by Crowe, Liz
“Hey.” His soft Southern drawl made her smile and lean back in her chair. “So, I was thinking that you owe me dinner.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because I bought the Coneys, remember?”
She frowned. “Oh, yeah. Wow, that was, like, another lifetime ago.”
“Yep. So, what’s on your agenda tonight?”
“Uh, tonight? Okay.” She was free and, in fact, ready. Ready to take this a step further with him. Or at least try. “Meet you at The Local? Seven-thirty?”
“Your brother’s place? Sure. See you then.” She smiled and put her chin in her hand, flirty and obvious but what the hell. She deserved this.
“I’m looking forward to it, Craig.”
* * *
Sara breezed into The Local by six thirty, her last appointment having cancelled on her, leaving her with an hour to spare. She grinned at the sight of her handsome brother, bossing the bar staff around. The jerk always was overprotective, but she did love him.
He put an ice-cold martini in front of her as he finished chewing out some bartender for not cleaning glassware properly. She frowned. He seemed tense, not himself. But his familiar grin eased her nervousness as he leaned over the bar and pecked her on the end of her nose. “What’s up, sister?” He grabbed a clean towel and started fussing with the pilsner glasses.
“Oh, not much. Got a date.” She did a quick phone email check. When she glanced back up at him the look in his eyes alarmed her. She turned to see what he was staring at. Rob was across the room, chatting and laughing with a couple seated at a table near the front window. She looked back at him, eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
He shrugged. “A date, huh?” She frowned, but let him create the diversion. He’d never been good at talking about himself.
She sincerely hoped nothing was wrong between her brother and the man who, in her opinion, was the best thing to ever happen to him. They represented the one solid thing in her life—gave her hope for the concept of love.
She let him putz around and ignore her a few more minutes as she sipped and tried not to be anxious about an actual date with the man who’d nearly seduced her the night before she’d accepted Jack’s marriage proposal. Her skin prickled, as if the air conditioner had been cranked up. She swallowed, suddenly tense.
When she looked over at Blake, he was frowning, hands on his hips. “Let me guess, Sara.” He jerked his chin at something behind her. “This date. It’s not with Jack.” She opened her mouth to talk but the sudden scent of him filled her nose.
“No.” Her voice cracked. “It’s not.”
“Good.”
The large familiar hand on her shoulder made her entire body zing like a too-tight violin string.
“Hello, Gordon. The usual?” Blake’s voice was icy calm.
“Sure. Thanks.” He took a seat next to Sara. She crossed her legs and kept as much distance between them as she could. If it were possible, he looked handsomer than ever. She flinched when he bumped against her shoulder.
“Don’t touch me.” She drained her martini and set the glass down, but her voice was weak and she knew it. Visions of them in that open house, the hallway the first time, all the amazing times after that in his house filled her brain. She shut her eyes against the overwhelming compulsion to climb into his lap.
Damn the man.
“Sorry.” He sipped the brown liquor in the rocks glass, keeping his eyes forward, mirroring her.
She sighed, determined to be an adult about this. “How’s the city commission these days? Get that approval yet?”
“As a matter of fact, I did, just today, and came in here to celebrate.”
“Congratulations.” She shut her mind against the inner calendar that had been so prevalent in her life for so many months. The one that reminded her that, if she had not broken it off with him, she’d be marrying the compelling man sitting next to her about the time the new building would open. They made plans around it, in fact. “Shit.”
“What’s that?” He looked at her, his deep blue eyes concerned, making her avert her gaze.
Fuck him and his fake emotions.
The sight of Craig entering the door, clad in ass-hugging dark jeans and what looked like the softest blue button-down shirt in the universe hanging over the waistband in his typical, too-cool-to-be-sloppy way lifted her heart.
Yes. This was why she was here.
She stood. “Nothing, sorry. I, um, gotta go.” She waved at Blake. Before she could make her way over to him, Craig appeared at her side, hand stuck out to shake Jack’s, whose eyes narrowed at the sight of them standing close. Sara flinched when he put an unwelcome arm around her waist.
