Between the Lines

by Lauren Hawkeye

  “You’re bleeding.”

  He looked down at his hand. Multiple scratches from the rosebush striped his skin, and a drop of blood welled up from one. “I didn’t notice.”

  He wiped it on the thigh of his suit pants, and Meg winced. Amy watched him thoughtfully, and Beth pretended to be busy moving clips on the hoops, though he knew that she was paying attention, too.

  Jo, though, squinted at him as though trying to peer into the dark recesses of his brain to find what his motivation was. He really thought she should have known.

  Her. His mind was full of her. She’d never been far from his thoughts, even when he’d tried to tell himself that choosing to locate the offices of Crossing Lines in Boston was because of the location, or when he’d dated other women—fucked other women—in a desperate attempt to wipe her out of his mind.

  He’d gone to that party knowing damn well that he’d see her, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. He’d let Ava give him what she wanted—his cock in her mouth—to try to tell himself that the only reason he wanted to see Jo was to check in, to make sure with his own eyes that she was doing all right. That the job offer was really just a job offer.

  And then there she’d been in the dark, watching him. Watching him and liking it. And just like that, it all came roaring back.

  She looked up at him with an indecipherable glint in her eyes.

  And then she nodded. “Okay.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “WHAT DO YOU know about Crossing Lines?”

  Jo rocked back and forth a bit in her chair. Unlike the hardware store special that was at her desk at home, this one was sleek leather, softly cushioned, and had wonderful support for the achy back that Jo figured most writers probably had.

  She was enjoying the chair so much that it took her a moment longer than usual to answer John’s question. When he cleared his throat, she looked up, realizing that she’d taken too long.

  “I looked it up,” she admitted, “after you emailed me. I read the Wikipedia entry on it and took a look at the site. But I’m afraid I didn’t really understand the specifics of it.”

  “Did you download the app?” John asked. Jo shook her head, trying to hold back her grin.

  “I’m sorry. I know most people would have, but I don’t have many apps on my phone at all. I use it for email and jotting down story ideas when pen and paper isn’t around. That’s it.”

  “You don’t use it as a phone?” John’s expression registered horror at this, prompting Jo to laugh. He’d had to pause their meeting several times already because he’d gotten calls that he couldn’t ignore.

  Jo was the opposite. “Hell, no. I hate talking on the phone.” She shuddered.

  John stared at her, perplexed. “You’re a unique woman, Jo.”

  “Is that bad?” She might have felt nervous, but she had a sneaking suspicion that John was one of the few people in the world who both wasn’t related to her and genuinely liked her.

  “Not at all. It’s very refreshing.” His smile was very nearly dazzling, and Jo might have thought that he was flirting—except that she knew she very much wasn’t his type. Never mind that he hadn’t been too subtle in checking Meg out yesterday, but she wasn’t most people’s type. Antisocial tomboys with tempers weren’t in high demand.

  “Okay. Where to start, then...” John stopped his pacing—he was constantly in motion, full of energy—and pulled a second chair up to the massive desk. “What dating sites are you on?”

  Jo couldn’t hold back the laugh this time. John looked at her, perplexed.

  “I’m not on any dating sites.” She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to interpret the look that John cast her then—not quite pity, but like he couldn’t figure her out.

  She didn’t really like it. Romance was for other people. She’d mostly accepted it, until Theo had crashed back into her life. She was the one who was friend-zoned, considered one of the guys. On the rare occasions that another person seemed interested in her, she was too awkward to figure out the interaction—and she rarely found it worth it at any rate, since none of them ever made her hot and bothered.

  She wasn’t about to express this to some slickly suited guy that she’d met yesterday, though, so she searched his face for a cue and decided to deflect. “I think my sister Amy is on this one, though. She’s on a few.”

  “Amy.” He rolled the name over his tongue. “Is she one of the sisters I met yesterday?”

  Jo refrained—barely—from rolling her eyes. “The sister you’re ever-so-delicately inquiring about is Meg. She’s a caterer with small-business dreams. She tells very dirty jokes, treats thrift-store shopping like an Olympic sport, and she’s single.”

  John blinked, then ran a hand over the buzzed ebony hair on his head. “I guess I wasn’t that subtle, huh?”

  “Not even a little bit.” Damn. Should she be more formal with someone who was now her boss? She wasn’t the formal type. And hadn’t he said that he liked the fact that she was unique?

  Theo always had.

  Do not go there, Jo.

  “Okay. The Wikipedia article said that Crossing Lines is revolutionary. Can you explain that to me?” She tugged on the hem of the black tunic thing that Meg had shoved at her that morning. She was wearing it with some stretchy leggings that her sister had also strongly—forcefully—recommended, but she’d ignored the ballet flats in favor of her Converse sneakers.

  “Okay. I’m going to explain as though you don’t know anything about dating sites, so apologies if any of this is redundant.”

  Jo nodded. It won’t be. I know nothing.

  “So on most dating sites—Cupid.com, PlentyOfFish, even older ones like Match.com and Lavalife—people set up a profile. They talk a little bit about themselves, about what they’re looking for, and then they conduct searches for matches with their criteria. Often the sites will have algorithms that suggest profiles that members might want to check out. Following?”

