by Kara Isaac
Outside her window, waves lapped against the shores of Lake Wakatipu, reminding her of yet another thing on her to-do list. A write-up of the new hotel they were staying in. Not that she could complain, since she’d been given an executive suite. Though it was disconcerting having so much space after being used to small hotel rooms. What was she supposed to do with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a chef’s kitchen, and a dining table for eight?
It accentuated her solo status, if only to herself. All the empty chairs, unused crockery, and echoing silence accused her—as if waiting for the nonexistent people for whom they had been created, the conversations and laughter that weren’t happening. So much so she’d suggested Kat ditch her room and join her for the rest of the week, and Kat had agreed.
Focus, Allie. This was exactly why she avoided seeing her mother. Because not only did it inevitably end in tears, but it always left her melancholic for days.
Her emotions tumbled around like they’d been stuck in a blender. Unable to forget for a second the way Jackson had stood up to her mother. No one had ever stood up for her like that. Ever. Certainly not to Veronica. Their parting had been chilly at best when her mother left to catch her flight. Mostly because of Allie’s refusal to work things out with Derek, who’d somehow managed to convince her mother the small issue of his other marriage was just a little “misunderstanding.” However, Jackson’s intervention certainly hadn’t helped matters.
Not with her mother, and certainly not with Allie’s now ludicrous attempts at denying how she felt about him.
What was she meant to do with her growing feelings for this guy who so aggravated her one second she wanted to clock him with the nearest blunt object, then the next looked at her like he could see through all the barriers she put up to keep herself safe?
Her lips turned up at the memory of him telling off her mother, totally unaware of the big smear of barbecue sauce across his chin. It was a good thing she’d been sitting, otherwise the heady combination of adorable and downright sexy would have probably knocked her off her feet.
When—how—had Jackson Gregory managed to tunnel his way into her heart and take up residence there?
Running her hands through her hair, she huffed out a breath. Don’t be so stupid, Allie. It was nothing more than a bit of unexpected chemistry. It would be nothing more than a vague memory within a week of the tour’s end. She was pretty sure he’d forget about her the minute he limped onto his plane home. Especially now, since he’d probably heard enough to work out that she was the last person in the world he should want anything to do with.
She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and turned her attention back to her screen. Tapping it awake from its slumber, she navigated her way through the opening pages, then honed in on the detail. The forms that would be pored over by the risk-averse wonks at HQ to make sure she had struck the perfect balance between covering the company’s butt and showing appropriate respect to the client—regardless of how much of the blame they deserved.
Reason for accident? Her fingers flew. An astounding level of stupidity by the most amazing guy I’ve ever met.
And there it was. The oxymoron of how she felt about Jackson in black and white. She hit the DELETE button until it disappeared from the screen and dutifully typed, Client allergic to horses. Did not declare either on booking or indemnity waiver, or to guide.
She sat and pondered her next sentence, remembering how Jackson had sneezed with such violence it had even freaked out Mildred, who was ordinarily as highly strung and prone to sudden reactions as the average cabbage.
Knock knock knock. Allie’s fingers paused over the keyboard.
Must be someone at the suite next door. There was no one with any reason to be knocking on her door at—she checked her watch—almost nine-thirty. Kat and the group were doing a degustation menu that should take them until ten to get through.
The sound came again. This time there was no mistaking it had come from her door. Sighing, she tilted her screen down so it couldn’t be read, leveraged herself up from her seat, and padded toward the entranceway.
What could it be now? Nothing would surprise her after today. The entire day had felt like the universe was throwing everything at her. It had clearly decided it couldn’t possibly let the final hours go to waste.
She peered through the peephole, and her breath caught. What was Jackson doing here? For a second, she contemplated not answering, afraid of what she might do or say. But the way he’d left her mother speechless for the first time Allie had ever witnessed—meant he deserved better than that.
Turning the deadbolt, she swung the door open and peeked around. He was in a pair of well-worn jeans and a fitted gray T-shirt, a five-o’clock shadow creeping across his jaw. The visual was all sexy and rumpled—like something out of a men’s magazine shoot. Her breath stalled.
Jackson had been attractive enough already, but there was something about adding the standing-up-to-her-mother factor that upped it a hundredfold. If she’d known Iowa produced farm boys that looked like this, she would’ve found her way to the great corn state years ago.
He leaned on one crutch; wedged against his torso was a stack of . . . pizzas?
Words. Need to speak. “Hi?”
“Hi. I think you might still have my phone in your bag from the hospital. And my drugs.” He nodded to the four pizza boxes that emanated a combination of enticing smells. A plastic bag dangled from the hand gripping the handle of the crutch. “You barely touched your meal so I brought a ransom payment.”
It was true. Any time spent with her mother did have the effect of killing her appetite. She’d barely managed a bite of her burger, even though Veronica uncharacteristically had managed to restrain herself from her typical passive-aggressive commentary on her daughter’s diet and dress size. Hints of cheese, tomato, and herbs wound their way up Allie’s nose, and she almost drooled.
“Thanks, but I’m fine.” Her stomach let out a rumble that outed her as the liar she was.
