Just One Touch: A Black Alcove Novel (The Black Alcove Series Book 3) (9 page)

Which is exactly why I
made up a reason to go over there. The fresh-baked cookie smell just
made me do it sooner.

I jump in the shower
and am dried, dressed, and ready in under five minutes. I’m about
to call Heather to see if I can get a few minutes of talk time in
with Jake when I smell something burning. I glance around my
apartment, trying to remember if I shut everything off in the
kitchen. The smells gets stronger, urging me to get up and find the
problem. As I get closer to the door, it occurs to me that the smell
might not be coming from my apartment. Yep, the odor is definitely
stronger in the apartment hallway. Opening the door to Alex’s
apartment without knocking was an afterthought before, but it’s
completely intentional now. Smoke is coming from her oven. I grab the
mitt and open the door, waving the smoke away.

“Alex?” I holler
out.

Silence.

“Alex?” I call out
again, stepping closer in the direction of her bedroom.

“I’m back here!”
she yells back. “I think I broke something.”

Letting the oven slam
closed, I drop the cookie sheet on the counter and run to her
bedroom. Is she okay?

I don’t see her, but
I hear a grunt from the bathroom. The door is ajar and I push on it
gently.

“Hey? Can I come in?”

“Yeah, I don’t know
what happened.”

The door opens fully
and I find Alex standing before me in nothing but a towel and head
covered in suds. She starts to bend over toward the bathtub, but
remembers I’m behind her and jumps back to cover herself. It takes
a lot of self-control to not think about the fact that her towel is
so small it barely covers her ass cheeks.

“I smelled the
cookies and went to get out of the shower and slipped. I grabbed the
showerhead but ended up breaking it off the wall, and now when the
water is on, it just shoots out all over the place.”

“It broke?”
Showerheads don’t just break off the wall.

“Yep. Mid-shower.”
She points to her hair and shrugs like she doesn’t believe it
herself.

“Let me get a look at
it while you go across the hall and finish up in my shower.”

She nods, sneaking by
me. I glance over my shoulder and she looks back. When I shoot her
another wink, she blushes and walks away. The moment she’s out of
sight I rest my hand flat against the wall and release a long, deep
breath. She doesn’t need to know I freaked out for a second,
thinking she was hurt. I never thought my heart could pound so hard
with worry for anyone other than Jake. I lean forward and drop my
head. And she sure as hell doesn’t need to know that my body
responded immediately, confirming how much I want her, the moment I
saw her in that tiny towel.

When I’ve got myself
together again, sure enough, part of the showerhead is still in the
wall and another piece is in the bathtub. On closer inspection, there
must be a leak that softened the drywall, probably what made it easy
to budge. This building isn’t in the best shape, but this
definitely needs to be fixed, and someone should have spotted it
before they leased the space out again.

I turn the water on,
and just as she said, water sprays everywhere, soaking me in the
process. Shutting it off, I dry up the mess I made and head back to
my apartment to change and send our landlord, Jace, a quick text. I
turn the oven off on my way. Baking is not her thing.

The shower is still
running as I step into my bedroom to grab a dry shirt. A vision of
Alex dropping the towel I just saw her in and letting water glide
over her body comes to mind. I freeze. She’s naked in my apartment.
She’s always responded to my flirting—does that mean that if I
walked in there, she’d enjoy it as much as I would? Shit, I haven’t
even kissed the girl, or even planned to kiss her until this very
moment, and I’m already jumping to sex in the shower.

I groan so loudly that,
if the water weren’t running, I’m sure Alex would hear it as I
put on a new shirt. I head back out to the living room, receiving a
text that says our landlord will be by tonight to look at it. Alex
now has something more important to take care of than going to
dinner, so I pull out a box of macaroni. Nothing gourmet but still
satisfying. The shower shuts off and the door opens a few minutes
later, but Alex doesn’t come out. After a couple more minutes, I
wander down the hall to see what’s taking so long.

I find her standing
next to my bed, holding up a picture of me, my sister, Sara, and
Logan. As much as I love the idea of Alex in a t-shirt and pajama
shorts, I clear my throat. She jumps.

