by Liz Crowe
“Don’t touch me,” she yelled loud enough for the partygoers outside the front door to stop talking and stare. Blake grasped her arm anyway, and pulled her close enough to hiss into her ear.
“I didn’t invite him, remember?” He put his arm around her waist. “Now calm the fuck down and don’t make a scene. He doesn’t deserve the attention, okay?” He pulled her close and she melted into his side, nodding her head and wiping her eyes. He gave her a tender kiss on the forehead, brushed one last tear from her cheek, and propelled her ahead of him straight into Craig.
Brushing past the handsome blonde man, she marched down the steps to the front yard, determined to get control of herself before talking to anyone else. She made it as far as the battered wooden swing her father had installed for them in the large oak tree. She grabbed the ropes in both hands, letting the tears drip onto the seat worn smooth by years of use.
I am such an idiot! I do want him. I just admitted that today. He asked me to trust him and if I really thought about what he said to her out there I’d know damn well he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“I hate this,” she said to herself. “Why did he have to wander into my life anyway?” She’d been fine and dandy, if more than a little pent up, sexually speaking. She let go of the ropes and sat hugging her legs, leaning against the giant tree trunk. Her head pounded with unshed tears and too much beer. A band tightened around her chest, choking her, making her chest ache and her mouth dry. She kicked her legs out in front of her and snorted in disgust and self-loathing, then yelped when a hand touched her shoulder.
“Sara,” Craig’s soft, musical voice intoned. “Hey, here, drink this.” He handed her a water bottle. She ignored him and stared straight ahead.
“Won’t your date miss you?” she said through clenched teeth.
“She’s not my date.” He slid down the tree trunk next to her, dangling his hands between his knees. She grabbed the water bottle from him and slugged half of it back, letting some spill out the side of her mouth, no longer caring how she looked. “Wanna get out of here?” He bumped against her shoulder.
She turned to him. His deep brown eyes were wide and inquiring. He shrugged.
“Or not, whatever.” He studied his fingernails.
She stood, drained the water bottle, and looked up on the deck filled with partiers. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Jack stride around from behind the house, Heather scurrying after him, trying to keep up. She watched Jack’s eyes scan the crowd, land on his friends Evan and Suzanne, then continue looking around, ignoring the woman standing next to him trying to talk until she threw up her hands and walked away. Sara smiled coldly. She turned to Craig.
“Yes, please, get me out of here.” She put a hand on his chest, and was satisfied to hear his breath quicken at her sudden, unexpected touch.
Craven, Sara. Don’t do this to this perfectly nice man. He doesn’t deserve to be some pawn in your power plays with Jack Gordon. But before she could take it back, he grinned, grabbed her hand, and pulled her toward his motorcycle. She stopped at the sight of it, then shrugged.
Why the hell not?
As she threaded her arm through Craig’s, relishing his familiar clean-washed scent, a feeling of calm slipped over her zinging nerve endings.
“Sara!” She turned to see Blake on the step. “Headed out?” he yelled, louder than was necessary, Sara thought. She faced him, standing next to Craig’s bike as he handed her an extra helmet.
“Yeah, thanks.” She blew him a kiss and he waved as Jack came up behind him. Sara put a helmet over her hair and Craig adjusted it under her chin. She watched as if from far away as Jack started down the steps and Blake’s strong arm shot out, blocking him.
“Not today, Gordon,” Sara heard her brother growl. “You’re lucky I don’t kick your sorry ass down the steps and off my property.”
She watched Jack glance down at the arm across his chest and shoot a murderous look at her brother. Her mouth dropped open at the sight of Evan taking three long steps across the deck to stand between her brother and her lover, facing Jack, pushing him backward. Rob had positioned himself in front of Blake who tried to follow Evan and Jack.
