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chapter twelve

Graham

“ I was… talking to Xander.”

Owen snorted, pulling empty beer bottles from the trash can. Jillian, in all her sloppy drunkenness, hadn’t noticed their recycling bin. “All of us but Jillian understood that, I think,” he said, lining the beer bottles up next to their sink.

“You’d better go after her, Graham,” Sarah said, taking the mop back from Abigail. “There’s been a family of skunks out there. She might run into one.”

I gave Xander a helpless, apologetic look, but he just rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Good luck. She’s a handful when she’s drunk.”

And that was that. I told them all goodbye, taking a deep breath as I made my way toward the open front door. Here we go.

I found Jill stumbling through the landscaping at the edge of the Gardners’ lawn, where the yard began to slope. She was struggling to carry her purse, book, and shoe—just one of them. She wasn’t aware she’d dropped the other one on the ground behind her.

I bent over to pick up the shoe, sucking on my bottom lip so I wouldn’t laugh. Jill turned around with a loud “Shhh!” despite the fact I hadn’t made any noise at all. “I think I saw a fox!” She must have thought she was whispering.

I went to her side, squinting toward the dimly lit street. “Was it by any chance black with a white stripe?”

Jill turned to me with a comical look of disgust. “You think I don’t know the difference ‘tween a fox and a skunk? ” she slurred, yanking her other shoe from my hands. God, if only the WWTV viewers could see this side of her. And what was with that Southern accent?

Grinning, I followed her up the hill of my front yard, wondering how I got myself into this predicament. At that very moment, I heard a sound that made my heart drop.

PSSSSHHT .

The goddamn lawn sprinklers kicked on.

Jill shrieked as a high-powered jet of water shot up from the grass at her chest. But instead of running, she froze and covered her face, too drunk to process what was happening.

“Jillian,” I gasped, getting hit with a separate stream of water from behind.

My movements were just about as coordinated as hers, and when I reached for her to nudge her away from the water, I nearly wiped out.

Her waist was the only thing I could hold onto to keep myself upright.

Jill bent over and laughed, letting the book and one of her shoes drop to the ground with a wet thud.

“Oh no…”

She tried to retrieve them both, but between the return of the icy water, all the items she was struggling to carry, and her drunkenness, it was too much to handle—and down she went. Her knees hit the ground first, but she flipped over to her butt, laughing so hard no sound was coming out.

“My God,” I said, struggling to keep my composure myself, especially after I caught sight of the lace on the trim of her white panties.

I forced myself to look away from her thighs, all shiny and slick after sliding down my lawn.

Clenching my jaw, I held out a hand to help her up, bending over to pick her soggy book from the wet grass.

With my help, she sprang up from the grass and tipsily held onto my waist as we dodged another spray of water. “I’m drunk, Graham,” she declared, stumbling toward my front door with me.

“Yeah? I sensed that.” I let go of her when we reached the stoop and pulled out my keys. When we got inside the living room, she dropped her shoes and purse by the front door, just like Caleb with his baseball equipment. I couldn’t help but smirk as I set the security alarm.

Jill pressed both of her hands to her face, groaning into her palms like she wanted to disappear. But it was far too late for that. And that dress was clinging to her in ways I couldn’t help but notice. “Oh God,” she said, her voice muffled by her hands. “That was a humiliating experience.”

I chuckled quietly, still focused on the alarm panel. “I didn’t know Jillian Taylor had the capacity to feel humiliated.”

Jill peeked at me from behind her fingers. “Did you see my panties?” She gasped. “Fuck, did I just ask that out loud?”

I grinned as I turned toward her, running a hand down the stubble on my jaw. “Yes,” I said, stealing the quickest glance at her legs. “And… yes.”

“No you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”

“Okay, I didn’t.

She dropped her hands, leaning on them behind her back against my front door. “What color are they?”

“Definitely not white,” I answered, enjoying the way that made her mouth drop open as I fiddled with my top button.

My fingers paused as I caught sight of a droplet of water sliding down the curve of her breast above the blue gingham fabric.

I took a deep breath, wanting to flirt with her more, but knowing I was dangerously close to crossing a line.

Not just with an employee—a drunk employee.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. Neither of us will remember this come Monday morning, and all will be well. ”

Even as I said it, I knew I was lying.

I turned and headed to the downstairs bathroom, grabbing a clean towel from the cabinet and tossing it to her on my way back.

