Hammered Read online

  The real question is, why did I date him in the first place? What had I seen in him? Well, he was steady and reliable, for one. Predictable. Staid. Paid attention to me, at first, at least.

  So yeah, maybe I had some issues, but I knew I wanted a man I could rely on, who would be there for me, who I knew would treat me decently. A boring, middle-class, buttoned-up guidance counselor had seemed like a safe bet. And I’d been starved for attention. My last boyfriend before Nicholas had not been a great experience, and the breakup had been worse.

  I was feeling bad about myself, when I met Nicholas at…well…Target, as a matter of fact. He was buying towels, and I was buying new bed sheets, because I’d wanted to erase any memory of the guy I’d been dating. We started talking about thread counts, and he asked me on a date, and I said yes.

  He had all his hair back then, and no obvious belly. Not that I judge a man’s worth based on his hair or belly—I’m not that shallow. If the right guy came along and made me feel like—well, like Jesse made me feel last night…and happened to be balding and a little out of shape, I wouldn’t care.

  I’d like to spend time with Jesse, though. Feel those hands on my hips…I bet he can dance, too. He probably has amazing rhythm.

  “Imogen?” I hear a voice, and for a moment I can’t place who is talking to me. Jesse’s voice is deep and rough, and this one is rather high-pitched and soft.

  “Huh?” I ask, blinking rapidly.

  An amused snort greets me, and I see Dr. Bishara standing in front of me. “I have been trying to get your attention for several moments. Are you okay?”

  I blink at him, still working on getting my bearings; right—I’m at work, and this is my boss. “Um. Yeah, I’m good, sorry. Just…spacing out, I guess.”

  Dr. Bishara chuckles softly. “Spacing out, yes. Precisely.” He smiles at me. “You did the work of two people yesterday, Imogen. Why don’t you go home early?”

  I want to, so badly. But I can’t. “I need the hours, Dr. Bishara. Why don’t you send Kathy home instead?”

  “There will not be any more spacing out if I keep you here, will you?” His smile is gentle, but the question is sharp, pointed.

  “Nope. I’m good.”

  “Very well, then.”

  The rest of the day goes by a bit faster, leaving me little time to spend thinking about Jesse, which is probably for the best.

  Once the day is over I head home with plans to hit the shower, make a nice little dinner and chill out in the backyard. It rained a little bit this morning, but then it turned super hot and I’m dying to cool off…in more than one way.

  Wait till Audra hears about my new handyman.

  My phone rings as I’m getting into my car to head home.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Imogen, this is Jesse.” A brief pause. “The contractor from yesterday. I boarded up your window?”

  “Yes, of course I remember you,” I say. As if I could forget him.

  “So, I have a window for you. I could have you all fixed up tonight if you’ll be home.”

  “Already? Yeah, sure. I’m on the way right now, actually.”

  “Sweet. I’m in the area, as a matter of fact, so I’ll see you there in fifteen or twenty minutes?”

  Sweet? Is he a prepubescent surfer?

  “You got it, dude,” I say.

  He laughs. “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?” He says it, once again, in a near-perfect replication of the inflection and tone from the scene in Toy Story.

  “Oh, no, no, no, no,” I say, answering the quote. “Buzz, look! An alien!”

  He laughs even harder. “Oh man, I still love that movie. I used to babysit my nieces on Saturday mornings, and they’d literally watch that movie on repeat. I know just about every line.”

  “I do too, actually,” I say. “I worked at a daycare when I was in nursing school, and that was one of about five movies the kids would watch.”

  I’m in my car by this point and then plug in my earbuds and back out of the parking lot, still chatting with Jesse about our favorite kids’ movies—we share an affinity for them, oddly, despite us both being forty-ish and single and without children. His favorite is The Emperor’s New Groove and mine is Lilo & Stitch, and we trade favorite quotes from both movies as I drive home.

