Always and Forever (11 page)

“But you wouldn’t,” he said, threading his fingers through her hair and palming the back of her head.

“Probably not,” she said, lowering herself on top of him. “If I filed suit against you, we’d have to stop doing this.”

“And why in the hell would we do that?” Jamal said before touching his mouth to hers.

Chapter 10

P
hil leaned her head against the leather headrest and closed her eyes, letting the gentle bumps in the dirt road lull her. She was trying frantically not to panic at the thought of everything she’d let slip with Jamal.

Let slip?

Yeah, right. She was like a damn guest on a talk show, broadcasting her business to the world.

What on earth had possessed her to run off at the mouth? The only people who knew about her bad business deal with Kevin were the coward himself and a couple of faceless people at the bank. She hadn’t confided in anyone else—not even her best friend. Yet she’d shared everything with Jamal?

It was the sex. That had to be it. Give her just a little action down there and she lost all of her common sense.

Well, she hadn’t lost
all
of her common sense. She’d had enough to refuse his offer of money.

Phil still could not believe he’d suggested it. They barely knew each other. She could take his money and leave him high and dry, skip out to California just as Kevin had done to her. Of course, she’d never leave her mother, but Jamal didn’t know that.

Even as she applauded herself for rightly refusing his offer, Phil let herself imagine, just for a moment, how it would have felt to take him up on it. Having the burden of all her financial worries eliminated just by uttering a simple
yes.

“Why are you so quiet?” Jamal asked.

Phil jumped slightly and lolled her head toward him. “Just recuperating from the last hour,” she said.

“Sorry about that,” he said, his grin wicked. “But with no condoms left, that was the only way I could think to satisfy you.”

“Mission accomplished.” Phil laughed.

“If you didn’t insist on going back to work on the house, we could do a whole lot more of that, all afternoon and into the night.”

“We’re on a timetable, remember?” she said. “I need to bring the crown molding in the downstairs parlor to my shop. I want to see how closely I can match those pieces we picked up at the salvage yard. If you want to, you can come over to my place and watch me work.”

“You know how much I love watching you work,” he said. “And that goes for more than just what you’re doing on the house.”

Phil rolled her eyes.

She should have known they would fall into this light, easy banter; it had been this way the night of Mya and Corey’s wedding. Even though she’d kept the conversation purposely superficial—talking about hot news items, movies they’d seen, books they’d read and other things that usually encompassed first-date
conversation—she’d sensed that finding something to say to Jamal would never be all that hard.

Phil had discovered that
talking
to him wasn’t the only easy thing to do. She’d never in her life fallen into bed with a man so quickly, let alone completely dispelling her inhibitions and allowing him to do all the things he’d done—and the things she’d done to him.

She stopped just short of licking her lips. She could still feel his silky hardness against her tongue, taste his deep, musky flavor. She was dying to taste him again.

Without warning, acute panic tightened her chest.

Was she setting herself up for heartache? She knew better than to lose her head over a man. Wasn’t she still paying the high price of falling in love once before?

But this wasn’t love. This was lust.

Phil glanced over at his strong profile, at the powerful jaw and those incredibly talented lips.

Oh, yeah. She was in serious lust with this man.

His eyes on the road, Jamal said, “Unless you want me to pull the truck over, you may want to stop looking at me like that.” He glanced at her. “It’s an option, you know. The windows are tinted. No one will see what’s going on inside.”

“Just drive,” Phil said. “I think I can control myself until we get to an actual bed.”

“You’re stronger than I am,” he said. “I’ve had to stop myself at least five times from finding a tree to park the truck behind so I can have at you again.”

Goose bumps traveled across her skin at the image that popped into her head. At this point, Phil was happy to get any man who was willing to provide a bit of sexual relief. To find one who was a downright master at it was better than winning the lottery.

She made a show of leaning over and peering at the speedometer. “Can’t you drive any faster?”

