Sommer Marsden - Once Bitten Twice Shy

She tried to keep her focus by slowly removing the tabs from the bandages and then carefully put them in a crisscross, forming an X, over his wound.

He smelled like fresh air and green grass with just a hint of something else she couldn’t place.

‘Painter?’ he said. His gaze ticked slowly around the studio as she attended to his battle scars.

She stood, stretched her back and kept her eyes off him. She looked at everything but him. The irises she was working on. A series of hyper-coloured flowers, the current ones being done in the yellow ochre she’d smeared all over him.

‘Yep. Painter. What gave me away?’

When he grinned at her, she glanced back at her work. Better to look at the work than at his handsome face.

Jack rolled his trouser leg back down and fingered the hole in the knee.

‘Sorry, I’ll get you new ones,’ she said, finally.

‘No worries.’

‘No, really. My fault, I insist.’

He stood and walked over to a finished painting. The only one in the entire studio she considered truly finished. It showed the ocean during the day but the water was coloured the true reds and oranges of a sunset. The body of water reflecting a horizon that wasn’t there.

Her heart stuttered. He reached out as if to touch it and she flinched. In his peripheral vision he must have caught the reaction because he stopped before actually placing a finger on the canvas. ‘Sorry,’ he said, drawing his hand back.

‘It might be wet is all,’ she lied. The painting had been dry for a decade. ‘Let me walk you out,’ she said. She had to get him out. Now. Fast.

At the door she stopped him. ‘Seriously, let me write you a cheque for the trousers. And if you need to go to the doctor –’

He shook his head before she could finish. ‘You have a pole with a red flag in the hole,’ he said.

August blinked. ‘Yeah? And?’

Jack grinned again and she felt that electric feeling once more in her gut. It unnerved her more than seeing him take a spill.

‘And I was too distracted to pay attention. That’s not your fault, Ms Adams. It’s mine.’

She’d forgotten he knew her name. For some damn stupid reason, it threw her for a second and she said, ‘August, please.’

He inclined his head. ‘August.’ With a smile he went on. ‘This is nothing I haven’t done to my own trousers with a weed whacker or on a fence.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do say so.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. ‘Look, I know this is weird. I fell into a hole in your yard, I had my trousers rolled up in your studio…’ A chuckle that seemed to shiver right through the centre of her came from his lips. ‘But I have a friend – Alice. She’s an artist, too. She has a showing at that teeny-tiny gallery by the coffee shop on Bradford Avenue. I think you’d like her stuff. If you have any interest in going, it’s next week.’

Then he looked at her. Those brown eyes seemed bottomless. And kind. So very kind.

A cool sweat broke out on her forehead and she exhaled loudly. August was attracted to him, there was no denying that now. Not just physically either. He was a nice person. A seemingly kind and open person. And it scared the shit out of her.

She shook her head quickly. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Plans?’ he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

‘Yeah.’

‘I didn’t tell you what day it was,’ he countered. But it was a kind jab. Not rude, just amused. Another endearing quality.

‘I’m just busy. Really busy getting ready for a big job. An attorney’s office downtown. I promised several canvases and…’

Jack held up a hand. ‘Ms Adams – August – you don’t owe me an explanation. I took a shot. No harm, no foul.’

Her heart sank. Because he understood or because he wasn’t pushing? She wasn’t sure.

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’ll be back in the morning. That hole’s fairly deep.’ He glanced down at his mangled trousers and laughed. ‘As you know. So I’ll have to do more than just fill in with dirt. Probably gravel, filler dirt, topsoil. So…yeah.’ He studied her face for a moment and then pulled his cap off again and ran his hand through his hair. A nervous tic maybe. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Bye,’ she said, weakly, watching him walk out of the door and down to his truck.

Damn.

Jack Murphy climbed into his white pickup, punched something into his cellphone, sat there for a moment and finally pulled off. She kept herself to the side of the curtain so he couldn’t see her there. ‘Me, here, being creepy,’ she whispered.

Six years was a long, long time to go without. The men she interacted with by accident couldn’t tempt her out of her celibacy. Occasionally, she’d feel some nameless ache for a connection. Or just to be around someone who could hug her when she was sad. Someone to catch a movie with or go to brunch with on a Sunday morning. For the most part, she was just fine by herself. Absolutely OK with being alone. It was better this way. Much, much better for everyone.

August realised she’d been holding her breath and exhaled. She pushed the curtain back into place and surveyed the silent living room. Restlessness crawled through her centre, making it hard to breathe and even harder to feel calm on any level.

‘Right. Get back to work. Stop daydreaming,’ she scolded herself, moving through the room and switching on the lights. The afternoon was waning. Soon it would be getting dark.

In the studio she turned on two extra floor lamps and found her palette. She eyed the iris she’d abandoned when she’d gone to investigate the sound of his truck. Its delicate petal was only half painted, curled down like a rumpled collar on a flouncy shirt. She smiled. Better to focus on something productive like painting and not something frivolous like wondering what those nicked-up hands would look like travelling up her bare thigh.

When August finally glanced up from the nearly finished painting, her neck ached and she was tired. No wonder. It was fully dark and well past dinner.

‘Food,’ she said and headed to the kitchen. A simple meal of grilled cheese, tomato soup, a glass of Cabernet. And then a long hot shower. A long hot shower where she pushed every stray thought of a strapping kind man named Jack from her mind’s eye.

She tumbled into bed with a glass of wine and a mystery novel and prayed to sleep like the dead. No dreams. No waking up to think about something she couldn’t have. Or, more accurately, refused to give herself.

He was on his belly. His back tan, his blue eyes staring out at the ocean.

‘The beginning of our lives,’ he said, knowing she was listening.

August stroked her hand along his strong back, liking the feel of the muscles jumping at her touch. A pre-honeymoon he’d called it. A kickoff to their lives together.

‘Are your parents still freaking out about us getting married now? Right out of high school? Before we even do the college thing?’ While she waited for an answer, she dropped a kiss on his sun-browned shoulder.

Aaron rolled on to his back and tugged her down to him. He kissed her once, and, when she pushed her body close to his, soaking up his heat, he kissed her again.

‘Yeah, but it really doesn’t matter now, does it?’ He pulled back to look her in the eye. His eyes were the same colour as the water outside their tiny, but nice, Virgin Island hotel room.

They’d saved all through high school for this trip. And their parents said they weren’t responsible enough to get married.

‘Nope,’ August said.

‘What matters is we have a plan and we stick to the plan.’ His hands came up to grip her hips, pulling her down even as he thrust up beneath her. He was hard and, though she thought she’d already been ready, she found herself overwhelmingly so. Just beyond ready to be with him again. She never tired of having him inside her.