It’s my turn to fidget. What the hell am I doing here? I’m clearly making her uncomfortable. It seems to be a pattern lately with the Donnelly women. First Douglass, now Natalie.
“I, uh, gave Douglass a ride home. That ugly monstrosity she’s been driving around died on her at the Gas ‘N Go. I called Curtis to pick it up and take it back to his garage.”
“That was nice of you,” she replies with a calculating glint that makes me feel like a teenager getting caught doing something naughty by their parent. “Douglass just went to freshen up. She’ll be out in a minute.”
I slide my socked foot over a pointed corner of linoleum sticking up on the floor. “I just need to get the car keys from Douglass for Curtis, then I’ll go.”
Natalie crosses the short distance between us and cups my face between her soft, wrinkled hands.
“You will do no such thing. I can probably guess the reason you’ve stayed away all this time. I never blamed you for what happened with Amelia.”
“Thank you.” A weight lifts from my shoulders hearing her say that.
“You’re here now, and I’ve missed seeing this handsome face,” she says and lightly squeezes my cheeks. “So come sit out on the back patio with me and stay for dinner.”
She grips my arm like the gentle Southern lady she is, letting me know she won’t take no for an answer, and waits for me to escort her outside.
“Help me sit.”
I guide her over to her favorite porch rocker I remember well.
Just as I get Natalie situated, the back screened door opens.
“The sky is absolutely gorgeous today—”
Douglass stops abruptly when she sees me, then curses when the tea spills over the drinking glasses she’s carrying and drips down her forearms. But it’s the form-fitting T-shirt that stretches over her breasts that draws my rapt attention like a divining rod. I’m so going to hell.
“Damn it,” Douglass mutters, holding her arms out to avoid the liquid from dripping onto her bare feet. She puts the glasses down.
“Language, young lady,” Natalie admonishes.
Douglass gives me a look that tells me I’m to blame for her mishap, then pivots a one-eighty and heads back inside the house.
“Don’t just stand there,” Natalie tells me.
I take that as my cue to go help.
I find Douglass in the kitchen, washing her hands under the sink faucet with irritated movements. When she sees me, she tears off a paper towel, dries her hands, then balls up the paper and throws it at my head. I easily catch it and toss it into the trash bin beside me.
“What are you doing here?” she asks tiredly.
“I drove you here.”
Her cheeks heat with a rosy flush of anger that I find very appealing. It’s twisted how much I like getting her riled up.
Her head falls back on her neck, and she moans dejectedly. She seems to do that a lot around me, probably because I seem to aggravate the shit out of her.
“You know what I mean, Jordan.”
I take a step closer and am immediately hit with the same charged electricity I experienced last night at Mickey’s when I turned around and saw her. It’s like a living thing, this pull of energy that crackles between us. Bottled lightning, barely contained. It intrigues me as much as it confounds me.
“I wasn’t done with our conversation.”
She rips off the top to the slow cooker and grabs a plastic ladle from an assortment of wooden cooking utensils that sit in a ceramic pitcher in the shape of a rooster.
“I was.”
I come up behind her and brace my arms on the counter, caging her. I don’t miss her sharp intake of breath or the way her body starts vibrating at my nearness. Her hair smells like sunshine and orange blossoms, and a memory of me burying my nose in those thick, glossy tresses almost has me groaning with the need to do it again. Whatever happened between us that night, it must have been intense, otherwise my body wouldn’t keep reacting to her the way it has been.
