by Jill Shalvis
“No, it’s true. I’d spent my entire life trying to please my dad and that hadn’t worked out, but I was determined to make someone love me.” She winced at how that sounded. “Lucas came along and paid me attention, and I was in hook, line, and sinker.”
“Not your fault,” Jacob said.
“Of course it was my fault,” Sophie said. “I don’t believe in being a product of my environment. And yet I played right into that. Poor little neglected Sophie, desperately seeking attention. And I found it too. Lucas was out of my league and I knew it, but he had this really great car…”
Jacob let out a low laugh. “So I wouldn’t have had a shot at you.”
“Which is kinda my point,” she said. “I was that shallow girl, which means I got what I deserved.”
His smile faded. “Maybe you should tell me the rest, because I don’t believe that for a second.”
She closed her eyes and remembered. “Lucas would see me walking to class and give me a ride. He knew money was a problem for me and he’d buy me things. A pretty dress. A fancy meal. I was young and stupid and I let his charisma turn my head even though I knew he was a player. I wasn’t the only one attracted to his showy ways. But I believed him when he told me I was the one.”
“And you married him.”
“Yes. I was twenty, way too young, of course, but no one told me I was being stupid.”
“Not even your parents?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Lucas was wildly ambitious and smart. He’d fast-tracked his way through college and law school, and they thought he was my last chance at succeeding at something. At first it was good. He liked having me in the background, taking care of everything for him, the house, his life, even some of his work. I did anything and everything he needed because I was still that pleaser. And it wasn’t until he got a promotion from associate to junior partner that he started to change.” She frowned at the memory and put her drink down.
“Change how?” he asked.
“He’d say things, things he never would have said before, to hurt me. And he knew exactly how to do that.” She hated this part. “And I let him. I’m not even sure why, but it made me try harder to please him. I should’ve known from experience that I couldn’t, but I was stupid. I stayed.”
“What happened?”
“He became unreasonable. Suspicious. A little verbally abusive. At first I thought reassuring him would work, but again, I should’ve known better. I couldn’t get anything right, and I got so frustrated I—” She broke off and shook her head.
He reached for her hand. “Did he hurt you, Sophie?”
She let out a choked laugh and shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. It was me. He’d been after me to put together this dinner party so he could impress some of the other partners at his firm. I worked my ass off on it until everything was perfect: the dinner, the decorations, the house…The next day one of the partners sent me flowers. Lucas accused me of sleeping with the guy. He’d been suspicious for a while at that point, accusing me of flirting with the mail carrier, the grocery store clerk, everyone with a penis, and it pissed me off. When it came out during that fight that he’d been the one sleeping with everyone in sight, I chucked the vase of flowers at him. I didn’t hit him, but he called the police anyway.”
“What?” Jacob said, straightening up with a frown. “Are you serious?”
“We were both arrested and hauled downtown for domestic disturbance and violence,” she said, shuddering in horror at the memory. “And while we were there, he managed to flirt with one of the desk clerks. It was kind of an as-low-as-you-can-get day for me. He bailed himself out and cleaned out the account I had access to so I couldn’t do the same. I had to ask my parents for bail money.”
“How did that go over?”
“Not well,” she said. “I’d failed at something else.”
“Getting out of a marriage that was killing you slowly isn’t a failure,” he said.
“Says the man who’s never failed at anything in his life.”
He laughed. Tossed back his head and let go, and watching him, she felt her own smile curve her lips. “So you’re a big, fat loser too?” she asked hopefully.
“Many times over,” he assured her, and his gaze ran over her slowly, warming her up.
He was so different from anyone she’d ever known. Even when he was pissed off or hurting—and she’d seen him both ways now—he neither internalized his feelings nor put the weight of them on anyone around him.
And she was breaking her rule. Falling for him. “Jacob?”
“Yeah?”
“You remember our promise to each other, right? The one where I won’t fall for you and you won’t fall for me?”
He studied her a beat, giving nothing away. “Hard to forget,” he finally said. “Why?”
