“You okay?”

  Turning my head, I find him studying me closely. “Yeah, totally cool.” I drop my purse to the floorboard then wipe my hands down the front of my bare thighs. “So, if you’re not a cop, what do you do?”

  “I work with my cousin.”

  “Okay…” I wait to see if he will fill me in, but he doesn’t. “What kind of work do you do with your cousin?”

  “Private security, bounty hunting, PI work, we do it all.”

  “So you’re kind of like a cop, but you’re not a cop. Why is that?”

  “My dad’s a cop. He loves his job but hates that he has to deal with red tape. He can’t just go in and get a job done. He has to make sure all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed.”

  “So you don’t like red tape.”

  “Basically,” he concurs as we pull into the drive through line of one of the small coffee huts that sits in a parking lot on Main Street. “Do you know what you’d like?”

  “A large iced green tea,” I murmur, leaning forward to grab my purse so I can get some cash out. As soon as we pull up in front of the window, he places our order with the girl working inside. “Here.” I hold the ten-dollar bill in my hand toward him, and he shakes his head. “Please, let me pay for our drinks,” I press, but he ignores me and pulls down his visor, taking down a twenty from the bills he has stacked there. “You know, it’s kind of annoying that you won’t let me pay,” I inform him as he hands me my drink.

  “You’ll survive.” He smiles at me before giving the girl a tip and pulling away from the window. “What’s your plans for the day?”

  “I have a date with a bookshelf I bought from IKEA that will likely take me a year to put together. What about you?” I ask, taking a sip of my drink.

  “My schedule’s clear. Do you want some help putting it together?”

  “Really?” I ask, stunned, and he brakes at a stop sign then turns to look at me.

  “Sure.”

  Wow, okay.

  “That would be really nice,” I respond quietly as warmth and something soft and sweet spreads through me.

  “Good,” he replies just as quietly, heading back to the mechanic shop, where he waits for me to pick up my car and pay before following me back to my place.

  As soon as we reach the house, I lead him down the long driveway that curves around the back of the property. My apartment is above the third garage, but the way it’s set up makes it feel like I have my own space and I’m not living in someone else’s house. Hitting the remote for the garage, I pull inside and watch Sage drive up and park behind me. Grabbing my bags from the passenger seat, I open my door, get out, and head toward the trunk, where I meet him.

  “Have you been over here before?” I ask when I see him looking around the neighborhood.

  “I’ve spent my whole life in this town. When I was younger, I wanted to buy a house over here before the developers got a hold of it,” he says, taking my bags from me.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, years ago, when this was nothing but farms and open land for miles.”

  “I would have liked to see it then.”

  “It was beautiful. My parents own a house a few miles down the road from here. Their house used to be in the middle of nowhere. Now, the city has grown up around them. My dad loves it, but my mom hates it and has been talking about moving farther out to get away from everyone.”

  “This place is growing fast. Since I moved to town a couple months ago, they have built a Starbucks and a Taco Bell. I have never seen buildings go up so fast before,” I tell him as I head for the set of stairs inside the garage. With him at my back, I open the door to my apartment and turn on the light.

  My apartment is just under six hundred square feet, with a combined kitchen and living room. There’s a small bedroom that is just big enough to fit my queen-size bed, two side tables, and a dresser, and a bathroom with a pedestal sink, and standup shower.

  “This is nice,” he says, looking around, and I smile. I love my place. The dusty blue of the walls sets off the light gray colored wood floors that run through the place, making it seem bigger than it is, which is a bonus for sure.

  “Thanks.” I take my bags from him. “But you should see the view from my bed,” I gush, then realize what I just said when his lips tip up. “Not that you will ever see it,” I add quickly, dropping my eyes to the floor as my cheeks get hot. “I just said that because I have a huge skylight over my bed that makes it feel like you’re sleeping under the stars,” I finish, then turn and head for my room without looking at him muttering, “I’ll be right back.”

