Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
JESS
By the time the drill battery died for the second time, I’d accepted that having Powell as my… whatever he was now… was hazardous to my ability to focus on literally anything else.
I pulled the trigger and got a sad little whine instead of torque. “I swear this thing hates me.”
From the other end of the truck, where he was wrestling a cabinet into place, Powell smirked.“It doesn’t hate you. It’s intimidated.”
“By what? My unreasonable standards?”
“By the way you look at screws like they’ve personally offended you.”
“They have personally offended me,” I shot back. “Half of them stripped themselves out of spite.”
He laughed, a low, easy sound that hit somewhere under my ribs. “Hand it over, Donnegan.”
I passed the drill back over my shoulder without looking. He stepped in behind me to take it, his chest brushing between my shoulder blades for the briefest, most devastating half-second. Heat rolled up my spine like someone had poured warm syrup along it.
Concentrate, I ordered myself. On the truck. On the business. On anything that isn’t the man who kissed you stupid in his kitchen before gently rewriting a decade-old wound.
It would’ve been easier if he didn’t keep being… like this. Helpful. Funny. Steady in all the ways I wasn’t. Infuriatingly observant.
Hot.
God, so hot.
He swapped the dead battery for a fresh one and leaned past me to set it back on the counter. His arm caged me in on one side, his body close enough to mine that the warmth of his breath dragged across my temple.
“Try now,” he said quietly.
I did. The drill roared back to life under my fingers. “Well. At least one of us is fully charged.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, my brain threw up both hands like, Really? That’s what we’re doing now?
Behind me, his breath hitched. Barely. “You trying to kill me today?”
“Not consciously.” I forced my focus back to the screw I was setting. “Subconsciously is a whole other question.”
He didn’t move away. His palm settled lightly at the curve of my hip as I drove the screw home, like he needed some kind of physical tether while I pretended I wasn’t hyper-aware of every place we were touching.
This easy intimacy layered over years of stubborn, intentional distance was surreal. A few weeks ago, we’d barely managed civil conversation. Now I was letting him stand close enough to count my heartbeats.
Now I was… what? Dating him? Testing the waters? Having a prolonged, high-stakes, emotionally fraught flirtation?
My brain, unhelpful as always, whispered: boyfriend. Like that was a normal word to attach to Powell Ferguson and not a live grenade. My fingers stuttered on the trigger, and the screw jerked sideways and stripped out of the metal.
“Dammit,” I muttered.
“You okay?” His voice was a little too gentle.
“Fine,” I said automatically. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous habit. Want to trade out? I’ll be the muscle, you be the brains?”
“That is already the arrangement.” That earned me a soft huff of a laugh and the brush of his thumb over my hip in a quick, unconscious stroke that made my stomach drop in an entirely not-professional way.
When the last of the outlet covers was finally installed, I rolled my shoulders, trying to shake out the tension wound tight between them. Powell straightened from installing the under-counter lighting, pushing to his feet in a smooth, easy motion that showed off a frankly unfair amount of arm.
He flicked the test switch. Warm light bathed the counter in a soft glow. “That should make opening shift a little better.”
My throat got unexpectedly tight. I could picture the dawn still blue over the square, my first customer of the day, the hiss of the machine, the soft thump of the grinder. For the first time since the fire, it felt… possible again.
“Hey,” he said gently. “Don’t cry. I’ll start feeling smug, and then you’ll have to punch me.”
I swiped at my eyes, scowling. “I am not crying. There’s sawdust in here.”
“There’s no sawdust in your tear ducts, Jess.”
“We don’t know that. You’re not an eye doctor.”
He smiled, slow and warm. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
I let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Thank you.” For once I didn’t tack anything on to blunt or minimize it. “Really. For all of it.”
Something soft and bright flickered in his expression. “Anytime.”
Anytime. As if this—me and him, this strange new tether between us—wasn’t some temporary festival fling but something that would still be here when the Christmas lights came down.
Dangerous thought. Absolutely not allowed. I shoved it aside and reached for my notebook. “Okay. Twelve Stops time. We need final talking points before tomorrow’s volunteer meeting.”
He leaned back against the opposite counter, elbows braced on the edge. “Hit me.”
We discussed the last of the details, while he studied me as if I was more interesting than anything on our informal agenda. I pretended not to notice those muscular forearms.
When I’d finished, he nodded. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll cook again.”
My stomach fluttered in that now-familiar, traitorous way. “You just like showing off.”
“I like feeding you.”
The words slipped out so simply he clearly didn’t realize what they sounded like until they were hanging between us, heavy and intimate. My hand tightened on the pen. He stilled.
It did something to me—to be liked that way. Not as some abstract crush or a convenient caffeine dealer, but as a person he wanted to take care of in small, tangible ways.
That was dangerous too.
“Fine,” I said, because my defenses were patchy at best and sarcasm was the only duct tape I trusted. “You can feed me. For science.”
“For science,” he echoed, voice low, eyes warm. “Obviously.”
We returned to work for a while, companionably working to install cabinet hardware.
It should have been only that: work. But everything was charged now.
Every time I stepped past him in the narrow aisle, my shoulder brushed his chest. Every time he ducked under my arm to grab a tool, his breath skimmed my neck.
