Home To You (14 page)

She shrugged and pulled off the highway onto the track to the cabin, and stopped to put the truck back in four-wheel drive. “I just thought of something that made me feel better about life in general.”

“I’m afraid to ask what that could be.”

“Chicken.”

“Maybe, but whatever it is, I’m hoping it has something to do with all that food you bought.”

*

Kendall hauled in the groceries while Jack brought in the building supplies. Every time he stepped off the porch, his gaze swept the clouds gathering in the
distance and heading their way. “Looks like it’s going to be a doozy of a nor’easter.”

“Sounds like it too. It was the talk of the grocery store. But don’t worry—I bought plenty of milk, bread, and toilet paper.”

“I knew I could count on you to think of the necessities of life. But if you knew about the storm, why didn’t you mention it to me?”

She shrugged. “I knew as soon as you heard, you’d be anxious to get home and finish working on the roof. Your worrying wouldn’t get us home any sooner.”

He pulled a few sheets of drywall out of the bed of the truck, set them on the top of his booted foot, and shook his head.

“Problem?”

“No. I find it funny that you think you’ve got me all figured out.”

He didn’t mean
funny
as in
ha-ha
; he meant
funny
as in
weird
. “Don’t I?” She grabbed four more grocery bags. “I am a professional. Or at least I have a license that says I am.” She looked him up and down, trying to imagine him naked. “It’s not that difficult.”

He took a step closer, drywall and all. “And what exactly have you learned?” His deep voice sounded loud in the sudden stillness around them. It was as if the earth were holding its breath, waiting for the storm to hit.

She didn’t think this was the time or place to mention that he could turn her on just by breathing, or that she’d somehow acquired an insatiable lust for him—one she’d never felt for anyone before. He’d figure that out all by himself in due time. “I’ve learned a lot of things about you, but mostly that you’re a ridiculously good guy with a very strong moral code.”

He let out a breath he seemed to be holding and looked equal parts relieved and disappointed.

“Lucky for me”—she put on what she thought was a sexy smile—“I’m a code breaker.”

Kendall didn’t wait to see his reaction. She didn’t need to; the choking behind her said she’d hit her target. She took the last of the groceries into the house and dug through the bag of personal items containing the three boxes of condoms she’d bought. It was the first time she’d ever purchased condoms—David had always handled that when they were younger. Kendall hadn’t known what size to get, so she bought a selection—choosing the largest box she could find of medium, large, and extra large, since she couldn’t imagine a guy as big as Jack needing a small. She ran to her room and stashed them in the bedside table before Jack returned.

The clerk’s eyes had just about bugged out of her head as she rang up the condoms. She probably thought Kendall was opening a brothel. “Gag gift,” Kendall had explained, and smiled innocently. The whole innocent look was way too easy to pull off for her peace of mind. Her lack of experience had never bothered her before; after all, she and David had been each other’s firsts. He’d never complained, and she’d never felt as if she’d missed out on anything, until she met Jack. Kissing Jack had been an experience like no other—just the thought of it was enough to leave her squirming in her seat. She’d never before experienced that much heat and intensity. Now she wondered what else she’d missed.

“Earth to Kendall.”

She turned to find the object of her erotic musings talking to her. “What?”

“Are you okay?” He came closer and felt her forehead. “You look a little flushed.”

No doubt. “I’m fine.”

Jack trailed a finger down the side of her face and lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Are you sure?”

She dragged her gaze from his and cleared her throat. “Positive.”

“If you don’t need help putting away the groceries, I’ll get to work on the roof. I need to get it dried in before the storm hits, so we don’t lose another ceiling.”

“I know. Go ahead. I’ll square away everything in the kitchen and then make dinner.”

She put away all the food, reorganized the now-overflowing pantry, and then scrubbed the unpolished terra-cotta tiles with kosher salt, hoping her idea would work, because she’d had a killer craving for pizza. Since her pizza stones were gathering dust in her kitchen in Boston, she knew she’d have to improvise. She laid the tiles tight against each other, lining both oven racks. They overhung the rack just a hair, but if the door closed, it might actually work better than the too-small pizza stones she’d always used. The tiles certainly increased the surface area. Visions of bread making flew through her mind and made her mouth water. More space meant larger pizzas, and when you were feeding a guy who ate as much as Jack did, that was a good thing. She held her breath and closed the oven door. It worked.

