Last First Kiss (15 page)

Carrie glanced at Bill, then Giselle. “I don’t like that idea, not until he’s slept it off.”

Giselle paced the floor between her fridge and her guests. “I feel guilty, Carrie...Can you understand that?”

“
You could follow me over there,” Bill suggested. “That way I can be there to make sure he’s okay. He was some kind of upset when I dropped him off.”

Giselle turned pleading eyes toward Carrie. “Could I bother you one more time to watch the girls for me? You can bring them to your place.”

Carrie nodded. “This goes against my better judgment, but sure.”

Giselle clasped her hands together. “Thank you. Let me get my purse.”

CHAPTER 9

Giselle parked in front of Jackson’s home thirty minutes later. She stood alongside Bill as he rang the doorbell several times without getting an answer.

Bill used his key to let himself and Giselle inside.

“Wow...” Giselle said, staring at the rooms. “Nice furniture.”

Bill picked up the nearly empty bottle of aged ninety proof whiskey he’d given Jackson for Christmas. “Furniture’s new, but the whiskey was old. He was supposed to be saving it for a special occasion.” A half empty glass of the stuff sat on a sturdy end table.

Bill turned to her wearing a doubtful look. “You should wait outside until I see what kind of shape he’s in.”

She gave him a silent nod and stepped outside.

<>

Jackson shut off the shower and stepped out onto his newly tiled bathroom floor, dying for a big glass of ice water. His
mouth was dry as the Texas panhandle in the middle of a drought.
He could have used another hour or two of sleep, but Giselle’s call had ended all hope of that. Just hearing her voice had twisted his insides into a painful knot. He wrapped one towel loosely around his hips and grabbed another for his hair. When he heard Bill’s voice call from his bedroom, he opened the door.

Freshly shaved and showered, with his hair still dripping water, he began toweling his hair. “Uncle Bill...I need water,” he growled.

Jackson was almost at the end of the hallway when he heard a woman’s scream and his door slam. His neighbor’s damn Doberman barked incessantly outside the main entrance of his home. He got as far as the end of his hallway and froze in his tracks at the sight before him. What the hell was Giselle doing in his home? And why was she standing there with her forehead resting against his front door?

Almost as though she heard his silent questions, she turned slowly to face him. Their gazes joined and her eyes seemed to double in size, but she didn’t turn away as he expected her to. She didn’t make excuses, or even blink, for that matter. She stared...stared at all of him. He watched the path of her eyes as it slowly moved across his chest area, down to his stomach...and past that. She scanned his legs then moved her gaze leisurely up his body. Her left eyebrow ticked and rose slightly as though she saw something she particularly liked. Her gaze roamed over to his arms and shoulders, her lips parted, her breathing became shallow and somewhat labored.

He stood there, observing her reaction to him, knowing she liked what she saw. She licked her lips, catching and scraping her lower lip in her teeth, until it popped out, looking wet and swollen.

Jackson’s own reaction to the sight of that lip was immediate and involuntary. He knew if he didn’t get the hell out of that room, he might well embarrass himself. Just as Giselle’s gaze riveted to his, he spun on his heel and walked away from her, back to his bedroom and Uncle Bill.

“See about Giselle,” he mumbled to his uncle. “I think the neighbor’s Doberman attacked her.” Bill rushed out, leaving Jackson alone with his dilemma. He shut the bedroom door and took several deep breaths, trying to calm down. The unexpected sight of Giselle staring him down like that, and looking as if she liked what she saw, wasn’t something he would forget anytime soon.

<><><>

Giselle tensed up when she heard the deep, menacing, growl behind her. She turned to see a huge Doberman, its teeth bared in a snarl, at the end of the sidewalk. She backed cautiously to the door, blindly feeling for the knob; thankfully, it opened for her and she backed into the room. She cleared the door in just enough time to screech and slam it in the fast approaching dog’s face. Giselle breathed a sigh of relief as she rested her head on the door then turned, and froze.

Jackson stood there, fresh from the shower in nothing but a towel wrapped loosely around his hips. In his right hand, he still clutched a hand towel that he must have been using to dry his hair. She raised her gaze to his well-defined chest and abdomen, covered with a fine dusting of dark, silky hair. Her eyes followed the trail of hair down past his belly button to where the towel covered up the rest of him. Her gaze traveled to one side of his hips, then the other, noting that sexy pad of muscle there on both sides. She let her gaze drop down past the towel to thickly muscled calves, then back up to his long muscular arms and shoulders. Giselle stared at the torso rivaling that of a Greek god’s, and felt her face infuse with heat. She licked her parched lips, thinking she could slap someone for a long, cool, drink of water. Just as she lifted her gaze to his stunned face, he turned and headed down the hallway.

The rear view of Jackson was almost as captivating as the front. She watched, fascinated, as the muscles in his broad, tanned, back and shoulders worked and rippled with every swing of his arms. She stared at the towel that clung tenaciously to his narrow hips, willing it to fall off so she could get a glimpse of what it hid. Giselle watched it shift from left to right, with every step Jackson took, craning her neck to keep him in sight. She heard him mumble something to Bill, who barreled out of the bedroom door and down the hallway toward her. Her shocked gaze locked onto Bill’s as she heard Jackson’s bedroom door close.

