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With Tressa right in the next room, maybe he could actually focus with her so close. He laughed when he considered how one minute he could be positioned at the design desk in his office, working away, the next he’d abandoned all thoughts of work and had replaced them with Tressa.
Damn, that woman is potent. She was all woman for sure. But she was also a flame that blazed through him constantly. A man on fire, he thought.
Setting the tablet aside for a moment, he went back into the kitchen for a bottle of water. When he decided the banana wasn’t going to be enough to hold him, he grabbed the bag of sour-cream-and-cheddar chips from the top of the refrigerator.
Taking the last paper towel, he moved to the storage room where Tressa kept additional rolls. A cardboard box sitting on the floor caught his eye. For whatever reason, he lifted the top and looked inside.
The box was crammed packed with male toiletries. Obviously, Tressa had got around to packing Cyrus’s shit, but hadn’t got around to giving it to him. The idea of her meeting with the weasel bothered him. No doubt the slimy bastard would try to slither his way back into her life. His jaw tightened, then relaxed. He wasn’t worried about that loser.
Or should he have been? Would seeing him awake any dormant feelings Tressa still had for the man? There had to still be some, right? Roth shook his head. He couldn’t stress over that. He had to trust Tressa, trust what they had.
Replacing the top, he grabbed the roll of paper towels, dropped it onto the wooden holder, then returned to the living room. Instead of working, as he’d intended, he found himself scrolling through the pictures of his boys—young men, he corrected—from the community center where he gave saxophone lessons to disadvantaged kids. They had been so excited about performing for their families at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh. And not just the younger kids, but the sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds, too.
They looked all GQ’d, decked out in their tuxedos and fedoras. He laughed at some of the jailhouse poses. He planned to do all he could to make sure none of them ever found themselves posing that way in a real jailhouse.
“My bed gets awfully lonely without you.”
Tressa ambled across the floor and he directed her onto his lap. Kissing the side of her head, he said, “I had intended to get some work done since you were sleeping, but I started looking at these pictures.”
“There better not be any big-boobed blondes on that device.” She managed a lazy smile.
“Jealous?”
“Maybe.”
He nuzzled her neck, then kissed it gently. “Your big boobs are the only ones I’m interested in. And I can’t wait until you’re better so I can show you just how interested I am.” Redirecting his wayward thoughts, he positioned the screen so that they both could see the images.
“Are these the young men in your saxophone academy?”
“Yeah. A good-looking bunch, huh?”
“Yes.” Tressa pointed to one of the younger kids. “Aww, he’s a cutie-pie. Those glasses make him look like a young philosopher.”
“Sebastian. He’s smart as a whip and doesn’t miss a doggone thing. He’s a little timid, but will say whatever is on his mind. No filter. He’s a good kid, though.”
Tressa swiped through the pictures, commenting on most of them. “God, I can’t wait to have a house full of kids running around. It’s going—”
Tressa stopped as if she’d realized a mistake she’d made. Maybe she thought the mention of kids had spooked him. It hadn’t. They could talk about kids all night long, because as far as he was concerned, she would be the mother of his football team.
CHAPTER 13
Tressa usually didn’t wake at the crack of dawn when she didn’t have to work. But Roth had shown up at her door at six that Saturday morning—six in the morning—blindfolded her and whisked her away to an undisclosed location. At least he had the common courtesy to bring her coffee.
In the month they’d been dating, every day was an adventure with him. What she truly valued was the fact that he always made time for her. Whether it was whisking her off to dinner and a movie, or challenging her to a game of bowling. He truly made her feel like she was an important part of his life.
