Jaxson's Song (9 page)

“
Oh, forget it. Just forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

“
No, I’m not a fucking lesbian. I like women,” he
growled.

Kate stared pointedly at
him, but remained silent.

He pinched the bridge of
his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I work at a club,” he
ground out, “I’m a…dancer. This,” he swept a hand down the front of
his body, “has nothing to do with my sexuality, okay?” He glared at
her.

“
Fine.” Her own lips thinned.

“
I’m just not—I can’t—you have to go.”

“
Yeah, I get it. I’m going.”

“
Next time, keep your so called
help
to yourself,” he called
out, staring hard at her retreating form, pissed off that even now
he wanted to haul her back into the bedroom.

* * *

“
That isn’t why I came in here!” she protested, turning and
stalking back into the room.

“
Yeah, well, you can go now.” He shrugged and turned away from
her.

“
Okay, what’s with you?”

“
Nothing. Just go, Kate,” he snapped, gripping the hem of his
dress and yanking it over his head. He sent it sailing across the
room before he turned to face her.

“
Why are you acting like this?” Kate asked, making a valiant
effort to keep her gaze on his face, only now beginning to calm
from the turmoil Jaxson had thrown her into.

Hands on his hips, he
regarded her with an unreadable expression. “What would you know
about how I normally act?”

The question stung, much
as Kate figured he’d intended it to. What was she supposed to say?
That she’d lost control? Clearly, he knew that. She felt her face
heat. The moment when she’d sat in his parlor and said “I’m Kate,”
felt like it had passed weeks ago, not mere hours. But the reality
was, she didn’t know how he normally acted. She knew virtually
nothing about him. Shame flooded her again. She’d been about to
take her clothes off on her transvestite neighbor’s bedside
table.

“
Goodnight, Kate.” Jaxson’s tone was pointed,
final.

She had been dismissed.
Slowly, her initial embarrassment turned to anger. “Hey, I didn’t
force myself on you,” she argued. “You wanted me, too.”

“
Well, I don’t want you here now.”

“
Fine.” She hugged her arms around her middle, heat flooding
her face at his icy, controlled words. “The next time you fall over
your own pantyhose, don’t come crying to me.”

His face clouded, and he
swung away from her to stare out the window.

Kate watched a muscle in
his jaw tick as light from the street illuminated him in profile.
“Lock up when you let yourself out in the morning.”

Her chest rose and fell
with each rapid breath. When he didn’t turn around, she spun on her
heel and stalked from the room, slamming the connecting bathroom
door behind her. She leaned against the solid surface for long,
agonizing moments while she struggled to find her bearings in the
shifting, churning sea of night.

Chapter Eight

Not Alone

K
ate
was up with the sun; an easy
enough feat, considering she’d spent the night tossing and turning
after leaving Jaxson’s bedroom. On any other morning, she would
have been dead to the world until at least six-thirty, maybe even
eight. Now that she was pulling a later shift and didn’t have to
wake Lilly up at seven, she’d planned to start sleeping in until
ten or eleven. And here it was at…she yawned and glanced around in
a half-hearted attempt to find a clock. There wasn’t one, but if
the pearl-gray light that was just beginning to seep through the
room was anything to go by, it was before six.

Scenes from last night
assailed her almost the instant she sat up and put her feet on the
floor, and she groaned. What in God’s name had she been thinking
last night? If her mother had still been alive, Aria Delaney would
have been horrified to know her daughter had thrown herself at a
stranger. A transvestite stranger. Kate groaned, head in her hands
as visions of the previous night tormented her.

She saw herself reaching
up to remove the last pin from Jaxson’s wig—his wig!—the tips of
her breasts grazing his arm for a brief moment. His lips on hers,
her butt on his nightstand. His erection pressed stiffly between
her legs, creating delicious friction every time she’d bucked
against him. She cringed and squeezed her eyes shut as the full
memory of her wantonness rolled over her.

There was no excuse for
her behavior. That was all there was to it. Kate let her hands fall
to the rumpled bed and forced herself to stand up and face the day.
She did the normal, mundane things that would have been done on any
other morning. First, she hit the bathroom and made an attempt to
look semi put together. After a couple of minutes, she gave up; her
hair was hopeless, the long, sleepless night had left her looking
pale, there were dark circles beneath her eyes, and her purse had
spent the night in the car.

Hell, what did it matter?
Kate sighed, slipped on the same rubber soled shoes she had worn to
work the night before and did a quick but thorough job of tidying
up the bedroom. A glance out the window told her that maybe ten
minutes had passed.

She stood in front of the
door and took three deep breaths. Would Jaxson be up and about?
Would he even still be in the house? She recalled his instructions
about locking up after herself, and her mouth settled into a grim
line. It didn’t matter if he was in the house; he’d made it clear
last night that he didn’t want to run into her this morning. Well,
that was fine because she didn’t relish the idea of running into
him, either.

Kate thrust her shoulders
back, twisted the doorknob, and strode into the hallway. Despite
her intention of breezing past Jaxson’s bedroom without so much as
a glance to the right, her eyes strayed to the closed door and her
stomach clenched. Nerves, and it was no wonder. With a sigh, she
jogged down the stairs and made her way through the lower level of
the house. In the soft light of day, Kate was able to confirm her
first impression from the previous night.

The pale pinks,
champagnes, and golds provided the perfect backdrop for the
Victorian charm the house seemed to exude. The home was warm and
charming…completely unlike the man who lived there! The thick,
beige carpet muffled her footfall and a minute later, her shoes
squeaked against the linoleum in the kitchen and dining room. She
was at the front door when a faint scuffling noise sounded behind
her.

