Next to You Read online

  Her flip-flopped feet appeared in his line of vision. He’d never really thought about feet being sexy before, but hers definitely were. There were hundreds of bones in the human foot, according to his nephew, and Jared wanted to run his finger along each and every one of her delicate foot bones. He wanted to sit on her bed and watch her paint that pink polish on those toenails. Her company probably sold that nail polish.

  “Jared?”

  Her voice was quiet but concerned. Like maybe she wasn’t totally unhappy that he had barged into her house but still wasn’t sure whether he was going to blow a gasket again or not. He lifted his sights from her toes to her knees.

  “I, uh, returned your pictures.” He waved a hand at the island behind them. “I owe you an apology, Ms. Miller.”

  Between the social need to apologize for his horrendous behavior and the wildly confusing effect her presence was having on his body, Jared felt like the low-level employee he suddenly realized he was. He had started a company, been its CEO, grown it into an industry leader and sold it for a boatload of money. But right now he felt like a teenaged pool boy.

  “Phlox. Please call me Phlox.”

  “I’ve never met anyone named Phlox before.”

  “No one has.”

  He could tell from the softness of her voice that she was smiling. Why wasn’t she yelling at him? Pushing him out of her house? Firing his sorry ass?

  “I’m also here to tender my resignation. I can leave in the morning or stay until you find a replacement. Whichever causes the least inconvenience for you.”

  Jared had never quit a job before. Or been fired, though he had fired plenty of people himself. Damn, this was humiliating. Jake would be rolling on the floor right now, laughing his ass off.

  “Resignation not accepted.”

  His head snapped up.

  “Why do you want to leave?” she asked.

  “I behaved abominably. You should fire me.”

  “I forgive you.” Her eyes flashed hard, then soft again. “But I get the feeling you don’t want to be forgiven.”

  She nailed him. Jared would never forgive and he didn’t understand why other people would want to, either.

  “Why would you want to keep me on, after the way I acted?” he said.

  “You’re good at the job. I don’t want to deal with the hassle of finding someone else. And …” Her voice trailed away and her eyes shifted to something behind him, over his shoulder. Yeah, that was about all she could take … he tried to shove the thought out of his head but it finished itself anyway. All she could take of his ugly mug.

  * * *

  Phlox’s eyes settled on her nemesis, the gleaming stainless steel range. And I don’t want to be alone here.

  “And what?” he pushed.

  And ...

  “And I like you, Jared.” My body likes you. Her body liked him a lot. A whole lot. When she came down the stairs and saw him standing there, every nerve ending in her body started dancing. He had to know how perfect his body was. The tee shirt he wore did nothing to conceal the hard contours of the muscles beneath. The guy was ripped, which made sense given he worked outside all the time. His jeans were faded and shrunk to fit on his hips and thighs.

  And the scars on his face weren’t ugly to her, as he obviously expected them to be. Instead, they gave him a rough, rugged air. He’s probably rough in bed, too. A delicious heat suffused her body.

  “I’m sure you’ll like someone else, too,” he said.

  No. No, she didn’t think she would. Her eyes met his again. There was something going on behind his dark gaze. She could tell. Something hot and powerful that wanted to get out, if only he would allow it.

  She took a step forward and pressed her body against his, cupping the back of his head with her hand, and pulled his mouth down onto hers. His lips stayed closed, not kissing her back. But Phlox persisted. A scientist doesn’t give up that easily. Kissing Jared Connor was an experiment and you don’t abandon an experiment just because you don’t get the results you want the first time. You reassess, make adjustments and try again.

  Phlox let her hands slide around to his back, where she found his muscles tight with tension. Then she ran her tongue along the seam of his lips, exploring … waiting. This time she was rewarded with his mouth opening, yielding to hers, but still he wasn’t kissing her back.

  Maybe he’s never kissed a woman before. That wasn’t such a far-fetched idea, considering the way he’d run away from her. Obviously, he wasn’t big on social interaction.

  The idea that he’d never been kissed, that he might even be a virgin, turned her on though. Massively turned her on. Her heart was pounding the way it did when an experiment took an unexpected—but better—turn, when you learned something you never would have imagined.

  She slid her hands over the curve of his lower back and let them settle firmly on his hard ass. She pulled his hips into hers and was rewarded with a long, low groan from Jared, one she could feel rumble up from his chest until it rolled out of his mouth and into hers. She discovered another reward, too—Jared’s arousal pressed against her stomach, long and hard. That he was turned on by this as much as she was only made her want him more. It had been over a year since she’d been with a man and now suddenly all she could think of was maneuvering Jared Connor up the stairs to her bed and fucking his brains out.

  Then just like that, he broke the kiss. Phlox watched as he turned on his heel and ran out of her house. This time she let him go.

  Chapter 10

  Jared Connor was one confusing man, Phlox thought as she lay in bed, unable to sleep even though the clock had just ticked past midnight. He had wanted her. Maybe his brain didn’t—maybe he didn’t want to want her—but his body had.

  Well, at least he didn’t yell and swear at her this time. That must count as progress, right? She smiled up at the dark ceiling. remembering the way his body had felt against hers, hot and hard.