Craig gunned the motor so she couldn’t hear anything but it was painfully obvious that Rob had some difficulty restraining Blake. The crowd stared first at him, then at Jack, who had broken free of his friend’s influence and was pointing at Blake. Suzanne and Evan stood on either side of him, holding his arms, until he turned and stomped off to the opposite side of the deck and out of Sara’s line of sight.
Blake stood, fists clenched, neck vein popping in anger as Rob put an arm around him and led him inside. She turned, put her arms around Craig – for safety, she told herself – and laid her aching head on his shoulder as he put the bike in gear and took off down the dirt drive.
She had the distinct sensation of having ripped a huge chunk of her soul out, leaving it back on the deck with the man she knew she loved but who was, without a doubt, the very worst thing to ever happen to her.
Craig may ease that but he won’t ever be what you need.
Enough! You’re done with Jack. Everyone is right about him. Focus on the man who rescued you twice now – see what he has to offer instead.
Sara sighed and tried her best to force visions of Jack’s face out of her head – the sight of his eyes that night when he pleaded with her to let him get close and not be afraid that he would hurt her.
Chapter Twelve
Sweat poured off Jack’s body by the time he finished an early morning ten-mile run on what promised to be a ninety-plus-degree day. He stood stooped with his hands on his knees in his front yard, surveying the street scene on the muggy Michigan early fall morning, shattered in body and mind.
“Hey, Mr. Gordon,” the kid across the street yelled. “Need that lawn mowed again this week?”
Jack waved at him and shook his head. “Not until it rains a little, but I’ll let you know.” He had a brief vision of his own father, yelling at him to get up off his ass and mow the lawn again, even after he’d mowed it a few days before. Jack had spent hours staring at the ceiling in his room vowing to never, ever be the type of unrelenting, critical father his was. Now look at him, almost forty with not a kid in sight to ruin with his impossibly high expectations.
And who can you blame for that, eh, Gordon?
The thought of his own stupid behavior last week brought chills to his sweat-soaked skin. He stared up at the piercing blue sky to regain his composure. The memory of Sara’s gorgeous green eyes filling with angry tears nearly seared him in half, all over again. Even though he had truly been trying to disentangle himself from Heather, she had caught them at a bad moment. Bad timing was the name of his game lately, it seemed.
He turned and walked into his house – the house he’d bought with his hard-earned money and renovated himself, calling upon the years of equally hard-earned experience, growing up on the job with his father. Anymore, though, it was an empty cavern, mocking him with its lack of a certain female presence.
The night they’d shared in his bed was never far from his mind. He’d felt so content then, better than he had in years. Had convinced himself that Sara would complete his life, could bring out his best as he coaxed out hers, and he was imagining the future with her on his run the next morning when he’d walked right into the shit storm created by his own bad choices.
The crazy bitch, Heather, who he’d picked up in his friends’ beer bar, would not let go of him, even though he’d only fucked her once. In a colossal fit of bad judgment, he’d reverted back to his old ways in her office at the title company a few weeks earlier. He’d attended some stupid fundraising thing with her, gotten drunk off his ass, and spent hours wishing it were Sara on his arm, even sending her texts the whole night, before passing out on Heather’s couch.
She’d kept at him for days afterward, ramping up the sex talk until he’d snapped. He’d had a frustrating day, felt thoroughly avoided by
Sara and had taken the woman, never once picturing any other face but Sara’s the entire time. It was the stupidest thing he could have done and he was far from proud of it.
Yep, King Shit of Bad Timing Mountain, that was him.
He’d tried. He truly wanted to be trusted. He’d hoped and prayed that he and Sara were on a new track, one they could control between them. So when he’d seen Heather at that party and decided that was the right moment to set her straight. Which is when Sara had found them.
The hot shower felt great, going a long way to soothing his troubled brain. Jack let the water slide across his face, and he turned to let it beat a pattern on his back as he recalled the fallout from Sara’s brother’s party. He and Blake had come within seconds of a brawl, and Jack knew that the man would have kicked his ass, but damned if he would let him treat his sister like some sort of precious jewel, unworthy of Jack’s presence.
