Rising from the Ashes

by Jessica Prince

  “You’re a disgrace to the badge.”

  He waved off my comment without even a blink and switched topics. “So, you never answered my question. What are you so happy about this morning?”

  There was no way in hell I was going to tell Luke about Savannah. Breaking her walls down was a work in progress, and Luke had a bigger mouth than every damn woman in Cloverleaf combined. If Savvy found out that people knew about us, she would shut herself off tighter than she’d ever been. Nope, no way I was risking it.

  “What are you talkin’ about? I’m always in a good mood.”

  He eyed me skeptically. “Yeah, but not like this,” he said, waving his hand at me. “You were whistling when I walked up. You’re downright chipper this morning. What’s going on?”

  I turned back to the car and began working again. I needed him to get of here before I found myself spouting shit about Savvy that would undo all the work I’d already put in. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. Nothing’s going on. Just a good day, I guess.”

  Like an answer to my prayers, the radio on his shoulder screeched and pulled his concentration away from harassing me. He mumbled a few words into the radio and stood. “Gotta go. Got a drunk and disorderly.”

  I looked at my watch and glanced back up at him. “At nine thirty in the morning?”

  Luke chuckled as he called out over his shoulder, “Yeah. Apparently, Forrest Hendrix had a hard night of partyin’. Barb got pissed and locked him out of the house…naked.”

  The image of a naked Forrest Hendrix sent a chill down my spine. “Wear gloves,” I hollered after him.

  I was sitting at work later that morning, trying to concentrate on my job and not that smokin’ hot kiss Jeremy gave me before walking off again, when my cell phone rang on my desk. I looked down to see Emmy’s gray eyes smiling back at me, and slid my finger across the screen to answer. “Hello?”

  “OMG!” she exclaimed before I ever got the full word out.

  “Emmy, we’ve discussed this. I will hang up on you if you insist on text-talking. You’re better than that.”

  Her tinkling laughter rang through the speaker. “IDK what you’re talking about BFF, Savvy.”

  “Hanging up now,” I said with a chuckle. “I’m kind of busy right now, Em.” Trying not to spontaneously combust from thinking about Jeremy.

  “So, you’re telling me that you don’t want to hear the latest in the Cloverleaf grapevine?”

  That instantly piqued my curiosity. “You’re telling me you got gossip?” I asked, sitting up straighter in my chair.

  “Jeez, you’re such a gossip whore,” Emmy replied with a laugh.

  “Guilty as charged. Now, spill it, sister.”

  As Emmy spoke through the phone, my thoughts trailed back to Jeremy—how the muscles on his back had flexed while he’d been making breakfast this morning, how his chest and stomach felt when I ran my hands down them, how the kisses he’d given me were enough to crack the foundation I’d built over seven years of regret and self-denial. I was so wrapped up in everything Jeremy that I hadn’t listened to a single word Emmy had been saying.

  “Are you listening?”

  Emmy’s annoyed tone broke through my lusty haze and pulled my attention back. “Sorry…what?” I asked.

  “Ugh! You didn’t listen to a damn word I just said.”

  I rolled my eyes before responding, “Oh, untwist your panties, you big baby. You enjoy telling gossip as much as I like hearing it, so just start again from the beginning.”

  “Okay, well”—she took a breath for dramatic emphasis—“this is coming straight from the source, so you’re the first to find out.”

  The anticipation was killing me. I really was a gossip whore.

  “So,” Emmy continued, “I’d just opened up Virgie May’s, and I was setting up the pastry case when Charlotte came bursting through like her ass was on fire. And she just up and quit. Can you believe it?”

  My back went stiff at the mention of her name. “What? Did she tell you why she quit?” I asked, completely shocked.

  With everything that had happened between me and Jeremy since last night, I never stopped to think about how Charlotte might have handled the breakup. Clearly, she hadn’t handled it well.

  “She was totally hysterical,” Emmy said dramatically. “I’m talking tears and snot—the whole ugly-crying thing. I could barely make out a word she was saying.”

