I stood in the door of my garage, holding a plate, looking at a shirtless muscular back bent over a half-constructed staircase.
This was why I hadn’t wanted him here. I knew it was going to be a problem. I had a boyfriend and I was attracted to this guy and now Josh was going to be out here, half-naked and sweaty every time I needed something from the garage.
This was a pleasant upgrade from Miguel, for sure.
Josh had been working for me for a week. He’d already done five orders and he’d done them well. He was a fairly decent carpenter. I got four more orders last night, just enough to keep him busy and shirtless in my garage until he went back to his real job for a forty-eight-hour shift the day after tomorrow.
He turned and gave me one of his million-dollar smiles. Straight white teeth, crooked upturned lips on one side. His hair had that messy thing going on, like a grown-man version of a cowlick. Then he saw what I was holding, and he deflated like a popped balloon. I made my way down the steps and shoved the plate in front of him. “I made lasagna.”
He looked at it suspiciously. I couldn’t cook. I didn’t pretend I could. He was well aware of this. This was a Stouffer’s lasagna that I’d heated up, so technically I did make it.
I’d made a few things I’d shared with him over the last week. Some very soggy mac and cheese, a sad-looking sandwich, and a hot dog I’d boiled in
water. I mean, if I was cooking for myself, I wasn’t going to not offer him some. That would be rude. After all, he’d fed me once and he was in my home.
Or maybe the rude thing was making him eat my cooking. I couldn’t tell which was worse.
“Thanks.” He took the plate. “It smells good,” he said almost hopefully. He always ate what I gave him, but he’d also brought a lunch today and announced it loudly when he got here.
“Want to come inside and eat at the table?” I asked.
He checked his watch and wiped his head with the back of his hand. I’d set up the fan, but it was still easily eighty-five out here, even with the garage door open. “Sure.”
He handed me back the plate and turned to put on a shirt while I watched the contoured muscles of his broad back disappear under the gray fabric. I averted my eyes when he turned back to me so it didn’t look like I had been staring the whole time.
On the way inside, Stuntman jumped at his feet. Josh scooped him up and held him for a minute, letting him lick his face.
The little thing was a roller-coaster ride of emotions. He seemed to take to Josh though. He hated Tyler. In fact, I was worried how it would play out once Tyler moved in. Stuntman wouldn’t even let him sit on the bed. Even thinking about how that was going to go launched me into a manic cleaning spree.
I wondered if Stuntman would let Josh sit on the bed. I bet he would.
That thought made me want to clean too.
Josh washed his hands in the kitchen sink, grabbed a Coke from the fridge, and pulled up a chair at the table. He took a bite and made a face.
“What?”
“It’s still a little frozen.” He gulped hard, wincing.
I got up, collected his plate and stuck it in the microwave.
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and swallowed some soda, looking like he was trying to get the ice crystals from his teeth. “Why don’t we make a deal? While I’m here, I’ll do all the cooking.”
I shrugged, leaning on the counter. “I’d be offended if I wasn’t so fucking practical.”
He laughed and his dimples creased. God, he was a good-looking man. I,
on the other hand, looked like a bum.
My guilt response to the attractive male in the house was to make as little effort at looking presentable as humanly possible.
I had no way of controlling what thoughts about Josh ran through my head. That runaway train had already left the station. But I could control what I projected. My clothes were my outward way of saying, “Nope, not interested,” while internally my imagination was naked and disrespecting my relationship with Tyler in every way possible.
My hair was in a sloppy pile on my head and I had dressed like I was about to play a mean game of volleyball. I picked the shirt with the hole in the armpit on purpose.
“Hey, I wanted to ask you for a favor,” Josh said. “Can I use your guest bathroom to take a shower later?”
Josh, naked in my shower. “Sure.”
“I’ve got a date, and I don’t want to have to drive home and back.”
“And do we have Stuntman to thank for this date?” I asked, hoping I sounded adequately unaffected by this news. As I should be. The microwave beeped and I handed him back his plate.
“You were right. He’s a hunting dog,” he mumbled. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.” I grinned.
He gave me a sideways smile. “He’s a hunting dog. Are you happy?”
He’d taken Stuntman to the Home Depot on my challenge and he’d come back saying only, “Let me know when you want to do the photo shoot.”
He put an exploratory finger into the center of the lasagna, testing the temperature, and seemed satisfied. He put his finger in his mouth to suck the sauce off it and started eating. I put my own plate in the microwave and leaned back on the counter to wait.
My cell phone pinged.
Sloan: Are you behaving yourself with your cute carpenter?
 |
I grinned mischievously.
Kristen: Nope. He just put a finger in my lasagna.
Sloan: WTH?!
I snorted.
Sloan: Okay, now my eyelid is twitching. Thanks.
Triggering Sloan’s nervous eye twitch was like hitting the bell on a strongman game. I loved it. You’d think after twelve years she’d be desensitized to my sense of humor, but she never failed to get flustered.
Sloan: Remember, you can look but you can’t touch. Unless you break up with Tyler
 |
I narrowed my eyes. She’d love that.
Kristen: Not a chance.
Sloan’s prejudices against my boyfriend boiled down to, “I just don’t see it.”
