Next to You (2 page)

J
ared's head
snapped up as the screen door slapped open with enough force he was afraid it was going to come off its hinges. He watched as the young woman burst out of the house, flew over the expanse of porch, her feet touching down on the edge of the wooden floor just long enough to propel her body out and over the granite steps. When she landed on the stone pavers of the patio, her body seemed to crumple beneath her and she hit the ground hard.

Jared jumped up from the rosebush he was pruning and ran over to her.

"Are you okay?"
Damn. What had just happened?

She whimpered. Did that mean yes she was okay or no she wasn't? He touched her arm. "Hey, what happened in there?" He glanced up at the porch. Something had spooked her, the way she practically exploded from the house.

"Just needed some fresh air," she gasped.

She pushed her body into a sitting position and brushed off her knees. The stone pavers had scraped them raw and droplets of blood were congealing on her skin.

"You need to get those cleaned up. Come on."

Jared scooped her up in his arms and carried her back into the house.
Fuck.
She smelled so good, like roses and the wind. The skin of her bare legs was soft on his arms. And when he dropped his eyes—which he did because he was only a man and a man who didn't often find himself this close to a living, breathing woman—he could see the gentle swell of her breasts and a sliver of white lace where her tank top gapped open.

He'd never carried a woman in his arms before. It was surprising how nice it felt, actually. In the instant before he set her down on a chair in her kitchen, he imagined carrying her upstairs and into her bedroom, lying her down on a fluffy comforter and ...

A tiny gargled noise coming from her throat knocked him back into reality.
Shit.
He gently lowered her onto a wicker-seated chair. She was looking away from him, toward the opposite wall of the kitchen. Of course she was, now that she'd gotten an up close and personal look at his mug. When she drove up in her sexy car, he had intended simply to watch her from afar, not get close enough for her to see him. Certainly not carry her soft, pliable body in his arms.

She continued to stare across the kitchen, pretending to look at the sparkling stainless steel range. And that was fine. Jared didn't like making other people uncomfortable.

"Do you have any bandages? Antiseptic cream? You need to get those knees cleaned up." He glanced down at her knees. She was going to have some lovely bruises on them come morning. His eyes dropped further, to her feet. Her toenails were painted a bright pink that matched her tank top exactly. He lifted his gaze back up to her head. She was still staring at the wall. He was consumed with a desire to see her face. He hadn't gotten a good look at her face when she arrived, and of course he hadn't looked at her as he carried her in. He didn't want to see
that look
in her eyes, the flat sheen of horror every person felt when they saw Jared's scarred and lumpy face for the first time.

He needed to make sure she was okay—he didn't want to get fired for not helping the owner's daughter—and then leave. "Bandages?" he repeated.

"There should be some upstairs," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "In the bathroom."

"Which one?" There were four bathrooms in the house.

"My bathroom."

Well, he’d figure it out. He took the stairs two at a time and opened the door to the first bathroom he came to. He opened the old medicine cabinet, looked beneath the vanity. Nothing resembling bandages in either place. He checked the other two guest baths and came up similarly empty-handed. He looked down the hallway to the master suite.
Was she staying in there? In her mother’s room?

He pushed open the wooden door and slowly stepped inside. He glanced around the room. Her mother had excellent, if expensive, taste in furniture. An antique four-poster bed dominated the space, covered by a colorful quilt. He knew there were names to the quilt blocks, thanks to his sister-in-law Mina who collected quilts, but he had no idea what this one was. It was pretty, though, feminine-looking in its bright yellow and red fabrics.

He hurried through the room to the bathroom on the other side. He yanked open the narrow linen closet and—eureka—there sat a white plastic box with a red cross on top. He grabbed the box and a washcloth and dashed back down the stairs.

He ran the kitchen tap to get the water warm. She was leaning over her knees, inspecting the damage. She still hadn’t looked directly at him. When he saw her fall, his face was the last thing on his mind. He’d simply sprung into action. Now, however, was a different matter. He would bandage up her knees and then get the hell out of there. The last thing he needed was her calling her mother and complaining about the ugly troll her assistant had hired. While Jared didn’t need the money, he did need the job.

