Exposed (5 page)

"So when Sadie wasn't around, he got worried about you?" Jack said, shaking his head.

"Maybe," Nia muttered. "I really think he thought I'd stay at our house. He's not making sense about any of this."

"I think it’s the way that we caught them, and now they’re backtracking the entire way as fast as their deluded minds will let them," Jack said, wondering where Sadie was if she wasn't still at Cooper's house. Then he got mad at himself for wondering. "All right ... well, good night, Nia," he said, and he walked through the doorway.

"Good night, Jack. Thank you," he heard Nia say as he walked down the hall.

She had a very pleasing voice; it was soft and rich—somehow it felt intimate. It wasn't like Sadie's who, more often than not, was too loud and repetitious. Sadie tended to repeat things after she'd had a few drinks—which was more often than he'd like—always leading into nights of drinking.

Jack went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. He bypassed the two cans of beer sitting on the top shelf and got a bottle of raspberry tea instead. It was too late to get drunk, and he didn't like getting drunk anyway. He twisted the cap off and took a long drink, turning to look at the scene of the crime. The air mattress with the crumpled sheets looked as tawdry as their use had been.

He leaned on the edge of the counter as thoughts nagged him about what it was he’d done wrong with Sadie. It was never just one sided ... no matter how bad Sadie looked in all of it.

Jack grumbled under his breath, then he walked to the patio doors, unlocking and pulling them open to step outside. There was some attempt at patio furniture with two plastic chairs and a small wrought-iron table. Really, he'd sadly neglected the potential of his large backyard. As he went to sit in one of the cheap chairs, he wondered why. Then he wondered if it was a parallel for his marriage.

He had to admit he did work too much. It took a lot to start and then build a business. There had been many late nights and weekends working. He lifted his drink up to the darkness beyond the patio lights in a silent salute.

"Okay, I neglected Sadie," he said it aloud, admitting it with feelings of guilt and hurt twisting inside him. He had many excuses his tongue wanted to produce. She was frigid, unwelcoming, and wanted to do social things, where he simply liked to be home with her. Or he used to.

"But those do not get me off the hook," he muttered, lowering his drink as he stretched out his long legs. He'd been so busy building a future for them, he'd neglected living in the present enough.

"I should have brought her flowers. Romanced her more."

That hurt worse, because he'd tried it ... only it never helped. Sadie had an excuse a minute for why she couldn’t embrace him at any given moment ... or even give him a kiss.

"Hated it when she turned her mouth away."

Jack sat straighter, blinking. It didn’t even seem like Sadie was mad at him for not being around enough. It was more like she was disgusted if he tried to touch her.
But she let Cooper maul her.

Jack's eyes burned and he rubbed them with two fingers. "Wasn't I rough enough? Pushy enough with sex?" he wondered aloud, bitterly.

He'd never get the image of Sadie out of his mind, bent over on her hands and knees, naked and getting plowed from behind, while being pulled back and forth roughly.

He cussed hard, never thinking in a million years to try something like that with her. He knew there would be regrets, but he just hadn't thought it would be as bad as it was. He'd not gotten married in the first place to quit on the marriage.

"She didn't try once to apologize and say she was wrong. Say she wanted
me
." He muttered it like a curse. What was he supposed to do with that? "Get her out of your life like you planned," he told himself.

Then he set his drink down and rubbed his knees, leaning back in his chair to pull his cell out of his pocket. He sat looking at it. Man, he was pissed off for wanting her to call him. "She should have fucking called me by now," he snarled.

Then he stood and stalked back into the house, shutting the patio doors harder than he needed to, before he headed for the couch to sleep. No way was he sleeping in a bed where his wife could have screwed another man.

N
ia knew she was a stupid, foolish woman. She'd barely slept the night before and she'd kept her cell phone by her side the entire night. She knew she’d done it thinking she might call Dan or accept one of his numerous calls. That was what made her pathetic. But in the end, she hadn’t answered any of his calls, so maybe she wasn’t entirely pitiful.

