by Mari Carr
So, for the first time in his life, he’d become celibate. He hadn’t slept with a woman in nearly six months—a record for him since he’d lost his virginity sophomore year with Donna Paxton, a senior and captain of the cheer squad, in the back seat of her dad’s Buick. She’d been so impressed with his equipment, she had instigated the locker room talk. He’d been volunteering at the fire station since he was a freshman, so between that and Donna, his reputation as Big Hose had been born.
While this current hiatus hadn’t been intentional at first, there wasn’t a single woman in town who’d tempted Jake enough to break the streak.
Until Miss Connor.
He followed George into her bedroom, Hope right behind him. The first thing he noticed was she wasn’t kidding about the bed frame defeating her. Pieces of it were strewn all around the room, nuts and bolts scattered as well.
That was the first thing he saw.
The second—and more interesting—was the nice-sized cucumber lying on the floor next to her mattress.
“Late night snack?” he joked.
If Jake thought he’d seen her blush before, those pink cheeks had just been a tease to what she could really do when embarrassed. She bent over, picked up the cucumber, and tossed it into the small trash can by the bedroom door.
“Seems like a waste of good food,” he murmured.
Before she could reply, a siren sounded in the distance.
Hope heard it as well. “Shouldn’t you go?”
“What?” he asked, confused by her question, wondering if he’d really pissed her off about the cucumber.
“Isn’t that a fire alarm?”
“Oh. No. That’s a tornado alarm.”
“What?” Every bit of the pretty pink she’d had in her cheeks turned stark white as she dropped to her hands and knees, scrambling across the room to George. “Oh my God. Tornado.”
When she reached her son, she tugged him down as well, her reaction scaring the kid.
“What are you doing?” Jake watched as she frantically started crawling around the room, trying to find somewhere to hide.
“Holy sh-ugar cubes. What the fuc-dge was I thinking moving to a place with tornadoes?”
“What’s a tornado, Mommy?” George’s eyes were wide as he crouched on the floor.
“Come on,” Jake said, reaching for George’s hand. “Stand up. Both of you.”
George seemed to find comfort in his lack of panic, while Hope was still frantic.
“Hope,” Jake said, using her name for the first time, as he wrapped his hand around her upper arm and dragged her from the floor. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
The fact she let him get away with calling her sweetheart proved just how scared the poor little thing was.
“Come with me.” He held George’s hand with his right, Hope’s with his left, as he guided them to the basement. “Down here.”
The three of them trudged downstairs as he fumbled around for the string to turn on the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. Jake led them to the spot under the stairs and urged them to sit down. The concrete floor was cool but clean.
The hiding place didn’t seem to help ease Hope’s fears. “How could I forget about tornadoes? It’s Kansas, for God’s sake. It’s like I learned nothing from The Wizard of Oz at all.”
Jake tried not to laugh, then it became clear her freak-out was starting to impact George, who looked ready to cry.
“What’s a tornado?” the small boy asked again.
“Hope.” Jake tried to get her attention, thinking she might calm down if she saw what she was doing to her son. Her eyes darted around the room and her hands shook violently.
Nope. There was no help from that front, which meant it was up to him to console George.
“A tornado is a storm with a lot of wind. Hey, George, listen,” he said, deciding it was time to take control of the situation. “It’s pretty clear you’re going to have to be the man of the house whenever that alarm goes off, okay?”
George nodded fervently. He obviously liked the idea of being called a man. “Okay. I will.”
“So here’s what you do. Whenever you hear that alarm, you find your mom, grab her hand, and bring her down here. This is the safest spot in the house.”
Hope was listening to Jake, her hands still visibly shaking, a slight sheen of tears in her eyes. He hated seeing her so shaken up, so he reached for her, tugging her next to him and putting his arm around her shoulder.
She didn’t try to pull away. In fact, she nestled closer.
Progress.
