And they were just friends. Had been since they were in kindergarten. And then in each other’s pockets from the time they were twelve and Claudia had started trying out recipes on him. He’d choked down the first few cakes because he’d really liked her. Just as he was about to have to tell her the truth or risk his stomach lining, she’d gotten better at what she was doing. Thank God. That was also about the time his hormones had started kicking in and he’d realized she was a girl.
What a mess he’d made of things when he’d tried to give her a kiss the first time, the first time for both of them. He’d never forget the complete bafflement on her soft face when he’d come at her, eyes open and lips pursed. She ended up laughing, and he’d forced himself to laugh with her.
He was wasting time standing out here and reminiscing. He had the plans for her remodel of Decadence under his arm and a solid reason for being at her house. Procrastination wasn’t going to do anything but draw things out.
He knocked, though he really didn’t have to anymore. Claudia had told him on more than one occasion to just walk on in. But a part of him, the very male part, still feared girl rituals and what he might accidentally interrupt.
“Come on in,” Claudia’s muffled voice said through the door.
He straightened his shirt, smoothed his hair, and checked his pants before opening the door. He realized he’d need to pull his shirt down a little farther to cover his jeans, and he held the plans over his crotch. Dammit. He couldn’t exactly stand out here thinking about the exact measurements of his next build-out or what he planned on making for dinner to try to make his erection subside before he walked in. He was stuck.
He must have taken too long, because Claudia came and opened the door herself, looking good enough to lick with her blonde hair pulled into a messy bun on the back of her head and skewered with a pencil. She should be illegal, plain and simple.
“Oh, hey!” she said dragging him in by the arm. “Zoe and Justin just went out to grab some subs while we go over the plans. They should be back soon.”
Which meant they were all alone in the house, and he was semi-hard. But at least her eyelashes weren’t fluttering. The other day at the batting cages must have been a figment of his overactive imagination. She was not into him, had never been into him, no matter how much he had wanted her, that one brief time in his youth.
While he’d been thinking all these ludicrous thoughts, she’d stepped in closer. Her hand brushed the front of his jeans when she took the plans from him. He jerked and tried to step out of the way. How was he going to hide anything now? He guessed he could make a mad dash for the kitchen table and take a seat to avoid showing his rampant evidence of wanting her. This was very uncomfortable and unfortunate. It shouldn’t be happening right now. What in the hell had gotten into him?
Coward that he was, he fast-walked his way to the table and left her in the doorway to do whatever she would. He could have sworn he heard a snicker behind him, but maybe it was his mind messing with him.
Regardless, he sat at the table facing forward and staring at the stove directly in front of him. He focused on the house he would be working on next week, mentally listing the supplies he’d need to buy, hoping he could get his woody to deflate before he had to stand up again.
He waited for what felt like an eternity before he heard her footsteps. As she passed him, a whiff of something exotic and warm hit his nose. It made a joke of all his progress in getting his body to settle down. Claudia had always smelled pleasantly of Claudia, but this afternoon her scent was something entirely different.
And if he didn’t want to swallow his tongue and not be able to talk like a normal human being, he needed to get his mind out of her pants and into the plans in her hand. Plans for what, he couldn’t say right now. But maybe it would come back to him once she sat across from him and spread out the papers on the surface of the big kitchen table.
His heart nearly stopped in his too-warm chest when she spread the papers out while caging him between her arms. Her breasts rested against his back, electrifying his skin under his thin T-shirt. It flashed through his mind to stand up and get away, but she’d effectively cut off his escape route, unless he was willing to knock her backward.
He struggled to keep silent his groan at the feel of her body pressed up against his. God, it was like being a teenager all over again. He was impossibly hard and hoping his cock wouldn’t knock on the underside of her table.
And then she started speaking. Right into his ear in a breathy voice that set the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. “Oh, Nate! These are fantastic.”
