Love On Her Terms

If only attraction always led to happily ever after...

Mina Clements wants to grab life with both hands. With a fixer-upper and a fresh start in Montana, the graphic novelist is ready to do just that. Plus, having handsome handyman Levi Pardo next door could be a bonus... But even though sparks sizzle when Levi helps with her renovations, the widower’s in no hurry to fall in love again. Still, he’s much more than the neighbor who looks good swinging a hammer. He’s a man she wants to trust with her biggest secret—one that can either bring them closer or wreck the new beginning they both need.

Mina couldn’t hear over the beating of her heart and the rush of blood in her ears.

“Are you okay?” Levi said, his forehead creased in confusion over her sudden change of behavior.

“I’m fine.” Her voice sounded breathy and disjointed to her ears, but he only nodded.

Levi’s gaze had become intense with emotion during the time they’d been sitting on the couch. Intent had softened his jaw and, she saw as he set both their bowls on the ice cream table, his shoulders. As he sat back up, the coming kiss dulled the world around them.

He leaned in to her, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

“I’m sure,” she reassured him, her lie failing miserably.

But Levi didn’t seem to notice her failure. Or, if he did, he didn’t care. Every skin cell burned as he trailed his finger along her jawline. The panic beating inside her couldn’t hide the intensity with which she wanted his lips pressed against hers. The fear didn’t stop her from leaning in to him, from meeting him halfway.

Dear Reader,

Love on Her Terms is one of those books that was born from many places yet somehow came together perfectly. There’s no question this book is influenced by the many times I’ve watched the 1966 movie A Man and a Woman (my mom’s favorite). And for years I’d wanted to write about a young woman who moves in next door to a cranky widower. She brings new sparkle to his life, but she has a chronic illness, and my hero’s not sure he can handle it. Of course, the heroine’s illness kept eluding me. Then while ruminating on a different novel where the heroine has HIV, a friend asked on Twitter if there were any heterosexual romances where one character has HIV. I knew then that I had to put the two ideas together! Sometimes—okay, often—authors need a friendly push.

My heroine, Mina, is also a graphic novelist so I can’t resist recommending Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. It’s a wonderful exploration of the art form whether you’ve read comics and graphic novels or are new to the format entirely. Some of his theories made my jaw drop in awe. And seriously, if you do pick up the book and want to talk about it—shoot me an email! And for a real-life love story similar to Love on Her Terms, read Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story by Frederik Peeters. It’s Peeters’s graphic novel memoir about falling in love with an HIV-positive woman, who also has an HIV-positive son. As a librarian and book lover, suggesting books is one of my favorite pastimes, and these are two good ones!

Love on Her Terms was a powerful book for me to write and I hope it’s just as powerful for you to read.

Enjoy,

Jennifer

JENNIFER LOHMANN is a Rocky Mountain girl at heart, having grown up in southern Idaho and Salt Lake City. When she’s not writing or working as a public librarian, she wrangles two cats and a flock of backyard chickens (the dog is better behaved). She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina. She has one published comic strip, which you can find in a collection called The Durham Comics Project.

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To Amy, Kirill and Yuri.

Thanks for all your support over the

past couple years and for bringing comics

and drawing into my life.

Contents

COVER

BACK COVER TEXT

INTRODUCTION

Dear Reader

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEDICATION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

EXTRACT

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

THE SOUND OF a heavy vehicle pulling into the driveway next door broke Levi Pardo’s concentration, forcing him to look up from the newspaper spread out on the kitchen table. A small, ridiculously young-looking woman was hopping out of the driver’s seat of a truck onto the narrow strip of grass between her driveway and his property. She’d parked too close to the lawn, which didn’t surprise him. He was amazed she could see over the dash and touch the pedals at the same time.

He looked back down at the horoscope he’d been reading, some bullshit about expressing what you’re feeling or else suffer the consequences. He didn’t believe in astrology and found the Missoulian’s particularly annoying, but he still read two signs, Taurus and Cancer, every day. Habit, after years of marriage. Even if Kimmie wasn’t around to care.

The woman moving in next door sure had a lot of energy, he thought, taking a sip of lukewarm, slightly oily coffee. He preferred to drink his coffee with flavored creamer, but he’d run out two days ago and hadn’t yet made it to the store. Through his kitchen windows he saw the woman bound to the back of the truck and, with more power than he expected from someone so small, throw the door up and open. When a car drove up and parked along the curb, the woman leaped across the lawn like a pronghorn to greet her new arrivals.

Levi needed another sip of caffeine just to keep up with her. Maybe the process of unloading everything from the back of the truck would slow her down.