Great. I’m gonna be the pawn in a testosterone slinging match now? Just what I need.
“Gordon, congrats on the council meeting. Full steam ahead, eh?”
“Yeah.” Jack shook his hand, never taking his eyes from Sara. She glared at him a half second, then away when Craig’s arm tightened around her. “Thanks.”
“Shall we?” he asked, then turned her before she could say anything. She felt her face flush. The obvious pissing contest she’d just witnessed might have flattered another girl, but it aggravated her to no end. The last thing she wanted was to be some kind of trophy, fought over by these two men.
She stepped away from Craig’s arm. He smiled and pulled out her chair when they reached their table. She frowned at him, suddenly questioning her motivation for being here.
“Don’t do that.” She stared at the menu after they sat.
“Do what?”
“You know, poke a stick in a pit of vipers. Egg him on.” She jerked her head to the side. Jack was still at the bar, his stare burning holes in her psyche.
She glanced up and placed her drink order, took a deep breath, and focused on the handsome man across from her. If this whole getting beyond Jack thing was going to pick up steam, she knew she had to give it a boot in the ass herself. It was the perfect night to do it.
But did she really want it? Her tingling scalp and zinging nerve endings told her that her former fiancé still sat at the bar and those deep blue eyes trained right on her. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, and gave Craig a huge smile.
It took every ounce of Jack’s inner reserve not to crush the glass in his fist as he watched that kid put a hand on Sara’s back and guide her to a table. He tried not to watch as the smarmy little shit pulled out her chair, but his eyeballs refused to cooperate.
His jaw ached already from keeping it clenched twenty-four seven, pretty much ever since she’d left and he’d been battling the city. And while he’d been pouring all his sexual energy into banging Heather’s brains out for the last several weeks, he still twitched with a near constant dissatisfaction.
He made himself ill. He wouldn’t let his own sister within a country mile of someone like him. How could he blame Blake for protecting her?
He perused his smartphone email inbox on autopilot, ignoring the near-constant stream of dirty texts from the woman he’d swear he’d called Sara at least once the night before. With a sigh, he looked up and straight into a pair of eyes as green as the woman in question. Instead of the usual raw hatred, there was pity in Blake Thornton’s gaze as he pushed a fresh glass of bourbon across the bar.
“Thanks.” He turned, not wanting anything resembling conversation with Sara’s brother right now. He had never in his entire life, felt more torn or confused about what to do or how to act. He kept watching her, sipping his drink, flashes of memory shooting through his brain like daggers.
How in the hell had he messed this up so completely? He couldn’t be trusted, could he? If his recent behavior with the eager Heather was any indication, pining for the woman across the room from him, the one who had so captured his very soul, was obviously not on the agenda. He shot Heather a quick text:
“Not tonight. Too tired. Talk tomorrow.”
“Jack!” He turned to see his old friend, Rob F
reitag, walking his way. Rob had been his college cohort in the deflowering of campus virgins back in the day. The guy had swung both ways then, too, but it hadn’t been an issue for them. Women had fallen for their one-two punch—tall, blonde or dark, and charming, once upon a time. He grinned.
“Pull up a chair. I could use a swift kick in the ass right now. You game?”
Rob shot an odd look toward Sara’s brother, who stood at the other end of the long bar, staring at them. “Huh, might make two of us. I seem to have done a bit of screwing up with a member of the Thornton family myself.”
Jack rolled his eyes and laughed as the other man eased himself into a barstool. His heart still pounded and spine tingled at being so close to Sara again, unable to do anything but watch her laugh and lean into the surfer kid who kept reaching out to touch her arm. Jack closed his eyes then refocused on Rob.
“Dude, you have no idea.”
