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Chapter 11
“Are you sure there’s no other way? Like, maybe wait until you or Luke are back, or your mom?”
“The ceiling is leaking. It’s urgent, Hope. Please.”
“Okay, okay.”
Great. Luke was at the San Francisco airport for one of his forty-eight-hour shifts, Libby was away in San Luis for a conference, and Deidre from the bookstore below their apartment had called to say that her ceiling was dripping water that obviously came from some burst pipe in their home. Connie and David were away with Libby’s aunt, Sarah, at a doctor’s appointment out of town, and Roni didn’t have a key. That left her to hand over her set to Jordan Delaney.
Oh no.
After the engagement party, she had spent the rest of the weekend with her daughters, wondering if there was any outward change in her. After all, it had been the first kiss that she’d had in over two years, and the first man she had kissed who wasn’t their father in the last million years. It must have reflected on her. Or maybe not because, on the way back home from the party, Roni and Don hadn’t seemed to notice how she had been an open flame in the back seat of their car. All they had spoken about was the catering and the beach house.
Hope hadn’t told anyone about the kiss. It had been so tantalizing, yet his apology right after so much like a bucket of cold water—a bucket she had needed because it had snapped her back into rational thinking—that she didn’t know what to make of it. She had been dying to tell Libby, but Libby was practically related to him, and when she had tried to hint something to Roni, she couldn’t go through with it.
What would she say? I wanted him to kiss me, and he did, he so did, and I wanted so much more, still do. It was just like you said, Roni. He could be what I need, but I can’t just have sex with someone, can’t just have sex with him because the way he looks at me makes me feel like I’m me again, not just someone’s mom, ex, teacher, friend, daughter, sister. Me. Hope. And it’s scary. Because I forgot who she was, but I see her in his eyes.And the difference between us is insurmountable, so nothing can come out of it, so it’s better that I don’t see or hear from him again.
No, none of it made sense. She couldn’t say that. So, she didn’t say anything.
Good thing her date with Chris had gone well earlier this week. Maybe, just maybe, just a hypothesis—all this confusion over Jordan was caused by the fact that he had been the first man she had touched in ages. She should treat it like an experiment, where Jordan and Chris were the variables, and her response to them, her feelings, would be the observed result.
When Chris had offered they meet at Life’s A Beach for their date, she had offered an out-of-town place. “We don’t want people to start gossiping,” she had said. In truth, she had wanted to avoid running into Josh, who owned the place with his father.
In his car afterward, she had leaned in so he would get the hint and kiss her, mostly because she wanted another kiss to obliterate the taunting memories of Jordan’s mouth, and hands, and body. Memories that had her send her hand into her panties the night it had happened and at least twice since. After nearly a thousand days without that type of physical contact with a male body, his male body had worked like narcotics on hers, even if she left her heart out of the equation.
But Chris hadn’t kissed her.
“It was a really nice evening,” he had said twice.
Later, she had realized that it had been his first date since his divorce. At least it hadn’t been as traumatic as hers had been with Blake.
Now, exactly a week after he had pinned her between his body and a door, Jordan was on his way to her house. She had thirty minutes at best.
She would meet him at the front door so he wouldn’t have to come in, and it’d be quick.
Rushing to her bedroom, she changed from the faded blue sweatpants and stained Tweetie pullover to a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She brushed her hair with her fingers and was just about to apply some concealer to the circles under her eyes when the doorbell rang. Sonofabitch. How was he here so fast? She hadn’t had a chance to clear the mess from the living room, at least the part of it that could be seen from the front door. And she looked horrible.
“I’ll get it,” she called loudly. But, while rushing barefoot from her bedroom to the living room, she heard a deep, bass voice, somewhat raspy, over Naomi’s squeaky one.
She halted mid-jog upon reaching the entryway. Sending a smile in the general direction of the tall form at the doorway without looking directly at him, she addressed the four-foot munchkin first. “Naomi, what did we say about opening the front door? How did you even manage the key?”
“It was easy-peasy,” Naomi said triumphantly.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
Feeling his gaze on her, Hope shifted hers to finally look at him. Jesus Christ. From the height of his six-plus-feet, Jordan was smiling at her, light brown eyes, dimples, and all.
“Hi.” She plastered a smile on.
“Hi,” he echoed, locking his eyes on hers.
She was about to open her mouth to say that she would get him the key when a tiny voice next to her said, “Don’t stand outside; you’ll catch a cold.”
“Thank you,” he stressed with a chuckle, his attention back on Naomi.
The house looked about as messy as she did, Hope thought when Jordan strutted his well-built frame into her living room. She noticed his gaze swooping it all in—the hill of unfolded laundry on the couch, Hannah’s sneakers thrown near the coffee table, Naomi’s Barbies and LOL Surprise dolls scattered all over and around it, Hannah’s homework and her students’ exams waiting to be graded spread on the dining room table. At least the walls had been recently painted and the accent ocean-blue one Roni claimed was out of fashion looked great with the white curtains that let the sun in, warming the space up though exposing its state.
“I’ll go get you the key,” she finally said.
