3. Sebastian
THREE
SEBASTIAN
I’d been in New Elwood, Virginia for two days, and didn’t think I’d find an ass as sweet as hers around here. Sure, it was in rare porcupine form, but enticing nonetheless.
As a single, wealthy real estate developer, women had done some pretty wild things to get my attention. But falling through my ceiling naked was a first.
Couldn’t say I was too surprised. Everything in this so-called building was falling apart. I couldn’t wait to get back to my downtown apartment in Arlington. The only reason I was living in this godforsaken dump was to fulfill the conditions of my grandmother’s will. All I had to do was endure this place for thirty days, and I’d get my full inheritance—a few key properties in this town. Grandma Lydia loved giving gifts with strings attached. Death apparently hadn’t cured her of the habit.
I’d spent the last year fighting with the executor of her estate to try to get that particular condition overturned, and all I’d managed to do was shovel thousands of dollars into my lawyers’ bank accounts. So I wasn’t too happy about being here in the first place.
But first things first. There was a naked woman in my bedroom whose butt splinters were causing her to bleed all over my floor.
She glanced at her feet, then gave me her back. I watched as she tried to open the towel enough to get a glimpse of her own ass over her shoulder. When that didn’t work, she moved to the mirror leaning against the wall to catch sight of her reflection.
From where I stood, the mirror revealed the extent of her injuries. I winced. That had to hurt. She was lucky her fall hadn’t been any worse. This place was a death trap. I’d be tearing this dump down as soon as I could, and no heritage preservation officer would stop me.
And once I did, I’d be one step nearer to closing the business deal of a lifetime and getting the hell out of this town.
The woman clenched her jaw and wrapped her towel around herself again, loosely enough that it draped down to her mid-back. “First, that pain-in-my-ass email. Now this?” she mumbled as a piece of auburn hair fell across her face.
“Just a pain-in-the-ass kind of day, huh.” I dropped my gaze to the offending area beneath her towel, arching a brow.
“Oh, very funny,” she snapped.
I found myself enjoying getting a reaction out of her. In business, I prided myself on my ability to get people off-balance so I could negotiate a killer deal. This was no different. Wondering if I could get her skin to flush red with outrage all the way down to the towel, I reached inside my opened suitcase on the floor and pulled out a grooming kit. Inside was a pair of tweezers. I held them up, tapping the ends together. “Allow me.”
Her eyes widened. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Never been more serious.”
“I’m not letting you tend to my ass with those.” Her chin took on a stubborn little tilt that I found extremely gratifying.
“Did you have something else in mind?”
She tightened the towel around her bust with a small huff, causing the towel to tighten on her ass. Her wince was subtle, but I saw it. “Maybe I should call a doctor.”
I knew this town was known for preserving its history, but I doubted there were any MDs still willing to make house calls. Besides, my conscience was giving me a bit of a twinge. She was putting on a brave face, but I could tell she was in pain. No one could ever accuse me of being soft-hearted, but I wasn’t so bad that I’d let a bleeding woman walk out of my place without at least trying to help.
“I could take you to the emergency room, but do you really want to stand in the waiting room, blood streaking down the back of your thighs wearing nothing but a towel?” I glanced at my sweats. I could probably part with them, for a good cause. Grimacing, I dismissed the thought. Less than a day in this town and I was already doing good deeds for people. This place was bad for my health. “I’m not seeing many other options for you,” I pointed out, lifting the tweezers.
It was still a ridiculous offer. There were a thousand better options than letting me go at her rump with a pair of tweezers. A cab. An ambulance. Hell, even my Maserati, though I just had it detailed, and I’d complain about it the whole way to the hospital. And I absolutely would not wait with her until she got treated. A man had his limits.
But she stood there, bloody and furious, and I found myself entranced.
She frowned at the tweezers, then at me. I had the ridiculous, nonsensical urge to reach over and run my thumb over her brows to smooth out the line between them. Shoving the thought aside, I waited for her answer, knowing she’d fling vitriol at my face the way she had since she’d dropped through my ceiling. As the moment stretched, I found myself half looking forward to the furious flash in her eyes that would surely come.