She was a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. Blake’s overprotection had reached unreasonable proportions, something Evan and Suzanne agreed with him on, although they had both beaten him around the head and shoulders that night for his own behavior even after he’d tried to explain. No one believed him. Suzanne’s disappointment had been the most palpable and upsetting.
“Stop trying to prove what an asshole you are, Gordon,” she’d said, her eyes bright with angry tears. “Maybe people will figure it out on their own.” She’d not talked to him the rest of the night. He’d sat with Evan and stared at a baseball game until his eyes were numb with boredom. Evan had put a hand on his shoulder before he left.
“I’m going to ask Julie to marry me,” he said. “But I swear on all that is holy if you don’t start acting like a man and not a sex-crazed teenager, you are not gonna be invited much less stand with me. You know what you want, Jack. Why you won’t admit it to yourself is beyond me, but keep acting like this and we are through. And that will piss me off so much I may even revoke your Mug Club card.” He’d given Jack a fierce hug and pushed him out the door.
Jack had pondered this turn of events on the way home. Julie was a lot like Sara as best he could tell. Fiercely independent, sexy, successful, and temperamental, but Evan was not willing to lose her, jumping off the deep end in order to keep her. Going beyond a mere Dom/Sub arrangement to actual marriage was a bigger leap than many realized.
Lame excuse, Gordon. Listen to yourself. You want control? Then fucking take it. Show her how happy she can be, that she can trust you. That you can trust yourself again.
He’d spent the next day enmeshed in work crises and had stumbled in the front door of his house to find Heather, naked on a velvet blanket on his living room floor, candles flickering, wine open, music playing. He’d hustled her out, amid much whining and pouting. He’d tried to call Sara, to text her, send her email, but she ignored him like it was her job.
Her uncommon stubbornness made him insane, and yet he wanted her even more. He wanted to take care of her, to be there for her, to help her, hold her every night before he fell asleep. It was a wholly new feeling but it suffused his every fiber. She’d admitted how she felt too, before he’d screwed everything up inadvertently at the party. And despite his fear that they’d never come to terms with their clashing type-A personalities, he knew they were meant to be together. She struggled like hell with trusting him, but he knew she wanted it. He wanted to be that for her too, exactly the way he’d confessed to her.
Jack stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. This called for a large gesture and he was ready to make it. She was what he wanted. All he needed was to prove it to her – in front of a shit ton of witnesses.
He dressed, called Jason to tell him he’d be about an hour late – that he had a project he needed to complete. Once he arrived at the office, shopping trip accomplished, the two of them spent the rest of the day working on the PowerPoint presentation he was giving at the Stewart all-company meeting, highlighting the progress of his downtown renovation project.
After attending two closings at the end of the day, he went home, changed into running clothes, and run until he wanted to drop to his knees from exhaustion. He’d not gone this many days without female companionship in a while and was starting to not only wet dream about Sara but daydream about her, too. His many attempts to contact her still went unanswered, and the two times he’d dropped in on her office she wasn’t there – or her friends were hiding her, which he wouldn’t doubt.
But she was going to be his. It was up to him to convince her of it now.
The morning of the monthly all-company meeting dawned bright, hot, and clear. Jack dressed in his best tailor-made blue suit, snapped his Rolex on his wrist, and popped a small velvet box into his pocket before donning sunglasses and heading out into the brain-melting heat.
He couldn’t remember a time he’d been more nervous and skipped his usual double espresso at his favorite coffee shop. He’d had Jason extend an invite to the meeting to Blake on his behalf and was gratified to see the familiar late model F150 with the vanity license plate that said “MiBrew” parked in the hotel lot where their meeting was held each month.
