Zipper Fall (14 page)

Instead, I wandered into Jack’s bedroom and unlocked his window for next time. The room was meticulously clean and his bathroom still emanated a faint hint of Jack’s aftershave. I walked in and inhaled, keeping at bay my memories of having prayed to the porcelain goddess there on the floor. Yep, the air smelled almost like him. Not quite, though. It lacked that undertone of musk I found so compelling.

Now I was at war with myself—I wasn’t much into perfumes, and I’ve certainly never tried men’s aftershave. If you’re a burglar, you need to keep a low profile, and I’ve heard of a guy who was caught based on his powerful scent trail. I liked the stuff all right, in moderation, but I’ve never been brave enough to apply much scent to my body. The idea of smelling like Jack was drawing me in, though, and I found my resolve softening. Maybe just this one time….

I watched my disembodied right hand reach out toward the mirror-covered cabinet above the sink and open the door. Slender fingers grasped a small blue vial and spritzed just a bit on my hands and patted my cheeks, just as I’ve seen other men do in television commercials. The scent hit my nostrils with unexpected force and I woke up to the consequences of my actions.

Damn.

I had had plans for that night—there was this coin collector who kept his collection in an off-brand safe, and he was going to be at a dinner party tonight—but now I reeked to high heaven. I couldn’t go out smelling like this, and not even a shower would entirely fix it—the scent just had to wear off all by itself. The coin job had already been blown. Jack was unavailable, and the only activity available left was honest work: I’d spend the night compiling advertisement campaign proposals.

A wave of ennui washed over me. My life was just so… boring.

I sighed, feeling sorry for myself, when my eyes fell onto Jack’s perfectly made bed. I kicked my shoes off and dove onto the tight bed cover.

So comfortable. Not too hard and not too soft, but just right.

I fished a pillow from underneath the bedspread and mugged it for comfort, and to my utter delight and amazement, this particular pillow smelled exactly like the man of my dreams.

Oh God.

I buried my nose into it and inhaled, and there it was. The musky, warm, comforting smell of Jack, with an edge of unidentifiable danger to it, plus my fresh application of his aftershave. My eyes rolled in my head as I rocked my hips into his bedding, breathing deeply. That man smelled like pure heaven.

I
WOKE
up, alarmed that I’d actually fallen asleep. Two hours had passed. Two hours! I had to get out of there. I leapt off the bed and looked around, and I noticed Jack’s closet was cracked open. I had fond memories of that closet, so of course I opened the door farther. His dark, soft suits met my eye… and my nose… and my hands. I heard a moan cut through the silence of Jack’s apartment—it must have been me. The closet was orderly and there was a dirty laundry hamper on the floor, right by my feet. It was half-full and….

Oh God.

I was torn, my pride and self-esteem at war with the promise of the delights below. The promise of sensual stimulus won: I just loved the smell of Jack’s dirty laundry. It had the musk and the cologne, sure, and that mysterious edge of danger, but it also had clean workout sweat, and the whole mess had had a chance to ripen for two or three days, and its odor wafted up right to my quivering nostrils. Before I knew it, the hamper was spilled on the floor before me and his black silk shorts were there, among his workout clothes, shirts, and undershirts.

I touched the garments with reverence, feeling the fine fabric just as my other parts roused with heat. It was so tempting to purloin another pair of those sensuous silk shorts, but they were expensive, and besides, I already had a pair from last time. He’d need his dress shirt, and it would be too big on me anyway… I was piling the clothes back into their receptacle when my eyes fell upon an old, ratty T-shirt. It was light blue and looked torn and abused; the silhouette of Mt. Whitney was almost washed off its front. The thing was a wreck; he’d never miss it. I lifted it up; it reeked of Jack. Before I knew it, it was rolled up and stuffed inside the waistband of my jeans, the laundry was back in the closet, and I was out the door. He’d be home any minute. I only wanted to remind him of my existence—letting him walk in on me while I was huffing his laundry pile would have been a severe overkill.

S
ATURDAY
afternoon had come and gone, rolling into evening, and I still hadn’t heard from that infuriating, obstinate man. I didn’t want to go out, didn’t want to watch a movie or hang out online; I wanted Jack, and nothing else would do.

