“Like you can’t hold your liquor?”
“Ha. And no. I mean…” She searched for something suitably off-putting. “I’m twenty-nine, and I keep a flashlight on me, just in case I need to hold the closet monsters at bay. I can’t let foods touch on my plate, everything has to be in its own quadrant. And my go-to movie is The Sound of Music. I can sing every song.” There. Didn’t get more embarrassing than that. But just in case, she added one more. “I can also burp the alphabet. I won an award for it in college, and sometimes when I’m alone, I practice in the mirror.”
“The whole alphabet?”
“Yeah, so it’s for the best that we don’t… you know.”
“You’re right. That Sound of Music thing is totally a dealbreaker. Thankfully, we have no chemistry at all.” He was teasing her, but when she met his gaze, he wasn’t smiling. Nope. His eyes were lit with something else entirely, and it wasn’t humor.
And she knew something else, too. She hadn’t scared him off. Not even a little.
Chapter 8
“The easy road is always under construction,
so have an alternate route planned.”
PHOEBE TRAEGER
Maddie rushed through a shower with water that wouldn’t go past lukewarm, and worse, it looked suspiciously rusty. She’d be worried except she’d gotten a tetanus shot just last year when she’d stepped on a nail at a movie set in Burbank. And anyway, it was hard to find room for worry when her body was humming and pulsing.
And he hadn’t even kissed her again.
Dammit, how dare he bring her body parts back to life with nothing more than his presence after she’d decided to go off men entirely?
It was rude, it was thoughtless, it was…
Not his fault.
Getting out of the shower, she stood in the bathroom and rummaged through her duffel bag. She’d packed only the essentials, leaving the rest in storage with her dad in Los Angeles.
She pulled on a pair of Levi’s and struggled with the top button. Damn chips. She pulled on a tank top, then added a big bulky sweater, not letting herself hear a certain ex’s voice whispering in her ear that she should hit the gym. Instead, she didn’t look at herself too closely in the mirror. Ignorance was bliss, right? Maybe she ought to put that on a 3x5 card and add it to the box.
As always, her hair had a mind of its own. Battling with the blow-dryer helped only marginally. She took a couple of swipes with the mascara wand and declared herself good to go.
Jax had offered to wait for her to take a quick shower and dress so that she could walk him around the property. She found him in the small kitchen, which was made even smaller by his sheer size. He was drinking something out of a mug and talking to Tara, but when she walked into the room they both fell into a silence of the shhh-here-she-comes variety. “What?” she said, looking down at herself. Nope, she hadn’t forgotten her clothes.
“It’s nothing, sugar.” Tara handed her a steaming mug. “It’s only instant from the store, and trust me, it’s no Starbucks.” She shot Jax a look like this was his fault. “I picked it up last night when I bought the cleaning supplies.”
“It’s good enough for me,” Jax said. “Thanks.”
Maddie told herself not to stare at him, that it was like staring directly into the sun, but she’d never been good at following advice. Plus she found she couldn’t stop looking at his mouth. It was a good mouth and made her think about things she had no business thinking about. “So about why we called you.”
A faint smile hinted around the corners of his mouth. “You needed a master.”
“Well, your ad did say you are an expert.” Look at that, she sounded cool, even smartass-like. She’d always wanted to be a smartass. Nicely done, keep it up. Do not let him see you sweat.
And whatever you do, don’t look at his mouth.
Or at the way his jeans fit, all faded and lovingly cupping his… cuppable parts. “Does your expertise include dusty hundred-year-old inns decorated in early rooster and duck?”
“Ducks and roosters are no problem. The cows are new to me. And I specialize in fixing things up and restoring them to their former glory.”
She wondered if that talent extended to humans, maybe even humans who never really had a former glory. “So how much can we get done between now and Christmas?”
“And think cheap,” Tara cut in to say. “Aesthetic value only, for resale purposes.”
“The inn didn’t come with an operating account, unfortunately,” Maddie explained. “Just a big fat mortgage payment, so money’s a problem.”
Jax’s eyes flicked to Tara, then back to Maddie, and once again she wondered what she was missing.
“So you’re going to sell?” he asked.
“Hopefully,” Tara said.
“Hopefully not,” Maddie said.
Jax nodded as if this made perfect sense. “I’ll walk the property and work up a bid.”
“And I’m off to shower.” Tara turned back at the door. “Sugar, tell me you left me some hot water so I’m not forced to head to Alpine and bathe outside like a cretin.”
“Alpine?” Maddie asked. “What’s that?”
“There’s a natural hot springs about three miles up the road,” Jax said. “The locals think of it as their own personal hot tub.”
Maddie looked at Tara. “How do you know about the hot springs?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“No,” she said, but Tara was gone. Alone with Jax, she pointed to his clipboard. “Better put a new water heater in that bid.”
“All right.”
The kitchen seemed even smaller now that it was just the two of them. She moved to the slightly larger living room and was extremely aware that he followed. “I don’t think we’ll waste any money in here,” she said. “Just the inn.” She reached up to shove her too-long bangs out of her face and realized what she’d done when she caught him staring at her right eye, at the scar on the outside of it that she knew was still looking fresh. Before she could turn away, he was there, right there, and gently-God, so gently it nearly broke something inside of her-brushed the hair from her face and stared at the mark.
For the longest heartbeat in history, he didn’t say anything, but the muscles in his jaw bunched. From his fingers, so carefully light on her, she felt the tension grip his entire body. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Another agonizing beat pulsed around them before he let go of her, allowing her bangs to fall over her forehead again.
He let out a long breath and eyed their Charlie Brown Christmas tree. When he spoke, his voice was low but normal. “You have an eyelash curler on your tree.”
Grateful, so damn grateful that he wasn’t going to push, she let out a breath, too. “We improvised.”
He took in the pictures of their teen crushes and shook his head, not smiling but letting go of some of the tension racking him.
“You don’t like?”
“Actually, I do like,” he said, and when she glanced over at him, she found him looking directly at her.
“I meant the tree.”
He just picked up his leather jacket from its perch by the front door, the one he’d given her to wear last night. Once again he held it open for her, then nudged her outside ahead of him.
The morning was clear and crisp, and the trees and ground glittered with frost. The sun was so bright it hurt her eyes and head, and also her teeth, which made no sense.
“Hangovers are a bitch,” Jax said and dropped his sunglasses onto her nose.