Come To My Window (Cumming, Arizona Book 2) Page 2

  “Still—my bad. It won’t happen again.”

  Cooper couldn’t release her wrist…not yet, anyway. “The calling the cops part, or the watching-me-naked-in-my-room part?”

  Her pulse went from a steady thump to a rapid thunder under his fingertips.

  “Maybe you should close the drapes in future,” she said. “So I don’t accidentally get a front row seat to one of your MM shows.” She tugged her wrist from his grip and returned it to her obvious place of security—tucked under her stunning rack.

  Cooper grinned as she slid a step sideways toward her back door.

  “I’m not gay, so any show you’re privy to won’t be with me and another man.”

  Rosie angled her chin. “I wasn’t judging.”

  “Neither was I. But like my brother, I enjoy looking at the stars at night. The view out his window is impressive.”

  And he wasn’t talking about the desert vista bordering the back of the property.

  Rosie blushed again. “Um. Yeah. Think I’ll skip the parkour and hit the treadmill. Night, neighbor.”

  “Goodnight, Rosie.”

  He let her escape then picked his way across her back yard into his own.

  “Sweet dreams,” he added, though she wouldn’t have heard him.

  God knew, he’d be having the sweetest, dirtiest dreams tonight.

  3

  For the first time in ages, Rosie had something to report to her book club girls. It wasn’t quite champagne worthy—bubbles were saved for the special occasion of one of them getting laid. Scratch that. Cracking open the bubbles was reserved for one of them having a Meg-Ryan-worthy orgasm.

  Unfortunately, despite the name of their town, coming didn’t happen as often as any of them would’ve liked.

  Rosie carried out a giant bowl of corn chips and a smaller one of guacamole, as it was her turn to play book club host…and besides, tonight was a guacamole kind of night. Avocados were fruit, and the chips were made from a vegetable, and to hell with anyone who said otherwise. She set the bowl on the coffee table, just a smidgen out of Dana’s reach. Dana, the only one out of the four friends who had a fat, satisfied smile on her face.

  And it wasn’t due to any kind of snack food.

  Rosie plucked out a corn chip and loaded it to the snapping point with dip. “How many this week?”

  “Three? Five? Seven? More?” Kari, a local real estate agent, sipped at her plain old chardonnay and gave Dana the stink-eye over the rim of her glass. “Bless your greedy heart, honey.”

  Christina, who was the newest to their group and a tour guide through some of the town’s supposedly haunted houses, pounced on the corn chips like a woman on the brink of starvation. “God, I’m dying of jealousy here. I need carbs.”

  “Why are you thinking in single digits?” Dana leaned forward, reaching for the corn chips.

  Christina growled and hugged them to her chest. “Hands off.”

  Dana giggled. “Hey! With all the cardio I’ve been doing this week, I’ve earned some carbs, too.”

  “Put us out of our misery,” Rosie said.

  She slumped on the couch between Christina and Dana. She waited until Christina distracted herself with loading up a corn chip and then snatched the bowl.

  “Here.” She shoved it at Dana with a grin. “Now spill. The top three best-of will do.”

  Kari groaned and unfolded herself out of Rosie’s armchair. “I need more wine for this.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  Rosie listened with half an ear as Dana described her sexual escapades with Patrick, Rosie’s boss. Since Dana was still, a cutely-blushing librarian at heart, she offered up the vanilla version. With the other half of her attention, Rosie kept glancing toward the neighbor’s house.

  “Oh. My. Lord!”

  Rosie glanced up to the kitchen doorway, where Kari stood gripping the frame, her eyes flared wide, a salacious smile on her face.

  “I just saw the hottest guy leave your neighbor’s house,” Kari said. “And it wasn’t your neighbor.”

  Rosie’s internal thermostat went on the blink, sending a flurry of superheated blood up toward her face. “That’s Antony’s brother. He’s house-sitting for a few weeks.”

  Kari made a fanning motion in front of her face. “That guy is ripped. And as a little thrill for my week, he was only wearing running shorts.”

  “You’ve seen him around then, Rosie?” Dana asked. “Or have you met this ripped God?”

  Regular, bone-melting sex obviously hadn’t affected Dana’s powers of deduction.