Kendall did a little happy dance and measured out enough flour to make two large pies. She loved baking bread and making dough; all the stirring and kneading were great outlets for stress and frustration. And that was something that had been building since she’d opened
her eyes that morning. The banging coming from the roof did nothing but remind her of the dream she’d woken to, the kiss that left her hot and needy and humiliated, the condoms in her drawer, and the man on the roof. She blew out a breath and took out all of her sexual frustration on the dough. At the rate she was going, she’d need to make a hundred crusts to center herself.

Two hours of cooking, cleaning, and laundry later, she pulled on a coat and stepped outside, picking her way around the cabin, following the trail of packed snow until she saw Jack standing on the roof. She didn’t bother asking him how he was doing; she could tell from the set of his shoulders all was right in his world. Lucky man. “Question.”

“Shoot.”

“How do you feel about anchovies?”

“Love them. You?”

“Same.”

“Anything else?”

The first flurries were already falling; the roof would be slick in no time. “How’s it coming?”

“Almost done.”

“Be careful you don’t fall off.”

She ran back inside and started on a Caesar salad. If Jack loved anchovies, he’d probably like that too.

*

Jaime sat in his office with his back to the door. He entered the part number into the computer and then added the time for labor. He’d found out years ago that if he wanted to concentrate on anything—especially stuff he hated, namely paperwork—he had to have his back to the action.

The hair on his neck stood on end, and when he took a breath, he knew why. He cringed and didn’t even bother to turn around. “Addie, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too.”

“That’s not an answer to my question.” He turned to look at her—it was a Mud Brown Day. Man, that was worse than Sweatshirt Gray. She wore a long, shapeless skirt; those ugly faux UGGs she favored when the weather went bad; and an oversize, shit-brown hoodie. Her hair was long, and if she’d done something with it, it could have been pretty. Today it looked like a bunch of five-year-olds had used it as a paintbrush. “What the hell happened to your hair?”

She shrugged as if she didn’t care that she looked more ridiculous than usual. “Today we were finger painting.” She held up her hands to display that every color of the rainbow was stuck under her short nails. “If you think that’s bad, you should see my smock.”

“There’s some decent soap in the shop—go scrub your hands with it. It’ll get anything out from under your nails. Your hair is above my pay grade.”

“I didn’t come here to wash up.”

“I know that. What I don’t know is why you’re here.”

She came in and frumped her way to the seat opposite his desk. “I’m worried about Kendall. There’s a storm coming, and I’m not sure she has enough food.”

Food was the least of her worries. “I let her use my truck to go to Concord today. She wanted to pick up a few things at the grocery store, and I needed a part—it was a twofer.”

“But she’s all alone in that cabin.”

“There’s propane heat, a gas oven, a woodstove, and
oil lamps. If the electricity goes out, she can always melt snow to flush the toilet. She’ll be fine.”

“But she’s alone.”

“She knows where I am, and I told her to just leave the truck by the cabin in case she needs anything else. Hell, I’m not going to need it.”

“Is she okay?”

He shrugged. Kendall was way better than he was at the moment. Hell, she was probably having great sex to boot. Unlike him. He hadn’t been with a woman since setting eyes on the walking, talking wet dream he’d been about to hit on, until he’d realized it was Addie. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. It had been three months. Three long, sexless, frustrating-as-hell months, and it was all her fault. “Kendall seems fine.”

Addie didn’t look like she believed him. She had that men-are-clueless-Neanderthals look about her. She didn’t know the half of it. She would never suspect that all it took was a whiff of her damn shampoo to give him a stiffy and that he’d spent more than a few nights doing nothing but picturing her naked.

“I think maybe I should go check on her.”

“Not a good idea. Kendall wants to be left alone, Addie. She did everything she could to get rid of me when I stopped by.”

“Well, that’s understandable. After all, what’s a man know about a broken heart?”

“What do you know about it?” He saw a flash of pain in her eyes, but it was gone so fast, he thought he’d imagined it.

“None of your business.”

He needed to get closer to her. And, yes, in the past three months he’d not only embraced celibacy, but he’d
also discovered he was a fucking masochist. He rose, stood in front of her, and leaned back against his desk, looking down at her. “What if I want to make it my business?”

“You what?” Addie looked dumbstruck and pissed. She waited until she got totally torqued before she rose and was nose to chest with him. She was the perfect height for him to catch the scent of green apple in her hair. She couldn’t step back because the chair was right behind her, so she tipped her head up and glared.

“You heard me.” Man, she had the most kissable mouth. He hadn’t noticed it until she’d walked into that Boston bar with it painted hooker red. But looking at her lips now, even slightly chapped, made him want to kiss her. He couldn’t fight it anymore. He gave up.

“And what do you think you know, Einstein?”

