Chapter Nine

Rory finished her shower, got dressed, and looked for her brother-in-law. She tried very hard not to think about him while she was in the shower, but her brain decided to do the opposite for her, and she was compelled to use the handheld shower nozzle to relieve her aching.

Good God, it was one thing that she had dreams about him, but to actively picture him in her mind while she m*********d, had to be crossing some kind of line. It was adultery in thought, if not by action.

Maybe she should attend morning mass tomorrow, then make a confession in the afternoon to unburden herself and seek penitence.

She had all of this in mind while she dressed herself and straightened her hair. She didn’t like the way it looked afterward because it just kind of hung flat, so she put it up in a French braid. She kept her makeup simple: eyeliner, foundation, lipstick, blush.

She was just going to go to Costco then to her nephew’s birthday party with her brother-in-law. She had no one to impress, so she put on a simple denim skirt and a cute, but casual top: a weekend outfit.

She didn’t know why she was so nervous about seeing Jim again after she’d showered and changed. Was it because she’d touched herself thinking about him? Or maybe because she wanted to find out what he thought of her hair and outfit. Ugh. She was an i***t. A therapist would probably say she needed a hobby.

She set out to look for him all over the house, but didn’t find him. She went to the backyard patio because sometimes he hung out there, just sitting, staring at the cliffs. Or he’d have a pool net in his hand, skimming the surface of the pool for leaves with the concentration of a Zen master working on his sand garden with a rake.

She envied his stillness. Jim could sit somewhere for hours, just thinking. She couldn’t do that. She’d go nuts. Her soul wasn’t quiet enough. But there was something poetic about his brooding, and she realized immediately that it was a very silly thought because it was something she might have written about a boy-crush on her Livejournal when she was fourteen.

His bedroom was on the far side of the house through the den instead of the family room where there was a corridor that led to the rest of the bedrooms. Sam thought there should be a guest bedroom that was separate from the family’s sleeping quarters for privacy on both sides. Rory visited his room once a week to clean up (while he was at work), though he picked up very well after himself, so there wasn’t much for her to do.

Unlike most households in Calabasas, they didn’t have someone else who came along to clean their house. Rory did that. Sam would prefer that they paid someone to come in once a week to clean, but Rory objected. She told him she could take care of her own damn house.

When she knocked on Jim’s door (heart pounding and everything), he didn’t answer. She entered his room and realized he wasn’t home. Both relief and disappointment coursed through her body. She’d been given temporary reprieve to sort out her feelings and retain her sanity. She was actively courting trouble by seeking Jim. What was she thinking?

She wandered back to the kitchen, but found that he’d cleaned up there, too, so there was nothing for her to do. Where could he have gone? Well, whenever he disappeared for a couple of hours at a time, it was usually because he’d gone trail running up to Calabasas Peak. She didn’t really enjoy hiking, so the fact that he could run up that thing was impressive.

A lot of things about Jim impressed her. Mostly the physical stuff he did. Sometimes she would randomly find him doing push-ups or sit-ups in the back patio as though he were punishing himself for something. He would do them until his limbs shook or he’d run out the demon he was trying to chase out of his body.

She’d been about to fix them some lunch when she happened to look outside through a window and saw Jim talking to Claudia, one of her neighbors. She gritted her teeth. Claudia was notorious for cheating on her husband whenever he was at work and she was not going to get her claws into Jim.

Rory flung open the door and called him in, sweetly reminding her neighbor of her husband and children lest she’d forgotten about them. Jim seemed amused by the scene. “I had no idea you were so eager to become piranha chow,” she’d said, thrusting her chin up to avoid his penetrating stare.

“I’m not,” he replied with a chuckle. “That woman is a nightmare and she’s not my type. I prefer to be the one doing the chasing, thank you.”

Rory felt her skin heat up as she thought Jim might have checked her out as he said that. He’d looked at her from ankle to her hair, then back down again. “Go take a shower, will you? We need to get going. Junie just called and asked if we could get there early.”

“No problem,” he murmured, his eyes lingering on hers once again. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

The two of them went back inside the house together. Jim headed for his bedroom while Rory went to the kitchen to make lunch for the two of them. Her hands went up to her heated cheeks. Was Jim checking her out or did she completely imagine that?

