Page 32 of Raging Fires

“Okay.”

“Anyway, I, uh, we won’t really have to be together all that much. I’ll work out and stuff.” Whatever stuff was. He’d find something to do. “You’ll be over at the bar a lot, and I’ll be here. We’ll only have to sleep together—I mean, you know, not together. At the same time.”

“I know.”

Jake suspected he was messing this up; talking had never been his strong suit. But he plowed on with what he’d rehearsed yesterday. “It’ll only be for two or three months. Training camp starts in July, and they have it in California. I’ll be away 4 or 5 weeks. Rookies and newcomers are a week early, then quarterback camp, and after that, full training camp. Then it’s the Season, and I’ll be gone all the time. You know how football is.”

“Yeah. I know.” The toast popped up, and Kelli put the slices on a plate, handing it over to him before she turned back to the toaster for another round. “Well. That ought to work out well this summer and fall.”

“Yeah.” The toast was some kind of weird health food deal made out of things that weren’t really supposed to be in bread, and without butter it was pretty hard to choke down. He took a big swig of coffee. “So… um, I thought I’d get that chest-of-drawers I was talking about out of my storage. And we could use my TV; yours is from about a hundred years ago.”

“It’s not that old. I bought it two years ago.”

“Yeah. From an antiques store. It doesn’t have USB ports. Hell, I’m not sure it has HDMI.” He felt on more familiar ground now.

“Your television is 72 inches,” she told him.” It’ll be like sitting in the front row at the theater.”

“No, not the one from the media room. I’ll get one from one of the bedrooms. That’d be about right.”

“Seriously—you have a tv in every room?” Kelli seemed more at ease, too, now that they were engaged in low level, semi-friendly sniping.

“I don’t have one in the kitchen,” he protested.

“You’re never in the kitchen.”

“Well, see—I only put them where they’re necessary.”

She laughed, so much like she’d done in the past. How many times had they stood in their kitchen (albeit a much larger one) like this and joked around with each other? He turned away, reminding himself that he’d decided he wasn’t going to think about the past. He was going to let go of old resentments… and old pleasures, too. They were living in the here and now.

Kelli pulled a cup out of the cupboard and reached for the pot of coffee. “I guess I’ll drink this black.”

He stepped out of her way, but he was still close enough to smell a hint of her perfume. It wasn’t the same kind she used to wear. Which was good—that stuff had been an aphrodisiac. “Well… I guess I’ll get going. Do you want me to take some of your things to the storage?”

She sighed. “Yeah, I suppose.” She went into the living room and began to rummage around in the boxes, taking things out and dividing them. As she worked, she said, “You need to tell me what you want from the grocery store.”

“That’s okay. I’ll grab a few things later.”

“It seems kind of pointless for both of us to make trips. I guess you’ll want some corn flakes, right? Pastrami and rye and Swiss cheese. Pickles. Do you have some special healthy diet? High protein? Low carb?”

“God, no. I mean, I try to stay away from fast foods but that’s all. Kelli, you don’t need to buy me food. I’m just your roommate.”

“Yeah. That’s true.” She shoved a box over. “Here. I don’t need any of this, really. I’ll have to go through the rest of the things. Maybe Gran would let me store some of my clothes over there.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He set down his cup and grabbed his key fob, then picked up the box, resting it on his shoulder. He looked back at her. “So...” What was he doing hanging here at the door like an idiot? “Bye.”

He strode across the parking lot to his car. He wasn’t going to think about the fact that Kelli remembered what kind of sandwich he liked. And he was not going to wonder if that soft little, “Yeah, bye,” she’d given him was tinged with regret.

Just living in the here and now, Jake. Living in the here and now.

Chapter Seventeen

Jake made it easy for her the next couple of weeks. And Kelli knew it was really stupid that she somehow resented that. What was the matter with her that he was even more on her mind all the time now that he was no longer bugging her? She didn’t want him teasing her. She didn’t like his weird off-the-wall comments. It was good not to have engage in the sniping they always did.

Okay, it was annoying that he’d put himself in charge of her security, but he hadn’t argued with her about it, just kept showing up at the bar every night at closing time. It seemed pretty stupid to complain about it when he was going out of his way to do something nice for her. And, really, though she would never have admitted it to him, she had always felt a little uneasy walking to her car at night after closing, and the house was even farther away than her car had been.

The problem, she decided, was that without Jake teasing and annoying her, she wasn’t distracted from the unwelcome thoughts of him that plagued her. She was far too likely to notice all the sexy things he did, and she couldn’t chase them away without any irritation to drive her. Like the way he didn’t shower and shave at home, but he still smelled of his shaving cream and cologne when he came home.

And if he showered at home, he used her products, and somehow she found that kind of exciting, too. When he showered at home, she kept picturing him naked, the water sluicing over his body. It wasn’t hard to do because she knew that body, knew every line of his muscles, every ridge of his rib cage. The way his wide shoulders tapered down to his slim waist and hips. The grooves slanting across his lower abdomen that she used to trace with her fingers down to slip her hand between his legs. How he felt in her hands, hard and hot.