Love Inspired November 2014 #2 (11 page)

“I think I should go ahead and get the custom ironwork for the front steps. I just don't see anything I like as much in the catalogues. I love the idea about Mima's quilt motif worked into the front railings.” He could see it as clearly as she could. The price tag started not to matter. There was something about being near her, as if she gave off some kind of magnetism he was helpless to resist. “Irresistible” suddenly wasn't a clichéd description—he found Charlotte wholly, genuinely irresistible. This was becoming dangerous on any number of fronts.

By the time he made coffee and doled out French vanilla ice cream to start melting all over the berry cobbler he'd pulled out of the oven for dessert, Jesse felt his personal and professional warning system completely short-circuit. She was talking about imported glass tile backsplashes and granite countertops while she tore off a piece of bread and mopped up the last bit of sauce off her plate. He knew just the color stone that would set off her eyes, and it no longer mattered that it was the most expensive. She was Charlotte. The world would line up to do her bidding because at that moment, he would have said yes to anything she asked. Even the dumb cat. She had him hooked. What made him most nervous of all was that he could already feel the ache that would start when he walked out this door tonight and never let up until he was near her again.

It scared him to death. He knew he was on the verge of a terrifying loss of control he wouldn't have predicted and couldn't contain. Jesse knew guys who got this way about fire—it drew them, fascinated them, nearly possessed them in a way that made them fearless.
It's also what gets them hurt or killed,
he reminded himself. When emotion overpowered thought, damage happened. The very thing he'd hoped to give Charlotte in this project—an objective eye, a grounded opinion as to what was a worthwhile splurge and what was reckless spending—was about to go out the window. This was not good.

Jesse turned back from returning the ice cream to the freezer and found her already digging into the cobbler right there at the counter—she hadn't even waited for him to set them down at the table. She had a spot of purple right at the corner of her mouth, and she let out this intoxicating little hum as she found it with the tip of her tongue.

That was it. Without a thought to the consequences, without even wondering if she'd welcome the advance, because every cell in his body already told him she would, Jesse kissed her.

The taste of his cooking on her lips was enthralling. When her initial surprise melted into surrender, he lost the ability to think straight. But when Charlotte began to return his kiss? That put him over the edge. Who cared what Bradens thought? It was one night, one dinner, one kiss. One really amazing kiss.

“Jesse...” She gasped his name, falling back against the counter as if the house had shifted off its foundations. He felt the same way, as if the world was whirling around him, spiraling out from the place where her hand still lay on his chest.

He put his hand atop hers, wondering if she could feel the pounding. “I...um...” He knew he should say something smooth, something casual and clever, but he came up empty. She'd undone him with one kiss, frightening as it was. He craved another kiss so much that he feared being able to control himself if he took one.

Not good, Sykes, not good at all.

Chapter Eleven

C
rash.
The moment came to a loud halt when a dish clattered to the floor. Mo had, at some point, leaped up onto the countertop in an effort to get at the melted ice cream and had succeeded in knocking over the cobbler dish. The cat screeched and bolted back into the dark of the living room. They both looked down to see white cream and purple cobbler splattered all over the floor and Charlotte's light-colored pants.

Charlotte didn't know whether to thank Mo or to kick the furry, meddling feline to the curb. The moment—whatever it was—was gone, replaced with a sticky mess and the casualty of one of her favorite pairs of pants.

Jesse had already grabbed a towel from the counter and was picking the pieces of the plate off the floor, muttering unkind things about cats. She stared at him, wanting to blink and shake her head, needing to know what had just happened and whether or not she should regret it.

It had been a spectacular kiss. The kind that made her sensibilities go white like an old-fashioned flashbulb, the kind that ought to be the first kiss between soul mates. Only now that the bubble had popped, she could name half a dozen reasons why Jesse Sykes was not the mate of her soul. And as for Jesse himself, if the kiss had affected him the way it had her, it no longer showed.

“See, not too hard to clean up.” Jesse slid the broken china into the wastebasket and tossed the purple-blotched towel into the sink. “I don't think you can say the same for those pants.” He turned to her, an “oh well” smile in his eyes, as if it had been a simple kitchen mishap. “There's enough dessert to start over.”

“I don't think we ought to.” She knew she didn't sound at all convinced. She wasn't—confused was closer to accurate.

His disappointment was so appealing. “Really? My cobbler's even better than my Brussels sprouts.”

Charlotte leaned against the cabinets. “Jesse...”

He leaned up against the same cabinets, inches from her. “Hey, it's okay.” He shrugged. “But it was a really nice kiss.”

She shut her eyes for a moment, slipping her hand up to press it to her own lips while she launched a prayer up to heaven for the right words. “I know there's something...here.” She opened her eyes again, wanting to make him understand. “The meal, the kiss—you know how to sweep a woman off her feet. It's just that...” How could she make him understand when she wasn't even sure what she wanted at the moment herself?