  I’m home in a few minutes. I pull onto my street, and see a giant pickup truck sitting at the curb in front of my house. By giant, I mean a heavy-duty black Silverado with massive, knobby, thick-sidewall tires and a lift of several inches, tubular chrome steps, an LED light bar across the top of the cab, a winch at the grill, an oversized, built-in toolbox in the bed, and a back rack with rear-facing work lights.

  “Is that you parked in front of my house?” I ask, still on the phone with him.

  “Yeah,” he says. “When I said I was in the area, I sort of meant in the same neighborhood. So I’ve just been sitting out here. That’s you pulling up?”

  “Yep.”

  He hangs up without warning as I bump into my driveway, which is nothing but a pair of hard-packed dirt ruts in the grass beside my house—there’s no garage, not even a carport. Another item on the list of things I’d wanted to do to the place—build a garage addition. Parking outside in the Illinois winter sucks.

  He’s sitting in his truck as I park, all the windows down, an arm hanging out. The engine is off and the radio is on—playing “music” that sounds like someone put a spoon in a garbage disposal and recorded the resulting grinding noise, with a lot of unintelligible shrieking over top of it. He’s bobbing his head to the music, and his fingers are fiddling on the outside of his truck door, mimicking the movements of the guitar chords, I realize.

  The radio shuts off as he opens the door of his truck and jumps down.

  “Hey there,” he says. “Long time no talk.” His grin is addictive and sexy and easygoing.

  “Hi.” I gesture at his truck. “What was that you were listening to? Your band?”

  He laughs as he leans into the cab and withdraws his tool belt, buckling it around his hips—which, holy shit, is a sexy thing to watch. “God, you think I just listen to my own music? I hope I don’t come across as that egotistical, Jesus.”

  “No, I just—I don’t know.”

  He elbows me in the ribs. “I was kidding. Mostly. Number one, I don’t listen to my own music. Mainly because we don’t have an album or even an EP or anything. We’re just a dive bar band. We play covers and shit, mostly, with a few of our own originals tossed in now and then, but there are no recordings of us. Number two, that’s not the kind of music we play.”

  I sigh in relief. “Good. Because I’m sorry, but that sounded awful.”

  He just laughs again. “Eh, it’s not for everyone.” His eyes twinkle, amusement rife in them. “That’s my cousin’s band.”

  I blanch. “Oh. Um. Sorry? I didn’t mean to offend you, or—god.” I let myself into my house, Jesse on my heels. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”

  He just laughs all the more. “I’m messing with you, Imogen, relax.” He shrugs. “I mean, it is my cousin’s band, though.”

  I set my purse on the bottom stair and head into the kitchen. “It’s definitely not my thing. I didn’t mean to insult your cousin’s band, though.”

  He waves a hand. “Oh, he wouldn’t care even if you’d said that to his face. He’d think it was funny.” Once in the kitchen, his demeanor shifts to business. “So, your window.”

  “So, my window,” I echo. “You found something that will fit?”

  He tips his head side to side. “Um, sort of?” He laughs self-consciously, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay, no, not really.”

  I wrinkle my brows at him. “I’m confused. I thought you said you have a window.”

  He nods. “Oh, I do. I have a window. I have the best, most amazing, most beautiful window ever, and it will take this kitchen to eleven out of ten.” He shrugs. “It just…doesn’t fit—yet. I’ll have to do some retrofitting.”


  “Meaning?”

  He holds up an index finger. “Let me go grab it and show you. Maybe it’ll make more sense then.”

  He’s gone before I can respond, jogging out the front door to his truck, leaving my front door wide open. He wrestles a truly mammoth window out of the bed of his pickup and carries it inside to the kitchen, setting it on the sink to show me roughly what it will look like once it’s installed.

  I gape at him, and then at the window. “That thing is enormous, Jesse.”

  He grins at me. “Sure as hell is.”

  “There’s no way something that big will fit in my tiny little space.”

  His grin widens, and an eyebrow quirks up. “It will if you’re as good at fitting big things into little spaces as I am.”

  My cheeks flame, my gut spins, and my thighs clench. “That’s—that’s not what I meant.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No!” I protest. “I was talking about the window.”

