all.
2
THE THOUGHT OF SEEING Alex again made Jessica’s stomach twist into nervous knots.
At least, that’s what she told herself. Those knots in her stomach were knots of dread, not excitement. And the jittery feeling she got at the thought of seeing him again had nothing to do with the way he’d kissed her. The way his roughened palms had made the bare skin of her arms tingle. The way he’d smelled unlike any other man she’d ever known—an appealing mix of sunshine, dust and sweat.
She blew out a long, slow breath.
Yep. Just nerves. That was it.
She’d armed herself with his business card and an outfit less likely to attract snide “princess” comments—black capri pants and a black, boat-necked T-shirt. It was as good an outfit as any to grovel in.
According to the card she’d salvaged from the portfolio he’d given her, Moreno Construction operated out of his home, which turned out to be a small bungalow-style house on the outskirts of town. Finding the house was not nearly as difficult as finding the courage to walk up the overgrown path to the door. But, she conceded, owning up to mistakes was not supposed to be easy.
She rang the doorbell, waited a full minute then rang it again. The front door was open, and through the screen door, she caught glimpses of the darkened interior. But no sign of Alex himself.
Then from deep within, she heard a male voice shout, “Come in.”
She opened the screen door, stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind her. The entry opened straight into the living room, which ran the width of the house. A collection of standard-issue bachelor furniture sat clumped in the center of the room. Moving boxes flanked the walls in stacks three or four high. From where she stood, she caught a clear view of the dining room and the kitchen beyond. More bland furniture, more boxes. Only the kitchen looked lived in, with a couple of cereal bowls on the counter and a pizza box wedged into a trash can.
From somewhere at the back of the house, a power tool roared to life, so she followed the sound down the hall to a back bedroom.
And sure enough, there was Alex. He stood on an A-frame ladder, straddling the peak. The stance accentuated the muscles of his long legs. With one hand, he held up a sheet of drywall, with the other, he used a cordless drill to drive screws into the sheet.
With the exception of the spot where Alex worked, the walls had been stripped down to the studs. Chalky dust from the drywall hung in the air, making her cough.
He turned at the sound and stared at her for a second. Disbelief and then suspicion registered in his eyes before he turned back to the drywall and drove in three more screws.
Watching him move, Jessica found herself fascinated by the way his broad shoulders shifted under the threadbare cotton of his white T-shirt. By the hole in his jeans that bared his knee and the worn patches of denim along the length of his thighs and down his zipper.
She was used to seeing men dressed in Dockers and button-down Oxford shirts. Three-piece suits and tuxedoes. Clothes designed to advertise a man’s wealth and social position. Funny how none of those clothes spoke of a man’s strength—a man’s ability to work with his hands—the way Alex’s worn jeans and grimy T-shirt did.
Funny how she now noticed how appealing those qualities were. How they made her skin tingle with excitement.
When he swung one leg over the peak of the ladder and climbed down, she averted her eyes, trying not to gawk. After all, he’d made it clear he just wasn’t interested. As he nodded in greeting, he dusted off his hands, then wedged them into his back pockets. Not the warmest reception, but about the best she could hope for under the circumstances.
“I wanted to apologize for yesterday. And to explain.”
At her words, the suspicion in his gaze seemed to flicker and go out, but his eyes were dark and mysterious regardless, so she couldn’t be sure.
Stepping to her side, he stopped just short of touching her and instead gestured toward the door.
“It’ll be less dusty outside.”
As with most houses in Palo Verde, the backyard sloped away from the house, up toward the foothills. A patch of overgrown fruit trees lined the far fence and crowded against the detached garage. A picnic table sat proudly in the center of a lawn of close-cropped weeds. It was a far cry from her own neatly manicured, obsessively maintained backyard.
When she turned her gaze to Alex, she found him watching her carefully, as if gauging her reaction. Once again she found his inscrutable dark gaze unsettling.
“It’s nice,” she said, carefully lowering herself to the bench seat of the picnic table.
He stared at her in blank disbelief.
“Come fall, you’ll really enjoy the apples from those trees.”
“My parents have worked in the apple orchards for over thirty years. I hate apples,” he said flatly as he sat opposite her.
Wow. Could this go any worse?
He crossed his arms over his chest and eyed her speculatively. And though she felt her pulse leap at his perusal, there was little flattering in his expression. “So, did you come here to talk about my landscaping or did you just think it’d be fun to waste another of my afternoons?”
Just when she was starting to hope someone would come by and shoot her with a tranquilizer gun just to put her out of her misery, she noticed his lips twitching.
He was enjoying this. Not out of cruelty, she was fairly certain, but he seemed to like having her at a disadvantage. That should have annoyed her, but it didn’t. Something in his smile short-circuited her synapses. “As I said, I came here to apologize,” she said again, trying to be blunt. Get this over with as quickly as possible. After all, he may enjoy flustering her, but she didn’t enjoy being flustered. “I think you got the wrong impression yesterday.”
He arched an eyebrow in speculation. “You mean you do want me to remodel your kitchen?”
“No. But you seemed to think I invited you over just to…sleep with you. But that’s not why I called you.”
“So you don’t want to sleep with me?”
“No!” A second too late, she saw the teasing glint in his gaze. He was toying with her.
“You’ll think it’s stupid.”
“Tell me anyway,” he coaxed.
And, oddly enough, she wanted to. It’d been like that when they were in school, too. Something about Alex Moreno made her believe she could trust him implicitly. That she could tell him anything. And he’d never hurt her. Of course, it didn’t help matters that he seemed so much less angry than he had yesterday. Even less than he had when she’d arrived. Her apology had gone a long way toward softening him up. Score one for Saucy magazine.
“It all started with this list.” No, that wasn’t right. “Actually it all started with my trip to Sweden.”
“Sweden?”