  And really, he didn’t look as bad as he seemed to think. Not to her. Maybe to the “beautiful people” but Phlox had never been one of them anyway. No one had been more surprised than her that she had ended up running a skin care company. That’s why she called herself the Chief Scientist. That was her interest in the whole enterprise anyway—the science of it all.

  Somewhere along the line science had failed Jared Connor, but there was still art in his face. Phlox saw it. The left side of his face was nearly untouched—classically handsome with a strong jaw, straight nose, and dark dark eyes. Eyes like an abyss. The right side of his face, though, was puckered and rippled, ravaged by burns. Phlox didn’t care. She wasn’t put off by the way he looked.

  She wanted to know how it happened though. And when. It wasn’t recent, she could tell that.

  She thought back to her first day at the house, when she’d wigged out and hurled herself off the back porch. He had carried her inside, washed off her knees, found the first aid kit and covered her bloody scrapes with bandages. He had been gentle, tender even. If he hadn’t wanted her to see his face, why had he bothered doing that?

  Phlox lifted her head, punched at the pillow to fluff it up and let her head fall back onto it. On the other hand, he was technically her employee. There was that. She could already hear Rye squawking over the idiocy of kissing an employee.

  From outside came the sound of a sudden splash. She jumped out of bed and peered out the window toward the pool. Ripples radiated outward in the water. A dark form glided beneath the surface before emerging halfway across the pool. It was Jared on another midnight swim.

  She wasn’t going to just watch from her bedroom this time. She dug her swimsuit out of the bureau drawer and pulled it on. She glanced down at her body. Unfortunately, she didn’t keep any sexy beach-worthy suits at the house in Connecticut, only a black one-piece Speedo. It would have to do.

  She hurried down the stairs and across the back porch. She knew from experience that Jared was liable to disappear in the blink of an eye and sh
e didn’t want that tonight. At the pool’s edge, she saw him approaching the far wall. Just as he tucked under to turn, she dove into the water one lap over. She caught his eye as he turned his head to breathe but she continued on with her lap, waiting to see if he would stay or leave.

  The night air was cool in the mountains, the water cooler still. It felt good to Phlox, the water coursing over muscles that had spent too much time lying in hospital beds over the past year. Above, the moon had tucked itself behind a bank of clouds, leaving Phlox and Jared swimming through water as dark as ink.

  He was waiting for her when she finished her third lap. She glided to a stop next to a pair of well-muscled calves dangling in the water. She looked up at him, sitting on the edge of the pool. His face was barely visible, just glowing eyes and shadows. She felt those eyes on her as she pulled herself out of the water and sat next to him, careful not to touch him. He was skittish, and she would respect that.

  “I guess I owe you another apology,” he offered.

  “You don’t owe me anything, Jared. I’m probably the one who should apologize. I’m not usually that forward with men.”

  “Wealthy beautiful women don’t have to be, in my observation.”

  “I haven’t been wealthy or beautiful for all that long, so I guess I’m still learning.”

  She looked down at their thighs, side by side, and at the dark wet hairs covering his.

  “How did it happen?” he asked. “Your … accident.”

  “It happened here.” She nodded her head toward the house behind them. “I was experimenting with a new product in the kitchen. Which was dumb of me, I know. Knew that back then but beautiful, wealthy, intelligent—two out of three ain’t bad. And a pot of wax and oil sort of blew up in my face.”

  Jared was quiet for a minute. “You weren’t here by yourself, were you?”

  “Yeah. I was. I barely managed to get to my phone to call 911. This is the first time I’ve been back here since.”

  “And what happened last week? The day you arrived and fell off the porch.”

  “I tried to turn on one of the burners and I panicked. That’s why I’m here though. I’m supposed to be, as my partner puts it, vanquishing the demons.”

  She heard a low chuckle in the dark. She was still hesitant to turn her head and look at him. This was nice, sitting here talking to him. She didn’t want to spook him again and cause it to end.

  “Hmm. Demons are hard little buggers to vanquish. In my experience.”

  A finger touched her temple, lightly. She held her breath as he traced the scar that ran down her face, a scar she normally hid with makeup. Her eyes closed when his finger rounded the curve of her jaw and he flattened the back of his hand against the soft skin beneath her chin.

  “How many?”

  “How many what?” His hand dropped away from her neck and she missed his touch immediately.

  “How many surgeries?”

  “Thirty-two. Thirty-three if my mother gets her way and browbeats me into implants.”

  She felt his gaze on her chest.

  “I think you look fine,” he said.

  “I used to be, ah, better endowed.”

  He shifted his legs on the tiled edge of the pool. It took all her willpower not to look at his crotch. He had felt pretty well endowed himself when she had pressed herself against him in her kitchen.

  Their conversation fell quiet then. Phlox was dying to kiss him again, wanted him to kiss her back this time. But why? Why him? You just haven’t been in close proximity to a man in awhile, and especially to one wearing nothing but swim trunks. Was that it? Simple chemistry? Phlox believed in chemistry, for certain. She’d been a chem major, after all.

  “It’s not that I didn’t like kissing you.” Jared broke the silence. “But you have a boyfriend.”