He shifted his chair over a couple of inches for a better angle. The house next door had been empty for almost two years and, as far as he knew, was as run-down on the inside as it was on the outside. It had good bones, though.

So did she, he thought, as the woman turned her head and faced his window. Long, dark bangs and a fringe of hair around her chin framed high cheekbones, a sharply pointed chin and a nose that looked like something out of a marble statue in those travel books about Greece that Kimmie used to bring home, back when she was feeling good and planning their adventures. Before he’d seen his neighbor’s face full-on, he would have described her as cute. Short women were cute. Now beautiful was the only appropriate adjective.

Levi shook that thought out of his mind and turned back to his morning paper. He was about as interested in short women as he was in astrology.

* * *

TWO HOURS LATER Levi wiped down the kitchen counter, and, with the drape of a washcloth over the faucet, the second part of his Sunday ritual was done. Paper, first. Clean the house, second. It was midsummer, so he still had outdoor chores to do. He put sunscreen on his face and neck, covered his hair with a ratty Broncos cap, shoved his sunglasses on and went out to his garage for the lawn mower.

His ancient lawn mower, more Frankenstein’s monster than anything resembling the machines currently lining the entrances of home-improvement stores, clanged as he pushed it down the driveway.

Even with his sunglasses and ball cap, he had to squint against the harsh sun.

He was leaning over to start the mower when voices caught his attention.

“I just don’t get why you had to move here, of all places,” an older woman’s voice said, loudly enough that Levi could hear her, even though he couldn’t see anyone when he looked around. He could picture the woman inspecting the neighborhood of old bungalows in varying states of repair with her hands on her hips and a slight sneer on her lips.

Though Levi couldn’t understand what there was in this neighborhood to sneer at.

“Because the University of Montana offered me a job.” A younger woman’s voice this time, probably the bubbling one he’d seen driving the moving truck.

“So did the University of Richmond. If you had accepted their offer, you’d be near home.” The older woman’s voice again. Maybe the woman’s mother. They must have been standing just on the other side of the moving truck.

Levi let go of the lawn mower’s pull cord and folded his arms, giving in to the eavesdropping. He wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to get to know his neighbor, without the burden of going over and introducing himself.

“Which is exactly why I accepted the Montana job,” the woman said, too bright and cheery for someone who was arguing with her mother. “Montana. Just the word conjures up adventure. Moose. Grizzly bears. Cowboys.”

“Referring to grizzly bears as an adventure doesn’t make me feel any more confident about your decision. Grizzly bears kill people,” the older woman said.

“So does sitting, but you didn’t offer to drive the U-Haul while I rode a bicycle alongside,” the younger woman said smartly, while Levi bit back a smile.

“Don’t talk back to your mother,” a man said, a snap to his voice, which softened when he spoke again. “She’s worried about you is all. We both are. If something were to happen, you’ll be so far from home.”

“Franklin married the most organized and efficient woman on earth. If something happens to either of you, she’ll have flowers delivered to your room before you even get to the hospital.” A laugh underpinned the woman’s voice, though her humor had a sharp edge. Hidden, like the lid on a can of chili opened with a rusty can opener—familiar and domestic and safe, until you sliced a finger because you weren’t paying attention.

“You know it’s not us your mother is worried about,” the man said, the sharpness of his voice less concealed than his daughter’s. He sounded as if he’d cut himself on that can of humor before. “If something were to happen to you...”

“This is Montana, Mom, not the jungles of the Amazon. I’ll be fine. Promise. There are good hospitals here. And my health has been good for years.”

Levi shook his head. He shouldn’t be eavesdropping, especially not on conversations involving hospitals. Resolving to return to his decision that he wasn’t interested in short women, he gripped the pull cord and yanked until the ancient motor turned over, drowning out the conversation next door.

* * *

THE PROBLEM, LEVI THOUGHT, as he slipped a Pardo and Saupp Construction T-shirt over his head while looking out the window at the house next door, was that his new neighbor was always outside. It was hard to ignore a woman who seemed to think every beverage should be drunk on her front porch.

This evening, as she had for the past two weeks, she sat in the rocking chair with her feet up on the railing and a coffee cup in hand. The hems of her loose cotton shorts gapped. If he were at a different angle, he could follow the line of her skin down to her panties. She had nice legs. Not overly long, but shapely. He had no interest in women with thin legs.

She set her cup down and stretched her hands over her head. Her shirt lifted, and a little line of skin appeared between the elastic waistband of her plaid shorts and the bottom of her T-shirt. It was the type of movement he imagined her doing first thing in the morning, as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and welcomed the day. Intimate. Personal.

And he was staring out his window at her like a creep.

