Blowing out a breath, I kneeled and crawled around the side of the island. I’d just snagged the escapee sock when the door to the laundry room flew open. But it wasn’t Rose.
Nope. Definitely not Rose.
Jesse tossed his hat onto the island before tugging his shirt free of his jeans. They were just as tight as the ones he’d worn yesterday. I was ready to bolt up and demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing stripping in front of me when he pulled the dirty, damp shirt from his body and tossed it into one of the laundry carts.
He didn’t know I was there. I wasn’t exactly making my presence known by staying motionless in my hiding spot. I might have been on all fours on the floor of a laundry slash torture room, but right then, I had the best damn view in the house.
Making his way over to the utility sink, Jesse cranked on the water before leaning down and splashing his face and hair. Hello, fine, fine ass. How I’d missed you.
He turned off the water and grabbed a towel hanging over the edge of the sink. As Jesse straightened up, my eyes shifted from the denim suctioning that backside up the seam of his back.
Hot damn, did that man have more than his fair share of muscles. As my eyes explored his back, lingering on the shadowed groves and highlighted peaks, I had the nearly uncontrollable urge to touch him. To feel him. To scroll my finger through the lines making up Jesse Walker.
My heartbeat picked up, along with my breathing, and the space below my navel started firing to life in a familiar way.
What the hell?
Was I about to get off in a laundry room spying on the back of some cowboy I’d known for all of a day and a half?
After Jesse finished drying his face, he tossed the towel into the cart, too. Okay, he was done. He’d removed his filthy shirt, washed up, and he could get out of here so I could get back to taking full breaths again.
That was when he unfastened his belt buckle and moved for his fly.
Ah, hell.
“Stop!” I shouted right as his thumbs hitched beneath the waist of his jeans. If I had to watch the rest of the Jesse Walker strip tease, I would moan the alphabet.
Jesse spun around. His look of surprise fell when he saw me peeking my head around the side of the island.
My gaze shifted from his face down. And I thought his back had been worthy of building the pyramids all over again. The wide chest, flowing down to his tapered waist, trailing down to his . . .
The undone belt buckle and button of his jeans did not make it easy to not think about certain pieces of anatomy I really shouldn’t be thinking about when he looked at me like that.
“Are you spying on me?” Those sky blue eyes sparkled as he took a few steps my way.
I forced myself to close my eyes because I seemed incapable of looking away from his general navel area. Those deeply grooved muscles angling their way to his . . . ahem . . . weren’t making it any easier for me to not think about it.
“No,” I replied, my voice three notes too high. “I was looking for some stupid sock I dropped, minding my own business, when you burst in and started taking your clothes off.” In addition to my voice being a few notes too high, it was also a few notches too loud.
“And you decided to stay silent and hidden for the entire time I was stripping and washing because . . .?” he asked, but he wasn’t really asking. That smirk of his gave away that he knew exactly what I’d been doing. When I didn’t answer, his smirk grew more pronounced. “Because you were enjoying the free show.” Not a smidgeon of doubt.
My eyes snapped open, and I forced them, upon penalty of plucking them out, to stay north of his neck. Not that Jesse’s face calmed my heartbeat, but at least my lady business wasn’t about to bust something.
“Not even,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “I was waiting patiently for you to be on your merry way.”
“Sure you were.”
“Sure I wasn’t doing whatever you so egotistically think I was doing,” I snapped back.
“Whatever, Rowen. You were checking me out so hardcore your face is still red.” Jesse took a few more steps my way. Crouching down beside me, his smirk shifted into a smile. “Mind if I join you down here?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” I lied. “Besides, I don’t think there’s enough room for your big head and bigger ego down here.”
He leaned his arms onto the tops of his legs, making his shoulders roll forward. So much for keeping my eyes in the safe zone.
“Not to mention my big muscles,” he replied in that tone that was as infuriating as him smirking at me. To drive the point home, the muscles spanning his chest popped a bit more to the surface.
My throat went dry.
“If you’re going to hover a foot in front of me, put on a damn shirt or something.” I wrote off playing it cool because I’d failed miserably. Jesse knew exactly what he was doing to me, and from the look on his face, he was enjoying the way I was unraveling.
“If I put on a shirt, will you do something for me?” His eyes, for the first time since he’d kneeled beside me, shifted from my face. They skied down the plane of my back and bend of my legs. His eyes went a shade darker before he clamped them closed. “Could you sit up? Or, better yet, stand up?” When his eyes reopened, one side of his face lined when he found me in the same position. On my hands and knees. With a short skirt on and my ass practically hanging in the air.