  Oh God.

  “What was wrong with her?” I asked in a small voice. I knew damn good and well what had been wrong with her.

  “Well, my lovely Savvy, that’s the good part. Charlotte and Jeremy broke up!” Emmy screeched into the phone.

  I had to pull it away from my ear to prevent any permanent hearing loss.

  “Um…did Charlotte say why they’d broken up?”

  “No,” Emmy replied. “She didn’t say why. She just said that he’d dumped her, so she couldn’t work here anymore because she knew we were all friends, and she didn’t want to risk running into him.”

  I sat there, trying to figure out how I should feel. While part of me was glad they had broken up because she was a horrible person, the other part couldn’t help but feel a little bad for her.

  “Well, it sucks that you’re out a waitress,” was the only lame-ass reply I could come up with.

  “You don’t sound surprised. Why don’t you sound surprised?” she demanded.

  “What? No! I’m totally surprised!”

  I was so full of shit. I knew Emmy saw right through me, but there was no way I was going to be the one to tell her about Jeremy’s little epiphany from the night before. She would sink her teeth into that one and never let go. Besides Jeremy himself, the only person more determined to get us back together was Emmy. I needed to keep this one close to the vest while I figured out what in the world I was going to do.

  Faking a work deadline, I quickly hung up the phone and dropped my head down on my desk. When had my life turned into such a roller coaster?

  I was losing my freaking mind. There was no doubt about it. It had been two weeks since Jeremy had started operation Prove Savannah Wrong, and it was official, I was losing—big time!

  The Thursday after he’d made me breakfast, he’d shown up at my job with Chinese takeout, and he’d eaten with me in my office. Friday, I’d pulled up to my house after work, and he had been there, cleaning out the gutters that I had neglected for as long as I’d lived in the house. The following Monday, he’d fixed my leaky bathroom faucet.

  Everything that had needed fixing around my house managed to be fixed over the last two weeks. He’d shown up with takeout or cooked for me at least four times each week. And every time he’d left, he would make sure to leave me with a skin-tingling, brain-muddling kiss that was hot enough to make my panties combust.

  Lizzy was the only friend who knew the full reason behind the end of my relationship with Jeremy. Therefore, she was the only one I could call to vent my sexual frustrations.

  “So, what’s he doing now?” she asked from the other end of the phone.

  I stood at the bay window in the small kitchenette area off of my kitchen with a cup of coffee in my hand. “Mowing my lawn.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” she replied.

  I pulled the phone from my ear, snapped a quick picture and texted it to her. A few seconds later, she put me on hold to check out what I’d just sent.

  “Hot damn! Has he always been built like that?”

  I looked back out my window at Jeremy, taking in the broad chest, ripped abs, and muscular arms pushing the mower around my front lawn. Sweat was running down his sexy-as-sin torso, pulling my eyes to the worn out jeans that were resting low on his hips. The white T-shirt he’d shown up in earlier had been discarded and was hanging out the waistband of the back of his pants. He was a walking advertisement for sex, and even my neighbors couldn’t help but come outside to appreciate him.

  I let out a sexually repressed
sigh and went back to my conversation with Lizzy. “He’s bulked up a bit over the years, but yeah, for the most part, he’s always been pretty cut.”

  She was silent for several seconds. “No offense, babe, but how in the ever-living hell did you give up having sex with that for the past seven years?”

  I leaned my head against the glass and squeezed my eyes shut. “With an iron will.”

  She started laughing on the other end of the phone. “How’s that working out for ya right now?”

  “Well, considering I’m two seconds from knocking his ass out just so I can take advantage of him, I’d say not so good.”

  “So, he’s still leaving you hot and bothered every night?” she asked, still chuckling.

  I wanted to reach through the phone and choke her out.

  “Yes, he is. And it’s really starting to piss me the hell off.”

  “Oh, someone’s edgy when she isn’t getting laid.”