Instead, her gaze softened. “Fine,” she said, then hesitated. “But only if you promise to be gentle.”
Now I was the one who’d been thrown off-balance. My heart thumped as I approached her, inhaling her freshly bathed lavender scent. “I can be gentle,” I told her.
Her chest rose as she breathed in, and that urge to touch her grew stronger. Maybe one of those broken floorboards had knocked me on the head without me noticing, because my thoughts were all over the place. I was convinced she was the hottest woman I’d ever met. I even liked it when she snapped at me. Wanted to make her do it again.
Her lips parted, and my gaze dropped to trace the shape of them. She had a perfectly formed cupid’s bow and a lush lower lip, stained with red that was a little smudged. I liked the look of them like that, mussed and undone. My pulse picked up. Thoughts of real estate and wills and splinters fled from my mind as my world narrowed to the shape of this woman’s mouth.
I jerked when she snatched the tweezers out of my grip. “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.” She pushed her way through my bedroom door and stomped out toward the small, open living area.
I shook my head and cursed myself. I must have looked like an idiot, staring at her mouth like that. Why would I care about some self-important chick’s lips? I was here for thirty days, and not a minute longer. Get in, get the deal done, and get out. That was how I operated, and I wasn’t going to change, no matter how good her mouth looked when her lips parted on a breath. Now was not the time to get distracted by angry, small-town redheads. I could do the gentlemanly thing and save her rump from splinterhood, but that’s as far as this would go. And even that hadn’t really been a serious offer.
And now she was stomping away from me like she was the one who owned the building. That got me riled up.
“Come on. Don’t get your panties in a twist.” I followed after her. “Oh, wait. You’re not wearing any.”
“Ha-ha. That’s hilarious.” Blue eyes cut to mine as she glared over her shoulder. “Do you really find this so amusing?”
“A strange woman falling through my ceiling naked with splinters in her tush? Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty funny.”
She stood still for a moment, staring at the tweezers like she was considering her next steps. I watched her, curious despite myself about how, exactly, she’d manage those hard-to-reach splinters.
She looked at the tweezers, then at me, then stared off into the middle distance for a few seconds. Finally, her shoulders dropped. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind being a decent person for five minutes to help me out, that would be great.” She shoved the tweezers back into my palm.
I blinked down at them. She’d actually agreed. A naked woman had fallen through my ceiling and now was expecting me to get up close and personal with her ass. What the hell was going on?
I gave her my best smile. “Sure thing, neighbor. Why don’t you hop up onto the table so I can get a better look.”
Her jaw clenched, but she did as I instructed, and I dragged the floor lamp closer. “Be careful,” she warned as I flicked the lamp on and shone it at her towel-covered curves.
The tweezers were warm in my hand. I stood there staring at the shape of her under the terrycloth, my mouth suddenly dry. “Should we, uh…” I nudged at the towel.
“Yeah. Sure.” She untucked it from beneath her and shimmied it so one of her ass cheeks was exposed to the light. And to my eyes.
I stood over her slender, prone frame and watched a droplet of water cascade from her shoulder to her spine. My gaze drifted down to her round rump, and I wet my bottom lip. Sure, her skin was red with specks of blood surfacing beneath the fifty or so splinters stuck to her. But my cock couldn’t help waking up to see what all the commotion was about. I adjusted myself over my sweats and tried to pretend this was what I’d intended to happen all along. Just me, my neighbor, and a pair of tweezers.
“Are you just going to stare at it all night?”
I blinked. Right. Splinters.
“Maybe,” I said and bent over to get a closer look at one of the bigger shards of wood. My gaze drifted to the perfect dimple on the side of her spine, just above the curve of her ass. I wondered if there was a matching one hiding under the towel on the other side.
“Is it bad?” Her voice was small.
“What?” I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. Hold still.”
“Ow!” she yelped, and my hands froze.
