Kissing Jenna (Big Sky 2)
She frowns at me, not moving from my lap. “What is it?”
“Looks like a pipe froze and burst. You have water everywhere.”
Her eyes close. “Fuck.”
I pull her to me and hug her tightly.
“Looks like it probably ran through the night. I’m going to call a guy right now to start cleaning it up, I just wanted to let you know right away.”
“Do you need me to come down there? I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I don’t think so. We’ll get the water cleaned up and the pipe fixed. There’s not a lot to do besides that.”
“I’ll swing by tomorrow morning,” she says with a sigh. “Thanks for taking care of it, Brad. If I didn’t have two groups coming in tomorrow, I’d come down right now.”
“Take care of what you need to up there. I’ve got this.”
They end the call, and she sighs. “Well, that’s bad news.”
“I’m sorry.”
She moves off my lap and begins to pace.
“All of my units are full right now,” she says, thinking aloud. “Which is good, but that also means that I don’t have a place to stay while I have my house fixed. Actually, Max is out of town, so I could probably just crash at his house.”
“Jenna.”
She stops pacing and turns to me. “Yeah?”
“You can stay with me.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “You’re a guest, and you’re paying to be here. I’m not staying with you.”
Why that irritates me, I’m not sure, but I pull myself up and walk to her. I’ve never felt the need to ask a woman to stay with me before. It’s certainly not something I make a habit of. But I love that she treats me like any man that she recently met, and I definitely want to keep her close by for as long as I can. “I want you to stay with me.”
She bites her lip. “It would be more convenient to be up here to welcome the guests.”
“And I’ll get to see you.” I offer her my best grin, the one that’s been splashed on dozens of magazine covers.
“It’ll only be for a couple of days,” she says.
“It’s settled, then.” I nod and reach for a box full of decorations. “Let’s get this done so it’s ready for your guests.”
“Thank you.”
I stop and look back at her. “You do realize that I have ulterior motives, right? We’ve been interrupted twice today, and I don’t intend for it to happen again.”
“Damn right,” she says.
***
“So tired,” she murmurs and stretches out on the small couch next to me.
“You should be tired.” I kiss her head as she snuggles down and lays her head on my shoulder. “You worked your ass off.”
She finished decorating all three units, stocked kitchens for incoming guests, and still managed to run down to her house to check on the status of things.
“It’s no more than usual,” she says and smiles up at me. “Wanna go up to the turret?”
“Sure.”
She stands and offers me her hand, then leads me up the circular staircase to the loft. I’ve been using the king bed on the main floor, so I haven’t been up here much since I arrived. There’s another king-sized bed and a set of bunk beds along with another full bathroom.
Jenna starts to climb the ladder to the turret, which I don’t love, and I reach for a couple of condoms in the bedside table.
I may not have been staying up here in the loft, but I was sure to stock the condoms on both floors, just in case.
A man can hope.
Jenna flipped on the tiny star lights in the ceiling of the turret and nothing else. I follow her up and climb under the covers of the king-sized feather mattress that is the only furniture up here and hold her against me, with just the glow of the stars shining down on us.
“How did you come up with this?” I ask her.
“A dream. I dreamed of these, and when I woke up in the middle of the night, I sketched it really quick before I forgot.”
She glances out the window, then sits up in excitement.
“The sky cleared.” She reaches over to turn off the star lights. “Look.”
I look out the window and catch my breath at the view of real stars in the sky.
“We don’t get views like this in L.A.”
“I know.” She settles back against me again, and I’m spooning her now as we both watch the stars outside.
“Did it bother you, killing these huge trees to make the tree houses?”
“What do you mean?”
“They sit on enormous tree stumps. They must have been ancient trees.”
She laughs and then turns to smile up at me. “They’re not real. The center of them is steel, and I had them covered in fake tree bark, just like they use at Disney.”
“Really?”
She nods and goes back to staring outside. “There weren’t trees big enough to support a building like this, and I would never kill a tree that old. But I wanted them to look real, so I did research on what Disney uses in their parks to make the trees look real, and that’s what I used.”