Page 4 of Maverick
They both fell backward. At the last second, the man, another Strong, no doubt, rolled over so that he took the impact of her falling atop him. She couldn’t move for several seconds, and when she realized how intimate they were laying, she started to scramble off him when he stopped her.
“Please. Please don’t move.” She stopped moving when he put his hands on her waist. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, thanks to you. What happened? Is there anything that I can do?” The man shook his head and told her that he just needed to catch his breath. One of the others came to where they were lying and asked if Maverick was all right. “I’m Grace McKenna. Not some stranger that just happened to be nosing around. Jade, your sister-in-law, invited me to help out. It looks like I’m no better at that than I am at a lot of things. I’m sorry.”
“You just knocked the wind out of me. If you’d like to get up now, I don’t think that it’ll hurt as much.” She was helped off him by Jenson. She didn’t know the other man either, the one that was standing next to Lisa but she felt the tears falling down as she turned away from them all. “Don’t leave. Please. I’m all right. See?”
When he stood up and did a dance, she burst into laughter. It was unexpected from her, but she needed to. When he promised her that he was just fine, she nodded, moving more away from them all to start picking up the boxes, and there were a great many of them to return to the house. Picking up one closest to her, she turned and saw Maverick standing a couple of feet from her.
“I’m Maverick Strong, as you have guessed.” She told him her name again and tried to get around him. “I’d like to tell you officially that I’m sorry for knocking you down. I was excited and came out of the house without a single thought in my head other than I own a house now. It’s a great house, too. I have to have some of it worked on, but I’m excited to have it.”
Almost as if he had summoned them to come at that moment, two construction vans pulled up as well as a cleaning service. They asked him where he wanted them to start, and he told the cleaning team, there were six of them, to go to the master bedroom and bath so that he could stay there tonight. The construction crew he told to hit the kitchen.
While he told her he’d be back, she started filling her hands with boxes. The ones that she had picked up seemed to go to the kitchen area. Taking them in there, she marveled once again at the house and the kitchen. While it was beautiful, even under all the dust and cobwebs, she knew that it needed a complete overhaul, too. It must have dated back to the early nineteen hundreds if she had to guess.
“Are we to save anything?” When one of the guys on the team asked her she said she didn’t own the house. But that she’d find Mr. Strong for him. “I spoke to Maverick just a bit ago, and he said to ask you what you’d do. So, are we to keep anything before we start pulling out walls?”
“I don’t know why he’d—” She could tell that the man didn’t give a shit for her excuses. “Give me a moment to look around. I just came in here.”
Gracie loved the old charm of the kitchen and thought that it would blend in well if it were modernized enough to bring it to this century. While she told the man what he was to keep, most of the room, he put stickers on it so that he’d know to tell his crew. She was so happy for the large butcher block that sat nearest to the sink and had him pulling the heavy thing out with the help of some of his men.
Going outside, she was told to put the other kitchen items in the mud room. That, too, would have to come down, she said, and he was happy to oblige her in putting up some of the shelving that was in the dining room. Even there, she could tell that work needed to be done. However, that room would only need a good floor sanding as well as larger windows, things that could be done when the kitchen was finished.
When Maverick came out to find her again, she asked him why he’d want her to pick out the things in the kitchen. Apologizing again, he said that he’d told the men to get in touch with his mom. That explained a great deal. It also occurred to her that those men had thought her old enough to be his mother, and that had her embarrassed again.
“However, after looking around with my mom, she said that you did a perfect job of keeping what she would have. So thank you for that.” She told him that she loved the house and thought that whatever he’d paid for it, he would have his forever home. “I hope so. Would you have dinner with me tonight?”
She stared at him. Then he went on to explain that he was supposed to have dinner with his family tonight, he asked her if she’d go with him. Gracie didn’t know what to think and asked him if he was asking her out on a date.
“You see, I’m not sure what...what I mean to say is that I’m going to be there too. Not as your date, though I don’t know why you’d want to date me, but I’ll be there too.” She felt stupid and shoved the boxes she had in her hands toward him. “These are for the kitchen, and I’m…we’re putting them in the dining room. It only needs larger windows and the floor taken…I’m going to shut up now.”
He laughed. It was a hardy laugh, too. Also from the look on his face, he had been as surprised as she was by it. When he turned on his heel, after she picked up boxes for an office, she went into the house with him, asking him where, if he even had one in mind that he was going to use as an office.
After putting the boxes in the kitchen, he had her follow him to another part of the house. She loved the old flooring that was in the long hallway and the beautiful woodwork along the walls too. When she was in what she could see as an office, there was already a desk and a couple of chairs. He took the boxes from her and pulled her into his arms, and kissed her.
~*~
Maverick had no idea what possessed him to kiss Grace. But almost as soon as his lips touched her, he knew that it was the right decision. Wrapping his arms around her, pulling her body to his, he ran his hand up and down her back and felt her arms go up and around his neck. When she yanked his head from hers, he stared at her.
Her lips were slightly bruised. And when she licked them, he groaned at the sight. Her tongue, a pretty pink, was there for him to taste, too, and he did. Well, he wanted to. She held his hair while he licked his own lips.
“What are you doing?” He thought that it was obvious but told her anyway that he was kissing her. “Why? I mean, do you have any idea…well, of course you don’t. You just take what you want, don’t you?”
“No. I would have waited for an invitation to kiss you, but I don’t think that you would have given me one. I was hoping…no, that’s not right. I was going to beg you for more, but right now, you have a tight grip on my hair that tells me you’re not happy with being kissed. Is it me? Or do you have someone else in your life?” She told him that it was all him. “I see. Was I too pushy, you think?”
“Do I think you were too pushy? Yes. You were. Why would you kiss a total stranger without knowing a bit about her?” He said he had only ever done that the one time with her. “In the event you might not understand this, I’m…it’s not something that you should be going around and doing all the time.”
“It was just that you have such a kissable mouth that I couldn’t resist.” She growled at him, and he nearly laughed again. “Sorry, but I think that’s about the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard from a woman.”
“You’re a sadist then.” He said not that he was aware of but did like her. “You’ve only just met me. For all you know, I could be a serial killer or something along that…you really liked kissing me?”
“I very much so liked it. Can I do it again? I promise that I’ll try very hard not to take any more than you offer me.” She asked him what that meant. “I don’t know, actually. You did kiss me back right up until you didn’t. I’d really like to taste the inside of your mouth. Taste your skin, too. However, there are a great many people around here and I don’t think we’d get as far with them wanting to come and bother me. Will you be offended very much if I were to ask you if you’d go out with me again?”
He heard someone calling his name. While he knew that his family was only trying to help him out, he wanted them all to go home so that he could get to know Grace better in the between-the-sheets sort of way. He had no idea why, but it just seemed right for him. And her.
When his dad found him, he cleared his throat several times when he saw him and Gracie together. When she jerked on his hair again and pulled away, he wanted to snarl at his father and go after her. It was insane to him how much he wanted Gracie all to himself.
“Son there are a couple of people out front that are asking questions about what kind of things you want done to the roof. And I’m not sure if it’s them or not, but I think that the family is here too. The ones that the banker was telling you about.” He told his dad that he was coming. “All right.”