by Jill Shalvis
He flashed a grin. “I blew your brain cells?”
“You know you did.” She gave him a little push and he stepped back.
“Your choice, Soph,” he said. “Always will be.”
He was telling her flat-out that she was in the driver’s seat here, that she had the controls. Too bad she had no idea what to do with that.
Or him.
Liar, an inner voice said. You want to strip him and ride him like a bronco.
When he laughed softly, it sent a bolt of heat through her that turned into a shudder racing up her spine. “What?”
“I half expected you to shove me overboard. Instead you’re looking like maybe you want to eat me for lunch, dinner, and dessert.”
She closed her eyes. “Well, not all three at the same time.”
He laughed again, and eyes still closed, she shook her head.
“Say it,” he said quietly. “Say what you need to say.”
How did he know? How did he always know? “All right,” she whispered. But she needed space for this, so she took a few steps back from him. “You told that lake patrol guy that we had a private dock secured.” She met his gaze. “We? Is that the royal ‘we,’ or you and the mouse in your pocket?”
“Babe, that’s not a mouse in my pocket.”
She rolled her eyes. “You lied for me, Jacob. Why?”
“It wasn’t a lie. You’re staff for the Wounded Warriors event. And did you forget what I told you about us?”
Her heart did a slow roll in her chest. “I’m yours,” she whispered. “For the duration.”
“Yes, but more than that, I’m yours,” he said, quiet steel. “That means I give you everything I can. Help. Backup. Whatever you need.”
Because that was way too much for her brain to compute, she turned away and looked at the spread he’d laid out. “This looks like a date,” she said warily.
“Dinner.”
“So…not a date?”
He smiled. “Which will get you sitting down and eating with me?”
“Not a date,” she said instantly.
“Fine.” He snagged her hand, pulled her down to the bench to sit with him.
“No glasses,” she said, nodding to the wine.
“No plates either.”
“I can go belowdecks and—”
“No need,” he said smoothly, opening everything and pulling out his pocketknife to slice the summer sausage and cheese. When he had a cracker loaded, he handed it to her and then made one for himself. He repeated that action a handful of times, until he sighed with pleasure. It was a sound she knew well, and it had her nipples tightening.
“I was starving,” he said, and opened the wine, offering the bottle to her.
It was a visceral reminder of that night they’d shared the Scotch, and the memory made her hesitate.
He grinned.
“Shut up,” she said without heat. “I swore off alcohol after the Scotch, but after a day like today, a girl needs a little something-something. And don’t—” She pointed at him. “Don’t turn that into a double entendre.”
“Don’t have to,” he said, still grinning. “You did it for me.” He watched her drink and then held out his hand. She passed the bottle.
He let his fingers drift over hers for a beat before taking a drink. There was something about watching his mouth covering the lip of the bottle where her mouth had just been that felt so…intimate.
And sensual.
As she had that night, she stared at the way his Adam’s apple moved when he swallowed, at the stubble on his jaw. And then, inexplicably drawn upward, she looked into his eyes and sucked in a breath when she found him watching her watching him.
It had her busying herself with wrapping up their leftovers, which granted, wasn’t much. Apparently a shitty day plus oral sex in public made a girl hungry. “I owe you dinner,” she said. “And while this is very good, mine will be better.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.” He took another long pull of wine, and she realized something. His eyes were shadowed, and lines of exhaustion were etched in his beautiful face.
She thought of what she’d seen at the resort, him with his siblings and the unease she’d sensed in him. “You’ve been hanging out with your family,” she said casually. “How’s it going?”
He lifted a shoulder.
She smiled. “Maybe you could use some words?”
He gave her an impressive eye roll. “Could be smoother,” he admitted.
She hesitated but couldn’t help butting in where she wasn’t wanted. “They love you, you know. Your family.”
Another oh-so-expressive shoulder lift.
She set down the bottle. “You know, it’s okay to give yourself a break. Sometimes you have to get things wrong before you can get them right, and that’s okay.”
He slid her a look. “Is that what you do?”
