“My strawberries,” she said. “I love them. And they’re so hard to find this time of year. Not to mention so expensive when I do find them.” She blew out an exasperated breath as she carefully gathered them up and placed them back into their plastic basket. “Maybe I can salvage a few of them,” she said morosely.
Jack made his way back up the steps just as she was dropping the last of her groceries back into her own sack. “I’ll help you get these upstairs,” he told her.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I can manage.”
“It’s the least I can do,” he insisted.
She relented then. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
As he followed her the rest of the way up, Natalie was acutely aware of him behind her. She knew he couldn’t be watching her—with the way she was dressed, what was there to see?—but somehow, she felt the heat of his gaze boring into her. It only added to her already frazzled state, jacking up the fire that was already blazing away in her midsection. But that was nothing compared to the inferno that fairly exploded when they reached her front door.
Thanks to her nervousness, when Natalie went to unlock it, she dropped her keys, which then skittered off the top step and threatened to go tumbling down the way her groceries had. But Jack deftly caught them before they could go too far, then stepped up behind her on the third floor landing, which she’d never, until that moment, considered especially small.
But with Jack crowding her from behind, it was very small indeed. Small enough that he had to press his front lightly to her back when he stood behind her, so that she could smell the clean, soapy, non-Aqua Velva scent of him and feel the heat of his body mingling with the heat of her own. Especially when he leaned forward and snaked his arm around her to unlock her front door himself. But he had a little trouble managing the gesture, and had to take yet another step forward, bumping his body even more intimately against hers, working the key into the slot until it turned and the door opened. And every time he shifted his body to accommodate his efforts, he rubbed against Natalie, creating a delicious sort of friction unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
Strangely, even after he’d managed to get the door open, he didn’t move away from her. Instead, he continued to hold his body close to hers, as if he were reluctant to put any distance between the two of them. Which was just fine with Natalie, since she could stand here like this all night. It was, after all, the closest thing she’d had to a sexual encounter for some time. Now if she could just think of some acceptable excuse for why she had to suddenly remove her clothing…
“You, uh, you wanna go inside?” Jack asked as she pondered her dilemma.
And then Natalie realized the reason he hadn’t moved away from her was simply because he was waiting for her to move first. And because she’d only stood there like an imbecile, he was probably thinking she was, well, an imbecile. Either that, or he was thinking she’d been enjoying the feel of his body next to hers too much to want to end it, and might possibly be grappling for some acceptable excuse for why she had to suddenly remove her clothing, and how embarrassing was that? Especially since he was right.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, forcing her feet forward. “Sorry. I was just thinking about something.”
Like how nice it would be to have her door opened this way every night. And how nice it would be if Jack followed her into her apartment every night. And how nice it would be if they spent the rest of the night rubbing their bodies together every night.
Oh, dear.
Hastily, she strode to her minuscule galley kitchen and set her bag of groceries on what little available counter space was there. Jack followed and did likewise, making the kitchen feel more like a closet. He was just so big. So overwhelming. So incredibly potent. She’d never met a man like him before, let alone have one rub up against her the way he had, however involuntary the action had been on his part.
The moment he settled his bag of groceries on the counter, he turned and took a few steps in the opposite direction, and Natalie told herself he was not trying to escape. As she quickly emptied the bags and put things in their proper places, he prowled around her small living room, and she got the feeling it was because he wasn’t quite ready to leave. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part. In any event, however, he made no further move to escape. Uh, leave.
“You got a nice place here,” he said as he looked around.
And why did he sound as if he made the observation grudgingly? she wondered. She, too, looked around her apartment, trying to see it the way someone would for the first time. Five years of residence and a very small space added up to a lot of clutter, she realized. But he was right—it was nice clutter. Natalie wasn’t the type to go for finery, but she did like beautiful things. After she’d graduated from college and found this apartment, she’d haunted the antique shops and boutiques along Third Street and Bards-town Road and Frankfort Avenue, looking for interesting pieces to furnish her very first place. Her college dorm had been stark and bland and uninteresting, so she’d deliberately purchased things of bold color and intrepid design, striving more for chimerical than practical, fun instead of functional.
Her large, overstuffed, Victorian velvet sofa, the color of good merlot, had been her one splurge. The coffee table had started life as an old steamer trunk, and the end tables were marble-topped, carved wooden lyres. An old glass cocktail shaker on one held dried flowers, a crystal bowl overflowing with potpourri took up most of the other. Her lamps were Art Deco bronzes, and ancient Oriental rugs covered much of the hardwood floor. Dozens of houseplants spilled from wide window ledges, while other, larger ones sprung up from terra-cotta pots. Brightly colored majolica—something she’d collected since she was a teenager—filled every available space leftover.
All in all, she thought whimsically, not for the first time, the place looked like the home of an aging, eccentric Hollywood actress who’d never quite made it to the B-List. It was the sort of place she’d always wanted to have, and she was comfortable here.
Nevertheless, she shrugged off Jack’s compliment almost literally. “Thanks. I like it.” And she did.
“Yeah, I do, too,” he told her. “It’s…homey,” he added, again seeming somewhat reluctant to say so. “Interesting. Different from my place.”
His place, she knew, was a furnished apartment, but it was much like the rest of Mrs. Klosterman’s house, filled with old, but comfortable things. Still, it lacked anything that might add a personal touch, whereas Natalie’s apartment was overflowing with the personal. And that did indeed make a big difference.
She had expected him to leave after offering those few requisite niceties, but he began to wander around her living room, instead, looking at…Well, he seemed to be looking at everything, she thought. Evidently, he’d been telling the truth when he said he found the place interesting, because he shoved his hands into the back pockets of his black jeans and made his way to her overcrowded bookcase, scanning the titles he found there.
“Oh, yeah,” he said as he read over them. “I can tell you’re an English teacher. Hawthorne, Wharton, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Twain, James.” He turned around to look at her. “You like American literature, huh?”
She nodded. “Especially the nineteenth century. Though I like the early twentieth century, too.”
He turned back to the bookcases again. “I like the guys who came later,” he told her. “Faulkner. Fitzgerald. Kerouac. Hemingway. I think The Sun Also Rises is the greatest book ever written.”
Natalie silently chided herself for being surprised. How often had she herself been stereotyped as the conservative, prudish, easily overrun sort, simply because of the way she dressed and talked, and because of her job? How often had she been treated like a pushover? A doormat? A woman who was more likely to be abducted by a gang of leisure suit-wearing circus freaks than to find a husband