by Lindsey Hart
“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry, son.”
His dad had somehow snuck up behind him and when he clapped him on the shoulder, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
Jesse had no idea what he was talking about until his mom brought both her hands up, swiped at her eyes, and gave him what could only be described as a purely evil smile. She’d sell her soul to the devil for a grandchild and he damn well knew it.
As the news van screeched to a halt right behind the SUV and a female reporter with the hugest, most flammable looking hair he’d ever seen, tumbled from the van, a camera guy close at hand, another scrambling for the mics and other equipment they needed, while a third going to battle with a huge camera and telephoto lens that was completely ridiculous given the bastard was standing a few feet away from them, set up on the sidewalk.
“Mr. Samson,” the female reporter with the big hair said. Ironically enough, was just about as tall as her, since she was all of five feet, petite, with a fire engine red pantsuit on, got straight down to work. “Tell us, who is your fiancé?”
“Fiancé?” He and Sydney spoke at the same time.
They shared a look and the feral gleam in her eyes said that he should most definitely be afraid of getting neutered the second they were safe in his house. He made a mental note to hide all forms of scissors and knives possible. He knew what Syd was capable of. She blinked that fringe of ridiculously thick and insanely dark lashes, that said she knew what he was thinking and that she’d beat him to all pointy, sharp objects since she’d always been more athletic, and she knew it.
He knew it too and swallowed hard.
“We got an anonymous tip,” the red engine, blonde beehive went on while the cameras blinked in their faces.
Snap. Snap. Snap. The guy with the camera seriously wasn’t wasting any time.
“That you’re engaged now. Are we the first to break the story?”
“Er…” Jesse hated the media. Always had.
They printed stories up about the company, which in their founding days, was good, but he hated when the focus shifted to his personal life. He’d always viewed that as off limits. He seriously wished he had a lighter, just to hold it out and flick it and threaten the lady to back the hell off before he lit her hairdo sky high.
That’s mean. Seriously. What the heck am I doing standing here, thinking about lighting that lady’s hair on fire?
That was just the media. Always seemed to bring out the best in him.
His mom turned to the side, so Sydney couldn’t see her and winked in his direction. He knew exactly who had tipped off the media. She tilted in, wrapped her arm around Sydney’s waist, and dragged her forward a step. Sydney was so shocked she couldn’t fight back. She nearly fell on her face, probably would have, if his mom didn’t have that hand steadying her. He also realized who gave his gate password away so that the damn van with the horrible roach reporters could get into the suburb in the first place.
“Here she is. Sydney Underhill. It’s a match made in heaven. Kept their romance a secret this whole time, even shocked us with it, but she’s here now. They’ve been friends since they were kids. It’s the perfect love story with the perfect happy ending.”
The words happy and ending received significant stress and Jesse winced.
He finally realized that Syd was too shell shocked to do anything. He had to, for once, be the one who saved her before everything went to shit in a handbasket and his entire world was a brown poo coated version of what could have been if Sydney was serious when she wrote that status. He wasn’t going to let anything ruin the one-shot he might have.
Not even his mom and her insane version of matchmaking.
He practically felt her arrow shred his heart, but she was no Cupid and she was going to drive Syd away before he ever had a chance to get close to her.
Jesse acted fast, without thinking. He mumbled something that he didn’t even catch, stepped forward and shoved his hand into the recording camera’s lens, knocking it askew without causing any damage. While the leach on the other end cursed and tried to refocus his shot, he sidestepped his mom, wrapped his hand around Sydney’s wrist, gave the reporters a wave and Martin a pleading look, and ran, yes, ran, practically dragging Syd behind him until he thrust her through the front door and locked it behind him.
“What the actual fuck,” she panted, her voice dripping with barely restrained rage that echoed through the massive foyer.
Through the whole house really. It was new construction and he’d moved in and barely got around to hiring someone to furnish the place. The walls were still stark, and the rooms were so huge that they dwarfed the few pieces of furniture he actually did have.
Yeah. That pretty much summed everything up. What the actual fuck had just happened out there?
CHAPTER 6
Sydney
Fudging pineapples, I’m hungover. It must be a new brand of hungover too because Sydney had never experienced anything like it. Her boobs were sweating. Seriously. Her boobs. Her armpit area was soaked, and she was afraid to lift her arms because of the pancake sweaty marks that were probably hiding there like a darn snake in the grass, ready to spring on some unsuspecting individual and kill them with their grossness. She kept them glued to her body as she walked penguin style away from the foyer with the huge glassed-in modern-looking closet and the beautiful tile work on the floor, ceiling, and wall like only the trifecta will do for a house of this caliber.
In the damn entrance, for goodness sakes.
Without being asked or invited, because they were probably beyond that, she flopped down on a huge leather couch. It looked like it was imported from Italy. When she reached out and smoothed her palm over the fine leather, it definitely felt that way too.
Jesse slowly crept into the room like a shadowy thing from her nightmares.
Except things that went bump in the night didn’t look like Jesse.