Even though she wasn't asleep, she waited until seven o'clock to get up, hoping not to disturb Jack's morning routine. He said he'd be leaving early and she thought she'd heard his big truck leaving the driveway earlier.

When she left her room she was pretty sure he was gone. Only when she came around the hallway corner into the kitchen did she exclaim in surprise ... startled to see Jack bent over the large air mattress. The place where the night before their spouses had been ... Oh! She didn’t want to think about that, she thought on the low end of a gasp while she clutched her chest.

"Man, I did not mean to scare you," Jack said, straightening, but his gaze was looking her up and down.

She blushed, and the more he looked the hotter it got, because she was wearing only a spaghetti-strapped short yellow tee with buttery-colored silk boxers. So, in other words, she wasn't wearing much, because she didn't own a robe. Never thought she needed one, and the fact her nipples were pearled tight did not escape her embarrassment.

Jack was dressed in a striped white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and he had on a navy tie. His crisp shirt was tucked into black khaki pants. He looked ... good.

"I thought you were gone." Her voice was high and breathless, and she wondered if she should flee from the awkward situation.

A rolling hiss sounded behind Jack, which made him turn to look back at the mattress ... where she looked also. "Finally," he said in a gruff voice. "I've been trying to get the damn thing to deflate."

Nia took a moment to scoot behind the breakfast counter. At least half of her would be covered from where Jack stood, she thought, crossing her arms over her perky nipples, while she watched Jack's handsome features turning back toward her.

"I kept thinking about you having to wake up and see this again." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "I thought I could get it put away before you got up, but then I couldn't get it to deflate."

The mattress was hissing and losing air. Nia knew she had a look of awe on her face, which had no makeup on it and was still sleep wrinkled. "You came back just to do that for me?"

When he nodded, she nearly got teary. It was the nicest thing anyone had done for her in a long time ... besides offering her a place to stay. "Thank you," she said, watching him give her a rueful half-smile.

"Well, it didn't work," he muttered. "But I am getting it out of here before I leave."

"Are you determined or just stubborn?" she asked, smelling brewed coffee, and turning to give the coffee pot a glance.

"I left coffee too," he said, then he walked up to the breakfast bar, placing his hands on the edge as he looked down on her. "I'm determined," he said firmly, "when I want something."

Nia felt some subtle meaning pass through her. Was Jack looking at her like a man looks at a woman he wants? They were both vulnerable, she immediately thought—not certain if he was or not. Maybe in her crazy mind she wanted him too.

She gulped, and then she stuttered, "Well ... well. Okay. I'm going to go to work." She backed up, turned, and she swore Jack deliberately gave her barely clad bottom a once-over.

"Have a good day, Jack," she said quickly, and she headed for the corner turning into the hall. "Thank you, again."

Jack leaned as far as he could, watching Nia's sexy bottom moving down the long hall to his guestroom. "Man, oh, man. Thank you, thank you. I needed that," he uttered beneath his breath, while he watched the way the silky-looking shorts Nia was wearing clung to the tantalizing cheeks of her bottom.

Then, when he couldn't see her anymore, he straightened and did a full replay in his mind. The tiny sheer top she was wearing was practically see-through in the way that it outlined her very bare breasts underneath, while shouting out that she had hard nipples. Man, they were thrusting outward.

"Little spikes." He breathed in a deep breath—he was used to round nubs. But Nia's were jutting spikes. And if she thought crossing her arms over them made her look less sexy, she was wrong. It only plumped her cleavage over the top edges of her thin night top, at the same time lifting the hem so he could see her (he wanted to lick) bellybutton.

"Down, boy," he drawled in a gruff voice.

Was he panting after her? He shook his head, unclenching the edge of the breakfast bar. Hell, any healthy and supplely curved woman, who was dressed in little to nothing, was going to get a reaction from him. He was a healthy man, besides his forced condition of marriage-bed celibacy.

"Any man would look at that."

He nearly had himself convinced it was because he hadn’t had sex for so long, but he wondered as he worked to get rid of the affair sheets and air mattress whether part of it wasn't a deep and dark place inside him that wanted vengeance. If that were at all true, and he tried not to believe it was, wouldn’t it just kill Sadie and Cooper to see him and Nia together?