* * *
As the dinner progressed, Sara forced herself to be calm, to focus on Craig’s dark brown eyes, to listen to his soft Southern drawl as he answered questions she didn’t remember asking. She flinched when she felt his palm on her knee.
“Earth to Sara.” His voice was soft. She sat back and pushed her plate away, no longer hungry. “You still here?”
She smiled at him, letting his smooth, handsome face and calm manner soothe her rattled nerves. “Sorry. Lame.”
“Nah. Long as you’re buying, I’m good.” He shot a look over to the bar. Sara wrestled her rapidly rising ire.
“Okay, so I’m nipping this in the bud right now, Robinson.”
“What’s that?” He finished off his blue cheese burger and wiped his mouth. She found her eyes drawn to his lips, suddenly hypnotized by the memory of them on hers.
“The dick-measuring thing you’re doing with my ex-fiancé over there, that’s what. Cut it out.”
He raised an eyebrow and put an arm over the back of his chair, letting his long legs stretch out to the side of their table. She suddenly relaxed as if he’d flipped a switch in her psyche. It was clear she had no business messing around with him, but there was a buzzing need in her brain that she knew, damn good and well, was the connection she shared with the man currently laughing his head off with her brother’s lover at the bar.
She also knew she had to find an outlet for it if she were to sever that connection with Jack once and for all. She leaned in on her elbows.
He frowned at her. “Then stop flirting with me. You’re just as bad as he is.”
She sat up and glared at him. Familiar words, and ones she didn’t need to hear right now.
“I am not.” His wide grin made her scalp tingle.
“Okay, I am. But not for his benefit. Let’s get out of here,” she said, surprising herself.
He leaned over and grabbed her hand, staring at her so hard that, for the first time in an hour, she forgot about the man across the room. “It’s making me antsy with him over there, I won’t kid you.” He stood, held out a hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to, you know, be all…” He shrugged as she stared at him.
“Act like you’re a dog who needed to piss on my leg?”
He laughed at that, and hauled her to her feet, pressing her close. “Yeah, I forgot to hide my inner dog from your inner bitch.” She let him kiss her, just a light press of lips together before stepping away. “Let’s get ice cream or something, a movie, I don’t care, something so I can prove my good intentions.”
She smiled, and without a glance at the bar’s direction, let him guide her out into the cooling fall evening. As they walked past the bank of windows along the bar where Jack still sat, he grabbed her hand. “I don’t share well, Sara, I won’t kid you. So when you’re clear of him, I’d like to show you how a real man acts, but until then, ice cream is on me.” She smiled when he put her hand to his lips, kissed it, and then kept his long fingers threaded through hers as they made their way down the street.
A sudden light went on in her head, spread its warmth down her spine and caught a slow burn as she watched the handsome young man flirt with the girl dipping ice cream. She followed the line of his shoulders down to a trim waist, firm ass, and long legs and let herself imagine a moment, held by him, easing the ache in her body she should exorcise. Perhaps ridding herself of Jack’s hold on her for good.
When Craig glanced at her, as if sensing her stare, his eyes widened at her pointed look, then feigned a look over his shoulder before pointing to his own chest.
She laughed, leaned in, and planted her own kiss on his firm lips. “Yeah, you. You are too cute for your own damn good, you know?”
“I’ve been told that a few times.” He handed her a cone towering with butter pecan. “But you’ll have to find out for yourself, I guess.” He grinned, wiped a blob of cream from her nose and put his finger to his lips. She shivered.
Yes. This was the solution.
At least she hoped so.
If not, she didn’t know what she could do to get Jack out of her life, her head, and her heart. She sincerely hoped Craig wouldn’t mind.
Chapter Seven
When a familiar voice echoed through her office Sara closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, praying she could shove him out of her head and her office by the sheer force of the pressure. It had been nearly six weeks since the Stewart picnic, and Jack kept showing up, appearing nearly daily in her space. She looked up at him as he leaned against the doorway of her cubicle. He smiled, sending signals she could not control clanging around in her brain. She gritted her teeth and turned away.
