Authors: Robin Kaye
Jessie sipped her coffee and tried to get her brain working. “We don’t have to stay. Don’t you want to go back to town?”
“I’d rather be here with you.” He kissed her shoulder and nuzzled her ear. “I don’t have to be back in Boise until Tuesday morning. I thought you’d planned to hang here with Karma for the weekend.”
“I did, but Karma’s not here.”
She felt him smile against her neck. “And for that I’ll be forever grateful.”
He took the empty coffee cup from her hand, set it on the table, and with absolutely no warning ravished her mouth. She didn’t even want to think about what she tasted like, but he tasted of coffee and toothpaste, not a combination she’d ever found appealing before, but with Fisher, it was incredible.
Before her foggy mind cleared, she was straining against him, gasping for breath, and thinking he was a whole lot more potent than caffeine.
“I like having you all to myself.”
***
Jessica had that wild-eyed look he’d come to recognize, the same one he’d seen right before she ran out of his house after the hot tub incident. Not exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for after last night. He’d been looking forward to a repeat performance, and she was right there with him until he opened his mouth. “When I said I wanted to keep you all to myself, I didn’t mean that to sound creepy.”
She pulled away and laughed it off. “It didn’t. I’m just not much of a morning person. I can’t do anything before I’ve had a quart of caffeine and a shower.”
He’d never seen a woman so tense. He was relieved she was only escaping to the bathroom. “Okay.” He stood and pulled on his jeans. “I’ll bring you a refill and then get started on breakfast while you shower.”
She stood, pulling the sheet off the bed and wrapping it around her like a very modest toga. “Fisher, you don’t have to serve me. I’m more than capable of fixing coffee. Not much else, but coffee, especially with those K-Cups, is pretty much a no-brainer. As for breakfast, don’t feel like you have to go to any trouble. A PowerBar is fine, and I brought some with me.”
He’d really like to rip the damn sheet from her body. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t memorized every inch he’d touched last night, just like he’d memorized her taste and her scent. “I’m going to make myself breakfast, and it’s just as easy to cook for two. But if you’d rather have a PowerBar than steak and eggs with hash browns, that’s up to you.”
“No, I didn’t mean… well, steak and eggs sound good if you’re cooking anyway.”
“Okay then. I’ll just go refill your coffee and bring it in to you. And before you argue, it’s not a big deal.” He kissed her cheek and gave her a shove toward the shower. “Go ahead, before I decide to join you.” That got her moving, which was a damn shame.
Jessie wasted no time running into the bathroom. She caught her reflection in the mirror, cringed, and ran her hand through her hair in a vain attempt to tame it. It was worse than a rat’s nest. God, between the hair, the pillow marks on her cheek, and the white sheet, she looked like Medusa. White was so not her color. “But look on the bright side, Jess, it would be a great Halloween costume if you were out to scare men and young children.”
A knock on the door made her jump. Okay, so she was a little bit freaked out and talking to herself. God, she hoped he hadn’t been eavesdropping.
“Is it safe to come in?”
Shit, she didn’t even have the shower running yet. She couldn’t very well hide, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t already seen her at her worst, several times in fact. She took a deep breath and opened the door.
Fisher’s hair was wild, but not like hers. His was more windblown than bed-head. The sun streaming through the skylight caught the blond hair on his chest and accentuated his pecs and abs. Sometimes life was so unfair. He looked perfect in a dreamy, storybook way. She needed to stop staring.
Fisher smiled slowly, as if he could read her mind. With every quirk of his perfect lips, she felt herself shifting farther and farther away from her safety net. It was as if she were fighting a battle against an invisible, unknown enemy and losing spectacularly. She had that whole fight or flight thing going, but she didn’t know why. She was so confused, she wasn’t sure she knew what she was fleeing. She needed to get a grip.
“You okay?”
Hell, no. But she couldn’t tell him that. There was only one person in the world she could tell, and her damn phone didn’t work. “I’m fine. I just need to call my best friend to check in, and I can’t get a signal on my phone. Is there a place nearby I can get cell coverage?”
“No need. Just use my phone.” He set the coffee on the counter, grabbed his phone off the nightstand, and handed it to her. “Plug it back in when you’re done, okay?”
