Page 11 of Hammered (Dad Bod Contracting 1)
His smirk makes my core heat. “I haven’t seen yours…yet.”
“Nor will you.”
“We’ll see.” His smirk is at once teasing and cocky, which does things to me.
I shut the door between us and scurry around my room picking up piles of dirty underwear, and scrubs, and jeans with one leg inside out, and T-shirts, and bras hanging off my bedposts and closet knobs, shoving it all into a laundry basket which I then shove into my closet, slamming the door shut. Finally, with my bedroom something close to neat and not embarrassing, I let Jesse in.
He goes to my window and measures it, and the space around it, and then glances at me. “So there were more windows she didn’t want and, as of this morning, none of the other guys had a use for them. As far as I know, they’re all still available. I could probably cut you a deal on the labor and install all of them for you.”
“If it’s three hundred minimum to install one window, that’d be more than I have to get done. And, as sad as it is, I don’t have that to spend right now.” I shrug. “I’d love a bunch of beautiful new casement windows, trust me, I really would. I just…things are tight at the moment.”
He nods. “Well, let me at least get this one in, see how long it will take. Maybe we can work something out.”
He turns to leave, and pauses at the tiny vanity I have up against the wall beside my bed—it’s an antique I rescued from a garage sale, a beautiful piece I’ve been meaning to strip and repaint. And there’s a bra hanging off the corner of the chair. Jesse hooks a fingertip under the strap and lifts the undergarment up. Embarrassingly, it’s a plain white utilitarian one, and not one of my fancy lacy lingerie numbers I sometimes wear when I need to feel secretly sexy.
“Missed one,” he says, with a hot, wicked grin.
I snatch it from him and toss it under my bed. “Don’t be a pervert.”
He just laughs. “It’s not like I sniffed it, Imogen. Relax. I’m teasing.”
I’m blushing again—I’m a forty-year-old woman, long past the blushing stage—or so I’d thought. “You tease a lot.”
“I like to have fun,” he says, exiting the room. “Does it bother you?”
“No, it doesn’t bother me,” I say. “I just…I don’t come from a teasing sort of background.”
“Well, you should try it sometime. It’s liberating.” He heads down the stairs. “Point is, don’t take anything I say too seriously, unless it’s about my work.”
“So I should just ignore all the innuendos you keep throwing my way?” I ask, following him downstairs.
He pauses at the landing, his hand on the front door. “I mean, yeah, you could ignore them if you want.” He turns back to tower over me, standing just a little too close for innocence. “But where’s the fun in that?”
He’s out the door, then, leaving me smelling his scent in the air and feeling his lingering body heat and seeing his deep brown eyes burning with promise and intent.
Oh my.
This is definitely becoming a thing.
A dangerous, problematic thing I’m simply not ready for.
I shake away the strange, powerful stirrings I feel in my gut—and further south—as I head upstairs to change out of my scrubs.
Or at least I try to shake away the stirrings. I swear, I try. But, as I strip out of my scrubs and toss them into the laundry basket, I can almost feel his presence in my room. He leaves his clean, delicious, masculine scent everywhere he goes, and that scent has a way of burrowing into my awareness, into my gut—and into my whole being. I’m in trouble.
I hear the sound of a saw screeching, so I know he’s occupied in the kitchen; I traipse naked from my bedroom into the bathroom, which isn’t en suite. I crank the shower on and pull my hair out of the tight bun I wear at work, and then examine myself critically in the full-length mirror on the back of my bathroom door.
My hair is brown—almost auburn if the sun hits it just right, but usually a deep, rich, brunette—and loose like this it hangs past my shoulders in thick, shimmery waves. My eyes are green—the shade of grass in the summer sun. I’m five-seven, and tend to be on the curvy side. No reason to mention my weight, but let’s just say most of it sits on my bust and hips, and I’ll admit since the divorce I haven’t been as faithful about the gym as I used to be, so things aren’t as tight as I once prided myself on. I have naturally tan skin and since I have a ten-foot-high privacy fence around the backyard, I’ve been known to indulge in some nude sunbathing to darken the tan a little, but mostly because nude sunbathing feels indulgent and luxurious and a little naughty, and I need to feel that way. Especially after Nicholas stopped paying attention to me, and even more so now that I’m alone.