He put a hand to his chest as if wounded. “I feed you fettuccine Alfredo and you shoot me down? Ouch.” His words were harsh but his eyes held that teasing glint she found most irresistible about him.

“I need to take it a whole lot slower than this.” That much was true. She still hadn't figured out if, in the space of one meal, Jesse Sykes had truly disintegrated her conviction not to get involved with men in his line of work. Had she truly overcome that fear? Or was it just pushed aside by Jesse's...
Jesseness,
just to return later when her guard was down? “I like being with you,” she admitted, “but we have a lot of ground to cover and a bunch of things we have to...I have to work out. Or through. Or something.” She let her head fall back against the cabinets. “‘It's complicated' sounds so stupid, but it is.”

“It doesn't have to be. I don't think this has to be a big, complicated deal. I do know I don't want tonight to end here, like this.”

“Maybe it's better that it does. At least for the sake of my pants.”
If not my convictions.

Jesse ran one hand through his hair. “I'll tell you what. Why don't you go upstairs and get those into water or soap—or whatever you do to get blueberry out of something—and I'll clean up here? Then we'll figure out what comes next. No sweeping off of any feet.”

It seemed as good a plan as any. She needed fifteen minutes out of the pull of his eyes, away from the way he seemed to fill the room and cloud her thinking. “Okay.”

Charlotte dashed upstairs, slipped into a pair of jeans and filled the bathroom sink—the beautiful bathroom sink Jesse had installed three days ago—with cold water and soap. She dunked the stained pants into the sink and scrubbed a few seconds before stopping to stare at herself in the mirror.

What do you want, Charlotte? What do you want to do about that man downstairs in your kitchen?

She knew Jesse. Knew his character and personality as if they'd spent years together instead of weeks. He probably thought she hadn't noticed his reaction to her prayer over the food, but she'd seen it. It was so strong she'd nearly felt it. Still, all that awareness wasn't the same as a man of faith, a man whose soul could match with hers. In all the time they'd spent together they'd only skittered around the topic of church and God. She knew his dreams, but not his values. And quite frankly, it wasn't hard to guess at his reputation where women were concerned.

And then there was the question of firefighting. It wasn't his whole life, as the police force had been for Dad, but it was a big part. Would it always be there, or would his volunteer duties eventually fade as his business grew to take more and more of his time? And was dating your general contractor ever a good idea? The questions seemed to rise up and swallow her clarity the same way the rising bubbles rose up to cover her hands.

Mo wandered into the bathroom, drawn out of his hiding spot in her bedroom by the lights and sounds of her spontaneous load of laundry. Charlotte pulled her hands from the suds and pointed a finger at the cat. “The jury's still out on you, mister.”

Mo simply sat down on the tile and wrapped his tail around his legs, a picture of all the calm and patience she currently lacked. If he had any advice or warning, she couldn't decipher it from his eyes. Charlotte would have to work this one out on her own.

She touched the framed photo of Mima as she passed it on the hallway table at the top of the stairs.
What do I do, Mima? Why is this man in my life now when you aren't here to tell me what to do with him?

Charlotte had enough married friends to know that to come downstairs to a man responsible for a spotless kitchen was a wonder indeed. He had his stuff packed up in the grocery bags but his face told her he wasn't the least bit ready to leave. “Talk to me,” he said as he sat down at the table she now noticed was set with two cups of coffee. “Tell me what's whirling around in that pretty head of yours.”

She sat down. Talking about this was a good idea, and she was glad for the table between them. She knew he wasn't clouding her thinking on purpose, but that didn't mean he wasn't very good at it. “I'm worried this won't turn out to be such a good idea.”

“Because I'm working on your house.”

She owed him the further explanation. “That's just part of it.” She ran her hands across the thighs of her jeans, wiping the last of the water from the upstairs washing project. “My dad was a policeman.”

His face changed, understanding darkening his features. “I didn't know that.”

There was a lot he didn't know. That was the whole point. “I've spent a lot of nights watching my mom get eaten alive from the stress of waiting for bad news. I made a promise to myself that I'd never let myself in for that kind of life.”

Jesse leaned back in his chair. “You've known I was a firefighter literally from the moment you met me.”

“I didn't say I couldn't be
friends
with you.” That felt like a weak defense.

“Friends don't kiss like that. But this doesn't have to become superserious overnight, Charlotte. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition.”

Charlotte's chest was filled with a mixed-up host of reactions. He'd felt it. Of course he'd felt it—how could he not feel what she felt humming between them? Only Jesse looked so much more in control of the situation than she felt. “Look, I'm kind of an impulsive person.” Was she explaining her choice in backsplash tiles or how she'd kissed him back?