Jamal’s deep chuckle resonated within the truck’s cab. A few minutes later they turned onto Loring Avenue. Phil almost suggested that he park in the back of the house so they could make use of the truck’s ample cab room. It had to be more comfortable than going at it on the Victorian’s bare floors, and she wasn’t sure she could wait until they drove to her house and her comfortable bed.

“I’m giving us five minutes to load the molding into the truck,” Jamal issued. “Whatever doesn’t get in there doesn’t get done. And you’re not touching them until after I’ve had you at least twice.”

“Are you expecting a complaint?” Phil asked.

“God, how I love an insatiable woman,” he said.

They turned into the graveled driveway at Belle Maison, and Phil felt the blood drain from her face. A whimper of alarm climbed from her throat, and her entire body went cold at the sight of a huge backhoe tractor shoving its metal claws into the heart of her mother’s painting room.

“Dammit,” Jamal whispered as he slowed the truck to a stop.

Phil opened the door and sprang from the truck, rushing over to the side of the house where the room was located. She waved her hands over her head, trying to catch the driver’s attention, but to no avail. The claws impaled another section of the room, taking out a side wall and two of the huge windows.

“Shit,” she heard Jamal say as he came around the house. He ran over to the tractor and climbed the side of the moving vehicle, banging on the window. The machine screeched to a halt and the driver pulled off the earmuffs covering his ears.

Phil could hear the two talking, but she didn’t try to make out what they were saying. What did it matter? The damage had been done. Half of her mother’s room lay in rubble. Phil wrapped her arms around her stomach in an attempt to stave off the rush of grief threatening to overwhelm her.

“Stop it,” she ordered herself.

Straightening her back, she steeled herself against the emotion clogging her throat and banished the tears that had attempted to collect in the corners of her eyes. She would not cry. After everything she’d been through these past few years, she would not let her emotions run away with her.

Jamal climbed down from the tractor and started toward her. The sorrow clouding his face brought Phil a measure of comfort...but only a small measure.

“Phylicia, I am so sorry about this,” he said. “I was supposed to cancel the wrecking service, but with everything that was going on, it just slipped my mind.”

She gave him a sharp nod, not fully trusting herself to speak. Not fully trusting him, either. What if he’d never intended to save the room? What if he’d only made that promise in order to get her to continue working on the house?

Her gut told her Jamal would never do that, but she had relied on her gut with Kevin, and he’d proved to be the exact opposite of the man she thought he was. The same could be true of Jamal. She just didn’t know.

And wasn’t that the truth smacking her in the face?

Reality washed over her like a tidal wave, bombarding her with a truth that was hard to swallow. This man was more of a stranger to her than ninety percent of the population of this town. But because it had made it easier to share her body with him, she’d created a false sense of familiarity.

Wrapping her arms around her upper body, Phil swallowed past the lump that had formed in her throat.

It was time to leave this dream world she’d been immersed in for the past thirty-six hours. Jamal Johnson was her employer. She’d allowed him to become her lover—a mistake she would no doubt pay dearly for.

Get over it,
Phil ordered herself.

“Let’s load the crown molding into the truck,” she said, turning on her heel and heading for the front entry, where she’d stacked the molding yesterday.

“Phylicia, wait.” He grabbed her by the elbow, halting her steps.

Phil pulled her arm out of his grip and turned to him. She ached to lash out at him, but she quelled the impulse. Employees had no right to be insubordinate to their employers.

“Yes?” she asked in the calmest voice she could muster.

“I’m sorry about the room,” he said.

“This is your house, Jamal. You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

His head reared back, his eyes narrowing into slits. “You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked with a measure of suspicion.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” she said, still calm. Score one for her.

“The hell it doesn’t,” he argued. “I’m telling you the truth, Phylicia. I was supposed to call the wrecking service when I left your house last Monday, but I got sidetracked. I forgot to call.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me. This is
your
house,” she reiterated. “I have no say in what happens to it. Now, can we please load the molding into the truck so I can get it back to my shop? We’ve lost too much time over the past day and a half. I have a lot of work to make up for.”