“When you get down here, you should probably hold her hand or say something like ‘it’s going to be alright’ to keep her calm.”
She breathed out a soft laugh as Jake continued giving George instructions.
“Tell her stuff like the city official in town who’s in charge of that siren is trigger happy, and if I’m not there to talk him off the ledge, he tends to fire it off a little more often than is probably necessary. Tell her to take some deep breaths and try not to panic. You know what panic is, George?” he asked.
He pointed to Hope. “What she’s doing.”
Jake laughed and George joined in, even though he was pretty sure he didn’t have a clue what he’d said that was so funny. George Connor was one cool kid.
Hope tried to push away from him, but he tightened his grip. “Just stay still a minute. Catch your breath. We’re all going to be fine.”
“I can’t hear the alarm down here,” she said. “How will we know when it stopped?”
Jake used his free hand to tug his cell out of his back pocket and fired up Facebook. “There’s an official Bootlick page. You should join it. As soon as the threat is gone, they’ll turn the siren off and tell folks it’s okay to come out. Oh hey, look at that. Coast is already clear.”
Jake released Hope, even though he’d been hoping for a few more minutes of holding her close. She smelled good and they fit together pretty good.
“Can you remember everything I told you, George?” he asked once they were all back upstairs in the kitchen.
“Yeah. Grab Mommy, go to the basement, sit under the stairs, and talk to her real nice so she doesn’t cry.”
“My clever boy.” Hope picked up her son and gave him a kiss on the cheek, rolling her eyes when he wiggled to get down, insisting, “I’m not a baby, Mommy. I’m the man of the house.”
“You’re a terrible influence,” she said to Jake, though her bright smile belied those words.
Jake grabbed her hand. “Come on. Let’s finish putting that bed together.”
Two hours later, her bed was assembled and made up with clean sheets and a fluffy light blue quilt. Jake had also taken care of a half dozen other tasks that had required the use of his tools.
George, bored with helping, had started watching a movie an hour earlier, so Hope walked Jake to his truck alone.
“I can’t thank you enough for everything you did today.”
Over the course of the past couple of hours, her wariness of him had grown less and he liked the way she was looking at him as they stood outside, the sun setting behind her house.
“Just saying the words is enough.” As soon as he said it, he realized he didn’t even need that much. He liked spending time with Hope and George. They were fun and easy to be with, genuinely appreciative of even the smallest gestures of kindness.
“Even so, I hope you’ll let me try. How about supper one night this week? Do you have a night off?”
Jake nodded. “Tuesday.”
“Perfect. Come by Tuesday around five thirty and I’ll cook us a feast.”
“A feast, huh?” He lived in the apartment above the fire station, and while he had a kitchen, there was also a diner across the street. That always felt like the easier answer come mealtimes. “No way I can turn down an offer like that.”
She raised one finger at him that Jake assumed was meant to be a warning. However, coming from her, it looked more adorable than
threatening.
“Just as friends. It’s not a date,” she stressed.
He chuckled and tossed his toolbox in the back of his truck, then he turned to look at her. Jake wanted to kiss her. More than he’d wanted to kiss a woman in a long time.
He also knew that would be a bad idea. It had taken him the better part of the afternoon to convince Hope he wasn’t being nice just to get into her pants.
That realization took him aback because he did want to sleep with her. He wanted it badly. His body actually ached with that desire.
Jake took a deep breath and nodded. “Just friends,” he said, wondering why he’d agreed to that so easily.
There was something about Hope Connor.
Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
All he knew for sure was that she was special.
And for the first time in his life, he was afraid the thing hanging between his legs, the thing that had always gotten him what he wanted, might chase away the only thing he needed.
Her.
Chapter 3
Hope plopped down at the table in the teacher’s lounge with her grocery list and sighed tiredly. She hadn’t slept a wink since she’d lost her mind and invited Jake to dinner. The vibrator she’d ordered online right after the field trip had arrived yesterday, but she hadn’t had the nerve to try it out. She had taken it out of the package, washed the thing, then chickened out—worried it might buzz too loud and wake up George.
