Tease Me. Dawn Atkins

      “Maybe you’ll get some stuff back,” he said to cheer her.

      “Maybe.” She lifted the pizza box with the coffee crap and climbed to her feet, moving as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. “I’ll clean this up, make a few calls and get going.”

      “Hold on a sec,” he said to stop her. “Now that you mention cleaning…I was thinking maybe you’d help me out.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “You can see I need a housekeeper.”

      She looked around the room and gave a droll smile. “You think?”

      “So, how about I trade you a room for cleaning? Save me calling a service.”

      She seemed to doubt his intentions. “Thanks, anyway, Jackson. I’ll ask my boss about…options.” She snatched her lip between her teeth, looked toward the sofa.

      He noticed a basket of nachos on the arm. They looked pretty gross—the cheese shriveled and an unnatural orange. “If you weren’t here, I might actually eat those,” he said.

      She turned shocked eyes on him. “You wouldn’t!”

      “Take the job. Save a life.”

      She smiled, then studied him, scrunching up her short nose and the freckles like sprinkled cinnamon that decorated it. “What were you planning to pay?”

      Hell, what was the going rate? “Twenty bucks an hour?” he threw out. “Thirty?”

      She frowned, ferreting out ulterior motives. “Not more than twenty. Let’s see…I was going to pay Tina three-fifty a month for the room. It would take maybe six hours to clean up the first time, three after that. At twenty an hour, that’s…sheesh…not even close to rent.” She looked suddenly ill.

      “Don’t sweat the money now. Get back on your feet and we’ll work it out.”

      She sank back to the sofa in despair, jarring the nacho basket, which landed on her lap upside down.

      “Damn!” She swept the chips back into the container, leaving a grease spot and a smear of hot sauce on her tan shorts, nicely tight across her thighs. She must work out.

      She scrubbed at the spots. “These are the only clothes I own.” Her husky voice cracked and wobbled with the motion and she was chewing her lip raw again.

      “There are some clothes in the spare room.” Gigi was careless about her clothes, as well as her men, her rent and her job. “They’re yours.”

      She looked guilty and relieved—like a person who’d screwed up her courage to make her first sky dive, but gotten a bad-weather out and taken it.

      “Come on,” he said, holding out a hand. “It would have been your room anyway, if Deirdre hadn’t screwed up.” And he hadn’t gone broke and had to move into his rental property.

      She held his gaze, a million thoughts behind her eyes. Doubts, hope, worry, but mostly relief. Then she gave him her hand. The contact made them both go still. A surprising jolt skimmed through him. It had hit her, too, he guessed by the color in her face and the way she blinked her big eyes at him.

      Then she collected herself, gripped more firmly and yanked herself up, as if he’d boosted her onto a high step, but now she was in charge. He’d felt the heat, though. It lingered like a whisper in his ear.

      He led the way to the room and she padded behind. In the doorway, he waved her forward. She looked around, a little daunted. The room was pretty jammed. He’d kept some of the station’s sound equipment and shoved it in here with his own amps, bass and keyboard. There were unpacked boxes from his house—albums, CDs, books, tools, car parts and miscellaneous junk he hadn’t missed in the three weeks he’d been living here. Framed posters and photographs he hadn’t yet hung rested against the walls.

      Even the bed was piled high—blues records he’d been sorting for a set at the bar. Though he didn’t have his father’s talent, he had an ear and he used it however he could.

      “Wow,” she said, studying the wall of equipment and CDs. She turned to him. “You’re a musician?”

      “I fool around. Play a little. I DJ at the bar I manage sometimes.” The customers came for the girls, not the music, but what the hell. He kept up with the local music scene, too. Followed new bands, hung out at recording studios, and played back-up bass or keyboard when he could.

      “You manage a bar? How interesting.”

      “Sure.” He started to tell her about Moons, then thought better of it. “Check out the clothes.” He opened the closet and picked out the first dress—fake snakeskin, pretty much a shrink-wrap job that had barely covered Gigi’s substantial rack. Heidi didn’t have much up top, but the dress was tight, so she could keep it in place. He held it up to her. “This’ll work.”

      She blushed and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

      “You’d look hot.” Every woman wanted to hear that stuff. Truth was, the thought of her wiggling into it made his throat clog. He cleared it.

      “Thanks, anyway.” She put the hanger firmly back in place.

      “There’s other stuff.” He shoved through the rack of slinky, slithery, see-through, mini, micro, strapless stuff that Gigi had looked natural in. Heidi would look as though she’d dressed as a hooker for Halloween. She was the gingham and rickrack type.

      “Shoes, too,” he said, looking down at the floor covered with feather scarves, running shoes and colorful high heels. Definitely Gigi. “This stuff belonged to a friend of mine. Any girl junk she left in the bathroom is yours, too.”

      “Thanks, but—”

      “If you want cash for fresh stuff, I can give you some.”

      “Thanks, anyway. I’ll make do.”

      He was probably lucky she’d turned him down. He had little to spare since he’d broken his dad’s number two rule: keep plenty between you and the wolves. That came right after look out for the ones you love. Which his dad had done in spades. All the way through his death. Then Jackson had flushed it right down the rat hole of his dream.

      He got that tight knot in his chest, as if someone was punching his ribs from the inside out, but he ignored it, turning to watch Heidi prowl the room. She’d zeroed in on his breast alarm clock, a gag gift from the girls at Moons for his birthday. One nipple set the alarm. The other turned it off.

      “That’s a joke,” he said, feeling like a kid whose mother had spotted a Playboy in his bathroom.

      “So, you’re a breast man?” The question was direct, as if she’d asked what position he played in football.

      “Pretty much.” Yeah, he liked breasts—the way they jiggled when women walked fast in heels, how they felt like flesh pillows in his hands when a woman hung over him in sex, the way the nipples knotted when he touched them. Breasts were miracles.

      She crossed her arms tight and spun away from him.

      Shit. She thought he didn’t like hers. Hold on, they’re fine. And nice nipples, by the way. Breasts didn’t have to be big to be great. Too late to fix her reaction, though.

      She bent over, looking so good that he looked away to be polite, and picked up the framed photo of his dad and the band in 1971, before they went to New York without him.

      “This has to be a relative.” She tapped his dad’s picture and turned the time-bleached photo to him, her gaze digging at him. “Your father maybe?”

      “Yeah. He played trumpet with Tito Real—the guy beside him. Tito was percussion.” In fact, the poster at her feet was the band after they’d made it big. Wish you were here, man, Tito had signed it. He’d still wanted Jackson’s father to join them. Jackson’s mother had been pregnant with Jackson when opportunity