“Yes! That’s him,” she said, smiling. “His name is Matt. He’s the nicest guy but there’s just never been any…”
“Pull?”
She glanced up at him and he felt like he’d been knifed in the gut. Her doe-brown eyes were wide. She had put her glass on the counter but her slender fingers toyed with the stem, making him imagine all kinds of obscene scenarios where those hands were running over his chest, down his body. The way that she leaned on the counter, made her tunic spill forward a little, and Jacob averted his gaze so that the small swell of her bra-clad breasts didn’t completely incapacitate him.
“Exactly. He’s a good friend, but I’ve never even thought about him…in that way.”
For some reason, he was extremely flattered. If she was avoiding interaction with the surfer mag centerfold but had let him kiss her, well, he’d take it. He would never deny that her sharp, sculpted chin, slender wrists, big, brown eyes, and, long, lean build had first attracted him to her, but God he’d wanted to kiss her lips the first time she had opened her mouth.
“Don’t look so smug,” she said, laughing. “Until this case is over, you’re my fake boyfriend. The real deal with zero of the benefits.”
He felt a laugh bubble up in his chest. “True. It’s going to be interesting.”
“At least it’s only nights and not all day?” she offered. “Then we’d probably be sick of each other before we had a real chance to go on a date.”
He laughed but didn’t agree with her. He was a chronic insomniac who stayed awake for hours looking at the ceiling of his apartment. And now, he’d be doing the exact same thing except he’d be staring at Lola’s ceiling while trying his damndest not to imagine her lying in the big bed, only feet away from him.
Fucking perfect.
Chapter 8
It had been four days or, at least in Jacob’s mind, three very long nights since he’d been staying over at Lola’s. Although he was sleeping on a blow-up mattress that took up a quarter of her apartment, things were going well. They’d fallen into an easy routine in which he’d get to her place around seven and they’d unwind over a single glass of wine before hunting up some food.
He wasn’t quite sure how they had ended up eating together every night, it had just happened organically that first night and now he found himself stopping to pick something up on the way over. He told himself it was ‘just in case she hasn’t eaten’ but he wouldn’t lie and say that he didn’t enjoy it. Even now, the smell of the Macaroni Republic pasta that he’d picked up wafted through to him from the back of his car, and, for only a second, a small part of his brain felt a little panicked by how quickly they’d acclimated to being in each other’s space.
Pulling into the spot that he’d temporarily reserved with the landlord, he let his thoughts wander as he took his overnight bag and the food out. A not so small part of him was whispering that he needed to pull back, to be more cautious. He was already staying over and bringing dinner and yesterday morning they had gone running together because, well, they both needed to work out and he couldn’t let her go alone. He’d been surprised by how athletic she was for such a reed-thin woman; she had kept pace with him easily for the entire four miles, and Jacob would openly admit that he had been more winded than her by the time they’d eventually looped back to the apartment.
They’d also taken one huge step over the black friendship line and into the massive box that was relationship gray—they had started watching a Netflix series together. The show, a truly binge-worthy one, was about the Saxons’ clashes with the Danes; it was called The Last Kingdom and although Jacob had already watched the first three seasons, he’d never tell Lola that. He loved watching her face when he knew that something unexpected was going to happen, loved the way that her eyes would get wide and she’d lean forward on the sofa a little bit as if her physical proximity to the screen somehow enhanced the intensity for her.
They were six episodes in after only three days, and Jacob, who spent most of each episode watching her, made sure that no part of his body was in proximity to hers while they sat on opposite sides of the sofa. Because he did think about touching her. A lot. He couldn’t be in the same room as her without thinking about how soft her skin was, how her mouth had tasted, how she’d wrapped her legs around his waist.
Pulling himself back from the rabbit hole abruptly, he jogged up the stairs to the front door. He knew that they couldn't afford a repeat of the last time he'd kissed her. At least not until the job was done. The thought made him frown, made him wish that they had met under different circumstances.
When he knocked on the door, he heard her marching across the hardwood floors, her slippers slapping against the wood gently. Just play it safe. Be professional.
When she didn’t open the door right away, Jacob was relieved that she’d remembered to check through the peephole first. It was something that he’d added to the list of safety precautions that she’d have to take over the next few weeks and he found himself genuinely happy that she was taking them seriously.
After a second, the internal deadbolt that he’d attached himself slid to unlock and she pulled open the door, her smile wide, her brown eyes dancing. “You thought I wouldn’t remember,” she laughed, knowing exactly what had been going through his head.
“I had my doubts.” Seeing her in a pair of sweatpants and a strappy top, her hair pulled into a messy knot on top of her head had made his words come out in a breathy rush.
Super cool, dude.
He handed her the pasta and stepped past her, grinned when she sniffed the bag of food and rolled her eyes with exaggerated pleasure. The look, although meant to be funny, made his skin pull tight, and his pulse jerk erratically for a few beats before slowly returning to normal.
Needing a distraction, he walked to the blowup mattress and placed his bag on top of it. He didn’t notice the smell of wet paint in the air at first and when it hit his nose after a few seconds, Jacob realized that he had become somewhat used to it over the last three nights. Lola always left the windows open when she painted, but the smell seemed to stick in the air permanently, irrespective.
Two glasses of wine were already poured on the kitchen counter and he could see from where he was standing that the next episode of The Last Kingdom was cued on her laptop. God, I could get used to this.
“I’m going to get fat if you stay much longer,” she said, moving past the blow-up mattress to the kitchenette.
“You eat like a high-schooler,” he replied instantly, grinning. “You have everything in the fridge, but I don’t think I’ve seen you open it once except to get water.”
“Damn it!” She looked at him bewilderedly. “I was hoping I could fake it.”
“Nope.”
“Cooking just takes so much time…and I can’t make anything better than anyone who does it for a living.”
“I’ll cook for you sometime.” Glancing at the small kitchen, he took a quick inventory of her cooking apparatus. It looked like she had enough to get a basic meal done.
“You’ll cook for me?” she asked, repeating his words as she looked at him, her eyebrows raised.