Pathetic.

“Hey, Wyatt.” Reyna called me later that night. “I got the most unusual phone call.”

“Yeah?” I was parading around my small apartment in a pair of black silk shorts and a ratty, light-blue T-shirt at least a size too large. With the phone stuck to my ear, I continued straightening up those odds-and-ends that tend to accumulate over a period of several days.

“Yeah. Azurri called. He wanted to ask some personal questions about you.”

“Oh yeah?” I perked up immediately. “Like what?”

“I can’t tell you that.” She giggled. “Oh, nothing harmful, don’t worry too much. It’s just, if I told him about you, he’d tell me about Auguste. They went to school together.”

My heart sank. “Reyna! Did you sell me out?”

“No, you pathetic goofball, I’m giving you a heads-up. Why’d he ask about you if he lost interest, right?”

We talked some more, me trying to pull critical information out of Reyna, her working hard not to let anything slip. She succeeded; I failed.

Resigned to my fate of earning my living through honest work, I poured myself a tall glass of beer, and once its head settled, I navigated it over to the coffee table, where I left my laptop. I settled on the sofa and got to work. The Novack proposal was beginning to look good. He wanted to target novelty seekers and the lunch crowd. For his crepes, he’d do best to advertise with the Francophiles in the area. Over the next two hours I compiled an exhaustive list of French teachers, as well as local schools and translation agencies, and I was about to get started on travel agencies when my ears picked up suspicious noises from my front door.

Somebody was trying to pick my lock.

That bastard.

Karma was out to get me in this life instead of the next. Payback was imminent. I tiptoed to the door, grabbed my old baseball bat off the coat rack, and listened to the burglar’s effort from the other side. I snickered—what a bumbler. Really, my locks were pretty average. I saw no need to draw attention to myself by indulging in high-tech security. A peek out my peephole didn’t show anything, since whoever was trying to burgle me was either bent over or kneeling on the floor. I was just about to call them on their incompetence and laugh in their face when I heard the tumblers align and fall in place, and the door swung open.

I jumped back, the baseball bat at the ready on my shoulder. I crouched behind the opened door, waiting to see who it was so I could whack them a good one for their trouble.

Tall, brown hair…. “Jack?” My voice rose, and he turned, startled.

His eyes widened at the sight of the weapon. Then I saw him relax and push the bat down with his long arm. “Hey, Gaudens. Should I also greet you with a baseball bat?”

I cleared my throat. “As I recall, you greeted me with a gun and tied me to a chair.”

“I guess turn-about is fair play.” He shrugged, sauntered over to the dining nook right off the kitchen, and set a brown paper bag on the table.

I shut the door behind him, turned the lock, and hung the baseball bat back in its place on the coat rack. “Why… why didn’t you call first?” Being fair-minded, I didn’t ask him why he didn’t knock.

“Why should I call?” he asked. “You never do.”

“Actually I always call before I break in, to make sure nobody’s there. Then I knock for good measure. That one time you were asleep. Your phone must have been turned off.”

He glanced at the laptop on the coffee table. “You busy?”

“Yeah. Well… sort of. I can finish later.”

He moved to my side and perched on the sofa’s padded arm rest while I sat down to save my document. He leaned and slid his hands down my arms, holding me in place as he peered at the screen.

“Hey, that’s private client information!” If there’s anything I absolutely hate, it’s people peeking at my screen over my shoulder.

“Novack’s Bakery. I see he’s marketing crepes.” He pushed my shoulder until I toppled onto the sofa cushion and almost ended up facedown. I heard the laptop close. The warm, delicious smell of Jack enveloped me as he pressed himself into my back, keeping my arms pinned in his generous embrace and his legs on top of mine. “I wonder if he delivers,” he purred. “I wonder if he leaves the samples of his newest product line in people’s refrigerators.”

I felt his nose burrow through the strands of my hair, his moist exhalation tickling my ear. His voice, smooth and seductive, rumbled a low note right next to me, and I shivered, feeling the inner warmth in my lower back, resisting a sudden urge to press up and into him.

“I wonder if he sleeps in other people’s beds.”

I forgot to make his bed…. A sense of doom washed over me.

