Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) (20 page)

Not as wicked either.

But he was right. Whatever she’d gotten into, it was all over her skirt. In her sweater too. She gulped.

Then gulped again. 

Then surrendered the hose so she could strip.

Nearly naked.

In front of CJ.

“I need to text Lindsey.” If she kept up a stream of conversation, she could pretend she wasn’t unzipping her skirt or worrying about what underwear she’d put on this morning or if he’d notice her mostly faded stretch marks. “She’ll bring me clean clothes.”

CJ’s full concentration seemed to be on mixing baking soda and water in a bowl. “Nicer than my sisters would be,” he said.

“Doubt it,” Natalie muttered. Because now that she thought about it, she
wasn’t
so sure Lindsey would be helpful if she knew Nat was stripping to her Skivvies in front of CJ. She’d gone all lawyerly and danced around Natalie’s questions as to how CJ ended up with her wallet. Which wasn’t like Lindsey at all. She didn’t play matchmaker. Nor did she usually cause hell just for the fun of it, especially when she knew how important the Golden Husband Games were to Natalie.

Natalie’s skirt hit the floor. She made quick work of yanking off her sweater. One minute CJ was staring at the baking soda mixture, the next he was scooping Natalie up and depositing her at the edge of the sink. He thrust the water at her, and she got the impression he hadn’t taken a single glance at her body.

It was almost disappointing.

“Keep spraying,” he said.

With her legs bent in the sink, she turned the sprayer on them.

And once again, moaned in relief.

CJ’s shoulders bunched. He was staring at the baking soda again. “My sister Pepper snuck out to a farm party one night in high school. Wore sandals. She got itchweed so bad, she couldn’t stand socks or pants for a week.”

Nat’s hands stung again, so she alternated the spray between her arms and legs. CJ’s green polo was getting damp from the mist off the sprayer.

“A week?” Natalie said. “I can’t wear clothes for a
week
?”

Damn the man and his adorable upturned lips. “Week or two, I’d say.”

A week or
two
? “Oh,
hell
, no,” she started, but then she noticed the vibration in his shoulders.

He was playing with her.

“You—”

He expertly flicked the sprayer out of her hands before she could turn it on him. “Hold still.” He picked up the bowl and brought it close, eyes trained on hers. “This’ll help.”

Before she could ask
what
would help, he slopped the wet mixture in both hands, and then, with slow, sure strokes, he rubbed it down her arms and over her hands. Her breath caught.

“My sister, Margie, could tell you the science behind this, but she’s as stuffy as Basil. I’d rather go to confession than listen to the two of them have a conversation. Makes your ears bleed.”

He didn’t flinch over the word
confession
, but she didn’t believe he’d slipped it in there completely innocently.

But with his hands rubbing her half-naked body down with gritty white goop, it was overlookable. Her skin pebbled into goose bumps, both from his touch and from the cool air around her. The man had talented hands. Competent, confident, warm.

She’d need to go to confession with all the ideas his touch inspired. “You like your family?” she asked. She needed something safe. Something normal.

If he noticed her teeth chattering, he didn’t comment. Simply piled more mix in his hands and went back to rubbing her down. “Most of ’em. Most days.”

“How do you keep them all straight?” Her head had swum at the conversations whipping around her when she’d fixed Saffron’s veil. She couldn’t imagine keeping all eleven of them straight.

“You don’t,” CJ said.

Natalie laughed. He grinned at her, then moved to rub the goo on her legs.

She shivered again. “Can you name them all?”

His hands stroked up and down her calves. “Nah, we just use numbers.”

This time her laugh caught in her throat, because his fingers were massaging the goop into her skin with tiny circles. The pressure had her on the cusp between needing to squeeze her thighs together to relieve the tension building there, and wanting to shove him away for tickling her.

She closed her eyes and decided there was nothing wrong with enjoying a cheap thrill. She was still a woman, this wouldn’t go anywhere, and it would probably be another five or ten years before another man touched her. “What number are you?”

“Numbers don’t matter when you’re the best.”

She missed the cue to laugh again. His hands stilled, and she blinked her eyes open.

