“No. I don’t think you do,” Em huffed, her arms visibly shaking, the material of her long sweater stretching across her slender back. Jeans. She changed into jeans tonight when he’d talked her into checking out couches with him after they’d left Louella in their dust. A rare occurrence for her—but, Jesus, she was killing him with her long legs and that rounded ass.
He admired it from behind her back when he replied, “Sure I do. You’re thinking, wow, that’s huge.”
“It is—” she fought for air “—huuuge,” blowing the last word out with a heaving grunt as she jammed his new couch into place.
He took a step back and gave the room a critical eye. “I should have listened to you.”
Em nodded with a resigned sigh, coming to stand beside him, but keeping that safe distance she always kept when other people were around. “When it comes to things like size and placement, you should always listen to me, Jax. I know huge by eye. This is what an impulse buy will get you.”
He took another step back and looked at the cramped space of his home office full of nothing but this enormous couch he’d been talked into in the heat of a couch-buying moment. “Swear, I really thought it would fit.”
Em gave him that you’re-so-five look. “You got caught up in the moment. It was cash-and-carry. Plus, Liam Tobias is a good salesman. I tried to warn you about him before we ever hit the store. He could talk you into buyin’ Brazilian butt implants. Now look. You have a couch the size of Godzilla and no room for anything else.”
“You gotta admit it’s a nice color.” It was. A foresty-green, or something woodsy, Em had said. Manly. It was very manly—not some sort of nondescript, wishy-washy color like beige.
And it had red pillows. When Em had tried the couch on for size in the store, she’d put her pretty head on those very pillows, letting her dark hair splay out on them, and he’d had to look the other way to keep from hauling her off that couch and kissing her senseless.
Her shoulder brushed his when she chuckled, making her inch in the other direction. That was what Em always did when they were in close quarters and they had witnesses. “That’s because after all that talkin’ me into something I knew wouldn’t fit, I was forced to at the very least choose a color that would work in the room. You want your office to be a place you want to come to every day, don’t you? Somewhere that’s all you?”
The more time they spent together out of their guesthouse lair, the more he liked Em. Every chance he got, he stole a glance at her. He was becoming convinced he was going to have to buy another house that needed redecorating in order to keep her around. Then he’d quash that notion. No women. Things ended badly when you let them steal your common sense.
Reece was a prime example. He’d lost all his senses when he could’ve sworn he’d seen her at Maizy’s school. Where was she and why was she lurking around Plum Orchard?
“Are you hearin’ me, Jax?”
Yeah. He heard. Stern teacher’s voice got un-fucking-believably-sexier each time she used it. “Yes. But this couch feels like me.” He gave her a wink and a wiggle of his eyebrow, a look she thoroughly ignored. She had on her game face while Tag and Gage roamed through the house.
He thought her game face was adorable. Her efforts to avoid any contact with him at all? Even more adorable.
For the umpteenth time in as many hours as they’d been at this, they danced the dance. If he so much as brushed against her, she was all panicked feet and bristling limbs, moving anywhere but where he was. Those very things were making her even more attractive than just a few hours ago.
He was pretty sure his intense attraction for her had nothing to do with her refusal to become involved. Maybe some subconscious protest against the fact that she’d rejected him as anything other than her boy toy. But he’d mostly tossed out the “when a woman treated you like a side of beef, the more attractive she became” theory.
At first he thought maybe it was a case of the “Gwendolyn Studebakers.” Gwen being the girl he’d had the most heartfelt of crushes on in third grade. The girl who wouldn’t give him the time of day while he mooned like a lovesick dog. Until she did give him the time of day and he discovered she was mean and he didn’t want her time of day.
But this thing he was keeping to himself with Em wasn’t like that. Em didn’t make him feel like a side of beef. She did make him feel. Fuck, it was uncomfortable.
She waved a hand under his nose. “So? Now what do we do, Mr. Jeff Lewis?”
“Who?” He didn’t know who that was, but he was sure he didn’t have a mouth as pretty as Em’s.
“He’s a design guy on TV.” Em shook her head like he was hopeless. “Never mind. What are we going to do about this couch, Mr. Hawthorne? It’s too big—it doesn’t work. It takes up the whole office. You have no room for the desk and printer stand I ordered. You should have gone with the one I showed you the other night online.”