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As the door swung open, Jet was revealed, standing there and smiling down at her. Her heartbeat caught in her chest. Her belly filled with flutters.
God. She’d only been away from him for thirty minutes. She’d known he was coming back here, so seeing him wasn’t a surprise. And still…the stuttering heart, the fluttering belly.
Damn, she was far gone.
“Hey, hot stuff,” he said by way of greeting, and the butterflies in her belly swarmed like a pond full of koi fish after someone’d thrown food in the water.
“Hey, yourself,” she replied, repeating his words to her from earlier.
She gestured at a folding chair that sat empty a few feet behind him. She used it to set cartons on while she looked through them, or sometimes to stand on when she needed help reaching a high shelf. He pulled it over and sat down just outside the open door to her small office, then slouched low in the seat and extended his legs until he was resting his feet on the edge of her desk.
“Oh, by all means, make yourself at home,” she teased.
“Thanks, Abs. I will.”
She leaned back in her own chair. “So, to what do I– and all of my customers– owe the pleasure?”
“I just missed your face,” he said simply.
“Oh.”
Wow. It was only a few words, and he’d said them so casually. But they hit her like a brick to the chest even more than they would’ve if he’d made some dramatic pronouncement. She thought that the way he spoke, as if what he said were no big deal at all, added to the power because it was so stripped down there was only room for what was real, and true.
“You want to go grab a drink?” he asked.
She was about to agree, her go-to automatic response when he asked her anything these days, when she remembered. “Oh, crap. I can’t I’m supposed to be meeting Gen and Ella tonight to go shopping. We’re looking for presents for the guys in our lives.”
He laughed. “I hope you’re talking about me.”
She shrugged. “You’re definitely in the running.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, and waggled his eyebrows wolfishly. “If you want to get me a present, I can think of a lot of things you can give me that I’d like a helluva lot better than anything that comes from the mall.”
She laughed. “You have a one-track mind. And that track is very dirty.”
He spread his hands wide. “I don’t know why you say that like it’s a bad thing.”
She glanced at her watch. “Oh, crap, it’s past closing! I’ve got to go out and relieve Charlene.”
“Is Charlene the girl who was at the register? Because if so, she closed the shop and locked the door before she went home, ten minutes ago.”
Abby breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, man. It’s so nice having help. It’s a little hard to make the mental adjustment, though, after having done everything by myself for so long.”
As she heard the words coming out of her own mouth, her heart caught in her throat a little. Damn. She’d been talking about the store, but what she’d said really applied to her whole life. And Jet…well, having him to lean on had been the biggest change. She just had to wonder how much longer she was going to have him.
She looked down at her lap, determined to shake off the melancholy mood. Hell, whether she was going to have Jet in her life for a few more years, or months, or days, or hours– it didn’t matter. Whatever it was, she was determined to make the most of it.
“You know,” she said in a low and sultry voice, making a point to lean forward at just the right angle to give him a great view of the cleavage poking out of her neckline. “I don’t have to meet the girls for another 45minutes. What do you say I give you one of your Christmas presents a little early?”