“Relax! I haven’t even touched you yet.”
“Excuse me? Unless you’ve ever been bare-assed in front of a man you’ve never met, then don’t tell me to relax.”
“Well, I have had a prostate exam so…”
She growled and squirmed just enough for her behind to shake, and I felt another quake in my sweatpants.
“Hold still , woman.”
“Oh, now it’s ‘woman,’ is it? What happened to ‘sweetheart?’”
“I think I overestimated just how sweet you are.”
“You’re a real jerk. You know that?” She turned to glare at me over her shoulder. That was better. I felt a little steadier when she wasn’t so soft and…jiggly. Through clenched teeth, she hissed, “If you don’t start pulling these splinters out of my ass, you better believe I’ll bleed all over your passenger seat while you drive me to the hospital.”
A growl rumbled at the back of my throat. She harrumphed, facing forward again, her arms folded under her chin.
I tugged the towel over a couple of inches to cover that pesky dimple on her lower back, then got to work. The first few splinters were easy. Some of the larger ones just needed a little nudge to fall out. I made quick work of them, placing the shards of wood on a paper towel I draped beside her on the table.
Then came the hard work. The first of the truly tiny splinters made her stiffen when I had to scrape the top of it to get a grip on it with the tweezers. The second made a whimper escape her lips.
My ribs winched tighter at the sound. I set the tweezers down on the table, walked over to my kitchen cabinet, and retrieved my small first-aid kit and a top-shelf bottle of gin. I poured us each a shot in the smallest glasses I could find and offered her one.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Gin.”
“No, thank you. I don’t drink gin.” She brushed it aside, still lying on my dining table.
“Well, it’s all I got, and you’re going to need it.” I clinked my glass against hers. “Bottoms up.”
She rolled her eyes as I shot back the smooth liquor. Perhaps it would take the edge off my anticipation of tomorrow’s meeting with Charlie Washington Reeves, Esq. What kind of loser included his middle name in his email signature? Probably some stuffy, wrinkly, old-timey jerk who needed to retire so this town could finally enter the twenty-first century. He’d already denied every proposal I’d submitted thus far because he was a miserable geezer who was falling apart—just like this damn apartment building. I clenched my jaw at the thought. Never mind him. What went around, came around. I was sure he’d get his one day.
I cleared my throat, took hold of the splinter-extractor, and got back to work. Just as the lady asked, I gently pulled at the shards of hardwood flooring pinned to her soft ass. She stayed still, but the next one made her hiss.
“Sure you don’t want that liquid lidocaine?”
She turned back with a look, her knuckles white as they gripped the edge of the wood table. “I’m fine. Just get it over with.”
I made a noise of assent and turned back to her butt. One of the splinters was near that crease at the juncture of her thigh and the curve of her ass. I gripped her cheek and pulled the skin tight so I could get some purchase with my tweezers, trying to ignore the sight of her smooth skin clasped in my hand. She was so soft. Especially for someone with such a sharp tongue. It made me think there might be other parts of her I’d enjoy discovering.
Why had I worn sweatpants? My body was having all kinds of reactions to this situation that weren’t exactly neighborly. Clearing my throat, I grasped at something to say to distract myself from the task at hand. “I know it’s customary in a town like this to get to know your neighbors, but for future reference a simple hello and a fruit basket would’ve done the trick.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She was silent while I finally worked the splinter free, then said, “I was wondering when someone would move into this apartment. It’s been vacant for the last three months.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
She shifted her position on the table, squeezing her thighs together as she readjusted herself. I stood, averting my gaze while she got comfortable. Every time I stepped away from the focus of tweezers and splinters, I remembered that a beautiful, naked woman was splayed over my kitchen table. I couldn’t afford any distractions right now. Especially not the female kind.
Done with the first side, I shifted the towel over to reveal the second half of her rear. Sure enough, another dimple winked at me from just above her curves.
Maybe thirty days in this town wouldn’t be so bad.
