Chapter Nine
Nine
T hea kept up a practiced patter honed over years of doing demonstrations for the fire department. But all the while her internal monologue was a variation on, Holy shit, Simon is practically pressed right against my ass. She ran through it twice, not even pausing between takes because she was so aware of his warm, solid body behind her.
When she was done, she turned to meet his gaze. “That okay?” she asked.
“Brilliant.” His eyes were crinkling with a smile.
Brilliant? Dear lord. The praise positively lit her up. “Should we...get down, maybe?” She didn’t want to, but she also didn’t want it to get too weird. Because this was weird, right? Having sexy feelings during a smoke detector demonstration? Yeah. Definitely weird.
“Um, yeah.” But he didn’t move. The air thickened and time slowed.
A sudden rapping on the door startled both of them, and Simon slipped. Thea grabbed for him, yelping, and his free arm went around her, the camera digging into her side. They swayed there on the ladder for what felt like forever, Thea clinging to his shirt with one hand and a rung of the ladder with the other.
“Thea, are you okay?” She looked to see Mrs. M standing in the open doorway, her eyes wide as she took in the scene.
Simon immediately let go of her and hustled down, his face bright red. Thea followed more slowly, breathing like she’d just run a sprint. “Yeah, we’re fine. Just doing a smoke detector video. For my new job. Mrs. McAnally, this is Simon. Simon, Mrs. M. My landlady.”
Mrs. M laid a hand on her chest. “Oh goodness. I am so sorry for barging in, but you’re not usually home during the day now with your new job, and there’s a strange car out front, and then I heard you scream when I knocked...” Her papery cheeks were white, and panic bloomed in Thea’s chest.
“I’m so sorry. Your heart. Do you need to sit down?” Without waiting for an answer, she went to the kitchen and got Mrs. M a glass of water.
“I’m fine, just surprised and a little embarrassed.” The older woman took the water and sipped, giving Simon a speculative once-over as he did something with the settings on his camera. Her words from the other day rang through Thea’s head. Maybe he had a little crush on you all those years ago. Thea had no idea what he might have felt well over a decade ago. But just now? The idea thrilled her with possibility.
Mrs. M handed back the glass. “I’m sorry for barging in. I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself and won’t do it again.”
Thea wasn’t glad that her elderly landlady had either worried enough to come over and check on her or that she’d taken the extraordinary step of coming in uninvited. But Mrs. M clearly had good intentions. “It’s okay. I know change is weird. But honestly, some of this stuff is probably going to have to be filmed at home. That’s where too many accidents happen so we—I will be using my space to illustrate things like cooking safety.” She gestured at the gas stove in the kitchen. “This may be more of a nine-to-five, but I can also do it from a lot of places. The county isn’t giving me an office.”
Mrs. M patted her shoulder. “Well then, okay. I’ll get used to it. And I apologize again. It was lovely meeting you, Simon.”
And, nodding at his quiet response, she was gone.
When the door closed behind the old lady, Thea slumped against it. “Well, that’s a new one,” she said, sighing deeply and standing straight again. “I’m the person who’s supposed to be looking in on her, making sure she’s okay. Not the other way around.”
“She seems to care about you,” Simon said, almost operating on autopilot. Thea had included him in her long-term plans for her job, but just for a moment. Then she’d corrected herself, made herself stand apart from him.
And she was already making plans to do the job without him. Intellectually, he knew that was the endgame, the goal everyone was working toward.
It still stung though, that she was already making plans to fly solo so early in their partnership. Especially after that charged moment on the ladder. He gave himself a mental kick. Great place to seduce anyone—up a ladder. It was ridiculous.
The moment had been hot though. And he thought she’d felt it too. It connected in an attenuated line from the moment in the car to now, a continuum of sexual tension, not two separate incidents.
He cleared his throat. “Um, we should probably get this footage onto your laptop. Do you know anything about video editing?”
Seeming to sense his mood, she nodded silently, her big, dark eyes fixed on his face. “Everything okay? I’m sorry about Mrs. M. She’s never done that before and—”
He cut her off before she could finish. “No, I’m fine. None of my business, anyway.” He rummaged in his bag and found the cable, holding it and the camera out to Thea.
“Oh. Okay.” She took the equipment from him and set it on the island, then went to fetch her laptop. She plugged it in to start the transfer then looked at him again. “Yeah. I’ve taken a lot of video of my nephews over the years. I think I can edit it up just fine.”
“That’s great. I can send you some resources I’ve collected too.” He thought about leaving then, getting away from all this awkwardness and going back to the library...until he remembered that he’d driven them both. And a rideshare for Thea to get back to her car would probably be ridiculously expensive out here. Not to mention being a jerk move for him to make, stranding her, even if it was in her own home.
“Can I get you something while this transfers? A glass of water or something?” Her face was starting to look anxious again, and the grumpy vines that wound themselves defensively around his heart frayed a bit. He was so used to thinking of her as someone who had everything figured out, but he was learning that she was just as human as anyone else.
“Yeah. Thanks. That’d be nice.”
She went to the cupboard, taking the glass she’d given to Mrs. M with her and putting it in the sink before she filled up a clean one with fresh water and handed it to him. “Here. Again, sorry.”
“Thanks. She seems to care an awful lot about you,” he said, grasping for a new topic. Any topic.
Thea nodded and checked the progress of the video transfer. The library’s camera wasn’t new by any stretch of the imagination, and the progress bar was doing its usual gradual inching forward. “She’s a really nice lady. I didn’t mention it before, but she’s kind of got me here as a buffer against her son. He’s had his eye on her house for a while and started renovating this building as an accessory apartment for her when she was in the hospital a while back.”