All she could say, as her eyes took in the crisp white dress shirt with the rolled-up sleeves, and those black slacks and expensive shoes, was that Jesse had really grown up in the ten years since she’d seen him last. He’d always been a little on the thin side, the geeky side. Well, heck. He’d lost the glasses. Probably paid to have laser eye surgery. Lost the baggy hoodies and jeans that never fit well.
And god, those forearms. Strong. Muscular. Striated veins. Crisp dark hairs. Those forearms could be the death of her if she let them.
His face wasn’t any better. Seriously. It was damn murder material. He’d filled out a little in ten years and in a good way, like he hit the gym four hours a day, every single day, kind of way. His shoulders were broader than she remembered, his chest thicker, his waist just as trim, but his legs strong and muscular under those slacks. He looked more like his brother did when the guy was on the football team in high school. Athletic. Lean, but in a powerful sort of way. He reminded her of a predator, a mountain lion or something. Not that she’d ever seen one before, but in the pictures, they looked sleek and rippled with muscles. And they were beautiful.
Damn it! She didn’t want to notice that kind of thing about Jesse, but he had a nice face. He’d always had a nice face in a cute way, but now he had a nice face in a hot way too. In the chiseled cheekbones and jawline, piercing blue eyes, high forehead and proud nose kind of way. His hair was cut just right, shorter on the sides, slightly longer on top, but not in the hipster up-cut kind of way that every other person seemed to be getting. He looked fashionable. He looked expensive.
Obviously, the years had been good to him and it intimidated the hell out of her. It made her armpits sweatier and tied her stomach and her tongue in knots. What she wanted to say was that the whole thing was a mistake. That she never should have been farting around on there, not when she was drunk, not at all. She didn’t mean to send that stupid message and she was hungover as hell, her head hurt, her stomach felt like it could potentially eject its contents all over the shiny tile floor, and her patience was severely at an end after ge
tting kidnapped by goddamn Jeeves, Alfred, whatever his name was.
“Why is your underwear so fucking hot anyway? I don’t see why people would buy the shit. It’s probably grossly overpriced and made for like, five cents overseas.”
“That’s slightly racist.”
“Nothing racist about that statement. I’m just saying, it’s probably true.”
Jesse sighed as he sat down on the other end of the couch. He crossed his arms over a chest that shouldn’t be sexy, couldn’t be sexy, a chest of a guy she used to think of like a brother, and what do you know, the shirt gods must seriously be against her, because those buttons bulged and strained at all the wrong angles, exposing just a hint of bronzed skin below.
Annnnddddd cue the whole dry mouth thing.
Which was probably just a by-product of being hungover. It was definitely a by-product of being hungover.
Sydney swallowed convulsively as Jesse sighed again.
“It’s actually made right here in the US, which was part of the reason the company took off. People want to support local. Make local. We use sustainable resources like cotton, bamboo, and hemp.”
“Hemp? You use Mary-J to make your gotch?”
“First of all, hemp is a fiber. It has nothing to do with marijuana, really. Not in that way. Secondly, it’s strong and durable and has been used for centuries as a textile fiber. It’s a very smart product to use.”
“Still. What does your underwear do that everyone else’s doesn’t?”
“First of all, we believe in the fact that everyone should have access to sanitary products and that’s not a reality for a large portion of the world, so for every pair of underwear sold, we donate a pair to developing countries, where they are needed most. They eliminate the need for those products that aren’t readily available, or even if they are here, many women find it more convenient not to use them and it certainly goes a long way in helping the environment.”
Sydney stared at Jesse with an open mouth. “Okay… first of all, that’s gross.”
“It’s not gross,” he assured her, dead serious. “It’s nature and part of a huge problem of waste that goes into the environment. Many of my co-workers are female and they swear by the underwear. It wasn’t me that created the product, I’ll put your mind at ease about that. We had a huge developmental team working on it.”
“And let me guess. Lots of them were pervy men.”
“None of them, actually.”
“Did any pervs try them out?”
“Not that I know of, but I can’t be responsible for the people who buy them.” Jesse’s lips quirked into a ghost of a smile, and Sydney squirmed on the couch.
She tried very hard to deny the fact that her ovaries, which were likely dusty as hell from disuse, had just kicked into overdrive. Was it possible that his smile just induced ovulation? Maybe she was pregnant just from looking at this man… this man who looked nothing like the boy she used to know.
Stop. That’s insanely ridiculous.
“We also make products for people who have bladder control challenges, a product that is comfortable and fits well. And then we have our sport line that is naturally moisture-wicking to keep people dry and comfortable and rash free-”
She held up a hand. “Stop. Okay, I’ve heard enough. I don’t really care about how you got rich.”
Or those billboards that have your name and your company’s name plastered all over them. Or the magazines. She’d never really paid attention to any of it. She’d tried not to see it, which explained why she didn’t notice that her best friend blossomed. Blossomed? Was that the right word? Could a man blossom? If so, he’d definitely bloomed. Like a damn flower. The billboards and magazines seriously did not do him justice.
“What I do care about is that all of this…” she waved that hand around, indicating the house, but more so, the large problem that was bearing down on her, crushing the living hell out of her. “Was- is- a mistake.”