“This may sting a bit,” he said as he kneeled before her, careful to keep his head down.

She gave a dismissive snort.
Well, how was he to know? Some people were total wimps when it came to pain.
He tried to ignore the smooth flesh of her thighs as he daubed gently at her scraped skin. Yeah, he definitely needed to get the hell out of here. He wasn’t used to being around women anymore, not this close anyway.

He struggled to keep his breathing under control as he uncapped a tube of ointment. Her skin was so warm, and her perfume smelled of roses and sweet vanilla. It made him want to bury his face between her breasts and just inhale as deeply as he could.
Yeah, that won’t get your ass fired.
He squeezed ointment onto his fingers and lightly rubbed it over her knees, then taped a square of gauze over each.

“What happened in here?” he asked, running his index finger along the tape to secure it against her skin. “Did you see a mouse? Smell gas? I need to call the gas company if you did.”

“No. Nothing happened. I’m fine now.”

That was the worst lie he’d heard in years. No one runs out of a house like a bat out of hell unless the house is on fire. And Jared had highly personal experience with running like a bat out of hell.

He stood and pivoted quickly to avoid her face. “Okay then. Take it easy today.”

R
un like a bat outta hell
.
That’s what Jared had done the night he’d awakened and smelled smoke. He felt his bedroom door, just the way he’d been taught in school. The door was cool enough to the touch so he opened it slowly and peered down the smoky hall. He looked back into his room. It was on the second floor but he could probably jump to the ground and be okay. But Jacob slept like the dead, his mother always joked. A nuclear bomb could go off and Jake would sleep right through it. So Jared crept down the hall, through the smoke, feeling the wall until he reached Jake’s door.

“Jake, wake up.” He pulled the covers back and poked his little brother in the back. Jake was eight, Jared ten. “Wake up, Jake!” He shook his brother roughly. “The house is on fire. We gotta get out!”

Jake rolled over and rubbed his eyes with his fists. “Huh? Jared?” His nose wrinkled at the smoke’s sharp odor. “The house is on fire!”

“Come on.” Jared grabbed Jake’s arm and pulled him toward the door.

“Mom and Dad!” Jake yelled.

Jared looked down the hall. His parents’ bedroom was over the garage. That end of the house was fully engulfed in orange and red flames. He could only hope they’d already made it out.

“We’re going to have to jump out my window,” he informed Jake, running toward his room. But Jake started crying, and Jared stopped.

“We’ll break our legs.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jared agreed. “They can fix that at the hospital.”

“I’m scared, Jared! I can’t jump. It’s too high.”

There wasn’t enough time to debate this, or convince Jake to jump. Jared glanced at the stairs leading to the first floor. He had no idea what was going on down there, whether the fire had started there. If he had to guess, he’d guess that the fire started in his parents’ bedroom. His mother was always complaining about his father smoking in bed.

“Get on my back,” he yelled at Jake. Thankfully, his brother obeyed his command. That was practically a first. “Keep your head down! Don’t look up!”

Jared raced down the stairs, Jake on his back, only to find the fire raging in the living room too. There was no way to get to the front door. He turned and ran toward the kitchen. The back door was their only hope now. Jared’s eyes stung and watered as he carried Jake blindly through the thick smoke.

“Jared!” Jake screamed in terror.

Jared lifted his head to see what Jake was screaming about just in time to get a faceful of the flames that had suddenly appeared on their right. Jared’s memories ended there. Somehow he had gotten himself and Jake out of the house and onto the wet grass. The next he knew, it was three days later and he was waking up again, this time in a hospital room. He’d gotten Jake out with only second-degree burns. But Jared had suffered third-degree burns from his face to his waist on the right side of his body. As he looked at the bandages covering his body and listened to his labored wheezing breathing, even he knew things were never going to be the same.

I
t was
after lunch and Jared was in the cottage, jotting down some notes on the state of the garden, when he heard the woman’s car start.
Maybe not a good idea for her to be driving.
He went out to the garden. From the very edge, where the rhododendrons formed a purple-dotted wall of foliage, he could see the driveway. He watched as she tossed a canvas shopping bag onto the passenger seat, then climbed in—gingerly, it looked to him. She had changed out of her shorts and skimpy tank top into a sleeveless yellow dress that covered her knees. He smiled at the sight of her red Chucks.