He wasn’t smiling.

He wasn’t frowning either.

He was simply standing there, watching her watch him, his hands resting on her knees. Her pulse danced in her veins and her heart knocked in her chest. She made a quick swipe of her lips with her tongue, and his breathing went ragged.

Maybe he was enjoying rubbing her legs as much as she was enjoying having them rubbed.

Or maybe she was delusional. Delusional was probably the best scenario. Because she already thought about him too much, and nothing good could come of his thinking about her too.

And she couldn’t fathom why he’d want to.

“How long does this stuff need to stay on?” Her voice wobbled, thick and low.

CJ took his time looking down to her legs. Under his gaze, the skin on her chest prickled, then the skin on her belly, around her belly button, beneath her panties.

He took one hand off her knee, grabbed the sprayer. “Feeling better?” he asked, and she was both relieved and terrified to note the husky tones in his voice.

She nodded.

“You’ll want some itch cream for a few days.” He took her hand, held it over the sink, and rinsed her arm, but this time, he wasn’t watching her arm.

He was watching her.

Her face, her eyes. Her lips.

This was crazy. He didn’t like her. She didn’t like—no, that wasn’t true.

She did like him.

She liked him too much. So she
needed
him to not like her.

He switched arms, carefully rinsing off more of the hardened white goo.

“You’re very pretty when you laugh,” he said.

“I wasn’t laughing.”

“You should be.”

He cradled her arm as if it were more delicate than a newborn, his touch as gentle as she would be with Noah. She had to swallow again, but nothing could cut the way her mouth had gone dry. She should’ve been cold. Instead, the kiss of the cool air against her wet skin made her feel more alive, more aware. “There’s nothing funny right now,” she whispered.

“Oh, it’s funny. Pretty sure I just heard God laughing.”

She needed to tell him to stop. Finish rinsing herself. Call Lindsey. Get to work.

Instead, her wet fingers drifted up to touch his cheek. “Thank you.” She swallowed against the huskiness in her own voice. “For your help. Here.”

He angled closer to her, his eyes never leaving hers. “Everyone needs help sometimes.”

“I don’t think I deserve it.”

He answered her whisper by twisting his wet fingers in her hair, his body becoming a solid shield between her and life’s complications. “When’s the last time anybody helped you with anything?”

“I help me.”

But she wasn’t built for it. She wasn’t tough and driven like Lindsey, she wasn’t the natural nurturer Mom had been. Deep down, she was still a spoiled princess who couldn’t cope with the difficulties of living in the land of wedding dresses and cake monuments and “Canon in D” without her prince charming. She did the best she could, but never felt that her best touched adequate.

And she suspected CJ saw every last one of her insecurities. It shouldn’t have mattered, but she didn’t want him to think she was weak. Didn’t want him to see the rest of her faults.

Didn’t want to confuse the fairy tale with reality.

But she couldn’t move away when his lips lowered to hers. Because he
was
good with his lips. His hands. His tongue. And probably several other body parts she shouldn’t think about.

So she gave up thinking, just for a little bit, and let herself kiss him back.

Just for a little bit.

But kissing him without touching him was impossible, so she rested her hands on his chest, felt it rise and fall with the steady drum of his heart beneath the solid wall of muscle, and restarted the clock on
just for a little bit
. Because this was much better.

Better still was when he wrapped her closer, kissed her harder, nudged open that long-neglected part of her that still craved a man’s touch. His touch was a uniquely thrilling combination, luxurious as silk and rough as starched lace. It left her aching for more, and she let instinct take over, squashing that part of her whispering a reminder that Noah’s mom and the covert planner of the Golden Husband Games should
not
be kissing this man.

Or sneaking her hands to the hot skin beneath his shirt, or letting him dip his just-this-side-of-chilly wet fingers beneath her panties.

“I don’t know why I want you so bad,” he said.

“Shut up and don’t stop.”

He took orders damn well. Before long, he’d hefted her out of the sink and up against the nearest wall, kissing her desperately, both of them fumbling with his clothes. Then he said it. “Protection?”

Gasped it, really, with the same needy desperation she felt all the way to her bones, but the word brought her back to reality.