Jesse kept that level face, a poker face, whatever it was called. He looked at her without emotion. Gave absolutely nothing away. She wanted to punch him in that damn face just to crack that surface level, to see if anything else poured out. Any feeling.
If she cut him, did he still bleed like she did?
Fucking period panties. She hated that she wanted to give them a try. Maybe the moisture-wicking ones too, since she hated getting sweaty ass crack when she jogged in the mornings. Maybe the bladder leak ones too, just for the hell of it. Too far. Too fucking far. Maybe none, because Jesse was clearly overconfident, and she didn’t want to add to that smug smile she did choose to focus on when she drove past a billboard.
“What kind of underwear would you recommend for an asshole problem?” she sassed, instead of getting down to the real issues, just because once upon a time, they’d been best friends, before everything went to hell in a hot ass handbasket, and she couldn’t help herself.
“Hmm.” Jesse scrunched up his face in consideration. “Really any of them would work. We have a few other lines too. Regular lines. Seamless lines. Then there’s our bright and wild line, our swimwear line, and our children’s line.”
Arrrrrrrggggghhhhhh! Sydney screamed silently, on the inside, which, bizarrely enough, hurt her head just as much as if she’d let that scream out.
“I should never have been on there when I was drunk,” she blurted. “It was like a drunk dial. Remember those? I- god! Social media is the black vortex of all that is horrible and unholy. It’s a cesspool of self-pity and stupidity and idiocy!”
Jesse cocked a brow, and damn it, even that was sexy. How pathetic was she that she noticed, and that she cared. She was sitting there, hyper-aware that she was in his house, just a few feet away. That when she inhaled, she smelled his crisp, spicy, manly scent. That he was gorgeous.
That the last time she’d seen him, he’d taken her virginity and given her the best four orgasms of her life.
Four.
And no, she hadn’t thought about those over the years. No, she hadn’t touched herself to them. No, she’d never picked up a magazine and kept that image of him in her mind until she went to bed. Alone. No, she’d never thought of him in the shower. No, she didn’t remember that he had a big package. Like… big. Seriously big.
No, no, no.
Jesse leaned forward, humor lighting up his beautiful plaid eyes, eyes like the surface of the lake reflecting the sky on a cloudless day. Eyes like… like the Caribbean Sea.
“Why then, if it’s such a cesspool, were you on it? You might have been drunk, but you were sober enough to type that message. Maybe, what you really wanted, deep down, or not so deep down, was exactly what you wrote.”
CHAPTER 7
Jesse
Just when she’d started to relax, he’d gone and pissed her off again. He watched Syd’s eyes narrow into dangerous slits. Her lips thinned out and even angry, she was insanely beautiful. Her skin… damn, her skin was so perfect. Not that it hadn’t always been, but California had been kind to her. She looked good with that permanent tan she had going on.
Good, as in amazing.
Then again, he’d always thought she was amazing. Because she was. Is. Whatever.
“You can’t keep me prisoner here,” she spat. “That thing with your mom isn’t going to work. I know her game.”
He had no choice but to feign innocence. Syd was there and that was more than half the battle. He made a mental note to give Martin a big raise for doing the impossible. He also made a note to thank his mom, as bad as it was, for giving him an ace up his sleeve. He now had a not so secret weapon. Mother tears.
Never to be underestimated, just like mom's disappointment.
“What thing?” he asked innocently. “My mom was just incredibly happy to see you. Those tears were completely genuine.” That, at least, was true.
Syd’s eyes narrowed further, even though he didn’t think it was possible. She looked like a pissed off housecat about to tear his face off. Or castrate
him. It would probably be a tossup between the two.
“I don’t know what you told her, but this…” she gestured wildly between them, “isn’t a thing. This isn’t a thing. It’s never going to be. It’s never going to work.”
Jesse nodded slowly like he was really going to actually let her off the hook, even though he had no intention of doing anything close to it. He decided to try another tactic, even if he had to guilt her into it. Once upon a time, in another life, Syd loved his mother. He’d play on that. His father too. She’d been a part of their family.
“Would it really be so bad to try?”
Her head snapped up and her eyes went from narrow little slits to wide as baseball saucers. She blinked at him like a black hole just opened up between them and aliens were springing out wearing funny little hats and screaming they were going to eat her brains.
“Are you kidding me? Would it really be so bad?”
He nodded. “I mean no.” He shook his head quickly. “I don’t think it would be so bad to try. Part of you must have meant and wanted what you wrote. It was pretty loud and clear. Don’t they say that there’s more truth in jest that in truth itself?”
“I don’t think that’s how that goes. Quit trying to quote shit from our English class.”
“I’m just saying. I think there is a lot of what people really mean in jokes. They just try and soften the blow.”
“I didn’t mean it. And that’s not true. Not with me. If I want to say something, I’ll just come out and say it. And I’m saying it now. You can’t send your crazy butler dude to kidnap me. You can’t lock me here. You can’t guilt me into staying. You can’t have your mom stand out on the front lawn and cry crocodile tears. You can’t call the media and tell them that you’re engaged. No, we are not trying. It would be a disaster. I think we both know that already.”