She was obviously going to the grocery store. If Miss Brisk Efficient had emailed him a shopping list ahead of time, he could have stocked the pantry with whatever the owner’s daughter wanted. It occurred to him to follow her and make sure she got there and back safely, then he caught himself.
Dude, you’re the caretaker. Not her minder. She scraped up her knees. No big deal.
Not to mention, the closer he got to her, the more likely she’d be to see his face again. He wanted to spare a beautiful woman like her the potential nightmares.

P
hlox couldn’t face cooking
tonight. She’d tried to put a kettle on for tea and failed miserably. And then failed even more miserably at jumping off the porch. Her knees still stung.

And that man—whom she assumed was the caretaker and not some serial axe murderer—had just scooped her up like she was as light as a pillow and carried her inside. She’d never had a man pick her up and carry her … well, anywhere. Well, her father had when she was kid but as an adult, no man had ever had the urge to carry her somewhere. That guy was only being helpful, of course. After all, he rushed out of the house as soon as he could. She hadn’t even gotten a look at his face, or asked his name.

God, how rude of me. I didn’t have the presence of mind to thank him, and I have no idea what his name is. He’s my employee, for God’s sake.
She’d have to call Cherise later and ask. Call her tomorrow, actually. She’d already used her one allotted phone call to the office when she called Zee.

Phlox pushed a shopping cart down the chilly supermarket aisles. She always managed to choose a cart with a squirrelly wheel and today was no different. Every few yards, she had to stop and hitch the cart backward a few inches to straighten out the troublesome wheel. Frozen pizzas. Pot pies. Ice cream. She was supposed to eat lots of fattening foods this month, right? Frozen French fries. Tater tots. Fish sticks. She tossed packages into the cart, all of it food that could be zapped in the microwave or baked in the oven. As long as she didn’t have to put a pot on the range and ignite the gas, she wouldn’t starve.

She rounded a corner and saw the long, gleaming salad bar with its glass visor. She pushed the cart over there and filled a plastic clamshell container with lettuce and all the toppings. Nice thick ranch dressing. Her mouth watered as she dropped globs of it onto the salad. She wouldn’t cook anything tonight.

She wondered what the caretaker did with his evenings. She couldn’t think of anything that had to be done around the property after dark. Probably his girlfriend came over or he hit the local bars for female companionship. A guy like that was never without a woman. Phlox remembered how solid his chest had been against her shoulder as he carried her up the porch stairs and back into the kitchen. Her eyes had been glued to the bulging muscles in his biceps.

He was one fine hunk of man, but then he’d been perfectly gentle—downright tender—as he washed off her knees and dabbed cream on them. He had rough hands, callused and scarred from working outside, and big enough to almost wrap all the way around her bony knees. The next time she fell off the porch, she’d be sure to scrape up more of her body. When he was meticulously taping the bandages to her knees, she’d been wishing for those big strong hands to slide down her calves, rub her muscles, caress the instep of her foot.

She shook her head and snapped the salad container shut. Being starved for male company was nothing new for Phlox, but that wasn’t why she was at her Connecticut house. She was here to confront her personal demons and vanquish them once and for all. Those had been Zee’s exact words: vanquish them once and for all. You could tell Zee’s grandfather was a revered author, a veritable literary lion. Zee had inherited his vocabulary and precisely descriptive way of communicating. No bland, boring words for Zee.

Zee wanted her to vanquish things. Phlox just wanted to turn on the range again without fleeing the house. Just wanted to feel safe and at peace in her house once more.

She wheeled the shopping cart to the baking aisle and began adding flour, sugar, baking soda, vanilla to her haul. The pantry likely still had some of this stuff in it, but Phlox hadn’t thought to check before she left. Cherise had offered to call the caretaker and have him stock the house with food and toilet paper, but Phlox had declined. She and Zee were millionaires many times over, thanks to the company’s runaway success—and Zee’s mother’s high profile flogging of the brand all over Hollywood—but Phlox didn’t want her money to isolate her entirely from normal life.

