Actually Love - Jessie & Zach (20 page)

Why
? Why did he still have to be here this morning? And why did he have to look so freaking sexy in sweats, with his back turned to her? She could not handle his level of sexiness before she’d had at least one cup of coffee.

She was tempted to turn and leave, but she stopped herself.
Get in and out,
she told herself.
You don’t have time to be embarrassed.
She would need to file this incident in her mental ‘revisit at a later time’ folder. That folder had probably doubled in size since she’d moved in with Zach.

“Morning,” Jessie’s voice rang out brightly to alert him to her presence and also set the tone of their interaction. Brushing past him, Jessie’s fingers were shaking as she began unclipping each garment from the clothesline.

It’s from the cold
, she told herself.
Right, and Santa Claus is real too
.

“Sorry. I meant to come grab these last night, but I must have crashed out early.”

Jessie knew that she was misrepresenting the events of the previous night. But what was she supposed to say? That she’d fallen asleep while waiting for him to come upstairs so that she could sneak down and retrieve them? No. There was no way that she was going to make that embarrassing admission. No siree Bob.

After gathering each and every one of her unmentionables, she turned to rush back upstairs and came dangerously close to running smack dab into Zach’s solid chest.

Had he moved closer to her while she was collecting her laundry or was that where he had been standing when she began? She couldn’t say for sure, but what she could definitely confirm was that his five-o’clock shadow was making her body want to do things to him like she had never wanted to do to another man. For instance, lick her tongue from the base of his neck, over his Adam’s apple, along his jawline, stopping only to pull his earlobe between her teeth and nip…

“Are you busy tonight?” Zach’s deep voice was so low that Jessie thought she might have misheard him.

“What?” she asked, her voice sounding raspy with desire even to her own ears.

“I told my mom about Thanksgiving and she’s on board. She just wants to meet you first. She says that it will help her get in character and also she wants to go over our backstory so that we are all on the same script.” Zach shrugged with an adorable what-are-you-gonna-do expression on his face.

It wasn’t fair that he could be all man and still possess a boyish charm.

Zach sighed as his mouth turned up in a half smile. “She always wanted to be an actress, and I think she’s looking at this as an improv opportunity.”

Jessie was just so happy that his mom wasn’t looking at this like “
What in the hell did this crazy chick get my son involved in now
?”

“Yes, of course. I’d love to meet your mom.”

“Great.” Zach’s lips turned up into a full smile then, revealing perfectly straight, white teeth, which made her insides all mushy.

Weren’t boxers supposed to be missing teeth or something, or was that hockey players
? Jessie thought to herself.
Either way, it would make this situation a whole lot more manageable in the hormone department if he didn’t look like he was in a toothpaste commercial every time he smiled
.

“Do you want to meet back here at seven?” Zach asked.

“Tonight?” Jessie clarified, swallowing over a lump that had formed in her throat.

Zach nodded slowly as an expression somewhere between concern and what’s-wrong-with-you-didn’t-we-just-establish-that flashed across his chiseled-to-absolute-perfection face.

“Okay,” Jessie agreed.

Standing as still as stone statues, the two of them stared at each other silently for a few moments before Jessie snapped out of the powerful magnetic trance he effortlessly pulled her under every time they saw each other. She moved her fluffy, white slippers across the floor and began to move around him. She’d only made it two steps before she stopped up short.

“Oh shoot.” Jessie spun back around. “This is Thursday. I signed up to volunteer at the Faith Rescue Mission food line from seven thirty until nine.”

Zach did not look fazed in the least. “Faith Rescue Mission is on the corner of Branson and Maddox, right?”

Jessie nodded.

“That’s not too far from Avalon. If you can be here by six, we can stop by, see my mom, and then I can go with you and volunteer.”

Jessie didn’t know what to say. What kind of a guy just gave up a night to go work at an outreach after going to visit his ill mother to introduce her to his fake girlfriend. This guy couldn’t be for real…right?

“Can you be home by six?” Zach asked when Jessie just stood there in shocked silence.

“Yeah. I’ll see you then.” Turning and hightailing it up the stairs she tried to escape before she could embarrass herself any further.

First the underwear, then the speechlessness. Sure, Jessie wasn’t an overly talkative person, but normally her silence was self-imposed. It was a choice. A calculated decision. It didn’t stem from the fact that she couldn’t string a sentence together to save her life.

“Hey, Jessie,” Zach’s voice called up to her.

She turned around, and her heart skipped a beat.

Zach stood at the bottom of the stairs looking every bit the fighter that he was. Zach was wearing gray sweats a dark-gray hoodie. He had one hand braced on the wall and the other resting on the railing that had started this whole arrangement. With another man, the stance might look benign, nothing special, but Zach looked totally…male. Dangerous in all the right ways.

“Do you mind if I put some equipment down here for a home gym?” He motioned to the open space in the center of the basement.

“Sure. Go ahead,” Jessie easily agreed.

“Thanks.” Zach’s full lips turned up into a sinful grin that woke her body up quicker than any cup of coffee ever could.

“No problem.” Jessie smiled tightly as she turned and hurried upstairs.

She was running late. She was meeting Zach’s mom tonight. She and Zach would be volunteering together.

Jessie honestly didn’t know which one of those facts made her more anxious.

“W
e could have walked.” Jessie shifted in the leather seat, her hands moist with nervous energy as she sat beside Zach, staring straight ahead out the windshield. She was trying to calm herself down by focusing on the fact that she wasn’t meeting Zach’s mom in the traditional “meeting the mom” capacity, but rather as a necessary evil that came along with her and Zach’s arrangement.

