Chapter 10
Ten
Zach
“Uhh—” I stammer, staring at Louise, arms lifted high, broom clutched between them like a baseball bat.
Her impossibly long hair is down and soaking wet, and I try like fucking hell not to stare at the way the wet strands have left the shoulders and front of her t-shirt damp, making it cling to her, to the roundness of her breasts beneath it.
To the peaked nipples tenting the damp fabric. I also don’t let myself look at the smooth expanse of her bare legs beneath the hem of the oversized t-shirt.
Don’t stare at her nipples, you fucking pervert, I tell myself. I swallow hard and raise my eyes back to hers, which are now wide with mortification.
“Ohmygod,” she whines, her face falling, arms drooping in what I can only describe as defeat personified, and then the door closes without another word. From inside the house, I can hear her muffled, “This is just great, Lou! Just great! Fuck this day!”
I can’t help but chuckle listening to her.
We had just gotten back from dinner at Mom’s, and the girls had pointed out the spilled soda and ripped bag of to-go food on her doorstep as we drove past. Mom had sent a plate of leftovers home with us that I had planned on eating for lunch tomorrow, but I have a feeling it could be put to better use tonight.
I’d sent the girls inside to start getting ready for bed, with instructions to get into pajamas, brush their teeth, and to wait for me to come back as I’d headed out the door with the broom and an empty plastic bag to clean up the mess. I’d knocked, but hadn’t gotten an answer.
Seeing her fresh out of the shower, I realize she must not have heard me knocking. Her mumbling gets quieter, as if she’s walked away from the door, and I go back to cleaning up the spilled food.
The door opens again, slowly this time, just as I’m pushing back to my feet. She’s put on a pair of gray sweatpants, and she’s without her broom-turned-baseball bat. There’s a smudge of mascara beneath one eye, and her hair is yet unbrushed, the strands a little wild around her head.
She’s stunning like this.
Utterly raw and vulnerable. It’s endearing and does something inside the aching cavern of my chest. Somewhere in the vicinity of where my heart used to reside.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.
I thought you were a raccoon,” she mumbles, crossing her arms over her chest, as if she’s just realized she’s braless beneath the damp shirt.
“I promise I don’t always swear like a sailor, or yell at people.
You caught me on a really bad day. I’ve also had several shots of tequila. Not that I’m making excuses.”
“I kinda gathered that,” I laugh lightly, gesturing to the mess of food I had just swept up. “Tequila would have been my first choice to deal with that, too. And, in my defense, you thought I was a raccoon. So, it’s fair. I cuss at Yolanda, too.”
“Yolanda?” she asks, her eyes going wide.
“That’s what Chloe named the raccoon.”
“Chloe… named the raccoon Yolanda,” she says slowly, blinking several times.
“Yep.” I nod, grinning, and shrug my shoulders. “She had babies earlier this spring. I’m pretty sure at one point Chloe had one of them in her bedroom after she found them under the deck, but I can’t prove it.”
She shakes her head, laughing. “Wow.”
“There’s also an opossum that hangs around, too. I don’t think he’s been named yet, though,” I tease, leaning down to pick up the plastic bag of ruined food and wrappings. As I straighten, she reaches for the bag of garbage but I shake my head. I’ll just toss it in the trash when I get inside.
It’s then that I hear her stomach rumble, loudly.
She looks appalled, wrapping her arms around herself tighter and I laugh. “Are you hungry, Princess?”
“Starving,” she admits, nodding sheepishly. “I was just about to order a door dash delivery.”
“Don’t waste the money. Give me one second, I’ll be right back,” I tell her, then turn and disappear around to my door.
Inside, the girls are just finishing brushing their teeth.
I shove the bag of garbage into the trashcan and wash my hands at the kitchen sink.
“You girls can have half an hour of tablet time, and then it’s bedtime.
Got it?” They all nod, racing for their devices.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to take this food over to Lou. ”
I take the tinfoil covered plate and a small container with fixings for a salad, along with another that houses a slice of the pie from the counter where I’d left it earlier and walk back over to Louise.
She’s still standing just inside her front door, feet bare.
