I wanted Jake Harding before I even really knew what "wanting" something like that meant. I mean, what wasn't there to want about him? He was charming, and rugged in that manly way you only read in books or saw in movies, and he always had something nice to say to me, even at my dorkiest, nerdiest phase.

He was also incredibly handsome with dark eyes, a strong jaw and a totally dreamy smile. I think I knew a man like Mr. Harding was “sexy” before I even know what sexy was; I knew he stirred something inside of me, even if I didn’t quite know what that something was.

Ok, at twenty-five years my senior, and married, and our next door neighbor, and best friends with my parents, it was hardly a feasible match; not by a freaking mile.

But I couldn't help what I felt. And what started as our names written on the covers of notebooks and childishly flighty daydreams quickly turned into something much more adult and much more longing as I got older.

By the time I was eighteen, a senior, and getting ready to leave home for the first time, I was barely able to talk around him he got me so tongue tied and flustered.

I'd watch him, biting my lip with bated breath as he peeled his t-shirt off his sweaty muscled torso after mowing the lawn. I'd let my eyes wander over every inch of his rugged chest, and imagine those big strong arms of his - still muscled from years of playing football back in the Navy with my dad - picking me up, instead of the bag full of grass clippings.

Sure, I flirted, in that geeky, bumbling and inexperienced way that girls do before we really know what the hell we're doing. But it obviously never led to anything in the slightest. To Mr. Harding, I was just that gawky girl from next door; his buddy's daughter with braces and a bizarre way of blushing and stumbling over her words.

But still, the seed was there, and as senior year turned into summer, that burning feeling of need and want got stronger and stronger the closer I got to leaving for college.

* * *

W e’d moved a lot when I was a kid, with my father being a Navy doctor. And being that a lot of those moves were overseas, by the time they got back to the States and stuck me into more regular schooling, I was stuck somewhere between two grades. The school decided that it was better for me to be on the older and more prepared side than the younger and playing constant catch-up side, so I was placed into 8th rather than 9th grade, which was also good because it gave me another year to acclimate to being a kid in the States and not living on a Naval base before I jumped into high school the next year.

It was late August that last summer at home, the night of my nineteenth birthday and just two weeks before I'd be on my way to school. That’s the night when that first event occurred that would quickly push me down the path to what happened later. Yes, I'd wanted Jake for years, but when I look back, I know it was what I heard, and then what I saw that night that turned me from curious and fantasizing to flat out pining determination.

I remember the night was hot and sticky in that muggy way only Florida can get. We had an AC unit in our living room back then, but my parents being the conservationist sticklers that they were, we were stuck with only fans in our bedrooms for those long hot nights.

I tossed and turned that evening, kicking off even the thin sheet from my sweat-sheened body and then yanking my tank-top off before lying back in just my panties trying to get comfortable in the heat.

Part of it, besides the temperature, was that I had Jake Harding on the brain bad that night. My parents had thrown me a big BBQ cookout in the backyard by the pool to celebrate my birthday that night.  I'd invited a couple friends, but mostly it was just my mom, dad, and younger brother, and of course the Hardings from next door.

I suppose it’s worth reiterating one teeny little detail here that Jake was not only much older - scandalously older, really - and friends with my parents, but also very much married. But Lenore, his wife, was always a little frosty I thought, and it wasn't just because I had the hots for her husband. They were one of those couples that just didn’t make sense to anyone. My dad had once let something slip about how Lenore’s father had given Jake a pretty great job after the Navy, before he started working for himself as college football scout, but my mom had hushed him after that, saying we had better things to do than pry into that.

Well, she might have, but understanding what Jake found appealing about women was something I was very much interested in.

Anyways, that night at the BBQ, she’d seemed extra standoffish, giving me only the smallest of cold smiles as she wished me a happy birthday.

Jake meanwhile had given me the best present I could have never actually asked for, which was part of the reason I was lying awake like this now, so late in the evening. When they'd walked over from their yard to ours for the party, he'd dropped a nicely wrapped gift on the picnic table, and then come over and picked me up in a big bear-hug! I about died right there as he'd swung me around, those big strong arms holding me tightly to his muscled body and making me squeal as he chuckled.

"How the hell did you get so big , Chelsea?" He’d said, grinning broadly at me at he set my trembling, blushing body back on the ground.

"Jake!" Lenore had rolled her eyes and smacked him in the arm. "You don't call girls 'big'. And watch your language!"

He'd rolled his eyes at my furiously blushing face. “Oh, heck , you know what I mean Chelsea. You grew up! And now you're heading off to college ! Man, where does the time go?" He pushed his hand up through his thick brown hair, flashing me that handsome grin that got me hot all over. “Besides, Lenore, she knows I'm not calling her big. " He'd looked at me with that melting smile across his jaw. “You know you're going to be a little heart breaker at school, don't you Chelsea?"