Forever in Blue Jeans (2 page)

"It's remarkably well preserved." His compliment was genuine and heartfelt. History was one of his favorite subjects and when he had the time or inclination, he often preferred watching one of the documentary channels on television. He was a bit of a geek that way.

"My family took great pride in making sure our history and roots were preserved for future generations.”

"What kind of plantation was it?" He wished he'd had time to research it on his own before coming out to meet her, but he hadn't gotten into town as early as he'd hoped. Neither Decker nor Buck could stop talking about the town they'd moved into and decided to call home. Cort hadn't had a chance to explore that either.

"Pecan. They planted a little cotton, even a little tobacco, but pecans were the moneymaker crop. So, what little cotton there was, they milled at a nearby cotton plantation nearby. My great-great-grandmother was a seamstress, among other things, and would make bedding sets. She'd hand stitch everything. People used to come from all over the South and buy from my family.

When the war came, she would stitch uniforms, tents, and even men back together again. She taught her daughters, and they taught their daughters and so on down to me. I'm the last one."

Her smile was sad and he found he had to fight his instinct to reach out and pull her in, to offer her comfort. "You have no other family?" He couldn't imagine how lonely that much be for her. He had a brother, a sister, parents.

"No. My aunt died a few years ago. It's why I--" She pursed her lips tight and shook her head, making her pigtails dance against her shoulders.. "My parents passed away when I was a baby."

He didn't want to feel bad for her. He didn't want to feel anything beyond hunger for her, and hell, he didn't even want to feel that for her, but he did. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's one of those crappy things life hands you. I had a good life with my aunt.

She'd never had kids of her own and we were very close."

"You said, among other things. What else did your family do?" he asked, drawing the conversation back to something a little less personal. Cort didn't want to like her, didn't want to like listening to her talk about her family or her life. There were a lot of things he didn't want when it came to her, but what he
did
want, was to lay her out on the floor or counter or bed, fuck her breathless, then walk away with his seed sliding down her thighs. He wanted to hurt her as she'd hurt him.

But every word out of her mouth was ruining it and he was falling back into that comfort and ease he'd first felt with her.

Shit.

She laughed and leaned in, close enough he could smell faint traces of vanilla and coconut.

He tried to concentrate on the scent of her but was captured instead by the mischievous grin and twinkle in her eyes. He was done for. His heart plummeted right down to his feet even as his dick promised serious retribution if he screwed this up before it had the chance to screw her.

Holy. Fucking. Hell.

"My great-great-grandmother made cakes. Special cakes. Medicinal cakes. But everyone knew what they really were. Drunk cakes." She walked out of the pantry and came back almost immediately. "Oh, I forgot. The breaker box is there, behind that shelf unit."

Cort followed the direction she was pointing her finger in. 'There' and 'that shelf unit' was the one that held the crystal. Great. It'd all have to be removed before he could possibly think about moving the cabinet.

He took some notes on the pad of paper he always carried with him to jobsites, knocked on each of the walls, did a quick inspection of the very outdated wall switches. Pulling a small screwdriver from his pocket, another thing he carried with him to all jobsites, he unscrewed the plate to have a look behind it and made a few additional notes. He stepped out of the pantry and inspected the outlets along the walls.

Pantry indeed. "Are any of the rooms current with electrical codes?" he asked without looking up.

"Only the kitchen right now. I use it for large batch baking."

When he turned around, his gaze found Blue standing at a large butcher-block island in the center of the room slicing a pound cake. Geez, he couldn't remember the last time he'd had pound cake. She looked over the rim of her glasses at him, and grinned again. His heart hadn't returned to his chest since she'd done that a few minutes earlier, and it didn't appear that it was going to any time soon.

"Why didn't you have the rest of the house done then?"
And saved us this awkwardness of
having to see one another again?

"Most of the money for the renovations was still tied up in red tape. It's only recently become available to me to use freely. Now this," she said, holding up a large slice that looked to weigh more than the plate it sat on, "is my family's secret recipe."

The pride in her voice was unmistakable. She held the plate toward him, and he reluctantly took it. After all, it was just cake. What could it hurt?

*

Blue hid a smile as she watched the man across the island from her. He was turning the plate, this way and that, and even took a good sniff of the cake and scrunched up his nose. She couldn't blame him. The alcohol in it was quite strong.

Another thing she couldn't do was believe he was actually sitting there. Of all the men in the world,
this one
shows up at her door as Decker and Buck's electrician friend. He was still just as gorgeous as he'd been that night in Savannah when she'd picked him up in that bar on the river.

His hair was a little longer in the front, his eyes were still that bottomless dark chocolate brown, and his scruff, which given that it was early still in the day must have been on purpose, made him so much sexier than the clean-cut, close shaven man she'd shared beer and sex with. Though, damn, she'd take either version of him any day of the week.

He wore those really nice but casual work pants, creased down the center of the leg where an iron had been taken to them, along with a crisply ironed button-down blue cotton shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up his forearms, revealing muscles, and hair that matched that on top of his head.

But that he was there, in her house, in her kitchen...

He remembered her. She knew it the moment he drove up and spotted her. He remembered that night, and he remembered what she'd done. Coward. She'd taken the coward's way out and left while he was sleeping. She hadn't wanted to, but after sex with him, talking with him, laughing with him, it really was the only option she had. She didn't get close to men, didn't get close to anyone really. She had Rosie and her aunt who'd passed away. Well, and there was Neil too but being his best friend hadn't been her decision or choice. He just kind of wormed his way in and refused to leave. But Cort... She didn't know what to do about him now, anymore than she knew what to do about him then. She wasn't the fairy-tale believing kind of woman and had never believed in love like that for herself until she saw Cort walk up to the bar.