Levi jerked at the hem of his shirt, as if the movement could do anything to erase the image of his young neighbor with hair mussed by a long day. Not that that particular mental image was so bad, but he also imagined his hand slipping under the back of her shirt, her skin warm and soft on his cool palm and a glimpse of her face as she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him.

He reached up and closed the blinds.

He had to pick up his niece for soccer practice. Since he’d taken over coaching her youth soccer team two years ago, watching those girls tear up the field, fight, celebrate, fail and succeed had become the highlight of his fall. Solstice, his niece, seemed to have grown another three inches over the summer and would be all limbs. Helping her figure out how to manage all the new length in her arms and legs was a challenge he looked forward to.

* * *

THE NEXT FRIDAY, Levi climbed into his truck and looked next door with resignation. If he didn’t want to watch his neighbor move about his life, he had to learn to ignore her better. That and keep his kitchen blinds closed. Actually, all the blinds on this side of the house. Today she had come home from work, disappeared only long enough to change into shorts and grab a glass of what looked like iced tea. Now the ice in her tea was melting as it sat in the sun on her front porch while she was elbow deep in soil, shoving mums into the dirt. When she leaned forward, she stretched like a cat, her back long and her ass high in the air.

God, he definitely had to learn how not to watch her, because he didn’t want to shutter his entire house. He liked the sunlight coming in through the windows, especially the afternoon summer sun. The big, south-facing windows were one of the reasons he’d bought this house.

He shoved the gearshift into Reverse, looked over his shoulder with barely a glance at his neighbor’s ass, backed out of the driveway and sped down the street.

* * *

“YOU’RE LATE,” DENNIS SAID, lifting up his eyebrow and his phone at the same time. Both pointed comments on the time.

“Barely.” Levi slid into the booth and motioned to Mary for a beer. The two of them had been coming to O’Reilly’s and sitting in this booth every Friday night for three years. The first six months, she’d come over to ask what beer he wanted. He’d said “whatever” enough times that she brought over whatever she or Brian, the bar’s owner, felt like bringing to him. Sometimes he drank the entire beer and sometimes only a sip or two.

A little adventure, in his otherwise boring life.

A safer adventure than watching his neighbor.

Dennis coughed, a bad one that collapsed his shoulders in on his ears and shook the table. The kind of cough that would have his sister rushing to her husband to see what was wrong and Dennis struggling to both catch his breath and shake off Brook.

If he and Dennis were being honest with themselves, a surprise beer was probably the only adventure either of them needed, since the mine accident. And Dennis didn’t even seem to need that. He always got the same bottle of Bud Light with a Jameson chaser. Had for years. Since before Missoula. Since before everything.

“You ain’t been late since the day you were born,” Dennis said, his bottle resting against his bottom lip. “And this ain’t a big city, so you can’t blame traffic.”

“I’ve got a new neighbor.”

Levi hadn’t meant the comment by way of explanation, but he could tell by how Dennis lifted his eyebrows that it was the way his brother-in-law took the information. “He park in your driveway?”

“No. My neighbor’s not why I’m late,” he said, though he didn’t have a better explanation for his tardiness, because “No matter how close I am to my new neighbor, I want to take at least one step closer, so it took me a while to drive away” would sound pretty stupid.

“Why’d you mention it, then?”

She was on his mind. “I’m not used to having a neighbor. It’s distracting.”

“So, not a sixty-year-old with a gut. You wouldn’t be distracted by that.”

“Ha!” Levi rubbed his own stomach. It was still flat but, at the age of thirty-seven, he was starting to think more about carrots and less about French fries and beer. “We’ll both be lucky not to be that in twenty years.”

“I’ll be lucky to be that in twenty years.” Dennis took a long pull on his beer, draining the bottle and signaling for another one. It was going to be one of those nights. Levi and the dishwasher would be hefting Dennis into the passenger seat of Levi’s truck, and sometime around noon tomorrow, Dennis would text him for a ride back to get his car because Brook refused. And Brook would be texting him about letting Dennis get that drunk, because not only did she still think it was her job to monitor Levi’s behavior, but she considered it Levi’s job to monitor Dennis’s behavior.

His sister had gotten taller over the years, but inside she was still a bossy twelve-year-old playing Mom while their dad worked in the mines.

But neither Levi nor Dennis would drive home drunk, so that was progress since their reckless younger years. At least they’d learned something.

Proof that stupidity wasn’t guaranteed to kill you young.

“So, you gonna introduce yourself to this distracting neighbor?” Dennis asked, his second bottle of beer already half-gone. At least the whiskey was untouched.

“What for? To get roped into helping her with home renovations?” Levi shrugged. “That house needs a lot of work, and I’m already too busy as it is.”

“So, she’s cute.”

