Actually Love - Jessie & Zach (19 page)

What in the hell was wrong with her?! Knowing that she didn’t have time to delve too deep into that question, she filed it away as something to revisit at a later date as she opened the door.

Oh. My. God
.

Zach stood before her in sweats and a t-shirt, his hair still damp from the shower, looking like sex on a stick. If she were wearing panties, they would definitely be damp with desire.

“Hey,” she said then clamped her jaw shut after she realized that, since opening the door, she’d been staring at him in silent, open-mouthed wonder. She had no idea what
he
was feeling, but from her side of things, the arousal between them was palpable. It felt alive—tangible.

“Hey.” He shook his head slightly, looking like he himself was just coming back from a daze. Taking a step back, he lifted his hand as he was already turning around and halfway down the hall. “I was just about to make dinner. Chicken, rice, and veggies. It’ll be done in about twenty minutes. If you’re hungry.”

Before she had a chance to answer him, he had already disappeared down the stairs.
Weird.
Jessie stood staring after him for a moment before closing her door.

Dinner with Zach?

Her body was screaming,
Yes
! But her mind was standing firm, arms crossed, shaking its head no with disapproval.

Jessie knew that what she wanted to do and what she should do were not the same thing. That seemed to be a recurring theme since Zach had come into her life.

Decisions. Decisions.

Z
ach yawned loudly as he walked down the wooden staircase into the darkened basement. With each step, the stairs creaked beneath his size-thirteen running shoes. A brisk chill hung in the air.

His gaze locked on the spot where he first laid eyes on Jessie. It had only been two weeks to the day that he’d removed the splinter from the pad of her fingertip, but Zach had a hard time remembering what his life had been like before she’d been in it.

Not that he’d spent a lot of time actually with her. He hadn’t. In fact, other than the one dinner they’d had together on Saturday night, they’d hardly spoken two sentences to each other.

A shiver from the drop in temperature ran through him as he flipped on the light switch, illuminating the cold room. Moving across the concrete floor, Zach realized that he hadn’t ever really taken a good look at how much space was down here. There had to be a good four hundred square feet of unused real estate that would be perfect for some training equipment.

Zach had only ever lived in apartments that hadn’t had space for anything more than a weight bench. But he could put a bag down here with plenty of room for a treadmill and his weight bench.

Setting his basket down on the folding table, Zach lifted the lid to the washing machine and dumped a scoop of detergent in the basin as it filled with water.

He would have to ask Jessie, of course, if it was okay with her that he turn the basement into his home gym. Hopefully he’d be able to do it better than the last time he’d asked her something. It hadn’t surprised him in the least that Jessie hadn’t taken him up on his oh-so-smooth dinner invitation.

Last night, when he’d impulsively knocked on Jessie’s door, he’d done it with the intention of casually throwing out an invitation for dinner. Instead, he’d acted like a nervous sixth-grader asking the most popular eighth-grade girl to the dance. He’d been tongue-tied—completely unable to speak.

The second she opened the door wearing only a towel, he’d lost every ounce of charm he’d ever possessed. He wasn’t sure where it had gone. He only knew that it was no longer hanging out with him. Zach found out a valuable mathematic lesson: Zach plus arousal minus charm equaled a fiery crash-and-burn scenario.

In fairness to his charm—that, up until last night, had never failed him—the picture that Jessie had presented in nothing but a towel, was more than any mere mortal man could ever be expected to see and not get knocked flat on his ass. Zach was a fighter—that’s what he did for a living—but seeing Jessie half naked and wet was the closest thing to a knockout punch that he’d ever experienced.

His eyes had hungrily devoured the sleek slope of her neck. His mouth had watered at the damp tendrils of baby-fine hair that were slicked against the supple skin behind her ear. The seductive line of cleavage that formed where her towel had been gathered, had caused a fire to erupt inside of Zach, and by the time his eyes had made it over the rounded curve of her terrycloth-covered hips down to her bare legs glistening with beads of moisture, he was scared he might spontaneously combust right there in the hall without even having touched her. He’d all but aborted his mission before it had even begun, turning and hightailing it downstairs without once looking back as he babbled an invitation to join him.

Another equally valuable lesson learned last night was: Cooking dinner with a raging boner was not the easiest thing in the world to do and could be hazardous to one’s…health. He kept knocking into things with his protruding shaft and had actually been relieved that Jessie hadn’t been there to witness it. Sadly, that relief was short-lived.

When he sat down to eat alone, something he’d done so many times he couldn’t count, for the first time ever, it had felt empty. He’d stared across the table where Jessie had sat a few nights before. The spot had been vacant. And for the first time in Zach’s entire life, he’d felt…lonely.

Shaking off the memory of his loner dinner, he dumped his darks into the machine and closed the lid. Deciding to turn his attention to something more productive than rehashing the disappointing way last night had turned out, he figured he would measure the space so he could plan a layout. Pivoting on his heels, he was stopped short when he came face-to-face with, hands-down, the sexiest-looking panties and bras Zach had ever laid eyes on.