  “Oh, I’ve seen him.” Rosie aimed for casually unaffected as she dunked another corn chip in the guacamole. “Seen him without the shorts. As in, wow, that dude’s packing some heavy-duty hardware.”

  Christina choked, her racking coughs interspersed with giggles. Rosie took pity on her, thumping Christina’s back with one hand while continuing to sip her glass of wine.

  “Who votes we table the discussion on my sex life and move on to Rosie perving on her new neighbor?” Dana asked.

  Three hands shot into the air, Rosie’s friends acting like a bunch of enthusiastic first graders.

  Christina’s coughing fit finally subsided. She wiped her eyes on a tissue from her purse. “You saw him through your rear window a la Hitchcock, Rosie? Or is he from one of those communing-with-nature naturalists groups in Sedona?” A giggle escaped. “’Cause if he is, I vote we have every meeting at your house from here on out.”

  “You didn’t even see him,” Kari said. “How do you know he’s worthy of a group eye-fuck?”

  Dana rolled her eyes. “Uh, because we haven’t heard you get so excited over a man since Ben Ripley bought a place in town last winter?”

  “I’ve moved on from that whole brooding rock-star thing he’s got going on.”

  Kari lowered herself into Rosie’s armchair, stretching out her giraffe-long legs. Best friend or not, Rosie would make a deal with the devil in exchange for Kari’s slender legs and perky boobs.

  Kari’s cheeks hollowed, and she flicked a fingernail against her wine glass. “It’s not as if I’ve got a snowball’s chance with the rhythm guitarist of Untold Tragedy.” She gave a sad, little laugh. “Even though I did get his mom and dad a good deal on their place on Third Street.”

  And…now Rosie could manage a little sympathy for her friend, chased down with a shot of guilt for thinking devil-dealing thoughts.

  “Anyway.” Kari crossed her ankles and pinned Rosie with a demonic little smile. “We were talking about the hot guy next door and what the odds were of another of us seeing him naked.”

  Rosie could understand Kari’s enthusiasm, though, oddly, a little barb of possessiveness hooked into her. Cooper was her hot, naked guy-next-door, and if anyone was going to eye-fuck him…she shook herself, blinking when the other women fell silent.

  “Oh. Are you and the hot neighbor…?” Christina bumped her fists together and raised an eyebrow.

  “No.” Rose wriggled uncomfortably on the couch. “At least, not yet. And his name’s Cooper. He’s only in Cumming for a few weeks but he seems like a nice guy,” she added lamely.

  The girls’ gazes sharpened on her like sugarholics hearing a clue to the location of a hidden candy bar stash.

  “Nice guys don’t go wandering past a window with their junk hanging out,” said Dana. Then she pressed a finger to her lips. “Hmm. Or maybe they do.”

  “He had a reasonable explanation,” Rosie said.

  “This, I gotta hear.” Christina leaned forward. “From the beginning.”

  So, Rosie talked. She omitted the details of Cooper’s insulin injection because it seemed too personal, but she fessed up to calling her brother because it’d be all over Cumming soon enough. She got some laughs and a few “Oh, Rosie,” admonishments from the group when she came to the retelling of trying to escape over the back fence.

  “You know what you have to do now,” Kari said.

  Rosie knocked back the la
st of her wine. “No. What?”

  The demonic little smile was back. “You need to flash him the goods. Tit for tat. Literally.”

  “You so do,” agreed Christina.

  Even Dana nodded, a shit-eating grin on her face. “Fair’s fair, Rosie.”

  Heat sizzled through Rosie, her nipples tingling and perking to attention at the thought of Cooper watching her through his window. Was she seriously considering giving her next-door neighbor a free peep show?

  She held out her wineglass to Kari. “I’m gonna need more wine for this.”

  The girls had left thirty minutes ago, and the house was silent except for the odd, spooky creak. Rosie wasn’t spooked. At least, not from being alone in a creaky house, but her skin under the nearly sheer shirt tingled like crazy.

  Maybe she was crazy, period.