In any case, she couldn’t imagine her big buff caretaker rolling a shopping cart down the aisle of a supermarket. She giggled at a vision of him buying toilet paper and tater tots, handing over his shopper loyalty card to the teenaged checkout girl. He just didn’t strike her as the type.

B
ack home
, Phlox put away her groceries and uncorked a bottle of wine to aerate. Then she walked—slowly and sedately this time—across the back porch and down the stairs. The caretaker’s cottage was on the other side of the gardens, right next to the pool. Phlox had always intended to turn it into a pool house. Good thing she’d never gotten around to that, or she wouldn’t have had a place for a caretaker to live this past year.

The cottage wasn’t very big, she realized. She hadn't paid much mind to the cottage before. Now she felt bad about the small size and the fact that she hadn’t replaced the carpet inside, not to mention the old appliances. It did seem to be freshly painted though, even the window trim. She didn’t remember it looking quite this nice last year. The boxwoods had been trimmed and shaped, too. The caretaker was doing a nice job, as far as she could tell.

She rapped her knuckles against the door. “Hello?”

“Yes?” came a man’s voice from inside.

She hadn’t really noticed his voice when he carried her inside and took care of her knees. But she noticed it now. Deep, a little raspy. Sexy. She waited for the door to open. And waited. “Hello?” she said again.

“Uh, I’m not dressed at the moment,” the man said. “Do you need something?”

Great Phlox, come over just as he’s getting out of the shower. Impeccable timing, idiot.
For a moment, she forgot why she’d even come to the cottage, distracted by an image of him in the shower, hot soapy water running over those broad shoulders and down that rock hard chest, trickling down to his happy trail …

She tried to push that image out of her mind, only to find it replaced by one of him opening the door, wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his narrow hips.

“Is there something you need?” he repeated from the other side of the door.

Get a grip.
“I just wanted to thank you. For earlier, you know. For, um, bandaging up my knees. I forgot to thank you. I’m sorry about that.”

“No problem. You’re welcome. But you should probably use the steps next time.”

She smiled. “I’ll try to remember that.” She turned to go, then turned back to the door. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the caretaker, right?”

“Yes. Do you need anything?”

“No. I’m good. Thanks again.”

“You bet.”

P
hlox ate
her salad and drank a single glass of chardonnay while reviewing the Google alerts she monitored for the company’s competition as well as customer reviews on the major online retail sites. People generally complained online before contacting the company. She and Zee had learned that early on—the hard way. By the time someone calls customer service, there’s already a large conversation underway on the internet.

Phlox was particularly interested in the new all-in-one product they had launched just four months ago, the A2Z Cream. Sales had been steadily growing, which was what she had hoped for. It was a customized product, a risky thing to launch, so she and Zee had not expected runaway sales overnight. Customers ordered the cosmetic and treatment functionality they wanted—shade, finish, moisturizing, oil-absorbing, anti-aging, skin tone correcting—and the company shipped the product directly from the manufacturing plant. So far, though, the response to it was positive.

Phlox and Zee had founded Phlox Beauty a year out of college. Phlox had quickly tired of working at a giant pharmaceutical company and Zee was merely cycling through internship after internship. Phlox had been making her own skin treatments and cosmetics since high school, a hobby that had made her and Zee, a certified beauty product junkie, fast friends their freshman year. By sophomore year, they were roommates. Now, at twenty-nine, the two of them hadn’t gone more than a week without seeing each other.

So two weeks away from Zee? Phlox wasn’t sure she could do it. Zee was the sister she’d never had, grounded and wise, the complete opposite of her movie star mother. She had inherited her mother’s otherworldly beauty, though. Phlox always felt like an ugly duckling next to Zee. But no one could resent Zee for her beauty or her family wealth. Her big heart cancelled out all of that.