She had done the same damn thing with that stupid cucumber last week. She’d bought it, thinking what the hell? Then she’d felt like an idiot when it came to actually doing the deed with a vegetable, so she had tossed it on the floor and forgotten all about it. Until Jake saw it.
Her horniness was currently off-the-charts and Jake was coming over tonight.
Yeah. That wasn’t a recipe for disaster.
“What the heck is wrong with you?” Ada asked from the doorway. “You’ve been acting weird since the weekend.”
“Jake came over on Saturday to throw the ball around with George.”
Ada’s eyes widened. “And I’m only hearing about this now?” She walked in and grabbed the seat next to Hope.
“There’s nothing to tell. They tossed the baseball for an hour or so, he set up my bed, and then—”
“Set up your bed?”
“I didn’t have the right tool. He did.”
“Yeah, he did,” Ada said suggestively, wiggling her eyebrows.
Hope narrowed her eyes. “It was a wrench, Ada. Or something. Anyway, the tornado siren went off, I freaked out—”
“As only you East Coasters can.”
Hope shrugged, wondering if she’d ever get over the idea that some big funnel cloud could crash down on her head and blow her away at any minute of the day. She’d looked up at the sky more in the past three days than in the rest of her whole life combined.
“We went down to the basement, sat under the stairs until it passed, and then he helped me with a few other chores.”
Ada stifled a pretend yawn. “Boring. Get to the good details.”
“There aren’t any other details.”
Ada frowned. “There have to be. You can’t seriously expect me to believe that Big Hose was in your house—and your bedroom—for hours and nothing happened.”
Hope rolled her eyes at Ada’s nickname—actually, it seemed to be the town’s nickname—for Jake. He was a firefighter. So what? She was a teacher, but that didn’t mean she wanted everyone calling her Teach.
Though she had to admit she got wet every time Jake called her Miss Connor.
She didn’t even want to think about what that might mean.
“Nothing happened between me and Jake,” she stressed again.
“Of course it didn’t.”
Ada and Hope both jumped at the new voice in the room. She stifled a groan when Lauren Rogers, the fourth-grade teacher, came in. Bitch was Hope’s first impression of Lauren on the first day of school, and the woman had done nothing since to change her mind about that.
“Excuse me,” Ada said, when Lauren walked over to the coffeepot to fill up her mug. “But we were having a private conversation.”
“Then shut the door next time.”
Hope narrowed her eyes, ready to read Lauren the riot act. She was existing on precious little sleep, and her nerves stretched so tight, someone could play her like a guitar. Before she could tell Lauren to go fuck herself, the obnoxious woman hopped into the conversation Hope and Ada had just told her to butt out of.
“Nothing will ever happen between Jake and Hope because he doesn’t go for the sweet, innocent type. He prefers a real woman in his bed. Not”—Lauren’s gaze raked over Hope from head to toe, judging her in her denim jumper with two frogs on the front panel—“some Mary Poppins wannabee.”
Hope stood up, but Ada grasped her arm. Her friend might be able to stop her from walking over and slapping the smug smile off Lauren’s face, but she couldn’t make Hope be quiet.
“What is your problem with me? You’ve been a grade A bitch ever since I started working here.”
Lauren lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug, not bothering to deny her behavior. “You goodie-goodie types annoy me. You give off this ‘I’m so wonderful’ vibe with your perfect mom and teacher routine and the way you bat those big brown eyes to get everyone to help you. Trust me when I say, Jake is too much man for you, sweetheart. You’re better off leaving him to the real women. He’ll never go for”—Lauren waved her finger in front of Hope’s jumper—“whatever this is. Booooring,” she sing-songed as she walked out of the lounge.
“That woman is a cuntcake,” Ada muttered.
Hope laughed at her description. “I love that word.”
