It’s Complicated (Her Billionaires #5)(96)
Author: Julia Kent

Across the baseball field she saw him. He must have rounded the corner, and now he flew past at a greater distance. He ran behind the dugout fence across the large field, and then a series of multicolored metal pipes that made up parts of the children’s playground; her eyes assembled the fleeting glimpses into a coherent whole. He ran behind houses, and she could no longer catch him with enough glimpses to assemble him into something she could hold in her mind. Breaking away from her trance, she padded back into the kitchen, made herself another cup of coffee, and very intentionally rooted herself at the kitchen table. She would not, absolutely would not, go back and gawk, trying to capture more pieces of him, as if she could hold them together and turn them into something she could touch.

He was the one who had destroyed everything. He was the one who hadn’t even tried. Radio silence from him for all these weeks had been devastating. It confirmed what she thought. He’d taken an easy out. It was simpler to create some reason why she was unprofessional and meddling in his grandfather’s affairs than to admit that maybe she had tapped into something in him that was so deep, a connection too profound, and that terrified him as much as it did her. Why was he running around her neighborhood? What purpose did that serve?

Her ears perked up before she even realized that someone was near. As the realization set in, slowly she turned her head to find a strange man standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway, as if a blonde surfer model had appeared out of thin air. In the seconds that her mind registered his presence, she took him in. Tall, at least as tall as Alex, with blonde, shaggy hair and eyes so bright blue they rivaled Mike’s. His shoulders were broad and his chest was sculpted, the skin a little goosefleshed around his pecs, as it narrowed impossibly into curves of a six-pack that went down to a thicker thatch of hair at the waistband of impossibly painted-on boxer briefs, made of a darker, smoky blue. Perhaps she took too long to assess the perfection of this body in front of her because it was the man, and not Josie, who cleared his throat. He dipped his head and slid his arms into a shirt, ending her reflexively lascivious appraisal before it even occurred to her that strange shirtless men surprising her in her own kitchen should maybe make her feel threatened, not intrigued. Less than a second into that thought, she figured out who he was. Another sip of coffee bought her manners, and her racing heart, a second to compose themselves.

“You must be Trevor,” she said quietly, pinching her lips together to hide the smile that tried to creep out, involuntarily sultry and flirtatious. She couldn’t believe this was coming out of her. Dear God, no wonder Darla had fallen for him. Josie would have f**ked him in a rest area, too, even an Ohio rest area. He was too young for her, she told herself. Old enough, of course, but still, she felt a little dirty thinking about him this way. A flash of guilt that Alex was outside running in front of her house while she was drooling over this hot, local rock star. Without even having properly introduced herself.

He crossed the kitchen with two steps and sat down next to her, the movement so fluid and confident that it made all sorts of parts of her perk up, not just her ears. Suddenly she didn’t need the coffee to be fully awake. Long athlete’s legs stretched out, nearly brushing against her calf, as he crossed his feet at the ankles and didn’t seem to care that he sat before her in his underwear and a tight cotton t-shirt.

“I’m Trevor, yeah,” he said, leaning forward and shaking her hand. That same hand then went and raked the top of his hair. “Man, Darla didn’t tell you we were staying over?”

We?Josie thought. “No, uh, but it’s fine, you know, hey.” She held her palm up and leaned back, unconsciously shifting her shoulders back and pushing out whatever she had that passed for br**sts. The guy was hypnotic; he had an instant effect on her that she found a bit dizzying. She wanted to reach out and just stroke one index finger down the ski slope of his perfect ab muscles, but held back, knowing that it would be rude. It would be rude, right?she thought, the temptation so great that she cursed herself on the inside. Down girl, down, she almost muttered aloud.

“Oh, it’s fine…uh, hey, help yourself to some coffee,” she said, gesturing to the Keurig, holding herself back from jumping up. She wasn’t going to wait on some guy. The only guys she did wait on were the ones she, herself, had just romped in bed with. Alex, the last man to sit in his underwear in her apartment, was the only one who had recently qualified.

Trevor stood, opened the cupboard above the coffee machine, and emitted a low whistle. “Have enough coffee mugs?” The cabinet looked like a Gay Pride Parade banner, every color of the rainbow represented in Darla’s coffee mugs. In fact, she’d organized them in ROY G BIV color order. Darla had teased Josie about her OCD nature, but it had been more of a challenge to see whether Cathy’s “winnings” really were enough to make a rainbow.

Turned out they were.

“I think we could use a few more,” Josie mused.

Trevor plucked an orange mug emblazoned with a logo for some information archive service, made himself a cup of coffee, and then, when he came back to sit down, said, “You okay?” The words were clipped, no empathy in them, just a politeness that she had found ingrained in a lot of the students she had met at work.

“I’m fine,” she said, giving back the qualified, neatly controlled, upper-middle-class answer. Giggling poured down the hall from the other room, and then the very sharp, unmistakable sound of a hand smacking against flesh. Trevor had the decency to blush slightly and stop making eye contact with Josie. “You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she said, “it’s not you in there.”

He frowned. “You’re right, it’s notme in there. It should be.” He stood and wandered back down the hallway to Darla’s bedroom, coffee mug in hand.

A long whoosh of held breath poured out of her, her body tingling, her cl*t on fire. You have got to be f**king kidding me, she thought. Pinned between Alex on the outside, and Trevor Connor of all people, and probably Joe Ross, on the other side, she found herself in a vice of arousal, completely unable to touch anyone right now, except herself. Thank god for battery-operated boyfriends. She had a drawer full of them, and would probably use them later to try to exorcise this raging case of frustration. Better living through plastics. Another slap, and then Darla screamed, “Put it on a different setting, that one’s too fast!”