"I mean
really
together."

He was bad. But it didn't stop him from thinking about the curves of Nia's body all the way to work, and at moments imagining her sprawled on that black and gold comforter in the guest bedroom while looking at his dirty magazines.

"Hell," he swore, pulling his pickup into a parking spot behind Rent-All. "I need to get laid," he muttered, gripping the steering wheel. Maybe it would help get Sadie out of his head and Nia Cooper from giving him a hard-on.

"There’s nothing stopping me anymore from going out tonight and finding someone to go to bed with," he told himself roughly before he got out of his truck.

Nia pulled into the lot by the Fabric Barn and she parked, looking across the street at Rent-All. She couldn't see Jack's truck from where she parked, but she knew he was over there. She wondered if he could be looking at her from across the street.

"That's crazy. Jack's a busy man," she muttered.

Yet she couldn't deny that she still felt warm about what had happened in Jack's kitchen earlier that morning. There was no denying that Jack was a very masculine-looking and attractive man. She also couldn’t deny the fact she liked the appreciation she'd seen in his eyes. He'd been looking at her barely clad figure like a man who wanted to lick her up.

"Wow," she whispered as she climbed out of her GTO and tossed her keys into her polka-dot ruffle purse, one of her latest creations. She liked Jack’s attention, especially after the way Dan was treating her. It dealt a serious blow to the ego, having a cheating husband. "So, I'd like to do this morning all over again," she wished aloud.

Nia smiled as she walked toward work, imagining that she was daring enough to not cover the evidence of her hard nipples, and then walk right up to Jack.

"Oh." She sighed. She bet he was the kind of man that knew what to do with a woman in bed. "Like give her the big O," she whispered with a sigh.

Then she tripped and it jerked her out of daydreaming as she caught her balance. The world came back into focus and she looked at the glass doors to her job, five feet away. She was certainly glad no one could read her thoughts, because she couldn’t believe what she was thinking. It dawned on her she was nurturing a small crush on Jack, and that just wouldn’t do at all.

“I have to cut that out, right now.”

It probably had something to do with Dan’s rejection, as she’d thought earlier. And Jack was, well ... Jack. And, he’d rescued her—when her husband didn’t want her anymore.

But right after her lunch break, about eleven thirty, Dan showed up at the store. He’d been drinking. She was cleaning up the new remnants, after not being able to resist setting aside two swatches that would work in a new purse design she’d been thinking about, when she looked up and saw Dan approaching. Even from the distance she could tell from his slouched manner that he was drunk to some degree.

Her first reaction was that she needed to flee, and it surprised her. Maybe she was well and truly done with him, because all she felt was disgust.

“We need to talk,” he said before he reached her, and with only a slight slurring of his words.

“I’m working,” she retorted, with as much censure as she could put into her voice. “I can’t possibly talk now.” Nia looked around, silently thanking heaven none of her fellow employees were around.

Dan came to the corner of the remnants table and stopped, leaning heavily on it.

“Where are you staying?” he demanded. “I called everyone you might stay with.” Then he added with an outraged whine, “You wouldn’t take my damn calls.”

As if he had the right to be offended, Nia thought, crossing her arms with exasperation. “You took all our money,” she accused him with a sharp voice, but also under her breath so hopefully no one but them would hear. Her gaze was checking to see if anyone could see their domestic dispute. “And now you’re worried where I go?” she finished.

Dan rubbed his jaw. “I had to make sure you wouldn’t do anything more stupid.”

Anger soared through her. “Like bringing your mistress home to
live
with us,” she hissed.

He only shrugged, and that made her madder. “If you hadn’t done that ambush with those cameras, none of this would have happened.”

“That’s it,” she uttered, in as low a voice as she could manage while being furious. “I’m not rehashing this here and now.”

Dan tried to straighten, but he seemed to lose his balance against the remnants table, then he tried again, while saying, “Well, just come home after work and we’ll talk about it there.”