The smudge of mascara under her eye is gone now, like she swiped it away with her fingers while I was gone, and the tangle of her wet hair is a little less wild, like she’d run her fingers through it to tame it.
“We had dinner at my mom’s tonight, and she always sends extras for lunch. Here,” I say, holding the plate and containers out to her. “It’s grilled chicken, roasted veggies, and a mixed salad. Oh, and homemade apple pie that the girls helped make. It’s not the prettiest, but it tastes damn good.”
She reaches for the food, her blonde brows dipping low over her eyes.
“I can’t take your lunch,” she protests, but her hands close around the bottom edge of the plate, our fingers grazing.
Fuck, the heat that spreads through me at that little point of contact is searing.
This close, with no make up on, I can practically count the freckles that bridge her nose and the apples of her cheeks.
Her lashes are long and soft, fanning out around the prettiest green eyes I’ve ever seen.
“My girls conned you out of your own birthday cake, I think you can take this,” I laugh, my voice coming out far huskier than intended, and I nod down at the food between us.
“This is really sweet,” she says softly, her lower lip wobbling just a little. “Today was… a really bad day, but this… this is definitely making up for it. Thank you, Zach.”
Goddamn I love hearing her say my name. I really want to hear her say it in other situations, too. Other situations that are wholly inappropriate to be thinking about.
“Please come inside,” she says, backing into the entryway. I glance over my shoulder and hesitate. “If you have to get back to the girls, I understand. I’m sorry, just never mind me—”
No, my hesitation is entirely because of how incredibly accessible she looks right now. Rumpled and soft and so damn cute. Her cheeks are flushed and rosy, my guess is from the tequila she’s consumed already tonight.
Which, if I’m honest and in any way still a gentleman, should be the first reason not to follow her inside.
She disarms me in a way that I don’t like.
Fuck it. I’ve been the king of bad decisions lately where she’s concerned. What’s one more? “You know what, they’re zoned in for a little screen time, I can spare a few minutes.”
In response, she beams a smile up at me, and that disarms me, too.
Like the masochist I am, I follow her inside and shut the door behind me, and then we’re alone in her tiny kitchen.
She sets the plate and containers down on the counter, unwrapping the foil covered plate.
She pops the plate in the microwave over the stove and turns it on, the machine whirring to life.
“Would you like to do a shot with me? I don’t know where my shot glasses are packed, unfortunately, so it’s straight outta the bottle,” she laughs, shrugging lightly as she picks up the bottle of tequila sitting on the counter.
The motion makes her unrestrained breasts sway slightly under her shirt and I struggle to remember how to fucking breathe for an extended heartbeat.
I think she’s forgotten about being braless beneath that t-shirt, which is both a blessing and a curse.
Her breasts aren’t large, but fuck me, the way that her nipples tent the fabric let me know just how fucking perky they are.
I’m a whole asshole for how badly I want to see them, to put my mouth on them.
Play with them with my fingers and see how responsive they are.
She’s twenty-four, asshole, I remind myself.
Way too fucking young to be messed up with the likes of me.
Fuck, this sucks. I haven’t felt desire like this in years.
I want her, so fucking badly. And I can’t have her, not even a little bit.
For way too many reasons. Several of those reasons being the three blondes waiting for me in my apartment.
But God, just one taste of that mouth, and I’d be content, I swear—
The microwave dings, but she doesn’t move back toward it.
Louise holds the bottle out to me in offering, fingers wrapped around the neck, and the way her fingers curl around it elicits even worse thoughts. Thoughts of what those fingers might look like wrapped around something else—
Clearing my throat, I don’t trust myself to speak, so I just shake my head. God, I can only pray she doesn’t look down right now, because I’m hard and straining behind the fly of my jeans.
She shrugs her shoulders again, tipping the bottle of tequila up to her lips and taking a swallow.
Her eyes never leave mine though, and when she lowers the bottle from that mouth, I find myself reaching for it.
Again…fuck it.
Because if I can’t put my mouth on hers to taste her from the source, I’m going to taste her on the rim of this bottle, instead.