Caught Up in the Touch (34 page)

“Can’t we please reschedule? There might be one or two small issues I still need to address.” Her voice had taken on an unattractive plaintive tone. She hated asking anyone for help, especially him.

“Look, I can always enter a provisional report if I find something that needs fixin’. That way you’ll know exactly what you need to do to pass on our reschedule.” A sympathy-infused drawl replaced his earlier Yankee-like impatience.

Dangit, that was … unexpected. Nice of him, if she wanted to give credit where it was due. Yet her voice hesitated with ingrained suspicion where he was concerned. “Okay. I suppose that would actually be helpful.”

He turned back to his truck and hauled a tool bag over his shoulder. The discordant tink of metal against metal sounded with his every step. She brushed her hands over the back of her shorts and wondered if she had time to change out of her frumpy paint-splattered T-shirt and into the demure business skirt and heels Jessica had helped pick out for her.

She led him through the front door. Somehow, the cavernous two-story foyer seemed smaller with him standing at the foot of the staircase.

“You mind if I freshen up?” She was already five steps up and climbing.

He made notations on his clipboard, not sparing her a glance. “I don’t require a babysitter, Ms. Hancock.”

No way was she letting him loose unsupervised in her house. She ripped the ponytail holder out of her hair and ran a brush through the thick dark mass. Looking longingly at the black pencil skirt hanging on the door of her closet, she brushed her teeth and sprayed on some citrusy body spray. Color flushed her cheeks, and her eyes were slightly pink and glazed. She sharpened her focus, narrowing her gaze, but then ruined the effect with a spontaneous giggle. Geez, she was screwed.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she slowed to regulate her breathing. Beeps came from the living room. She tiptoed to the door and peeked in, not sure what she expected to catch Alec doing. Deliberately cutting wires while twirling a fake mustache and laughing maniacally?

Instead, she found him bent over a desk testing an outlet, his pants pulled snugly over the curve of his butt. Good Lord, it was an outstanding butt. Buzzes and beeps from his equipment filled the silence. She moved closer. He straightened to make even more notations on the clipboard, and his glutes flexed.

He looked up, his gaze meeting hers before trailing down her body and back up. Probably he was cataloguing all the deficiencies—her shortness, her sparkly purple toenails, her decade-old oversized No Doubt concert T-shirt—but her body thrummed with an inconvenient awareness.

Now—years later and sober—she wondered what he would be like in bed? Quick and a little bit rough? Or had he learned to take things slow?

Curiosity drew her another step toward him. This time her gaze travelled an exploratory path down his body. A body that had aged little since college. He was the quintessential quarterback—tall and lean, but with broad shoulders and muscular legs. Yet he did look immeasurably older. He’d shed the party-boy image he’d cultivated at Bama. But there was something else. Something around his eyes that made him look older than his thirty-one years. Whatever it was incited a strange urge to hug him.

Before her marijuana-addled brain could act on the compulsion, she asked in a singsong voice, “So, how’s it going?”

“Fine.” He returned his attention to his clipboard, making notations in little boxes.

She wanted to touch him, feel the answering warmth in his body, push him back against the desk, press her softness against his hardness, muss his hair with her fingers.

What in the hell was wrong with her?

It had been too long since she’d gotten any action—even a kiss on a cheek. He possessed a virile, warm body with the correct appendages. Having any man who wasn’t blood-related in her house would probably kick her libido into overdrive.

Nervous chattering commenced. “The football team is doing well. Hunter Galloway is kicking butt and taking names.”

“Yep.”

“Think you’ll make the state playoffs this year?”

“Got to take things game by game. Any given Friday night…” He was feeding her the standard line. The Falcon football program was the heart and soul of the town, and its coaches were the conduits for encouragement and unwanted advice. And besides Robbie Dalton, the head coach, Alec probably received the most flak since he coached the quarterbacks.

He tucked the pen behind his ear and pulled the strap of his tool bag over his shoulder. The muscle in his hairy forearm flexed. When had she started to find men’s forearms so damn sexy? He smoothed his hair, putting his forearm level with her hungry gaze. Her pelvic muscles tightened. Apparently since about twenty minutes ago.