  “Yes.” It sounded a little bit tedious to Jo. She spent enough time at her computer, and the thought of scrolling endlessly, looking for a partner, didn’t appeal to her.

  “What makes Crossing Lines different is that it adds back a bit of the meeting-in-person element. You know, how everyone up to our generation was stuck meeting.” He grinned, tapped on the keyboard, then turned the monitor to show her the screen. “What our site does is connect you with people that you come across in real life.”

  “I’m not following.” Wasn’t that just...meeting in person?

  “Bear with me.” John tapped on the keyboard again, and she was surprised to see him bring up what appeared to be his own profile. “Okay. So let’s say that your hot sister and I were both members of Crossing Lines.”

  Jo couldn’t hold back the smirk.

  “Then let’s say we both happened to go to the same Starbucks at the same time—crossing lines, so to speak. We would each receive an alert that someone else from the app was in the vicinity. You could then check out their profile and indicate whether or not you’re interested.”

  “Oh...” Jo cocked her head to the side. “Oh, so that saves the nerves of approaching someone you find attractive for a date, too.”

  “Exactly!” John beamed at her like she’d performed a trick and earned a treat. “So then let’s say your hot sister and I checked out each other’s profiles and indicated that we were interested. Then I could approach her, or she could approach me, and we could set up a date.”

  “What if one of you didn’t hear the alert?” Jo didn’t hear her phone most of the time, though in her case she kept her notifications on silent deliberately, so they didn’t annoy her. “Doesn’t that kind of screw things up in this magical meet cute?”

  “No matter when you catch the alert, you’re still able to see the profile,” he assured her, pointing at the screen. “So even if you chec
k an hour, two hours later. The next day. You still might think, oh, that’s the cute girl from the coffee shop. Or, oh, that guy was with his kids, but now I see that he’s a single dad, so I’m going to hit him up to install my kid’s car seats.”

  Jo snorted at the innuendo that John infused his last words with. Pushing back in her chair, she took a moment to let it all absorb.

  “This is actually kind of brilliant.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “Who thought this up?”

  “Theo did.” John suddenly, deliberately, busied himself with closing out his profile and readjusting the screen.

  Yeah, Jo was pretty sure that Theo had filled him in on their history. She wondered if he also knew about the upcoming date, and what he thought about it.

  She still wasn’t sure what she thought about it. She didn’t—couldn’t—dwell on it right now, or she’d think herself into a spiral of doom, so she changed the subject again. She was becoming an expert at it.

  “So where do I come in?” She couldn’t really think what place a creative writer would have on the staff of a cutting-edge dating app. She especially couldn’t imagine what her kinky sex blog could contribute to anything.

  “We’re still what’s considered a start-up company,” John explained, pushing out of his chair and starting to pace again. “We’re the new kid on the block—the weird new kid on the block. Our business model tells us that we can be incredibly successful, but we need to find new and creative ways to bring in users. Millennials and Gen Z are statistically the most likely to give something a bit different a try, and they are also the generations that are more open to new things when it comes to sex and relationships. They’re intrigued by kink, and that’s where you come in.”

  “You don’t expect me to put up a profile, do you?” Panic was a flock of tiny birds in her belly. She couldn’t imagine something less appealing. “I just write about it. I don’t want to get kinky with strangers.”

  John looked at her as though she’d grown a second head. “Of course not.”

  She exhaled, trying to expel those tiny birds from her system. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “We want you to write content for us, targeted toward millennials and Gen Z.” Pulling his phone from his pocket, he glanced at the screen before returning it. “We plan to start a blog that will be advertised on the home page of the site. We’ll be advertising it on Facebook, Amazon and all social media. Essentially it’s to be a column about sex and dating as a member of that generation. We’re a new, edgy site, and we want edgy content. Your blog stood out because you aren’t afraid to go there.”

  “Are you sure it didn’t stand out because I used to date Theo and he has some kind of guilt complex?” Jo winced as the words left her mouth, but even if it was brazen to ask, she wanted—needed—to know.

  She wanted this job. She had that hit of adrenaline, cold sweat, sick-with-want kind of feeling in her gut, and that wasn’t even factoring in any feelings left over between her and the boss.

  Her writing was hers and hers alone. No matter how much she wanted the job, any joy from it would be tainted if Theo had only offered this out of guilt.

  John stopped his pacing in front of the window, his face set in serious lines. In the pale light filtering through the thick glass, Jo noted again how classically handsome he was—and again, she felt nothing. When she looked at Theo, though, with his wild dark eyes, the skin that reminded her of caramel, the way he moved his hands when he spoke about something he was passionate about...

  Her entire body clenched just thinking about him.

  Damn you to hell, Theo Lawrence.

  “Jo, when Theo showed me your blog, he didn’t tell me anything at all about your history. I had no idea that you two had ever even been in contact, let alone...close.” John tapped a finger on the glass. “I agreed that your writing was perfect. And I have to say, I’m a bit jealous—you have the most fascinating dating life. Reading about it almost makes me feel like I’m there.”