She caught it with a quiet laugh, dabbing at her arms and hair while I finally unfastened the top button of my shirt, the damp fabric clinging uncomfortably to my skin.

The room was quiet for a moment, with just the sound of her drying off and the hum of the air conditioner.

I took a slow, steadying breath, trying to decide what to do next.

“You probably want some dry clothes,” I said, scratching my earlobe. “I think Olivia’s got some pajamas in her room you could borrow, or…”

It wasn’t a fully formed idea, but my thought was that if I put her in my daughter’s clothes, my sexual thoughts would dissipate completely. Somehow, that made sense. Right?

But Jill, slowly running her hands over her breasts, sighed and said, “I’m not going to fit into your daughter’s pajamas, Graham.”

Oh. “Right,” I said, swallowing. “That’s dumb. I’m dumb. I don’t know why I said that.”

“Don’t you have a shirt I can wear?” she asked, handing me the towel.

“Pants?” I blurted.

Jill furrowed her brows. “I said shirt .”

“But don’t you also need… pants?”

“How drunk are you?” The corners of her mouth lifted in a subtle smile. “I’m just looking for a long, oversized t-shirt. You got one of those?”

Did I? Suddenly, I couldn’t recall any specific item of clothing I owned. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I could find my way to my own bedroom.

“I’ll wait,” Jill said, running her fingers through her damp hair.

Upstairs, I fumbled through my dresser drawers until I found the oversized tie-dye Panama City Beach t-shirt my kids brought back from a vacation with Andrea and Pete two years ago. It was two sizes too big, which I tried not to take as an insult at the time, and I’d only worn it once to sleep in.

Bingo.

Jill was looking at the pictures of Olivia and Caleb on the wall when I returned. I held up the shirt. “Will this work?”

“Perfect.”

I got myself a glass of water in the kitchen while she changed in the bathroom, rubbing my eyes like this whole night might be some alcohol-fueled hallucination.

And then she emerged wearing my t-shirt, walking over to one of the stools at my kitchen island like this was completely normal.

The shirt was almost as long as the dress she’d just been wearing, maybe an inch or two shorter, but the mere fact that Jillian Taylor was standing in my kitchen without pants was almost too much for me to handle.

I took a sip of water, coughing before I asked, “Is that comfortable?”

She slid into the stool across from me and put her dress on the seat beside her, and then she draped one hand over the other on the counter. “It’s great. Thank you.”

I poured her a glass of water, handing it to her without asking if she wanted it. I was going to insist she drink it, anyway, knowing it’s what she needed. Thankfully, she didn’t give me any trouble, gulping down half the glass in just a few seconds.

“Do you want something to eat?”

“Um…” She thought this over, and then her stomach growled so loud we both laughed. “That might be a good idea.”

I rummaged through the cabinets, rattling off some of the kids’ sugar-loaded snack items. “Pop-tarts, chocolate chip cookies, Nutty Buddies—oh look at that, an unopened box of dried fruit strips.” I looked over at Jill. “At least I tried.”

She smiled, tilting her head to get a better look at something in the cabinet. “Are those Cocoa Pebbles? I haven’t had them in ages.”

A minute later, I was pouring both of us a bowl of cereal. I took the empty stool beside her, and the two of us sat there and ate like this was completely normal for us. It was one in the morning, but I was more wired and alert than I had been all day.

I told her why I owned the giant t-shirt—making her laugh when I said they’d redeemed themselves by also bringing back a shark bottle opener for me. “That’s better,” she said, stirring her cereal. “Do you and their mom get along, or is it a we-only-text-about-the-kids situation?”

“Andrea and I get along great. There’s no animosity there. Although, I was a little miffed at her this week for keeping me in the dark about some things. I guess Olivia and her boyfriend have been… getting too close.”

“Oh no.” Jill smiled, swallowing a bite of her chocolatey cereal. “You weren’t ready for that, were you?”

“Fuck. In my mind, she’s still this pigtailed little girl driving around in her Barbie Jeep. But I guess they’ve gotta grow up sometime.”

“Hold on,” Jill said, touching my elbow. “She had a Barbie Jeep? Lucky kid.”

“Her mom’s house couldn’t have all the cool toys,” I explained. “Caleb had a ride-on Lightning McQueen. We turned the driveway into a car wash. Guess who got to be their dutiful car wash operator?”

Jill stared at me with a smile, holding her spoon between her teeth. I took another bite of my cereal, wondering what I’d said to make her grin like that. “That’s so cute.”