was just…peachy.
Which made him hungry. And made him want to see what she looked like naked. See where else she might be peaches and cream.
He came close to groaning out loud at the thought.
The door had long since closed, the train pulled away, and he was still standing there, like the horny idiot that he was. He checked his watch. Only twenty-five and a half hours until he saw her again. He could survive.
Maybe.
As long as he didn’t think about her chest, hiding behind that loose floral dress, but glorious nonetheless. It brought to mind all sorts of metaphors about flowers and fruit, with words like ripe, budding, and juicy rising up and tormenting him.
He took the stairs to the street two at a time and ordered his hormones to lie down and play dead. It didn’t work. His sister owed him an explanation. Never once when talking about her roommate had she mentioned Jamie was a sexual goddess with breasts that could stop traffic, war, and obliterate the need for Jack to hang on to the Victoria’s Secret catalog that had been accidentally delivered to his apartment.
Ten lust-filled minutes later he stepped into his grandfather’s room at the nursing home and found him sitting in his recliner, watching a game show. “Hey, Pops, how are you?”
“Stuck in this hell hole, but other than that, no complaints.”
“Come on, Pops.” Though Jack could sympathize with his grandfather. Living in a nursing home must be an anti-climactic ending to life. It was a rehabilitative facility, but Jack got the impression Pops felt this was the beginning of the end. One stay led to another until you never went home. “It’s nice here. It doesn’t smell or anything.”
“Hah. You haven’t been here on taco day.” Pops turned and studied him. “What’s all over your shirt?”
“Your dinner.” He’d bought it for his grandfather in the first place, being more of a pesto sauce, lean chicken kind of guy. But he wasn’t sure how appealing it was going to be now that it had bounced around the inside of the bag. “Spaghetti. It got shoved against me by this woman on the subway.”
Pops narrowed his eyes as his gaze dropped. “You’ve got a hard-on, Jack.”
Though shocked at his grandfather’s words, Jack took a quick glance down. “Jesus, you’re right.” Just the thought of Jamie leaning against him was having an immediate and painful reaction. Or maybe he had been like this from the very first second she had collided with him.
“Spaghetti always does that to me, too.” Pops reached for the bag. “Give me the food, don’t just stand there.”
“It wasn’t the spaghetti.” Not by a long shot. “The woman who fell against me, well, she was…Pops, there was something…she had…” He couldn’t find any words to describe Jamie and her soft skin without sounding like a jackass.
Wait. Too late.
“That good, huh?” Pops took the bag and started ripping it open. No sign of his stroke there. Pops tore with fury, his left hand a little limp, but the right one compensating.
Jack shifted painfully. “Oh, yeah.”
He suddenly realized that Pops was lifting noodles out of the exploded plastic carrying container with his fingers. “What are you doing? That fell all over the inside of the bag.”
“So? Didn’t fall on the ground, did it?” Grabbing another handful, Pops jammed the noodles in his mouth.
“Well, at least let me get you a fork.” Jack looked around the room, forgetting there was no kitchen in Pops’s one-room accommodation.
“They don’t let us have utensils in our rooms. Might stab someone or ourselves with them, you know.” Pops shook his head. “Treat us all like we’re whacko.”
“I’ll go ask someone for a fork.” Jack pictured the look on his mother’s face if she saw Pops eating with his fingers. “Good thing Mom’s not here.”
Pops snorted. “Don’t know how I raised such a snooty daughter. Nose always in the air. Yet she doesn’t have a pot to pee in that I didn’t give her. It’s not like your father’s ever amounted to much.”
Jack’s father was a partner in a prestigious law firm. He was more than successful, but Pops liked to rib him. To a man like Will Hathaway, anyone who wasn’t self-made like he was didn’t deserve the same level of respect. Pops had started out playing stickball in Brooklyn, and he made sure everyone knew it.
It was part of why he was so proud that Jack had made his own fortune, independent of the family trust.
“And you’re the one who’s rich,” Pops added with a grin.
Jack folded his arms and grumbled. “I’m not rich, Pops. I’m comfortable.” Actually, he was rich. But sometimes that embarrassed him. He’d never set out to be successful for the reward of wealth. He had been aggressive because he loved the challenge, the thrill, winning the game—the money just happened to come along with it.
Pops was unrepentant. “You’re sitting on a cool ten mil, ain’t you? That makes you mighty comfortable in my book. Most people would call it rich.”
Taking a seat on the bed, Jack stretched his arms over his head and tried to ignore the wet sauce stain sticking against his skin. “I guess you’re right. It’s just that being considered rich makes me uncomfortable sometimes. Maybe I should just give it all to Mom. That would make her happy.”
“Over my dead body.” Pops slurped a noodle up, sending tomato sauce spraying over his blue striped shirt and his chin. “You made that money legally and it’s yours. Not your mother’s. Besides, you bought her that fancy car. That’s more than enough.”
Jack flopped back on the bed and checked out the ceiling. When he had first made the money a few years back, day trading, taking advantage of the market and its ups and downs, he had been ecstatic. He could retire from Wall Street, dabble a little here and there and increase his net worth without killing himself with fourteen-hour workdays.
That was the plus side.
What he hadn’t counted on was the negative side.
The fake, fawning people who played ass-kissing games, yet would stab him in the back the minute he turned around. It was a cold, hard world for even the single-digit millionaire, and it had been a long time since Jack could trust that any woman was interested in him and not his money.
Until today.
Jamie didn’t know he had anything more than the shirt on his back. And he intended to keep it that way.
Jamie wanted to see him, Jack. Joe Ordinary who rode the subway like everyone else and carried spaghetti in a brown paper bag.
Jamie who looked normal. Like a regular girl from small town, USA, with a slight twang that still lingered in her voice.
Hair that just spilled all over the place, untamed by a hairstylist named Ricardo.
And she didn’t watch what she said. She just said it, without weighing whether she would sound déclassé