“This table’s vintage. 1940s oak. Where did you get it?” she asked, as if attempting polite conversation to distract from her compromising position.
I turned back to her and tweezed at the shards of wood jabbed into her flank. These had to hurt, and all she did was stiffen ever so slightly once in a while. She was tough. Even tougher than she pretended to be.
“I don’t know,” I said, answering her question about the table. “The apartment came furnished. Table’s a piece of junk if you ask me. This whole place is about to get a makeover.”
“Are you planning to hire a decorator?”
“Something like that,” I said, careful with my words. This poor girl lived in that sorry excuse for an apartment upstairs. This was not the best time to tell her that she’d have to move soon.
“You almost done?”
“Almost. Hold still.” I pulled out the final two splinters, then opened the first-aid kit to retrieve some antiseptic wipes. “This might sting a little,” I said, then cleaned down the last of the dried blood on her skin. The woman didn’t even flinch, but I heard a quiet intake of breath. Tough as nails.
With one final swipe, I said, “There. Good as new.”
Without a thought, I gave her clean cheek a congratulatory smack. My palm connected with her generous ass, the sharp crack of skin on skin filling the silence of the kitchen. Her flesh wobbled attractively for a second, and I watched it, mesmerized.
Then I realized what I’d just done.
I froze. She froze. Time itself froze as horror iced my veins.
My neighbor was the first to speak. “Did you… Did you just smack my ass?”
Was her voice a little breathy, or was it just me?
She spun around, outrage clearly written on her face.
Yeah, it was just me.
“Huh?” I yanked the towel down to cover her and took a step back. Sweatpants were definitely a bad idea. I gathered the first-aid detritus and turned to the trash can.
“You just smacked my ass,” she confirmed, straightening.
I dumped the trash in the can and moved to wash my hands. “Well, thanks for, uh, dropping in,” I said over my shoulder. “But next time, feel free to use the front door.”
Her glare was nothing short of thunderous. But all she said was, “Speaking of front doors. Mine’s locked.”
I checked my watch. “Too late to call the property manager.” I knew from experience that everything in this dump of a town closed by the time the sun went down. I hadn’t bothered getting copies of all the keys; the place was getting torn down the minute my inheritance came through and I could get the two other tenants to clear out. I met her gaze. “I don’t suppose you have a spare key under your doormat?”
“I do not,” she said.
“I could kick down your front door. But a single woman really shouldn’t have two open entrances to her apartment.”
“Who said anything about being single?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and it glistened like a shiny red Christmas ornament.
Not single? My hands paused as I dried them on a dishtowel. I’d have to find out who… Wait. No. I didn’t care. I spun around. “Then why don’t you call your boyfriend? I’m sure he has a spare key.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said through gritted teeth like it physically pained her to admit it to me.
I couldn’t have stopped the smile that stretched over my lips if I tried. She just loved fighting back at every opportunity, didn’t she?
I stepped closer and really took in her soft features—ocean-colored eyes and long lashes, dainty nose with a full, pink bottom lip. Then I frowned. “You have a little blood…” I smoothed my thumb against it, feeling her velvety skin. Her full chest rose with a deep inhale and her breath warmed my hand as I lingered there for a moment.
Then she jerked back. “It’s ink.” She used the back of her hand to wipe her mouth after me, to no avail. “Okay, I have a better idea.” Without another word, she walked back into my bedroom.
A screech of wood against wood rumbled through the floor when I found her yanking the desk closer to the bed. She pulled again, this time so hard that her towel toppled to her toes.
Hello, nipples.
I stood there, leaning against the doorframe.
“Damnit!” She scrambled to cover herself again. They say Virginia is for lovers, but apparently New Elwood, Virginia is for two peep shows in one night. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Whatever you need, sweetheart.”
“Back to sweetheart, are we?”
“Whatever you need, woman.”
She huffed, then pointed at the hole above her head. “I need you to hop up here, climb into my apartment, and unlock the front door.”
