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After that, the only sound in the dining room was that of our cutlery scraping against the bowls. The silence was strained and awkward, and I wished I could think of something to say. But my mind was blank. Ah, yes. “I was thinking we should swap phone numbers,” I blurted.
She looked at me in surprise. “You think?”
“Yeah. So I can arrange the work for your dad, when I’m better.”Not because I want to call you. Talk to you. Ask you about your day. Just work stuff, Em.
“Oh, right. Sure. Of course.”
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I said, “Shoot.”
CHAPTER8
Emma
Ireeled off my number, feeling a little breathless as I watched him typing. Then I realized it was too long just to be my number, and frowned in puzzlement until I heard my phone ping.
“There. Now you’ve got my number, too. You know, just in case.”
“Great.”
He went back to eating, but I noticed that he was scratching at his jaw every so often, an irritated look on his face.
“Is that bothering you?”
“What?”
I gestured. “Your stubble. Is it annoying?”
“Yeah, a bit. Why did it have to be my dominant arm that got broken, hey?”
Without giving myself even a nanosecond to think about it, I said, “I can shave it for you, if you want.”
Heat flashed in his eyes before just as quickly being smothered. “Not necessary.”
“Of course it’s not, but I don’t mind. I do it all the time at work.” Although I could safely say none of them smelled earthy and hot like Jake did. Or that being so near to any of them made my core clench. He shook his head, and for some reason that annoyed me, making me dig my heels in. “What’s wrong? You chicken? You think I’ll cut you?”
His gray eyes lit up with amusement and he leaned back in the chair, pushing the pasta bowl away before folding his arms across his chest. The simple action made his biceps bulge and I flicked a glance over them, feeling my mouth go dry. Keeping his eyes on me, he scratched at his chin yet again. “Fine.”
Fear and anticipation slithered into my gut. Fuck. What had I just done? “Great. I assume everything I need is in the bathroom?”
“In the ensuite, yeah.”
Fan-flipping-tastic. So now I was going to walk through his bedroom, past his bed, into his bathroom where heshowered, to get what I needed to shave him. “I’ll be right back.”
It was just as discombobulating as I had thought it would be. He hadn’t made the bed, so the sheets were all rumpled, which of course made me picture him lying in it. At least he’d put his clothes in the hamper, so I didn’t have to see his underwear. I paused at the door to the ensuite, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply. It smelled like his aftershave: woodsy, clean and oh so enticing. A vision flickered across my mind, a memory. Jake. And me. In a bathroom— Oooooh, nope! Donotdo that!
I retrieved the shaving gear from the cabinet and caught sight of myself in the mirror. My face was scarlet. Fuck you, Jake Walker, and the things you do to me! The whole situation was irritating me, so when I came back out to the dining room, my face was a thundercloud.
Jake had cleared the table and filled a bowl with warm water, and was leaning back in the chair with his legs crossed at the ankles. I dumped everything in front of him, forcing the scowl from my brow. The last thing I wanted was for him to realize that he was getting to me. “Can you move out a bit, please.”
The scrape of his chair across the floor was loud enough to make me wince. Maybe because I was so wound up. “Like this?” He was angled away from the table now, with his feet tucked under the chair. At least that meant I didn’t have to straddle him to get the job done, thank Christ.
“That’ll work.” I squirted shaving cream along the edge of the bowl. Immediately the scent wafted up to me, filling my head. A sense memory from earlier slammed into me without warning, making my hands shake as I dipped the brush into the cream.
“Jake Walker! We’re going to be late if you don’t hurry the fuck up!” I stepped into the bathroom to see him standing there in just a towel at the bathroom mirror, shaving. He turned to look at me, heat flaring in his eyes when he ran them over my short, slinky dress—
Stop it!
Forcing my hands to stop trembling, I lathered up the cream on Jake’s face. My entire body throbbed as I picked up the razor, but there was no way I was going to let him know. I tilted his face to the side, scraping the razor down his cheek, somehow managing to avoid looking him in the eye, despite how close we were to each other. I had to lean over him to rinse the razor in the bowl of water, which brought my breasts much closer to him than I was comfortable with. Or than he was himself, judging by the way his breath hissed out. Holy fuck, was this a bad idea? Yes, it was. Was I going to stop? No, I was not. But I did shift so that next time I leaned over to clean the razor, I wasn’t as close to him.