“Hello,” she said, spreading out her arms. “Look at me. I’m a temp worker in a temp job because I excel at getting things wrong. But I’m trying.”
“You think I’m not?”
“I think you need to learn to let things go,” she said gently. “You came back, Jacob. You get points for that, no matter how it goes. Stop looking in the rearview mirror and start looking out in front of you. Earlier today, Hud couldn’t take his eyes off you. I think he wants you to be at home here. He just doesn’t know any better than you do how to deal.”
One corner of his mouth quirked. “You got that all from just looking at us, huh?”
She shrugged. “I’m good at reading people.”
His eyes met hers and held. “I’m getting that,” he said. “I’m also getting that you had to be.”
She didn’t want to go there. “You could just come right out and say you’re sorry for leaving, you know.”
“I’m working my way up to it,” he said.
“How’s that going?”
“Hud’s not ready,” he said.
“Ever think that maybe you’re projecting?”
He didn’t move, didn’t even breathe as far as she could tell, so she handed him the wine. “I project,” she said conversationally, taking the bottle back when he’d taken a drink. “And trust me, it’s not healthy. I projected all Lucas’s assholery onto myself, and I let it color how I see myself. But then I realized that no one’s going to like me if I don’t like me…” She trailed off and took another sip of the wine, and when she lowered the bottle, she discovered he’d moved after all.
Closer.
He slid his fingers over her jaw and tilted her face up to his. “You’re smarter than hell, sexier than hell, and I like you way more than I should,” he said. “Tell me you got over that hump, Sophie, and that you learned to like yourself even half as much as I do.”
She didn’t realize she was chewing on her lower lip until he bent his head and kissed that lip. And then the corner of her mouth. And then the other corner…And then he stared at her, letting her see that what he’d said was true, that he liked her a whole lot more than he should. Her breath caught.
“Tell me,” he whispered against her lips, making them tingle in anticipation. She knew how he kissed now, with his entire heart and soul, and it so contradicted everything about him that it always threw her off-balance.
He threw her off-balance. In the best way.
In fact, she wanted to be thrown off-balance right this minute.
As if guessing where her thoughts had gone, the very corners of his mouth turned up.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “But has anyone ever told you that you’re deadly up close?”
“Sophie.”
She sighed. While she could be distracted, she should’ve known that he couldn’t. “Yes, I got over myself. I know now that I didn’t do anything wrong. That I’m a good person.” She closed her eyes. “That I deserve better.”
“Good.” He kissed her then, until she crawled across the blanket and into his lap, sighing when his arms closed around her.
<
br /> “This is a little scary,” she whispered.
“A lot scary.”
She tipped her head back to his. “I’m still not keeping you.” As if her body didn’t agree with her mouth, her fingers tightened on his shirt. “I’m not going to keep anyone, not ever again.”
“I know,” he said, and stroked a hand down her back, soothing her even as she did her best to hurt him.
“But you don’t want to love anyone either,” she said. “That hasn’t changed, right?”
He didn’t answer, and she closed her eyes. “Jacob.”
His big hand continued to stroke up and down her spine, and she felt hot tears prick at her eyelids. “We’re so screwed up,” she whispered.
“In a very large way,” he agreed.
He did that thing he did, where he lightly tugged at a loose wave of her hair. Then he produced chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
“I might have to rescind my no-love rule,” she said, a cookie in each hand. “Cookies are my sweet spot.”
He smiled. “They’re not your only sweet spot.”
Her “sweet spot” quivered, a fact she firmly ignored. “I miss baking. No oven.”
“Tell me again why you took this boat. Or better yet, why you stay on it. You could’ve gotten whatever you needed, money…nice things…”
“Money and nice things didn’t work out so well for me,” she said. “I’m trying something new to find my happy.”
He stared at her and then smiled, shaking his head.
“What?”
“You expect me to believe that being here on this boat is making you happy?” he asked, disbelief heavy in his voice. “And be careful here,” he said when she opened her mouth, “because I’m the one who held your hair back while you threw up from seasickness, remember? You hate this boat.”
