Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

Fox

“What are you up to this weekend, boss?”

I didn’t need Porter knowing I’d taken his suggestion to take Josie to the winery, so I stared straight at the road as we drove back from the jobsite in my truck on Friday afternoon. “Not much.”

I caught him smirking in my peripheral vision. “Uh-huh.”

I wasn’t sure if that meant he knew something or suspected, but I left it at that. Porter went back to playing some game with annoying cartoon sounds on his phone.

But a few miles later, he couldn’t help himself. “I’m not usually a wine drinker, especially reds. I went for the ambiance and because it made the girl I was seeing happy. But they make this wine that tastes almost like black cherries. I think it was called petit verdot.”

My eyes flashed to him and back to the road. “Who told you?”

Porter snickered. “Miss Hope called the office. She told Opal you were going out of town for the weekend.”

I shook my head. “My own mother.”

“Now don’t get upset with her. She didn’t spill the beans intentionally. The other day, you sent me over to the home-improvement store to pick up a spool of electrical wire. While I was there, Sam happened to be working up an estimate for some flooring. I saw Josie’s name on top, so when he asked if I needed any help, I told him to finish up what he was working on. Figured I was on the clock and you wouldn’t mind. Anyway, Sam said it wasn’t a rush because the customer had come in yesterday to get an estimate, but she was going away for the weekend. I put two and two together after Opal hung up with Miss Hope and asked if I knew you were going out of town this weekend. Don’t worry, I didn’t mention the connection I made to Opal.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

Porter smiled. “Glad you took my recommendation, though.”

I’d been hoping to get away without acknowledging that. But I felt like a dick now that I’d been caught. “Thanks for the idea.”

He smiled bigger than if I’d just given him a raise. “You’re welcome.”

***

“Alright, now I know you’re probably as nervous as I am about my weekend. But I think it’s time.”

I walked out on my back deck and found Josie kneeling on the grass at the water’s edge, having a conversation with the duck. The scene was too entertaining to interrupt.

She stroked his feathers and pointed behind her. “You have a nice new house. Well, it’s not new new. I got it at the garage sale I went to with Opal. But it’s clean and new to us. So if you decide you’re not ready to go back with your friends yet, your bed is fluffed up and waiting.”

Jesus Christ, I hadn’t even noticed the new addition to the yard. The woman had bought a wild duck a dog house. I suppose that was fitting, seeing as he slept on an orthopedic bed.

She leaned forward and nuzzled the duck. When she stood, the thing flapped its wings and started to walk into the water. Josie smiled and covered her heart with her hand. “Come back and visit soon, Daisy! I left food in your new house in case you get hungry!”

I leaned a hip against the deck railing, watching Josie watch the duck swim off. Fifty feet into the lake, a gang of similar-looking ducks swam over, and Josie’s little friend joined their group.

I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “I’m glad you put him back where he belongs. I was concerned you might try to stash him in your bag and bring him this weekend.”

Josie jumped before turning around. “You scared the crap out of me! How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know you’re nervous about this weekend.”

A hint of pink flushed across her cheeks. “I was just trying to make Daisy feel better, like she wasn’t alone.”

“Uh-huh.”

Josie rolled her eyes. “I’m not nervous to spend time with you.”

“Maybe you should be.”

“Why is that?”

I looked her up and down, drinking in how good she looked in yet another pair of yoga pants—this time blue—and a matching cropped top. “Because I’m going to do very bad things to you.”

Her jaw went slack. I liked it when she got that look, like she was visualizing me pleasing her. Yet she kept up the charade, folding her arms across her chest. “Is that so?”

I pushed off the railing and stalked over. Josie lifted her chin and stood her ground, which turned me on even more. When we were toe to toe, I looked down my nose at her and tugged at a piece of her hair. “It is. Got a problem with that?”

“What if I say I do?”

“Then you’d be missing out. I was planning on fingering you in the driveway before we even left so you’d be relaxed for the trip. Mrs. Craddox would probably be disappointed too. I’m sure she can’t remember the last time she saw an orgasm face.”

Josie play-smacked my stomach, laughing. “You’re so crass.”

I cupped my ear. “What’s that? Did you say you want it in the ass? That can be arranged...”

Her cheeks reddened, but I could tell she enjoyed my teasing. Well, I was mostly teasing. Wrapping an arm around her waist, I pulled her to me. “So is this how it’s going to be? When I see you, I’m going to have to take a kiss because you’re not going to offer me one?”