It wasn’t working.

“You’re right. We could have.” Zach nodded in agreement as his hands moved on the steering wheel and they pulled away from their curb.

Even though Jessie knew that technically he was agreeing with her, his response made her want to argue her point more. She didn’t, however, because it would be as useless as painting your nails, not letting them dry, and then hopping in the shower. Zach had shown up at the brownstone at five to six in a black SUV.

Jessie’s nerve endings were so on edge that she could swear she felt the tires turn against the asphalt as they headed down their street. She’d tried to ignore her stress. Push it down. Stomp on it with facts. But every time she’d successfully pound it into submission more would pop up in its place. Questions and anxiety filled her.

Like, why had she just assumed that he didn’t have a car? With that new detail coming to light, she felt a little guilty over the fact that she hadn’t even discussed who would be getting the parking space. She might not be able to do anything about the nerves pinging through her, but she could definitely do something about parking situation.

“I didn’t know that you had a vehicle. We can split the time that each one of us has the parking space. Two weeks on, two weeks off,” Jessie suggested.

“No. The space is yours,” Zach answered as firmly as if that ended the discussion.

“No, it’s not. It’s the space that comes with the brownstone we share. I can keep my car at the office—”

“I want you to have access to your car.” Zach’s tone was serious and definitive.

Although part of Jessie wanted to say that it really didn’t matter what he wanted—she was going to do what she thought was best—another part of her got a little thrill out of the fact that he was always trying to take care of her. Not that she took any of Zach’s behavior as personal. He struck her as the kind of guy who didn’t just open the door for ladies for show. He did it because that was how a man treated a woman.

“Besides,” he said, sounding a little more lighthearted, “keeping this thing at the gym all the time makes people think that I work out a lot more than I do.”

She tilted her head, and a knowing grin lifted on her mouth. Jessie knew for a fact that Zach was not worried in the slightest about what people thought of him. She’d been doing a lot of research on him this week, which she didn’t feel the least bit guilty about doing, considering as of tomorrow he would technically be one of her clients. She wasn’t a stalker. Nope. Not her.

Maxi was bringing in a small-but-impressive client base when she officially came on board, and that list of clients included Zach Courtland. There was also Billy Marshall, who Jessie had met briefly when she dropped off the keys at the gym. And rounding out the roster was an MMA fighter, a baseball player, and a hockey player.

Jessie had been researching
all
of her new clients, but she would admit that she had done a very thorough job when looking into Zach. His mom suffered from a rare heart disease that had been misdiagnosed for years. From what Jessie could piece together, over the past decade, Anna Courtland had been in and out of hospitals. Her condition deteriorated, and once she started having life-threatening seizures, she needed round-the-clock care. She lived with Zach up until a year ago. During the time she lived with him, he hired home-care nurses so she wouldn’t be alone.

As they pulled into a parking lot at the back of a building that reminded Jessie more of a resort-type facility than an adult-care home, Jessie’s nerves once again kicked into gear.

Zach expertly maneuvered the large SUV into a parking spot. Turning off the engine, he looked over at her with an open smile. “Ready?”

“Yep,” Jessie replied tensely.

“Are you okay?” Zach followed up, his left brow rising in question.

“I’ve never met my boyfriend’s parents before.” The admission had spilled out of her mouth unexpectedly. Trying to salvage her misstep, Jessie quickly added, “Not that you’re my
real
boyfriend. But I mean…” Jessie sighed in frustration. “You know what I mean.”

Zach got a strange smile on his face. It made Jessie feel something inside that she couldn’t quite place. Jessie did not like feeling things she could neither name nor classify. It made her mental filing system, which was the one way she knew to process things, totally useless.

“What?” she snapped harshly.

Zach continued grinning at her, appearing to be totally unfazed by her unprovoked attitude. “Nothing.” He shook his head back and forth.

Lifting his hand, he tucked a stray hair that had fallen in her face behind her ear. The feeling of the rough pads of his fingertips, grazing the sensitive skin behind her ear, sent a tidal wave of tingles rushing through her.

His green eyes stared into hers as he said simply, “I just think you are adorable when you get flustered.”

Wait. What?! No
. No, she wasn’t.

Before she had a chance to defend herself against his delusional observation, he reached for the door and was halfway out the truck. Looking over his shoulder, he added, “Just consider this practice for when it is the
real
thing.”

He winked at her as he shut the door. Jessie had never been a fan of the wink. She’d always put guys who winked into one of three categories: too-cocky-for-their-own-good pricks, arrogant assholes, or slimy douchebags. Zach was definitely none of those things. He was…

His category was on the tip of her tongue when her door opened. Zach held out his hand to help her step down.

Well, he was a gentleman, that was for sure. But between the glimmers she’d seen in his eye more than once, the way her body continually responded to him, his profession, and his nickname of “Playboy,” she knew without even the smallest sliver of a doubt that there was a bad boy underneath that easygoing charm. Unfortunately, Jessie would never get to see it, but she was sure that the many women who had, had not walked away unsatisfied. Sore maybe, but
definitely
satisfied.

Placing her hand in his, she immediately noted the difference in their sizes. Even with her gloves on, her hand looked miniature in his. She heard the beep of the alarm as they started across the small back parking area. Zach placed his hand on the small of her back as they walked, which felt
way
more right than it should have.

The automatic doors separated and they entered into a lobby that looked like a cross between a hotel and a spa. Nothing like what she had expected. Jessie had only ever been to one other nursing home, and although that one had been clean and well lit, it felt like a hospital. Also, it had a smell that was unique unto itself.