I don’t know if I’d ever sat up so quickly in my life.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, skimming my hands down the front of my skirt before standing. I didn’t know what the big deal was. It wasn’t the first short skirt I’d ever worn, and I’m sure it wasn’t the first time I’d been in an inappropriate position wearing one, but Jesse had a way of making me more self-conscious about it. He made everything a bit more intimate.
“I guess I see why Mom’s got you hiding out back here.” He flashed me a wink as he popped up beside me. “And no need to apologize.” He grabbed a white undershirt from the top of the pile and tugged it over his head. “I wasn’t complaining.”
I rolled my eyes and gently punched him in the stomach. Yep. It was as hard as it looked.
“And here I thought you cowboys were supposed to be gentlemen.”
Jesse lifted an eyebrow. “Emphasis on the men.” He was tucking his shirt into his pants when he paused. “Whoa. This is the whitest, most wrinkle-free undershirt I’ve ever slipped into.”
I patted the stack of shirts and pants on the counter that I’d taken a bit more care with. The clothes labeled with a JW on the inside tags. “I might have bleached your shirts and ironed them after.”
“You . . . ironed . . . my shirts?”
He looked and sounded a little shocked. All I could do was nod.
“Why?”
Exactly. Why? Why had I taken such care with Jesse’s clothes? My immediate answer scared me, so I decided it was time for a conversation change. “By the way, thank you for mentioning you’re not just a ranch hand at Willow Springs, but you’re the owner’s son.”
“You didn’t ask,” he said, tucking his shirt into his pants before buttoning and buckling his pants back up. It was a relief. And yet, it wasn’t.
With Jesse properly covered again, I had an easier time keeping my eyes on his. “Are we back to that whole question and answer thing? Because I don’t think the fact that you’re a Walker is something I should have to waste a question on. That should be common knowledge. A freebie, or something.”
“A freebie?” he repeated, like he was unfamiliar with the idea.
“Yes, a freebie. Things like last names, pedigree, shoe size, et cetera, et cetera, shouldn’t have to be revealed through this sick game of Q and A you forced me into. Some pieces of information should qualify as freebies.” Crossing my arms, I leveled him with a look. “Things like your last name being Walker.”
He crossed his arms, too. “I didn’t realize this was a rule to the game I made up. My bad. It won’t happen again.” He was amused. By me or the conversation or who knows what, but I could tell from the way only one of his dimples was on display. “And you expect me to believe you would or will give me any freebies in the getting-to-know-you department? Because really, Rowen. I’ve seen brahma bulls that open up easier than you.”
I knew that was true. I had a million issues, the most apparent one being my inability to open up to others, but hearing it from Jesse still hurt like hell. In a little over twenty-four hours, he had figured that out about me.
Only because I felt a little belligerent did I snap back when I should have shut my mouth and gotten back to folding. “Oh, really? Two ton bulls who can’t talk, have kiwi-sized brains, and basically want to kill you if you come within ten feet of them open up better than I do?” I stepped into him, trying to get into his face. I stepped back when I realized just how close that put me to his mouth. “What do you want to know then, Cowboy? What are you so certain I’ve been hiding from you? What could someone like you possibly want to know about someone like me?”
The words spilled from his mouth like he’d only been waiting for me to ask. “Why are you here?”
That was quite possibly the easiest hard question to answer.
“I want to go to art school in the fall,” I said, hoping that answer would appease him. Knowing it wouldn’t.
“And what does Willow Springs have to do with art school in the fall?” He searched my face like he expected the answers to be there if he looked close enough.
I inhaled slowly to give myself a chance to put together my answer. “The school I want to go to is expensive. My mom only agreed to fund it if I came and worked here this summer.” I did an internal cartwheel; honest, yet vague. Just the way I preferred my answers.
“Why would your mom only agree to pay for school if you worked the summer here?” Jesse asked with genuine curiosity. He leaned into the island and waited for my response.
“Your dad and mom didn’t tell you why I was coming here?” I found that hard to believe.
He shrugged his shoulders. “They told the girls and me that the daughter of one of Mom’s old friends was coming to spend the summer with us. There weren’t any additional details.”
“They didn’t tell you why?” If it wasn’t for the innocence of Jesse’s expression, that would have been utterly impossible to believe.
“No,” he said with another shrug. “And I didn’t ask.”
I didn’t know what was worse: assuming Jesse knew what a bad egg I was all along, or realizing I’d have to tell him face-to-face.
Either way, I was about to find out.
“I’m here because I mess up, Jesse. I mess up a lot. So much my own mom has pretty much written me off as a lost cause. I’m a failure at pretty much everything—I barely graduated high school—and, for whatever reason, she chose Willow Springs as the place I could redeem myself and prove to her I’m not the piece of shit failure she thinks I am.” The words came out strong, but I felt anything but. Admitting that to Jesse, a person I wanted to like me, I really wanted to like me, made me feel weak and vulnerable.