He had not lived the life of a Boy Scout by any means; Zach had seen more than his fair share of lingerie. Not only were the pieces he was staring at in and of themselves enough to get any man’s engine revving, but the fact that the lace and satin garments were hung side by side on an old clothesline made them seem so much more provocative and
hot
.

Zach’s first instinct was to reach out and touch the delicate fabric. Obviously, he refrained. He might not be himself around Jessie, but there was
no way
he was going to turn into the creepy panty guy who touched ladies’ underwear. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t look. His gaze continued down the line, where he saw that there were stockings and garters in addition to bras and panties.

Fuck
. Zach’s jaw tightened as his hands fisted at his sides. He had never been one of those guys who were into fetishes or anything like that, but there was just something that he’d always found innately sexy about a woman in stockings and a garter belt. Add a pair of stiletto heels to that picture and it became his ultimate fantasy.

Heated lust rushed through Zach’s body as pictures of Jessie, wearing each and every one of the things that were hung up and displayed before him, flashed in his mind. He’d seen the heels she owned, and that was all he needed to go on for his mind’s eye to instantly dress her up like an X-rated paper doll. Each time a different combination of lingerie and stilettos popped up in his mind, his dick grew like he was Jack and it was the beanstalk.

Zach was so screwed. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that every time he saw Jessie from now on, he would be picturing what she was wearing beneath her clothes. It was bad enough that he already had to stop himself from picturing her naked all the time. Now he had a sexy peepshow that was imprinted into his consciousness, which he was sure his libido would press play on without getting the a-okay, thumbs-up from his brain.

Great. That’s exactly what he needed.

*     *     *

Dammit
.

Jessie couldn’t believe how late she was running. After clicking off the hair dryer, she ran a brush through her hair and decided that she would apply her makeup either on the train or when she got to the office. She grabbed her small makeup bag, stepped out of the bathroom, and dropped it in her brown leather satchel.

This was the second time in less than a week that she had slept through her alarm. Well, the first time, she had been sleeping in Zach’s bed and had forgotten to set it entirely, so she didn’t think that actually counted, but this time, she’d set it and just slept right past it. Sleepless night or not, Jessie was not letting herself off the hook. This was unacceptable behavior and it could not continue.

If she couldn’t manage to figure out how to live with Zach and function, then she was going to need to figure something else out. One month. That’s what she would give it. Jessie didn’t care if she had to continue paying half the rent here for the duration of the lease while she lived somewhere else. If she hadn’t pulled herself together after one month, she was out of here.

After picking out her black skirt and white-and-black-striped shirt, she moved to her dresser and pulled out the top drawer. All that laid in it were brightly colored bras. No white bra to be seen.

Seriously
. Jessie had completely forgotten that the reason she’d been up so late was that she’d been waiting for Zach to go to bed so she could sneak down and get her underwear from the clothesline last night. After Zach’s dinner offer, she’d stayed up in her room for fear that she would pounce on him like a jungle cat in heat if she dared to even step a foot downstairs before he was safely closed behind his bedroom door for the evening.

Okay, all she had to do was run downstairs, grab her stuff, run back up, get dressed, and head out the door.

Simple enough.

She pulled a robe tightly around her waist as she stepped into her puffy, white slippers. Yesterday had taught her that the basement was a lot chillier than the rest of the house. She’d been freezing her toenails off when she’d ventured down there with bare feet. Not going to happen again.

Halfway down the stairs, the rich smell of coffee met her with a ‘good-morning, how-are-you-today’ greeting. Jessie just did not think that she could adequately describe the feeling that meeting the day with a fresh pot of coffee gave her. Of course, she knew that there were coffee makers, that she could program to turn on at a certain time each day, that would garner her the same results, but she didn’t trust those. Ever since her sister Haley had accidently left her curling iron plugged in when she was thirteen and the girls’ bathroom had caught on fire, Jessie hadn’t trusted any appliances. Period. So, the knowledge that a hot pot of coffee would be waiting for her after she ventured down into the frozen tundra, a.k.a. the basement, filled her with happiness.

As she opened the door and started down the wooden steps, the first thing she noticed, before she even made it halfway down, was that the light was on. A quick thought crossed her mind—that she could have sworn she’d remembered to turn it off—before she heard the loud rumblings of the washing machine.

Aha! She hadn’t forgotten to turn it off—Zach had. He must have come down to throw in a load of clothes this morning before he headed to the gym or wherever he went at the ass crack of dawn. Of course. That made total sense because Thursday was his ‘laundry day’. She had a little ‘
aww’
moment at the thought that Zach had actually taken her schedule seriously. That sweet feeling was over before it had a chance to take root because the stark realization that, if Zach had been down here doing laundry this morning, he must have seen her unmentionables.

Great. That was going to be a fun conversation to have. “
Hey, sorry I left my drawers hanging around. Hope they didn’t get in your way
.” As she reached the bottom of the staircase, Jessie wondered what the appropriate time was to bring something like that up. During dinner seemed a little crass. Passing in the hall seemed a little forced.

Lifting her head, she got her answer. Now. Now would be the time to bring it up. She saw Zach’s back as he stared at her lady wear.