The Naked Fisherman by Jewel E. Ann

Chapter Three

It tookus forty-five minutes to get to her place. I’d never been to Colorado. Never seen the Rockies. I couldn’t stop gawking at them in the distance. How had we lived in Nebraska for nearly fifteen years and never headed west? We’d made a million trips straight south to Texas and a few trips out east to visit my mom’s parents. But never west.

“Home sweet home. I know it’s not as nice as your grandparents’ home in Houston, but I want you to feel like it’s yours. We can decorate your room. Paint. Whatever you want. Fisher said as long as we don’t tear down walls, the sky’s the limit.”

“Fisher?” I asked while climbing out of her Subaru Outback.

“Fisher Mann. My landlord.”

“Interesting name.” I chuckled while my mom retrieved my suitcase from the back of her car.

“It is.” She grinned, nodding toward a cobblestone path that wound around to the side of the sprawling ranch home with an unobstructed view of the mountains.

“There’s a door to the house through the screened-in porch, but I usually go in through here because there’s a locker area to put coats, shoes, purses, etcetera.”

She unlocked the door, and I followed her into the basement. It was nice—way nicer than I expected, not basement feeling at all. A wall of west-facing windows gave it depth, not that it needed any illusion. The vast family room held a mammoth sectional, big screen TV, and a pool table.

“You’ve bought a lot of stuff.”

“Pfft …” She shook her head. “No. The family room came furnished. I purchased beds for the two bedrooms and bedding. Towels. Kitchen stuff. And by me, I mean my parents loaned me the money.”

“I see.” My other grandparents. I saw them three times while my mom was incarcerated. My father wasn’t exactly accommodating.

“Let’s see if Fisher is upstairs. I want you to meet him; then we can grab food and spend the rest of the evening catching up.”

Catching up … I found that odd. The catching up would be very one-sided. There was no way she had that much to catch me up on in regard to her life.

I followed her up the split staircase. She knocked on the door and waited a full two seconds before unlocking it and opening it. It was odd that there weren’t locks on both sides like connected hotel rooms. As I followed her into a spacious kitchen with high ceilings, I glanced back and noticed there was a lock on his side. He just hadn’t locked it.

“Fisher?” she called and waited a few seconds. “I’ll check the garage. Sometimes he’s working on a project or spit-shining his motorcycle.”

I nodded, feeling nerves tighten in my stomach. Why? I wasn’t sure, but two seconds later I quickly figured it out.

“Hey.”

I turned toward the deep, male voice.

“Oh my gosh!” I made another quick turn, completing a full three-sixty in total. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? Did you break in? Or are you Rory’s daughter?”

I cleared my throat. “That … um … yeah … Rory’s daughter.”

“Ah, Reese Capshaw. It’s nice to finally meet you. Rory talks about you nonstop.”

I nodded a half dozen times, refusing to turn back toward him and his nearly naked body. My initial glance caught lots of chest and water dripping down said chest and a loosely tied navy-blue towel hanging low on his waist. Oh … yeah … his hair was messy, wet, and light brown or maybe dark blond.

“Where’s your mom?” He brushed past me. Like … physically brushed past me. His wet arm bumped mine. And he didn’t say “excuse me.” Instead, he turned a few degrees just before reaching for the garage door handle. He eyed me from head to toe, a smirk reshaping his mouth into something I didn’t trust. “You look just like your mom. Lucky girl.”

In that moment, I knew Fisher Mann was bad news.

“There you are!” Mom started to open the door at the same moment Fisher turned the handle and pulled inward.

Was it the right time to tell my mom she couldn’t go to Los Angeles because her landlord looked at me like his next meal? But more than that … I couldn’t believe she had no response to his nearly naked body on full display in front of her daughter.

“Sorry. I was in the shower,” Fisher said while he gave his towel a slight adjustment in the wrong direction! He lowered it an inch.

Heat gathered in my cheeks. I had only seen men like him on television or with my friends when no one’s parents were home. It felt forbidden then, and it didn’t feel any less forbidden with my mom standing between us.

“So you met Reese. Isn’t she beautiful? Even more stunning than her pictures. Don’t you think?”

Dear God, please make this stop.Make HIM stop.

Stop being so … everything.

My mom, too busy giving me her most adoring expression, looked on the verge of crying again, while Sin—with his disheveled hair, overexposed flesh, and hard muscles—wet his lips and nodded. “She’s perfect, Rory. Almost angelic.”

What was that supposed to mean? I contemplated his wording. Did he know I went to a Christian academy? Was he making a jab at my religion? My faith? My youth? My level of experience? Maybe it wasn’t a biblical reference to an actual angel. What if he thought I was truly beautiful?

I quickly shook my head to derail that train of thought. Of course, I didn’t want Fisher to find me attractive to any degree. He was older than me by more than a few years. He didn’t look like a man of faith. Yes, I realized that was another judgment, but my mind did its own thing. Was he with my mom … as in with her in the biblical sense?

“I told Reese you might have a job for her.” She glanced back at the naked fisherman.

Ugh!Why did that have to go through my head? I would forever imagine him naked with a fishing pole in his hand … maybe naked except for a pair of those fly-fishing boots reaching his mid-thigh region.

Stop!

“Sure. I can keep her busy with lots of odds and ends. Some days you could work in the office with my secretary, Hailey. Other days you might come with me to job sites. Drop off lunches. Grab supplies.”

There was a long silence.

“Reese?” my mom said.

“Huh?” I hummed, slightly incoherently.

Fisher bent to the side like he was lowering his body to fit into the view of a camera lens. But there was no camera, just my gaze affixed to his abs and the teasing of dark hair peeking out from the top of his towel. The coveted happy trail. No not coveted. At least, not by me. Nope.

“Hello?” Fisher said, and that was when I realized he’d caught me gawking at him, just inches from his … uh … lower pelvic area.

I needed the fire department to extinguish the embarrassment from my face. “S-sorry …” I jerked my gaze away from him and folded my arms over my chest, staring down at my feet as I rocked back and forth on the balls of them several times. “A job. Yes. That would be great. Thanks.”

“Everything okay?” my mom asked.

“Yeah. It’s just been a long day of traveling. That’s all.” I shifted my focus to things around the kitchen. He kept it rather clean, unsure of what I expected from a guy who worked in construction. And he liked bananas and apples. He must have had two dozen bananas and an equal number of apples in a glass bowl by his toaster. Apples … the fruit of temptation. How appropriate.

“We’ll let you get dressed before your towel falls off, and you show Reese more than she wants to see. I haven’t had the sex talk with her yet.”

Let. Me. Die!

She really said that. To him! Prison had done things to my mom. I couldn’t remember her being so forward, so blunt, so embarrassing.

“Oh my gosh …” I covered my face with my hands. “Thanks for embarrassing me. I’m an adult now, ya know?”

I was an adult covering her flushed face. I was an adult who hadn’t had sex because I wasn’t married. I was an adult who fit in with my grandparents, my church family, and my friends from the Christian academy. Apparently, I wasn’t an adult in my mom’s eyes, and something told me I wasn’t an adult in Fisher’s eyes. Or maybe I was. That was the most terrifying thought at that moment.