My blond waves were damp and unruly, so I pulled them back in a low ponytail. I trailed mascara over my translucent lashes to help my eyes stand out and so I wouldn’t look twelve years old. That way
the families of our residents wouldn’t think they could boss me around with their crazy-ass requests. I
concealed the freckles on the bridge of my nose, and finally dabbed on some pink lip gloss.
Now a twenty-one-year-old woman stared back at me. I had finally developed curves my senior
year in high school, but my butt and chest weren’t as filled out as I would have liked. My boobs were
finally a solid B cup, but the rest of me still looked too boyish.
Not that the men I was with cared about any of that. They were in it for the same thing I was—a
quick release of sexual frustration. I could go months without needing it, but my vibrator only did so
much. Rob was good for fast relief, but he wouldn’t be at my beck and call forever. Sooner or later he’d
want something more. Something I couldn’t give him.
The sunlight streaming through my window looked so inviting that I decided to walk the three
blocks to work today. As I was headed out the front door of my apartment building, a large U-Haul
pulled up to the curb. One of the apartments on the fifth floor had been vacant for the last two months,
and I’d gotten used to dragging my laundry basket up there, where it was quiet. The other guy who lived
on the fifth floor was a pilot and rarely there, so the washer remained unused.
Two guys stepped out of the truck, and as one rounded the corner, I almost tripped over my white,
cushy nursing sneakers. He didn’t have his red ball cap on today, and his messy hair fell into his warm
brown eyes.
No fucking way.
He stared at me, a moment of recognition crossing his face. At the party last night, I’d heard him
tell his friend he was moving, but never in a million years would I have guessed it was to my apartment
building.
My head down, I kept walking, equally embarrassed by my scrubs as by my eagerness last night.
Nothing like the prospect of a day spent with geriatrics to sober me right up. Thank goodness the friend
with him today wasn’t the same one who’d gotten my name and grabbed my waist. “Hey,” he said. I turned and faced him, unsteady in my white nursing sneakers. “You’re . . . um . . .
do you live here?”
I drank him in with a fondling gaze, his deep eyes like hot chocolate, drawing me forward for a
taste. “Yeah.”
“Small world.” He extended his fingers toward me. “Bennett. Bennett Reynolds.”
His hand squeezed mine. Smooth palms and long fingers. I bit my bottom lip to hold in a sigh.
What in the living hell was wrong with me?
Maybe he’d let me get him out of my system. Maybe even tonight.
“Avery Michaels. First floor. Apartment 1A.”
“Avery,” he said. “I remember.”
His eyes darted down to my scrubs and supportive shoes and I felt frumpy. Not at all sexy. Not that
he thought I was last night, either, with my tight jeans and low-cut top. “You work at the university
hospital?”
“Nope; the nursing home on Hamilton Street.” He paused like he was considering what to ask next.
His hot cocoa eyes drilled through my layers, inspecting me for any underpinnings of truth. I filled in
some of the blanks for him. “I’m taking college courses at Turner State to become an RN. Working on
the side helps pay the bills. How about you?”
“Art major at the university. Got a year left. In the meantime, I work at Raw Ink on Vine Street.” I
was more than familiar with that tattoo parlor. I’d been in the owner’s bed a couple months ago. Oliver
was skinny, inked up, and just the right amount of bad boy I’d needed for the night.
“You’re a tattoo artist?” Holy Mother of God, this man just got hotter. I looked at his arms but saw
no telltale signs. “I’d think you’d have more tats on you.”
My fingers slid over the back of my ear near the tattoo I’d gotten when I’d turned eighteen and
finally escaped my mother’s house. He’d probably think it was amateurish at best.
“Nah, just a couple of well-placed ones.” His cheeks pinched into a grin and he looked down at his feet, almost shy about it. His teeth were perfectly white and straight and mesmerizing. “Sometimes less
is more, you know?”
And sometimes
more is more.
My eyes roved over his stacked biceps and down the front of his
jeans. Having a fuck buddy in the same apartment building could prove to be interesting. Or a disaster.
I needed to reel it the hell in and remind myself that this guy was not interested in me.
Yet.
“Okay, gotta run,” I said. “Good luck moving in.”
I eyed his friend, who stood on the grass texting someone. I considered whether he’d be a good
prospect as well. “You guys big partiers? This building is on the quiet side.”
“Nope. Last night was the extent of the kind of partying I do. And it’s only me moving in up there.”
Bennett was moving in,
alone
. He turned back to the truck. “See you later.”
I restrained myself from glancing back more than once to see if he was watching me. He wasn’t.
Disappointment and indifference waged a war in my chest.
***
Work was busy that day, between med counts, feedings, and bed changes. Sometimes I felt like a
glorified chamber maid. Some of the elderly were downright nasty. Were probably always nasty, even
before they became sick.
And then there were gems like Mrs. Jackson. I’d become accustomed to seeing her kind eyes and
soft wrinkles every day for the last year. I knew better than to get close to the residents, because I’d said
my share of good-byes, usually to empty bedsheets and untouched trays of food. I wasn’t really one to
build emotional connections anyway. But Mrs. Jackson had somehow broken through my barrier and
befriended me.
If I was being honest, she reminded me of my grandma, who died when I was twelve. Feisty,
strong-willed, and never minced words. Total opposite of my mother. No wonder we seemed to
understand each other pretty well. “Is that a smile I see on your face?” she asked as I entered with the extra pillow she’d requested.
She could always read me well. I’d just been thinking about Hot Boy living in my building.
“I wasn’t smiling,” I said, placing the pillow behind her neck. “You’re imagining it.”
