Chapter 10
Jason
♪ Soul Meets Body | Death Cab for Cutie
Sloan sent me a link to a YouTube video. I sat on the edge of my bed and watched it, maximizing the screen.
Someone held up a piece of paper in front of the camera that read, My vacation with Sloan. Then it began to show clips of Tucker. Tucker on hikes, Tucker swimming in a swimming pool. Tucker at Starbucks licking whipped cream out of a paper cup, and him at PetSmart with a blue plush doll in his mouth. Then he was in a bathtub getting a bath with his hair spiked into a Mohawk. Tucker chasing a green tennis ball on the grass and playing with other dogs at a dog park.
If I hadn’t already liked Sloan, this would have done it. Tucker was my currency. It might as well have been me she was spoiling, it had the same effect.
I smiled down at my screen as I watched a clip of Tucker on his back, getting a belly rub. Then the frame changed, and he sat on a couch next to a woman. I bolted to attention and pulled the phone closer.
The woman smiled at him, and he licked her face. I could see the tattoos on her arm. She looked directly at the camera and reached up off-screen, and the video ended.
My heart thudded against my rib cage. This was Sloan. This was the woman I’d been talking to.
And she was fucking beautiful.
I played the video back. Then I played it back again. I paused it and took screenshots of her so I could look at them. I zoomed in and studied her. She had one of those broad smiles that radiated. Full lips, large brown doe eyes, long golden-blond hair. Jesus, she was gorgeous.
I was still watching the video when I got into my Uber. I called her.
Voicemail.
* * *
I texted Sloan last night, telling her how beautiful I thought she was, but all I got was a smiley face and didn’t know how to interpret that. I think the stress of our meeting each other was getting to her.
It was getting to me too.
Even before I’d seen what she looked like, I’d liked her more than anyone else I’d met in a very long time. I went to sleep and woke up thinking about her. I fucking dreamed about her. I hadn’t even looked at another woman sideways pretty much since the moment we started talking. And all that for a woman I hadn’t even laid eyes on yet.
Now I worried that I would somehow not measure up—which was crazy. She’d seen enough pictures of me to know what to expect, and I was not an unconfident person by any stretch of the imagination. It was just that meeting her felt too important.
My flight had been smooth, and I’d gotten as much sleep as I could so I’d be fresh for our “appointment.”
After I dropped off my luggage at home, I took a shower, threw on a T-shirt and jeans, and took longer than I care to admit trimming my beard and messing with my hair. Then I made my way to the Starbucks on Topanga Canyon.
I waited on the patio, bouncing my knee, opening and closing my hand the way I always did right before I played in front of a big crowd. I’d gotten there half an hour early and I sat there scanning the parking lot and sidewalks, completely nervous and laughing to myself because I never got like this—for anything or anyone.
I didn’t know what it meant that I felt like this already. All I knew was that I did.
She was eight minutes late when she called.
“Hey,” I said, picking up on the first ring. “You said Topanga Canyon, ri—”
“Jason, I can’t come, my kitchen is flooded!”
Chaos came through the line. Tucker barked in the background, and I could hear the sound of spraying water. “The pipe under your sink?”
“Yes! Oh my God, it’s a disaster!”
I was already running to my truck. “Give me your address.”
There was a pause.
“I…but…”
I had to laugh. Still? Even now? “Sloan, your kitchen.”
She moaned. “Fine.”
She rattled off her address and told me not to knock.
Google Maps said she was just two blocks away, and I got there within three minutes and ran into the house.
I glanced around the living room, registering only momentarily that I was in Sloan’s personal space. It smelled like vanilla. It was clean. The flowers I’d sent her sat by an easel with a half-painted canvas of a pug dressed like Napoleon on it. I darted toward the sound of distress and burst into the kitchen to madness.
Sloan was by the sink, soaking wet and panting, standing in an inch of water.
Our gazes met, and she hit me like a ton of bricks. My body’s reaction to her was instantaneous. I could almost feel my pupils dilate as I took her in.
She was a woman who would have frozen me dead in my tracks anywhere. Absolutely showstopping.
I allowed myself two heartbeats to stare at her before I tore my eyes away to look around. She hadn’t been kidding, this really was bad.