Jamal’s eyes slid shut. He brought his hand up to knead the bridge of his nose. “Phylicia, don’t do this,” he said in a pained voice.

“Once we get everything loaded, I’ll need you to drive me home,” was all she said.

Twenty minutes later, they were pulling into her driveway. Phil grabbed her keys from the front compartment of the bag that held her painting supplies. She entered through the side door of her workshop and then raised the garage door from the inside. She cleared off a spot on one of her worktables.

She looked over at Jamal’s truck to find him still sitting behind the wheel, staring at her with that brooding look he’d had for the past twenty minutes. He opened the door and got out, shutting it with more force than necessary.

They hadn’t said a word to each other since she’d left him standing in the yard at Belle Maison.

Phil went around the back of the truck and reached for a strip of molding.

“I’ve got them,” Jamal said. He pulled out an armful of the long wooden pieces and carried it into the garage.

Well, she was not going to just stand here and watch him do all the work.

Jamal eyed her as she carted several strips of molding into the garage. He carried the remaining pieces in and stacked them with the others, then he turned to her, his expression still dark with anger.

“I apologized for the room, Phylicia. What else do you want me to do? Rebuild it?”

The fact that her father had built the room for her mother made it special. His rebuilding it would mean nothing.

“I don’t want you to do anything, Jamal, and that includes apologizing. I already told you, you have nothing to apologize for. It’s your house.”

“You’ve pointed that out already. Stop pretending as if that’s the only thing that matters here.”

“It
is
all that matters,” Phil said. “You hired me to work on the house. I’d lost sight of that. What happened today reminded me of what my objective is.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe this.” He stared at her, accusation and anger heavy in his eyes. “So, what does this mean, Phylicia? Does this mean I’m getting in my truck and going home?”

Phil swallowed a hard knot of emotion and nodded. “I have work to do.”

The fury emanating from Jamal was a living, breathing thing. He stared at her for so long; it took everything Phil had in her not to flinch under his glare. She waited for him to blast her with another accusation, but after several more uncomfortably long moments, he turned and stalked back to his truck. He yanked the door open and climbed in, revving the engine and peeling out of her driveway like someone trying to win a drag race.

Phil had to take several deep breaths before she could even think of moving from the spot where she stood.

She’d let it happen again. She had allowed herself to get caught up in the romance of good sex and good conversation, knowing all it would do was muddle her brain and make her lose sight of her real agenda.

At least this time she’d reined it in before things got too far out of control.

Right. As if rolling around in the grass while letting the man have his way with her naked body was anywhere
near
being in control of the situation.

“Lesson learned,” Phil murmured. “Again,” she tacked on with an annoyed snort.

But this time the lesson would stick.

* * *

Jamal stared at his cell phone for a solid minute as he watched the time switch from 9:59 to 10:00 a.m. Phylicia was two hours late, which probably meant that she wasn’t going to show up at all.

Probably?

From the minute he’d sped out of her driveway, something in his gut told him this would happen. She was going to quit working on the house, would probably avoid him like the plague whenever she passed him around town. How in the hell did he go from licking every part of the woman’s body to this?

Jamal cast a derisive glance at the spot where her mother’s painting room once stood.

What else could he do to convince Phylicia that tearing the room down had been one humongous mistake? Probably nothing. From the way things had ended between them yesterday, Jamal wasn’t sure if he should even try.

“Damn that,” he bit out.

He tossed the miter saw onto his worktable and shut off his iPod. He didn’t even bother telling the work crew that he was leaving. He just climbed into his truck and took off, his mind’s focus on one thing.

He pulled into Phylicia’s driveway, having a hard time recalling a minute of the fifteen-minute drive that brought him here. Her blue pickup truck was parked where it had been yesterday, which meant she was probably home. Jamal went to the front door and rang the doorbell, but after a couple of minutes with no answer, he headed for her workshop.

The door was unlocked, as usual. He entered and immediately spotted her toward the rear of the room, her back to him. She stood before a huge armoire, sliding the flat end of a putty knife up the front of it.