  Kicking off my sandals, I dump my bags on the bed then pick up my pillow and hold it to my face, wishing I could just scream. I’ve had three boyfriends. Two of them were when I was in high school, and one of them was in college. I haven’t dated since the last. Not really, anyway. I mean, I’ve gone out to dinner with a few guys, but nothing serious, and none of them ever came back to my place, so I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. Knowing he will hear me if I scream, I toss the pillow to the bed and head into the living room, where I find him standing over the demolished box my shelf came in.

  “Did the box come like this?” he asks, looking at me, and I shake my head.

  “No, it was in one piece when I bought it,” I say, and he looks from me to the destroyed box then back again. “It might have fallen down the stairs when I tried to carry it up here.”

  “Just once?” he asks, and I let out a breath watching his lips twitch.

  “Okay, a few times,” I revise, and he smiles.

  “You got any tools?”

  “Tools?” I repeat, and he presses his lips together like he’s trying not to laugh at me. “I obviously know what tools are. I just don’t have any. Besides, it came with the little thingy to put it together.”

  “Thingy?”

  “Are you going to make fun of me or help me?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips, and his eyes move over my face then drop to where my hands are resting.

  “I’m not making fun of you.”

  “It feels like you’re making fun of me,” I point out, and he stands, and now that I don’t have my sandals on, he’s not just taller than me. He towers over me, making me feel tiny and fragile.

  “I would never make fun of you. I think the way you talk is cute.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m gonna go out to my truck to get my tool bag. Can I use that door?” He tips his head toward the sliding door off the kitchen that leads to a deck, which looks over one of the large ponds in the middle of the community.

  “Yeah, but you’ll have to walk around the back of the building and go through the gate at the side. It’s easier if you just go out the garage. Besides, if Burt is out back, you may have to run from him, and I can tell you from experience that’s never fun,” I inform him, and his eyes have once again filled with humor.

  “Who’s Burt?”

  “My landlord’s Chihuahua. He’s small but scary as hell.”

  “I’ll go out the garage.”

  “That’s probably smart,” I murmur, and he shakes his head then opens the door and leaves. I listen to him head down the steps and hear him open the garage door. Standing here, I wonder what I should do, and then my stomach grumbles, reminding me I didn’t eat breakfast, which is something I definitely shouldn’t be missing out on. Since I need to take my pills, I really need to eat.

  Opening the fridge, I grab the stuff to make myself a sandwich and hear Sage coming back up the steps. As soon as he is in the apartment and closes the door, I turn to watch him drop a huge bag of tools onto the floor near the box.

  “Do you always travel with so many tools?”

  “Most of the time,” he says, pulling out a power drill and a plastic box with attachments inside. “I work on my house when I have time, but I don’t leave my tools there since someone could break in and take them when I’m not around.”

  “Is your house in a bad neighborhood?” I ask, opening the breadbox and pulling out a loaf, dropping it to the counter.

  “Do you know Percy Priest Lake?”

  “Yeah.” My eyes go to him over my shoulder, and I notice he already has the pieces of wood for the shelf separated into piles.

  “My house is on the lake. The house is shit. One day it will be beautiful, but right now, it’s shit, which means I got it for practically nothing and will probably spend way too much fucking money and the rest of my life fixing it up.”

  “It will be worth it,” I tell him immediately. Even though I haven’t seen the house, I know for certain that one day, when he’s done, it will be beautiful.

  “Waking up to a view of the lake every morning and sitting out on my deck at night, watching the sun set on the water, I know it will be, too,” he says quietly, and something in his eyes changes in a way that makes my body feel funny.

  Pulling my eyes from his, I turn around to face the counter before I say something stupid, like “I want to see both those things with you.”

  “Do you want a sandwich?” I ask instead, and hear him say, “Sure,” behind me right before the power drill starts up.

