Jake remains remarkably still until he manages the slightest nod. “Ah, so now you’re a nurseanda detective.”
I know it’s a joke, but it’s the first time I wonder whether I’ve jumped to lazy conclusions instead of listening to what he’s really said. He told me he’d been restless after dinner and went for a ride, but there was no reason for me to assume he was alone—or even at his own home—and maybe the way he’d stopped my hand from moving against his thigh had nothing to do with me.
And everything to do with someone else.
I’m certainly not jealous, but my curiosity is piqued. I don’t know Jake well enough after the eight years we’ve spent across the bar from each other, even if recent weeks have made me want to ask, and suddenly I’m trying to imagine the man he might’ve been with tonight, before he ended up here with me. Myquestions wait, only so I can take a step back and attempt something predictable first.
“I’ve been told I’m a damn good bartender, too.”
“Damn good,” Jake echoes. “And you’re sure enough about it that you don’t need me to agree with anyone who’s said it before.”
“Where were you drinking tonight?”
“At home.”
“Alone?”
“Are these questions coming from the detective or the bartender?”
I shrug. “Maybe they’re from your friend.”
“Maybe they are,” Jake says.
He studies me for a few more seconds, then scoots off the desk with a wince. I catch him there without thinking, my hands at his waist, and when we both realize he needs help to get dressed again, I feel like the moment should be so much more awkward than it is. I mumble an apology, mostly because it seems like the next line in a script I don’t know all that well, and crouch to get a grip on his jeans. Then I make the mistake of looking up at Jake again, too close to kneeling for the second time tonight.
I don’t hurry to stand. He doesn’t turn away.
“It’s never happened. A man on his knees for me.”
Questions I’d had before become tasteless on my tongue, and I swallow hard before I begin to cover his legs with jeans that fit him too well. I rise slowly, conscious of the bandages as I move past them, and I think maybe I hold my breath until I’m forced tolet it go.
“Because you’d rather give than receive?”
“Haven’t been on my knees for a man either.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, face to face again and blinking up at him. Without warning, his hands cover mine, and he doesn’t speak when he loosens my hold on his jeans, able to tuck himself in just fine, even if I think I would’ve helped with that, too. I tell myself to tease him about something, but I don’t have it in me when he’s caught up in sleepy honesty, and I keep my voice low when I trip and fall into the same. “When I was touching your thigh, you—reacted. You didn’t hate it.”
Jake chuckles, though it’s too serious. “It’s a good touch. Just not one I’m used to.”
“From me?”
“From anyone. My wife died a long time ago, and there hasn’t been anyone since.”
It’s a heavy sentence that carries no extra weight. Jake doesn’t want my sympathy, nor is he grieving in this moment, his words a simple statement meant to explain a complicated thing. I don’t offer any of what he’d brush off anyway, still so close to him when I go on.
“There were no men before her?”
“We met as teenagers. Got married just before we turned 20,” he says. “It’s never been more than a hypothetical to me.”
“But you’ve thought about it?” I ask.
Jake’s eyes drop to my bare chest and back up again, his smirk a lot like most of mine. “I could get a Guinness anywhere.”
That startles a laugh out of me, and I finally give us both some breathing room while I put the first aid kit back together and stash it in V’s drawer. Jake fastens the button on his jeans and pulls his belt tight, and if it draws any of my attention to his body again, I think I have to ignore it. I have to do a few other things too, and I nod toward the open office door.
“I need to finish closing up, but it shouldn’t take long,” I tell him. “Sit down. Relax if you can get comfortable enough in one of these chairs.”
Jake waves me away, and my only stop on the way back to the bar is to grab my t-shirt, wallet, and car keys from the employee room. I’m grateful again for the slow night that allowed me to knock out most of my closing routine before Jake stumbled through our barn doors, and as I move to lock the door to the beer garden I’d finished clearing an hour ago, I make a phone call and ask for a favor.