I looked up at the female-sized hole in my ceiling. Not sure if I could get through there without a few splinters of my own. No, thank you. Then again, she’d have to return the favor and play nurse. “You really want a stranger alone in your apartment?”
“I figure if I can trust you with my ass, I can trust you to be in my apartment unsupervised for thirty seconds,” she said with crossed arms.
“You know, you’re kind of bossy.” I narrowed my eyes. “I think I might be all out of favors for tonight.”
“Oh, no.” She jabbed a severe finger into my chest. “You owe me for slapping my ass back there. That was out of line.”
I rocked back onto my heels and let out a huff. She had me there. I shrugged. “Force of habit.”
Her only response was an arched brow.
I liked her sass. Liked that she didn’t back down, ever. Maybe that’s why I jumped onto the desk, ignoring the organ in my pants that was enjoying the sight of her angry little scowl. My little brain needed to be reminded by my big brain that I didn’t have time to entertain an angry woman while I was here. The best thing to do was to get her out of here before the evening’s events got out of hand. Or should I say, more out of hand.
I glanced up through the opening. Wow, her ceiling was much higher than mine. What else was up there? I reached for the jagged edges of the hole and thrust my body up into her place. My nose nearly grazed the white clawfoot tub when I made my way through. “Ah!” My shoulder stung with a fresh scrape, but it was just a fat splinter. “I’m in!” I called down. “Bring the tweezers.”
“Oh, shut up,” she groused, disappearing from view.
I stood up and surveyed the room. Her bed was unmade, as if she’d just slept in it with a laptop and various files piled up near her pillows. The foot of the bed looked like a dump truck had unloaded an entire load of throw pillows onto the floor. Floral ones and tasseled ones and striped ones and even a faux-fur one. I frowned at the pile of pillows. She seemed so tough, made of spit and mettle. But she liked pretty things.
The room smelled just like her skin, so I took in another breath. As I wandered out to find her front door, I passed the kitchen. There, in the corner near the toaster, was a collection of cans of sparkling water. I drifted closer, noting they were all peach-flavored, and shuddered. Disgusting.
I took in all the other little details—framed family photos, a collection of antique teacups on the shelf, a vase of fresh daisies on the table. Her apartment felt warm and well-lived-in. A pang of guilt twisted in my gut, but only for a split second. If she could make this dump welcoming, imagine what she could do with a new apartment. One with intact flooring.
I opened the door, and she stood there with one hand on her hip. “Hello, again.”
Her gaze fell to my arm and she leaned in. The tweezers bit my arm as she dislodged a shard of wood.
“Hey!” I flinched and smacked my hand to my shoulder.
“There. Now we’re even.” She pushed her way past me and stopped with an impatient expression. “You’d best be going. Thanks for your help.”
“Anytime,” I said, stepping out. “If you need anything, you know where to find me.”
“Uh-huh.” She shut the door before I could say another word. I stared at the wood grain on her front door for a moment, and for some reason I couldn’t explain, my lips curled into a smile.
A minute later, I turned the knob to my apartment but it didn’t give. So I tried again. Locked. Of course… Had she done that on purpose? Back up at her front door, I banged my knuckles against the hollow wood in a friendly rhythm.
She opened the door still in her stained blue towel. “Don’t tell me you’re here to borrow a cup of sugar.”
“No, I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the only sweet thing in this apartment. My front door is locked. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said a moment before giving me a sharp smile. “Force of habit.” Her words were delivered like little daggers.
I held her gaze for a moment, my heart thumping. This woman would drive me nuts if I spent any more time with her. So why wasn’t I ready to turn around and leave?
I let myself in and headed toward her bedroom. “If you wanted me to stay the night, you should’ve said so.”
Her steps followed close behind. “Oh, you think you’re so cute. Well, I don’t.”
“You sure about that?” I took a few steps into her bedroom, my eyes drawn to the messy bed and ridiculous overabundance of throw pillows. When I took a step closer, the floor squeaked beneath me.
She strode past me and took an authoritative stance near the hole. “I have a very important meeting tomorrow and I need to sit on a bag of ice, so you have to go.”
