“Mark does tend to harbor a grudge,” I reply, fairly. “If you didn't give him an online review last visit, he gets a bit snippy.”
Her cheeks flush. That is more than a little distracting too. So she blushes easily, good to know. I wonder what else I could do to make her blush….
I'm getting harder just thinking about all the ways to make this innocent city girl turn bright red.
“Mark. Dammit, I knew it was an M name.”
I laugh. “If you didn't even remember his name, you're doomed.”
“What do I do?” She frowns and glances past me at the living room. There's something in her eye, something honestly and truly panicked that makes me almost feel bad for her.
Almost.
“I can't stay here,” she blurts.
“I'll talk to Mark,” I promise her. Her eyes immediately go wide with relief. I hold up a hand to stave it off. “But he's not going to be around anymore at this hour. You’ll have to rough it one night here, Princess.”
Her cheeks flare again. “I'll take my old room,” she murmurs, starting for the hallway off the kitchen, the one that leads to the tinier spare room. I'm surprised she even remembered where that was.
But I have to cut her off. “Your Mama turned that into an office a few years back.”
Sasha stumbles to a halt. Fuck, even her confused face is sexy. “So…” She trails off, leaves that question unspoken.
“There's your Mama’s room.” I let that hang long enough for her eyes to go wide yet again. But they’re still fixed dead on mine—she doesn’t back down from a challenge.
I guess some things, at least, haven’t changed.
“I’ll sleep in the car,” she says, hands on her hips.
I smirk. “What’s the matter, scared to be too near one of us country hicks?”
Our eyes lock. That wipes any remaining politeness from her expression. Good. I always preferred her when she was angry. The way her eyebrows crease and her fists ball, the way she won’t back down from a fight. The way she’s glaring at me right now, though, is making me harder still.
Fuck. How am I still so fucking attracted to her, after all these years?
“Of course not,” she replies, chin high. “I’m only being polite. You take the bed.”
I step closer. She holds her ground. I catch a whiff of her perfume now, something floral, expensive I’d guess. It smells okay, great probably. But I like her better without it. I like her scent, the one that’s all Sasha, can’t be bottled. “We could always share.” I grin at the way that sets off a white hot flush across her cheeks. Then I turn away from her, still smiling to myself. “But that’s okay. Don’t want to make you nervous, city girl. You couldn’t handle a wild man like me anyway.”
She snorts. “Oh, I doubt that.”
“Is that a challenge?” I turn back to raise one eyebrow at her, and find she’s moved closer to me, almost chasing me, fists still clenched.
Fuck, she’s glorious when she’s annoyed.
She holds my gaze for a long moment. Long enough that I know she’s thinking about it. About what fucking me would be like.
Good. Let her dream. Let her be the one to lie awake at night and fantasize, for once.
“You take the bed,” I tell her, hands spread in what I hope comes across as the peace offering I mean it to be. “My truck bed is bigger than your Porsche’s backseat anyway. And I’ve got a quilt in the truck from other times I’ve roughed it.”
She opens her mouth, though whether to agree or decline the favor, I don’t stick around to find out. I dust off my palms, leave her with the firewood, and head outside to make my bed for the night.
4
Sasha Bluebell
The sound of hammering wakes me up. Well, that and the rooster crying away in some far off field. I crack one eyelid at my blinds, then groan and fling an arm over my forehead to shade myself from the dawn light beginning to tint the blinds.
What time is it?
My phone, down to its last cell of battery life since I couldn’t find a plug near the bed in this tiny room—how on earth did Mama sleep without her cell phone beside her?—tells me it’s 5:04am. Not the kind of hour any civilized person should ever greet from this side of sleep.
But the hammering continues, directly overhead and growing louder by the minute. And unless I’m much mistaken, I do catch a whiff of something at least somewhat promising in the air.
Coffee.
I stumble out of the bedroom wiping sleep from my eyes to find a fresh pot of coffee on the stove and a little plate of toast and jam waiting beside it. I munch on the toast while I tie my hair into some semblance of a bun, then pull on a pair of jean shorts and toss on the only tank top I packed. Normally this would be a running shirt, but I’m working with what I’ve got for now. At least I remembered to bring a pair of boots. Granted, they’re leather, but they’re sturdy work boots, not the heels I stupidly put on yesterday morning. I yank them on too, and I’m surprised how good it feels to be wearing sturdy, reliable shoes.