  She hovered in her bedroom doorway, light from the half-dozen strategically placed candles flickering over her bare legs. The drapes on her windows were open. The drapes on Cooper’s window, more importantly, were also open, and the soft glow of a nightstand lamp lit the bedroom. The currently empty bedroom.

  She’d waited in her darkened living room, spying out the window until Cooper, wearing black running shorts and yep, Kari was right, no shirt, appeared moving at a slow run under the streetlights. And BTW? He was still as ripped as her memory—and adult-rated dreams during the past week—supplied. He’d slowed as he reached his brother’s front yard, casting a lazy stare toward her house before disappearing inside.

  That’d been Rosie’s cue to strip, change her mind a dozen times, drink another glass of chardonnay courage, and then stake out her position in front of her bedroom window…and wait.

  “Come on,” she muttered. “Before I lose my nerve.”

  Maybe one more glass of wine…

  Too late. Next door, the bedroom door swung inward, and Cooper walked in. He’d swapped the running shorts for a pair of jeans, and a towel draped over his shoulder, the end of which he rubbed over his short brown hair, leaving it sticking up in damp spikes. Fresh from the shower, yum. Pity he hadn’t misplaced the towels again. He stopped in the center of the room. Rosie knew from the bunching of muscles in his jaw the moment he’d spotted her past the reflection in the glass.

  Rosie’s nipples brushed against her shirt, pebbling to stiff little points that jutted out under the crisp silk. Nipples weren’t the only things sitting up to pay attention. Beneath her panties—the satin and lace pair she’d changed into—her clit grew hot and swollen, and her pussy flood with moisture. Was she really going to do this?

  Man or mouse time, Rosie. YOLO and all that crap.

  Squinching her eyes to narrow slits in an attempt to shield her ego in case he turned away, Rosie gripped the edges of her shirt and sloooowly peeled them apart. The chillier air of the room stiffened her nipples further until they were so engorged, so sensitive that she let go of one shirt edge and cupped her breast with her hand, scissoring the aching tip between her first and middle finger. The tugging sensation sent an arrow of pure lust downward, and she squeezed the somewhat-neglected core muscles her Pilates teacher was always going on about, just to stop her knees from buckling.

  After a delicious moment of squeezing her breast and teasing her nipple until it stood rosy-red and distended, she found her left breast with her other hand and tugged on that nipple until a moan slithered from her throat and curled around her silent bedroom. Her lashes flickered up, and she spotted Cooper standing right beside the window, both palms flattened so hard against the glass it was as if he were trying to suction it out of its frame. They were close enough that Rosie could see the rigid bulge of his cock pressing insistently against his jeans.

  Mission accomplished.

  But because he looked so damn hot and more than a little horny—and her confidence had sky-rocketed in the past few minutes—Rosie strolled over to her window and pushed her breasts against the cool glass. The cold was a shock to the system, and she gasped then shivered, as it reminded her of the time one of her more adventurous lovers had traced an ice cube over her breasts until it had melted, and her lover had licked every trace of moisture off her skin.

  Her gaze flew to his face and the raw heat in his eyes.

  “You’re killing me,” he mouthed.

  Even though she couldn’t hear the words through the glass that separated them, she felt the rough timbre of his voice down to the marrow in her bones. She forced what she hoped was a seductive smile onto her face.

  “Now we’re even,” she said.

  And before she did something foolish, such as shove up the window sash and climb into the cool desert air on her way to bang her neighbor’s brains out, Rosie grabbed the edge of the drapes and yanked them closed.

  4

  Rosie was definitely avoiding him—and doing a terrible fucking job at hiding it.

  Cooper sighed as he cleared his brother’s mailbox of a few envelopes and a printed flyer for a church picnic, and caught site of his super-spy neighbour ducking below the window ledge of what he assumed was her living room. He imagined the sway of her magnificent tits as she crawled across the floor. Suddenly, he wasn’t sighing any longer, but grinning as he strode up the path and unlocked his front door.

  Holy shit, she’d nearly made him come in his boxer shorts like a horny teenager with her performance two nights ago. He’d hoped to catch a glimpse of her since then, but each night when he’d come in from his evening run, the drapes in her bedroom had been closed tight. And he was left feeling like a bear with a thorn in its balls because he was clueless as what to do next.