“Really? I hadn't noticed.” Did he have to smile like that? All velvety and cavalier?

She struggled forward, telling the flutter in her stomach to behave itself. “It makes it hard to hang on to certain...challenging convictions.”

Jesse gave her a look that said he rather enjoyed challenging people's convictions. Right—there was one of the problems with this whole situation. “Okay.”

“My faith is really important to me. Maybe more now than it's been at any point in my life. It'd be a bad idea to get serious with someone who couldn't share that with me. I know you don't get that, but—”

“I do get that.”

She hadn't expected that response. “You do?”

“I liked your grace. Never heard it done quite that way before. I'm okay with it.”

“I'm glad to hear that, but it goes a bit deeper for me than table grace. There are—”

He cut her off. “Do you know I said yes to emceeing the talent show at your church tomorrow night? I figured maybe it was time I stopped ditching that stuff.”

Oh, he'd managed to say the one thing that made resistance harder. “Clark didn't tell me you'd said yes.”

“I told him I wanted to tell you myself. Surprise you at the end of tonight. I've seen you, and Chief, and Melba, and even JJ when you talk about going to church. I want to know what it is you all have over there. I just don't know how to try it or if it will stick. But you came up with the perfect introduction, didn't you? Doesn't that count for something to you?”

Lord, couldn't he be a jerk or something? You know me, I'm going to go all optimistic and hopeful now and I'm having enough trouble thinking practically already.
“If we're going to be...” She didn't know how to finish that sentence without revealing how very attractive she found him, and Jesse surely needed no encouragement in that department.

“Hey,” he said, taking her hand. She knew she ought to pull away, but she couldn't muster up the resistance. “Who actually knows what we're going to be? I'm not so sure why you have to plot this out right now. Can't we just wait and see?”

He meant well, but Charlotte knew herself, and she had a bad habit of throwing herself headlong into relationships that ought never to have been pursued. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know there was some serious chemistry between them, and that could make it hard to pull back before it was too late. “Well, the term
playing with fire
does come to mind.”

“I'm a fireman. I think we'll be safe. How about I finish my coffee and leave like the gentleman I am? I'll see you at the talent show tomorrow night, and maybe we can try a dinner Sunday. Someplace easy and friendly, like Dellio's.”

Those events—she refused to call them dates, even in her head—felt safe.

“I won't even be sitting near you at the talent show. There'll be something like sixty people between us. Then at dinner we can talk some more,” he continued. “I can hear you say grace again.”

If he was willing to come to church and be part of the talent show, if he was willing to let her say grace over burgers in public, there had to be an openness to faith about him. He was putting in an effort; she ought to at least meet him halfway on this. “Okay.”

Jesse finished his coffee in one gulp—something she'd seen Melba's fireman husband do, so it must be a professional requirement—then stood up to leave. She stood up, as well.

He held his hand out, an oversize request for a formal handshake. “Friendly, see?”

When she offered her hand, he pulled it to his lips and left a soft kiss there. “Well, mostly.” Without any further explanation than that, Jesse gathered up his things and headed out the door.

* * *

Jesse stood in his kitchen, staring at the still unemptied grocery bags, sorting through the puzzle of his feelings. Exactly what had happened tonight? He knew how to wow a lady, always had. It was an extension—however egotistical—of his urge to please people. He liked making customers happy, helping fire victims, making women feel special.

Whatever it was he felt for Charlotte, it was a whole new thing. He found himself disturbingly desperate for her—but not at all in a physical sense; it was so much more than that. This was much more consuming than a merely physical attraction. There was some gaping, empty hole he couldn't seem to hide from her. Worse, not only could she see it, she effortlessly filled it. As he paced his kitchen, Jesse had the uncomfortable sensation that his life had just cracked open to make room for her and nothing else would ever fill the space that made.

He tried to tell himself that urge to make her happy, to watch the delight spark up in her eyes, was ordinary, an ego boost, the way it was with everyone else. Only with Charlotte, it wasn't. It was the closest thing to a purely selfless urge he'd ever had, and he had no idea what to do with that. Oh, sure, lots of people thought of his work at the firehouse as selfless, but it really wasn't. It was a hero thing. He liked playing the hero—the stakes at the firehouse were just a bit higher than when he built someone the garage of their dreams.

The old Jesse would have kissed her again even when he knew better. He'd never, ever have pressed his advantage with a woman, but he would have been far bolder than he was tonight. It was as if someone had changed the rules on him without notice.

Without his consent. Chief Bradens really was right: Charlotte hadn't learned how to go in small steps—not in relationships or renovations or maybe even in life. Could he be the man to show her how to slow things down? Lighten up and have a little more fun? Learn that a few dates and kisses could be just that—a few dates and kisses? It was worth a dinner at Dellio's to find out.

And beyond that...he'd figure it out when he got there.