Handcuffed in Housewares (Tulle and Tulips #3)(9)
Author: Nikki Duncan

“That’s not how it works and you know it,” Kayla stated bluntly.

“All she has to do is say she wants him.” Tabatha shrugged and looked at Leigh. “Do you want him, Leigh?”

It was a look that dared her to deny what she wanted even while daring her to admit her deepest wants. Embrace an adventure or stay safe within predictability. It hadn’t been a dilemma, or even a question she’d asked herself, in years. That it was coming up when she was still within the first year of a new business venture where her success impacted the success of so many others and didn’t have the time for a distraction was problematic.

More problematic than how easily she’d given in to desire when she’d been with Burton was how quickly she would slip into a downward spiral if she spent more time with him.

Excitement.

Adventure.

Indulgence.

They were all normal experiences, unless the person having them was her. Looking around the table at her friends, weighing their suggestions with what she’d felt in Burton’s arms, Leigh forced herself to admit an uncomfortable truth.

She wasn’t ready to handle the consequences of being with Burton, but neither could she stomach the idea of Tabatha making a play for him any more than she could stop thinking of what it would be like to be with him again.

The only way to stop the circling advice and see how much she could handle would be to give their suggestions a shot. And keep Tabatha away from Burton.

“Yes, I want him. I don’t know what to do about it, but I do want him.”

Each of her friends smiled, but Tabatha’s smile was the broadest, brightest and most triumphant.

“The what-to-do part is easy.” Tabatha offered with a wink. “You call him, ask him out, and then you let him screw your brains out.”

So much easier said than done because saying the words didn’t have the power to hammer each nail into her obsessive nerve center with an addicting accuracy. Thinking about him, the admission, calling him, had heat slipping along her cheeks and the tops of her ears.

Chapter Eight

Metallica rocked the earbuds that did a passable job at blocking out the noise from the sander. The rock did nothing to stop the vibrations shaking Burton’s hands, arms and shoulders. Until he’d found the escape of loud music and earbuds they’d even reached his head, taking over until every hair tingled at the root. It wasn’t such a horrible sensation until he stopped working and a headache set in as the vibrations subsided.

His dad and brother argued that he wouldn’t get the headaches at all if he would take a few more breaks. Unlike his brother and father he didn’t have anything, anyone, around to serve as a worthwhile distraction.

For a few moments with Leigh he’d thought she might be the kind of woman he could settle down with. After the rush of office sex they’d moved to his room where they’d taken their time with each other. Hours of perfection had passed.

He’d planned on asking her to spend the night, something he never did, but her plans were different. She’d gotten dressed and made him take her home. When he’d dropped her off she thanked him for a fun night and made a hasty retreat—not giving him the chance to walk her to her door.

He’d never seen a woman retreat with regret as fast as Leigh had. It was his problem that he was still thinking of her a week later. He thought of her when he went to Jace’s to work on Misty’s office. He heard her laugh in the aisles of the hardware store. Her scent—soft sex—taunted him when he went into Hearth and Home to follow up on a few final touches. His body felt hers as vividly as if she were in touching distance when he went bowling.

The woman had been a brief light in his life, but every moment had stuck with him. They had him thinking about her and wanting to call her. Several times he’d reached for the phone. Each time he’d put it down, because why torment himself with a woman who wanted no part of being with him.

The softness of her scent mixed with the sharp odor of dust from the floor. The impression was so real a flash of Leigh spread nak*d on the newly sanded floor snapped into his mind. His gut knotted and his skin heated in a way that had nothing to do with manual labor and everything to do with desire.

Burton flicked off the sander and sat back on his heels. The driving wail of heavy metal blasted his ears. It had drowned out the sander, but it was worthless against the images of Leigh. Nothing he’d tried had been enough to drive her memory from his mind. She invaded his thoughts almost entirely, and each invasion increased the idea that he was missing out on something important. Something too important to miss.

She wasn’t like his ex. She was more conservative—considerably so—but she’d also been willing to shed her proper attire and cut loose at the bowling alley. She had friends who clearly loved her, which said a lot about her as a person, and she made him laugh. He hadn’t laughed with a woman in a long time.

Whatever made her run, he couldn’t make himself stay away any longer. Leigh was different in every way that was good, and he wanted to get to know more about her. If he were lucky he could talk her into another date. If he were very lucky she’d allow herself to be seduced to his bed.

Plucking the earbuds from his ears with his left hand, he used his right to reach into his back pocket for his phone. Maybe she didn’t want to hear from him again, but he wasn’t going to leave it to chance.