  Cooper dumped the mail onto the kitchen counter and opened the fridge. Cool air blew over his face while he shut his eyes for a moment. He was sensitive-new-age-guy enough to recognize his confidence had taken a knock since the diabetes diagnoses. But even before then, he hadn’t had Ant’s easy charm, which worked on both sexes, or his buddies’ pick-up lines, which got them laid but got him strained smiles and a polite “no thanks.” He sucked at small talk, which was why he gravitated toward women who didn’t require it—women who wanted to use his body only for pleasure and who weren’t interested in polite chitchat.

  He shot a glance out of the kitchen window, his gaze falling on the stack of palings and rails. Since his temporary neighbor had made it clear there’d be no more peep shows, he might as well get started. He changed into a tank top and basketball shorts—leftover from his University of Arizona days where he’d once played small forward—and headed outside.

  He worked for a solid hour, nailing rails to posts, making use of the physical exertion to keep his brain and eyes occupied and away from Rosie’s windows. Then she went and ruined his efforts by coming out her back door with a trash bag in her hand. She tossed it in the big green bin and wandered over, hand on one curvy hip that was clad in a pair of cut-off jeans. She smelled like watermelon and sugar and who the fuck knew how he managed to catch such a delicious whiff of her when he stood sweating in the afternoon sun.

  Cooper straightened from where he was crouched, arched his spine to work out the kinks, and was rewarded with Rosie’s gaze locking on to his chest as if her hazel eyes were heat-seeking missiles.

  “My brother sucks,” he said, by way of greeting. “He gives up too easily.”

  “Anthony has good intentions,” she said. “Just no stamina—not when it comes to fence building. I think he hoped you’d get around to it, instead.”

  That sounded just like Ant. “Since you haven’t taken over construction, I take it you’re not a do-it-yourself-er. At least, not when it comes to fence building.”

  A pretty pink flush spread over her cheeks.

  “My talents lie elsewhere.” She gave a little head-toss and angled her chin. “But maybe I could help you for a while.”

  Spend some time with his sexy neighbor in the sunshine, which would provide him with a perfect view of her curvy ass and stunning tits? Sounded like heaven to him. “Sure.”

  Thi
rty minutes later, the curvy ass and stunning tits didn’t make up for Rosie sucking even worse than his brother when it came to construction. Some of the distraction wasn’t her fault—such as the near collision of hammer and his thumb because she’d picked that moment to bend down for another handful of flat head nails, cut-off jeans rising to expose the pale mounds of her ass. Some of it was because the woman really didn’t know her cute ass from her elbow when it came to a toolbox.

  After they’d only managed to construct two feet of fence in the past half hour, and one of the palings she’d hammered into place would need to be removed and straightened, Cooper called it quits.

  “Rosie?”

  She glanced up at him, her mouth pouting slightly. He wanted to stride over and kiss that pouty little mouth until she begged for mercy. His fingers closed around the rough, wooden paling instead.

  “Can you take a little constructive criticism?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “If it follows a compliment, then yes.”

  “You look hot in those tiny shorts,” he said. “Fucking flammable. How’s that for a compliment?”

  “Adequate.” Her narrowed eyes softened. “Crass but adequate.”

  “Here’s your constructive criticism—you stink at fence building, and I’ll be here ’til Christmas if you insist on helping.”

  “Are you telling me to leave?” She returned to the hands-on-hips stance, dropping her hammer, which narrowly missed his toes.

  “Asking. Nicely. Before one of us gets hurt.” Or before he couldn’t resist that pouty mouth of hers any longer.

  “What a gentleman,” she said. “Getting me all hot and bothered and then ordering me to leave. I’m going inside to cool off.” Rosie turned and stomped away, disappearing around the side of her house.

  Cooper hunched his shoulders, anticipating the slam of her back door, but it didn’t happen. Instead, an instant later, movement inside her house caught his attention. Through the window in front of him he saw her stride through the doorway into her bedroom, then continue into the ensuite bathroom—leaving the door open. She reached into the clear glass shower cubicle and viciously twisted the mixer. Without glancing over her shoulder to where Cooper had a perfect view, Rosie stripped off her little tank top.