CHAPTER TWELVE
Derek banged on Jenny’s front door. When she’d come into the garage earlier he’d been on the phone with Martin Bradford, his contact at the bank, feeling him out about a loan. The call had not been going well. Then Derek had seen Jenny talking to Burke. Her deer-in-headlights response when she saw him in the office had made him smile.
He was more interested in the look that had followed.
Her eyes had been wide, her lips slightly parted, and she’d stared at him with an irresistible mix of challenge, desire, and denial.
The first two he was happy about.
As for the third? He’d always known he had his work cut out.
He raised his hand to knock again, and Jenny snatched open the door.
She was in jeans and a button-down shirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Hi.” She attempted to step out onto the porch and shut the door behind her. This move would necessitate Derek stepping back to give her room.
Derek calmly stood his ground.
Jenny, under the mistaken impression that he was going to be polite, fetched up against him, and she had to tilt her head back to meet his amused eyes. “Nice body check,” he said. “Now let me in.”
“Can’t,” she said. “Busy. I’m about to do some yoga.” She did not leap away from him, as he’d expected her to do.
Derek smiled. “Yoga?”
“I’m a huge fan. Huge. I’d go so far as to say an aficionado.”
He shifted, walking her backward across the threshold. “It’s almost like you’re saying the first thing that pops into your head in a feeble effort to keep me out.” He shut the front door behind him, and leaned against it. “Yoga in jeans sounds like a shortcut to chafing and wedgies.”
Jenny rolled her eyes at him.
Derek followed her into the kitchen. The large table was littered with crayons and sketchpads and enormous books. Some lay open to show full-color spreads of fancy-looking gardens, and the rest were piled in a messy stack, pages bristling with sticky notes. He wandered over and angled an open sketchpad toward him. He propped a hip against the table as he flipped through.
Jenny was a talented artist. She had filled the pad with a mix of garden plans and doodles, interspersed with beautiful studies of plants, a couple of manga-style cartoons of Kate, and at the very back, a dragon. Derek took in a breath.
It was an almost perfect replica of the dragon tattoo that coiled around his left arm.
Smiling, he looked up and caught Jenny watching him warily. He tilted his head to one side, but didn’t say anything. He set the sketchpad on the table. Straightening, he closed the distance between them.
“Why are you here?” she asked as he approached.
“Oh, I think you know why I’m here.”
Jenny bit her lip.
“Don’t you?” he prompted.
“I told Burke I’d mail a check. Did you need payment in cash instead? Or are you going to take my toaster? Coffeemaker, perhaps?” The last word came out in a squeak as he put his hands to her hips and lifted her onto the counter.
“You’re going to have to get over that someday, Jen.” He pushed her knees apart, hooked his hands behind them, and tugged her toward him. “It was a long time ago. And I was doing you a favor.” He braced his fists either side of her hips, leaning in.
“I know,” she said with a scowl.
“But you are right. I did come here about the bill.”
“Oh.”
“You got it on you?”
“It’s on the table. Move, and I’ll grab it.”
“Hmm.”
She squirmed against him, then shoved with a laugh.
Derek allowed her to push him an inch away and slide down his body. Jenny rifled through the mess on the table and pulled the bill out from the very bottom of the stacked books.
“Here you go-oh!”
He’d been waiting for her, leaning against the counter, ankles crossed. When she came back to him, he picked her up again and set her on the counter in the same spot.
Jenny clutched his forearms. “Derek!”
He adjusted her until her ass was right at the edge and she was tucked against him, and held out a hand for the bill.
Jenny’s fingers clenched around it. She gave him a suspicious look. “Don’t you want the money? Why do you even need this?”
“Need to check the amount. I might have undercharged you.”
She thrust it at him. “Here.”
He scanned it.
“What?” Jenny said. She got close, trying to read it upside down. “Did you miss something off?”
“No, it’s all there.” Derek folded the bill and stuffed it in his back pocket. “But the price has changed.”
Jenny stared at him, then poked him in the chest. Hard. “You said you’d charge me for parts. You are not fixing my car for free, Derek. I will not take advantage of your sweet nature.”
“I ain’t that sweet, honey. I never said it was free. Said the price had changed.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I am not going to sleep with you for fixing my car.”
“No,” he agreed. “That is not why you’re going to sleep with me. You’re going to sleep with me because, sooner or later, you’re going to get tired of pretending that you don’t want this as much as I do. And, honey? It’s going to be sooner.”
“Wow.”
“That it?” he asked after a beat of silence. “That’s all you got? I was expecting a tirade.”
“A tirade? I’m sorry, I’m too busy reeling at your arrogance to muster up anything as dramatic as a tirade. But rest assured, as soon as I’m done with the reeling, a tirade is incoming.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Sure.”
“Since we seem to agree that I won’t be charging you in orgasms, we’d better hash out exactly how you’re going to pay me back.”
Jenny’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkling. “I’m great at garden design.” She waved a hand at the sketchpad. “You need something landscaped?”
“I have an apartment. No yard.”
