Jagged (Colorado Mountain #5)(19)

“We good?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Zara—”

I leaned in. “Please, listen to me.”

Ham held my eyes. “I’m listenin’.”

“I can’t let you do that. Even if we were together, I couldn’t let you do that. I’ve made my own way since I was eighteen.”

“Darlin’—”

“Please. Listen,” I urged.

Ham shut his mouth.

“We have to work something out. I know what it costs to rent there because I checked it out when I was moving. It was totally out of my range and I wasn’t even looking at two bedrooms with three balconies. I suspect half of your rent is more than my rent on the studio so, it sucks, but I can’t hack that. But I have to do something and you have to let me, Ham. I’m moving right back out if you don’t. Maybelline said I could stay with her and her husband if—”

He cut me off. “Half utilities, a hundred dollars the first month, a hundred fifty the second, two hundred the third, we stick with that for the next three and see where you’re at.”

I took a deep breath and felt the tension ease from my shoulders.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“So we got a deal?” he asked.

I nodded.

His intelligent eyes moved over my face.

“Easy,” he murmured.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nothin’.”

“No, Ham, what?”

He again studied me and then he bent into his forearms in the bar and my stomach muscles contracted at the blow delivered from that memory.

Before we were together, and especially when we were, I couldn’t count the times when I stood outside the bar, Ham stood behind it, leaned into his forearms, leaned into me, while we flirted, chatted, talked deep, teased, joked, whatever.

I missed that, too.

Huge.

And my working there, Ham leaning into me now, I was getting it back.

Just not the way I wanted it.

Oh yes, this was going to be a struggle.

“Hesitate to say this, darlin’”—Ham took my mind from my thoughts—“but we had what we had and the deep part of that where we shared, I want us to get back to, so here it is. I think you got in that shit I spewed at you that, for the most part, I’m not a big fan of women. I’m a man, so basic needs, I’ve had my share, didn’t hide that from you but only two of those women I had were easy. Until that night we had our thing, one of ’em was you. You were goin’ through shit so I get it. But I want you to know, I’m glad you’re back to easy. It’s how I always thought of you and, when I didn’t have you, it was what I remembered of you.” He grinned. “That and your smile, how soft your hair was, and how good you were with your mouth.”

I hid the shiver his words caused and warned, “I’m not out of the woods, Ham. You’re helpin’ a lot but I have a loose hold on easy.”

“We’ll get you there,” he promised.

“Thank you for being cool,” I replied and smiled. “That’s what I remembered of you. You bein’ hot and cool.”

His hand came up and reached out. I braced, hoped, but feared that it would drop away.

It didn’t.

Ham did what he used to do. He tucked my hair behind my ear, his fingertips running the full length of the shell to the lobe, then dropped to my neck. He ran them down the skin there and they fell away.

Depending where we were back in the day, his fingers didn’t stop at my neck.

But I’d take that. As desperate and wrong as it was, it felt good. It made my scalp tingle, my eyelids feel heavy, my skin heat, and I missed that from Ham, too.

And when I could lift my eyelids again and focus on Ham, the look on his face, his eyes aimed at the spot where his fingers last touched, made my breath catch because he looked like he missed it, too.

“Just makin’ you safe? Yeah, right,” Arlene broke the moment by grumbling as she hefted her ass up on the stool beside me. “Coors, now, player,” she ordered, her eyes sharp on Ham.

“Player?” he asked, his eyes on Arlene, and then they moved to me.

Arlene turned to me. “Isn’t that what they call a Lothario these days?”

“Ham’s not a player or a Lothario, Arlene,” I told her firmly.

Arlene ignored me and looked at a displeased-looking Ham.

She also ignored that Ham looked displeased.

“Know her, don’t know you ’cept what I knew of you years ago when you were right where you are now. Like her and have for years. Don’t know if I like you yet. Also want her to get on her feet, and she don’t need no man playin’ with her heart while she’s doin’ it. So, just sayin’, this thing you two got goin’”—she put her fist toward her face, extended her index and middle fingers, pointed to her eyes then to Ham then back again—“I’m watchin’ you.”

Terrific. Now Maybelle, Wanda, and Arlene were all going to be up in Ham’s face.

Instead of getting pissed, the Ham I’d always known came out and his lips twitched.

“You wanna watch me get you a beer?” he asked.

“Yeah. And incidentally, that’ll go a long way to making me like you,” Arlene answered.