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"Jack, get in here. You can't sleep on that fire escape all night."
"Sure I can. It's perfectly comfortable."
Katherine couldn't resist rolling her eyes as he winked and made a dramatic production of pillowing his head on the iron rail. She doubted that it was the first time he had slept outside, but really. He was completely ridiculous.
They'd been ... well, what had they been doing? Courting? Together? Together, yes, that was a good word. They'd been together for almost a year. It was a new century and she was a woman of independent means with her own apartment. A few rooms where she didn't have to tiptoe around her father and his increasingly dark moods. Moreover, Katherine thought proudly, her salary paid for it. Plumber money, not Pulitzer. She adored this haven.
There was a small part of her wanted to share this with Jack, even if he was stubborn as an ass -
She should have closed the pane and turned her back on him, but instead, Katherine found
herself leaning out the window. She grabbed at a fistful of vest, and tugged Jack through the open window.
But Katherine Plumber, who rarely (if ever, thank you very much) made mistakes, made one vital miscalculation. She underestimated Jack's weight while over-estimating her own strength.
Jack ended up tumbling through the window and Katherine's bare foot caught in the hem of her nightgown. They thumped down to the floor together; Jack's rangy form sprawled over her.
He was smirking. Of course he was smirking! Jack propped himself up on his elbows, as if content to rest right there. On top of her!
"Always said you couldn't resist me."
"Oh, it's not nearly as hard as you seem to think it is," The words barely left her mouth before Katherine flushed in mortification. She had spent entirely too much time reviewing vaudevilles and interviewing teenage boys if naughty innuendos slipped off her tongue so easily.
Jack laughed, pressing a kiss to her humiliation-warmed cheek. "Trust me, Ace, it's way harder than all that."
And he was, err, right. Their bodies were pressed close enough that she realized just how true that innuendo had been. This was the closest that they'd been in the past year and, honestly (honestly!) it was far too tempting for Katherine to manage.
"Up!" She commanded, both hands moving between them to create some space as she pushed at his solid chest. "And I told you to stop calling me Ace. It sounds completely ridiculous and you know it."
She tossed a quilt and pillow at Jack, pointing to the chaise she had taken from her childhood bedroom (all right, perhaps there was still a little Pulitzer to this apartment). "Go to sleep or I'll send you back to your fire escape, Jack Kelly."
"No kiss good night?"
"SLEEP!" she shouted, hardly caring if the nice family in the rooms below overheard.
As she extinguished the lamps and curled under her blanket, Katherine briefly considered moving to the fire escape.
The cold air might do her some good.