“I wonder if he steals their favorite workout shirts.”

Well, fuck.

Sharp teeth nipped my shoulder, grabbing the fabric of his light blue T-shirt, and tugged. “I wonder if he is Goldilocks. Hmmm?”

The purr was back at my ear, and I whimpered, my respiration rate increasing.

“What am I going to do with you, Gaudens?”

I could suggest something….

The pressure increased and my nose got pushed into the sofa cushion. I couldn’t breathe; my face was stuck and I was pinned and there was no air left in my lungs. I started flailing about.

“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” I heard him ask, easing off but not letting go.

I jerked my head up, drawing in a frantic gasp of air, relieved. “Couldn’t breathe.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He let go of me and flipped me onto my back, then lay on top of me again. “Better?”

“Yeah. Although there’s a
deja-vu
quality to it.” There he was once again, his chin propped on folded arms, comfortable in his repose on my chest while I struggled for breath.

“So,” he said, his tone conversational. “Explain the shirt to me.”

He got me there. I would have been smarter to steal one of his Armani suits and fence it on the street. You’d be amazed what you can actually sell it for, if you know where to go, but I had to go for a ratty old shirt—hell, I had several shirts just like that myself. “I didn’t think you’d miss it.” I sighed. “It’s so old.”

“That’s precisely why I’d miss it. And it’s not something a few crepes is gonna fix, either, Gaudens.” The way he said my name—that hurt. I had called him by his first name, failing to elicit a reaction of any kind. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

I looked at him, right on top of me but thousands of miles out of reach.

This guy.

This guy was just, so… so….

Special didn’t even begin to cover it. Despair at never finding a place in his heart suddenly overcame my desire for him, and I had to spend a moment fighting the dark feeling down. So I borrowed his T-shirt. So what? I’d have given it back… eventually.

I squinted my eyes and clenched my jaw. I still knew a few good moves from years ago, back when I took wrestling and was still welcome at home. I employed a twist, and Jack flew off me. The coffee table was shoved to the side when Jack fell against it, and my laptop slid along its surface and teetered off the edge of it. I was now straddling Jack with my hands on his shoulders, an inexplicable feeling of anger welling within me as I resisted getting sucked into that bewitching blue gaze. “So what. What’s so special about this one, Azurri?” I retorted, putting an obnoxious amount of emphasis on his last name.

He returned my stare with nary a waver. “That’s the last thing my sister gave me before she died.”

Oh… shit.

Gingerly, I let go of his shoulders, shy all of a sudden. I started to get up, but long arms surprised me and I was pulled down into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry.” My voice was very small. Barely audible.

He sighed and rolled his head sideways, avoiding my eyes.

“Really, I am. I have a whole bunch of washed-out, ratty T-shirts with mountains on them. So I figured… doesn’t everyone? There is no way I would notice one of them missing.”

He blinked hard, still not looking at me. “You do?”

“Yeah. I always get one after I summit a new peak….” A sudden realization hit me like a cement truck. The washed-out pattern on the T-shirt seemed familiar. “Jack. Did she… did your sister climb?”

He nodded, his jaw locked and tight. I picked up his hand, brought it to my lips, and brushed his smooth, office-pampered knuckles with a soft caress. Then I flipped his hand over, satisfied that my memory served me right. He had rough fingers—especially the fingertips.

The rest of his hands were smooth, like he had never had to do much physical labor—except for his fingers with their short, blunt nails. Only climbers and guitar players kept their nails as short as that: if you climbed rocks, you needed a good grip, and a nail that was too long was more than just an inconvenience—it was a liability. You break a long nail while you climb—and with my luck, it would hurt like a bitch—then you can’t grip the rock well anymore, and boom, you fall. I examined his climbing calluses and beat-up fingernails.

Not overthinking it much, I succumbed to a sudden urge to kiss his roughened fingers one by one. First one hand, then the other; finally our gazes locked. His eyes shone with unshed tears as he took a deep breath to steady himself, and once again I was taken by the almost iridescent quality of his irises. I lay down next to him on the carpet, draped my arm over his chest and slung my leg over his thigh, and pressed my face into his shoulder. Time passed and his breathing leveled out again.