“I know what you’re hiding under those clothes. I saw you that night in Boston with Kendall. And, like it or not, I can see you now too. I wanted you then, and I still want you.” He expected her to be angry at the admission; he’d been trying to avoid her for months. When that didn’t work, he’d hoped to hell she’d be interested.

She laughed in his face. Not just a chuckle either—a full-throated laugh that sounded sexy as hell, even if it felt awful. Yeah, he hadn’t expected that.

She fell back into her chair and hugged herself, as if she were laughing so hard, her stomach hurt.

“Oh, that’s a good one, Jaime. I don’t know what you think you saw, but it wasn’t me.”

“It was too.” He put his hands on the armrests of her chair and leaned into her, and her scent surrounded him. “You can deny it all you want, but you and I both know I’m right.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Apparently.” He might be crazy for wanting her. Little Miss Virgin Kindergarten Teacher. Hell, she even taught Sunday school. But he’d tried to forget about her for three months, and he was done. “Go out with me.”

“Right. So everyone in town will know? I don’t think so.”

And what was wrong with that? He was hardly a leper. “We don’t have to go anywhere in town. We can go to Concord or to Boston.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to get to know you.”

“You’ve known me all my life. You’re going to have to come up with a better one than that. Besides, I don’t need to be the laughingstock of Harmony. Just cut the crap, Jaime, and tell me if the lane up to the hunting cabin is plowed.”

“No, it’s not. And it’s snowing already. Did you get new tires yet? Last time I looked, your tread was low.”

Addie rolled her eyes and pushed him away from her and the chair, forcing him back against his desk. “My tread and everything else about me is my business, not yours. Besides, you’re the only one in town who sells tires, so you know I didn’t.”

“I thought you might have gone to Concord. Why don’t I order some for you? I’ll put them on right after the storm. You need to stay off the lake road until I get a chance to plow it. With the storm coming, I doubt I’ll get to it until after the weekend.”

“What do you have against me going to visit Kendall?”

“Nothing. Why would I care either way?”

“I don’t know, but I know something is up.” She crossed
her arms over the chest he’d been dreaming about for three months, the same one he hadn’t known she’d kept hidden all these years. “Do me a favor and have Kendall call me, please.”

“She doesn’t have a phone that works.”

“Let her use yours. If I don’t hear from her in the next two days, I don’t care if I have to hike across the lake, I’m going to see her and make sure she’s okay.”

“Since when did I become your errand boy?”

“About the same time you asked me out. What can I say? The world’s gone mad.”

J
ax laid the last row of tar paper, with one eye on the sky. He just hoped it would survive the nor’easter. He wasn’t too worried, though. After all, he’d spaced the nails a hell of a lot closer than he’d been taught to the summer he’d worked as a roofer. The memory brought a smile to his lips. It was the first time he told his uncles to pound rock salt. They controlled his trust fund until he turned twenty-five, and they thought threatening to cut off the money would make him dance to their tune. They’d never made that mistake again. Jax got a job at a roofing company the next day and spent the summer humpin’ seventy-five-pound packs of shingles up two and three stories in the Chicago suburbs during one of the hottest summers on record. He’d loved it.

The scent of something cooking came right through the roof and made his stomach grumble. It smelled like pizza, but he couldn’t imagine Kendall ever pulling a frozen pizza out of the box and tossing it in the oven. He doubted she’d ever eat anything out of a box—that just wasn’t her. No, Kendall was all about sensuality; no matter which of the five senses she was using, she went all in. Everything she cooked smelled, tasted, and looked too
good to eat. Everything she wore was soft to the touch but had style. And the way she danced around the kitchen, to music better suited to the bedroom, when she thought he wasn’t looking told him everything he’d imagined she’d be like in bed was probably dead-on. It was in the way she did everything, from walking across a room to kissing. Damn. He sat back on his heels and then checked the sky again. They’d be shut in the cabin, riding out the storm with no TV, no Internet, not even many books. He was in serious trouble.

He checked one more time to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, cleaned up his tools, and threw the rest of the tar-paper roll on his shoulder to haul down the ladder.

The stove and heaters were propane, so no problem there. If the electric went out, they had a generator, or they could just do things the old-fashioned way and take all the food in the refrigerator and stick it out on the enclosed back porch. For light, there were oil lamps in every room. Jax had spent his first week at the cabin doing nothing but chopping wood, so there was plenty of firewood for the season, much less for a nasty nor’easter.

He picked up an armful and stacked it on the front porch. In blizzard conditions, it was a bitch to trek to the woodpile and back. Plus, it was the best excuse he could come up with to release his pent-up frustration and avoid going back in the cabin with Kendall—the root cause of it all. He was in no rush to face her.