At ten, Phlox curled up on the parlor sofa and tried to read a new romance novel on her tablet but her mind wouldn’t stay focused. Her thoughts kept drifting to the caretaker. She still didn’t know his name. Maybe his girlfriend was over.
Ohhh.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t answered the door earlier. She was already there. They’d been
in flagrante delicto
. Well, he was allowed to have a girlfriend, she reminded herself.
Lucky woman.
Getting to touch that chest every night … being scooped up and carried back to bed … feeling those gentle hands glide across her skin …

At eleven, Phlox gave up on reading and went to bed. She opened the windows to let in fresh air. Sleeping in the clean, crisp air was restorative. That was one of her favorite things about her country home. It was quiet here too, unlike her apartment in the city where buses and taxis roamed the streets all night. Up here, the only sounds were the rhythmic chirping of crickets and the belching of frogs.

Restoring her life was exactly why she was here, to reset the clock on the last year, to get her mojo back.

But tonight, sleep eluded her. For hours. Her first day here hadn’t gone anywhere near as well as she’d hoped. She had a panic attack in the kitchen less than five minutes after arriving, then skinned her knees and chickened out of cooking altogether. Plus there was a buff man living on her property, a man she’d totally embarrassed herself in front of. Twice.

Yeah, great start to the Vanquishing the Demons Month.

She tossed and turned for another hour. Then she heard the sound of water splashing. She sat up, listening carefully. Had she left a faucet on? Was the toilet running? It was an old house. It was always in some state of repair.

No, the splashing was coming from outside and it was perfectly cadenced. It was calming, soothing almost. She knew that if she just laid there and listened to it, it would lull her to sleep. But curiosity got the better of her. She climbed out of bed and peered through the open window. There was a person swimming in the pool and, from the size of the shoulders that rose out of the water with each stroke, it was the caretaker. Beneath the moonlight his swimming form was impeccable. Hell, his form in general was impeccable.

He was built, that was for sure. His shoulders, his biceps, his forearms … he was nothing but muscle. She watched his body slice through the water, then disappear as he turned against the far wall, then re-emerge for another lap. He was swimming freestyle, his face turning in and out of the water. His speed and the distance between the house and the pool made it impossible to make out his face. She didn't even know what color his hair was. It was ridiculous that someone had carried her in his arms and she couldn't say what he really looked like, beyond a lovely set of biceps and some rock hard pecs.

She'd been nearly in shock, exactly what everyone had feared would happen if she spent time alone in Connecticut. But she had to do this alone. If her mother or Cherise were here, they'd end up doing everything for her. Cooking, cleaning, shopping. That wasn't what Phlox needed. Yes, she'd been exceedingly fragile this past year, both mentally and physically, but she wanted her life back. She wanted
herself
back. Whoever that was these days.

She watched the caretaker's chiseled arms and shoulders heave in and out of the water. With a body like that, it didn't really matter what his face looked like. At least that was her experience.
Everyone's pretty in the dark.
Her mother had actually said that to her once.
With your boobs, you'll do just fine with the boys.
The bitch of it was her mother had been right. Phlox had never wanted for dates, even if there were plenty of evenings where her date's eyes barely rose above her chest.

Of course, Phlox’s luscious breasts were gone now. In trade she’d acquired a pretty face, to replace the old one that got burned off by the scientific endeavors she had conducted in her less-than-scientific home kitchen. Well, she’d learned her lesson there. No more tinkering with serum formulas or ingredients at home. She had promised everyone, and she intended to keep that promise. Her laboratory at the office was designed for R&D and that’s right where it would stay from now on.

Her mother had been sad about the breasts, of course, but enthusiastic about the new face. Phlox shouldn't have been surprised by that but she was. With her new face, she no longer resembled anyone in the Miller family. People used to mistake Phlox and her older brother, Rye, for twins. That wouldn't be happening anymore.

The caretaker swam lap after lap, fourteen after Phlox began keeping count. Not once did he stop to rest. At last, his strokes halted at the far wall, his arms still in the water. His shoulders gleamed, wet and slick, in the moonlight. A sudden flashback to the feel of his arms around her body took her breath away. It had just felt so damn good. After a year of surgeries, of being poked and prodded and jabbed by doctors and nurses, Phlox wasn’t overly fond of being touched, of having her personal space invaded. But she hadn’t minded the caretaker’s touch, not at all. She hadn’t flinched or struggled to breathe or get free. On the contrary, the feel of his skin on hers had been comforting, peaceful. She could have endured it all night.