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Poor T.J. was worried sick, and if Jaine had been married to Galan Yother, she would probably have been worried sick, too. How could something that had been innocent fun between four friends have turned into something that might break up a marriage?
She hadn’t slept well, again. She had taken more aspirin for her sore muscles, soaked in a hot tub, and by the time she went to bed, she was feeling much more comfortable. Fretting about that darn article kept her awake long past her usual bedtime, and woke her before dawn. She positively dreaded getting the morning paper, and as for going to work—she would rather wrestle another drunk. On loose gravel.
She drank coffee and watched the sky lighten. BooBoo had evidently forgiven her for waking him again, because he sat beside her washing his paws and purring whenever she absently scratched behind his ears.
What then happened wasn’t her fault. She was standing at the sink rinsing out her cup when the kitchen light in the house across the way flicked on and Sam walked into view.
She stopped breathing. Her lungs seized, and she stopped breathing.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” she croaked, and managed to inhale.
She was seeing more of Sam than she had ever thought she would; everything, in fact. He stood in front of the refrigerator, stark naked. She barely had time to admire his buns before he took a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, twisting off the top and tilting it to his mouth as he turned around.
She forgot all about his buns. He was more impressive coming—no pun intended—than he was going, and that was saying something, because his butt was severely cute. The man was hung.
“My God, BooBoo,” she gasped. “Take a look at that!” The fact was, Sam looked pretty damn good all over. He was tall, lean in the waist, hard-muscled. She wrenched her gaze north just a little and saw that he had a nice, hairy chest. She already knew he had a good face, if a bit battered. Sexy dark eyes, white teeth, and a good laugh. And he was hung.
She pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart was doing more than pitter-pattering; it was trying to sledgehammer its way through her sternum. Other parts of her body were joining in the excitement. In a moment of insanity, she thought about running right over to audition as his mattress.
Oblivious of the tumult going on inside her, as well as the heart-stopping view across the way, BooBoo continued licking his feet. His priorities were obviously a real mess.
Jaine gripped the sink to keep from folding in a limp heap on the floor. It was a good thing she was off men, or she really might have charged across the two driveways and right up to his kitchen door. But off men or not, she still appreciated art, and her neighbor was a work of art, hovering somewhere between classic Grecian statue and porn star.
She hated to do it, but she had to tell him to close his curtains; it was the neighborly thing to do, right? Blindly, not wanting to miss a moment of the show, she reached for the phone, then paused. Not only did she not know his number, she didn’t even know his last name. Some neighbor she was; she had lived here two and a half weeks and still hadn’t introduced herself to him, though if he was any kind of a cop, he had found out her name. Of course, he hadn’t rushed over to introduce himself, either. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Kulavich, she wouldn’t have known his first name was Sam.
She wasn’t stymied, though. She had written down the Kulavich’s phone number on the pad by the phone, and she managed to tear her gaze from the spectacle next door long enough to read it. She punched in their number, and belatedly worried that they might not be awake yet.
Mrs. Kulavich answered on the first ring. “Hello!” she chirped so enthusiastically Jaine knew she hadn’t woken them.
“Hi, Mrs. Kulavich, it’s Jaine Bright, next door. How are you?” Social niceties had to be observed, after all, and with the older generation that could take a while. She was hoping for ten or fifteen minutes. She watched as Sam killed the bottle of orange juice and tossed the empty.
“Oh, Jaine! It’s so nice to hear from you!” Mrs. Kulavich said, as if she had been out of the country or something. Mrs. Kulavich was evidently one of those people who talked in exclamation points when she was on the phone. “We’re fine, just fine! And you?”
“Fine,” she answered automatically, not missing a minute of the action. Now he was getting out the milk. Eewwh! Surely he wasn’t going to mix orange juice and milk. He opened the milk and sniffed it. His biceps bulged as his arm lifted. “My, oh, my,” she whispered. Evidently the milk didn’t pass muster, because he jerked his head back and set the carton aside.
“What was that?” Mrs. Kulavich said.
“Uh—I said fine, just fine.” Jaine wrenched her attention from its wayward path. “Mrs. Kulavich, what is Sam’s last name? I need to call him about something.” That was an understatement.
“Donovan, dear. Sam Donovan. But I have his number here. It’s the same number his grandparents had. I’m so glad, because that way I can remember it. It’s easier to get older than it is to get wiser, you know.” She laughed at her own wit.
Jaine laughed, too, though she didn’t know at what. She groped for a pencil. Mrs. Kulavich slowly recited the number, and Jaine jotted it down, which wasn’t easy to do without looking at what she was writing. Her neck muscles were locked in the upright position, so she had no choice but to look through the kitchen window next door.
She thanked Mrs. Kulavich and said good-bye, then took a deep breath. She had to do this. No matter how it hurt, how it would deprive her, she had to call him. She took another deep breath and dialed his number. She saw him cross the kitchen and pick up a cordless. He was standing in profile to her. Oh, wow. Double wow.
Saliva gathered in her mouth. The damn man had her all but slobbering.
“Donovan.”
His deep voice was rusty, as if he wasn’t truly awake yet, and the single word clipped with irritation.
“Um … Sam?”
“Yeah?”
Not the most welcoming of responses. She tried to swallow and found it was difficult to do when her tongue was hanging out. She reeled it in and sighed with regret. “This is Jaine, next door. I hate to tell you this, but you might want to … close your curtains.”
He wheeled to face the window, and they stared at each other across the two driveways. He didn’t dart to the side, or squat out of sight, or do anything else that might indicate embarrassment. Instead, he grinned. Damn, she wished he wouldn’t do that.
