At least until he turned his gaze back to Mary and took the towel she was offering. She’d also taken off her jacket and was standing in front of him in her wet wrap dress. Just that quickly, the desire in his eyes was back.
But only for her.
“Jack is the engineer and inventor I was telling you girls about last night,” Mary explained.
“Mary is so lucky to get to work with you,” Susan said with a seductive toss of her curly black hair.
“My partners and I are the lucky ones.” He wiped his hair and face with the towel. In unison, the three young models all sighed over his gorgeously rumpled good looks.
Well, Mary thought as she barely held back her own sigh of appreciation, could she blame them? Jack really was that gorgeous, especially with his button-down shirt and slacks damp and clinging to his well-developed muscles. Clearly, he must not spend all of his time working.
People always asked Mary about her life because she was a celebrity, but she was just as interested in theirs. Journalist, waitress, mother, photographer, bus driver—they all had interesting stories to tell. What, she wondered, was the rest of Jack’s story? She guessed he was close to his family from what he’d told her at the diner, and she knew he was devoted to his work. But neither of those things explained the slight air of danger—and risk—that he wore so easily. He hadn’t been at all intimidated by the bigwigs in the boardroom.
“If you need any other models for your campaign,” Yvette offered with her most alluring smile, “you know where to find us.”
Feeling as if she’d accidentally dropped Jack straight into a shark tank, Mary stepped into the fray by gesturing to the three sets of sparkly heels on the wood-planked floor. “Looks like you have a big Friday night out planned?”
Janeen nodded, then looked back at Jack with a hopeful expression. “It’s a new club Yvette heard about from the photographer on her shoot today. You two should come with us.”
“I’m all danced out,” Jack said with a grin for Mary that brought back every wonderful moment of their impromptu dance in the rain. “But thank you.”
Mary watched Susan shoot the other girls a pointed glance. When Janeen and Yvette didn’t immediately understand, Susan did the world’s most obvious pantomime of Jack and Mary being a couple that included a heart drawn in the air and kissy motions with her lips.
“Oh,” Yvette said as she looked between them. “Of course, you two don’t want to go dancing with us.”
Janeen chimed in with, “We should probably let you two be alone now, shouldn’t we?”
What could Mary do but laugh as she turned on the kitchen tap? “I’m making coffee if you want some before you head out on the town.”
But the girls were now a blur as they strapped on their shoes, grabbed their coats and sparkly purses and headed for the door. “Thanks, Mary, but our dates have already been waiting for us for a while.”
Dates?
Mary followed them to the front door and caught them as they flitted down the front steps. “Be careful, and call me if you need anything. It doesn’t matter how late, I’ll come and bring you home.” Reminding herself that they were young, but that each of them had a good head on her shoulders, she added, “And have fun.”
A taxi immediately skidded to a stop for the three long-legged beauties and they blew her kisses as they got inside. “You, too!” Yvette called out before tucking her feet into the cab and closing the door.
Jack was laying both of their jackets over the radiator when Mary returned. She’d chosen the house not only for its views, but because she loved how big and open the rooms felt. Even with four people living in it, she never felt cramped. In fact, on nights like this when the girls went out, rather than appreciate the quiet, she often found herself counting the minutes until they returned with their noise and laughter and exuberance.
She’d made it sound to Jack as if she was looking after them, but the truth was they looked after her, too.
“Sorry about all of that. It can be a bit of a circus around here sometimes, especially on Friday nights.”
Jack was the first man she’d invited inside her house since moving in a month earlier. Seeing him looking so right in the midst of all the feminine disarray sent her thoughts into a different kind of disarray. What had she been doing before she’d rushed to see the girls off? Thankfully, the half-filled boiler of her moka pot beside the sink provided a clue.
Still feeling flustered as she went back to filling the boiler and then setting it on low heat on the stovetop, she decided to face the situation head-on. “I hope they didn’t make you uncomfortable. Especially,” she added with a small laugh, “with all their flirting.”
He laughed as he pulled up a seat at the bar. “They were charming, although I can see that they could certainly be a handful. I sometimes had trouble keeping a class of engineering undergrads from rioting in the middle of a lecture when I was a teaching assistant. My hat is off to you for taking on three energetic young women.”
She was still amazed that he hadn’t drooled over them the way men always did, especially when they’d been practically throwing themselves into his big, strong arms.
“Oh, we’ve had a riot or two around here in the past month,” Mary informed him as she inserted the funnel in the boiler, then filled it with espresso beans she had ground that morning. “Especially the night they were all fighting over the same worthless guy. I ended up banning all social activities for the rest of the week.” As she spoke she continued with the coffee preparations by screwing on the top container and watching as the coffee began to appear. “Of course, the girls are also a tremendous amount of fun.” Seeing that half the coffee had brewed already, she turned off the heat.
“I’ve never seen that kind of coffeepot. Is it from Italy?”
She nodded. “It’s called a moka pot.” She spelled out the word for him.
“Whenever you speak about Italy, your accent comes through.” His eyes were warm as he said to her, “Tell me about the country you were born in so I can hear it some more.”
She was a grown woman of thirty-two, not a naive teenage girl anymore. So how did Jack manage to make her blush so easily and so often?
“Much like the United States, Italy is a place with many different colors and textures. The golden ruins of Rome. The checkered Duomo of Florence. The canals and opulence of Venice.”