Since he’d last seen her, an hour hadn’t passed without her crossing his mind. He’d thought of her touch, her smile, her laugh, her kiss. She’d saved him, then intrigued him, then slipped into his mind more solidly than she’d gotten beneath his skin.

He pulled up her number and hit Talk before he could chicken out. She answered quickly.

“Hello.”

“Leigh, it’s Burton.”

“Um… Hi.” Her tone stumbled. She cleared her throat. “What’s up?”

My libido. That probably wasn’t the best approach to take with the woman who ran away from him after sex, so he tried for something less direct. “I wanted to thank you for putting me in touch with Jace.”

“Oh. No problem.” She cleared her throat again. “He says you’re doing a great job.”

“Thanks.” Silence strained the line as neither of them moved to take the conversation to the next point or to end it. He could practically feel her waiting on him to say something, but he’d resorted to the blank mind he’d always suffered in high school when he called a girl. Phone calls were not his thing.

A dog’s bark broke the silence. He wasn’t sure if it was on her end or his, because the neighbor’s dog was always barking. He had to say something before she hung up. It couldn’t be too pathetic either. He used to be smooth. Clearly those days were over. “Listen, Leigh.”

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to see you.” That didn’t suck too bad. “I can’t seem to stop thinking about—”

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts, not that he’d really had anything great to say planned. “Damn. Someone’s at the door. Can you hold on?”

“Sure.”

With as late as it was, it was probably a neighbor coming to complain about the noise of the sander. Mr. Michaels—the one with the barking dog—because he was the block complainer. Or Mrs. Finelli.

As long as it wasn’t Mrs. Finelli he would be able to get back to Leigh quickly. If it was Mrs. Finelli he worried he’d find himself spending an hour in the kitchen eating too-hard cookies and listening to the old lady talk about her grandkids.

He dusted his hands on his jeans and then opened the door. It wasn’t Mrs. Finelli.

“You can’t seem to stop thinking about what?” Leigh asked with a smile as she leaned against the doorframe.

Instead of her typical bun, her hair was in a ponytail with a few soft strands falling against her face. Her normal makeup, at least her lipstick, had been given an extra layer of gloss that teased him when she smiled her shy smile.

“Leigh. What are you doing here?”

She slipped her phone into the back pocket of her snug-fitting jeans. “Testing a theory.”

“Yeah?” He slipped his phone back into his pocket and reached for her hand. He didn’t pull her inside right away. For the moment he was happy to just look at her and hold her hand. “What theory’s that?”

Her smile slipped and her gaze slid to the floor. He’d glimpsed her uncertainty a few times before, yet this more closely resembled all-out shyness. She wasn’t the kind of woman to go to a man’s home uninvited, yet she stood on his doorstep. Choosing to show up at nearly eleven at night suggested she was torn between wanting him to answer and wanting him not to answer.

“Were you trying to see if I’d be out on a date? Maybe you wanted to see if I’d have another woman here?”

“What?” She lunged back. Burton tightened his hold on her hand. He wasn’t ready to let her go. “No!”

The blush staining her cheeks made a liar out of her and knowing that made him smile. She’d thought about the possibilities and didn’t necessarily like them if the frown pinching the corners of her mouth were any indication.

“Well—” he leaned against the doorframe and played with her fingers, “—then why are you here?”

She said nothing, maybe because she wasn’t sure how to answer or maybe because she was afraid of her answer. It didn’t really matter. He’d thought about her for days. She was back. He was going to keep her around long enough to figure out what it was about her that pulled him to her.

“Since you’re here—” he stepped back and tugged on her hand, “—why don’t you come in?”

She nodded and stepped inside. Sawdust coated her black flats, but she didn’t seem to mind. She sneezed a sneeze that looked like it would be hard enough to send spasms through her entire body but ended in a dainty little squeak. Then she sneezed again. And again.

Each one had him smiling bigger, because damn if they weren’t the cutest sneezes he’d ever heard. She looked around as she ran her hand along some of the molding he’d installed. His skin tingled with the remembered brush of her fingertips.

“You’ve gotten a lot done.”

“Pent-up energy has to go somewhere.”

“I just seem to live at work.”

He opened his arms to indicate the house around them. “And I can’t get away from mine.”

“It doesn’t look like you really want to.”

Rather than respond, he pulled his iPod from his pocket and wrapped the earbud chord around it. Setting it on the banister, he stepped in closer to Leigh. As much as he enjoyed working on the house and watching it take shape, and as simple as the last year without a woman in his life had been, having Leigh show up had him realizing how quiet the last week had been. Making love with her had rocked, but more than that he’d enjoyed talking to her. She brought a spark of life into his house, making it feel a bit like a home.

“Are you going to stain the floors or clear coat them?”