Until Jake

Then he kissed her.

Chapter Four

“You have got to be shitting me.” Maggi stared at Kate, her green eyes wide, shock written all over her face. “You had sex all weekend?”

“From just about the moment he walked through my front door to the moment he left.”

“Seriously?” Maggi demanded. “You really spent forty-eight hours in bed with God’s Gift to the Vagina?”

Kate laughed. “Now who’s being un-PC?”

“Cut me some slack. I’m living vicariously through you, remember?”

“Then you’ll be very pleased to know that the man is a stallion. With stamina that would make a Roman warrior jealous. And we weren’t just doing it in the bedroom.” Kate winked. “He’s fantastic, Mags. In every way imaginable. I am such an idiot for thinking he was just some studly construction worker I could fantasize about, fuck and then send on his merry way.”

“I’m sorry…” Maggi said with a hint of hesitation in her voice. “Are you telling me you might have…you could possibly be fall—oh, hell, no! I know you way better than that!” She mocked wiping sweat from her brow. “For a second there, you had me going.”

“Yeah, well...” Kate vaguely waved a dismissive hand in the air. But the sudden coiling low in her belly made her jump out of her chair and reach for the cord on the blinds. Yanking it tight, she snapped the verticals closed.

“Kate, the windows are tinted. He can’t see you!”

“I know. But just the mere thought that he might be down there, hefting two-by-fours, flexing his muscles, his bronze skin glowing in the mid-morning sun… Oh, shit.” She groaned as she sank back into her chair, her pulse racing as fast as it had when Jake had kissed her, touched her, slid into her. Every single time. “You have no idea what I’m dealing with here. The man is not at all what I was expecting. And on Sunday morning—”

“I still cannot believe he stayed the whole weekend!” Maggi’s eyes became huge saucers in her pretty face.

“We talked, then ate, then talked, then—”

“Fucked. Call a spade a spade, Kate. You talked, fucked, ate, fucked, talked, fu—”

“Mags!” Kate chastised her friend with a pointed look. “After the first few times it ceased to be just fucking.”

This caused Maggi to collapse into a chair in front of Kate’s desk. “Now wait just a minute.”

“I know, right? I’m totally shocking the shit out of you and it’s only ten o’clock. But I have to admit… something happened to me this weekend.”

Maggi, despite her stunned expression, actually appeared quite thrilled with Kate’s revelations. “Seriously, it’s about time, Kate. I haven’t seen you beam like this since our college graduation.”

Which was, Kate suddenly realized, a very sad sentiment. So much so, it made her breath catch. It occurred to her that she was

a woman who’d had everything go right in her life except for one of the most critical components. Love. She had a family that adored and respected her and friends that never let her down. A career that only continued to get better.

But love had eluded her all this time.

Until now?

Until Jake?

Kate pulled in a sliver of a breath. She wasn’t quite ready to accept what all of this meant.

“Okay, let’s hit the stop button and rewind,” she said, her sensible side stepping in. “The man is eleven years younger than me. Eleven!”

“Well, yeah, there is that.”

Even though she’d mentally contended that first night with him that the number had become inconsequential, in the light of a new day, she was back to obsessing over it.

Kate nibbled her lip, then mused, “What would his friends think?”

Hitching her chin, Maggi said, “Screw what his friends think. They should want him to be happy, right? And it is the decade of the cougar. This isn’t anything new.”