“Works so well, right?”
She nodded, then sat back down. “Do I seriously give off that vibe?”
“No.” Ada shook her head. “I’m pretty sure Lauren was dropped on her head as a baby. She’s been Queen of the Mean Girls since middle school. She’s got a pack of three besties, who fawn all over her and tell her she’s the hottest thing on high heels. They barhop every weekend, cutting a swath through all the single guys in town. I think she feels threatened by you.”
“Yeah. She didn’t sound threatened to me.”
“Of course, she did,” Ada insisted. “That right there was Jealousy 101. Lauren’s got it bad for Jake. Always has.”
Hope considered that, then decided she could accept that answer more easily than Lauren’s assessment of her personality.
She was a quivering bag of nerves as she considered tonight’s dinner, so from now on, she would just ignore Lauren and erase her from her world.
Sticks and stones and all that shit.
“So is this depression of yours based on the fact Jake didn’t kiss you or sneak a feel or something when George wasn’t looking?” Ada asked.
Hope shook her head. “No. This isn’t depression. It’s me kicking my own ass. I invited him over for dinner tonight.”
Ada perked up, her interest suddenly piqued. “Alone? Like a date?”
“No. Not at all. As a thank-you. And George is definitely going to be there. I need a chaperone.”
“You need a chaperone or Jake does?”
Meeting Ada about two minutes after Hope moved to Bootlick was probably the best thing that had happened to her in a long time. After leaving college, she had moved back in with her folks, and since then, she’d had precious little time for anything short of online classes, work, and raising her son. She didn’t realize how much she’d missed female friends until right this very minute.
“I think I do. He’s a player, right?”
The only frame of reference Hope had to go by on Jake was what Ada—and Lauren and the cashier at the grocery store and the office secretary—had all alluded to. To the countless notches on his bedpost, his ability to charm women out of their pants, and his stance—or lack thereof—on commitment.
Try as she may,
Hope couldn’t make any of that fit with the Jake who’d bent over backwards to help her around the house on Saturday, the guy who’d been a perfect gentleman—with the exception of some playful flirting, and the man who was pretty terrific with her son.
“Jake Garrett is the ultimate ladies’ man. And I say that with affection,” Ada said. “He and my brother, Ike, are best friends, so I’ve grown up with him. I adore Jake. But based on his track record, I wouldn’t date the guy…not that he’s ever asked. His wheelhouse is older women. He was dating a senior in college when he was only a junior in high school.”
“Really? I wonder why?”
Ada shrugged. “I always assumed it was because of his lack of desire for marriage and kids. He hooks up with divorcees and widows, more mature women who know the deal before they saunter to his bed. I swear to God, I think his bedroom door revolves. Probably makes it quicker and easier to get the old lover out and the new one in.”
“Wow. Thanks. Knowing that helps. George’s dad was the same. Alan was the hottest guy on campus and he knew it. Girls were falling over themselves to get his attention. He was nice to me, said all the right things, told me everything I wanted to hear. I thought I was special.” Funny how six years later, just thinking about Alan could make her feel like the world’s biggest jackass.
Ada gave her an understanding smile. “There’s one lesson no one ever teaches girls and it’s this. Guys are dicks. If someone, somewhere would tell us that, would teach and reteach it until we learned it, life would be a lot easier for all us women.”
Hope lifted her coffee mug in a toast. “Hear, hear.”
“So why do I feel like you might still need remediation?”
Ada really got her.
“Because I’m horny as hell and Jake is hot.”
She laughed loudly. Ada had one of those explosively loud bursts of laughter that probably had everyone within a half-mile radius looking around and saying what the hell was that?
“Gotcha. How long has it been?”
Hope hated to answer the question. Mainly because it was embarrassing as hell. “Six years,” she said quietly.
“Six years?!”
She groaned. “Why don’t you say it a little louder, Ada? I’m not sure they heard you in Texas.”