“I’m sorry, I
thought you were still next door.” She blushes.

“Nope, sadly I can’t
fix your plumbing issue. Jace will be by tonight. If he can’t get
it fixed, you can use mine till he does. So I made a plan B for
dinner.”

“No date?” She
frowns.

“We can still have
dinner and a movie, just not out. You know, in case Jace needs
something.”

Alex nods and holds up
the photo.

“So how did you
become friends with everyone here? School? Or just work?” she asks.

“Yeah, I’m the
youngest of the bunch. But it doesn’t feel that way. My sister
became friends with Sara when they were in grade school, then Sara
met Logan. We soon became a group.”

“What about your
brother-in-law? How did he and your sister get together?”

“Oh, that’s a whole
other story that you can ask them to tell you someday.” I
smile—they were on and off more times than a light switch before
they finally made it work.

“Alright, well, I
guess I’ll go finish getting ready, sort of, and be back. I assume
you’re cooking.”

“I sure am.”

I walk her to the door
and then I cook dinner. The entire night feels like I’ve done it a
million times before. We talk, we laugh, and the next thing I know,
it’s morning and I’m waking up on the couch with Alex in my arms
and a phone that won’t stop vibrating against the coffee table.
Doing my best to not wake Alex, I pick up my phone and see I’ve
missed three text messages from

. Each text is ten minutes apart
from the last.

Heather: Meet us for breakfast?

Heather: Hello?

Heather: If you don’t want to even try this, I need to know so I
can stop wasting my time.

“Everything okay?”
Alex asks, catching me off guard. I didn’t know she was awake. “You
look upset?”

I peel my body away
from hers, already regretting it.

“Everything is great.
I just forgot about something, is all.”

“Okay, well, if you
need me to do anything, I’m going to owe you for the next week of
showers since Jace said he has to order a part. Let me know.”

She winks at me and
heads back to her apartment. I stand there smiling like an idiot,
thinking of how many more times she going to be naked in my
apartment. Then my phone beeps with another text from Heather. Shit,
what am I getting myself into?

Conner

It’s been a week
since I woke up with Alex, and because her shower still isn’t
fixed, I’ve had the pleasure of two more nights and mornings just
the same. She comes over in the evenings to shower and somehow we end
up watching a movie, hardly ever talking, which is both nice and
completely odd at the same time, until we eventually fall asleep. Her
company is wonderful and everything is great, except one thing: I
want to kiss her and I’ve yet to make that happen. Scratch that,
two things: I also haven’t decided to stop being a pansy long
enough to tell Heather I can’t give her what she wants from me.

Until I figure out what
I’m going to say to Heather, keeping things uncomplicated between
Alex and me is best. Her first impression of me was that I was trying
to cheat on Heather, which isn’t the case, but I don’t know if I
would be able to explain it well enough for Alex to understand that.

Shit, I’m about a
touch away from just going for it with Alex and taking my chances.

I pull up at Sara and
Logan’s house, parking my truck on the curb. As usual, Jake has his
seat belt off and he’s climbing over the backseat to get out on the
sidewalk. I walk around to meet him and close the door as he runs to
the front yard to play with Clara. Kelsey, Sara, and Beth are
gathered in a circle near the front door, each one occasionally
stealing at glance to watch over Clara and now Jake.

I grab the potato salad
I agreed to bring and walk up to the garage door where Logan, and
Ethan are standing.

“What do you think
that’s about?” I ask both Logan and Ethan, nodding toward the
girls.

Logan looks away from
the code box on the side of the garage for a brief moment. He shrugs
and then goes back to punching in numbers.

“Probably another
hormonal thing.” Ethan laughs. “You’re lucky you aren’t
living with someone who is pregnant anymore.”

“Kelsey wasn’t so
bad to live with,” I say. Logan groans and hits a few more numbers.
“Do you not remember the code?”

Logan shoots me a look
that says, “Don’t ask.”

“Yeah, you’re also
the brother, not the husband and father,” Ethan says, his eyebrow
cocked as he glances between me and Logan.