  I let out a low growl. “It’s not just that. It’s the fact that he insists on turning me on almost every friggin’ day, and then he leaves me high and dry. If I had balls, they’d be blue as a fucking Smurf right now.”

  That set Lizzy off into a fit of hysterics. I couldn’t appreciate the humor in my situation at the moment.

  “I’m serious, Lizzy! Maybe I should roofie him. Can guys still get it up when they take that shit?”

  “Why don’t we try to stay away from the felonies? Have you tried something simple like, I don’t know, maybe seducing him?” She said it like I was an idiot for not coming up with that plan already.

  A light bulb went off, and I knew exactly what I had to do. “Lizzy, I gotta go.”

  “It’s about damn time you pulled your head outta your ass!” she shouted right before I disconnected the call.

  Armed with a plan, I ran to my bedroom and started stripping out of my ratty sweats, and then I went on the hunt for the perfect outfit. Five minutes later, I headed out to my front yard just as Jeremy was finishing up. If we lived anywhere other than Texas, my plan wouldn’t have worked. It was one of the only times I was thankful for Texas weather.

  I spread my beach towel out on the freshly cut grass, and began rubbing sunscreen onto my bikini-clad body. Thank God I’d never been all that modest about my body, or I might not have been able to pull this off. After I was properly SPFed, I slid my sunglasses on, stuck my earbuds in my ears, scrolled through my playlist for The Neighbourhood, and lay back, propping one knee up in an attempt to look sexy yet casual at the same time.

  After about five minutes, I started to doubt my plan when Jeremy hadn’t made his way over to jump my bones, but then a large shadow spread over me, blocking out the sun. I lifted my sunglasses and saw Jeremy standing above me, wearing a knowing grin. Without a word, he reached down for the glass of iced tea I’d sat next to me and guzzled it.

  “Thirsty?” I asked with a sassy smile.

  He gave me a crooked smile and laughed. “Yeah, just a little.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows and crossed my feet at my ankles. “Kinda hot for November, isn’t it?”

  “Seeing as you’re lying there in a bikini, I’d say, yeah, it is.”

  Why isn’t he all over me yet?

  “You know”—he took a seat beside me on the grass and lay back with his hands behind his head—“I know what you’re doing, and it’s not gonna work.”

  Shit.

  I could feel a blush creeping up my neck to my cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied. “I’m just trying to get a little sun.”

  “Sugar, all you have to do to get me to sleep with you is say four little words. We. Are. A. Couple. It’s not that hard.”

  I let out a huff and lay back down, completely defeated that my plan hadn’t worked. The asshole was even more stubborn than I was! I didn’t know that was possible. “Is it a crime for a girl to work on her tan?” I replied testily.

  Jeremy stood, and to my displeasure, pulled his shirt from his waistband and put it on. “Jesus, you’re stubborn, woman!”

  I shot to my feet, full of not-so-righteous indignation. “Look who’s talking, asshole! You kiss me like you want to fuck me every damn time you see me, but you absolutely refuse to make a move. What do I have to do? Put it out there on a silver damn platter for you?”

  Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest and stood his ground. “You know exactly what you have to do.”

  “Damn it, Jeremy! Have sex with me!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, not caring that my neighbors were still on their porches, enjoying the view of Jeremy.

  “Say we’re a couple.”

  “Oh!” I turned and stomped off toward my house. “Kiss my ass!” I shouted over my shoulder.

  “I’d do that too—if you’d just admit we’re together!” he called after me.

  I flipped him the bird and slammed the door before he could say anything else.

  Two weeks.

  Two. Fucking. Weeks.

  That was how long I’d been making Savannah suffer, but I was starting to think I was the only one suffering.

  If my dick hadn’t hated me before, it was a sure thing now after two weeks of self-induced agony. I was crazy!

