the deal for free labor included food.
After the men went to work, I kept finding excuses to go outside to see what Jason was doing. I found him on the roof pulling shingles.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
I was a lurker. His shirtless body had me creeping on him from the trees. I’d have used binoculars if I could have done it without being noticed. Broad, strong shoulders, six-pack abs, a defined chest that made me want to trace the contours with my fingers. I was my boyfriend’s stalker.
When the men pulled on their waders and started putting in the dock, it was almost lunchtime. I liked the dock project because I could see Jason from the sliding glass doors off the kitchen, though he had a shirt on now, so it was slightly less exciting.
When Patricia and I brought sandwiches down, we set them right on the wooden planks so the men could stand in the lake and use the dock as a table. They descended on the food. Jason grabbed two sandwiches and a beer and we moved to the end, away from everyone, and I sat down with my legs crossed under me so I could be by him as he ate. He stood up to his stomach in water.
“Are you having fun?” I asked him, my chin in my hand.
“I am now,” he said, smiling at me, taking a bite of a turkey sandwich.
I wanted to kiss him. He looked extra rugged and handsome today. Heaven help us both if he did one more sexy man-thing around here. If he took off his shirt and started splitting logs, I’d probably drag him into a bush and let him have his way with me.
“How cold is that water?”
He shrugged. “Forty-five? Forty-six degrees?”
“Wow. That’s cold. But you’re dry in there?” I peered into the front of his camouflaged waders.
“Want to put a hand inside and check?” His eyes gleamed.
I dipped the tips of my fingers into the lake and flicked him with water. He laughed.
The sun warmed the planks of the dock. A speaker played Journey somewhere, and Tucker ran soaking wet back and forth along the shore with about half a dozen other dogs. Every pickup truck that had pulled onto the property this morning had had a hunting dog in the front seat.
“I have a confession to make,” I said, drumming my fingers on my cheek. “I was checking you out on the roof earlier. I didn’t really need to get anything out of the car three times.”
He grinned at me over his sandwich. “And I had to talk myself down from sneaking into your room last night. Only the thought of my mom catching us stopped me.”
“I locked my door last night. I figured I might have to protect you from yourself. I know how much of a risk taker you are.” I ticked off on my fingers. “Kissing me on a first date, volunteering to meet Kristen and Josh, making out with me in the hallway with your parents in the other room. You have no self-preservation instincts.”
“Not with you I don’t.”
I laughed.
He finished eating and I got up and grabbed him a fresh beer from the cooler. “Do you put in your parents’ dock every spring?” I asked, sitting back down in front of him.
He put his hand on my thigh and rubbed it absently with his thumb. “I try to. They’re getting older. They need the help.” He took a drink of his beer. “You know, I got my stage name putting in the dock.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. It was a few years ago. David’s oldest, Camille, was three and she couldn’t say Jason. She used to call me Jaxon. I was standing in the lake and she pointed at me and said, ‘Jaxon in the water.’ I liked it, so I used it.”
I gave him a smile. “I wondered about that. There wasn’t anything about it on your Wikipedia page. I was going to ask you.”
“Nobody knows that but my family. And you.”
I smiled, and we watched each other for a moment. “I wish I could kiss you,” I said quietly. “I’ve been wishing I could kiss you all day.”
A slow grin crept across his face. He put his beer down. “Well, I don’t see how I can refuse that request.”
He closed in on me, the lake swirling around him, and his fingers traveled past my jaw into my hair. He paused a moment, grinning an inch from my lips, and I inhaled him, his