He breathed in another lungful of that exotic scent and nearly choked. Maybe it would be better to just not breathe at all. He didn’t know if he could last another ten seconds without exploding. “Thanks.”
“I can’t believe you were able to get everything drawn up and finished so quickly. I knew there was a reason I loved you so much.” She squished herself down on his back, and he felt every line and softness of her body. He also felt her rigid nipples poke into his back.
To hell with not knocking her back. He had to stand up. Now. Damn the consequences. Not to mention the tent in his pants. He scooted back gently from the table. “I should—”
Before he could say any more, she lifted her hands from the table and wrapped them around his torso, shifting herself to fit the curve of his back and giving him a huge hug. This was unbearable.
He placed his hands over hers to pull them away, but his body had other ideas. He shifted back into her embrace, enjoying it in a way he shouldn’t. They’d hugged numerous times, but this was different, and he didn’t know how he felt about it.
He had no time and no desire to explore those feelings right now. His heart thumped so hard in his chest he was afraid she could hear it. He forced a laugh he didn’t feel and followed through with his earlier intent to remove her hands. Turning to look at her, he prepared to tell her how much her enthusiasm meant to him and then get the hell out of there as fast as his legs could carry him without damaging his goods permanently. He needed breathing room—without essence of Claudia and spice filling the air. He needed room to get his distance back into place where it belonged. He needed to have his head checked for wanting her as more than a friend and feeling a faint kicking in his stomach that told him to go for it already.
But she took the option completely out of his hands when she grabbed his ears and laid a kiss on his lips like nothing he’d ever experienced before. For sure, there was no laughing going on this time.
Chapter Five
Nate’s lips were infinitely softer than Claudia had ever dreamed. Her hands roamed his back, then clasped around his neck, pulling him down to her level. She rubbed her lips back and forth against his, electrified by finally being this close to him and planting one on him. Not to mention the fact that she’d actually gathered the courage to do what she’d wanted to do from the moment she opened the door.
He hadn’t opened his mouth yet, but she was working on it by tracing the outline of his lips with her tongue. He made a noise in his throat that shot thrills right to her stomach, and she topped it with her own, “Mmmmmm.”
And then she was cold, her arms empty, her heart stuttering. Her breath stopped in her lungs as she listened to the door slam closed behind him.
When it opened again, she was sitting in a straight-backed chair, elbows holding down his drawings on the table.
“I tried to take a little longer, but the monkey caught on that something was going on,” Zoe called out as she waltzed by, food in hand. “He’s coming up right now. I made him carry a few things so I could check out the scene and make sure he wouldn’t walk in on something that would haunt him for years and be burned on the back of his eyelids forever.”
Claudia would have laughed if she didn’t feel so dejected. She heard cabinets opening and closing around her, and Zoe’s footsteps quick and light. Then total silence descended for a second before the heavy tread of Justin’s step sounded in the living room.
Zoe grabbed Claudia’s chin and turned her head. “We’ll talk later,” she said, giving Claudia a one-armed hug. “For right now, you need to come up with a reason why Nate isn’t here, while putting on your happy-mom face. Quick, before Justin trundles in.”
Claudia did her best, knowing it wasn’t enough. She told her lips to lift on the edges and form a smile, but they weren’t listening. She’d made a mess of things, and now she had no idea how to make the situation any better.
But then Justin came stumbling into the kitchen under the weight of three big bags. Claudia couldn’t help but laugh. “Think you loaded him up enough, Zoe?”
“I can carry it all,” came his muffled reply from behind the white paper bags.
She got up from the table, the smile staying in place all on its own. “Let me at least help you set them down.” She took the fragrant sacks and placed them on the table. Pulling food from each, she marveled at the amount of food Zoe had purchased. “Since when are we feeding an army?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure what all to get, so I got a little of everything. It’s not like we can’t have leftovers. But we should eat the subs first. We can have lasagna for dinner tomorrow.”