  That damn woman was going to drive me completely batshit crazy. There was no way in hell I would ever admit it to her, but I’d come so close to just caving many times. If I had to jack off one more time, I was scared I might actually go blind. Every time I was around her, my cock turned into a friggin’ heat-seeking missile pointed right in her direction.

  I had been determined before, but she’d turned this into a fucking war. I was going to break her like a wild horse if it was the last thing I did.

  I headed to my truck, muttering curses about Savannah the entire way. When I climbed in, I had to adjust the ever-present hard on in my pants to get comfortable enough to drive. If any of the guys knew the torture I was putting myself through, they’d never let me hear the end of it.

  If the blood loss to my brain—because it was all stored in my dick—didn’t kill me, I knew Savannah was going to be the death of me. But damn was it going to be sweet when I finally had her.

  Even after all these years, I remembered almost everything of our time together. For how hard we fought each other, we loved twice that. She was playing hard to get, but no one on Earth could convince me that Savvy didn’t still want me.

  And all the pain and suffering I was going through was going to be so worth it once I had her. I just had to stick to my guns. I already had a very creative, very detailed list of how she could make up all my current physical pain up to me.

  I was starting to wonder if I could get away with killing Jeremy and using temporary insanity as my defense. I felt that all the sexual frustration he was intentionally causing was sending me over the deep end. The women in that jury would have to understand my dilemma when they saw a picture of Jeremy without his shirt on.

  “Savannah? Are you listening?”

  For the past few weeks, my brain had been on one channel, and all that channel played was Jeremy Matthews, twenty-four/seven. I was even dreaming of the bastard every night.

  I looked up to see Ben standing in the doorway of my office. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  Ben gave a little chuckle before tucking his hands in the pockets of his designer slacks as he leaned against the doorframe. “Where’s your mind been the past few days?”

  Nowhere I want to admit to you. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately. But don’t worry, I won’t let it affect my work.”

  Embarrassment washed over me at the idea that I’d been so transparent to someone who didn’t even know me that well. Just because I didn’t need my job financially didn’t mean I didn’t want it. I liked what I did and who I worked with, so I always tried my hardest not to let me personal life bleed into my professional life.

  Ben pushed off the wall and made himself comfortable in the only other chair in my office. “I’m
not worried about your work. I’m more concerned about you. You’ve been…on edge for several days now.”

  I could tell by the twitch at the corner of his mouth that he’d wanted to phrase that statement very differently. “You mean, I’ve been acting like a raving bitch?” I asked with a smile of my own.

  “Hey, you said it, not me.”

  I threw my head back and laughed for the first time in days. If I couldn’t appreciate the humor in my situation, it was going to drive me batshit crazy. “Yeah, sorry. It’s been a trying few weeks, I guess you could say.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  The last thing I was going to talk to Ben about was my sex life—or in this case, the lack thereof. “Nah, I’m pretty sure everything will work itself out soon.” Either Jeremy and me were going to go at it like rabbits soon, or one of us was going to end up in jail.

  Ben stood from the chair and headed for the door. “Okay. Well, I’m here if you need me.”

  His sincerity made me happy that we’d been able to stay friends after his failed attempt at a date. “Thanks, Ben.”

  “I’m heading to the deli around the corner to grab some lunch. Want to go with me?”

  My stomach let out a sound, selling me out to the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast. “Yeah, that sounds good.” I grabbed my purse from the bottom drawer of my desk and shut down my computer. “Let’s go.”

  I’d managed to get away from the garage long enough to grab a bite to eat. The last thing I’d expected to see when I turned the corner on Briar Street was Savvy walking into Briar Deli with that dickhead, Ben. That was all it took for the fine thread my control was hanging by to snap. Before my brain could register my actions, I was storming through the door and straight up to the table where they were sitting, looking all fucking cozy.

  “Well, don’t y’all look too cute?” I spit out before I could think about what I was saying. The only things I could concentrate on were Savannah looking like a walking pinup model in a tight ivory skirt that should be illegal with her legs and the twat who was sitting way too close to her.