Flirting With Temptation (21 page)
“Hold on, I’ll get something.” He got up, opened the bathroom cabinet and spied a bottle of Ibuprofen. He grabbed it and, after their talk this afternoon about expired dates, turned it to check that it was, in fact, okay through next year. “Good.” Then he grabbed a glass from beside the sink, filled it with water and moved back to the tub. “Here.”
She didn’t move her hands toward the pills, though they had left her boobs, which was good, due to what that image had done to his manhood. But instead, she leaned forward and licked the two pills from his palm, then she moved her mouth toward the glass, and Jeff realized that what relief his dick had received from her putting her hands back in the water was lost with the sensation of her tongue against his palm.
“Thanks,” she said, resting her head against the back of the tub again and closing her eyes.
He swallowed. It took a damn decent man not to take advantage of this situation. Then again, the fact that he was sitting beside the tub and taking in Babette in all her wet glory was probably taking advantage enough, but he couldn’t very well leave her soaking in the tub in the state she was in. She might drown. Or he’d tell himself that, because he really did like sitting here, not necessarily because Babette was nude in the tub, but because he really liked helping Babette, period.
“I think I’m done.” She pushed on the sides of the tub and stood up.
He pressed a hand to her forehead, and it didn’t feel as hot. Not exactly cool, but not as hot either.
She stepped out of the tub and stood there dripping on the floor.
“Hang on, I’ll get a towel.” He grabbed one off a rack nearby and handed it to her.
She took it, moved it to her face and yelped. Then she dropped it to the floor. “Hurts.”
He hadn’t thought of that. He scanned the room for something to use and spotted the silky shirt she’d been wearing. “How about this?”
She took it, dabbed at her face, and then started patting the remainder of her body dry. “Thanks.”
“You’re okay?” he asked.
“Still stinging, but not as much.”
“I’ll go get the stuff I brought to help.” He left the bathroom and then returned with the bag of medicine and the sheets he’d brought from his condo. She was standing near the tub with the silky shirt held in front of her and covering everything important.
“I’ve got an aloe lotion with Lidocaine to help numb the pain.” He lifted the bottle from the bag and placed it on the counter. “Can you put it on?”
She smiled, but it was kind of lopsided with her mouth so swollen. “I think I can.”
“Good. Use that lotion, while I put these on your bed.”
“What are those?” she looked toward the folded sheets he held.
“Satin sheets. They’ll be softer than the cotton ones you have on there now, and hopefully, they won’t bother your burn so you can sleep.”
Another lopsided smile. “Thanks.”
While she used the aloe lotion, he put the navy satin sheets on her bed and turned back the coverlet. “Where are your sleep shirts?”
“Top drawer on the right,” she called from the bathroom.
Jeff opened the drawer, found the one he thought was the softest, the least likely to hurt her skin, and then turned.
She stood near the bathroom door still holding the damp satin shirt in front of her.
“I really do feel better now. I can already tell the Lidocaine is working.”
“Good,” he said, placing the night shirt on the bed. “Here, I think this one will feel the best.” He cleared his throat. “If you need anything during the night, just call. I’ll be right down.”
“Thanks.”
He left the bedroom, made it through the living room and to the door, then he paused, wondering if she’d want him to stay, not in her bed, but on the couch, just in case she needed him during the night.
“Jeff?”
He turned and saw she’d already put on the pale blue nightshirt and had followed him into the living room. “Yeah?”
“I shouldn’t have any trouble for the next day or so. Keeping the rule, I mean.”
He’d expected her to ask him to stay, so her statement didn’t make sense, until she continued.
“About no flirting. Kind of tough to flirt, or even look all that appealing, when you’re sunburned.”
He could tell her it’d take more than a sunburn to squelch her appeal to any male, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “That’s okay. You’ll still have another week to go.”
“I
can
do it. And you will talk to Kitty.”
“No, you can’t. And I won’t.”
“We’ll see.” She smiled, then moved a hand to those swollen lips.
“I put some petroleum jelly in that bag. You should put it on your mouth.”
“Hey, maybe the big lips will make it impossible for me to whistle-flirt. I might just keep them.”
“Use the jelly, Babette. You don’t want your lips to peel.”
