CHAPTER NINE JAY
CHAPTER NINE
J AY
T his is a nightmare.” I sip my coffee in the same way I would if I were watching a train wreck. Because, really, it’s about the same thing. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that. ”
Gabrielle climbs a ladder leaned against the house. The legs aren’t on even ground, and there’s no way it’ll stay vertical once she’s up more than a few rungs. My stomach churns and I hold my breath.
One step. Two.
“Shit,” I hiss as she starts to wobble.
She looks over her shoulder. Then she slowly descends back to the ground. Once her feet are planted on the soil, I breathe a sigh of relief.
My attention slides to the back of the house, where Dylan sits on the edge of the deck. He’s looking at a drill like he’s never seen one before. Maybe he hasn’t.
“Stop looking,” I mutter aloud, turning away from the window. “It’s not your problem.”
I force myself into the living room—a space that has no view of the house next door. I’ve found myself watching them most of the morning like an obsessed lunatic.
It doesn’t matter that I have nothing to do today and could so easily have their tasks done in a few hours. It doesn’t matter at all. Why? Because I’m not getting involved.
Because I almost fucking kissed Gabrielle last night.
Despite that moment being twelve hours ago, I haven’t managed to settle down. I’m still buzzed on adrenaline.
I don’t know what happened or what came over me. I don’t lose control like that. But my lips were inches from hers when reality pummeled me and I realized what I was doing.
Maybe I got sucked into the moment. Maybe her realness, her vulnerability, softened me. It’s been a long time since anyone was that open, that honest.
“I just want to feel like a woman again. Love isn’t necessary. I just want a reason to get dolled up on Friday nights. I want someone to laugh with, cuddle up to—someone to have fun sex with.”
My jaw tenses. So does my cock.
My self-restraint was the only thing soft.
“I might have to move,” I say, shaking my head. “If I can’t figure out how to handle this, I’ll pack up and head elsewhere. Alaska is nice this time of year.”
But even Alaska probably isn’t far enough away to erase her from my mind.
The problem is that Gabrielle would be an amazing woman to spend time with if I were ready to do that. But I’m not. When I imagine holding her in my arms, having her in my bed, losing myself inside her ... it’s immediately followed by a sickness that’s all too familiar.
It’s one I don’t want to have again. I don’t think I’d survive it.
“You have to hold the screw in place a second, Dylan,” I say, realizing I’m back at the kitchen window. The screw drops to the ground again. “Come on, kid. YouTube it or something.”
I glance back to the front of her house and nearly choke.
Gabrielle is standing on the front lawn, facing her house, with a sledgehammer.
“Oh, fuck it.” I slam my mug on the counter and charge out the door. “You can’t leave well enough be, Jay. You’re going to have no one to complain about except yourself.”
Gabrielle looks up, propping a hand on her hip, and all but scowls. She’s not happy to see me.
“What in the world are you doing?” I ask, marching across the lawn.
“What’s it to you?”
“I don’t know. Call me a concerned citizen.”
She makes a face that tells me to fuck off. “It’s demo day. So if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
“Look,” I say, frustration growing. “I know demo day is cute on all the home renovation shows. But in the real world, all that smashing something with a sledgehammer is going to do is make a bigger mess to clean up.”
“And?”
I roll my eyes. “What are you trying to do?”
“Right now, I’m trying to get a very nosy and unwelcome neighbor to leave me alone.”
Her little jaw is set in place like a wannabe badass. Her tits are about ready to spill out of her skewed tank top. She has a pair of safety goggles dangling around her neck and boots on—with her shorts. It’s hard to keep a straight face.
“Let me help you,” I say, struggling not to smile.
“You’ve already thanked me for the shirt.” She turns toward the porch. “You’ve done enough.”
Oh. That’s what this is about.
She pulls the sledgehammer back, ready to attack a defenseless spindle. I snatch it from her hand as she brings it forward.
“Hey,” she yelps, spinning around. Her hand is still cupped where the handle was. “What are you doing?”