“Mmm-hmmm . . . Then why are your cheeks flushed?”
“Now you’re just dreaming,” I said, filling her glass with fresh water. “I think the meds are
affecting your brain.”
“Don’t you play with me, girl,” she said in her spirited way. The bronze fingers of her good hand
reached for my arm. I bet she was a pistol, a force to be reckoned with, in her day. “It looked like you
were thinking about a man.”
“No way. Never. Boys are stupid.”
“Not all of them.” It was the same conversation, different day. Mrs. Jackson had a doting husband
who had visited her every single afternoon since she’d been admitted after her stroke. He usually had a
fresh bouquet of flowers or a Snickers—her favorite candy bar. She may not have had good use of her
right arm or leg, but she was still lucid and could appreciate the visits, unlike many of the other patients,
who were riddled with dementia or Alzheimer’s.
“Unfortunately, you got the last remaining good guy in the entire universe,” I said, moving toward
the door. “There are no more available. Maybe I’ll have to steal him from you.”
“I may be old and sick, but I’d tackle you to the ground and fight you for him.”
“I believe you would, Mrs. Jackson,” I said, waving. “I believe you would.”
I loved our banter; it was the best part of my day. Mrs Jackson was in residence because her
husband could no longer care for her due to his own medical problems. After her stroke, she’d needed
around-the-clock care, which included feeding, changing, medication management, and physical therapy
for her weakened limbs.
Her children were grown with lives of their own, and Mrs. Jackson had hinted that she’d never
burden them. They visited her once a week and you felt the affection rolling off of them in waves. From snippets of conversations I’d heard, they had all offered to take her into their own homes, but she fought
them tooth and nail. Told them they couldn’t afford to lose their jobs or provide for all of her needs.
Since her admission, Mrs. Jackson had also had two smaller strokes, called TIAs . Hopefully they
wouldn’t lead to the big one—the mother of all strokes—anytime soon. I’d sure as hell miss her around here.
Chapter Three
I hadn’t seen Chivalrous Hot Boy Bennett since his move-in day, outside of the one occasion I brought
my laundry up to the fifth floor for old times’ sake. I heard hammering behind his door. I figured he was
affixing something to a wall—maybe a poster of a hot girl with dark hair and dark eyelashes, the exact
opposite of me—and I knew going up there in the first place was a bad idea, too stalkerish. So after
transferring my clothes to the dryer, I hightailed it out of there, setting a reminder on my phone to check
back again in an hour’s time.
Except I fell asleep reading my nursing textbook, and by the time I rushed out of the elevator to
retrieve my clothes, I spotted Bennett pulling my red lace bra from the dryer.
“Planning on stealing my unmentionables for your private viewing pleasure?”
Bennett froze with my B cup dangling from his fingers, his expression unreadable, except for a
twitch in his jaw. If this beautiful man could remain unaffected by sexy lingerie, then all hope for us was
lost.
He had on a pair of cut-off khaki shorts, and I scanned down his toned legs to his calves, which
were rock hard. He turned toward me, a smirk hanging from his lips. “This belongs to you, huh?”
“It does,” I said. I noticed how he took in my shorts and pink heart T-shirt, his eyes lingering on my
breasts, as if imaging me in that red lace. “Care to borrow it—or maybe you want to see it on display?”
“Now
that
would be a sight.” My cheeks became inflamed. Was Hot Boy’s flirting voice finally
rearing its sexy head? “Why are you doing your laundry all the way up here?”
“Habit I picked up while your place was vacant. The guy across from you is never home, and the machine on my floor is always broken,” I said, smoothing my hands down the front of my shirt. I
noticed how his eyes carefully followed my fingers. “Why were you picking through my things?”
And this is where Hot Boy Bennett became flustered. “I . . . uh . . . you . . .” He ruffled his fingers
through his hair. “I was waiting to dry my clothes and I figured I’d just move yours aside until you
retrieved them.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” I inched closer and noticed the stubble on his chin. It made him look more
rugged tattoo boy, less clean-cut jock. “I fell asleep reading about the finer points of infectious
diseases.”
“That
would
be hard to stay awake for. My textbooks aren’t much better. Especially the
Impressionist period.” His eyes scanned up my legs and stomach before landing squarely on my eyes. “I
wouldn’t take you for a nursing student.”
“Really. What kind of student, then?” I leaned against the washer and inhaled his faint scent of
coconut. This one ought to be good. Not sure why his pause made my palms sweat.
“Um, I don’t know. A business or marketing major; something more . . .” He trailed off and
scratched the back of his neck, looking at the wall behind me.
“More what?” What did Hot Boy really think of me? Maybe I should’ve just been happy he was
thinking of me at all.
“More
aggressive
, cutthroat, I guess.”
My face fell. Right there he was telling me he knew I was after him that one night. And somehow I
hated what he saw in me. I did
not
go after guys. They went after
me
.
But he thought I was some sort of predator. And that made me want to prove to him wrong.
I didn’t care about guys. Any of them. And I certainly didn’t care what they thought of me. Except
for this very instant.
“Nope.” I pushed off the washer and moved past him to my clothes, my hip brushing against his
stomach, and my knees almost buckled. I hauled my undies and bras out at supersonic speed, wanting to get the hell away from him and how he made me feel. “Guess I’ve got a soft spot for the sick and
vulnerable.”
“That’s admirable.” His voice was velvety soft, almost like a whisper. It rumbled up my spine to
my hairline and I almost shivered against it. I didn’t say anything in response, because my mouth had
trouble forming words.
“So, um, anyway, sorry for touching your stuff,” he said, straightening himself. I could feel his