He waved to Greg Stewart as he entered the building and fielded a few work calls, working up his nerve to go in the huge room filled with milling Realtors, title company minions, lenders, and others. He hadn’t seen Sara’s car in the lot, but he knew she’d be along. She usually showed up just in time for these things. Jack took a deep breath, touched the small box in his trouser pocket, pasted on his smile, and walked into the room.
Sara ran late, as usual. She’d gone to a six a.m. hot yoga session and made the mistake of sitting at her laptop to answer some emails before leaving the house. Caught up in a transaction crisis, she stayed sitting and typing away until nearly eight forty-five. When her phone buzzed and she glanced at the text, the sight of Craig’s name made her smile.
He’d been amazing during the last week after rescuing her from that fiasco of a party. They’d gone for coffee that night and he had let her snivel her way through an iced latte before taking her hand across the table and telling her that he was sick of talking about Jack, then asking if she wanted to see a movie.
They’d gone to the latest summer blockbuster, shared a bucket of popcorn, and she’d enjoyed the hell out of it, including the arm he draped across her shoulders. He’d not tried to kiss her or grope her or anything, but at one point she turned to catch him looking at her, which made her blush and turn away, horrified at what she was doing to him.
The next night he’d asked her to go with him to his band’s gig out in the Detroit suburbs. They’d taken his old SUV, which smelled even more strongly of bleach.
“What the hell, Craig, are you a clean freak or what?” she’d asked. He’d shot her an odd look.
“What? Why?” he asked as he steered his car into the bar’s parking lot.
“Everything about you smells like bleach,” she said. “And this car, it’s like a swimming pool in here.”
“That’s because I swim every single day.” He’d pulled his guitar case out of the back and opened the door for her to enter ahead of him. “How do you think I keep my boyish figure?” he’d whispered in her ear as she walked by him, making her shiver.
She’d wanted him to kiss her again as he had in her condo the weekend she was attacked but he kept his distance, treating her like more like a buddy. Sara didn’t know if she felt relieved or annoyed by it. It was hard enough ignoring Jack’s constant stream of texts, calls, and emails. She needed Craig to step up and be a real distraction. But he wouldn’t oblige.
And she probably deserved no less or more from him. He wasn’t deaf or blind. Everyone knew she and Jack were some kind of item, whatever they wanted to call it. Frankly, she admitted Craig for stepping in like this, coming between her and Jack, which was a somewhat precarious position to be in.
Three sets later, exhilarated and a little drunk on beer and watching Craig perform, Sara waited while they broke down their equipment
. The band “JakeLeg” did nineties and current rock covers, everything from the Foo Fighters to White Stripes, but also managed to sneak in a few original tunes.
Singing duties alternated between Craig and his drummer. Sara couldn’t remember a time she’d had more fun dancing to live music. The sight of the young man caressing the mike with his lips with his eyes closed during a song made her more than a little damp between the legs. She could see how women fell in love – or at least mad lust – with rock stars.
It was nearly two a.m. when they wrapped up. Craig’s black t-shirt was soaking wet and had plenty of women salivating and hanging around hoping to buy him a drink. He flirted lightly with each of them while Sara admired his denim-clad ass for the millionth time. She was proud of herself for going the entire three-plus hours without obsessing over Jack wondering what, or who, he was doing.
At the thought of him, his strong body, piercing blue eyes and deep voice in her ear, she shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut to expel him. She opened them to find Craig pulling her to her feet.
“Hey, you still here?” He smiled and avoided the little crush of groupies that closed in on him. “Let’s go. I’m starving.” He propelled her ahead of him out the door.
Sara broke her hard and fast rule about eating after midnight when she smelled the amazing odors emanating from the twenty-four hour diner and indulged in a loaded Coney dog. At one point, as the grease dripped down her hand past her elbow, Craig reached across the table to grab her arm and pulled her fingers into his mouth. She widened her eyes at him, as the sensation of his lips on her skin sent her nerve endings singing. He placed her hand back on the table, face calm, and continued eating as she stared at him, not quite believing what she’d just experienced.