She was losing her mind. What she needed was to get her cupcake project off the ground. Once she and Suzy found a location, she could start focusing on what they needed before they could open for business, instead of her staying at home, getting cooped up with her sexy brother-in-law.

She made tuna salad sandwiches for her and Jim because tuna was the unsexiest thing she could think of and she added chopped onions for a good measure. The two of them had been alone together numerous times, but she had never more aware of him as a man than she was now.

She was able to hang out with him just fine while Sam was out of town because her little crush had been just that: a silly little crush any woman would have on an extremely attractive man like Jim. This awareness of him as a man, this perception that he too might have thoughts and feelings didn’t enter the equation.

He had eyes and ears, needs and desires of his own. What if she’d become the focus of them because there was no one else around for him?

“That looks great,” he said, walking into the kitchen where she’d set up two plates on the table with the sandwiches along with cut fruit. “You didn’t have to go through all this trouble, Aurora.”

Sam called her by her full name, but when Jim did it, something deep inside her tickled and made her shiver. She forced herself to smile. “No trouble. Come on, eat up unless you’d rather wait till later and have Costco hotdogs and pizza with the kids.”

He laughed and took the seat in front of her. “Tempting, but no thanks.”

“DAMN IT, CHICA,” Junie whispered as Jim walked by with her nine-year-old son Caden, carrying a Super Soaker Pump-Action Blaster with his shirt off. “You didn’t tell me how sexy this motherfucker got! Look at him! Jesus, he’s cut and he’s got that V-thing on his hips. I’m dying!”

Rory gave her cousin a shove. She’d been expecting her to be the voice of reason, not to goad her on. “He’ll hear you, puta. Have some shame, will you. The poor man. My female neighbors see nothing but a slab of beef when he walks by.”

“I was watching his old music videos on YouTube before you came over,” Junie said with a sigh. “What a waste. He’s so talented. He should pick it back up again without those losers in his band.”

Rory smiled. “I don’t think he’s ready. He hasn’t picked up a musical instrument in a year. He’s clean, though. Doesn’t drink, no drugs. Still smokes cigarettes.” She was proud of what Jim had accomplished in such a short while. When he’d first come to them, he seemed down and depressed all the time. Now he was able to laugh and joke around. Not so much with Sam, but with her. “I think he just needs time.”

Her cousin rolled her eyes. “Ai-ya-yai, Rory, I hear it in your voice. He’s your latest pet project, isn’t he? You and Sam really need to have kids already, man.”

Rory felt a stab of pain in her chest at her cousin’s words. “We’re trying, Junie. I don’t know, maybe Sam is just too busy right now and it’s not the right time.”

Her cousin snorted. “Pfft. Then when is? You want one of mine? Speaking of Sam, is he worried about this Coronavirus thing? More and more people are getting infected, man. I don’t believe the government when they say they have it under control.”

While they were at the warehouse store, Rory had noticed that other people were also stocking up on toilet paper, bottled water, and canned goods. She and Jim had looked at each other and followed suit. If it turned out to be nothing, Jim said, it was never a bad thing to have a surplus of toilet paper.

They’d loaded up Rory’s SUV, making jokes about an upcoming apocalypse, but Rory couldn’t shake her feeling of dread. After picking up what they needed from the party supply store, the two of them headed to Junie’s house, where there were other parents helping out.

Jim had elected to wear a navy-blue t-shirt that matched his eyes and long black jogging pants to cover his ankle monitor. At one point, as he was fixing one of the boys’ water guns, his shirt did get drenched and he had to take it off.

Rory would swear she heard a collective gasp from the mothers of the boys along with the teenage girls who were also present. Rory sighed. Jim drew admiring glances everywhere he went, which was why he often went out in a baseball cap and sunglasses.

But there was no hiding that body. Rory bit her lower lip and groaned. This was so not good. Every day it seemed her desire for Jim only got stronger and she had no idea where it was going to lead.

She would just have to hold on until he left the house, that was all, and everything would go back to normal. She could forget this whole insanity ever happened.

From across the pool, Jim must have sensed her staring at him. He looked over his muscular shoulder and winked at her.

The fifteen-year-old girl inside Rory squealed.