was he, some schoolboy hoping for just a look at the girl next door? Just a raise of her hand to acknowledge him?
He hadn’t felt like that since he was thirteen. He’d actually stood there for at least half an hour last night hoping she would appear. And here he was again this morning.
She was something to look at, he told himself as consolation for how dumb it seemed.
Not that he hadn’t seen—up close and personal—plenty of women who were something to look at. But a pretty woman was always something to look at. And Kelsey’s sister? She was more than just pretty. A lot more.
When he’d first seen her yesterday, he’d recalled, instantly, the first moment he’d seen her.
She was the woman from Lily’s party who had caught his eye over and over again, long before he’d finally been introduced to her.
Jessie—he’d barely learned her name and he hadn’t had the chance for more than that at the time.
Then all of a sudden yesterday, there she’d been again, in the living room downstairs.
She was lovely. Downright beautiful, actually. Even in baggy jeans and that World’s Greatest Mom T-shirt. Beautiful, but in an approachable kind of way. Natural and artless. And without any indication that she was even aware of her looks.
She had the silkiest hair he’d ever seen—chestnut brown and so shiny that it glistened as it fell to below her shoulders around a face that no man could ignore. Her skin was fresh and flawless, interrupted by only a small, adorable dot of a beauty mark just below the corner of her left eye.
And those eyes, big, round, cocoa-brown, they had the softest look to them. They glimmered a little—they were almost dewy. He’d had trouble glancing away from them.
Until his own gaze had slid down her straight, thin, well-shaped nose to those lush, exquisite lips. Slightly full but not too full. Petal pink. Just the right shape. Perfect whether she was smiling or talking or doing nothing at all with them. Perfect for kissing …
Not that he’d ever know if that was true, he reprimanded himself, shoving aside the thought by altering his view from her bedroom window to her backyard again.
Four kids.
Four!
A mom—however beautiful—who had been widowed somehow and left to raise them on her own. That was a situation shouting for him to stay away.
He was happy for his own three siblings—all married or engaged. But for himself? Marriage wasn’t in the cards.
He’d tried it once, and once was enough. More than enough to confirm what he’d seen of marriage growing up and watching his mother do it again and again. Complicated and difficult and costly. Something that could too easily deteriorate into a very, very ugly situation—that was what marriage was to him, and as far as he was concerned, it didn’t have anything to recommend it.
And the fact that Jessie had four kids?
Flint wasn’t a kid person. One of the worst pieces of news he’d ever received in his life had come last month when word had gotten to him that Anthony might be his. He hadn’t had the foggiest idea what he was going to do if that was true. And he’d never experienced the kind of relief he’d known when the baby had turned out to be Cooper’s instead.
I’m just not dad material, he thought, remembering Kelsey’s comment about how Adam had chosen him as a role model and not even feeling as if he could be that. He didn’t have any idea how to be either of those things. How could he when his own father had barely had anything to do with him, when none of his mother’s other men—husbands or not—had ever hung around long enough to be either of those to him? When he hadn’t spent enough time with the Fortunes to have found that in Red Rock either?
Plus he liked his freedom. He liked coming and going as he pleased. He was enjoying his life the way it was now and he didn’t want to change anything.
And when it came to women? There was no shortage of them—never had been. Not even when he made it clear that he had a strict no-strings policy. That he liked to keep things light.
Which didn’t mean kids. Or the extra responsibility, the extra burden of worrying about those kids ending up feeling the way he and his sister and brothers had felt every time another man had come into their mother’s—and consequently their—lives. Every time they even began to get accustomed to those same men and then watched them walk out the door.
It was something he never wanted to inflict on any child, let alone four of them.
So Jessie was a no-go for him. However beautiful she was, with four kids who could end up getting hurt in the shuffle he’d learned so well as a child himself, she was strictly, totally, completely, one-hundred-percent off-limits, regardless of how beautiful she was. Or how doe-soft her eyes were. Or how kissable her lips might be, or how much he’d wanted to reach up and run his fingertips over her cheek to find out if her skin was as smooth as it looked …
Then, suddenly, there she was—in the yard with all her kids.
And just as suddenly all those kids seemed to fade into the background as he honed in on her as if she were out there alone, her hair drinking in the morning sunshine and reflecting it.
She was wearing better-fitting jeans today, with a tank top tucked into the jeans. And when she leaned over to check a tag on whatever it was that had been delivered, her well-shaped backside was impossible for him not to look at.
Flint’s hand actually tingled with the urge to cup that great little bum, and suddenly being a good role model was the last thing on his mind. Only Jessie was. And the fact that in just a while she was scheduled to come over here and work …
Knock it off! he commanded himself, refocusing his eyes, making sure his view again took in those four kids running around, climbing on things, making a ruckus.
She has four kids, he told himself once more, firmly, sternly, determined to brand it into his brain so that he never lost sight of it.
But then she stood up straight again, turned enough to be in profile, slipped her hands into the rear pockets of those jeans and this time it was the sweet, sweet swell of her breasts that made his hands ache to touch.
But it didn’t matter, he swore to himself. She was a no-go.
And he meant it. If he had to dredge up every lousy memory he had of his own childhood to stick to it, that’s what he’d do.
But one way or another he wasn’t getting involved with The Mom Next Door.
“I don’t think I know your last name—or is it Hunt, like Kelsey’s?”
It was not easy for Jessie to be in her sister’s laundry room, sharing the painting duties with Flint late Monday afternoon after he and Cooper had returned from buying supplies for that day’s project.
The space was small—only big enough for a side-by-side washer and drier with enough room in front of them to open their front-loading doors. And if Flint had seemed to fill Kelsey’s entire living room the day before with his mere presence, it was nothing compared to the laundry room.
In