  “I do?”

  “That guy who was here over the weekend. With the sweet BMW.”

  Phlox laughed. “Oh that was Rye. My brother. He brought the photo album up. I asked my assistant to just overnight it but Rye wanted to check up on me.” She kicked at the water. “If you had seen me before, you would have figured it out. I don’t look like anyone in my family anymore though.”

  “Yeah, I don’t look my brother anymore either.”

  She took a deep breath. It was the perfect opening, and she wanted to know, but she was afraid he would get up and run off again. She screwed up her courage and took the plunge.

  “How about you? How did it …” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “House fire. I got my brother out, but our parents …”

  She nodded.

  “I was ten.”

  A choked sob escaped her throat, and he was touching her face again. This time, his thumb grazed the scar at the corner of her eye.

  “You’re lucky you could afford all this. I was just lucky they saved my life.”

  “Jared,” she said quietly. She reached up to cover his hand and hold it against her cheek. Her heart ached at the thought of him as a little boy in a hospital, with all those injuries. It had been tough for her and she’d been an adult.

  She was surprised when his other hand cupped her head tentatively, his fingers pushing gently into her wet hair. “I’d kiss you but I’m not very good at this,” he said.

  “I don’t care.”

  His lips brushed hers lightly, hesitant.

  “Harder,” she murmured. She wanted him to take the lead so he could be in control. She didn’t want to scare him off this time.

  She felt the firmer pressure of his hand on her scalp as he pulled her closer. His mouth began to explore hers, tasting and testing, and what had started as a shy kiss quickly ignited into two people grasping and panting. Phlox couldn’t tell which moans were hers and which were Jared’s as his tongue brushed hers. She opened her mouth to let him in deeper.

  His palms slid down to her shoulders as he gently pushed her onto the pool deck. The stone pavers were rough beneath her skin but Phlox didn’t care. She pulled his body onto hers, letting him settle between her legs. He was hard as steel against her, with nothing but their thin swimsuits between them. She hooked a finger beneath the waistband of his trunks. He froze for a moment, his lips hovering just over her neck.

  Please don’t stop. Please don’t.

  He groaned and ground his erection into her hips. She felt his hand cover one of her breasts, then his thumb rubbed her nipple through her swimsuit.

  “Phlox. I want this so bad,” he moaned into her breast.

  The heat of his breath seeped through her suit and warmed her skin. “So do I.”

  She knew what was coming next though. He pushed himself up onto his knees and looked at her, sadness and regret on his face. “I’m sorry. I can’t—it won’t be any good for you. I’m sorry.”

  “Jared.” Her arms stretched out to pull him back down but he was quicker and stronger, already up and walking away. She bit back a scream of frustration. “If you’re not here in the morning, I will so fucking fire you,” she called after him, his nearly naked figure disappearing into the moonless night. His silence was her only reply.

  Chapter 11

  Phlox was exhausted and bleary-eyed the next morning. Sleep had eluded her most of the night, catching up to her only as the first rays of dawn seeped in through the blinds. In the shower, she turned the water on as hot as she could stand it and let it wash away the frustration of the night before. Sexual and otherwise.

  At least he had kissed her back this time. One step forward, two steps back. As she toweled off and dressed, she asked herself why she even wanted to sleep with him. She was supposed to be in Connecticut relaxing and getting over her fear of lighting a stove burner. That particular demon had yet to be vanquished.

  Demons are hard little buggers to vanquish. Jared Connor was obviously battling some demons of his own. A house fire, his parents killed, he and his brother orphaned. Phlox couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror of that. And at the age of ten. He was ent
itled to his demons.

  But Phlox still wanted to get rid of hers. Downstairs, she started a pot of coffee and then stood in front of her lovely, expensive-as-hell range. She ran her fingers over the stainless steel knobs. Just turn one. She knew what would happen. Turn the knob a hair, the electric ignition would click and then whoosh. A bright blue flame would appear. Turn the knob some more to lower the flame. Simple.

  She did it. Click, whoosh. She turned the flame down and watched it flicker orange and red. She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

  I’m fine. Just standing here watching a burner. I’m in control. She turned the burner off. Of course, there was nothing on the burner, a voice in the back of her head oh-so-helpfully pointed out. No skillet of grease. No boiling pot of whatever.

  But it was a start, and Phlox made up her mind to run with it before a wiser part of her brain kicked in. She would cook dinner tonight, a dinner that required the use of the range. She thought for a minute, running through menu options in her head. Lasagna. That’s what she would make. Cheesy-tomatoey lasagna. There would be onions and garlic to sauté, beef to be browned, sauce to be simmered, noodles to cook. She would make a large pan of lasagna and eat it and … gain five pounds in one meal.

  Maybe she should share.

  Forgetting that her hair was still wet and she had absolutely no makeup on, she ran out of the house and over to Jared’s cottage. She knocked, then remembered how early it was, only eight o’clock.

  “What?” came a sleep-roughened voice from inside the cottage.

  “Jared. It’s me. Phlox.”

  “Are you okay? What’s happened?”

  Her spirits lifted at the note of concern she detected in his voice.