  He just smirks at me, his expression teasing and lascivious at once. “So was I. What were you talking about?”

  I suck in a deep breath and try to compose myself. “Nothing. Never mind.” I move closer to the window he’s holding in place for me. “Seriously, though. I don’t understand your plan. What kind of window is this?”

  “It’s a casement window,” Jesse explains, pointing at a little rotating handle-and-knob near the base of the window. “Turn that clockwise.”

  I rotate the knob clockwise and the entire window panel opens outward; I rotate counter-clockwise and the window closes again. “The whole thing opens?”

  He grins at me. “Yep. This will let in a whole bunch of airflow. Plus, this window is seriously energy efficient.” He sets the window flat on the floor to one side and withdraws a tape measure from his tool belt.

  He extends it a few feet and measures the frame of the window, and then lays that measurement against the space over my sink between the cabinets. From what I can tell, the window will just barely fit. Maybe.

  “It looks like it’ll be a close fit,” I say.

  He nods. “There’ll be just enough room to put in the window and fit some molding around it. I’ll have to open the space up almost all the way though.” He eyes me. “It’ll be a pretty major upgrade. This window is top of the line.”

  “I can’t afford top of the line, Jesse.”

  He just winks and clicks his tongue. “Got you covered, sweetheart. James is doing a custom build in the neighborhood, a few streets over, and the folks we’re building it for wanted all these sweet casement windows throughout the whole house, right? Well, we measure and count and order them all, get them in, install most of them, and the wife is like, um hold up, I want this whole wall to open so our backyard is indoor-outdoor. Cool, right? Well, she’s already paid for the windows and doesn’t want them anymore. James told her we couldn’t refund her the price of the windows and she just waved it off. They’re loaded, and apparently don’t really care, so James told us to make use of them if we could. So, I snagged one. And since I’m not paying for it, neither are you. One top-of-the-line casement window for free. Win-win.”

  “What if she changes her mind again?” I ask. “It would be a nightmare if you installed this and then she wanted it back.”

  He waves a hand. “Nah. We’re already almost done building the new patio door area, and she loves it.”

  “If you’re sure this is on the up-and-up, then that would be pretty exciting. I do love this window.”

  He frowns at me for the first time. “Don’t let the tattoos fool you, Imogen. I take my job seriously, and I’d never do anything dishonest.”

  “Oh god, no, Jesse—it’s not like that. I didn’t mean it like that.” I rest a hand on his forearm, on the inked skin. “I like your tattoos.”

  He only stares at me for a long moment, scrutinizing. “People tend to be kinda judgy sometimes.”

  “Like being a forty-year-old divorcée with no kids?”

  He nods. “Yeah, maybe something like that.” He leaves the window on the floor and goes out into my living room. There are two windows in my living room, facing each other. He eyes me inquisitively. “Can I take a quick peek at your bedroom window?”

  I blush, for some reason. “Um. Sure?” I lead him up the stairs to my room, and then promptly shove him backward out of the room. “Just—just give me a second. It’s—um…just—just hold on.”

  He laughs. “What, you got something hidden in there?”

  “Yeah, a mess.” I hold up a hand. “Just let me pick up a few things, okay?”

  He laughs. “You do realize I’ve seen women’s underwear before, don’t you? I’m just going to look at your window real quick.”

  I squeeze into my room. “Yeah, I’m sure you’ve seen tons of underwear. You probably have a collection or something. But you haven’t seen mine, and I intend to keep it that way.”

  His smirk makes my core heat. “I haven’t seen yours…yet.”

  “Nor will you.”

  “We’ll see.” His smirk is at once teasing and cocky, which does things to me.

  I shut the door between us and scurry around my room picking up piles of dirty underwear, and scrubs, and jeans with one leg inside out, and T-shirts, and bras hanging off my bedposts and closet knobs, shoving it all into a laundry basket which I then shove into my closet, slamming the door shut. Finally, with my bedroom something close to neat and not embarrassing, I let Jesse in.