  Once I’m done making a sandwich for him and one for myself, I pull down a box of Cheez-Its from the top cupboard and drop a handful on each of our plates. Then I take both over to the coffee table and set them down. Moving back around where he’s working in the middle of the room, I head to the fridge and open it up to see what kind of drinks I have, which isn’t a lot, since I don’t drink soda or anything else besides water really.

  “Is water okay with you?”

  Turning off the drill, he nods, and I grab two bottles from the still open fridge. I hand one to him as he stands, and then he follows me to the couch where we both sit.

  “Do you read a lot?”

  Chewing and swallowing the bite of turkey and Swiss sandwich I just took, I look at him and notice his eyes are on my collection of signed books I have stacked up neatly in the corner of the room.

  “Yeah,” I reply, folding my feet under me and setting my plate on the tops of my knees. “I love reading. I always have. When I was young, I used to sneak into my parents’ room in the mornings before school and read whatever book my mom was reading. Then when I got old enough to buy my own books, I would buy romance novels with guys on the covers with their shirts open and their long hair blowing in the wind.” I laugh, watching his eyes fill with humor. “Once, my dad found me in my room reading one of those books, and he lost his mind. He was convinced I was reading porn. Thankfully, my mom came to my defense and told him to back down and that he should be thankful I was reading and not out partying and doing drugs.”

  “My mom reads a lot, too, and so do my sisters.”

  “How many sisters do you have?”

  “Three, and two brothers.”

  “I always wanted siblings growing up,” I confess, wondering not for the first time what it would have been like if I hadn’t been adopted, if I had grown up with my mom and sister. I know my life would have been completely different. My mom shouldn’t have had kids at all, and I know that because my sister told me about her childhood. She told me what it felt like to wonder if she would get dinner or where she would sleep.

  “So do you think it will take us a year to finish the shelf?” I joke when I feel sadness start to creep over me like it always does when I think about Kelly and what she had to endure growing up alone with our mom.

  “Nah, it shouldn’t take long at all.”

  HOLDING THE LAST shelf, I watch Sage screw in the last four shelf guards and fight the urge to laugh at the frustrated look on his face. It’s been over five hours since he told me it wouldn’t take a year to put the shelf together, and he was right; it shouldn’t have taken so long. He had all the right tools, but half the screws and things that came with the shelf had disappeared, which meant we had to go to Home Depot to buy them. And seeing how he just happened to know everyone we came in contact with, our ten-minute run into the hardware store took us forever.

  Okay, so I may have spent a little time there wandering down the aisles. Home Depot may be a store dedicated to men, but every female knows they have the best cleaning supplies at the best price you can get anywhere. Plus, Sage took me to the kitchen department so I could see all the stuff he was planning on putting in his place, which included an awesome six-burner gas range with matching fridge, dishwasher, and double oven. He also showed me the cupboards and countertops he had chosen, which were a cool, sandy-colored material with flakes of teal, silver, and gold glass in them.

  After he showed me everything, I made him promise that I could see the kitchen in person when he was done with it, and that was when something changed. I don’t know exactly what it was, but when I made him promise, his face turned soft and his eyes warm, right before he took my hand and led me to check out, not letting me go until I was back in his truck.

  “Are you laughing at me?” he asks, bringing me out of my head, and I shake it then press my lips together when he starts to grumble under his breath. About what? I don’t know, but it’s cute seeing him like this. “Fucking finally.” He takes the shelf I’ve been holding and puts it in place before stepping back. “Jesus, this thing was a pain in the ass. I think we’d have been better off building the shit from scratch.”

  “That would have probably taken us four years,” I correct him, and he turns to look at me, smiling.

  “You’re probably right. Now where do you want it?”

  “Back against that wall.” I point to the only wall in the room that doesn’t have an angle to it, and he picks it up and carefully puts it in place. “Thank you for helping me out. If I had been on my own, I probably would have tossed the whole thing over the deck and had a bonfire with it.”

  “Good thing I came to the rescue then,” he says, then he pulls out his phone and looks at the screen. Knowing what’s coming and that he’s about to leave, I pick up our plates, which are still sitting on the coffee table, and take them to the sink. “It’s late. Do you feel like ordering something?”