Her nose wrinkled at that. “Right. Thanks.” She gently tapped her forefinger across her lower lip to apparently test just how swollen it was. “Do I look like Mick Jagger?”
“I was thinking Angelina Jolie.”
She nodded. “That’ll work. Good night, Jeff.”
“Night, Babette.”
T
he phone in Babette’s condo rang promptly at 4:30 Tuesday afternoon, exactly when Jeff had told Rose that he’d get off work. He’d been calling periodically ever since he left Babette Saturday night, and each time, she made sure her personal guardian took the call. However, this time, Rose had her hands covered in flour and was busy rolling out biscuit dough. She shot a look over her shoulder at Babette, gently stirring the gravy on the stove while Rose’s friend Tillie watched approvingly.
“Babette, you’re going to have to get it this time,” Rose said. “I’m busy.”
“Now Rose, you know she can’t leave the gravy now. It’ll get lumpy. She has to keep stirring.”
“And I can’t get it anyway,” Babette said. “Or he’ll know I can talk.”
“Oh, Good Lord, you can’t keep hiding from him, Babette,” Rose said, yelling over the shrill ring of the phone. The three of them stared at it, but no one left their current post in the kitchen, and it blessedly stopped ringing.
“I know I can’t hide from him forever, but the longer Jeff thinks I’m too sunburned to get out of the condo, the more days I’m not out there tempted to flirt. And if I make it without flirting, then he has to talk to Kitty, and I get to keep my hundred percent rating, and Kitty’s money.”
“What I don’t understand is why you don’t just meet with him, do your people reading thing, like you’re going to do for us, and then tell him why he and Kitty should be together,” Tillie said, making it all sound so easy. And it would be, if Jeff was like any normal Love Doctor assignment. But he wasn’t. And that was the problem.
“She can’t,” Rose said flatly, running a hand over the rolled biscuit dough and patting the yeast bubbles as she did. “Did you see how I did this, Babette? You roll gently. If you bear down too hard, you’ll make the dough too flat, and the biscuits will be harder than rocks.”
“I saw,” Babette said. “But I probably still need to do some myself, don’t you think?”
“Oh, definitely. I just knew you were busy with the gravy this time. We’ll do biscuits again another day.”
“What do you mean she can’t?” Tillie asked, unswayed by the cooking instruction in the middle of their conversation. “Why can’t you just get them together the way you do everyone else?” She turned an accusing eye toward Rose. “You told all of us that she never misses, that she could help us with the guys at Sunny Beaches, and all we had to do was teach her how to cook.”
Rose pursed her lips. “She doesn’t miss.” Then she opened Babette’s cabinets until she found the glasses, got one and turned it upside down, then pressed it in the rolled dough to cut the first biscuit. Babette watched with awe, and promptly got a hand slap from Tillie.
“You can’t stop stirring the gravy.”
“Right. Sorry,” Babette said, then turned her attention back to her own project.
“And why
can’t
you do the normal Love Doctor thing with Jeff?” Tillie pressed.
“I can’t read him,” Babette said honestly. “Or I forget to, or something. But I’ve been with him a few times since I got here, and not once have I even thought to check for body language, or signals when he says Kitty’s name, or anything. It’s like I totally blank out when I’m around him. He’s not like anyone else I’ve ever talked to.”
“Wonder why that is,” Rose muttered from the other side of the kitchen.
“So, are you just going to ignore him the rest of the time you’re here?” Tillie asked. “And what good will that do?”
“I know I can’t ignore him the whole time, but I’m going to keep it up as long as I can. If he doesn’t see me, he can’t see me flirting. And if I can pull off not flirting until next week, then he’ll have to see her, talk to Kitty, and I’ll keep my business thriving. Better than thriving, with Kitty Carelle on my list of satisfied clients.”
“And you won’t even have to read him,” Tillie surmised.
“That’s the plan, though there is the problem of Kitty wanting to know something now. She wants me to tell her
something
about Jeff’s comments regarding her.”
“And if you don’t talk to him about her, you’ve got nil, right?” Tillie asked.
Babette nodded.
Rose mumbled something else, but Babette didn’t catch it.
“What are you saying over there?” Babette asked, while Tillie popped her wrist, and then she promptly picked back up with her stirring in progress.
