Perfectly Saucy

He turned at the sound and stared at her for a second. Disbelief and then suspicion registered in his eyes before he turned back to the drywall and drove in three more screws.

Watching him move, Jessica found herself fascinated by the way his broad shoulders shifted under the threadbare cotton of his white T-shirt. By the hole in his jeans that bared his knee and the worn patches of denim along the length of his thighs and down his zipper.

She was used to seeing men dressed in Dockers and button-down Oxford shirts. Three-piece suits and tuxedoes. Clothes designed to advertise a man’s wealth and social position. Funny how none of those clothes spoke of a man’s strength—a man’s ability to work with his hands—the way Alex’s worn jeans and grimy T-shirt did.

Funny how she now noticed how appealing those qualities were. How they made her skin tingle with excitement.

When he swung one leg over the peak of the ladder and climbed down, she averted her eyes, trying not to gawk. After all, he’d made it clear he just wasn’t interested. As he nodded in greeting, he dusted off his hands, then wedged them into his back pockets. Not the warmest reception, but about the best she could hope for under the circumstances.

“I wanted to apologize for yesterday. And to explain.”

At her words, the suspicion in his gaze seemed to flicker and go out, but his eyes were dark and mysterious regardless, so she couldn’t be sure.

Stepping to her side, he stopped just short of touching her and instead gestured toward the door.

“It’ll be less dusty outside.”

As with most houses in Palo Verde, the backyard sloped away from the house, up toward the foothills. A patch of overgrown fruit trees lined the far fence and crowded against the detached garage. A picnic table sat proudly in the center of a lawn of close-cropped weeds. It was a far cry from her own neatly manicured, obsessively maintained backyard.

When she turned her gaze to Alex, she found him watching her carefully, as if gauging her reaction. Once again she found his inscrutable dark gaze unsettling.

“It’s nice,” she said, carefully lowering herself to the bench seat of the picnic table.

He stared at her in blank disbelief.

“Come fall, you’ll really enjoy the apples from those trees.”

“My parents have worked in the apple orchards for over thirty years. I hate apples,” he said flatly as he sat opposite her.

Wow. Could this go any worse?

He crossed his arms over his chest and eyed her speculatively. And though she felt her pulse leap at his perusal, there was little flattering in his expression. “So, did you come here to talk about my landscaping or did you just think it’d be fun to waste another of my afternoons?”

Just when she was starting to hope someone would come by and shoot her with a tranquilizer gun just to put her out of her misery, she noticed his lips twitching.

He was enjoying this. Not out of cruelty, she was fairly certain, but he seemed to like having her at a disadvantage. That should have annoyed her, but it didn’t. Something in his smile short-circuited her synapses. “As I said, I came here to apologize,” she said again, trying to be blunt. Get this over with as quickly as possible. After all, he may enjoy flustering her, but she didn’t enjoy being flustered. “I think you got the wrong impression yesterday.”

He arched an eyebrow in speculation. “You mean you do want me to remodel your kitchen?”

“No. But you seemed to think I invited you over just to…sleep with you. But that’s not why I called you.”

“So you don’t want to sleep with me?”

“No!” A second too late, she saw the teasing glint in his gaze. He was toying with her.

“You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Tell me anyway,” he coaxed.

And, oddly enough, she wanted to. It’d been like that when they were in school, too. Something about Alex Moreno made her believe she could trust him implicitly. That she could tell him anything. And he’d never hurt her. Of course, it didn’t help matters that he seemed so much less angry than he had yesterday. Even less than he had when she’d arrived. Her apology had gone a long way toward softening him up. Score one for Saucy magazine.

“It all started with this list.” No, that wasn’t right. “Actually it all started with my trip to Sweden.”

“Sweden?” he asked, his mouth set in an inexplicably grim line.

“For business. I write software for PalmPilots. Companies hire us to write programs for them. Software that tracks sales, shipping, delivery, that kind of thing. So I went to Sweden to install it and train them to use it. I went with the understanding that when I came home, I’d have this big promotion.”

“Let me guess. You didn’t get the promotion.”

“Three days before I came home, they gave it to someone else. You know the really ironic thing? The whole time I was in Sweden, everyone kept talking about how hard I worked. That I did the work of three people. Everyone was amazed. But you know what? I didn’t work any harder there than I do here. But that’s when I saw The List.”

“The List’?”

“In a magazine I was reading on the flight home. ‘10 Things Every Woman Should Do.’ I decided right then and there that I was going to do everything on that list. I know it sounds silly, thinking that some list from a magazine will change your life, but I’m tired of settling for doing the work without the recognition. I’m tired of putting my life on hold while I wait for some promotion that may never come.”

She studied his face, looking for some sign that he found this as silly as she did, now that she heard herself saying it out loud. But his expression was carefully blank, so she said with a shrug, “I know it’s just a list, but it’s a start.”

“So how do I fit into all this? What exactly is on this list that you think I can help you do?”

The question she’d been dreading. But he certainly deserved her honesty, if nothing else. She swallowed hard, embarrassment burning her cheeks. The idea of discussing sex with Alex made other less visible parts of her burn, as well. “Number one on the list is ‘Find Your Fling.’”

He nodded and for a second she thought he wasn’t going to respond, but then he asked, “And you thought I’d be a good candidate?”

She shrugged, wishing desperately he wasn’t so blasé about this whole thing, as if women propositioned him all the time. Though, for all she knew, they did. For all she knew, she was just one in a long line of lonely women who wanted to have a passionate fling with Alex.

And if that was the case, no wonder he’d been so annoyed with her yesterday. Of course, she still hadn’t owned up to her mistake, not completely. So she sucked in a deep breath and said, “Yes, I thought you’d be a good candidate. And not because I wanted to fool around with the hired help.”

Something in his eyes caught and held her attention. Once again she felt the gut-level tug of attraction. Passion, yes. But something more. Something more unsettling than that.

She waited a moment, hoping he’d say something. When he didn’t, she moved to leave. “I should go.”

But he grabbed her arm to stop her. “Wait—”

For a moment they simply sat there, his palm warm against her arm, the delicate skin at the crook of her elbow sensitized to the touch of his work-roughened fingers.

In that instant she knew—she hadn’t come here to apologize. She didn’t want him to forgive her. She’d come here hoping…Hoping what?

That he wanted her as much as she wanted him?

That the kiss they’d shared yesterday had been more than just a kiss?

That it had kept him up all night—hot and wanting—as it had her?

Yes, yes and yes. What she’d really wanted was for him to touch her again. After a lifetime of being coddled and cosseted by men with soft hands, she wanted this rough man—these hands—to touch her. Just once she wanted to know how that felt.

Too bad he didn’t seem to want the same thing.

Okay, maybe he was a little interested. After all, that kiss in the kitchen had been pretty hot. But she wanted more. She wanted the kind of passion he couldn’t walk away from.