Chapter 5
5
Jake
All my concerns about pissing Frank off or scaring the shit out of Kitty fly right out the restaurant’s front door when she gasps and bites down on that plump little bottom lip. I think about that lip a lot.
“I look sad?”
“Not right now,” I tell her, my usual bluntness probably sealing my own fucked up fate. You can’t tell a woman this shit and expect to see her again. She’ll probably take out a restraining order on me. “Right now, you look…blindsided. Maybe a little interested.” I want to move deeper into the open doorway, closer to her, but until she says different, I’ll stay right where I am. Holding myself perfectly still, I ask, “Are you?”
She looks dazed. Lost. “Am I…?”
“Interested.”
“I’m—”
A car door slams, jolting her out of whatever spell I somehow managed to cast.
“I’m sorry, this is…I don’t know what to say. I’ve been drinking and it’s a messed up day for me. More than just my birthday, you know? All this other stuff.” She shakes her head. “Thank you. For your…weird offer.”
“Yeah.” I scan our surroundings, watch the car take off, and look at her, hard. “Go ahead and close up. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“You don’t have to?—”
I sigh. “It’s not a choice, Kitty, I can’t not watch out for?—”
“It’s Kit.”
“What?”
“It’s Kit E. Like, Kit Esteban.” She sighs. “The first place I ever waited tables, there were two of us—two Kits.”
“That’s random.”
“Right? Anyway, we were known as Kit R and Kit E. And mine stuck.”
“No shit.”
“So, it’s just Kit.”
“Short for?”
After a second’s hesitation, she tells me. “Katarina.”
The name suits her. Much more than Kitty. Or Kit. “That’s right. Your brother’s real name’s Franco. Y’all are Spanish.”
“Half Spanish, half Puerto Rican. And I was named after a German figure skater.”
I give the quiet lot a quick once-over, tell her goodnight, walk to my truck, and settle in to wait for her to come out the front and lock up.
When she does, she’s got a bright red coat thrown over her clothes. It’s long and cinched in at the waist and it makes her look like she stepped out of the pages of one of the old Louis Lamour books my dad used to read 24/7 in the cracked back booth when he was dying. Like a wild west saloon girl or something.
Which works with the whole vibe of her place. It’s called Parlor. Frank’s never seen it, but he described it to me with impressive precision.
I don’t get the impression Frank’s aware of her current money problems, though. How the hell’d it happen? The restaurant’s obviously doing well.
Something tells me it’s the ex.
I watch her step carefully over the gravel of the lot and pause, about halfway to her VW. Slowly, she turns, scanning her surroundings until her eyes land on my truck. To keep from seeming like a total perv, I flick my lights on and off, showing her I’m here.
When she heads my way, instead of to her car, a new purpose in her step, my breathing revs up.
As she crosses to the passenger side, I lean over and shove it open for her.
She stands there, clearly uncertain. “Did you mean it? What you said? Or was that just a…a…I don’t know. Like a come-on or something?”
“Some of both.” I watch her. “Get in.”
After a second’s hesitation, she swings into the truck and shuts the door, then just sits there, staring straight ahead through the windshield.
“I don’t need a husband,” she says, her voice low and tight.
“I wasn’t proposing.”
I feel the shocked little breath she lets out deep down in my balls. What is it about this woman? Every physical response from her draws one from me. Vague recollections hit me from science class, way back in the day. Newton’s law, was it? For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction? Funny. Here we are, I guess. Newton’s theory in action.
“Right. Of course. In that case, would you consider being a donor, without any contact?”
“No.”
“Wow. Okay.” She pauses, obviously considering. Which is far more than I expected. Not that I expected anything. Hell, I shocked myself when I opened my mouth with the offer to knock her up. “What if…what if… Crap, I don’t know. What if it works and then you try to tell me how to raise my child and?—”
“I wouldn’t ask for shit from you.”
“The thing is, I don’t sleep with employees.”
I give her a look that says Are you kidding me? We both know I’m not your regular employee. We also both know that there’s a term limit here.
She huffs out an unhappy sound. “I need a cook.”
“I’ll be out of your hair as soon as you find me a replacement.”
“Easier said than done.”
“No luck?”
She shakes her head, drops her face, and rubs her eyes.