  He goes to my window and measures it, and the space around it, and then glances at me. “So there were more windows she didn’t want and, as of this morning, none of the other guys had a use for them. As far as I know, they’re all still available. I could probably cut you a deal on the labor and install all of them for you.”

  “If it’s three hundred minimum to install one window, that’d be more than I have to get done. And, as sad as it is, I don’t have that to spend right now.” I shrug. “I’d love a bunch of beautiful new casement windows, trust me, I really would. I just…things are tight at the moment.”

  He nods. “Well, let me at least get this one in, see how long it will take. Maybe we can work something out.”

  He turns to leave, and pauses at the tiny vanity I have up against the wall beside my bed—it’s an antique I rescued from a garage sale, a beautiful piece I’ve been meaning to strip and repaint. And there’s a bra hanging off the corner of the chair. Jesse hooks a fingertip under the strap and lifts the undergarment up. Embarrassingly, it’s a plain white utilitarian one, and not one of my fancy lacy lingerie numbers I sometimes wear when I need to feel secretly sexy.

  “Missed one,” he says, with a hot, wicked grin.

  I snatch it from him and toss it under my bed. “Don’t be a pervert.”

  He just laughs. “It’s not like I sniffed it, Imogen. Relax. I’m teasing.”

  I’m blushing again—I’m a forty-year-old woman, long past the blushing stage—or so I’d thought. “You tease a lot.”

  “I like to have fun,” he says, exiting the room. “Does it bother you?”

  “No, it doesn’t bother me,” I say. “I just…I don’t come from a teasing sort of background.”

  “Well, you should try it sometime. It’s liberating.” He heads down the stairs. “Point is, don’t take anything I say too seriously, unless it’s about my work.”

  “So I should just ignore all the innuendos you keep throwing my way?” I ask, following him downstairs.

  He pauses at the landing, his hand on the front door. “I mean, yeah, you could ignore them if you want.” He turns back to tower over me, standing just a little too close for innocence. “But where’s the fun in that?”

  He’s out the door, then, leaving me smelling his scent in the air and feeling his lingering body heat and seeing his deep brown eyes burning with promise and intent.

  Oh my.

  This is definitely becoming a thing.

  A dangerous, problematic thing I’m simply not ready
for.

  I shake away the strange, powerful stirrings I feel in my gut—and further south—as I head upstairs to change out of my scrubs.

  Or at least I try to shake away the stirrings. I swear, I try. But, as I strip out of my scrubs and toss them into the laundry basket, I can almost feel his presence in my room. He leaves his clean, delicious, masculine scent everywhere he goes, and that scent has a way of burrowing into my awareness, into my gut—and into my whole being. I’m in trouble.

  I hear the sound of a saw screeching, so I know he’s occupied in the kitchen; I traipse naked from my bedroom into the bathroom, which isn’t en suite. I crank the shower on and pull my hair out of the tight bun I wear at work, and then examine myself critically in the full-length mirror on the back of my bathroom door.

  My hair is brown—almost auburn if the sun hits it just right, but usually a deep, rich, brunette—and loose like this it hangs past my shoulders in thick, shimmery waves. My eyes are green—the shade of grass in the summer sun. I’m five-seven, and tend to be on the curvy side. No reason to mention my weight, but let’s just say most of it sits on my bust and hips, and I’ll admit since the divorce I haven’t been as faithful about the gym as I used to be, so things aren’t as tight as I once prided myself on. I have naturally tan skin and since I have a ten-foot-high privacy fence around the backyard, I’ve been known to indulge in some nude sunbathing to darken the tan a little, but mostly because nude sunbathing feels indulgent and luxurious and a little naughty, and I need to feel that way. Especially after Nicholas stopped paying attention to me, and even more so now that I’m alone.

  My breasts aren’t enormous, not like those saline-filled melons Nicholas’s secretary carries around on her chest—flaunting them with every movement and accentuating them with inappropriately low-cut tops, which is most of the reason Nicholas is such a popular figure with the kids at his school, primarily the boys…