“I’m ready to move on. Foyer and then kitchen?”

She looked from the jumping muscle of his arm up to his eyes. Too far up. Instead of intimidating her, though, his height made her want to toss her hair and swing her hips and send him come-hither looks over her shoulder. In New York, she had avoided the tall, preppy fitness nuts in favor of skinny, goth, artsy types.

“Of course, right this way, Mr. Grayson.” Her voice was as serious as a funeral director.

The clomp of his work boots echoed behind her in the grand foyer. On his way to the huge chandelier’s light switch, he shot her a look. “Is everything okay?”

She wanted to shout,
Everything is bad, very, very bad. I’m a little bit high and a whole lot horny.
Instead, she plastered on her practiced, fake southern-politesse smile. “Everything is fine. Awesome. Wonderful. Couldn’t be better. Really, really, great.” She drew the last word out like Tony the Tiger.

His eyebrows rose and the corners of his lips quirked into an honest-to-God smile, but his frown was back in place so quickly she was sure her imagination ran wild. “Miss Hancock, there’s no reason to be nervous. This is a preliminary inspection of your electrical system. Although, structurally I did notice some dry rot around your porch that will need to be fixed.”

“Yes sir.” For some reason she found herself saluting, which garnered her another slightly-bemused flash of amusement.

He finished in the foyer, and she trailed him into the kitchen. He reached high to check the security of a light fixture, not needing a boost up from anything. She had to pull a chair over to reach the top shelf in her cabinets.

He squatted to check an outlet, once again displaying his butt in all its glory. Their one encounter had involved drunken sex in his dark room. She’d never actually seen him naked, but she remembered how he’d felt. Sometimes she still dreamed about it.

If she were honest with herself—and pot tended to heighten her candor to skyscraper-like levels—eighty percent of the reason she occasionally wandered by Falcon football practices was to see his butt in action. The other twenty percent involved other aspects of his body. She wasn’t proud, but that didn’t change the fact that the man was panty-melting hot.

And he seemed to have received a personality transplant since college, which both confused and intrigued her. Gone was the party boy who strutted around campus like he deserved the adulation. Now he was overly stoic and serious, and as far as she’d been able to determine, he never went out or even dated.

He was a nut she wanted to crack. Which would make her the squirrel. She let her gaze wander over the shifting muscles of his back and then down to his butt, unable to keep a little smile off her face. Yep, she was a horny little squirrel.

Leaning on the kitchen island, she propped her chin on a fisted hand. “How tall are you? Six-two, six-three?”

He glanced over his shoulder, and her eyes shot back up to his.

“Six-four.”

“A foot taller than me exactly.” A flash of him walking her to the door at the end of a date and kissing her had her staring at his mouth. Kissing him like that would give her a neck-crick. It would probably be a terrible, horrible kiss. The worst of her life.

Yet, even as sloppy drunk as he’d been that night at Bama, his kisses had curled her toes and made her frantic. She couldn’t even blame the alcohol. The two beers she’d nursed at the frat party had given her a buzz but hadn’t impeded her judgment—or lack thereof.

She closed her eyes and shot back to that night. The pulse of music from the other room, the hum of conversation, the occasional burst of laughter. The sex had been quick and dirty. Unlike in her romance novels, her hero-figure had been unconcerned with her pleasure, and it had honestly hurt a little. Probably because she’d been a virgin, but maybe because he was proportionally bigger everywhere.

No longer an innocent, the thought sent blood rushing through her body. What would he feel like now? And how insane was she to even be thinking about sex with him? Her one dose of humiliation would last a lifetime.

It was crazy.

“What’s crazy?” he asked.

God help her, she’d actually spoken. She popped her eyes back open and stared at him while her mind searched. “Adding under-cabinet lighting?”

The reasonably intelligent recovery smoothed her frazzled nerves, and she listened with half an ear to him explain the need for another breaker if she installed the extra lighting.

The narrow former mudroom and current office was next. She stayed on his heels. He pushed at the mass of cords with his pen. “You really need a surge protector.”