“Yes, but…” She grimaced. “I’m still getting some mileage out of knowing Lucas is miserable because I’m living on his baby.” She didn’t look at him, not wanting to see what he thought of this.
But he laughed. “Okay, remind me to never piss you off.”
And that was just the thing. He had pissed her off, several times now. And yet she didn’t feel like retreating, or never speaking to him again, or strangling him with his own pillow in the dark of the night.
Well, okay, maybe she had once or twice…But she’d also felt like making up with him in ways that just thinking about made her squirm uncomfortably. In the best possible way.
Chapter 18
Jacob gathered everything back into the bag he’d brought down from his cabin and stood.
Sophie did the same. “You told me I could stay here.”
A commander had once told Jacob he was the hardest sonofabitch he’d ever met, and Jacob had believed it. He’d been in some pretty ugly places and had done some pretty ugly things. People tended to give him a wide berth.
But not this woman. Nerves and fears or not, she still went toe-to-toe with him.
He fucking loved it.
Whether she knew it or not, she was comfortable with him. It made him want even more from her. Things he hadn’t imagined ever wanting from anyone. Things he’d promised her he didn’t want.
Which put him in the ridiculous position of either continuing to lie to her about that, or swallowing emotions he didn’t know what to do with anyway in order to keep her in his life. “Yeah,” he said. “I told you that you could moor here. And I meant it. Indefinitely.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Indefinitely?”
“Yes.” Expect more from me, he wanted to say. Demand it from me. You deserve it. Instead, he smiled. “No worries. I’ll collect my rent.”
She didn’t smile. Instead she stared up at him. “I’m sorry I assumed you were lying to me.” She said this quietly but also slightly begrudgingly, which made him smile. “I’m not good at letting people in.”
“I think you’re doing pretty damn good,” he said.
She stared at him as if she wasn’t sure how to take him. So while they were on that, he said, “And you should know, I don’t lie.” Well, except for how I feel about you… “Too much to remember. I’m lazy, Sophie. Very lazy. We square?”
“You’re the most unlazy man I’ve ever met.”
“Say it.”
She looked at him for a long beat. “We’re square,” she finally said. “Are we friends?”
Is that what they were doing? He hadn’t put a label on it, but if he had, friends would have been in the mix. Friends. Lovers… “Is that what you want?”
She stared into his eyes, and then her gaze dropped to his mouth and she licked her lips, nearly causing him to groan.
“I think we’re a little more than that,” she said.
“Is that what you want?” he asked again.
She stared at him. “It’s a start, right?”
“And the end?”
“You don’t seem like a guy concerned with the ending of anything.”
True enough, he thought. And he had no idea why he was pushing on this. Except he did. He wanted more and yet he wasn’t exactly in a position to offer it. “You know what I’m asking. I’m asking if we’re going to be more than friends.”
“For the duration, you mean?”
His own words, of course, put right back on him. He’d said she was his for the duration, and he was hers. He’d meant it. He just hadn’t known how much…or how badly he’d want the duration to be extended.
She cocked her head and studied him, and he did his best to look like the kind of guy she couldn’t live without. And maybe also the kind of guy she wanted to take belowdecks and lick from head to toe.
“I have no idea what to do with you,” she said.
“I’ve got a few ideas.”
She snorted. “Stop. I mean it.”
He sobered. “I know.”
“And you know it’s not you, right?” she asked earnestly. “It’s me.”
He laughed at her use of the cliché. He couldn’t help it. And she smiled and gave him a push. “It’s not a line. I mean it.” Her smile vanished. “We both know I’ve got some things to work out. In my head.”
And she wasn’t the only one. Reaching over, he took her hand in his, liking it when she entwined their fingers. Bringing their joined hands up to his mouth, he brushed his lips over her knuckles.
Her breath caught.
“Sophie?”
“Yeah?” she asked a little breathlessly.
“Take your time,” he said.
She let out a whoosh of air as if greatly relieved, and not for the first time he wanted to hunt down the men who’d been in her life, starting with her dad, who should’ve protected and cherished