“Or I could have Derek over,” Justin said, throwing himself into a chair. “I bet we could eat everything without a single problem.”
Claudia ruffled his hair, knowing full well how much he hated the gesture. But they were going through a relatively smooth period, and she figured he could stand a little riling. “No friends tonight. We have a big day tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but you got to have Nate over. Why is it always different for kids?”
Which brought the incident and the kiss crashing back to her. The smile dropped from her lips in an instant.
Justin was completely oblivious as he looked around the room as if he thought Nate was hiding in one of the cupboards or under the table. “Where is Nate, anyway?”
So it was time for her excuse that she hadn’t even thought of yet. “Um, he ended up having to leave early.”
“Damn, I wanted to ask him something,” Justin said, pulling a sub over to his placemat.
“Hey!” Claudia said, once she found her tongue again. “We do not use language like that in this house.”
“I heard Aunt Zoe say it yesterday when her show was a rerun.”
Claudia turned her glare briefly to Zoe before zeroing back in on her son. “Regardless of Aunt Zoe’s potty mouth, we do not use that word here. You know better.”
“Fine.” He waved her away with one hand while he used the other to cram half the sandwich into his mouth.
“It’s not fine. I don’t want to hear that word out of you again.” Claudia sat back down, feeling that this was the last thing she needed right now.
He barely chewed his meat, bread, and cheese before swallowing. “All right, all right. I won’t say it again, but I wanted to ask Nate something, and now he’s not here. That...” He trailed off and slid a glance at Claudia from the corner of his eye. She knew what was coming and tried not to groan. “...sucks.”
“I said you can only use that word in the appropriate context. Don’t test me tonight. Why don’t you just cram the rest of the hoagie in your mouth and zip it?”
He smiled at her with a mischievous gleam in his eye. “Okay.”
She knew thinking the matter was over was too good to be true, but after the Nate debacle, she didn’t have the energy to deal. So she changed the subject while she watched in horror as the other half of the sandwich really did disappear into his mouth in seconds. She shook her head. “Nice, Justin. Now what did you have to ask Nate?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled. But at least he chewed this mouthful and a half.
“Okay.” She knew what battles to pick and choose. If it was something really important, her son would tell her. She wasn’t going to worry about it.
Zoe plopped down at the table and bit into her own sandwich. Apparently conversation was over for the next little while. Claudia took the opportunity to eat her own sandwich, thinking it didn’t matter if she had the onions at this point; she’d already messed up her chances with Nate. Kissing would probably never happen again, since she’d botched it so completely. It had been almost as awkward as when he’d tried to give her their first kiss. At least then she’d had a lack of experience to hide behind. She had nothing this time. She hoped, though, that he wouldn’t avoid her after this. This was exactly what she’d been worried about when she first thought about making him her cake. Damn Zoe for putting it into her head that Nate wanted her and had simply been waiting for her. And thank goodness she’d only said that in the confines of her head.
She glanced over at Justin to see him still chewing, and took another bite of her own dinner. He’d come out with it soon. She just hoped it wasn’t too late to make sure Nate would be there when Justin needed him. Or at the very least that she hadn’t messed things up so badly that he wouldn’t take their calls.
****
Nate sat in his garage, inside his car, long after the overhead light for the garage door opener turned itself off. What the hell had happened in Claudia’s apartment, and what did it mean?
The engine was off and the only noise was the intermittent knocking of his cooling engine. Closing his eyes, he inhaled the scent of old French fries in his car and couldn’t help seeing again the scene that kept flashing across his brain.
Claudia’s lips had settled on his, and her hands had locked around the back of his neck. He’d done his best not to step into her and take everything he could, everything she might have been offering. It felt wrong to be that close to her, and yet so right—in a bunch of ways.
What was she doing, anyway? Was this her acting out over Edward being an ass? Why would she have tried to kiss him? And there was no mistaking that it had been a kiss. It hadn’t been an accident, but he had no idea why she was trying herself out on him.