“Holy shit, Lucas, you nearly scared me outta my skin!” I say, batting at his chest with my hand.
I don’t realize it’s the first time I’ve actually touched him until I feel sparks travel up my arm, down my spine and directly to my core. He must feel it, too, because he seems to stiffen a little.
“I’d hate that,” he says, reaching to push a stray hair out of my face. “It’s beautiful skin.”
“Jesus, get outta the sidewalk,” huffs a woman as she barges between us, and the moment of tension is neutralized.
“So!” I grin to Lucas, recovering myself. “What brings you to town?”
“Ah,” he says. “Well, I had to drop the Toyota back to its owner this morning, or I’d have come then. But I was actually just going to the hotel to check you got things sorted.”
“Ugh,” I say, reflexively, shaking my head. “It’s a nightmare. Sweet of you, though. Thanks.”
“I take it you’re looking for a place to stay?” he asks.
I nod. “Yup. Not exactly blown away by the options.”
“Here,” he says, moving toward a Porsche 911 parked at the curb. “I own a little cottage just on the edge of town. It’s nothing special, but it’s available. Jump in and I’ll show you.”
I realize with a rush that if the Toyota wasn’t his, neither were the child seats in the rear of it. All of my assumptions about him are blown away by the realization, and I wonder if I would have said yes to dinner if he’d been in this car, instead of the family Toyota. Of course I would have.
But should I say yes to renting a place from him, considering how dangerously volatile this tension between us feels?
“Sure,” says my mouth, as my legs walk me around to the passenger side of the car. My brain doesn’t even have a chance to object.
Chapter Three
Lucas
Three weeks after Wren moved into the cottage that sits on the opposite side of the courtyard from my mansion, I’m starting to learn her habits. According to the realtor who sold me this place, the cottage was built by a generous former owner to house the man who kept the grounds and tended the gardens, and it was built in the position it was so that he could provide some security to the house, too. Consequently, I have a decent view of the place in the evening, and I can catch glimpses of Wren a lot of the time as she goes about her business.
And hey, don’t start thinking I’m some sort of creep. It’s not like that. I can fully admit that I’ve seen her walking around in just a t-shirt some evenings and it’s driven me wild, but most of the time it’s the little things. Like the way she leans back in her chair and expresses frustration with her whole body. Or the way she does a load of weird stuff where she holds her head upside down after a shower and does all manner of strange things to her curly hair.
She’s a writer, and she’s busy writing all the articles for her travel blog now that she’s home from traveling. She’s writing a book, too. The few times I’ve met her out front, she’s told me how she’s doing, but I’m always half distracted by the little flecks of gold around her pupils and the way her dimples set in before she’s properly smiling.
Tonight, she has the window open and she has some sort of mellow country music I’ve never heard wafting gently outward. I’m sitting on my veranda in a rocking chair, eyes half-narrowed, watching the sun as it sets on the horizon and throws streaks of red, orange and purple across the sky. My eyes happen to wander to Wren’s window and I freeze, my heart jumping into my throat.
She must’ve forgotten the window’s open, because she whips her shirt over her head and reaches around to her back to unclasp her bra. I look away before I see anything—turns out there is a limit to my ability to watch her without feeling like a creepy stalker—but the silhouette of her figure, all softness and curves, remains seared into my mind.
I dig out my phone and scroll to her name in my contacts list. My thumb hovers, briefly, and then I place my phone down and look up and over to the window where she’s tugging down the hem of a shirt. Over the course of the next ten minutes I watch her pace. She’s mentioned that she does this when she’s feeling frustrated or suffering writer’s block.
Our chats have only been brief, five minutes here, ten minutes there, but they always leave me feeling like she’s the one. She’s the one I want to live in this big mansion with me, the one I want to have my babies, the one I want to be with, ‘til death do us part.
But I’ve never been the crazy spontaneous type, and to have such strong feelings well up inside me so quickly has been disconcerting. When she laughs I feel a flutter behind my sternum. When she smiles I want to take her face in my hands and kiss her dimples, one by one, and tell her how beautiful she is. But courtyard chats haven’t really seemed like the right place to make any moves.
When I glance back over to the cottage, she’s in the window. I see her looking quickly away, pretending she wasn’t watching me, and then she looks back to me, feigns surprise, and waves.
“Now or never,” I say out loud, waving back. I pick up my phone, scroll to her number again and hesitate over what to say. Hi, Wren. Want to move over here and make babies with me forever? Seems a little too forward, but it’s definitely how I feel.
SMS: Hey. Looks like someone’s frustrated. Want a beer?
My heart is in my mouth as I hit send. It’s the first time I’ve sent a message to her that wasn’t a formal bit of business or information about the rental, though I’ve stared at the blank message box a few times over the last few weeks.
The minutes that I sit there waiting for a reply seem to pass like hours.
Wren
Some days I sit down and place my fingers to the keyboard and everything just pours out, almost complete, onto the page. Other days it feels like I could offer human sacrifice to the gods of writing and never get anywhere. Today is one of those days. The sun is setting and I’ve barely managed a hundred words.
When I realize I’m pacing, I decide to take a shower. Tomorrow is another day.
I leave the window open a little and I purposely forget to close the blind, much like I have a few times when I’ve showered since I moved into the cottage. I know Lucas sits out on the porch and looks over here sometimes, and I want him to see me.
Judge me all you want, but the guy is literally too good to be true. He is tall, dark, handsome, works with his hands, comes home covered in grease smears every day—to his mansion, no less—and from the conversations we’ve had on the courtyard every now and then I can tell he’s funny, kind and smart.
Once I’m dressed, I go to lean against the window and look over, feeling a little thrill when I see that he’s sitting out. Did he see me? I hope he did. I also hope he didn’t, because the way I feel about the guy has me on edge. If we start something, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop it.
He looks my way and I quickly turn my head, then pretend I’ve only just spotted him. He probably knows I saw him already, and the thought of it makes me cringe. As he waves back, I hear the familiar sound of an incoming video call on my laptop, behind me.