Page 27 of His Best Friend's Baby

His arms, belly and back still rippled with muscles, exuding the sort of power that seemed only slightly diminished from when she’d seen him in Germany.

His black hair had gone shaggy over the months in the hospital and now covered his ears and flirted with his eyes. He brushed it out of the way, looking right at her in the process. His dark eyes cut through her like a flashlight in a dark room. She felt like a thief, caught touching something forbidden.

His eyes didn’t move, they stayed locked on her and everything in her started a slow burn. Blood pooled between her legs, in flesh so forgotten it hurt. Her skin ignited under his hot gaze, her mouth fell open, suddenly parched for air. Dying for something she didn’t have. This was the connection she’d been missing; this is what it was supposed to be between men and women. Surely, Jesse hadn’t meant it when he told her to stay away. How could he deny—Just as she was about to step forward, get closer to him, Jesse bent down to his work.

He tore up shingles as though she weren’t even there.

“Mama?” Ben asked. “Let’s walk.”

The blood rushed from her breasts to her face.

“Right, Ben. Let’s get walking.”

She jerked Ben’s stroller and stalked away from Jesse Filmore as if the hounds of hell were after her.

JESSE HAD TO GET OFF the roof; his hands shook so much it wasn’t safe. As soon as he was sure she was long gone, he climbed down the ladder and went inside.

Jesus, that woman had the power to kill him. He went to the sink, tore off his gloves and splashed cold water over his face, sluicing it down his chest and over his back, trying to cool his damn body.

He had to get out of town. If he could keep going with the roof at this rate he might be able to get it done in a week—two at the most.

He nearly groaned. Two weeks of pretending she wasn’t a hundred meters away? He shook his head, spraying the room with water droplets. He had to find a real estate agent. And screw him doing the roof on his own, he needed professionals. Guys who could get it done in a few days.

He went into the living room to the small telephone table where for years the yellow pages had sat collecting dust. But, of course, the table was bare. He banged his way through the cupboards under the TV stand and the end table, but they were all bare, too.

“Damnit!”

“Uncle Jesse?”

Everything in him went cold. Then hot. He turned to the doorway to see the blond teenager who had stared at him through the hole in the picture window.

“I’m not your uncle,” he said. Stupidly, faced with Amanda’s brilliant blue eyes, that’s the best he could come up with. You’re really doing a great job here, handling all these women. She’s, like, sixteen—surely you can scare her away.

“Well, not by blood. But marriage counts.” She shrugged her thin shoulder and the sun hit the fall of white-blond hair along her narrow face.

“Can I come in?” she asked, with a half grin.

Man, she looks like Mac.

“Will you leave if I say no?”

She pretended to think it over and finally shook her head, that grin turning into a beatific smile. “Probably not.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“My final project for English class is due in a few weeks and I was hoping…” She poked her pinky finger through the metal spiral at the end of the notebook she held in her hand. “I was hoping I could interview you.”

“No.” He walked away from the window toward the kitchen, hoping she’d get the hint, but worried that the glint in her eye suggested she didn’t take no for an answer.

“You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked,” she said as she walked in. “Anyone could just come in.”

“I’m serious, kid—”

“Amanda.” Her chin came up like a boxer going into the ring and those eyes of hers, God, were they familiar. It wasn’t just their likeness to Mac’s; it was also the knowledge in their blue depths. She looked like his soldiers had after their first missions into Kabul. A surprising steadiness lived in her eyes, a fearlessness that told him she’d seen everything that could possibly scare her and lived through it.

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