“Am I supposed to do that? I wasn’t sure of the protocol. I’ve never been in a sex-only relationship.”

That last statement should’ve set off a band of warning bells—there was a reason some women only ever did relationships. They couldn’t separate the physical from the emotional. Yet instead of making me think twice, I was ecstatic to know hookups weren’t her thing. It was a ridiculous double standard, of course, considering those were the only thing I’d done for the last couple of years. But it was what it was.

I ducked my head down and planted my lips on hers. It took all of three seconds before my jeans grew snug, so I knew I needed to pace myself. But the week had been long, and Josie had been my first thought when I woke up every day and my last thought when I fell asleep at night. So it wasn’t easy. I wanted her stripped naked and calling my name the way she did as soon as possible.

Begrudgingly, I pulled back from the kiss and rubbed my hands up and down her shoulders. “You ready to go?”

“Pretty much. I just need to throw a sweater or a sweatshirt in my bag in case it gets chilly.”

“Why don’t you do that? And I’ll grab my stuff and pull around into your driveway.”

“Okay.” She smiled.

One good thing about whatever was going on between us, I no longer had to pretend I wasn’t watching her. When she got to the back door, she turned. My eyes took their time lifting to find hers, so it was clear what I’d been doing.

“Still checking me out, huh?” She smiled smugly.

“Damn straight. By the way, doc, you might want to pack the Epsom salt. And the ice pack.”

***

“Heard you were thinking about putting in new flooring.”

Josie looked over at me. We were an hour into the drive and about a half hour from the B&B I’d booked. “How did you know that?”

“How does everyone know anything around here?”

She shook her head. “It’s really bizarre how fast things travel. My flooring isn’t even scandalous. But yeah, I’m thinking about doing the first-floor kitchen with new tile, the kind that looks like wood. The existing stuff is so outdated.”

“Well, let me know when you decide. I’ll place the order for you. I get a contractor’s discount.”

“Oh wow. Thanks. Will they still install it for me, though, if you order it?”

“I’ll install it for you.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Still…you’ve done so much already.”

I wiggled my brows. “I plan to do much more. You just wait.”

Josie laughed. “Maybe you can show me how to install the floor and we can do it together?”

“If you want. But I can knock it out in a few hours by myself.”

“I’ve actually discovered that I enjoy learning and doing the work. When I decided to come down here, I thought fixing up the house would keep me busy. But it’s turned into more than that.” She looked out the window for a moment. “When I was little, after I realized I couldn’t dance for crap and ballerina was not likely happening, I wanted to be a painter. Not the artsy kind, but the kind who uses a roller on the walls.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “We had this painter my mom always used. His name was Roland, and he always had a smile on his face. He would paint the living room while humming to the songs playing in his headphones or singing along. He let me help him do the roller whenever my mom wasn’t home.”

My brows dipped together. “Only when your mom wasn’t around?”

“Melanie Preston would never allow me to hang out with someone doing work on the house. She treats people who work for her like they’re hired help, two steps below her. Plus, she wouldn’t want me to get any ideas about career choices. She’d already decided I was going to medical school. It was disappointing enough that I went for my PhD and did research and not real medical school.”

“Why would what you do be disappointing? Aren’t they both doctors who heal people?”

“It’s more about the prestige for my mom than the actual work. She wanted me to be a surgeon like her. Research also doesn’t pay as well as medical doctors, and she measures success by things and awards. That’s probably why she and Noah got along so well.” She paused and grinned. “My mother would probably hate you.”

“Because I do construction?”

“And because you were a hockey player. My father used to have to watch football in the basement because she found contact sports barbaric.”

The thought of her mother disliking me might’ve amused Josie, but it made my jaw tic with tension. It shouldn’t have mattered. Meeting the parents wasn’t on my agenda, yet it hit a nerve for some reason. “Your mother sounds like she should use her surgical skills to get the stick out of her ass. Hope you don’t mind me saying so.”

Josie chuckled. “Not only don’t I mind, but it’s one of the reasons I like you so much.”

Her adding so much at the end of that sentence soothed my bent feelings a bit. I reached over and rested my hand on her thigh, and our eyes met briefly for a silent smile before returning to the road.

“My dad would’ve liked you, though,” she said.

“Oh yeah?”

She nodded. “He liked honest people who didn’t put up pretenses.”

“How did he wind up with your mom, then?”