He didn’t push. But he also didn’t pretend not to notice.
Neither did I.
I was reaching for the tape measure near his elbow when he shifted at the same time, and our hands collided. His fingers closed around mine instinctively.
The contact lingered a beat too long, warm and solid.
I could’ve pulled away. I didn’t.
He turned his hand slightly, so our fingers slid against each other, slow and deliberate. My heart did a full somersault in my chest.
“Jess.”
At his murmur, I looked up. Big mistake. His eyes were dark and intent, fixed on my face like he was cataloguing every micro-expression, every flinch, every invitation.
“Yeah?” My voice was not nearly as steady as I wanted it to be.
He didn’t answer with words.
He stepped in, closing the space between us, and leaned down. The kiss started soft—testing, merely the press of his mouth against mine like a question.
I answered with a yes. Not out loud. But in the way my fingers tightened around his, in the way I tipped my chin up and leaned into him. In the small, involuntary sound that escaped when his free hand slid to my waist and pulled me closer.
Heat rolled through me, slow and deep. The world shrank to the warm circle of his arms and the solid line of his body and the faint taste of coffee still lingering on his lips.
He kissed me like he had time. Like he wasn’t in any rush to get anywhere except right here.
Something uncurled in my chest—a knot I hadn’t even known I was carrying. For ten years, I’d told myself a story where this man was the villain. Now he was kissing me like I was something precious, and I had no idea what to do with that.
The kiss deepened almost without my consent—his tongue brushing mine, his thumb sweeping small, slow circles against my hip through my sweater.
My free hand slid up his chest, over the warm, firm plane of it, to the back of his neck.
His skin was hot under my fingertips. He made a low sound in his throat that sent a shiver straight down my spine.
He backed me gently to the counter, careful to protect my head as he boosted me up onto it.
The stainless steel surface was cool through my jeans, a sharp contrast to the heat pooling everywhere else.
He stepped between my thighs, lining us up center to center, and my brain officially shorted out, despite the layers of clothes between us.
I stopped thinking and let myself ride on sensation.
For the first time in a long time, that didn’t seem like a mistake.
His lips traced the corner of my mouth, the line of my jaw. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I’ll kick you,” I managed, hooking my feet around his incredible ass.
He huffed a laugh. “Fair enough.”
He kissed me again, and I opened for him without hesitation. My hands slid under the neckline of his T-shirt, fingers splaying over warm, hard muscle. He shuddered, and the tiny, helpless noise that spilled out of him made something hot and hungry coil low in my belly.
I wanted him.
Not in some vague, abstract way.
Right now. Here. This man who’d pulled me out of a burning truck and helped rebuild my life from the inside out. This man who’d carried regret for a decade over words I’d misheard, and who had apologized for them like it still mattered to him that he’d hurt me—even by accident.
The realization was terrifying and right and too much all at once.
Which was exactly when Esmerelda brayed loud enough to rattle the bolts.
The sound was so sudden and so close, I yelped against his mouth and jerked back. Powell’s hand tightened on my waist on instinct, steadying me as a furry gray head wedged itself between us.
Esmerelda stared up at us with wide, judgmental donkey eyes and brayed again, like she was lodging a formal complaint.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I gasped, half breathless, half hysterical.
Powell dropped his forehead to my shoulder and groaned. “I swear she has a sixth sense for bad timing.”
Esmerelda shoved her nose harder against Powell’s hip, and I tried not to think about how many health code violations were happening just by having her in the truck. Her whiskers tickled my leg through my jeans. I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of me, wild and giddy.
“Okay, okay.” I pushed gently at her big dumb head so I could slide down from the counter. “I get it. Boundaries. Or hay. One of those.”
Powell lifted his head, eyes still dark and blown but now threaded with helpless amusement. “She’s very protective.”
“Of whom?” I demanded. “Me or you?”
“Yes.”
I snorted as the absurdity of it all hit me in a wave. “We are not getting anything else done here.”
His gaze flicked down to my mouth and back up. Slowly. “Work-wise or…?”
“Any-wise,” I said. “I can’t concentrate with you five inches away and your emotional support donkey trying to referee.”
“She’s an unpaid consultant.”
“Give her a raise,” I said. “And then get me out of here.”
He stilled, that easy humor sharpening into something more focused. “Out of here how?”
I took a breath. Let it out as the decision settled in my bones, solid and terrifying and right.
“Somewhere that doesn’t have industrial lighting and open doors and surprise barnyard witnesses,” I said. “Your place, mine, I don’t care. Just… not here.”
Something like relief flashed across his face. Relief and want and something softer that made my chest ache.
“Mine’s closer,” he said quietly.
“Then yours,” I agreed.
We looked at each other for a beat. Standing in my almost-finished future, with a donkey pressed against my hip and sawdust in my hair, deciding to do the most reckless, hopeful thing I’d done in a decade.
Then I slid out from between him and Esmerelda, grabbed my bag, and tipped my chin toward the barn doors.
“Come on, Donkey,” I said. “Before your chaperone changes her mind.”
He laughed, that bright, delighted sound that always made something inside me lift. “Yes, ma’am.”
As we stepped out into the cool December air, side by side, our hands brushed. He laced his fingers through mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And for once, instead of yanking away or over-analyzing it to death, I held on.