She froze, pulled her arm back to hold her bra up. “You don’t—?”

He winced, slowly backed away, letting her slide to the floor while he scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t.”

She was breathless, heart pounding. She was also suddenly painfully aware of how little clothing she had on and how big and open the kitchen was. “So, ah, I’m just gonna go wait. For Lindsey. In the bathroom.”

At least, she hoped that’s what she said. She couldn’t hear herself speak over the
Shit! Dammit! What the
hell
was I thinking?
chorus in her brain.

She needed a second job to support her cussing habit.

He stared at his feet. “Sure.”

She hadn’t been prepared for that to hurt. But the bigger surprise was that she wanted to launch herself at him and ask him to kiss her—just kiss her—a little bit more.

Make her feel special for a few more minutes.

Make her feel wanted.

Make her feel like a woman again. Not a mom, not a daughter, not a surrogate shop owner.

Just a woman.

She blinked against the sting in her eyes. She couldn’t afford to feel like a woman. That never ended well for her, and she didn’t have room for one more regret.

“Thanks again,” she choked out. She snagged her purse and fled the kitchen for the bathroom, back to her regularly scheduled, CJ-free life.

Because that was reality, and reality was the only thing she could count on.

W
OMEN WERE TROUBLE. It was a truth CJ had been born into, but knowing the truth didn’t make living with it any easier.

“You got a bone up your butt, boy?” Huck said. He’d arrived to play cook today fifteen minutes after Natalie left with Lindsey’s assistant, and he’d spent the last thirty minutes being more annoying than half of CJ’s sisters put together.

Or perhaps CJ was simply in a foul mood. “Nope.”

“You break those bottles, you’re buying ’em.”

CJ took more care with the next beers he pulled out of the back cooler to stock the front, but he didn’t reply.

“Two solutions to your problem,” Huck called. “Forget her or do her.”

Forget her.

CJ needed to forget her.

“I vote you do her,” Huck said. “Preferably tonight. Got some money on you.”

CJ spun on him. “She’s got a kid, Huck.”

“So?”

So
was right. Two consenting adults could keep a kid out of it.

But CJ couldn’t. Whether because Noah made a convenient excuse or because CJ liked the kid, he couldn’t say.

He did know, though, that everything that affected Natalie affected Noah. Her job, her friends, her reputation. It all filtered to Noah one way or another.

“I’m leaving after Knot Fest,” CJ said. And he was seventy percent sure it wasn’t just his ego thinking that his leaving would affect Natalie.

“Long time away,” Huck said. “Tell you what. You decide you like it here, I’ll take that trip for you. Wouldn’t mind getting away from the exes a while. Don’t get married again. Ain’t no such thing as being done with ’em when they still got their hands in your cookie jar after the divorce.”

“Appreciate the offer. Don’t need the advice though.”

“Don’t ever let anybody say I ain’t a giver. Hell, boy. Ain’t gonna hurt a thing for you to try her out. You know women. She’ll decide you ain’t all that in the end anyway.”

“Watch your mouth,” CJ growled.

Growled.

For Natalie.

Shit
.

Huck’s laughter took on a gleeful edge. “Don’t forget. I got tonight.”

CJ went back to stocking for the lunch crowd. “Too bad you booked me for a double shift.”

Huck let out a string of foulness that would’ve been worth a few dollars in Natalie’s cussing jar. And when CJ realized he was thinking about Natalie’s cussing jar—another tidbit about her he’d picked up from his customers in the last week or so—he added a few quarters’ worth himself.

Knowing he was facing a revolving door of single women auditioning for the role of his Golden Husband Games partner tonight didn’t help. He didn’t mind the tips, but he wasn’t in the mood for women.

Not when his curiosity about the wrong one had him tied up in knots that this festival couldn’t fix.

Chapter Eleven

S
ATURDAY WAS BUSY, thank God, but with Noah underfoot, still wearing CJ’s Air Force Falcons hat, the day felt like a bustle with two popped buttons. At least Natalie had recovered from her itchweed, if not from whatever insanity had prompted her to make out with CJ again.