Towels and what must have been the contents of the cabinet were strewn all over the floor. The doors under the sink were open and water sprayed out. Tucker barked and scratched from behind a door off the kitchen.
I quickly rummaged through the open toolbox on the counter, hyperaware that Sloan watched me. Then I dove to my knees to look under the sink, kneeling in a pond of cold water and taking the spray right in the face.
Sloan had amazing water pressure. I was impressed.
The cutoff valve on the water inlet line was jammed. It took a few hard yanks, but I got it shut off. By the time I stopped the flow, I was completely drenched.
I shimmied out and stood, soaking wet, water dripping off the tips of my fingers. I turned to her, raking a hand through my damp hair. She looked at me, her eyes wide, and we stared at each other.
Wow. This is her.
“Hi,” she breathed.
“Hello.”
The short video clip and the tiny picture of her on The Huntsman’s Wife had in no way prepared me for Sloan in person. She was like a 1950s pinup girl. All tattoos and curves. Long hair, loose around her shoulders, wet at the ends.
Smart, funny, and now this. I’d won the fucking lottery. Why she hadn’t been throwing pictures at me right and left was beyond me. Maybe she didn’t want me to know how good-looking she was for the same reason I downplayed what I did for a living? I didn’t know, but this was a welcome surprise for sure.
Her wide, brown eyes moved down my chest and back to my face. The only sounds were the water still trickling out from under the sink and the thrumming of my heart in my ears.
The corner of her mouth twitched. Then she started to laugh, and I mentally assigned the image to every smiling moment I’d imagined on the phone.
Beautiful.
“I’m glad you didn’t make things weird for our first appointment,” I said. “Just a run-of-the-mill, no-stress, first-meeting flood.”
She looked down at the water in her kitchen. “This is so messed up,” she said, still giggling.
“Do you have a shop vac?”
“I don’t know.” She put a hand to her forehead. “Brandon might have had one.”
“Where’s your garage?”
She pointed to a door. I went into the garage and immediately noted the man cave–like interior. Professional tools and an impressive workbench. A few neon beer signs on the walls. A dusty man’s jacket hung on a hook by the door and an empty open beer sat on the counter.
An old Corolla sat in the middle of the two parking spaces, with a duct-taped side mirror and a door that didn’t match the rest of the car.
After poking around, I found a shop vac. When I got back into the kitchen, Sloan was sweeping water out the back door with a broom.
The next half hour was spent sucking water off the floor while Sloan wrung out towels and set up fans in the doorway. We worked without talking. The vacuum was too loud. But we kept stealing glances at each other.
I helped her carry a huge armload of wet towels to the washing machine. When the door to the laundry room opened, Tucker spilled out, and I dropped my towels and crouched on the floor, laughing and letting him lick my face. God, I’d missed him. He made crying noises at the sight of me and all I could think was, This guy’s getting a major finder’s fee later.
Sloan watched us with a smile and started the load. When she closed the lid and turned to me, I leaned in the doorway with my arms crossed. Tucker stood between us and looked back and forth with the same proud face he always made when he’d retrieved a duck for me and dropped it at my feet.
“Thanks for all your help.” She looked up at me through her long lashes. “This house is a mess. It’s really old. Things keep breaking.” She seemed unsure what to do now that the crisis had been dealt with.
I smiled. “Go to dinner with me.”
She blinked.
“Dinner, tonight, a date. Not an appointment, a date.”
She studied my face.
“I want to take you out,” I said. “Let me.”
If she said no, I was pretty sure I was going to beg.
“Okay.”
I grinned. Good. Finally. “I’ll wait for you to get ready,” I said. “We’ll leave Tucker here and I’ll get him when I drop you off.”
“But what about you? You’re soaking wet.”
“You get ready, and then I’ll drive us to my place so I can change.”
She gave me a wide-eyed stranger-danger look and I laughed. So that was the face she made every time I asked her probing questions on the phone.
“Here.” I pulled out my soggy wallet and fished out my ID. “Take a picture of my driver’s license and send it to Kristen.”
I handed it over and she looked at it. “You really are an organ donor.”
“And not a creeper or a pirate. I hope you’re not disappointed.”
She laughed, and I couldn’t even take my eyes off her.
She smiled up at me. “Give me a second to get changed.”