And then she'd left him, snoring softly in that big comfy bed in that fancy hotel. Of all the sex she'd ever had, that had been one to make her sing. Every time he'd touched her, her blood boiled, and she teetered on the edge of orgasm. Every time he'd whispered against her skin, she spread wider and lifted higher. Every time he'd looked at her, she ached all over from her head to her chest to her belly to her pussy to her toes. He was the one, she knew it as surely as she knew her own name, and she'd run so far and so fast.

Damn fate for throwing him back at her.

His fork clinked against the china plate and drew her full attention back to him and the piece of cake. Blue watched him take a bite; then she giggled when he sputtered as the alcohol hit the back of his tongue. She promptly handed him the glass of water she had waiting.

"Christ." He continued to cough, and his eyes began to water.

He took a few sips of the water, then gulped down the entire glass. "What's in that thing?" he asked, pointing to the piece of cake with his fork, staring at it as though it might bite him.

In a way, it had, she mused.

"That is a vanilla bean and cream cheese bourbon cake, except I didn't have bourbon on hand when I made it last night. I had to use dark spiced rum. It's the buttered rum glaze that really gets you, that adds the extra kick."

"You might want to warn a guy next time."

Blue took the glass and refilled it. She handed it back to him with a grin. "And miss that reaction? Not on your life."

For the first time since he'd arrived, he smiled at her--an open, genuine smile--and her belly tightened, sending a shockwave between her thighs. This was not the tight, polite business smile he'd given her on the porch. She'd developed an instant hunger for him in Savannah, and seeing him again, here at her home in Blue Ridge, that hunger was back and ravenous. She'd recognized him as soon as he'd recognized her. Her insides had flipped over, and her nipples had tightened.

It had taken everything within her to greet him with courtesy and respect rather than with her arms thrown around his neck and her legs hitched around his waist.

She suspected he would have been shocked by it. Looking at him, watching him, the way he carried himself now, the proper, professional questions he asked, the hesitancy before he took the piece of cake from her, she was of the mind that he wouldn't have welcomed such an overtly sexual greeting. All business and hiding that kind of attraction would be near impossible, though she'd been doing it since he arrived, so it was entirely possible he could too. It was in the looks he gave her when he thought she couldn't see them, however. It was in the way his fingers curled in, then stretched out. It was in the way he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He might be angry with her, hurt by her, even resentful toward her, all of which she would understand, but he wanted her too. "Do you still drink only dark, imported beers?" she asked softly, figuring she would test the waters of...she had no idea. His eyes widened, and he began sputtering again. Blue bit back another smile. She had to admit, catching him off guard was kinda fun.

"I, ah... I..." He drank half the glass. When he put it down, he glanced at her, then away.

"No." The word came out sounding like a croak. It was cute. He took another long drink of the water, slower this time, and when he'd collected himself, he raised his gaze to her, solid and sure.

"I haven't had one of those since that night."

"So, what do you drink now?" Inane, dumb conversation to be having, and by the look on his face, he thought the same thing, but she wanted to... She didn't know what she wanted right then. She just knew she had to try and get beyond his outward mask of indifference. She might not have thought she wanted him to want her, or that she didn't care if she ever saw him again after that night, but now that she had and now that she knew he still wanted her, she needed him to let her in, to give her another chance.

"Domestic swill."

"Why?"

"I couldn't stomach the other anymore."

His gaze hadn't dropped from hers, and she wondered if he was also saying he couldn't stomach her. The idea of that hurt far more than she dare admit. "I see." She took his plate and put it in the sink. "Is working on my house going to be a problem for you?"

"Blue didn't believe in beating around the bush, especially one she intended to jump right on into. She was crazy, she knew it. Crazy about him, crazy to try and push him into admitting he still felt it. Lucky for her, she was Southern and crazy ran in even the best of Southern families.

Her aunt used to tell her all the time that in the old days, crazy was not only invited down to dinner, but expected to head the table.

"Not for me, no. I can't speak for you."

She covered the glass pedestal cake plate and gently pushed it to the side, then offered up a smile. "I don't have a problem with it, Cort. I have the updated plans out in the carriage house for with the small changes I want made." She turned on her flip-flopped heels and exited the kitchen through a screen door. She didn't looked back to see if he was following or not.

"I'm here to visit friends, not rehash old love affairs," he uttered.

'I can understand that. But he was behind her, and had called their one night a love affair.

She was gonna go ahead take that as a good sign.

'I didn't know it was
your house
when I agreed to look into it.

'Do you need to reconsider the job? The passion and desire still sizzled between them. The circumstances were a bit different and quite a few years had passed, but the sparks were there, if not a little rusty and frayed. When he didn't answer right away, she added, "You want it, and it's yours, Cort.." Statement, not a question.

"You can't know that I do." Did he get the double entendre and choose to ignore it, preferring a non-specific answer?

At the front door of the house and with her hand on the knob, she looked over at him.

"You're still here, aren't you?" His defiant stance and his hard eyes told her he didn't like being read, didn't like someone else, more than likely her above all, being able to predict his thoughts and motives. Too bad, so sad. He was just going to have to get over it. "Besides there are things I remember about that night aside from the sex."

She stepped out of her flops and walked into the bright living room of her home. The walls were painted a pretty yellow, nothing too orange, nothing too white. It was a rich, warm color but bright enough to make one feel happy, cheerful. He crossed the threshold, and she heard him inhale sharply. She stood with her back to him, allowing him time to take it all in.