Page 27 of Hammered (Dad Bod Contracting 1)
I drive to the hospital and sit in the parking lot for a moment, still trying to collect myself.
It can’t really be this easy, can it?
Apparently it can.
Dr. Waverley and I spend over an hour together, talking. She’s a wonderful woman: wise, kind, firm, knowledgeable, and personable. I have the feeling she’ll be a dream to work for—authoritative and in charge, but not a micromanager or power tripper. She’ll expect the best, expect results, but will also be reasonable. I have a packet of paperwork, my official scrub color code, and a start date of the following Monday—which gives me a few days off to fill out my paperwork and buy a few sets of ICU color-coded scrubs.
I drive home, and for once I’m so caught up in excitement about my new job that I momentarily forget how I got the job in the first place.
Then I get home, and Jesse’s truck is in my driveway, backed in, and full of construction detritus. There’s also another truck parked on my curb. Unlike Jesse’s and James’s, this one is more subdued. It’s silver, with normal tires at the normal height, and one of those body-color-matched bed caps. The tailgate and cap windows are both open, revealing a dizzying array of power tools, bins, containers, toolboxes, ladders of all sizes, tarps…who knows what all. Coming from within the house—the front door of which is propped open—are the sounds of a nail gun and a vacuum.
I park at the curb behind the truck and approach the front door, eyeing Jesse’s truck and the mess inside it, but I can’t divine what he’s done from the contents.
I enter hesitantly, unsure of what I’ll find. I pause at the entryway and call in. “Hello? Jesse?”
The sounds halt, and I hear the clomp of booted feet.
My jaw literally drops open.
Hello, fantasy made real.
Chapter 6
My gaze travels from floor upward, slowly, twice. He’s wearing his usual boots, stained and scuffed and well-worn, with jeans so faded they’re almost white. Tight, but not too tight. There’s a rip in the left knee, showing tanned skin.
He’s shirtless, his tool belt slung low around his hips.
Covered in sawdust and sweat.
He has a Blackhawks hat on backward, with his Oakleys perched on top.
God— holy god. He’s so hot it’s mind-boggling.
His body, though?
I’m literally speechless.
His chest is heavy with muscle, thick and tanned and solid. His arms are python-thick, and his waist trim. His jeans hang just below his hips, showing the band of his underwear and a hint of those V-shaped lines. His tattoos cover his chest as well. He has a hint of a belly—not a beer belly, just a slight layer over a rock-hard abdomen. He likes food, and likes working out in equal proportion, and he’s not a twenty-year-old kid anymore either. He’s all man, hard and muscular. His chest isn’t fitness model smooth and hairless, either, but is rather hairy. Not wookie/werewolf hairy, just…masculine and manly.
And then another pair of boots clomps across my floor. My jaw can’t drop any further, so my voice squeaks in protest of the sudden emptiness of my lungs.
“Uh—huh? Who?” My voice is a breathless squeak. “Ahem. Who—who are you?”
The man standing beside Jesse is…well…nearly his equal in terms of sexiness, although his opposite in build and appearance.
Five-eleven or six feet, lean as a whip, and built like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Blond hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, sunglasses on top of his head. No shirt—all abs and pecs in razor-sharp definition. Shaven jaw, no tattoos or piercings, with icy blue eyes. God, he’s beautiful.
Jesse grins. “Imogen, this is my buddy, Franco. He works at Dad Bod with me.”
“Hi—um. Hi.” I’m still a little shell-shocked at the excess of male hotness in my house.
Jesse pokes Franco in the belly—which doesn’t give even a millimeter. “It’s annoying isn’t it? The bastard is a year older than me, we eat the same and work out the same, and the fucker has an eight-pack while I’m packing on a keg.”
Franco snorts derisively. “First, I’m ten months older than you, not a full year. Second, we may eat the same kinds of food, but you eat twice the amount, and third, we may work out at the same time and do the same things, but you lift twice what I do.”
“Yeah, well, that’s ’cause you’re a twink,” Jesse says, laughing.
Franco just rolls his eyes and turns away. “Which makes you something that it’d be offensive for me to say out loud and, unlike you, I have manners.” He shoots me a grin. “I should warn you about Jesse. He’s a big ugly roughneck with no manners and less class. Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. He’s like a stray dog, actually. Feed him, and you’ll never be rid of him.”
Jesse reaches into a pouch of his tool belt, withdraws a nail, and flings it at Franco’s retreating back, pegging him square between the shoulder blades, leaving a red welt.