“Is that for code purposes?”

“No, but it would keep your computer working if lightning hits or a squirrel gets fried. I’d hate to see you lose your hard drive. You can pick one up for ten bucks or less at Wal-Mart.”

“Okay. I’ll do that.”

He turned toward her, and the room seemed to shrink around them. A squirrel was about to get fried all right. The checks of his shirt blurred into muted shades of blues, and she thought his breathing quickened, but maybe it was just hers. My God, if she didn’t get control of herself, he might wonder if she was having an asthma attack. Yet she didn’t move. Couldn’t move. She trailed her gaze up the corded muscles of his neck to his face.

She hadn’t been this close to him since college. That one night his eyes had been glassy from arousal and alcohol. Now the green and blue shards glowed sharply against the background of brown.

His tongue darted over his lower lip, and her gaze dropped to his mouth. A shaving nick where a small dimple creased his chin made her want to reach up and kiss it better.

“We’d better”—a frog sounded from his throat, and he tried to clear it, but his voice still rumbled, low and sexy, tumbling through her stomach like a rockslide—“better get on to the second floor.”

“You didn’t check the outlets,” she said barely moving her lips.

His gaze flicked over her face, and he took a deep breath. “I’ll get them during the final inspection. Next floor, please.”

He wrapped a big, warm hand around her upper arm. Her body went slack, ready for him to pull her to him. Instead, he moved her aside and brushed past, his biceps grazing her breasts.

What was wrong with her? Just like that night in college, she had zero self-control around him. She rubbed the tingly place on her arm as if she could erase the arousal his touch inspired. Alec was the last man in Falcon she should be messing around with, yet when was the last time her blood sparked like this?

She stayed at his side up the grand staircase to avoid staring at his butt in action, rambling on about how her ancestors had made the long oak banister. She pointed out a saber gash from the Civil War.

“We were occupied for a time. Yankee officers commandeered the house. Anna Hancock fell in love with one of them and ran off with him after the war. Quite the scandal.” Unlike her aunt Esmerelda, who whispered about it as if poor Anna was a criminal, Lilliana announced the defection with pride.

At the top of the landing, they turned to face each other. His mouth was tipped in what probably passed for a smile in his eyes. “You admire her?”

“She forged her own path in a time when it was difficult to break free of family expectations. Especially for a woman.”

“You went off to art school in New York, didn’t you? I can’t imagine any other Hancock doing that.” Was that a hint of appreciation in his voice? She was scared to trust her intuition or senses even though the effects of the pot were fading.

“I did, but you see where I ended up. Back home trying to live up to my family’s expectations.” The weight of responsibility pressed on her lungs, tightening her voice with emotion. “I wish I was as strong as Anna. I would let someone else worry about this old place falling down, let them lose sleep over loans, let their fingers blister from hours of sanding drywall.”

She held her hand palm up to showcase the calluses she’d grown from the constant work. Mindless work that took away from her real passion. He skimmed his fingers over the back of her hand, tentatively at first, but his grip firmed as he brought her hand higher for a closer inspection, his thumb massaging the blisters and calluses along her palm.

“Family expectations can be tough. But maybe staying is the brave thing to do, not the weak one.” His touch was unexpectedly tender, his voice understanding.

She kept her gaze on their hands, afraid to look him in the eyes. She could handle him being brusque and all business. She could even handle him being hot as sin. What she couldn’t handle was him being so …
nice.

She pulled her hand away, their fingers tangling for an instant, and led them into her bedroom. He stopped in the doorway, his gaze sweeping the spacious room. His face gave no indication of what he was thinking or feeling. He closed the door behind him and moved toward the first outlet.

Instead of crouching down, though, he stared at the small portrait on the wall, hung where only she could see it when she closed her door. She curled her hand into a fist, waiting to hear his opinion. She flashed back five years to the panic-inducing anxiety of hearing a professor rip her creative vision to shreds.

“You did this?” He pointed like a toddler as he glanced over at her.

“Yes.” She shrugged and said the word more like a question than a statement.