And J. T. was leaning against the hood, watching the canyon as avidly as if it were the Superbowl. She had told him about the view.
She hung back. Breath lost.
He was wearing faded jeans and apparently nothing else, unless it was boots. That smooth burnished gold of his shoulder and the eloquent wedge of his torso vanishing into the waistband of his jeans made her knees watery.
He looked like every fantasy of every bad boy she’d ever had. Times a million.
She gawked.
“Out walking your mountain lion?” he called.
She was pretty sure he hadn’t even looked up. But then maybe he had, and she’d been too busy feasting her eyes on his torso to notice.
His torso disappeared a moment. She heard some rummaging and clinking and then the pop and hiss of a bottle being opened.
His head popped back up and reappeared and held a beer out to her.
She closed the distance between them, took the beer and tapped it lightly against his, and took a sip. Because he’d been right before. She did like a good beer.
“So how did your day go, Britt Langley?”
“Well, J. T., my day was pretty great. I got home from work at the Misty Cat today, and discovered that someone had fixed my porch. I couldn’t finagle who it was out of Mrs.Morrison. All she would tell me is that it was someone with three names. And that he took off his shirt to do it. And that he patched some holes and changed some high-up lightbulbs for her and invented a new drink.”
His eyes lit as he listened to this recitation.
His mouth still sort of somber.
“You mind?” he said, after a moment.
The same thing she’d said to him when he’d turned the corner of his house and was stopped in his tracks by those blue-eyed Mary’s.
“That I missed the shirtless part? Heck yeah, I mind.”
He didn’t reply. Just wrapped her in a slow smile.
She could have said a million other things. That he had a lot of nerve. Because she could in fact take care of herself, and she would have gotten around to fixing that porch.
And that it was the nicest thing she could remember anyone doing for her, let alone a man, because it wasn’t just about a porch, it was about her safety and the integrity of a little house she loved, and she knew damn well he knew it, too. But she struggled with surrender, because surrender felt like vulnerability and still carried with it a whiff of danger, just like the old sagging top step of her porch, for example. It could be a trap she fell right through.
She supposed she knew in her heart that his little lecture of the night before was exactly right: sometimes it was okay to just let go and let someone fix your porch. Maybe it didn’t have to be anything more than that.
But she kind of had the sense that allowing him to give to her was her way of giving to him too. And frankly, when she was standing next to him, she wanted him to have whatever he wanted, particularly if he wanted her body.
“Thank you,” she said shyly. And somewhat stiffly.
He just smiled at her. Like he knew everything she wasn’t saying.
“I’ll paint it, if you want. Still got some downtime.”
“If you want to.”
“I want to,” he said easily.
“Okay,” she said. It was getting easier to agree to stuff.
He flashed her a smile. “Saw some of the old furniture you refinished up there, too. Nice job on those. You got yourself a little plant hospital, too. You like rescuing things, Britt Langley?”
It sounded a little innuendo-y, that question.