  My body, which I didn’t know was tight, relaxes and I turn to face him.

  “Sure.” I shrug like it’s all the same to me, when it isn’t. “I have a few menus.” I open one of the drawers in the kitchen, and he shakes his head.

  “Nah, I know a place. Do you like Italian?”

  “What woman in their right mind doesn’t like Italian?” I ask as my answer.

  “Right.” He puts his phone to his ear, and I listen to him place an order then give my address without having to ask me for it, which I can only imagine must come in handy with his job. As soon as he’s done, he puts the phone back in his pocket. “We have about an hour, maybe a little longer, before the food gets here.”

  “Cool. Do you want to watch a movie or something?” I ask, going to the couch and picking up the remote, and I turn on the TV that hardly ever gets used, since most of the time I’m reading or listening to music if I’m home.

  “I actually need to make a few phone calls. Do you mind if I step outside for a bit?”

  “Sure.” I nod, and he touches my waist with the tips of his fingers as he walks past me to the door.

  Stepping out onto the deck, he shuts the door behind him, and I watch him put his phone to his ear. Seeing his phone, my mind goes to Kelly. She hasn’t returned any of my phone calls in the last few days, and even though she has a tendency to disappear for days at a time without so much as a text to let me know she’s okay, I still worry every time it happens.

  Going to my room, I find my cell in my bag, put it on the charger, and wait for the Apple icon to pop up on the screen. Then I wait for the phone to turn on. As soon as it does, I see I have three texts from my mom, all of them asking how my bag hunt went this morning, and one from my dad reminding me that I need to book my ticket to go home to surprise my mom for her birthday, but nothing from Kelly. Sitting down on my bed, I snap a picture of my new purse and text it to Mom with It went awesome. Then I send a text to my dad letting him know I already bought my ticket and when I will be arriving. With that done, I toss my phone on the bed and change into one of my lounge-around-the-house outfits before I head to the living room, where I wait for Sage to finish his calls and our food to arrive.

  Sage

  JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. My chest heaves and I pull in a deep breath, trying to get my breathing under control and my heart rate back to normal. I didn’t expect this to happen. Not yet, anyway. But after Kim and I ate, we were sitting there talking and she laughed. It was at that laugh that I leaned in and kissed her without thinking, and then one thing led to another and we were taking off each other’s clothes like it was a fucking race to see who could get who naked first. I won, and fuck me, I thought she was beautiful fully clothed, but she was beyond that when she was laid out completely exposed to me.

  Lying back, I drag her with me and soak in the feeling of her weight settling against me, her hot, wet pussy pulsing around my cock and her soft hair falling against my chest. Wanting to keep her right where she is, I tighten my hold. Never fucking ever have I had this with any other woman, a connection that defies logic and time, a connection that makes me question every fucking thing in my life.

  “I’m too heavy.” She tries to move off me, and my grip tightens even more as her words whisper across my damp skin.

  “You’re not, so don’t even think about moving,” I growl, feeling her body tense against mine. “Please,” I add quietly, running my fingers through her hair, and she relaxes.

  Placing a kiss to the top of her head, I wrap my hand around the back of her skull to keep her in place. My whole life, I’ve been hearing about the boom. When I was younger, I thought it was bullshit, some crazy story my dad and uncles made up to tell me and the boys in my family. But as I got older, I thought that if by some chance that shit was real, it was a good thing I was adopted, so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Now, after meeting Kim, I’m wondering what the hell is going on.

  Listening to her breath even out, I feel her body relax against me, letting me know she’s fallen asleep. Carefully moving her so I don’t wake her, I get up and head for the bathroom to get rid of the condom and grab a washcloth. I walk back into the room and find Kim in the exact position I left her in. After cleaning her up, which is something I have never done for another woman, I toss the rag toward her laundry basket in the corner and get back into bed.