He gently moved her away from the door then jerked it open. “Get out of here you son of a bitch!” Bill yelled at the offensive animal as it ran off. “That damned thing is a menace!”

Jackson re-entered the room wearing jeans and a white tee shirt. He stopped in front of Giselle. “Are you okay?”

She nodded then looked quickly away as she felt the heat rising from her face and neck area.

“Jackson!” Bill barked. “Who’s that damn Doberman belong to? That’s the third time this month I’ve seen him out of his yard and off his leash, and I don’t even live here.”

She met his gaze for a split second before allowing herself the chance to absorb the sight of him. Giselle had worked with Jackson for five years and had never seen him in anything more casual than Dockers and a Polo shirt at the office. She’d barely noticed him when he showed up to work in her yard the past two months. Here he stood, in a pair of faded, tight jeans that fit snugly over his muscled thighs and hugged his hips. He wore a clean, white, v-neck tee shirt that clung to the planes of his chest nicely...and he was barefooted.

Giselle raised her gaze to his clean shaven face, seeing that several locks of his damp, chocolate brown hair curled enticingly over his forehead. She noticed the dark circles under his eyes, remnants of his night of drinking, and remembered why she was here.

“Jackson, I came to tell you how very sorry I am for saying those awful things to you.” She looked around for support from Bill, who had somehow managed to slip out of the room, maybe out of the house. She took a deep breath and began her explanation. “I know you were only trying to help. You and Bill have been so good to the girls. I couldn’t see past my own hurt...I hurt them, and you, too. I’m sorry.”

He walked up to her. “What does this mean?” he asked huskily, his breath a blend of minty toothpaste with a residual of whiskey.

She concentrated on his broad chest. “I’m sorry for trying to stop you from seeing the girls, and for being such a...for being so unreasonable. Whether you like it or not, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them from now on.” Giselle’s breath caught in her throat as he cocked his head and lifted one corner of his mouth in a lopsided grin.

He was so near, she could smell the fragrance of his soap...A sharp masculine scent. He spoke again, and she caught the smell of minty mixture of his breath, tantalizing her nostrils, tempting her to lean closer. Oh God, she’d missed being this close to a man.

Her gaze moved from crown to broad chest, and she fought the urge to run her hands over the smooth material of the tee shirt, stretched snugly over the sculpted planes of his pectorals. Absently, she answered. “What is it, Jackson?”

“If Bill is their Paw Paw, what does that make me?”

She blinked, as if awakening from a trance. You’re just...Jackson.” Her eyes darted up to his face. He gave her that crooked grin again, the one that must have made the girls melt when he was about seventeen.

She grinned slyly. “
Is he
always right about everything?”

He smiled back at her. “Always, and it annoys the living hell out of me.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a Master’s Degree in Engineering, and he’s never spent one day in college, and he’s
still
smarter than I am.”

Giselle chuckled. “That must be a gigantic blow to that big, bad engineer ego of yours.”

“No,” he sighed, dramatically. “Just a small one.”

“What’s the matter, Jackson? Did the big, tall man hurt your widdle, bitty, feelings?” she asked, pushing her lower lip out in a pout.

His brow wrinkled in a frown. “Okay smart ass...Don’t push your luck.” He reached out to place his hands on her thin shoulders, and lowered his head to stare into her eyes. “Are you okay now, really?”

Giselle felt heat infuse her face at his close perusal. She looked away shyly and lifted a shoulder. “I think so. I’m not saying I won’t have some bad days, but the worst is over.”

With a light squeeze of her shoulders, he urged her to look at him. “Are we okay?”

Reluctantly, she locked onto his piercing blue-eyed gaze. “You tell me. I’m the one who came here to apologize.” She pulled away and shifted one foot to put some space between them. “You could have saved me a trip if you hadn’t hung up and taken your phone off the hook.”

“Hey,” he said, giving her a half hearted shrug, “I had a rough night.”

He pulled her into a hug that probably would have been short and sweet, had she not wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. “Thank you, Jackson,” she spoke into his chest. “You and Bill have both helped me and my girls so much.”

He raised his left hand and placed it gently on her head, cradling her to him, as his right arm tightened protectively around her. “I’d do anything for Toby’s girls.”

She turned her face and pressed her nose up against the soft fabric of his tee shirt just below the neckline, inhaling deeply. She breathed in the scent of the freshly laundered cotton, before lifting her face so that her nose was above the shirt’s v-neck collar. Intoxicated by the scent of pure Jackson, she forced herself to loosen her grip on his waist. When he released her, she grabbed the opportunity to back away from him.

“No,” she said, her face heating again as she remembered the sight of him in that towel. “Bill told me to wait outside, but that damn dog. I turned around and you were there...and...uh, sorry about that,” she finished lamely.

“I’m sure I’m not the first man you’ve seen in a towel.”

“No. I just never expected to see my boss in that state of...undress,” she said, fanning herself. “It’s kind of warm in here.” He turned and tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the grin that covered his face. Oh yeah, he was enjoying this.

“Speaking of work,” he said, “I heard an ugly rumor that you may not go back.”

She took two steps back and turned away from him. “I’m considering staying home, now that it’s just me and the girls. Toby picked up a lot of slack for me around the house when we were trying to meet project deadlines.”