Читать книгу Always and Forever - Farrah Rochon - Страница 13

Chapter 4

Phil pulled into her driveway and hopped out of her truck, making a beeline for her workshop. She needed a solid hour of mind-numbing work before she could even think about doing anything else. She wanted to hit something with her mallet. Hard. But she’d passed the pounding stage on all of the projects she currently had in the works.

The blowtorch would have to do.

Phil headed for the back of the shop. She lowered the safety shield over her face and ignited the blowtorch. Moments later, she was lost in the piece she had been working on for the past few months.

With painstaking precision she carved intricate loops and curlicues through the metal she’d found at a scrapyard, creating a lace effect. Immediately, the lace curtains that once hung in her mother’s painting room popped into her mind, and her hand slipped.

“Dammit,” Phil cursed. She released the trigger on the blowtorch and surveyed the damage her slip had caused to the metal. Nothing too noticeable, thank goodness.

“Phylicia?”

Phil nearly fell off the stool at the unexpected summons. She whipped around, the blowtorch still in her hand.

Jamal took two giant steps back, his hands raised in surrender. “Careful with that.”

Phil lifted the safety shield from her face but didn’t put down the blowtorch. “How did you get in here?”

“The door wasn’t locked.”

Of course it wasn’t. She lived in Gauthier. She never locked the door to her shop while she was working. She’d have to rethink that. This was the second time he had crept up on her.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to know what happened back at the house,” he said. “Why did you run off?”

Phil’s entire being sagged in defeat. It was no use withholding the truth from him. He would eventually find out. With the way gossip traveled in this small town, she was surprised no one had revealed Belle Maison’s previous owner to him already.

“It’s my house,” Phil said. His confused expression would have been comical if there was anything even remotely funny about any of this. “The Victorian that you have all these fancy plans for? It’s my family’s home. It’s where I grew up.”

“But the bank said they owned—”

“Yes, the bank owned it,” she cut him off. “It’s a very long story that I’m not about to get into, especially with you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Especially with me? When did I become the bad guy, Phylicia?”

“When you bought my family’s home and decided to make it into a bed-and-breakfast.” Phil raised her palm, stanching his protest. “This isn’t your fault, and I know you don’t deserve any of the disgust I feel toward you.”

He flinched at her harsh word choice, and Phil felt even worse.

“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for,” she said. Phil shook her head. “I just can’t do this, Jamal. What you’re doing? Opening this B&B? It’s a great thing for Gauthier. It’s going to be a huge draw for tourists, and I know the businesses on Main Street are going to benefit from it. But that’s my house,” she said, pointing east toward Belle Maison. “It’s hard to see it being destroyed.”

“I’m not going to destroy the house. How many times do I have to say that?”

“When it comes to this sort of thing, it seems we have different definitions of what it means to destroy. And you are planning to destroy a part of the house.”

“Just that one room,” he said.

“It’s the most important room in the house!” Phil yelled.

She covered her face with her hands and pulled in a deep breath. As the tears collected in her throat, Phil mentally cursed each and every one of them. But it was too hard to maintain a stoic facade. She was never one for wearing her heart on her sleeve, but when it came to her mother, she couldn’t hold back.

Phil bit her lower lip to help curb the wavering. She wiped at the tears that traveled down her cheeks.

“Twenty years ago, my father built that room for my mother. It’s where she painted. She needed a place with plenty of natural sunlight, and there wasn’t a room on the east side of the house that was suitable. She would spend hours in that room. Her painting meant everything to her.”

Phil sucked in a deep breath. “I’ve lost so much of her already. Hearing that you planned to tear down her room... It was just too much.”

She couldn’t interpret the expression on Jamal’s face. He just stood there, staring at her, and her discomfort grew with every nanosecond that passed.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I had no idea. About any of it. The bank never told me anything about the previous owner. Shit, Corey didn’t even say anything.”

“I was surprised neither Corey nor Mya told you it was my family home. But neither of them knows how Belle Maison ended up on the market. Mya believes I put it up for sale intentionally.” She looked up at him. “I never would have let the property go if I’d had a choice. I love that house. It’s been in my family for generations.”

His mouth dipped in a frown. “Phylicia, I’m really sorry that you had to sell your family’s home, but I’ve invested too much into this project not to see it through.”

