Nerd in Shining Armor (Nerds, #1)(14)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

"If that’s the hitch, then we don’t have a deal. Lincoln goes."

"But—"

"You know, it’s a good thing you don’t have children, if you can imagine leaving one of them behind to wait and worry by himself while his mother’s out hunting for his big sister. So thanks, but no thanks. I’ll hire a boat my own self." She started toward the door.

"Okay. We’ll take Lincoln."

She turned. "Good. Then let’s go."

"Now?"

She’d lost all patience with him. "Yes, now! You’re not going to be slowing me down like an old mule with the rheumatiz, now are you?"

"No." He glanced at his desk once, then threw up his hands and turned away from it. "Nope. I promise not to act like an old mule with the rheumatiz. Let’s go."

* * *

"This reminds me of Christmas." In the shade of the overhanging rock ledge, Genevieve sank to her knees in the sand next to her suitcase and flipped open the lid. She didn’t know which she was more excited about unpacking, her nail file, her hairbrush, or her lotion.

"Santa brings you suitcases of soggy clothes every year?" Jack crouched beside her.

"Very funny. I meant it feels like Christmas because we have this unexpected treasure to open. I’m referring to Christmas like I remember it back in the Hollow. Nobody could afford store-bought presents, so you never knew what strange and wonderful thing would appear under the tree with your name on it. One year my cousin Festus made me a party dress from corn husks and duct tape."

"Creative."

"It was a little scratchy, but I wore it until the mice ate so much of the corn husks that it was indecent." She tossed her flip-flops into the sand and lifted out the South Park towel. "Lincoln made me the cutest bunny out of Play-Doh when he was six. Now he thinks he’s too cool to make his own gifts, but homemade presents are the best, don’t you think?" She wrung the towel out, letting the excess water drip on the sand beside her.

"I only ever had one homemade present. My grandmother crocheted an afghan for me one Christmas."

"That’s wonderful." She hadn’t heard much about Jack’s family before, and it was good to know he had some kin who cared enough to make him a cherished heirloom. She smiled at him. "I’ll bet you were touched that she’d spent all that time making something for you."

Instead of smiling back and telling her that he used that afghan to this day on the foot of his bed, he dropped his gaze. "Actually, I… told her I would’ve rather had Nintendo."

"You didn’t!"

" ‘Fraid so." He glanced up. "She sold the afghan and a couple more she had around the house, and got me Nintendo."

"That’s purely dreadful. I’m flabbergasted that your parents allowed such a thing to happen. Somebody should have tanned your hide for being so ungrateful."

He looked as if he agreed completely. "Unfortunately, Grandma never had the heart to tan my hide, and my folks died when I was two months old, which is why I ended up with Grandma. Years later I realized I’d done a terrible thing by rejecting that afghan, but I never did work up the courage to apologize. I guess I’m hoping she’s forgotten."

"Not likely, Jack." She nearly forgave him, considering that he was an orphan and he had that hangdog look on his face. He really had a terrific face, too—squared-off and manly, nicely accented with remorseful blue eyes. A girl could fall for that combo if she wasn’t careful.

But he’d caused his poor grandmother to sell what should have been a keepsake, and he shouldn’t be let off easy for a transgression like that. "I’m sorry your parents died when you were no bigger than a minute, but I have to say you’ve treated your grandmother mighty poorly."

"You’re right, I did. I’m scum." He glanced at the beach towel in her hand. "Would you like me to drape that over the ledge?"

"Yes, thank you." She handed him the beach towel. "What color was it?"

He stood and draped the towel across the ledge. "What?"

"The afyhan, Jack. If you’re hoping that I’m going to forget, too, you’re barking up the wrong tree." She squeezed the water out of her green suit jacket.

"I don’t know what difference the color makes to the discussion. It’s gone, in any case."

"I just want to picture it, is all." She handed him the jacket. "And I think you should picture it, too, as a fitting memorial to something that has departed from your life forever, because you didn’t have the good sense to appreciate the effort involved in creating it."