Jackson raised an eyebrow and the hint of a smile plucked at one side of his mouth. “Uh-huh.”
She stood in the doorway. Wavering. The sensible thing to do would be to leave him there and go get his stuff and trade it for a pizza. She’d get fed, he’d get his phone and drugs, and whatever this weird chemistry was between them would get left alone. No harm, no foul.
And then what? Eating pizza in a huge empty suite with only paperwork and her own depressing thoughts for company? That appealed even less.
Fingers curling around the cool, metal door handle, she pulled and stepped back as the door slid all the way open. “Come in.”
“Thanks.” He hobbled through the doorway and past her, stopping a few feet inside.
The door swished against the plush carpet as she closed it. She moved around him and started back down the hall. “Let me go check my bag.” She was hyperconscious of his presence following a few feet behind her. At least being in a suite made the situation a bit less weird. A hotel room would have been a bit too confronting, too intimate.
The accumulating smell of cheese and pizza dough caused her stomach to do an anticipatory flip, dragging her thoughts away from the disturbing direction they had started to head.
What was with the food? He could’ve just knocked on her door and asked for his phone and painkillers. Or, even more sensibly, rung her from his room. Though, at some point, they’d catapulted over the border that delineated sensible.
Allie grabbed a glimpse in the hall mirror on her way to the kitchen. Her hair was pulled up into a straggly, crooked ponytail and desperately needed a wash. Ugly reading glasses—why, oh why, hadn’t she left her contacts in? She’d stripped all her makeup off, revealing blotchy uneven skin, and her eyes still bore evidence of the crying jag she’d had over her mother as soon as she walked in the door. Again.
Her bag sat where she’d droppe
d it on the kitchen counter and she walked toward it. Anything to distract her from the fact that he smelled of some kind of masculine soap and that she hadn’t been alone like this with a guy who scattered her emotions in years.
“Where should I put these?” He said the words easily. Like there was nothing weird about this at all. Like they were friends who ate pizza together all the time. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got a mixture.”
“Um . . . anywhere will be fine.” She gestured around the large open-plan kitchen and turned her attention to finding his stuff. Thunk. He dropped the precarious pile onto the bench next to her, moving the plastic bag to sit next to them.
Her hand grasped around a rectangular object, and she fished it from her bag. Sure enough it was his phone. She held it up in her palm. Next followed the brown paper sack holding his painkillers. “Sorry.”
He glanced up from where he was pulling containers out and lining them along the granite countertop next to the pizza boxes. “No problem.”
Her stomach let out an unladylike gurgle. “What exactly do we have?”
“Um, hold on a sec.” He turned, facing her full-on, barely a hand’s width between them. She involuntarily took a quick breath as she found herself staring at his broad shoulders. She tilted her head, her gaze traveling to his chin, lips, nose, eyes. Her toes curled. This guy was far too sexy for his own good. Actually, he was far too sexy for her good. This was bad. Very bad.
She quickly took a small step back to overcome the sudden overwhelming desire to reach up and run her fingers through his hair and down his arms and— Whoa, Allie. Don’t even go there.
It was getting hot. Her face suddenly felt like she’d been out on a summer’s day with no sunscreen. Get busy. Unstack and open boxes. Hopefully if Jackson noticed her blush, he’d put it down to the warmth of the pizza boxes as opposed to the very inappropriate series of thoughts zapping through her brain.
“Here you go.” Their fingers brushed as he handed her a long receipt so she could see what he’d ordered.
Zap. Another thought. Another two degrees. The heat of pure attraction rampaged through her body. She was going to have to lose a layer soon. She didn’t remember Derek ever having this effect on her. The two of them had had pizza many times over the years and not once had she needed to remove any items of clothing in his presence to cool down her internal furnace simply because his fingers brushed hers while handing over a receipt.
Allie glanced at the white piece of paper. “One thin-crust vegetarian pizza with no cheese. No cheese? Why would anyone want to eat pizza with no cheese?”
Jackson shuffled his feet. “I just thought maybe you were one of those girls who didn’t like to eat carbs and dairy and stuff.”
Ha! Not likely, when her jeans were a size larger than she’d admit to. “We’ve eaten together for two weeks. At which point did I impress you as the kind of girl who doesn’t eat carbs and dairy?” She held up her hand as he opened his mouth. “Don’t answer that. It was purely a rhetorical question.”
She looked back at the list. “One chicken, cranberry, and brie pizza. One spinach, pepperoni, feta, mushroom, and tomato pizza. One super supreme pizza with barbecue sauce. One serving of lemon-pepper wedges with sour cream. One chicken and avocado salad. One spaghetti carbonara. Two slices of chocolate mousse cake. Two slices of passion fruit cheesecake. One Diet Coke. One regular Coke.” She refused to look at the dollar figure at the bottom.
He shrugged. “Okay, I might have gone a little overboard, but I wanted to be sure I got something you liked—especially after what I put you through today, and then . . .” He trailed off, clearly not wanting to put into words the obvious about her mother. Instead he just looked down, ocean eyes drilling into her.
