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Looking down into her face, he knew she was. No pretense lay hidden in her wide eyes or in the concerned twist of her mouth. If she said it, she meant it. He could get used to that. Part of him already had.
Uncomfortable with the realization, he turned away. “Yeah. They divorced. I grew up with my dad. It worked out great.” He knew this speech by rote. “Two guys in a guy house.”
She put the bowl down in front of him and handed him an egg. Her hand lingered, so soft and strong at the same time.
“I found her.” His voice cracked. He’d never told anyone before, not even his dad, but he wanted—no, needed to tell Claire. “I was seventeen and about to graduate high school. It seemed like something I had to do. I’d been working at Absolute with dad since I was old enough to file, so it really wasn’t very hard to do a records search.”
He remembered the excitement mixed with foreboding as his fingers had flown across the keyboard. He must have looked over his shoulder a million times to make sure his father couldn’t see the screen. It had only taken a few minutes and boom, he’d found her.
“She’d gotten remarried a few years after she left us. They lived on a ranch two hours outside of Denver. I told my dad I was going to a concert with friends and drove out there. I parked my truck on the side of the road, down a bit from their dirt driveway. There was a mailbox there. I figured she’d have to get the mail eventually. She did. She looked a bit grayer, heavier than dad’s pictures, but it was her.”
His gut had wrenched when she’d checked her mail. He’d looked down at his white knuckles wrapped around the steering wheel as hate and love spun around inside him in a confused whirlwind. Even now, the picture of her reaching into that battered metal mailbox put a hitch in his breath.
“Then I saw the school bus in my rearview mirror. She waved as it slowed down. A boy and a girl got out. Elementary-school age, both of them. And she smiled at them, hugged them. She loved them. I could see it.”
The profound sense of rejection had hit him like a slap across the face. Ever since, with every emotionless hookup and cold, calculating move, he’d distanced himself from the women who floated through his life.
Until now. Until Claire.
Jake looked down. He’d crushed the egg Claire had given him, the slimy yolk dripping from his fingers. “I must have left marks on the road, I took off so fast.”
She handed him a towel. “Did you ever go back? Contact her at all?”
He shook his head and tossed the dirty towel onto the prep table. “No. That part of my life’s over. Doesn’t matter anymore.”
Thankfully, she said nothing to that. He locked up his teenage-boy hurt and cracked the rest of the eggs into the bowl in silence.
He had breakfast-for-dinner whipped up in no time. Claire sat on the prep table eating with gusto. He forgot all about his food when a syrup-drenched piece of French toast left a trail of sticky sweetness on the corner of her mouth. Her tongue darted out to swipe at it. Unable to get it all that way, she wiped up the rest with her middle finger and sucked it off.
His body went on high alert. His pulse hammered and blood rushed through his veins, engorging his cock. He thought he had been rock hard before, now he worried his zipper wouldn’t hold.
She caught him staring with his fork frozen halfway to his mouth. Turning beet red, she dropped her gaze. Then a devilish smile tugged at the corner of her mo
uth.
Trouble. Just the kind he liked. He waited, food forgotten, anxious to see what she’d do next.
She parted her cherry lips and her gaze darted over to him. She blew him a kiss and then…she hummed.
What the hell?
Dumbstruck, he watched her eat the last bite of French toast.
She hopped down from the table, strutted over to the industrial sink and dumped her plate. She grabbed a tiny square package from a shelf and tossed it to him. Without looking his way, she slipped off her red dress and left it puddled on the floor. Claire sashayed down the hallway, her swaying ass framing the jade-green thong.
Jake could live to be a hundred and he didn’t think he’d ever see a sexier sight. Her voluptuous curves nearly overwhelmed his senses. He couldn’t wait to trace a finger across her peach nipples and slide into her wet folds. His balls tightened when her butt jiggled as she strutted away.
Then she looked back over her shoulder, a come-hither look in her chocolate-colored eyes.
“Coming?”
Was he ever.
He looked down in his hand. A condom. She must have snuck it into their grocery bag at the Stop and Sip when he hadn’t been looking.
He jerked his head back up. For a few beats, Jake watched her saunter down the hallway. Unable to resist the view any longer, he rushed to catch her.
She unhooked her bra and dropped the flimsy scrap of silky material to the hallway floor. Lust slammed into his stomach and then sank lower, making his cock harder than the cast iron pan he’d used to make the French toast. The brief side view of her heavy, round breasts as she turned into another room sent all his blood straight to his dick. His body reacted like that of an untried fifteen-year-old boy. It had been a long time since a peek of side boob had pre-cum staining his boxers.