“Will you stop being so dramatic and talk to me?”
She snorts. “You are hilarious. Hilarious. I’m dramatic and you want to talk. I’m in stitches over here.”
“Then you should see me when I’m trying to be funny.”
“I had a front-row ticket to it last night, bucko.”
I smirk. “Bucko?”
She waves a hand in the air. “I don’t know. My grandma used to say it. But that’s not the point.” She steps my way. “The point is that—”
“The point is that I didn’t kiss you last night.”
Gabrielle sucks in a breath and, for once, doesn’t speak. I’m completely aware that Dylan could walk around the side of the house at any moment, so I speak quickly and quietly.
“I think that was more effective at getting you to stop talking than kissing you would’ve been,” I say.
That brings her back to life.
“Do you want to know what I’m mad about? Fine. I’ll tell you,” she says. “It’s not because you didn’t kiss me. Believe it or not, I’ll survive without kissing you. What pissed me off was that you made me feel like a complete fool. You initiated the situation. You acted like you wanted it. And then when I opened myself up to it, you laughed in my face.”
“I did not laugh in your face.”
She glares at me.
The hurt in her eyes swims to the surface. Her lips tip toward the ground. Her voice is filled with frustration and edged in hurt. And I kick myself for it.
I didn’t anticipate her thinking I was fucking with her. Doesn’t she realize that she’s the prize? Any man in their right mind would kiss the hell out of her.
Clearly, the problem is me. Doesn’t she see that?
“Gabrielle, I’m sorry,” I say, looking her in the eye. “I was going to kiss you but thought better of it at the last second.”
She flinches but recovers quickly.
Fuck. “Look, kissing you would’ve been giving in to the moment. Did I want to kiss you? Of course. You’re gorgeous.”
You’re the first woman that’s made my heart race in a long time. That’s why you’re so dangerous.
Her cheeks flush a rosy shade of pink.
“But it would’ve been wrong of me to do that because it wouldn’t have gone anywhere,” I say. “I was trying not to lead you on.”
“What’s so terrible about me that it can’t go anywhere? Hypothetically, of course.”
“Not a damn thing.”
We face one another, both of us refusing to give in. I’m not looking away first. I want her to see I’m telling her the truth.
I want her to know it’s not her who’s the problem.
Finally, her shoulders slump. “Whatever. Give me my sledgehammer back.”
“If you want to take the spindles out, all you need is a hammer.” I point at one of them. “But look at how they’re attached. They’re nailed on the outside. So if you go whacking it from this side, you’re not going to pop it out. Not easily, anyway.”
“Oh.” She leans forward to investigate. “So I need to be on the porch and hitting it out toward where we are now.”
“It would be much easier and much cleaner.”
She huffs. “Fine. Good point. Thanks.”
“Get yourself a hammer, Miss Fix-It.” I swing the sledgehammer as I walk away. “I’m going to show your kid how to use a drill.”
“I can show him.”
I look at her over my shoulder. “This is painful to watch. Don’t make me suffer longer than necessary.”
She holds my gaze for a few seconds. As each second ticks by, the look on her face shifts from annoyance to a playful arrogance that has my cock hard as hell.
“If you want to stick around, do it,” she says, smirking. She glances down my body to the bulge in my pants and then lifts her eyes back to mine. “I’m going to make you suffer as long as I can.”
I narrow my gaze. Walk home. Turn around and get the hell out of here before you fuck everything up. Now, Jay.
But even as I think it, I find myself at the back deck with Dylan.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, getting to his feet once I’m around the side of the house. The drill hangs at his side.
I wish I knew. “Need some help?”
“No.”
I lean the sledgehammer against the deck. “All right. No worries.”
He clenches his jaw and doesn’t speak.
“Look, man, I’m not your enemy,” I say.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Ah, there’s the mouthy little shit I remember.
Dylan will play hardball, and a part of me respects the hell out of that. Sure, he’s being a little fuckhead. But he’s trying to be a man in the best way he knows how. He’s trying to protect his mother and his home from me, the guy who instincts tell him might be preying on them.