She placed the paper on the counter. “You really didn’t need to. All part of the job. You’d be amazed at the stupid things I’ve had to deal with.” The last sentence came out a bit more harshly than Allie had intended. “I mean, this is great. Thank you.” She gestured at all the food covering the surface. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”
Derek would never have bought out a pizza joint’s menu because he wasn’t sure what she might feel like eating. He was definitely a more budget-restrained kind of guy. Or so she’d thought—until she discovered that was only with his money. With her money, he was a pro at making extravagant gestures, like the bachelor party for which he’d “borrowed” her credit card and racked up almost five grand.
This was too much; it was all too much. “I—” Her voice caught in her throat and before she knew what was happening, a tear rolled down her cheek, and then another. She attempted to stem the flow with her sleeve, but they kept coming until there was a torrent pouring down her neck, pooling around the edge of her top.
She tried to pull them back in, shove them down. Shires didn’t cry. She definitely didn’t cry.
“Hey. Hey. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. Come on.”
She had to stop crying. He couldn’t see her like this, but the gush refused to slow. She couldn’t even talk. Shuddering breaths squeezed from her shrunken lungs. She looked at the floor, the wall, the bench—anywhere but him—as she attempted to blink away the tears.
Warmth surrounded her. She’d been scooped up in his embrace, her head on his chest. Her arms wrapped themselves around his torso almost as if they had a will of their own, and she buried her face in his soft, lemony-smelling T-shirt. One of his arms was around her waist while the other stroked her back. It was everything she had imagined it would be. And more. He felt safe. She’d never expected that.
“Shh. It’s okay, Al.” His ragged, whispered words feathered down her face and straight into her heart. No one had ever called her that before, but Jackson could say it a million times and it wouldn’t be enough.
For the first time in a long while, she even believed things might actually work out.
They stayed entwined for a few seconds—if only it could be a few centuries. Lucky him: drop by to get his phone and be accosted by an emotional wreck. Allie loosened her arms and stepped back slightly. Tilting her head up, she found his blue eyes boring into hers filled with concern . . . and something else she couldn’t identify. He was so close that, when he exhaled, she could feel his breath on her lips. All it would take would be the slightest tilt of her toes to kiss him.
Bad idea. Very bad. She might not have been the sharpest needle in the haystack when it came to relationships, but even she knew only bad could come from kissing one guy when you might still be married to another. She quickly raised her sleeve up to her nose and wiped it in the most unladylike way possible before she did something to add to her list of regrets. A flicker of something crossed Jackson’s eyes. Relief maybe? He loosened his arms as she stepped back a bit more.
To burn the bridge once and for all, she reached over, plucked a tissue from the box on the counter, and proceeded to blow her nose loudly. Nothing cooled the flames of passion more efficiently than expelling large amounts of snot in front of the object of one’s affection.
Not that he was— Oh, this was seriously messed up.
Sure enough, by the time she looked up, Jackson was cracking open the remaining pizza boxes.
“I’m sorry about that. It’s just . . .”
He stopped and gave her his full attention.
“It’s just been a tough week,” she finished. Wow, that wasn’t lame. Not at all. She turned her attention back to opening the pasta container.
“You want to talk about it?” Jackson’s arms wrapped around her waist from behind. “It’s completely up to you.”
The bottom of his chin scraped against her hair and, almost as if it had done so a hundred times before, her whole body relaxed into his. A perfect fit. His warm breath grazed the side of her face as her hands came to rest on top of his. He spread his fingers, slipping them through hers.
His next
breath caressed the space between her collar and the curve of her neck, setting fire to every cell from the tip of her spine to the arches of her feet. She tilted her head, and the next breath traveled across the side of her mouth, leaving her lips tingling in its wake. God help her, she wanted to kiss this guy more than she had wanted to do anything in her life.
And then what? The thought somehow cut through her haze of longing, breaking the spell for a split second. When the kiss ended, all she would be left with was an even bigger mess than the one she was already in.
“Food. I need food.” She practically leapt from his arms as she reached out and grabbed the closest slice of pizza to her. She shoved it into her mouth, now safe to turn to face him. After all, she couldn’t kiss someone with a mouthful of pizza.
What was she thinking? She was married. Maybe. Sort of. Or was she? Until Jackson had shown up and thrown her world into chaos, it hadn’t even been a question she’d been forced to confront, and Google didn’t seem to have any guidance as to what the moral code was when you married someone who was already married to someone else.
A smile creased his face. “That one’s got . . .”
Urgh. The salty putrid taste of olives assaulted all of her senses.
“Here.” Laughter lined his voice as a napkin materialized in front of her face. “Spit.”
Not a chance. She waved the napkin away, almost retching as she forced herself to swallow the foul taste. Nasty, nasty things.
“I’m impressed. I can’t believe you ate that.” Eyes twinkling mischievously, his arm reached around her and grabbed a slice of the same pizza. His other hand rested lightly on her waist, his thumb brushing against a millimeter of bare skin between her T-shirt and pants.
“I can’t believe you got one with olives!” Allie moved along the bench on the pretext of getting a slice of something else, though she really just needed to get outside of his personal space before her resolve melted.