He lifted his head, searching her face. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. What did I do?” He grinned. “Because if you’re going to thank me this way for a sandwich and a salad, I’ll feed you all day long.”
She found herself honest-to-goodness giggling. “I appreciate that, too. I meant cleaning my kitchen downstairs.”
Jamie brushed her hair back from her face. “So the fact that I cleaned your utensils all spick-and-span makes your ovaries flutter?”
“That makes me sound easy.” She grimaced.
He shook his head. “That makes you sound adorable. You’re not like other women.”
“We covered this once. I know I don’t get all gussied up and pray properly to the makeup gods.”
“Screw that. I mean, you don’t try to be anyone except yourself. You don’t act differently to please your mother. You didn’t put on a face to impress me. And you certainly had no problem telling Hayden how you feel.”
Bristol cocked her head. “I guess some people don’t act like themselves when others are watching. That baffles me. Seems like a lot of effort merely to be miserable.”
He nodded slowly. “Let’s just say I’ve met a lot of unhappy people over the years. Neurotic, insecure, self-absorbed. Hell, I was one for a long time. I didn’t really feel like myself for a decade.”
“I can’t picture that.” He seemed so natural, so normal. “And where are you meeting these awful people?”
“They’re everywhere. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be with someone so real.”
He cut off the conversation by kissing her again, devouring her as if he was hungry, as if they hadn’t touched in a decade.
Then she stopped thinking entirely when he peeled off her clothes and lost his towel. He tossed everything to the floor and grabbed a condom from a stash he’d found in his saddlebag.
After making her scream a couple of times so loudly she wondered if everyone on her block could hear, Bristol draped herself over his steely chest, still damp from exertion, and pressed a kiss between his pectorals. At the moment, she felt too sated to do anything else.
“I’m happy, too. You’re a really decent guy,” she murmured, looking up his hard torso, into those dark eyes that had the power to make her shiver. “You’re considerate and helpful, not the sort of douche who would deceive me, like Hayden.”
He was quiet for a beat, his thumb tracing her cheekbone. “I don’t ever want to be that guy in your eyes. And I hope you’re saying that you like me, too.”
“Yeah,” she admitted. Way more than I should. That realization made her a little uncomfortable because she worried it would end up one-sided, so she slid out of bed and grabbed for her clothes. “Um…I should get to work. I’m running late.”
With a promise to drop in downstairs once he woke, Jamie gave her a lingering kiss good-bye. Bristol tried not to feel that jittery, excited, falling-in-love thing. But she failed miserably because it coursed through her veins and squeezed her heart as she tiptoed down the stairs. She was so deliciously sated that she didn’t care she was twenty minutes late getting back to her kitchen. Nope. She simply headed for her dough, pushing thoughts of tomorrow aside and wearing a big ol’ smile on her face.
In a ridiculously good mood, Bristol turned on the radio and swayed to the music while she made goodies for her patrons that day. The bounce in her step was probably leftover pleasure hormones drifting through her body and the happiness of knowing that she’d get to be with Jamie for another few days.
After a few crying-in-her-beer songs, Bristol changed the station from her usual contemporary country music to the happier Top-40 station out of Texarkana. She didn’t recognize many of the songs and artists since this wasn’t her usual thing, but this music matched her mood.
The hours slid by, and she figured Jamie would be sleeping. When she baked her first pan of cinnamon rolls, she took two upstairs and left them on the counter for him with a note. As she turned, she skirted the coffee table, heading for the door. One glance at the glass slab topping the pair of whiskey barrels proved that the notebook in which Jamie had been writing earlier was gone, but he’d left his phone behind. Bristol hesitated.
She couldn’t deny a gnawing curiosity to know more about him. But peeking at his phone would be prying. Even if she blew past her principles, she would either be wildly disappointed or even more intrigued, depending on what she found. Nope. So they’d crossed into temporary friends-with-benefits territory. Maybe even a bit more. Still, that didn’t mean she needed to know his deepest thoughts. Because no matter how she defined their relationship, that didn’t entitle her to invade Jamie’s privacy.
With a sharp nod, she left the phone untouched and made her way down the hall to find him sprawled out in her bed, one bulging arm thrown over his head, the bronzed ridges of his chest and abs bare. She cursed the sheet riding low on his hips, covering everything else.
At a glance, he looked like the dangerous sort of man, built of brawn and brute strength. If he’d lived in another time, Jamie could have slayed his enemies with a quick slice of his sword before he claimed his woman with a ferocious kiss. God, she really had to stop the over-romanticizing, even if she did have an amazing man in her bed.
When he sighed in his sleep, Bristol couldn’t help the fond smile that crept over her face. He was more than gorgeous. He had a kind side. And he liked her. Having him here felt comfortable. Right. And it wasn’t simply because she didn’t want to be alone and he would do. Hayden had been here many times, and she’d always been a bit relieved when he’d left. No, around Jamie she simply felt grounded, like life was as it should be.
Dangerous thoughts.
Shaking her head, she headed back downstairs. The buzzing alarm on her phone reminded her when it was time to open the shop, so she started her first pot of coffee and waited for old Mr. Jones, who was eighty if he was a day. But he came every morning like clockwork at six thirty.
Sure enough, as soon as she unlocked the door, he ambled in. Sun began streaming through her windows. He took a seat and she set a mug of coffee in front of him, along with a bowl of sugar and a cinnamon roll, as always. She watched him doctor his coffee with somewhere north of a half dozen teaspoons of sugar.