“
Kate.”

“
Jaxson…” She turned around. He was standing in the kitchen
doorway, clad in a nondescript, navy blue bathrobe over a blue
skirt and white blouse. His close cropped, dark brown hair was wet
from the shower. Kate lifted one hand to tug self-consciously on
her own wild hair, but quickly forced it back down to her side and
steadily regarded her neighbor. “I was just leaving.”

“
Yeah…” His green eyes traveled the length of her body. “Look,
I just came down here to…”

“
To what?” she prompted when Jaxson fell silent. Keeping her
gaze locked on him required a herculean effort; it was impossible
to see him this morning and not picture his hands on her body. Her
heart rate kicked up a notch as she waited for him to respond, to
make this morning less awkward, to say something,
anything
.

Jaxson opened his mouth,
closed it, and finally dug into the side pocket of his robe. He
pulled out an elastic band and tossed it across the dining
room.

Kate scrambled to catch
the black elastic hair tie.

“
You left that on the floor last night.”

Now it was her turn to
gape. “Thanks,” she finally snapped. Without a backward glance, she
walked out the door, slamming it in her wake and stomping across
the still-wet grass that separated her house from Jaxson’s. She was
still moving full steam ahead as she took the steps up the porch
two at a time, paused, remembered her purse, backtracked, and
retrieved it from the Toyota. Back up the steps she went, slamming
her front door behind her, so irritated that for a full minute she
forgot to pause, forgot to be afraid.

Kate’s bravado deserted
her a second later. She stood in the entryway, back pressed to the
front door as dust motes swirled around her. Some long dormant
self-preservation instinct made her slow her breathing and close
her eyes, listen for any sound in the empty house. Hopefully it was
empty. Her pulse kicked up a notch, and for a brief second she
reached behind her back and went for the doorknob.

“
No,” she whispered. Repeated the word with more force. The
door had been locked a moment ago. Hadn’t it? The house was
silent.

“
There’s no one here.” She exhaled, hating that her voice
sounded so shaky in the rambling space.

Kate squealed when the
crash came. A thud, then the sound of glass shattering. The sitting
room, it had come from the front sitting room, just off the
entryway. She took two steps forward, a chill trailing down her
back as she moved away from the safety of the front door.
Get out
!

Ignoring her internal
voice of reason, for the moment, anyway, she scooted closer to the
wall and crept to the edge of the entryway, skirting around the
dark cherry wood secretary and a bare coat rack in order to get an
unobstructed view of the next room.

There was nothing to see.
Her gaze briefly swept the space before she turned her attention to
the wide, open hallway beside the entryway.

The sudden jangle of bells
put Kate’s heart in her throat. She turned tail and fled, her
bravado having taken her as far as it was going to. Her feet
pounded the floor, and she grappled with the doorknob for far
longer than should have been necessary. Panic made her movements
jerky, uncoordinated. Once she wrenched the door open, she stumbled
out of the house and onto the porch.

Something moved in her
peripheral vision. Kate whirled—and locked eyes with
Jaxson.

The pale blue skirt
swished around his thighs and his low cut blouse gaped open to
reveal a smooth, muscled chest as he bent to retrieve the morning
paper.

“
Problems?” he called out to her, immediately
straightening.

Before she could answer,
the bells jangled again and with a cry, Kate spun around to
confront—nothing. She paused, then looked down.

The scrawny gray cat
stared up at her with baleful eyes and let out one of the most
pitiful mewling cries Kate had ever heard. Hand still on her chest,
she exhaled and slumped forward to grip the faded, splintered porch
rail. “Just a cat,” she murmured, rolling her eyes skyward when the
tabby cat shook itself like a dog and set the bells around its neck
to jingling again.

“
Kate.” She craned her neck to find Jaxson leaning over his
own porch, corded muscle looking tense as he braced his arms on the
glossy white railing and glanced from Kate to her open front door.
His gaze dropped lower. “Is that a cat?”

“
Yes…it’s…my cat,” she finished lamely, her face heating at
the way she’d just run screaming from her own house.

“
Ah.” Jaxson leaned back and folded his arms across his chest,
making the satiny-looking material of his blouse pull down just a
little.

Belatedly, Kate noticed
that he’d put on a wig before stepping outside. An ash blond bob
today, instead of yesterday’s platinum vixen.

Her mouth tightened, and
she fought a strong urge to cringe. Seeing him like this made her
question her judgment—to say nothing of her sanity—all over again.
What was with her? Whenever she pictured Jaxson, her mind brought
forth images of pale green eyes and short, dark brown hair. But
that wasn’t him at all. Kate turned around and threw an assessing
glance in her neighbor’s direction. No, Jaxson wasn’t some
green-eyed Justin Chambers; he was Florence Nightingale and Ru-Paul
rolled into one.

“
Uh, is everything okay over there?” he asked, staring hard at
the second-story of her house.

Kate frowned and
automatically glanced up, but of course she couldn’t see anything
except the worn timbers of her front porch ceiling, that and miles
of chipped paint that may or may not have been blue at some
point.

“
Fine?” she replied, the word coming out like a question as
she raised a brow at Jaxson.

“
You’re sure?” His gaze switched from the second floor of her
house to her face, which he seemed to study intently.

“
Yes,” she replied, stubbornly refusing to explain her earlier
actions. Nothing had happened, other than a stray cat sneaking into
her house and knocking stuff over. Besides, she’d already made a
fool of herself in front of her new neighbor, and once was more
than enough. “My, uh,” she glanced down at the tabby that was now
winding itself around her ankles, “cat and I were just about to go
to the hardware store.”