Must be because I’m still feeling grumpy about tripping in the mud yesterday.
That finished, I splash my face clean, then bring my coffee outside to see about the racket.
Grant is on the roof. I lean back to squint at his broad, muscular back—unfortunately clothed today—and watch him lay out another roof tile, then hammer it into place. He’s about halfway done reshingling the roof, to judge from here.
“Need a hand?” I call up.
He turns around to squint down at me with what’s clearly doubt in his eyes.
That only makes me want to prove him wrong the more. He thinks he knows me—spoiled city girl, the town stuck-up bitch. Well, I might be a city girl now, but I was born country. Some things you don’t forget how to do.
Clearly, he doesn’t remember the way we used to clamber up every tree in the woods around here. Or the tree house we built, us and a couple of our neighborhood friends, with our own hands. It’s been a while, but I can still swing a hammer, thank-you-very-much Grant.
I set my coffee down and climb onto the ladder. He watches with progressively wider eyes as I scurry right up it to join him. I don’t even pause when I switch onto the roof and keep my balance easily as I cross it to his side.
To his credit, he doesn’t dismiss me the way some guys might. He just passes me a hammer from the tool bag perched beside him. I accept it, and our hands graze for a moment, his calloused skin rough against mine, like a match striking. It sets my whole body on fire, and I have to turn away for a second to catch my breath, to drive out the sudden images flashing in my mind.
Him shirtless yesterday, glistening with sweat.
His eyes, the way they bore into mine, dark and serious.
How those eyes and that sexy shirtless body of his would look above me in a dark room as he tossed me down onto the single bed in this house and…
I shake myself back into the present.
“You know how to use this thing?” he says.
“Might need a refresher course,” I reply. “It’s been a while.”
He grabs some nails as well, and holds up another roof tile for me. As he demonstrates how to grip the hammer, reaching around me to do so, I nearly lose my grip in distraction. Fuck. He smells amazing. The sweat he’s worked up already makes his scent even more noticeable—something piney with a heady undertone that’s all him, a hint of salt that makes me lick my lips unconsciously. He presses against me, and his hand wraps around mine around the hammer, that rough skin so firm against mine, his hand so strong, and huge. It completely engulfs my hand.
His whole body, to be honest, is huge. So much bigger than the scrawny kid I remember. Or even the handsome but lean guy in high school who never so much as glanced my way, despite all the summers we spent together as kids. Now, with the way he’s built up… God, he could toss me around the bedroom any way he wanted.
Fuck. Stop it, Sasha. This is not the time or the place.
“Paying attention?” he asks, his voice low and close to my ear—so close the breath tickles my skin.
Dammit. “Of course,” I respond.
He lines up the first nail, shows me how to drive it in. Then he shows me what angle to lay the next tile so the roof will all lie flat and orderly. Then he releases me, and I try to ignore the quiver in my thighs, or the way my pussy tightens in reflexive protest.
Having him kneeling behind me was too damn hot.
I suck in fresh air to try to clear my head, and then, while he watches, I nail down another tile, then another.
Eventually, he nods, satisfied, and goes back to his own pile of tiles.
I try not to watch him out of the corner of my eye too often. Or to track the way his biceps flex as he drives in the hammer.
Once or twice, I catch him looking back at me. My cheeks flush both times, and by the third time, I tell myself I need to behave. I keep my eyes ahead, focused on the tiles, and shift over ahead of him. That way I won’t be tempted.
We work in tandem for what feels like hours, though to judge by the way the sun is inching up the horizon, it can’t be more than one hour at most. I make it all the way up to the center of the roof, and then I turn to get more tiles.
This time, though, it’s Grant who I find staring at me. More specifically, at my ass. My cheeks flush again, and I realize with how short these shorts are, and how far I’m bent over kneeling on this roof, my ass cheeks must have been showing.