Page 59 of Love & Other Disasters

She was in the shower when he returned with the broom. He worked to sweep up the dirt and dried mud flakes from the bathroom floor. J.P. looked up to find her watching from behind the shower curtain.

“What?” he asked.

“You shirtless and cleaning is lady porn,” she said. “I should film this. I’d make tons.”

He laughed. “I don’t know about that.”

“Hot man cleaning is like a unicorn. I must document it.” She laughed.

“Stereotype much?” He grinned and left with the broom and dustpan.

With that out of the way, he returned to his original goal and joined her in the shower.

Violet wasn’t so exhausted that she couldn’t appreciate the hot male that stepped into her shower. But he was more than that. He’d driven for an hour to pick her and Jill up from jail without hesitation. After Elle hadn’t answered her phone, Violet had given into hopelessness. It’d been Jill who’d insisted they call J.P. And he came, bought them breakfast, and now here he took care of her with no reason to do so. Beyond busy with work, he owed her nothing. He wasn’t at all like her judgment of him at the bar the night they met.

From deep in her thoughts, she returned to reality with Jordan’s hands in her hair, massaging her scalp and suds filling her hair. He was washing her hair.

“Oh my gosh, that’s so good,” she said.

“It’s been a while. I worked as shampoo boy at my mom’s salon from fifteen to eighteen.”

The tips of his fingers circled on her scalp. “Why did you ever stop?” she moaned.

“I’d gotten propositioned by several older women,” he replied. “One of them had slept with her pool boy.”

A laugh burst out. “No way,” Violet giggled. “Seriously?”

“Yep, my mom kicked her out of the salon with wet hair.”

“Oh, how embarrassing,” Violet breathed, imagining his irate mom yelling at a woman who’d hit on her teenage son.

“At least I was legal.” He continued working shampoo through her hair. “But I’d gotten into school in Indiana, so it was time to leave my salon days behind.”

“Does your mom still run the salon?”

“She retired a few years back,” he replied. “Had three by the time she sold them.” There was an unfamiliar tone to his voice. Was that sadness? Before she could investigate any further, he guided her under the falling water and rinsed her hair. She closed her eyes and sighed in pleasure.

“It looks like you won’t have to cut any of your gorgeous locks.” His hands ran through her hair applying conditioner. Her hair was far from gorgeous, but she appreciated his compliment.

Violet startled awake. How long had she slept? The sun outside the window shone, but from the angle, it had to be afternoon. Sleeping all day would mess up her sleep schedule. But exhaustion had won the instant J.P. pulled the covers over her. His kiss pressed to her forehead was the last thing she remembered. They still hadn’t spoken about why she and Jill were in a police station in the boondocks overnight. She wasn’t naïve enough to think that conversation wasn’t coming.

The internal struggle raged between staying in her soft, warm bed cocoon and going to the bathroom. The bathroom won out, and she pushed the covers off exposing her warm skin to the chilly air. The bedroom door was closed, which was odd since she lived alone and never had a need. Violet crossed the room and opened the door a crack. His voice crept down the hallway. He was speaking to someone. She ducked into the bathroom; there she found her clean glasses on the counter.

Violet peeked around the corner of the hallway into the living room. There Jordan sat, kicked back on her couch with a laptop perched on his thighs, cell phone balanced between his shoulder and ear. Tapping away on the computer, he’d end up with a crick in his neck. She checked the thermostat and pushed it up to turn the air conditioning off. No wonder it was cold in the house.

“Yes, I understand,” J.P. said into the phone. “But they’ve had eight months’ worth of service with zero payments, and I don’t know how it’s gone on this long without someone looking into it.” He looked up at Violet in the doorway and smiled.

She smiled and moved past into the kitchen needing a drink. Her mouth was dry. When she returned, he was off the phone. “You’re taking calls about customers now?”

He shrugged. “All money matters land on my doorstep. It’s all a cluster,” he muttered, fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s what I signed up for.”

“Is it though?” she sank into the oversized, plush armchair that she loved and pulled the blanket she kept draped on it over her lap. The goal with her home was always to make the space as cozy as possible.

He laughed and stopped typing for the first time since she’d found him. “Are you feeling better?” he asked, eyeing her.

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