The thought of being stuck in the cabin for days alone with Kendall was enough to make him sweat, even with the temperature dropping. Maybe he should have bought the economy-size box of condoms, because he had a feeling
that if he were to slip, it would be a very, very, very long fall from grace.

He stripped out of his coat, and a few minutes later his sweater, in his quest for physical exhaustion. The woodpile on the porch was waist high by the time Kendall stepped outside and plucked his coat and sweater off the porch rail. “I’ll take these inside.”

“Thanks.”

“Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes, if you want to get a shower.”

All it took was the word
shower
, and he was right back where he started that morning—dry-mouthed, breathing heavy and hard. Damn, he was seriously screwed. There was nothing between him and Kendall but his quickly dissolving moral code and a small box of condoms.

Jax tossed the armful of firewood onto the stack and followed Kendall inside, watching the hypnotic sway of her hips all the way to the kitchen.

He was going to have a shower, all right—a very cold shower.

Kendall stopped and turned to him as if she’d just remembered something. “Jack.” She rested a hand on his sweat-soaked shirt and then licked her lips—lips he couldn’t seem to stop staring at. “Let me know if you need me to wash your back or anything else.”

“If I did, we’d be in there a hell of a lot longer than fifteen minutes, sweetheart. I wouldn’t want to spoil the dinner you’ve worked so hard to prepare.”

Her eyes widened and she sucked in a breath. “I thought you had no concept of time.”

“I don’t, but I do have a memory.” His hands went to her waist, slid beneath the sweater and the tank, and stroked the warm, smooth skin just above her low-riding jeans.

She curled the fingers on his chest into a fist, shirt and all.

He pushed her hair behind her ear and then leaned in to whisper, “And I remember that when I’m truly inspired, I can go for hours.” He nipped her earlobe and then sucked it into his mouth to soothe it, until he heard that sound she’d made when she’d taken her first bite of her lobster BLT at lunch. “And you inspire the hell out of me.”

He tried to back away, but she had his shirt in her fist. He grabbed ahold of the back of his shirt and pulled it off. “I’ll just go toss this into the mudroom.”

Kendall released the shirt, and the way her gaze roamed his chest and abs made him thankful he’d never given up competitive swimming. He’d gone from his high school team to his college team, and then right into Masters swimming. The 2,500 meters he swam every morning before work not only kept him sane, but also kept him in insanely good shape.

*

Kendall watched Jack walk shirtless to the bathroom, and had to remind herself to breathe. He looked almost as good going as he did coming. She’d always had a thing for men’s backs—broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist, and, God, no love handles. Even David—the guy who spent two hours a day at the gym—had love handles. She’d known Jack would look good without a shirt on, but she’d never seen anyone look that good, except maybe David Beckham, but it wasn’t as if she’d seen him in the flesh. She turned around, poured herself a glass of wine, and downed it.

She had to concentrate on dinner, not washboard abs
and back muscles that flexed as he walked. And she wasn’t going to get started thinking about how good he looked in a tool belt. No, she was going to concentrate on food.

Kendall slid the pizzas she’d placed on a sheet of tinfoil off the cookie sheets and onto the heated terra-cotta tiles, and set the timer. She looked around and did a mental checklist. The table was set, the salad was chilling, and she’d already made a dent in the nice, big bottle of Chianti she’d chosen. She refilled her wine, tried to erase the picture of a naked Jack in the shower, with water cascading over his well-defined abs, until the timer went off. It hadn’t worked. When the buzzer went off, she pulled the tinfoil out from beneath the pizzas and spun them around the best she could. Normally she’d flip them too, put the top one on the bottom and vice versa, but she was already on her third glass of wine and really didn’t trust herself not to take a header into the oven.

“Kendall?”

“Yes?” She followed his voice and found Jack in his room, wearing nothing but a towel.

“Where’s my dresser?”

“I slid it into my room.” She stared at the slash of muscle that ran from his hip bone toward his pelvis on both sides and disappeared beneath the white terry cloth.

“Why?”

“Why what?” He didn’t have much chest hair, but maybe she just couldn’t see it because he was blond and the lighting was bad. “Do you wax your chest?”

“No, not anymore. I used to when I was on the swim team in college—less drag.” He ran a hand across his chest. “Why is my dresser in your room?”

Her mouth had gone dry. She tried to swallow.
“Because it’s too dusty in yours, and with the plaster raining down the way it was, I deemed the room uninhabitable.”

“You deemed my room uninhabitable?”

She nodded and took a step closer. “You didn’t want your dresser and clothes ruined, did you?”