“Once it’s…over, you’ll leave town? Stay out of our lives?”
“Absolutely. I’m not in the market for a family.” Not now. Not ever.
She nods, her sigh so heavy I feel the weight of it, of everything she carries around on those narrow shoulders. “Why the hell would you do this for me?”
With relief, I let the full truth out: “I’ve wanted to get my dick inside you since I first laid eyes on that face.”
Her laugh is high, shocked. “You’re a real prince.”
“Not even a little.”
“I’m getting that.”
I half turn and let myself loom, let her get how big I am, how it would feel to be crowded by me, show her what it’ll be like when I’m up in her space. “I’d make it so goddamn good, Kit. You’d forget there’s an endgame.”
She shifts and I swear she’s squeezing those thick thighs together. Is it wishful thinking or is she as excited by this as I am? “What if…what if once isn’t enough?”
It won’t be. I know that already. I also see how skittish she is when it comes to men. Not as though she’s scared of us, but like she’s been burned and figured out through firsthand experience that the best way to avoid it is to cut us out entirely.
“We’ve got a little less than five weeks to figure that out.”
“Right. Right.” She turns fully my way. “I make the rules.”
I force myself to nod, slow and thoughtful. “Yep. Your rules. I’ll provide STD test results and…” I look down at the hard-on already trying to rip its way outta my jeans. “The genetic material.”
“Right.” I watch her consider, eyes wide as they scan our surroundings, touch on me and then skitter away again. She’s probably asking herself if she wants an ex-con for her kid’s dad, maybe wondering just how high my IQ can possibly be if I turned to crime as a youth. On the flip side, I’m big and strong. That’s gotta count for something in whatever genetic calculations she’s running through that sharp brain of hers. “Frank says you’re a good man. Says there’s no one he’d trust more than you. But this restaurant is my life, Jake. It’s all I have.”
“I would never hurt you,” I grit out, a vow I’ll gladly scratch out in blood.
I’ve counted up to thirty in my head by the time she nods and shoves her slender hand at me. “Okay. Yes.”
My cock goes impossibly harder, heavier. It’s throbbing where it’s trapped between my leg and rough denim. It’s takes an effort to do nothing but reach out and slide my palm against hers, grip those delicate fingers, shake.
When she finally pulls away, she’s all business.
“Once you get your results…”
“I’ll get it done tomorrow.”
“Okay. We can do it at my place.”
“Probably a good idea.”
Her expression changes. “Why?”
“Would you rather do it here?”
“No.” Her exhale’s nervous or impatient or something. Not impatient the way I am, I figure. I’m thinking about that big, heart-shaped ass. About how she’ll smell in bed, how those eyes will look, how her pussy’s gonna feel wrapped tight around me. Fuck…going in bare… I swallow. It’ll be a first.
Can’t fucking wait.
“Things will be the same at work, Jake, got it?”
“Of course.”
“You and I aren’t…anything.”
“Just doing a job.” Ma’am. The last word’s silent, but it’s there.
Her laugh comes out, hoarse and high. “Jesus. That makes it sound…” She swallows and shifts in her seat. Some part of her likes this. I know it. I fucking feel it in the air between us. “Dirty,” she whispers.
“That bother you?”
When her little pink tongue comes out to lick that plush bottom lip, I realize I’m in for a world of pain until those test results come in. At least I know they’ll be negative.
I haven’t touched—or even thought about—another woman since I walked into Parlor and saw Kitty behind the bar. Kit.
No, Katarina.
“Doesn’t bother me,” she says.
“Me neither.”
“You’re into it.”
I nod. Even without the visible erection, there’d be no denying it. I’m into whatever happens here. Hell, she’s pretty much all I’ve thought about since I first saw her. To get the chance to fuck her raw? “Yep.”
“All right.” She opens her door, letting in a blast of much-needed air. “See you tomorrow.”
She swings out into the lot and pauses halfway through shutting the door again. “Nothing changes. Got that?”
“Of course, boss. Nothing changes.” This is a bald-faced lie.
Pretty sure we both know it. But, man, all I can think about is seeing her tomorrow and knowing that soon, she’ll be stuffed full of me.
If Frank knew what I was up to, he’d slice off my balls.