“Oh, God, I’m not asking you not to go forth with the B&B. I’m a businesswoman, Jamal. I understand how these things work. You bought the house. It’s yours. I just can’t be a part of the restoration process. I thought I could, but to stand there and watch my mother’s room being torn to the ground?” Phil shook her head. “I just can’t do it.”

Several moments passed before Jamal asked in a gentle voice, “What if I don’t touch that room?”

Phil’s eyes shot to his. She didn’t want to believe the sincerity she saw there. “You would do that?”

He took a step toward her. “The room isn’t hurting anybody,” he said.

His deep brown eyes searched her face. When he reached toward her, Phil stiffened, but he only captured the safety shield and pulled it off her head.

“Besides,” he continued, “as you pointed out, I’m making a lot of other changes, so my authenticity argument doesn’t carry much weight. And the house holds sentimental value for you.”

“For me, not you.”

“It’s clear how much it would hurt if the room was destroyed. I don’t want to be the one who hurts you, Phylicia.” He reached forward and lifted her ponytail from where it draped along her neck. “I think someone did that already.”

She gazed at him, feeling as if she’d been drawn into a trance by his hushed voice. “Why do you always call me Phylicia?”

The edge of his mouth quirked in a smile. “Because it’s your name.”

“Everyone else calls me Phil.”

“That’s a man’s name. And despite that blowtorch you were wielding a few minutes ago, there’s no denying that you are all woman, Phylicia.”

As he dipped his head toward her, a tiny voice told Phil to move out of his reach. But a much louder voice told her to stay right where she was. It had been way too long since she’d been kissed, and after the day she’d had, Phil couldn’t think of a single thing she needed more.

The moment Jamal’s soft lips touched hers her heart melted. He was gentle in his coaxing, but insistent, his lips enticing her to join in. He cupped the back of her head and slanted his to the side to get a better angle.

Phil heard a moan but couldn’t tell which one of them had made the sound. Without fully recognizing what she was doing, she linked her hands behind Jamal’s neck and cradled the back of his head. She parted her lips and thrust her tongue inside his mouth, losing herself in the kiss.

An animalistic growl rose from his throat. Jamal held her in place as his tongue plunged into her mouth. He tasted like cinnamon, spicy and sweet, and as his tongue made itself at home in her mouth, Phil allowed herself to enjoy it. He knew just what to do, applying just the right amount of pressure before pulling slightly away, making her reach for him.

After she had enough fodder to fill her nightly fantasies for a while, Phil ended the kiss, leaving Jamal with a dazed expression, his eyes heavy with desire.

She took several steps back. “Did you offer to leave the room untouched just so you could get away with kissing me?” Phil asked, trying to add some levity to the sexually charged tension suffusing the room.

“No,” he said, a hint of humor tingeing his voice. “I promised not to touch the room because it’s the right thing to do, but I would have kissed you anyway,” he said. “I’ve been dying to kiss you since Mya and Corey’s wedding. And that was before I saw you holding a blowtorch. That just pushed me over the edge.”

Phil rolled her eyes. Despite the fireworks his kiss had set off within her, she needed to reiterate her previous assertion. “I meant what I said, Jamal. If we’re going to work together, you can’t do that again.”

“What? Kiss you?”

She nodded.

He blew out a ragged breath. “Are you really going to make me choose between kissing you and having you work on the house? That’s not fair.”

“Wait a minute. Didn’t we already have this conversation?” Phil asked. “There is no choice. The whole you-and-me thing isn’t going to happen.”

“Come on, Phylicia. You know we’d be good together.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” she returned.

A simple, sexy brow quirked. “Need me to show you again?”

Phil’s insides quaked with instant want. God, this man was dangerous to her undersexed body.

She picked up the blowtorch. “Stay back. I mean it.”

Jamal’s head pitched back with a crack of laughter. “You definitely have a dangerous side to you, Phylicia Phillips.” He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, “You should know that I like that in a woman.” He winked at her, then turned and headed for the door. “I’ll see you at Belle Maison tomorrow morning,” Jamal called over his shoulder.

She watched him walk out of her workshop, and a part of her wanted to follow him. How was she going to survive the next couple of months working alongside that man? Especially now that she knew how he tasted.

As she tapped the igniter on the burner head and connected the blue flame with the metal, Phil muttered, “Boy, you just love heaping trouble on your head, don’t you?”