Logan chuckles and I
just shake my head. I’m going to take his word for it.

“Where’s Lucas?”
I ask. “Isn’t he coming?”

I’ve always hung out
with him, but it wasn’t until a few months ago he started making
plans with Ethan and Logan outside the bar, too. And since he’s the
only one I’ve really talked to about Alex, I thought I’d get his
opinion, even if I do sound like a girl.

“Someone has to open
the bar.” Logan laughs.

Like magic, the garage
door creaks right before it begins to open. Logan punches his hand in
the air with a “whoop” as Sara starts clapping behind us.

“Finally,” she
says. “Now what’s the code before you forget again, telling me I
can’t use the house key, and we have to go through this another
time?”

“I’ll tell you
later when there aren’t so many people around.”

Everyone falls silent
and we all glare at Logan. For fun, of course.

“Yes, because I can’t
wait to break into your house. The one that is directly behind my
own, where climbing the fence into your backyard would be a lot
easier,” Kelsey says with humor.

“Babe, climbing
fences is not your thing,” Ethan says with a chuckle.

Sara then punches Logan
on the arm and he fakes an injury before giving in.

“Okay, don’t laugh,
but it’s 0606.”

Everyone laughs.

“Wow, I’ve never
been so impressed with my husband,” Sara comments as she passes him
into the garage on her way to the backyard. Everyone else quickly
follows.

“So tell me about
this new neighbor of yours. Lucas and Ethan both say I need to meet
her ASAP,” Logan says, walking directly to the barbeque, opening
the lid and holding the ignition switch until a flame appears.

“How did you get that
in here if you couldn’t remember the code?”

Again, Logan shoots me
a look.

“He brought it the
day the inspectors were here,” Sara answers as she takes a seat at
the patio table. I’m going to assume they also brought that when
the inspectors were here. “Once the contractor was done and all we
had left was the inspection, they told us we could move some stuff.
We just can’t sleep here until the house has been approved.”

If I ever build a
house, I’ll keep that in mind.

“So back to this
girl,” Logan brings Alex up once again.

I can’t help but
smile. It’s dead giveaway that I’m into her.

“I invited her today,
but she said she had plans.”

“I was just at the
gym. She wasn’t there,” Beth says, sitting next to Sara.

“She didn’t say
what time she had to work,” I reply.

“Then what is she
doing? She doesn’t know very many people in this town. In fact, I’m
pretty sure everyone she knows is sitting right here.”

“I don’t know.”

“You should ask these
things,” Beth says and then starts to text away on her phone like
she always does.

“Anyway,” Logan
says with annoyance. He has this thing about cell phones making
people unsocial. “Is she hot? I hear Ethan almost caught you two
kissing. I got to say man, it’s nice to hear you’re into someone
again. I didn’t want to admit it for fear that was what you wanted,
but I don’t think Heather is the right woman for you.”

“Yeah, me neither. I
still haven’t figured out how to tell her either. And yes, of
course Alex is hot. But the best part about her is her—”

“You know what, let’s
not talk about Alex. I remember how defensive you got over her when
we went boating the other week,” my sister interrupts.

“Yeah, because you
were asking her personal questions. Shit, I’m into the girl and I
haven’t even asked her things like that.”

“One, maybe you
should. Two, watch your language around the kids. And three, can I
have a word with you in private?”

My sister gives me that
same glare she used in high school when I would do something to
embarrass her and her friends. The “I mean business if you don’t
do what I say” look. Clara better watch out. Kelsey has only
perfected the look over the years.

I follow Kelsey into
the house and into one of the bedrooms. She closes the door and
immediately starts in on me.

“What do you know
about this girl?”

“Who, Alex?”

“Yes, Alex.” She
rolls her eyes at me.

“I know enough. Why,
what’s the big deal?” I never did get a chance to talk to Ethan
about his behavior the other day. Asking my sister is basically the
same thing. “And explain to me why Ethan was being so weird on the
boat.”

“Is Alex her full
name?”

“I think so, why?”

“What’s her last
name?”