He arranged the jacket next to the towel. "All right, I admit it was a rotten thing to do, but don’t you think you’re getting a little carried away with this subject?"

"Nope. I’ll bet she spent hours and hours bent over her work, all for love of you, Jack." She squeezed water from the matching skirt and passed it up to him. "She probably even had poor eyesight and arthritis in her hands."

Jack groaned.

"What color was it?" Next she wrung out her bathing suit and held it out to him.

"Orange and yellow, I think."

"You think? You paid so little attention to it that you don’t even remember what color it was? Your sins are piling up on you, boy."

"Okay, you might as well know the truth. I’m color blind."

"Color blind?" She stared at him in astonishment. "Well, shut my mouth. That explains a heap of things. Why didn’t you tell me that a long time ago, when I was trying to do something about your look?"

He shrugged. "What difference would it have made? I couldn’t expect you to show up at my house every morning and pick out my clothes."

That idea had more appeal than she wanted to admit. Dressing Jack would be fun, now that she realized he had a decent body. Undressing him wouldn’t be a real chore, either. "There is a solution, you know. Wear black." She could see him in all black, too, looking better than those velvet paintings of Elvis that Aunt Maizie had in her front room.

"I’d probably mess that up and get navy or purple mixed in there."

"Not if you asked the salesperson to sell you only black clothes." She gazed up at him. "Right?"

"I guess."

"You don’t want the salesperson to know you’re color blind, do you?"

When he didn’t answer, she figured this physical failing was a touchy subject for him. "Being color blind is nothing to be ashamed about," she said more gently. "It’s not like it’s your fault or anything. Try being my aunt Nelda, who has six toes on her right foot. That’s not her fault, either, but you should see the way people make fun of her every blessed time she goes wading in the crick. She’s threatened never to go again, on account of that."

He smiled down at her. "You sound like my grandmother. She used to tell me to be glad I had all my fingers and toes."

"I’ll bet I would like your grandmother. Is she still alive?"

"Uh-huh. She lives in Nebraska. I’ve tried to get her to move over here, but she’s very attached to her little house and I don’t think she’d ever do it." He glanced at the suitcase. "Anything else to hang up?"

Nothing but her pale blue underwear, and she was feeling a little shy about giving him that. She shouldn’t be shy. This was good old Jack, after all. Even so, she couldn’t just hand him her panties and bra. "That’s it." She unzipped her makeup bag and took out her tube of sunscreen. "Come on back down here and I’ll put some lotion on your back."

"Okay." He crouched down with his broad back facing her.

Uncapping the tube, she squeezed coconut-scented sunscreen onto her fingers before laying the tube back inside the suitcase so it wouldn’t get all sandy. Then she rose on her knees and smeared the lotion over his right shoulder.

He flinched. "Yikes. That’s cold."

"Sorry. It’s because your skin’s so warm." Warm and smooth. Nice. His indoor-white color was starting to turn pink, but the sunscreen should save him from getting burned. She went back for more lotion, because there was a lot of area to cover.

And she was having a good time. If anyone had asked her before today, she would have said Jack probably had a bony, skinny back, but it wasn’t at all. He was firm and very touchable. She made

several passes over his shoulders and then got more lotion before heading down toward the waistband

of his jeans.

With the way he was crouched, the waistband of his jeans gaped at the small of his back, right where

a sprinkling of hair followed his spine down under the elastic of his tighty whiteys. She wondered if he wore Fruit of the Loom or Hanes or Jockeys, like the pair the King had left in her grandmother’s bedroom.

Whatever the brand, Genevieve figured Jack would have great buns underneath the cotton. She never intended to find out about that. She’d never find out about what was on the flip side of those briefs, either, although parts of her were acting very interested in that area.

Time for a distraction. "Jack, I have the best idea. I’ll teach you how to whittle, and you can make your grandmother something. And when you give it to her, you can tell her how much you regret your behavior regarding the afghan, and this is how you’re showing it, by giving her a gift from the heart."

"You whittle?"

Maybe she shouldn’t have told him. "I suppose you think that’s peculiar."