“She’s a child,” he said, yanking his mind away from her legs and her nose and her ass and everything else about her he’d tried not to admire over the past couple of weeks.

“She bought a house, so I’m guessing she’s at least twenty-five. Hmm. Might be more than cute—hot, even.”

Levi shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time. Or interest. I’ve been married already. You should know. You were my best man.”

Dennis shrugged. “Only ’cause no one else would do it.”

A couple of beers between them helped them both laugh at the joke. At the time of Levi’s actual wedding, Dennis—and everyone else—had been dead set against it. Kimmie had been too young, the chorus of noes said. And Dennis had only served as best man because Kimmie had cried when he’d refused. And then everyone had been mad at Levi for making her cry. No one had noticed at that time that his entire goal in his marriage had been to keep Kimmie happy.

All history.

“You gonna ask your neighbor out?” Dennis asked with disarming openness. Both he and Brook regularly pushed Levi to date women. Dennis suggested women like the girls who worked the registers at the hardware store or the ski shop. While Brook had a never-ending supply of friends who would be perfect for him.

Sometimes he said yes to Brook’s friends, and he’d even gone on more than one date with a couple; but there had never been any spark that compared to what he’d felt for Kimmie. Anything less would be doing both of them a disservice.

“I don’t know her name.” The least of the things he didn’t know about her, though he was very familiar with the shape of her calves.

He had to figure out how to stop looking at her without closing his damn blinds.

“Don’t see why that should stop you.”

“I’m not interested in being married again.” One time had been hard enough, even without the spectacularly tragic ending.

Dennis signaled for his third beer. Levi was still on his first. A part of him wished his friend would finish the shot sitting on the table so he would fall over, and they could both go home already, but his friend seemed determined to get drunk nice and slow. Which usually meant mean. He’d have to warn Brook.

“Hey, man, I’m not suggesting marriage,” he said, draining the last of the bottle while Mary brought a new one.

No, Dennis never suggested marriage. But that was always Levi’s first thought after seeing a woman who attracted him.

Or second, after the she’s got nice legs thought.

He just wasn’t interested in a stand, one-night or otherwise. Once attached, he stuck.

“Maybe you should ask her,” he suggested to his brother-in-law, as useless a suggestion to Dennis as Dennis’s had been to him. “Brook wouldn’t be at all mad.”

Dennis’s shoulders started to shake with a laugh, which turned into a hacking cough. It sounded worse tonight. They each waited until it passed, pretending it wasn’t happening. The one time Levi had offered Dennis sympathy and a pat on the shoulder, he’d been angrily shrugged off, which only exacerbated the hacking fit. The next time they’d gone out for beers, both had been short and angry with each other.

Levi hadn’t offered anything resembling sympathy for Dennis’s coughing since.

Like Kimmie’s suicide, they both found it easier not to acknowledge its existence. Kimmie died and Dennis had a chronic cough. Every Friday night, Dennis came out to the bar to drink and forget, climbing out of bed every Saturday afternoon back in the guise of a devoted husband and father. Levi had learned long ago how to hold on to your drink despite shit things happening in the world around you, rather than letting your drink hold on to you.

He tipped his bottle, watching the liquid slosh around while Dennis recovered himself. Levi was half-done with his beer. It would be his one and only tonight. His heavy drinking days were over, and the days he was willing to watch Dennis pickle himself were numbered. Time to go home.

“Brook doesn’t want to be with me when I’m coughing like this. And you think another woman would?” Dennis asked after he’d recovered from coughing and had been able to take another drink of his beer. He shrugged, and his smile was bitter. “Maybe you’re right—Brook might not mind after all.”

Levi shouldn’t have brought the subject up. Coal dust from the mine accident lingered in every decision they made, obscuring any view at happiness. That was what this conversation was really about. Between Levi’s dead wife and Dennis’s dead lungs, could either of them be happy again? As much as Brook and Dennis suggested Levi ask women out and encouraged him to go on dates, he wondered what they would do if he found himself happily settled.

And, hell, what would he do if he wasn’t spending his Friday nights with Dennis? They were in this wreck together.

“I’m going home,” Levi said. No reason to finish his beer. He wasn’t enjoying it any more than he was enjoying the conversation. “Finish your drink and I’ll give you a ride.”

Dennis shook his head. “It’s Friday. There’s more drinking to be had.”

“Not for me.” Could his friend hear his weariness?

“Hot date with the neighbor?”

Levi ignored the slice of resentment cutting through Dennis’s question. “Finish and let’s get going.”

Dennis’s face hardened into belligerence. “I’m staying.” The alcohol had started to hit, and his voice sounded like an angry three-year-old’s.