“How are you feeling, Sara?” he asked, an innocuous comment meant for public consumption. “You don’t look so great.” He moved closer, his eyes changing, losing their cold glitter. Realizing what he was really asking, she straightened up in her chair, observing him, fascinated by his seeming interest in the current condition of her body.
“Lost your touch? You never tell a lady she’s not looking good.” Sara tossed her hair back. “I’m fine. Maybe a little more tired than usual,” she told him, unable to resist. “Can’t figure it out, really, but I’m sure it’s nothing.” She turned to her desk, brain spinning, counting subconsciously backwards from her last period.
Before she could finish her frenzied mental calculations, she sensed another male presence behind her, and groaned inwardly, wishing to be anywhere but here in the middle of this stupid battle. Craig walked into her cubicle past Jack and leaned up against her desk. He addressed her, ignoring Jack completely.
“Hey, I hope you don’t have plans for tonight.” She looked up at him, surprised. They’d had a few pseudo-dates. She’d been to see his band a couple of times. Her plan of attack—to seduce him, get what she needed to shake her physical craving—had been thwarted time and again. The stubborn man would not engage with her beyond friendly buddy status.
“No. No plans… really,” she told him, her voice weak, the tension between the two men nearly suffocating her.
“Good, I’ll pick you up at your place, say, seven?” He leaned down and kissed her lips, softly, quickly. “Pack your swim suit,” he whispered into her ear.
Craig walked out, nodding at Jack without speaking, which left her with her thoughts, wondering if she even had a presentable swimsuit. She was acutely aware when Jack turned and left the building without another word to anyone.
She hurried home at six, wondering what the hell Craig had planned. She found a somewhat threadbare bikini and shoved it down in a bag, with a hairbrush and an extra set of clothes.
Craig rang the doorbell at seven sharp, and she walked out, the bag over her shoulder, having calculated that her period had appeared on schedule two weeks ago and so Mr. Gordon was off the hook.
He smiled at her in that lazy, relaxed way that caused her heart to flutter with renewed purpose. No, he didn’t set off fireworks like Jack did. But that was the whole point. She decided to take the direct method. “Why does this feel awkward all of a sudden?” He glanced at her b
efore starting the engine.
“What does?”
She swallowed hard. “Well, I’ve been trying to get in your pants for weeks now and you’re either a virgin or I smell bad. I don’t know where this is headed tonight, but I’m interested to find out.”
He put a firm, possessive hand on her thigh. She stared at it. “What is this about? You tell me,” he said before leaning over and pressing his lips to hers before she could answer. His hand cupped behind her neck, holding her close. The firm, gentle connection calmed her. None of the frantic need she had always had with Jack emerged, but that familiar slow burn ignited in her belly. One she recognized, and welcomed.
She broke the kiss. His lovely brown eyes darkened as the silence swirled around them. “I need this, Craig. But I doubt I can offer much more than, well…” She shrugged out of his embrace and stared straight ahead, hating the sound of her own voice. “I need you as a friend, but, um, sure could use some benefits. Does that make…mmph.” She gasped when he yanked her close again over the console, owning her with a kiss that promised much more. She sighed, and let it take away the yawning emptiness she’d lived with for over a month.
When he released her, his breathing ragged, he kissed her hand then tugged it down to his lap. She grinned at the heat under his zipper. “Is that a yes?”
He groaned, let go of her and squealed out of the parking lot. “You’re impossible, you know that?”
She giggled, the slow burn spreading, making her thighs tingle. She put a hand on his neck, laced fingers through his hair. “No, I’m not. Just horny. So what?” she asked, truly meaning it.
“Yeah,” he said with a chuckle. “Me, too.”
They made their way downtown, and he pulled into the underground lot of a tall condo building. The elevator eased them up to the top floor and Sara allowed herself to admit how wrong this was, but that she could not wait to see what he had to offer.