“I’m good with window boxes. Ask Ms. Irwin.”
“Another time.”
“What is it I’m going to give you, Derek, if not orgasms or a window box? Should I bake you cookies?”
He shook his head. “Cookies aren’t going to cut it.” He leaned in, placing a hand at the small of her back so she couldn’t shuffle away. Not that she even tried. He placed his mouth at her ear. “What I want,” he said, low, appreciating her responsive shiver, “is pizza.” He stepped back.
“Pizza?”
“Yep.” Derek sauntered out the kitchen and into the living room, where he flung himself down on the couch.
He heard the solid thud as Jenny hopped down from the counter. She marched in to stand before him. “Pizza?” she said again.
Derek lifted his boots to the coffee table.
Jenny leaned down and smacked them off. “No boots on the table.”
He braced his arms behind his head and grinned up at her.
“All right,” she said. “I can do pizza. I already know how you like it. Extra jalapenos. I’ll order it and have it delivered to your apartment for, what, seven? Or is that too early?”
“If you’re talking about today, yes, it’s too early. The pizza is pending. And don’t send it to my apartment. We’ll be having it here.”
“We?”
“I want a do-over.”
Jenny studied him. She opened her mouth to say something, but cut herself off.
“I am referring to the last time we had pizza,” Derek said.
“I remember it.”
“Then you’ll remember what happened the morning after? What I told you?”
“Other than the jalapenos, the details are fuzzy…”
He reached out, snagged her wrist, and fell back, pulling her down on top of him. “I said if I find out you’re free again, you’re mine.”
Jenny landed with a shriek. She propped herself up on her forearms. “What makes you think I’m free?”
“Sterling is having a baby with another woman.”
Her eyes dropped.
He caught the point of her chin between finger and thumb, and turned her face to his. “Somehow I doubt that you’re good with carrying on a secret affair when he’s some other woman’s baby daddy.”
Jenny hiccupped a small laugh. “Maybe it’s a relief to share the load. Maybe I can’t keep up with his sexual demands.”
“That’s not what I want to hear, Jen.”
“What can I tell you? Gabe may have turned forty last month, but you couldn’t tell by his stamina. And of course, he’s got all that experience.”
“I was thinking more that if you can’t keep up with Sterling’s demands, you’re gonna have a problem keeping up with mine.” He settled her more comfortably against him. “I want to hear you say it. Your affair with Sterling is over.”
Jenny exhaled slowly and chose her words with obvious care. “I can assure you that there is nothing sexual whatsoever between me and Gabe.”
Derek’s arms tightened. “You telling me you’re free?”
She hesitated then nodded. “Yeah. Yes. I’m a free woman.”
Derek brushed her hair from her eyes. “Are you okay with it?” he asked.
“Being free? Hell yeah. Right where I want to be.”
He scanned her for signs of hurt, but she seemed positively chipper. “It was an amicable breakup?”
“Yes. Amicable. No drama. None at all. Went straight back to normal. It’s almost as if nothing ever happened. I’m thrilled for him. He’s going to be an amazing dad.”
“Good—”
“And we’re still friends. In fact, best friends. Lila is my best girl friend, and Gabe is my best guy friend.”
Derek tightened his jaw. “What does that make me?”
“My mechanic?” Jenny smoothed a palm over his chest, her attention fixed on it as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. She added after a brief hesitation, “You haven’t talked to me for six months, Derek. I know I deserved it, but…it wasn’t very friendly of you.”
He examined her face again, and blew out a surprised breath. There it was, the hurt he’d been expecting her to feel over Sterling. “I made you unhappy, baby?”
“I’m a big girl. I can handle some frost.”
Not from him, though. “I never intended to hurt you.”
“I know. I never intended to hurt you, either.”
Jenny was still stroking his chest. Her palm coasted over his pecs and stopped, her brow furrowing. She lifted up a little. “What’s that?”
She’d found his piercing.
Well.
She’d found one of them.
Suppressing his smile, Derek shrugged.
Jenny brushed her fingertips over it again, seeming fascinated. She went back and forth a few times, then glanced up at him through her lashes.
He waited.
She lifted a hand and touched a fingertip to the small barbell he had in his eyebrow. Then she dropped it to his chest again and brushed over the one he had in his nipple. She squinted at him.
He grinned.
“Are you going to show me or not?” she demanded with a breathlessness that she was trying, Derek could tell, to make sound like annoyance.
“Are you going to ask me nicely?”
“Maybe I’ll stick my hand up your shirt without asking at all. You know. Like a dude. It’s all right, baby, I just want to touch you a little bit. It’s no big thing. I won’t even take off your bra. Swear.”
“Mmm,” Derek said. “Your man voice—I’m assuming that’s what the last bit was supposed to be—is very arousing. You keep sweet-talking me like that, I can’t promise to control myself.”
“Derek.”
He did an ab curl, taking her with him. He reached for the hem of his tee, lifted it up and over his head, and tossed it over the back of the couch. Then he lay back down.
Jenny remained bolt upright, straddling him.