An electric buzz filled the air, followed by more giggles from the boys.
Grace didn’t know how to respond to his voice. She was first shocked, then angry, then confused, then angry again.
“I’m going to find a way to help—both you and Carolyn.”
Josh’s last words filled Grace’s head.
She pushed her feet forward and gripped the doorframe as she turned into the room, but the sight on the floor in front of her tangled her mind.
Josh knelt on the floor between the twins. He was shirtless, wearing only jeans, lightweight suede work boots, and a leather tool belt. And Grace instantly understood Jasmine’s Trojan Ultra Ribbed metaphor. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen his body. Over the years, she’d seen him in swim trunks dozens of times.
But…this was like seeing him again for the first time, all bronze and beefy, the thick muscles of his shoulders and biceps curved and cut. The scars on his right shoulder had healed well, but left thick, discolored welts on his skin. Somehow, it only made him more authentic, more masculine, more…delicious.
“Dillon, Dalton.” A strong male voice called from the back door. “Let’s go.”
The boys ignored their father, enamored with Josh’s drill.
“Sounds like Dad’s here.” Josh put the drill down.
“Noooo,” Dalton whined, the twin with hair a shade lighter than the other.
“Again,” Dillon chirped, leaning into Josh, half in his lap, hanging on one broad shoulder. “Do it again.”
“Little man,” Josh said, “I am not gonna get my heinie whooped by your daddy today.”
He wrapped an arm around each boy’s waist and whipped them up and over his shoulders, one on each side. The boys squealed and giggled, and Josh’s smile could have powered the club for a week. But what Grace saw was a wide chest, six-pack abs, and jeans pulled so low by the heavy tool belt that the hollows at his hip bones pointed to what Grace’s body craved most.
Jasmine appeared at Grace’s side, laughing. “They’re going to want to come here after school every day.”
“Excuse me, ladies.” Josh carried the wiggling bundles of happiness through the doorway, his muscles flexing, then passed through the short hallway toward the rear door where Rocco waited.
Both Grace and Jasmine turned to watch him go. The muscles in his back played in the shadow of the hallway, rippling beneath his tattoo—the skeleton of a frog overlaying a waving American flag, with the word Frogman curved into the design. His ass and thighs filling out his jeans deliciously. Two little boys gigging on his shoulders.
Grace’s mind was in the clouds, the only clear thought: I want that. All that.
“If your panties haven’t melted by now,” Jasmine murmured, drawing Grace’s mind from the haze, “I might start thinking your sexual preferences have changed.”
The comment directed Grace’s attention between her legs, where she was hot, tingling, full, aching, and…wet.
“It doesn’t matter what’s melting,” she said, keeping her voice low. “There’s way too much bad history between us. And he’s way too much like my ex-husband. It’s no wonder they were best friends. Isaac always wanted to run things, the same way Josh is trying to run them now. When Isaac came home from overseas, he always expected to get back that sweet twenty-two-year-old kid he’d married. Josh doesn’t like me working here. He still treats me like I’m fragile doll.” She shook her head and crossed her arms. “No, I’m not letting my feelings for a man dictate my life ever again. I’m sure as shit not twenty-two anymore.”
“Honey, if you don’t want to be treated like a kid, act like an adult,” Jasmine said in that sassy way of hers, drawing a frown from Grace. “Adults go after what they want, and successful adults do it even when what they want scares them.”
Josh’s words from the night before pushed into her head. “Damn right you scare me. You’re the only thing that’s ever scared me, Grace.”
She shook her head against the emotional pull the words created. “He’s a runner. As soon as his conscience is soothed, he’s going to make skid marks out of town.”
One of Jasmine’s dark eyebrows shot up. “How is that a problem? Girl, you don’t have time for the love of your life. Between this job, your cheer jobs, and your mom, you exhaust me—and I parent twin four-year-old maniacs. What you have time for is one smokin’ hot guy to hit you up but good a few times and then get the hell out of your way.”
Grace had never been a hit-and-run kind of girl. But Jasmine was right about one thing—she didn’t have any room in her life for the complications of a reciprocal relationship.
Jasmine crossed her arms and leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb. “Go after what you want—on your terms. Go after him the same way you’re going after this studio. You can be diligently single-minded, girl. Just shift your focus from business to pleasure.”
Grace glanced down the hall, where Josh was talking with the twins’ father while the boys played at their feet.
A fling? With Josh? That was ridiculous. A disaster waiting to happen. “This has been one hell of a long day already.” She returned her gaze to Jasmine. “Would you mind telling the girls I’ll be right out?”
Josh turned and started back down the hall, grin happy, stride confident.