“I’m saying that he’s not the one who needs reading around here. You are.”
“What?” Babette asked, while the phone rang again. “Rose, can you get it this time?”
“I’m not lying to him,” she said, the same way she had every other time he’d called.
Babette looked at Tillie. “Will you finish stirring it for me? I get the gist of it now. Keep it on low heat, and stir it forever.”
Tillie smirked, took over control of the wooden spoon. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Okay, go get in the bed,” she said, shooing Babette out of the kitchen.
Babette dashed through the condo and dived into the bed at the very moment that Rose picked up the phone.
“Hello,” Rose said sweetly. “Oh, hi, Jeff. Yeah, I couldn’t get to the phone a little bit ago, busy cooking some dinner for Babette. We’re having breakfast for supper. I always like having breakfast for supper. Kind of changes things up, you know.” She was rambling, and Babette listened appreciatively. Thanks to the Lidocaine, aloe and Ibuprofen, she’d felt relatively normal by Sunday afternoon. Monday was even better, and today even more. So she’d taken advantage of being holed up in her condo by letting Rose’s sidekicks teach her how to cook and tell her about the guys they wanted to meet over at Sunny Beaches. It’d been a lot of fun, kind of like an elderly summer camp, and the best part was she hadn’t been tempted whatsoever to flirt and had consequently crossed three days off her time that she had to go without doing so. From the look of things, next week Jeff would meet with Kitty and Babette would be a successful businesswoman once more. Committed to her job, and proving to Jeff that women—more specifically, she—could commit.
Life was good.
“No, I don’t think she’s up for company,” Rose said, like she’d told him every other time he’d called. “Her lips?” She peeked in at Babette, who smiled broadly. “Well, I think they’re going to be just fine. Her arms started peeling a bit today, but we put some lotion on them and they’re going to be okay.” Rose paused, frowned, and Babette got a tad worried. He’d evidently asked a tougher question. “I guess she’s just being safe, you know, staying out of the sun while her skin is healing and all. And she’s taking it easy at night, hasn’t really felt up to going out after the sunburn ordeal. She says it even hurts her to talk.” Rose nodded, and Babette breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like she’d made it another day, and she was thrilled.
Finally, Rose hung up the phone.
“What did he ask, that last time?”
“He wanted to know why you weren’t at least getting out of the condo at night, since he knows how much you enjoy the beach in the evening. Then he asked again to come see you, and I told him you didn’t want to see anyone until you felt better.”
“Did he believe you?” Tillie asked, while Babette left the bedroom and went back to the kitchen to check on the gravy.
“I think he did.” Rose’s eyes followed Babette as she moved across the room. “But I’m not going to mislead him again, Babette. And I honestly think you need to face whatever is really going on here. There’s a reason you can’t read him, and I think you know what it is.”
Babette started to argue, but before she could get the first word out, someone knocked at the door.
“That’s probably Hannah,” Tillie said. “She was waiting until after Bingo to come over and help with the cooking.”
“I’ll get it.” Babette smiled at the two women taking over her kitchen, then moved to the door to let the third one in. But upon opening the door, she didn’t find the four-foot-nothing eighty-two-year-old who’d proclaimed her cinnamon roll recipe the best ever. On the contrary, she found a six-foot-two thirty-eight-year-old who hadn’t been calling from his office. Jeff held a cell phone to his ear and looked at her as though she’d been . . . caught.
“I thought you were in bed,” he said. “Too sore from your sunburn to get up.” He stepped inside, sniffed, and said toward the kitchen, “At least the part about cooking breakfast for dinner was true, huh, Rose?”
Rose slammed the oven door closed—she’d been checking on the biscuits—and scurried toward Jeff, her black granny shoes working double-time in the effort. “I promise you, she was in the bed when I said she was,” Rose said matter-of-factly. “I told her I wasn’t going to lie. I may spy, but I don’t lie,” she said, nodding for emphasis. “So she got in the bed, and then I said she was there.”
He grinned, and Babette gawked. “Rose!”
“That’s what happened. I told you we wouldn’t be able to fool him that much longer.” Rose shrugged. “Her sunburn isn’t that bad at all anymore, so I guess you did a pretty good job doctoring her on Saturday.”
“Not that I’d have known that from my phone calls,” he said.