“No, but it’s my room. My bed.”

“Your bed was trashed, but don’t worry. I pulled off all the bedding, grabbed your dirty clothes, and threw them in the wash. They’re all folded and put away. And I don’t think there’s much hope for your mattress—it’s drenched.”

“But . . .”

“At first I tried just sweeping up the plaster, but it just kept falling, so I whacked it with the broom handle and dislodged what I could—it all has to come down eventually.”

“Yes, but my bed—”

“That’s when I slid your dresser into my room. It’s not a problem—there’s plenty of space for your things. I grabbed the computer off your desk and then moved the rest of the furniture out of the way of the remaining plaster. With you banging up there on the roof, well, you just never know, do you?”

The way Jack turned a full circle, if he struck a pose and put on a thoughtful expression, he could be an underwear model—that is, if he put on underwear.

“Even after I swept, the dust was horrible. Just come out of there and close the door so it doesn’t get into the rest of the cabin again. As it is, I already had to dust the whole place, and, unfortunately for you, I don’t find cleaning therapeutic, thank you very much.”

“Kendall, I never asked you to clean. Cleaning is not the problem.”

She wished she’d brought her wine, because for some
reason, this conversation was very confusing. “Okay, so what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that we’re both tall and the couch is short.”

She didn’t understand, but that could have something to do with the towel slipping down his hips as he stalked back and forth over the dusty floor. “What does the couch have to do with anything?” She jumped just a little when the timer went off. “Are you planning to eat in your towel? Or maybe naked? If you are, you won’t hear any complaints from me, but if you want to dress for the occasion, now would be a good time. Dinner’s ready.”

Jack stomped the three steps to her bedroom and slammed the door. She thought she heard him cursing again.

“Jeez, I try to help a guy out, break my back knocking down a freakin’ ceiling, sweep and dust, do his laundry, and cook dinner, and do I get so much as a thank-you? No. All I get is an angry man stomping around in a towel.”

But then when she thought about it, that wasn’t such a bad trade after all.

*

Jax cursed a blue streak as he threw the towel against the wall and rummaged through his drawers for clothes—clothes that Kendall had washed and folded and put away. He’d gone up to work on the roof, and when he’d come down, he’d found out that Kendall had demolished the remaining ceiling in his bedroom and moved him into hers without so much as a word.

He didn’t bother with underwear—something about knowing she had her hands all over his shorts was a turn-
on—which in and of itself made him worry about his mental capacity, not to mention his ability to button his damn fly. Unfortunately, both problems seemed minor compared to his reaction to the thought of sharing the bed with Kendall. His body screamed, “Hell, yeah!” but his brain told him to run while he still could.

By the time he’d gotten both problems under some semblance of control, he went out to the kitchen and found Kendall with her head practically stuffed in the oven.

She wore blue pot-holder mittens on her hands. “God, I really miss my pizza paddle.” She closed the oven door, turned, and almost ran into him.

“And here I thought you’d never buy frozen pizza.”

“Frozen pizza?” The look she gave him was enough to make him want to sleep with the light on, a knife under the pillow, and one eye open.

“Don’t get me wrong—I’m not complaining. It looks amazing.” He scanned the counters to make sure there were no weapons close at hand.

“You think I bought this?”

Of course he did. He’d never seen pizza that looked that good in any New York or even Chicago restaurant, for that matter, and definitely not in Harmony. “Are you trying to pull one over on me? Come on. No one could make a pizza at home that professional-looking without a brick oven and a pizza chef.”

She slammed the pizza wheel he’d never seen before into the first pie with such force, the sound made him jump.

He watched while she sliced the pie in perfectly even pieces, making short work of it, like it was second nature. She’d done it without ever taking her pissed-off glare away from him.

“Think again. And as for the brick oven, I improvised and made my own.”

And to think he’d just spent the past few minutes wondering about his sanity, when all the while maybe he should have questioned hers. “You made a brick oven? How did you manage that one?”

She walked over to the oven and opened it up before doing a really good impression of Vanna White. “What do you think the terra-cotta tile I picked up at the Home Depot was for, Einstein? Oh, and thanks for the professional comment. It’s good to know that the four years I spent cooking at Pizza King downtown weren’t wasted. Mine’s better, since I perfected my recipes for the crust and sauce—I’m not a fan of sweet pizza. Tomatoes are sweet enough on their own, don’t you think?”

She was still obviously pissed over his frozen pizza comment, if the way she attacked the second pizza was anything to go by. While he was busy trying to scrape his jaw off the floor, she’d gathered both pizzas and left him standing in the kitchen.