Merry and Bright Read online

  Still walking, he glanced over at her. His jaw was square, his mouth generous, but it was his eyes that held her. They were fathomless, and in those swirling depths was a mix of emotions with a barely restrained impatience leading the pack. He was busy, needing to get back to work, and at the knowledge, her nerve packed up and went on vacation. “Never mind.”

  Two years without sex, her good parts whined....

  They turned a corner, tight with stacks of boxes. “Watch where you’re going,” Jacob reminded her.

  Right. Watch where she was going instead of watching him and daydreaming. Time to stop daydreaming! “Yes, well, in my defense, I rarely do watch where I’m going.”

  “And we’ve got a mess all around you, I know. But your boss promised he’d give you all this week off so we’d have the empty building to ourselves. Then he didn’t.”

  “Tim’s a good guy, but he’s tight with his money, so tight he squeaks when he walks.” She smiled when he laughed. He had a good laugh. “He’s never given us a week off.”

  “We’re attempting to not miss our deadline. Some of us have flights to catch out of here tomorrow, if we finish.”

  “You’ll finish.”

  He looked a little surprised, and a little amused. “How do you know?”

  She was doing her best not to limp. No limping in front of the cute guy from high school—but she wanted to. “In high school, you finished everything you started, even when it was hard. Basketball, chemistry . . .” The 36-D blonde in that empty classroom . . . God, she’d been so jealous of that girl. “You just seem like a guy who still finishes what he starts.”

  His eyes heated, and oh, Lord, so did her body, but had she really just said he looked like a guy who finished what he started? Why didn’t she just strip down right here and ask him to finish her? “Where are you flying out to?” she asked instead, desperate for a subject change. “New Orleans?”

  “You remember.”

  She remembered everything about him, but gave a slight shrug. Playing it cool.

  “My mom lost her house in Katrina,” he said. “She’s in a new place now and we’re all meeting there for Christmas.”

  “Sounds lovely.” She was happy for him, but wistful for herself. Yes, she had Janie, but she missed having her mom, too.

  Jacob stopped at an empty lab on the far side of the building, which he and his crew used as an office and for tool storage. Knees on fire, Maggie sat on a chair while he dug into a large toolbox and came up with a first-aid kit.

  “Here’s some antiseptic spray,” he said. “It’ll take out the sting. Pull up your skirt.”

  No can do. Not when she’d just remembered she hadn’t shaved her legs. “I’ll do it.” She held out her hand for the spray, which she shoved beneath her skirt, gave a cursory spritz and gritted her teeth. “All better.”

  “Maggie, I can see the blood dripping down your calves. This is my fault, so let me see.”

  “I’m good.”

  With a sigh, he reached for the hem of her skirt himself.

  3

  Jacob’s fingers brushed Maggie’s skirt, and suddenly he wasn’t thinking about her knees but other things altogether, until Maggie put her hands over his, flashing a quick and definitely fake smile. “I just remembered. I have my own Band-Aids.”

  He pushed a smile of his own, one that usually got him a lot more than a peek at an injured knee. “Maggie, it’s just your knees.”

  “It’s not my knees I’m worried about.”

  She was blushing. Was she for real? He had a million other things to do, and yet he was crouched before her watching her most mesmerizing face. She was the ultimate science geek fantasy, if one was into that sort of thing. And apparently, given his pheromone level whenever she got within sight, he was. Her hair was still piled on top of her head, her lips fully glossed, and that smoking body covered up with her coat. Her killer eyes were magnified behind her lab glasses, which she’d clearly forgotten to take off. She’d put the pen behind her ear again.

  She flashed another fake smile and rose, then winced and sat back down. “Honestly, it’s not hurting at all.”

  “God, you are such a liar.” He shuffled through the kit. “Damn, I don’t have Band-Aids. I can’t believe it. Joe must have used them all last week when he staple-gunned his finger to the ceiling. The spray should help, though. Did you get a lot of it? Come on, let me see.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not? You have ugly knees?”

  She rolled her eyes. “If you must know, I didn’t shave my legs.”

  “Jesus, really? I’ll call the fashion police, stat.”

  She wasn’t amused at his grin. “It’s not funny. I haven’t been as diligent lately since I’m not dating.”

  He sat back on his heels, fascinated by this, by her. “So you only shave your legs for a date?”

  “Well, it’s a time sink otherwise, and—Never mind.” She lifted her chin. “My point is, I can’t show you my legs if I haven’t shaved them.”

  “Maggie, I don’t care.”

  With a look that said she was prepared for his disgust, she finally pulled her skirt up past her knees.

  His smile caught in his throat. Disgust was the last thing he felt. She was definitely wearing silk, which had torn and snagged at both knees, but that wasn’t what caught his interest and held it. Nope, that honor went to the fact that her silk stopped at mid-thigh, or one did; the other had sagged down just above her bloody knee, held there by what appeared to be an inch-wide strip of stretchy lace.

  If she’d been this sexy in high school, he’d been blind. He tried to control himself, but suddenly all he could think about was what she’d look like in that silk and her white lab coat and nothing else.

  As if she could see his wicked, dirty little thoughts, she let out a sound that managed to convey what she thought of him, and snatched the antiseptic herself. “I got this.”

  “Okay.” He straightened and jammed his hands in his pockets, waiting for her to deal with it, letting out a slow, long breath, practicing some multiplication problems in his head . . . anything to make sure his brain didn’t focus in on those sexy as hell thigh-highs. But she slowly rolled the stocking down, past the scraped knee, and—

  “Don’t look!”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are so.”

  Yeah, he was.

  “What, you’ve never seen a clumsy woman tear her stockings before?”

  “I’ve never seen a beautiful woman so unaware of herself before.”

  Her gaze snapped up to his, and he let her look her fill, which she did with a wary hunger that quite frankly turned him on more than the stockings, more than any woman had in a long time.

  “So I have a little thing for lingerie,” she said defensively, and sprayed her knees again. “And dammit, ouch.”

  He put a hand on her thigh, bent, and blew on the scrapes.

  She gasped.

  Nope, he wasn’t alone in this odd and inexplicable attraction. “Maggie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re crazy if you think I have a problem with your lingerie.”

  “It’s not that I’m crazy. Although in general, women are thirty-seven percent more likely to need a psychiatrist.”

  That made him smile. “You know some interesting things.”

  “I know, it’s odd. I’m . . . odd. I dress in lab coats every day and I wear glasses, and my hair—Well, just never mind about my hair. I know what I look like. Wearing sexy underwear gives me the illusion of being sexy, at least in my own mind.”

  He took in her slightly disheveled, sexy-as-hell appearance and shook his head. “Hate to argue with someone thirty-seven percent more likely to need professional help, but there’s no illusion here. You are sexy as hell.”

  She blushed beet red. “And not that it’s any of your business, but the thigh-highs are far better for the female body anyway, and—” She broke off when he slipped his hand around the back of one ca