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“Whatever.”
“Jesus, Jax, get your hippie hair out of my face.” Arlo shoved at me.
I tucked the wayward strands behind my ear as he attempted to push me. He was back to his teasing self, as if the date announcement had been a barrier inside him holding back his happy.
Arlo gestured that he was sliding out, and I moved away, not staring at all as his T-shirt caught on the corner of the door and dragged upwards, revealing sun-kissed skin, muscles, and that damn soft belly he forever griped about wanting to fix.Stop staring.I always laughed it off when he bemoaned his belly, patted him there and told him it made a nice pillow and that he didn’t need to fix a damn thing. All of which was inappropriate, and always left him flustered and me feeling as if I’d crossed a line. Sue me, but I happened to love his belly, and had complete fleshed-out, fantasies of the two of us lying in bed, me resting my head on all that gentle sweetness, with kisses that would move lower…muchlower.
He tugged the shirt down with a frustrated huff, and I mourned the loss of the belly and the glimpse of the treasure trail disappearing into worn jeans. Both of us startled when his phone emitted a tone I recognized as being from the dating app. Fuck. Another match? Or a message from Karaoke-guy? Arlo ignored the sound given we were working, but still, how many matches had he gotten? Jeez, I bet there were hundreds of men in and around San Diego and the ’burbs all wanting a piece of Arlo Marshall.
Mine.
“You should have a look at this, make sure you’re happy.” Arlo gestured at the open cupboard, grabbing my attention back to work, which was where it should be. Only, I felt wrong, my skin tight, as if everything had changed.
Work. I could focus on work. I pushed the door and it whisper-closed as it was supposed to.
“It’s perfect. The whole thing is as perfect as…” He glanced at me, waiting for me to end that sentence. “… a perfect thing,” I finished.
He rolled his eyes again.
“Yeah, it’s good,” he mused, then ran a finger along the counter—more frowning, peering at it from an angle, and then, huffing.
This kitchen, nearly eighty thousand dollars of work, and, if I was right, twenty in profit, should have been signed off Monday, but Arlo had found small imperfections, one after another, until this morning, Friday, he’d finally said he was happy to sign off. This was what Arlo did, he huffed, and he picked at details, and he made me want to wring his neck at times, but also, to hug him and tell him not to worry so much, that he was a craftsman and, then maybe, to add that he was my best friend.
Oh my God! Get a grip.
I could see the tension in him and the way his hands twitched to touch everything we’d created. I stood behind him, pushing my fingers into his shoulders, the muscles tight. “Breathe,” I instructed as I dug into where he held all of his stress. At least, he didn’t shrug offthistouch.
“I just want it to be right,” he protested.
I carried on working the knots loose, and his shoulders dropped that half inch I wanted to see, and when I released him, he rolled them with care.
“It is right,” I murmured.
He mumbled something, then shrugged off my hands and smoothed his T-shirt, his focus darting from one finished cupboard to the sink, to the door for the walk-in pantry, and then, up to the recessed lighting. He might be more relaxed, but the patented frown didn’t disappear.
“Do you think I should take condoms?” he blurted.
I stiffened. “The fuck you asking me that for!” I snapped. “I’m not your fucking father.” Shit. Way too many fucks in there. And what a dick move to mention a father when he didn’t have one. Or a mom. “Shit, Arlo, sorry.”
He stared at me. I stared at him. Then, he nodded and tugged a hand through his stormy-sky hair. I was mesmerized for a moment because, when I was around Arlo that was how I rolled—he moved, I watched, and I pined. He smiled because he didn’t have a clue what I was thinking, and my heart hitched. He decided he wanted to date some random stranger, and I got all up in my head and hated it. He was beautiful; he was sexy and strong; and I wanted him to be more than just Arlo-who-works-for-me so bad I ached with it. But I’d never done anything about it.
And now, I was too late.
He met my steady gaze with his own. “But you think I should?” he pushed. “I mean, I haven’t dated since…” Since his parents died and left him guardian of his two younger brothers is what I assumed he was going to say.
What?I don’t know, but I don’t want anyone else but me touching you.
“Condoms it is ,” he murmured, his normal sunny expression dipping for a moment, almost as if he were disappointed by my weird silence. Well, jeez, what did he want? It wasn’t as if a discussion about sex and STDs was an appropriate workplace conversation. And now, the room was heavy with the weirdest interaction we’d ever had. All because of me not getting my head out of my ass.
Make this normal again.
I peered into the space he was checking, deliberately getting in his way, and he elbowed me, and I elbowed him back. What started then was a familiar shoving and teasing, and it only stopped when I stepped back and left him to it, and I watched the muscles in his thighs flex as he crouched. I spent way too much time considering his thighs, and his ass, and his chest, and his soft bits, and the hard bits, and his eyes.
God. His eyes. At the last July Fourth fireworks, we’d been drunk, sitting by the fire pit, and I’d told him that his eyes were the shade of a can of Moonmist paint from the Sherwin-Williams catalog. He’d gone quiet, and of course, I told him I was joking and then, fell out of the garden chair. He laughed at my joke; I laughed at falling—crisis averted, because page one in the employee handbook probably said: thou shall not comment on an employee’s stunning eyes by comparing them to cans of paint.
Or, indeed, commenting on them at all.
So, not only did Arlo have eyes so pretty I could stare at them all day, but he was taller than me, wider, built solid, muscled from construction work, with a belly that showed his love of all things cake-related, and he never met a T-shirt that didn’t cling to every God damn curve. And he’d swiped right with a total stranger.