“Sure.” She took the phone from him and caught the sheet that was slipping off her breasts, watching him leave. “Fisher.”
He looked over his shoulder.
“Thanks for the coffee and everything.”
“I’ll wait for you to finish before I start breakfast, so take your time. Talk as long as you want.”
She nodded as Fisher closed the bedroom door behind him. Of course, he was really nice and generous, and well, wonderful. Almost perfect, except for the whole dating thing, and couple thing, and always showing up wherever she was thing—although that had come in handy yesterday. Last night had been perfect too—at least the sex part had. In fact, she awoke wondering if it was just another one of her romance novel–induced, multi-orgasmic dreams. Although in the past dreams, she’d always woken up hot and bothered, well before the big pay off, which made her realize that sex with Fisher had been no dream. Well, that and the slight twinge of sore muscles that hadn’t been used in way too long. Last night was certainly one for the record books. She could claim most orgasms with one person, most orgasms in one day, and most orgasms in one year. Yeah, Andrew was right. She definitely needed to get out more.
Jessie took a deep breath and dialed.
“Andrew Monahan.”
“Are you alone?” She turned on the water in the party-sized tub to drown out the conversation and be able to soak at the same time.
“Hello to you too. What’s the matter? Why are you in Chicago? And why is water running?”
“I’m not in Chicago, and I’m filling the bathtub.” She sat on the edge of the tub.
“It’s a Chicago area code.”
“I borrowed a friend’s satellite phone. We’re outside of Stanley, and I can’t get cell coverage anywhere. Not even on the top of a mountain, I might add.”
“You have a friend?”
“You’re surprised I have a friend, but you’re not surprised that I climbed to the top of a mountain to get cell coverage? What’s wrong with this picture?” Jessie stepped into the tub, easing into the hot water while it continued to fill. “And need I remind you that you’re my best friend in the world?”
“Sugar, I love you. You know that, but I’m your only friend, and that makes me your best friend. What can I say? The rest of the world is shortsighted.”
“I have friends.”
“You have acquaintances. Friends are people who will drop everything on a moment’s notice and take the red-eye to see you throw out the first pitch in a minor league season opener.”
“I totally smoked it.”
“You did, but how many of your other so-called friends even crossed the Hudson to see it?”
“Yeah, you do have a point there. None, but I have two now.” She leaned back, stretched out her legs, and rested her neck on the edge of the tub.
“Well, good for you. Didn’t I tell you that people in Boise are friendlier?”
“Yeah, see that’s the thing. I kinda need your help. You know the guy I met?”
“The stalker?”
Jessie rubbed her eyes and wondered why she told Andrew everything when he used it against her later, just like he was doing now. “His name is Fisher Kincaid, and I was wrong. He’s not a stalker. We just have the same circadian rhythm, and he likes me.”
“He likes you? Sugar, wake up and smell the Old Spice. He wants to get into your pants.”
“How do you know? What am I? Unlikable or something?”
“Look at yourself.” God she hated it when Andrew used his I’ll-speak-slowly-because-you’re-too-stupid-to-live voice. He picked it up when he minored in pop psychology, and she’d been waiting for him to lose it ever since. “You’re gorgeous. What’s not to like? You’re sexy as hell in an I-don’t-give-a-fuck way that dares a man to step up to the plate. But you’ve built so many walls. You’re more impenetrable than a super-max prison.”
“I don’t have walls.”
“Sugar, your walls have been firmly in place since your junior year in high school.”
“You swore you’d never repeat what I told you.”
“No, I swore I’d never repeat it to anyone else. Repeating it to you is fair game. What that jock did to you was unforgivable, sugar. Taking your virginity on a dare was horrible, but it’s time to get over it all ready.” She had broken his nose when she found out and years later turned him down when he hadn’t recognized her and tried to pick her up at her class reunion. She thought she had persuaded Andrew that she had moved on.
Jessie tried to erase the picture of the asshole-of-the-moment in her mind. “I’m so over Jamie Babcock. I was over him the second I broke his nose. I moved on years ago.”
“Jessie, you like men. You may even have sex with them on occasion, but you only see them as the competition. You might be over Jamie Babcock, but you’ve never recovered. You’ve never trusted another man.”
“I trust you. The last I checked, you’re a man.”