Simon felt his eyes bug out. “What the hell?” He knew something about being used and taken for granted by family, but this was next-level.
Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah. I’m not a fan. And not just because I get to live here. Bossing around the elderly isn’t a good look. And she’s not even that old—only in her midsixties. She might not even be retired now if she’d been in the workforce. But everything worked out for the best. I have a cool place to live, Mrs. M has someone to check on her, and Kyle still lives in a huge house that anyone else would think was ridiculously luxurious. Everyone wins, even if he doesn’t see it that way.”
Simon’s eyes had stopped doing that guarded thing again. Not for the first time, she wondered what had made him the way he was. Or maybe he was just born wary. He handed her the glass, now empty, and she was so preoccupied it nearly slipped from her fingers. They both gasped and gripped the smooth sides of the tumbler, fingers touching. Electricity sizzled up her arm.
How was it that keeping a glass from crashing to the floor had her heart racing and her breath coming fast? But Simon was breathing hard too, and his pupils had spread across his eyes until there was just a tiny ring of golden brown around the edge.
Without thinking, Thea went up on her toes and kissed him. There was a shocked moment where they both stood, lips touching, unmoving. Then Simon angled his head and slid his free hand around her waist. She looped hers around his neck and deepened the kiss with him. They were still holding the glass as if they were in the middle of some sort of weird ballroom routine that included an empty tumbler. Their lips sipped and teased, testing and questioning. Thea almost brought her tongue into play, then froze. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled against his lips, still clamped to his body by his arm.
“Why?”
Under her hand, she could feel the frantic beat of his pulse. “I... Are you okay with this?” she asked.
An incredulous laugh gusted over his lips. “How would you think I wouldn’t be okay with this?”
“Well. I kissed you. I didn’t ask.”
He finally loosened his hold on her and leaned back, pulling the glass from her hand and setting it on the kitchen island with quiet deliberation. “I kissed you back. Are you sorry you kissed me?”
She shook her head. “I just don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Did you want to do it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to do it again?”
Electricity zinged through her body again and her breath went shallow. “Yes.”
“Well, let’s do that, then.” He raised a hand, began to slide it behind her neck.
“Okay.” But suddenly, all her frantic urgency had morphed into shyness and uncertainty.
Simon’s brows drew together, his hand stopping, heating her shoulder but somehow unsatisfying. “Or we could not if you changed your mind.”
She shook her head, anxiety twisting her gut. “I haven’t. I just... The whole professional thing. I don’t know how this works, remember? And there’s so much on the line.”
He traced her cheek with one gentle fingertip, his eyes following his touch. “We don’t really work together. I’m not your manager. I’m temporarily helping you get your feet under you.” Something shifted in his expression, tightening, for a bare moment. “But you’re getting your feet under you so fast I don’t even know what you need me for. There’s no professional issue here.”
“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” He nodded, and energy fizzed from her belly out to her extremities. She hadn’t been wrong. The attraction between them, the connection, it was real . “So there’s nothing stopping us?”
“Well, we probably shouldn’t make out in the library stacks, but...” Those eyes drifted up to meet hers, and his lips tipped up in that rare way that she was learning to crave.
She covered his shy grin with her mouth, and they both opened for each other at the same time. Their tongues did meet, brushing and tasting sweetly at first, and then more urgently. Time went away until she pulled back, dazed, breathing fast and realizing she had his thigh clamped between hers, her hips grinding slowly to try to ease the increasingly urgent ache pulsing from her clit. She froze.
“Oh god. Zero to sixty there. I’m sorry. Again.”
Simon needed to clear his head. Thea was saying something. What, he couldn’t have said. Her lips, the lips that were moving, were even more full and plush than usual, redder from kissing. His gaze moved up to her eyes, huge and dark.
His jeans were uncomfortably tight around his cock, which desperately needed adjusting, and the way she was riding his thigh was criminal.
He blinked. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Thea’s lips quivered, almost a smile. “I didn’t mean us to get that carried away.”
“But you meant us to get a little carried away?” He hadn’t had that hot of a make-out session in...when? Ever?
“I don’t know what I meant. I just know I wanted to kiss you.”
I’ve wanted to kiss you for longer than you know. He kept the thought inside. There was something too raw, too vulnerable, about exposing his teenage self like that. “Well, I think you know how much I wanted to kiss you too. I think it’s kinda obvious, actually.”
Her hips slid forward and met his, and he had to stop himself from groaning aloud. “Oh. Yeah. Almost as obvious as me humping your leg.” She smiled gleefully as he adjusted himself, and then he did groan with relief. Or, a bit of relief. His erection was now upright, at least. “I could’ve helped with that, you know.”
With a huge effort, he set her back a few inches. “You could’ve. And we could’ve ended up over there on your bed.” He felt at once confident and daring saying this. It’d been a long time since he’d been this free with anyone, but the evidence of their mutual interest and lust was established enough that he found himself unusually assured.
“Yeah. We could be there right now. But we’re not. Why?” Thea’s eyes had gone all clouded with worry.
He cupped her jaw in both hands and kissed her softly. “Because I think we should do things in the right order.”
“What do we need to do first?” she asked, pouting slightly as he drew back.
He laid a finger on her lips and drew it back when she went to nip at it. “We need to get to know each other first. Not as colleagues, not as me helping you learn a job, but as people.”
“You’re saying...?”
“I’m saying we should go on a date.”