“I know another place you can sit.”
The words just…slipped out. There was something about the flush warming her cheeks and the outrage lighting her eyes that made my mouth move before I could think—but it was worth it just to see her scowl.
Clasping the blood-smeared towel at her chest, she pointed her finger at the opening. “Get in the hole, jerkwad.”
I couldn’t stop the grin that stretched across my lips. Then I made my way to the opening between our two worlds, sat on the edge, and let my legs dangle beneath me. The last of the bathwater draining from her tub gurgled down the drain, bubbles clinging to the bottom.
She liked throw pillows and bubble baths. A woman who was hard, who took no shit, and who surrounded herself with pretty things and delicate scents. My gaze snagged on a splatter of red on the far wall: ink. A pen sat in a pool of red below the mess on the wall.
It made me want to keep needling her. Pretty things, floral scents, a great ass, and a vicious temper. My kryptonite.
But no. She was just a small-town shrew, and I’d be out of here as soon as I could get these properties transferred into—and out of—my name. There was no use indulging in a fleeting interest that had probably only sparked because I’d already seen her naked.
Still, I reached down to snap off a particularly sharp piece of floorboard so it wouldn’t stab me in the shoulder again, and I couldn’t resist asking, “What’s your important meeting?”
She leaned so close I could smell the scent of her lavender shampoo, floral and feminine. When she spoke, she did it through clenched teeth. “Get. In. The. Hole.”
Holding her gaze for a moment, I gave her a nod and disappeared back into my apartment, landing softly on the desk. I glanced down at my bed. One side was littered with scraps of floor and ceiling. I climbed down from the desk and drew in a deep breath as I surveyed the mess. I really didn’t have time for this.
When I looked up, I saw pursed lips and eyes full of daggers framed by dangling auburn hair. Then her face disappeared and a towel was draped over the opening as a sorry excuse for a barrier between us.
“That towel won’t stop you from falling through again,” I pointed out.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she replied, voice slightly muffled.
“I’m just saying.”
“Buddy, I literally don’t want to hear it. When the towel is in place, pretend I don’t exist. We do not speak through the towel. Got it?”
“How do I know I won’t wake up in the middle of the night with you trying to get another glimpse of me naked?”
The towel was wrenched away to reveal her glaring face. She really was quite fetching when she was furious. The expanse of bare shoulder on display made me think the towel she’d used to cover the hole was the one that had previously been wrapped around her body. “I’m not the one who slapped your ass when I had you lying on my kitchen table. If either of us is a pervert, it’s you.”
I crossed my arms and popped a brow. “Is that right?”
“Yes. That’s right. Do you deny it?” She was doing that clenched-jaw-talking thing again, which made an almost irrepressible urge to laugh rise up inside me. I hadn’t had this much fun in months.
I gestured to my bedroom. “I’m going to sweep this mess up, and then I’m going to take my clothes off and go to bed,” I informed her. “If I see you peeping through the hole at me, I’m going to call the police. We’ll see which one of us they decide is a pervert.”
“Noted,” she replied, voice clipped, and the towel covered the hole once more.
I frowned at it. The way she’d said that twigged something in my memory. Who else did I know that had a fondness for ending discussions that way?
My laptop chimed with a new email, and I remembered. The grizzled, cranky, old-fashioned dinosaur I was meeting tomorrow liked to sign off on emails that way when he knew nothing had been resolved but he wanted to cut me off.
“Charlie Washington Reeves,” I said through clenched teeth, wanting to take all this pent-up aggression out on someone. “ Esquire .”
“ What? ” The word snapped through the towel barrier, sounding even more peeved than before.
I glanced down at my crotch, which merrily twitched behind the gray jersey of my sweats. “Really?” I mumbled, then added, louder, “Nothing!”
Unintelligible grumbles made it past the blue terrycloth.
I shook my head and made my way to the kitchen to grab the broom. I knew one thing for sure—these next thirty days would be interesting.