“I’ve always wondered the same thing. But he loved her. I’d often see him watching her from a distance with a smile on his face. Like, she’d be in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee or whatever, and I’d find him leaning against the doorframe watching her when she wasn’t looking.”

I thought back to the way I’d watched Josie today, enjoying the moment. And how I’d watched her in the yard from the second floor, or stolen a few moments of her toiling in the kitchen through the front bay window on more than one occasion. But that was different, wasn’t it? At least that’s what I told myself.

“Anyway…” Josie shifted in her seat to face me. “I feel like I’m always talking about me. Tell me about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. What was it like playing professional hockey? Did women wear your jerseys and ask for your autograph?”

“I loved playing, and women did.”

“But did you have groupies? Like women who wanted to be with you because you were a player?”

This was a line of questioning that a man played chess with. One answer could lead us down a path she might not want to go. So I moved a piece that kept my king from being checked. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”

She grinned. “So that’s a yes. Did you have a girlfriend the entire time you were playing?”

I shook my head. “Not until the last year.”

“What about in college?”

“I went out with someone for most of freshman year.”

“What happened with that?”

“She was three years older. She graduated and moved back home, and I got drafted into the league.”

“You went into the pros that early?”

“It’s not early for hockey. Most guys are in by nineteen.”

“I didn’t realize that.”

“Do you follow hockey?”

“I’ve never actually watched a game.”

I chuckled. “Average retirement age is twenty-nine. So if you’re not in early, you’re significantly cutting down your chance at seeing ice time. There are outliers. Gordie Howie and Chris Chelios played twenty-six seasons. But for every one of them, there are ten guys who don’t make it two years.”

“Retirement at twenty-nine. Wow. That’s so young.”

“It’s a physically demanding game. There’s a reason players are shifted in and out every minute or so.”

“They change players every minute?”

I laughed. “You weren’t kidding around. You’ve never watched a hockey game, huh?”

“No. Never. A minute seems so short.”

“Not when you’re playing the game. I think the average shift is about forty-seven seconds. Top players can stay in for a minute or better; lower-level guys sometimes are out in forty seconds. All depends on stamina.”

“How long were your shifts?”

I wasn’t cocky about too many things in hockey. I was never the best, never the worst. But I was proud of my play time during my heyday. “A little over a minute.”

“Jeez. No wonder I needed the Epsom salt.”

She gazed out the window after that. I wondered what she was thinking, even considered asking—something I would normally never do. But she beat me to the punch.

“Did you have a good time when we…you know?”

She couldn’t possibly be questioning whether I liked fucking her. “You know…what?”

“When we fooled around. Had sex.”

“Why in the world would you ask me that?”

“I don’t know. I guess because we did it so many times. When we were in the moment, I thought it was because we couldn’t get enough of a good thing. But after…I don’t know. I guess I have doubt because of Noah cheating on me. If he was satisfied, why would he have cheated?”

I shook my head. That asshole ex of hers had done a number on her, even more than I’d realized. “Sweetheart, when a man cheats, it usually has nothing to do with his sex life or the woman he’s with. They cheat because they have self problems. They’re self-absorbed and have low self-esteem. How hard would it have been to break things off with you before deciding to fuck around? Not hard at all. But he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Don’t let that asshole put his issues on you. Got me?”

She didn’t look convinced. So I put my blinker on and got off at the next exit, even though we still had a half dozen to go before we got to the one for the place we were staying. Once we were off the highway, I pulled into an empty parking lot.

“What are you doing?”

I parked and made sure I had her full attention. “Fucking you was phenomenal. I missed my exit driving to the lumberyard the other day—a place I could get to with my eyes closed—because I was picturing what my dick looked like going in and out of you, the way you milked me like a tight fist, only better. Every day this week, I woke up thinking about you underneath me, and I went to bed jerking off, remembering the sound you make when you come. So whatever dumb-ass doubt that moron you were with planted in your brain, get rid of it. Because I didn’t have a good time, Josie. I had the best time.”

Her eyes watered. “Oh my God. I needed to hear that.”

“Didn’t tell you because you needed to hear it. Told you because it’s the truth.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and crawled over the center console onto my lap. Pressing her mouth to mine, she mumbled, “I want you.”

“Here?”

She nodded and reached down for the button of my jeans. “Please.”

The only thing better than this woman taking charge was her saying please. I wanted to hear that word from her lips every damn day. Which was a problem…but one I’d think about when I wasn’t about to have Josie Preston sink balls-deep onto my cock.