  If only you knew. Jo forced herself to smile, nodding along with John. If he liked her content, then she didn’t think there was any reason to let him know that she had experienced precisely nothing that she’d written about on her blog...well, except for this morning’s. Lack of real sex, of desire, meant that she’d filled that void in her life another way, with a fascination of all things kinky. She threw in anecdotes about her sisters, too, since they always insisted on sharing every single dirty detail of their relationships, their hookups.

  But her own experiences? Her blog hadn’t included a single one, because there hadn’t been any—not until Theo had come back.

  “So that’s what you want me to write, then?” Shit...did Theo think she’d done all those things she wrote about? Not that she would be ashamed of it, she just...hadn’t. It was weird that he might think she did. “What I write about on my blog?”

  “Essentially, yes, with an emphasis on the dating experience posts. But—” He was cut off when a knock sounded on the door. Theo entered the room without waiting for an answer. “As I was going to say, Theo will be in momentarily with a list of ideas for topics.”

  “And here he is.” Theo’s words were light, but his gaze was a punch of pure heat when he ignored John and focused in on Jo. “Is John treating you right?”

  Something about the way he asked made the question sound deliciously dirty. Jo found herself unconsciously rubbing her thighs together under the shiny surface of the desk.

  “Like a lady,” she retorted, casting a smile in John’s direction. On anyone else the expression might have looked coquettish—on her, Jo imagined it looked pained, but it had the intended effect. Theo narrowed his eyes at his partner.

  Like Jo, he’d always had a temper, often fueled by jealousy. Where that had caused them to self-combust when they were younger, now Jo tasted a hint of how that possessiveness could be...well, hot.

  Moving her gaze from John to Theo, she instead found it a bit hard to breathe.

  What the hell was she supposed to do with this?

  John’s phone rang, the no-nonsense ringtone slicing through the thick air. Without another word to the pair of them, he answered it, waving goodbye as he exited the office, closing the door firmly behind him.

  They were alone, and the heaviness of Theo’s gaze made Jo want to break eye contact. The thread of stubbornness that had been wrapped around her since birth refused to let her back down.

  He wasn’t challenged by the direct stare. If anything, he seemed amused, his lips curling into a faint smirk. Holding eye contact, he closed the distance between them, stopping when he reached the front of the desk.

  Jo immediately felt the need to stand, to put them on even ground, but she knew that the movement would show how off balance he made her feel.

  Why did this feel so much like war? And why did she want to wave the white flag and throw herself at that rock-solid chest?

  “Since you showed up this morning, I’m assuming you’ve accepted the job.” His posture was arrogant, as though it would never occur to him that she would say no. Looking him over, though, Jo noticed him rubbing the pads of his thumb and forefinger together at his side. It was an old tic of his, a way of releasing excess energy when he was feeling more than he wanted to be.

  What was he feeling now? Lust? Guilt? What would she do if she knew?

  “I haven’t accepted it officially, no.”

  Theo said nothing, just kept watching her with that dark gaze. Damn it, he knew—he knew how much she wanted this job. Refusing it would show him how much he was affecting her.

  Still looking at her, he pulled out his tablet, moving his fingers over the screen. “I just emailed you the employment agreement. There’s no need to print it—it can be signed electronically. Of course, you’ll want to read it all the way through, but I think you’ll find that it’s an extremely generous offer.”


  “Theo...” She closed her eyes. Why was she bothering to put up a front at all? He’d always been able to read her better than anyone, and she had no doubt that he knew exactly what she was struggling with right now. She might as well say it. “Look. I want this job. I’m still attracted to you.”

  She choked on the last part—that she was terrified of falling for him again, only to have him leave. There was vulnerable, and there was vulnerable.

  “I don’t understand why you can’t have both.”

  Jo’s chin snapped up. There was no disguising the desire that was thick in his voice, a sound that was imprinted onto her very DNA.

  “You can review the agreement in the car.” He tossed an inky-black silk scarf onto the desk in front of her, and for the first time since he’d entered the room, she noticed that he was wearing a light peacoat. “You can also look over the list of potential blog topics that I sent. I’m curious which one catches your attention first.”

  “The car?” Picking up the fabric, she discovered that it was a kerchief, the type an old-time movie star might have once worn to protect her hair. “Where are we going?”

  “You agreed to go on a date with me.” The cocky smile he shot her made her feel like she was fifteen years old again, all knobby knees and fluttery feelings for the boy next door. “It’s date time.”

  “I agreed to go to dinner with you.” She pointedly checked out the clock on the wall. “It’s not even eleven in the morning.”

  “We’ll have dinner, too. Maybe more, if you’re good.” Damn it. The confidence in his voice, in every line of his body, shouldn’t have still been so sexy, and yet it was like his words cast out a hook that caught her and reeled her in.

  “You know damn well that I’ve never been good, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.” Even as she spoke, she found herself rising, reaching for the cardigan sweater that was part of the ensemble when Meg had dressed her up like a doll this morning.

  Theo frowned when she shrugged into it. “Don’t you have a heavier coat?”