It wasn’t him and me she couldn’t see. It was him and us.
I guess I kind of got why. I mean, Tyler didn’t ride a motorcycle. He didn’t hunt. Didn’t care for poker. Preferred an expensive glass of wine to whiskey or beer. Liked theater over movies. Brandon and he had very little to discuss the one time they met except for the Marine Corps, and Tyler’s job was so specialized they couldn’t even really connect on that front.
Tyler didn’t fit into Sloan’s vision of our future, full of pool parties and barbecues. He was more of a cocktail-party and charcuterie-plate kind of guy.
I didn’t like charcuterie plates. They always had weird stuff on them.
I took my lasagna from the microwave and sat down across from Josh. “That party is coming up soon,” he said. “Do you mind if I got ready
here then too? It’s thirty minutes in the wrong direction if I go home.”
Sloan had a dinner party planned for stuffing wedding invitations into envelopes and putting together the wedding favors. It was a mandatory
bridal party activity and in typical Sloan fashion, she wanted everyone dressed to the nines to take pictures for Instagram.
“Sure. Wanna share an Uber? I want to drink.” “Yeah, sounds good.”
I smiled. I liked that we were going together. Aside from being fodder for my fantasies, Josh bore the distinction of being one of the few people who didn’t annoy me. I liked spending time with him.
A dangerous circumstance to be sure.
My cell phone rang and I answered it, leaning over in my chair to grab my order clipboard off the counter. I wrote the order down and hung up.
Josh gave me an amused smile. “Wow, you’re so different on the phone.
So professional.”
“I only cuss on business calls when I’m upselling my Son of a Bitch and Crazy Little Fucker shirts.”
Josh chuckled and cut another bite of lasagna with the side of his fork. “What did they order? Any stairs?”
A part of me hoped he asked because he liked coming over and wanted a reason. That same part of me purposely dropped lasagna on my shirt as penance. If I had one more inappropriate thought about Josh, I was going to have to see if I had some old curlers to put in my hair.
“He has my stairs in every room of his mansion already,” I said, wiping the red sauce stain with a napkin. “Dale’s my best customer. He’s got six Maltese and millions. He owns a strip club in downtown LA. Spent two years in prison for tax evasion. I love the guy. Every month he orders twenty-four shirts for his dogs. He likes me to deliver them in person.”
His handsome brow furrowed. “You deliver goods to a felon by yourself?”
I gave him a cocked eyebrow. “He’s eighty-three. He’s lonely. And how dangerous can an arthritic old man with a ponytail and a dog named Sergeant Fluff McStuffs actually be?”
He chuckled. “Fluff McStuffs? Do all little dogs have stupid names?” He took a drink of his soda.
I balled up the saucy napkin and picked up my fork. “You should name any dog according to how it will sound while yelling his name and chasing him down the street in a bathrobe.”
He laughed so suddenly Coke dribbled down his chin. He choked a
moment and I handed him a napkin.
“So have you planned the bachelor party yet?” I asked once he’d recovered.
“I’m working on it. It’s not for another month and a half, so I have time.
How about you?” He was still smiling and shaking his head.
“We’re going to a day spa first. Then Hollywood in a limo to go barhopping. And I’m making her a suck-for-a-buck shirt,” I said.
His forehead wrinkled. “A what?”
“Hold on—I’ll get it.” I went to my room and grabbed the shirt I’d been working on. When I came back out and held it up, he stared.
“Are those Life Savers?”
I’d sewn the candies onto the shirt every inch or so apart. “Yeah. Random guys pay a dollar per candy and they have to bite it off her. The ones on her nipples are five dollars. She’s going to hate it.”
He started laughing again.
“Where are you taking Brandon?” I draped the shirt carefully over the back of a chair and sat back down.
He chewed thoughtfully. “I’m thinking Vegas. No strip clubs. Maybe a nice resort, a round of golf. A steak house. This job is definitely helping me with the budget.”
You’d never find Brandon in a strip club. It spoke to their friendship that Josh knew that. I could see Brandon going to be a good sport, but that wasn’t his scene. He was kind of introverted. He didn’t like dancing, wouldn’t go near a karaoke bar. “He’d probably like a straight-razor shave. Maybe a bourbon tasting.”
He gave me an approving nod. “I like that. Anything else?”
“Can you get a motorcycle? He loves his bike. He’d want to ride there.” That earned me a dimpled smile. “You’re good at this.”
“I’m full of ideas. Too bad they’d never let us do something fun for the walk down the aisle. Sloan wants it all dignified.” I rolled my eyes.
“What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Something viral video–worthy. Maybe the lift from Dirty Dancing or something.”
“We still could. It could be a surprise. You know they’d love it once they saw it.”
I eyed him. “Do you have those kinds of dance moves?”
“Hell yeah, I’ve got those moves. Nobody puts Baby in the corner. Let me know when you want to start practicing.”
God, those dimples.
The corners of my lips turned up. “You and I might just be the perfect best man–maid of honor match ever.”
He smiled at me a flicker of a second too long and something fluttered in my stomach.
I couldn’t help but think we were well matched in more ways than one. And mismatched in the worst way possible.
