“Um…” She lifted her gaze to his again and wet her lips. “This is going to sound like a come on, especially after the conversation we just had,” she said.
He felt surprise jolt through him.
“But,” she continued. “Could I maybe just use your stuff here? That would be easier.”
“Of course.”
And that was the moment Zeke realized he really liked her.
He didn’t let women use his shower.
He didn’t shower at their places because he liked his shower much better. But he didn’t let them shower at his place either.
Because one, shower sex was a lot more difficult and awkward than porn made it seem. Which was a bummer, because he’d installed a shower bench that he’d thought would be sexy and perfect.
And two, long hair clogged his drain.
He didn’t mind snaking his drain for his own hair, but it was gross for anyone else’s.
And yet, here he was leading Jill to the steps, and telling her, “It’s the third door on the right. Towels are in the closet. Borrow whatever soap and shampoo you want. I’ve got a couple kinds of shampoo and body wash and some really great hair conditioner.”
She lifted a brow. “You have a couple of kinds of body wash?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”
“Why?”
He answered with the same thing he’d told his brothers when they’d asked. “Sometimes I want to smell like spring rain and sometimes I want to smell like a mountain morning “
“Oh my God.”
“You only have one kind?” he asked, as if that was crazy.
“I have soap,” she said simply.
“Just soap? What’s it smell like?”
She shrugged. “Soap.”
He looked at her, feeling a surge of what he could only describe as like. He liked her. In his family they were all boys, and most of his female cousins lived outside of Autre. Kennedy was the only Landry granddaughter who had grown up in Autre and she was…not a typical girlie-girl. But he generally knew from the girls he’d dated that things like soap and shampoo mattered to most of them.
He reached up and pulled the ponytail holder from Jillian’s hair. He ran his fingers through the long tresses.
She seemed startled by that as well.
“You’re low maintenance?”
She laughed out loud at that. “You have no idea.”
But he wanted to have an idea. That all seemed to come out of the blue, but he wanted to have an idea what she was like, he wanted to figure out just how low or high maintenance she was, he wanted to know what kind of towels she would pick out if she was picking out her own, and he definitely wanted to be her friend-with-benefits. Though he was definitely going to press for more than once a month. Twice a month, or even three times, wasn’t that much. Especially if they just got right to it each time.
Though the idea of not talking to her and teasing her and showing her the ins and outs of a good old Louisiana crawfish boil—because he somehow knew this girl had never sucked a crawfish before—made him feel like he was definitely going to be missing out.
“So yeah, go clean up, then we can go over to the penguin habitat together.”
She looked down at her shoes. “My clothes are pretty dry, but I’ll have to change shoes, though,” she said with a sigh. “They feel gross.”
“I’ll get you some from Paige for now. Then later, after the penguin habitat, I’ll help you move your stuff up to the house. You can definitely stay there from now on.”
He now wanted to be there when she saw the bedroom and bathroom he’d remodeled. It was all he’d been able to get done in that house, and that had been driving him crazy, but he at least wanted to see her reaction to what he had done.
He always took pride in his work and he loved when people told him that it was even better than they’d envisioned.
Considering Jill had given him zero direction, he had no idea if this was going to be better than she’d envisioned, but if she really was low maintenance and didn’t care about this stuff, then it would be easy to wow her.
“Who’s Paige?”
“My cousin Mitch’s girlfriend. They just live three houses over. She’d be happy to loan you shoes.”
Jill rolled her eyes. “I don’t know about that. I have a way of ruining shoes.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t really think about things, like what I’m wearing, before I do things. Like this morning when I climbed into the penguin habitat and jumped into the moat.”
Zeke’s brows arched. “You climbed into the penguin habitat and jumped into the moat?” he repeated. “Why?”
“I wanted to get inside and see everything. And the guy with the key was running late this morning.”
“Because he got very laid, very well last night and needed a little extra rest,” he told her, pointing a finger at her cute little nose. “So…also your fault.”
“Somehow I got out of bed nice and early though. Guess we know which one of us wore the other out.”
“Or which of us did all the work,” he returned.
She laughed.
God, he loved teasing her.
“Anyway, no worries. Paige has been here long enough that she knows what kind of footwear it takes to be on the bayou. Let me go get something from her. If you ruin it, you can replace it. You’re a millionaire after all, right?”
Jill’s sudden smile nearly knocked him on his ass. It was quick, bright, and full of amusement.
“Hey, that’s true. I’m definitely still getting used to that.”
He chuckled. “Something like that won’t take long to get used to.”
“I’m just not a big spender, and I have pretty much zero taste when it comes to…everything. So, it might take me longer than most.”
She was intriguing. He was often attracted to women. He made friends easily and enjoyed other people and loved nothing more than to just sit around and talk and bullshit and laugh. But there was something about Jill that actually interested him. Maybe that sounded shallow when it came to his other human interactions, but he just wasn’t that often interested in the women he flirted with.
Well, he was interested in them as far as flirting, and having a good time, and then of course when they ended up naked, he was interested.
But most of the conversations he had that were actually fun and thought-provoking and entertaining were the ones he had with his family and friends. And most of his friends were family. He was as close to his cousins as he was to his brothers, and the entire Landry clan spent most of their social time together. He supposed that meant that he wasn’t looking to women to interest or entertain him.
But Jill was already doing both. And she wasn’t even trying. She only wanted to hook up with him once a month.
He was either going to throw her over his shoulder and take her upstairs and give shower sex another shot or he was going to take a big step back and insist she head up to the shower alone.
He did the latter. Which surprised him, actually.
“Go clean up. I’ll get dressed and get you some shoes and then we’ll go see the penguin habitat.”
He was really proud of that thing too.
She took a step toward the stairs, then turned back. “Actually…”