"No. Well, maybe, a little. I always thought of whittlers as being old guys with beards sitting on a sagging front porch with a hound dog lying beside them and banjo music in the background."

"Picture a barefoot little kid in place of the old guy with the beard, and you’ve painted it just about right. We always had coon dogs lying around, and I don’t know a single porch in the Hollow that isn’t slightly swaybacked. My uncle Harley was the best banjo picker in the hills of Tennessee. Or so he always told us." She gave his back one final swipe. "There, you’re done."

He stood and stretched, looking way too good doing it. "Thanks."

"Put some on your chest and arms." She thrust the tube of lotion at him.

"Then I’ll do you."

She panicked at the thought. "That’s okay. I can reach everything that’s exposed." If she felt as nice to him as he felt to her, they could get into trouble, with him having a crush and all. And her getting increasingly attracted. She knew it was on account of them being marooned and Jack being her rescuer. Once they were back in Honolulu she’d stop thinking of his hands and his mouth and his … other stuff.

She turned back to the open suitcase. There was another reason her thoughts were going in that direction. Six of them, to be exact, lay in the bottom of her suitcase. Now that she’d taken out everything except her underwear and her makeup bag, one or another of those six packets kept slipping into view. She thought the suitcase might have had elasticized side pockets once upon a time, but they’d been ripped out by the time she became the owner.

She shoved the packets under her bra and panties and makeup bag as she listened to Jack rhythmically slapping more lotion on his bare arms. It sounded like two people hav**g s*x. Two specific people. People marooned together who wouldn’t be discovered for hours and had six condoms.

"Did you bring a knife?" he asked.

"A knife?" She couldn’t imagine why he’d ask.

"To whittle with."

"Oh." She’d been so sidetracked by the image of hav**g s*x with him that she’d plumb forgotten about her offer to teach him to whittle. "No, but I have a pair of manicure scissors in my makeup bag. I could make do with those." She turned to glance up at him and found herself having to look past his crotch in order to get to his face. She gulped. "Do you really want to learn?"

"It’d be a way to kill some time until we’re sure Brogan is gone for good." His attention veered from her to the blue underwear in her suitcase. "Those look wet, too. Why don’t I hang them up?" He leaned over and reached one long arm toward the suitcase.

"Never mind." She spread her hand protectively over her damp undies. "They’ll dry in there."

"Ifyousayso."

"I do. So are you ready for me to teach you to whittle? First we have to find some small pieces of driftwood." She had to change her position and change it fast. This view of his male equipment was not helping her mental condition at all. She got to her feet, but in the process kicked the suitcase slightly. The contents shifted.

"Whoa." From the tone of his voice it was obvious he’d seen at least some of the condoms.

She banged the lid shut and avoided his gaze. "Never you mind about that, either." She started toward the beach. "Come on. Let’s find something we can whittle."

"Hold on." He grabbed her arm. "You didn’t trust that smarm-meister to bring his own, and yet you were willing to go to bed with someone that irresponsible?"

"When it comes to makin’ babies, I don’t trust any man."

His grip on her arm gentled, and a soft light came into his eyes. "You could trust me."

Chapter 9

Condoms. The suitcase Jack had rescued, the one that had nearly turned him into shark bait, the one that meant so much to Gen that the thought of trashing it had made her cry—that same suitcase had contained condoms. And not just one, either. If he’d known the suitcase had condoms in it, he would have dived down to the sunken plane, if necessary. Condoms were even more exciting than energy bars.

This put a whole new light on things. True, she’d brought the condoms on account of Nick, but Nick had been revealed as a murdering, embezzling creepazoid, so Jack could rightly assume she had no more interest in Nick as a sexual partner. She had no interest in Jack as a sexual partner, either, but he had a decent chance to remedy that and absolutely zero competition. Statistically, he was in fine shape.

She smiled at him. "When I said I wouldn’t trust any man, I wasn’t talking about you."

"Good, because I—wait a minute." What had sounded like a compliment might have been the exact opposite. "Is that because you don’t think of me as a man?"