He’s not wrong, and I don’t want to negate his innate sense to listen to his gut.
I need to figure out how to convince him to let me help while still letting him have dominion over his space.
“Hey, I don’t blame you,” I say. “Always trust your gut.”
His brows pull together in confusion.
I peer over one of the loose rails I saw him fiddling with from my window.
“Oh, I bet you’ll have a hell of a time with this one.” I point at the edge of the rail he was trying to fix. “Is that giving you shit?”
He nods warily.
“You probably don’t have any screws long enough to attach it, do you?” I ask.
“No. But I’ll get some.”
I run a hand down my jaw. “I’m a carpenter and have seen this many times. You can try the screws, but you’d be better off just replacing the whole board.” I shrug. “That’s just my professional opinion. Take it or leave it.”
He swallows hard, watching me carefully. “Why are you being so nice to us?”
His question puts me on the spot. It throws me off for a moment. Why am I being so nice to you?
“I mean, I know why you’re being so nice to Mom,” he says. “You probably want to do her.”
“Well, Dylan, that’s not a conversation I’m going to have with you.”
“But why are you being nice to me?”
My heart tugs in my chest, and I decide to be honest with him. “Because I hope someone is being nice to my daughter right now ... just for the sake of being kind. No ulterior motives.”
“All right.” He pauses. “Where does she live?”
I blow out a shaky breath and yank the board in question off the deck. That’s enough honesty for one day. “I have a whole bunch of these in my garage, taking up space. Want them? I’ll help you carry them over.”
His eyes search mine.
“You’ll be doing me a favor,” I say, hoping he’ll follow my redirection. “I was going to donate them somewhere anyway. You might as well take them. I gotta get them out of my way.”
I’m not sure he’s going to go with it. Finally, he sighs. “Sure, I guess.”
We set off for the garage, Dylan a couple of steps behind me. I give him a few minutes to get his head together and to come up with a plan on how he’s going to handle this. If I don’t, he’ll act like a child out of habit, and no one wants that.
I can also use a few minutes to get my head together. This morning has gone sideways in ways I didn’t predict.
We enter the garage and I sort the boards, gathering a stack that will work for him. The noise keeps us from having to speak for a while. Thank God.
“If these are too long, just mark where they need to be cut, and we can cut them over here,” I say, motioning toward my saws.
“Yeah. Okay.” He holds his arms out while I put the boards across them. “You’re really just giving these to us?”
“They’ve sat here for months.”
He nods. “Okay.” He looks around. “You have a lot of tools.”
“I’ve liked building things since I was your little brother’s age.”
“You know Carter?”
“He came by last night wanting me to help him with his basketball. The kid never stops moving.”
Dylan grins. “That’s Carter.” His affection for his little brother is clear. That’s interesting, considering I’ve seen how he talks to everyone else. “So how did you learn how to build things?”
“Practice, mostly. I went to a trade school while I was in high school and learned the basics. It’s a lot harder than people think.”
“So do you build houses or what?”
“I don’t build them from the ground up. That involves a lot of shit that I don’t want to deal with. I do a lot of renovations, and sometimes that means adding a room or taking one down. That kind of thing.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
“There are worse ways to make a living.”
He nods, seemingly satisfied by his investigation of me. “Does that offer to help still stand? Not because I can’t do it. But because, you know, it might go faster with two guys on the job.”
“No problem. I have some time on my hands.”
He smiles, relief written all over his face. “Thanks. What did you say your name is?”
“I’m Jay.”
“I’m Dylan.”
“All right, Dylan. Let’s get over there and get to work.”
We start back across the lawn. Gabrielle watches us from the front porch. Her grin says, Thank you . My wave says, Don’t worry about it .
But I worry about it. I worry about it a whole damn lot. Because helping a single mother I’m wildly attracted to is the last place I need to be. It’s a place I swore to myself I’d never be again.
I know that.
So why didn’t I simply just stay away?