to stay on task. “And what do we tell her when Shane goes and the custody thing is settled and she’s used to you and me?”
JJ didn’t want to think about that.
Not about the potential fallout or the time frame on their relationship.
“We cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Right. As simple as that. Typical Ethan—not borrowing trouble.
“I don’t have to tell you how us living together will look much better for any custody proceedings,” he continued. “Knowing there’s a stable female influence in the same house will be a huge tick in the box for a family court.”
“I know. And you know that Connie staying with you is my priority too, right?”
He nodded. “I do. Thank you.”
Ethan’s sincerity was palpable, so JJ moved on to an even bigger hurdle as she poured the boiling water into her mug. “So … the sleeping arrangements …?”
“Ah … well … I’ve been thinking about that too …”
Probably not half as much as she had! “And?”
“We need, for Connie’s sake, for this to look like a real relationship. If this was just about Shane then you could set up in the spare room and nobody would know. But if Delia were to question Connie too carefully about our living arrangements …”
“It’s all over red rover,” JJ murmured.
“Yes.”
“So we’ll be … in the same room?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say, your room.
“In the same bed, actually. Connie occasionally still comes in for a morning cuddle, so it would be odd if I weren’t in my bed. It would be odder still if you weren’t there with me.”
JJ nodded, trying to control the sudden hitch in her breathing. “I guess.” She tried to imagine sleeping right next to him, night after night and not reaching for him.
“It’s okay,” he assured, placing the half-empty beer bottle on the kitchen bench. “We’ll just stick to our ground rules and it’ll be fine.”
JJ couldn’t decide if she was relieved or insulted that Ethan thought sharing a bed would be easy. “Okay.”
She must have sounded doubtful because he gave her one of his stern-cop looks, like he’d just caught her necking at Hobson’s Crossing and was about to give her one of his perils-of-making-out-in-public speeches he was well known for among the town’s high schoolers.
Like he’d never taken Delia there …
“We’re not teenagers with out-of-control hormones, JJ,” he said.
JJ blinked. Speak for yourself.
“We can make this work. We just have to keep an eye on the endgame, that’s all.”
All? JJ was damn sure it wasn’t that clear cut. For her, anyway. But maybe it was for him. He was a man after all, and they didn’t get all hung up about sex. He had been freaked out about what had happened between them but maybe, in that typically male way of his, he’d managed to put it away in a neat little box.
And then he said something that was guaranteed to make her putty in his hands. “Please, JJ. I know I’m asking a lot, but I can’t lose her.”
JJ stirred her coffee, reaching for some breathing space. “Okay,” she said, trying to keep it light as her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. “But I’m packing Dennis as well.”
He frowned slightly, like Dennis bothered him. Good. He couldn’t expect to share a bed with her and insist on keeping it all platonic and expect her to be a freaking nun into the bargain.
Not that she had any intention of using Dennis. But Ethan didn’t have to know that.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Whatever gets you through it.”
“Good,” she said picking up her mug and heading for her bedroom. “I’ll have the bag ready to go in the morning.”
Ethan snagged her arm as she brushed past and heat slid into all her secret places. “Thank you,” he said. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“Yes, I do,” she said before breaking away to the sanctuary of her room.
Because his happiness meant everything to her.
