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From her reclined position, she tossed the pillow back. “You’re crazy! He doesn’t even like me.”
“Oh, he likes you alright. He watched you the whole time he was at the diner. If you think about it, it’s the perfect setup and he’s the perfect man. He looks like he knows his way around a woman’s body and could teach you things. A lot of things that you wouldn’t necessarily learn from anyone in our circle. If you know what I mean.”
Janel would never admit to thinking the exact same things. “Rica, you’ve been watching too much porn.”
“Are you saying he doesn’t do it for you? You in no way find him attractive or wonder what it would be like to be touched by those great big hands of his.”
“You noticed the hands, did you?” They are impressive and yes, she had fantasized about being under them, but doing what Rica said would never happen.
“What do you say we order pizza? I know we worked around food all day, but we didn’t eat much and I worked up an appetite.”
Rica popped up in her seat. “With mushrooms and sausage?”
“Sure. Why don’t you go take a shower and I’ll order before I take one, that way we’ll be clean when it gets here. It’s crazy how food smells stick to everything. Even my hair smells like french fries.”
Rica pulled her new used shirt to her nose and sniffed. “Yuck, I smell like meatloaf. As much as my feet hurt, I can’t stand my own smell.”
She pushed up from the couch with a groan and hobbled down the hallway.
As Janel placed the order, she heard the low rumble of a motorcycle. Pushing the curtains back, she peeked out in time to see Dozer’s bike pull into his driveway. He paused at the garage, the door slowly opened, he rolled inside and then the engine quieted.
She wondered where he’d been since he left the diner. Did he have a girlfriend and he’d been at her house? Her hands clenched—which was ridiculous. She had no right to be upset about that.
Earlier, she noticed the side of his house that she’d hit had been repaired. She really should go over to get the bill. It was her fault and she needed to take responsibility.
And that was the reason she walked out her door and found herself knocking on his. She was being a good neighbor and not for any other reason.
He didn’t immediately answer, so she knocked again. When the door swung open, it was obvious she’d caught him either changing clothes or getting ready for a shower because all he had on was a soft looking pair of worn denim jeans riding low on his hips and a whole lot of tattoos.
Janel licked her lips as her eyes took in his broad shoulders, a smattering of dark brown hair on his bulging pectoral muscles that narrowed to his waist and then… She had to swallow hard as she followed his abdominal muscles to a V that disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans. As if that wasn’t delectable enough, most all of his chest and upper arms were covered in ink decorating his body like it was an artist’s canvas.
Her eyes should have stopped there. She could have spent hours studying his tattoos, but her eyes had a mind of their own and went lower to the bulge behind his zipper, jumped down to his bare feet, and back up to the danger zone again. Her face was already hot. She put a hand over her racing heart.
“Up here, darlin’,” he said in the smoothest, sexiest voice she’d ever heard, but it was enough to jerk her back to herself and not the sex-crazed woman who’d been ogling him.
“I…” She pulled the french fry-smelly t-shirt away from her suddenly sweaty neck and did all she could not to look at his face. Her embarrassment level was near explosive. She cleared her throat and attempted to form a coherent sentence.
“House…” She tried again with a clear thought, but then her damn fool eyes met his and away flew her words.
The smirk on his face quickly told her he knew the effect he had on her. He was probably used to making women mindless, babbling fools by simply taking his shirt off.
Over her lifetime, she’d met kings and queens, movie stars and rock stars. How could this one man make her hotter than the hottest Tanistanian summer day? Her nails bit into her palms as she tried to get herself back in check. She took a breath and tried one more time. “I noticed your house has been repaired. I want to pay for the reconstruction.”
One of his giant paws landed on his chest and rubbed. Janel bit her lip to keep from following the movement of his hand and keep her eyes on his.
“Don’t worry about it. I turned it into insurance.”
She didn’t really know what that meant. “Be that as it may, I’d still like to pay. It was my fault after all.”
He chuckled and shook his head like her request was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “You can pay me by telling me who you are.”
Her head tipped. “I told you. I’m Jane and my cousin is Ree.”
Slowly his head moved side to side. “I know your names. I mean who are you? You have an accent that you try to hide and sometimes the way you talk is very formal or either way off base. So who exactly are you, and why are you here?”
Janel sighed. They obviously didn’t blend in as well as she’d hoped. She contemplated how much she should tell him. Definitely not everything. She waved to his chest area, “Before I tell you, do you mind putting a shirt on first?”
“Sure, want to come in?”