“Just making sure.”
“Are you reminding yourself, or me?” he asked.
“Maybe both.”
He smirked. “Can’t resist me, can you?”
She laughed in spite of herself, and he smiled. “Come over here,” he said in his bedroom voice, “and I’ll prove it.”
Oh boy…He was most excellent at distractions, but she had to stay strong because she was missing something. She could feel it. “Just talking though, right?”
He smiled and instead of answering, hooked her paddleboard with his paddle and drew her toward him.
Chapter 23
Jacob watched Sophie sit up on her board as he towed her toward him. She was right about her hair. It had rioted, falling to her breasts in wild, fiery waves that his fingers ached to sink into.
And then there was Sophie Marren in a bathing suit.
She had curves that made his mouth water and legs that went on for days. Their boards gently bumped as he slid an arm low around her hips and leaned in to kiss her.
She put a hand on his chest, and with their mouths an inch apart, gave him a long look. “You don’t look like you’re about to talk.”
“Caught,” he said. “Is there something you wanted to talk about?”
“Well…you never said what brought you to the inn today.”
He didn’t really want to go there. He’d had a shit day, and his first instinct had been to be with Sophie.
“Talk,” she said in an imitation of a guy’s voice, which he assumed was supposed to be mimicking his own. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Spending time with Hud and the others again had been pretty great but also hard. Back when he’d been a stupid punk kid, he done his damnedest to keep his distance from Gray and Aidan, but they’d gotten past his walls more than he’d thought, something he hadn’t realized until he’d left.
Being back had those walls crumbling with shocking alacrity.
But not with Hud. They’d worked together all week and yet it was still…strained. So after a long day it had felt natural to hunt up Soph, because nothing was strained with her except for his zipper.
Exerting pressure on the hand she had on his chest, he leaned in past her barrier and nuzzled the sweet spot he knew was just beneath her jaw.
She sucked in a breath and…tilted her head, giving him better access. “You’re trying to distract me,” she murmured.
“Is it working?”
“Are you kidding? You’re a walking distraction,” she said. “What is it, Jacob? Your mom? Hud?”
He must have given himself away, because she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, her wet and nearly nude body a welcome distraction.
“It’ll get easier with him. It will,” she said softly. “Just don’t give up.”
He shook his head. He wouldn’t.
“Is that what brought you to my work?”
“Actually,” he said with a smile at the memory, “it was your text.”
“The one where I said I was busy with my client?”
“Ah,” he said with a smile. “So that’s what you meant.”
She blinked in confusion.
/> “You had a typo,” he said. “You left out the ‘e’ and ‘n’ in client.”
Her brow furrowed as she worked that out in her head. He was already flat-out grinning when she gasped in horror.
“Oh, my God!” she cried. “I didn’t!”
“Yep. You did. You said you were very busy with your clit. I had to come see that.”
“Oh, my God,” she said again, on a groan this time, and tried to push free of him. “Let go so I can sink into the water and die.”
“Hey, if I were a chick, I’d be very busy with my clit too. I’d be busy twenty-four seven.”
“Spoken like a guy.” Her cheeks were red, her green eyes wide. “I can’t believe my phone changed ‘client’ to…”
“Come on, make my day and say it,” he teased.
She covered her face. “Bite me.”
“I’d love to,” he said. “Right on your client, minus the ‘e’ and ‘n.’”
One hand still over her face, she used her other to point at him. “You, I could do without right now.”
He burst out laughing. She dropped her hands from her face and stared at him.
He couldn’t help it. People had come and gone in his life. He’d come and gone as well. But this time, with this woman, he didn’t want to let go.
And yet she did. Well, so she said. And he knew she wanted to believe it. But he also knew she wasn’t being honest with herself, because her eyes, mirrors to her heart and soul, gave her away. It was in every look she sent his way, in every sweet laugh, every sexy moan when he kissed her, in every slow, delicious writhe of her hot body when she wrapped it around his.
But that didn’t matter if she didn’t want to want him.