“You trust me and only me because I’m nothing like every other man in your world. I’m a writer, not a jock. I could give two shits about sports. Hell, in your eyes, I’m a girlfriend with a Y chromosome. In all the time I’ve known you, I’ve yet to see a man willing to fight the good fight and win. Sugar, I’ve seen you scare off more men than Mike Tyson with an iron deficiency.”
Jessie chose to ignore the Mike Tyson crack, and the fact he dragged up an experience she’d rather not think about because she needed Andrew’s help, and fighting with him wouldn’t get her an answer any sooner. “Win what?”
“Your heart.”
“I have a heart. I just don’t believe in the happily-ever-after, fairy tale society has brainwashed women with since the beginning of time.”
“That’s old news and your convenient excuse to avoid getting hurt by men like Jamie Babcock. So, sugar, what’s the problem?”
“It’s Fisher. We’re dating… sort of, and well, he’s different.”
“What does ‘dating… sort of’ mean exactly?”
“Since I rarely date—”
“Rarely?”
“You know, Andrew, this would go a whole lot faster if I didn’t have to deal with comments from the peanut gallery. Do you want to help me or not?”
“Okay, calm down. I’m ready and willing to help you if I can.”
“Good. Fisher knows about me writing a romance and my dating history.”
“You told him about Jamie Babcock?”
“Hell no. Jamie is not the issue, never was, never will be. I told Fisher I don’t date much, so he’s offered to show me how a man romances a woman for research purposes.”
“Well, that’s one I’ve not heard before. Do you think he’d mind if I used that line?”
“Probably not. And guess what? It works.”
“Really? Go on.”
“Last night I was working on the book, while he made dinner. Before he put the steaks on, he asked if I was at a good stopping point, or if he should wait. And that was before we made our romance, dating deal.”
“What did you do, shake on it?”
“In a manner of speaking.” God, she felt herself blush. Talking about sex, even over the phone with her best friend, had her face heating.
“You had sex with him?”
She reached over and turned off the water, wishing she could dunk her head. “Well, yeah. You would have too if you were me, and he was cooking for you. He’s amazing. He even made peach cobbler from scratch and homemade ranch dressing.”
“I’m not seeing the problem here. Does he suck in bed?”
“Um… no. Just the opposite, he’s perfect. Well, except he insists he rescued me when he didn’t.”
“And what would make him think he rescued you?”
She tapped her fingers on the surface of the water, watching the ripples. “Because my car broke down, and he found me climbing a mountain to see if I could get a signal to call for help.”
“Sounds like a rescue to me.”
“Of course you’d take his side, you’re a man.” She scooted down into the water to stay warm.
“Guilty. But back to the reason you’re calling me at an ungodly early hour on a Saturday morning when you obviously like this man who cooks, is good in bed, and isn’t a stalker or a rescuer. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. One minute I want to rip his clothes off, and the next I want to run as far and as fast as I can and hide. Maybe I’m PMSing. I’m not acting like myself. My eyes leaked.”
“Your eyes did what?”
“Andrew, I swear, if you repeat one word I’m about to tell you, I’ll write a tell-all book about you and send it to your aunt, the nun.”
“Sister John Paul? You’d do that to her?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Fine, I swear. Now tell me what’s wrong, so I can fix it and then get some sleep.”
“After, well, you know.”
“No, sugar, I don’t know.”
“What we did.”
“Cook, eat, have sex?”
“Yeah, that last one.”
“Okay, I’m following you. What happened after you had sex with Fisher, the rescuer?”
“Oh God, please don’t make fun of me.” She sat, pulling her legs to her chest and wrapping her arm around them, before resting her face on her knees. “I really don’t think I could handle it, and honestly Andrew, you’re all I have.”
“Okay, I’ll stop teasing, and I promise not to make fun of you. Now tell me what happened.”
“Afterward, I started crying for no reason. I just bawled like a total whack job. And it wasn’t as if I had anything to cry about. But I couldn’t stop.” She didn’t hear anything, not even his breathing. She pulled the phone away from her ear to make sure the call hadn’t failed. “Andrew, say something.”
“I’m speechless.”
“That’s a first.”
“Yeah, just like you crying. Maybe you’re right, maybe it is just PMS. You know, you
are
a woman; you have hormones, maybe they just took over.”