And he was going to be good with that. He’d promised her, and he didn’t break promises. But he was one hundred percent going to have to pull back to keep it.
When the last of the sun dipped behind the mountains, the temp began to drop. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get you back.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re cold and wet, and we both know I prefer you hot and wet.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll race you home. Loser has to tell me what happened today with his twin.”
“Nothing to tell,” he said.
She searched his gaze. “Nothing to tell? Or nothing to tell me?”
Stubborn, gorgeous, a wicked smart-ass, and sharp. God, he loved that. “We going to argue about this?”
“Don’t we argue about everything?”
“Good point,” he said. “Let’s settle this one like adults—in the bedroom, naked.”
But she didn’t smile. “I told you my stuff. It means you have to tell me your stuff.”
But he couldn’t. He slowly shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Let it go,” he said.
“But—”
“Look, Sophie, stop, okay? You set some boundaries and I’m trying to keep them for you, but it turns out I have some boundaries too.”
Her face went blank. “Right. Sorry.” She turned her board away and began to paddle.
He stayed where he was for a beat, hating himself. When he realized that she was seriously moving, working hard to lose him in nothing but that itty-bitty bikini, he went after her.
She moved faster, not giving up, even when the winds kicked in, blowing right at them, making the going all the more difficult. She simply faced the winds head-on, attacking the water with her paddle.
Much as, he now knew, she tackled life.
In any case, the view of her, slightly bent, a little bit of a wedgie going, was enough to fuel his fantasies and distract him so much that he actually forgot to beat her to the shore in front of his cabin.
She jumped off the board, dragged it up the sand enough that it wouldn’t float away. Then she headed straight for her boat.
Your own doing, he reminded himself. You had to remind her about the boundaries.
He started to follow her, but she picked up the pace.
“I’ll be in my shower,” he called after her. “My very hot shower.”
This made her stop short on the dock and go hands on hips. Still facing away from him, her head dropped low and she swore under her breath before kicking the boat. Slowly she turned to face him, her expression torn between lust for his hot water and a hesitation that made his heart feel a little too tight for his rib cage.
He crooked a finger at her.
She bit her lower lip in indecision—her blue lower lip—and he moved toward her, scooping up the shirt he’d left outside so he could drop it over her head.
It fell to her thighs, and she immediately hugged herself to hold the shirt closer to her chilled body. “Unlimited hot water,” he said. “And I just got new towels. Thick. Sitting on a heated towel bar even as we speak.”
He saw the towel lust in her eyes and he smiled. “And there’s also a room heater. You can crank it up. And after, I have hot chocolate.”
“You do not,” she said.
“You willing to risk it?”
“The boundaries,” she whispered.
Yeah, the boundaries. But here was the thing. He wasn’t ready to let her go. “The shower is a boundary-free zone,” he said.
She stared at him. “Are you sure?”
No, he wasn’t sure. He was talking out of his ass. But he nodded, and she did an about-face and then strode straight at him.
He started to lift his arms to pull her in, but she walked right past him, heading toward the cabin at a near run.
For his hot water.
In the boundary-free zone.
He really was an idiot. Catching up, he opened the front door for her, gesturing her in ahead of him.
She was seriously shivering now, and some of the wind had gone out of her sails. Feeling like a jerk, he took her hand and led her through the place, quiet as she stopped and stared.
“You leased this place furnished,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But…the furniture’s gone.”
“That’s because I took it all to Goodwill,” he said. “I replaced the important stuff for now.” Bed, bedding, towels, and flat-screen TV.
“But you’re just leasing,” she said.
“Was. I’m buying it.”
She stumbled, and when he stopped, she plowed into him, all those delicious curves plastered to him. For a beat he reached back and held her there. Just until she found her feet.
And then he let her go. He considered it practice for when he had to let her go for real.
“You bought this place,” she said slowly.
“I wanted to have a home to come back to after I finish my service.” Dammit. Why did he feel defensive?
“You’re really coming back,” she breathed.