by Jen Doyle
Jack leaned back, too, relaxing only slightly. “If it helps any, she kissed me.”
“There was an actual kiss?” Nate asked, straightening in surprise. “Are you even trying to make me not regret this?”
“She, uh, didn’t mention that part while you were upstairs?” Which meant Jack had just blown his own case. “Then how did you even...?”
“I know you,” Nate answered, “and I know her. You think I wouldn’t notice there was something going on?”
Yep, leave it to Hawk. Noticed everything, damn it. Including...
“Wait—you kissed her?” Nate asked, this time not to confirm the fact, but because he knew it wasn’t Jack’s MO at all. Then Nate let out a sigh while shaking his head.
Although he knew he deserved it, Jack was grateful to be spared the lecture. Lola deserved more. As Jack had told her, incidentally. Right before she kissed him. Yeah, he should probably just accept the fact that there were too many red flags here. What he’d done to Nate was bad enough; he couldn’t risk messing things up any further, as he had clearly just been about to do. So maybe he should just cut his losses and get out of here now.
Well, it had been a good ride. For a few days there, at least. It had all been a long shot anyway. The Hail Mary when he had no other play.
“I know.” Jack pushed off the truck and ran his hand through his hair. “Well, thanks for being willing to give me a chance.”
Reaching down for his bag, Jack looked up only when Nate said to himself, “I don’t know why I’m bothering. I seriously don’t. I should hit you again just for that.” Then he turned to face Jack. “Don’t think for a minute you’re leaving me here to deal with the wrath of Lola all on my own. You made this bed, you deal with lying in it.” He cringed. “Except, you know, a different analogy.” He took a few steps away from the truck and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Damn it. You kissed her.” Then he laughed, kind of to himself, and muttered, “You kissed Lola Deacon and lived to tell the tale.”
Jack had no idea what that meant. He was still caught up in the other part. “You want me to stay?”
Turning back to him, Nate snapped, “What I want is to play baseball and not have this shit show hanging over my head any more. Other than that, I have no idea.” He shook his head. “No freaking idea.”
That, Jack supposed, was something. Entirely unexpected, but something. “Nate, I—”
“No.” Nate cut him off, voice raspy.
For a moment Jack thought Nate was going to say something about Courtney. It was written all over his face. But what he ended up with was, “Dorie’s going in late tomorrow so don’t show up any time before two.” Without another look back, he climbed into the truck and was gone.
Chapter Seven
Lola was happy Deke was happy. Lola was thrilled the woman soon to be joining their family was Fitz, someone she already thought of as a sister. But Lola would be beyond ecstatic if she never had to hear even a hint of Deke’s skills in the bedroom again.
Alas, that was not to be at the moment, due to a quirk in the acoustics at the bar. Because despite being at the other end, crouched down to get something out of the fridge, Lola could hear every word Fitz was saying to Dorie.
“I mean, it’s like he catches every little thing. If I so much as breathe differently he knows I’m ready for hard and...” She shrugged and grinned. “It’s kind of amazing.”
Okay, fine, Lola grumbled to herself. If she could get past the sex part, she had to admit she was also happy Fitz finally had someone who worshiped her. Fitz was amazing, and she deserved a far better future than the past she’d had.
Of course Lola then began to wonder about her own future, and then came the selfish thought that she deserved to have someone worship her, too. Didn’t everyone? Once she started thinking that, however, she realized once upon a time in high school she had been worshiped. Having it twice seemed too much to ask. Wanting it with anyone other than Dave seemed downright blasphemous.
But, oh, how badly she’d needed to kiss Jack. To feel the heady lightness that came with being kissed. The feeling of being swept away without even a moment’s thought about the consequences. And with Jack there would be consequences—so many, it was difficult to count. One of them was walking into the bar right now and heading over to Dorie, a smile on his face so brilliant it nearly blinded everyone in the bar.
Or maybe the blinding part was the way Nate’s eyes darkened as Dorie turned to him, her hand going to his chest as she greeted him. It wasn’t the kiss that got to Lola so much as the look they shared. She missed intimacy even more than the physical act of sex—and she’d been missing it for a lot longer. Since before Silas was born, truth be told, although she’d never mentioned that to anyone.
She took more time than was necessary to restock the fridge. By the time she stood, Wash Fairfield and Jason Pike, two more members of their tight circle of friends, had joined them. With Deke in the back, she took their orders and was blending up a protein shake for Nate while only vaguely paying attention to conversation around her. Something about two of Wash’s farmhands being out, and he was on the lookout for help.
“You could always ask Ox,” Nate said. “He’s got some time on his hands.”
Lola could feel the sudden stillness all around her as she lifted the blender off its base.
“About that...” Wash said.
After pouring the shake, Lola put it in front of Nate. He looked up at her and then away.
The whole group was close, but Nate and Wash had been nearly inseparable from the moment Wash moved to town in elementary school. They’d stayed that way through college, after which Nate was drafted into Major League Baseball while Wash spent a few years in the NBA. When Nate came back to town earlier this year after checking out entirely for the two years prior, Wash was the one who’d settled back into the friendship the most easily. It wasn’t a huge surprise he was the one to call Nate out right now.
Although Nate surely knew what Wash was getting at, he hedged. “About what?”
“You really want to make me say it?” Wash asked.
Although he mostly gave the appearance of being completely unperturbed, a muscle in Nate’s jaw twitched. “The part about him getting Courtney pregnant?” he answered, an undercurrent of ice in his voice. “Honestly? I think I’d rather you didn’t.”
Wash refused to be put off. “So—what? We’re just supposed to welcome him with open arms?”
Nate didn’t answer right away. He stared at the glass in front of him for a few moments and then looked up just as Deke deposited a crate of glasses onto the counter next to her.
“You do whatever you need to do,” Nate said, gruffly.
“But you’re totally good with what he did,” Wash replied, more anger in his tone than disbelief, although that was there, too.
His eyes back on his drink, Nate gave a bitter laugh. “No. I’m definitely not good with it.”
“Then what the—?”
Wash only got a few words out before Nate’s anger came out. “I don’t know, okay? This entire thing is fucked. I still wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and I want to kill him. But...” He cut himself off, closing his eyes for a moment. “But I can’t seem to get it in my head to hate him.” When he opened his eyes again, his gaze went straight to Dorie and he smiled ruefully as he took her hand. “I just can’t.”
Even if someone had wanted to contradict him, the emotion in Nate’s voice would have stopped them. Lola couldn’t deny feeling a little choked up herself. And Wash, who probably knew Jack better than anyone else here other than Nate, was definitely giving Nate’s words a lot of thought. It took a few moments, but he nodded. “I might still have to hurt him next time I see him.”
“Full disclosure,” Nate murmured in response. “I may have hit him yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” As in the day of The Kiss?
Nate hadn’t given any indication he’d been aware he interrupted something, and she’d been grateful for that. She had no intention of kissing Jack again. And considering the way he’d practically run out of the room, the feeling was mutual.
That was perfectly fine. So, yes, her nerve endings were still a little frayed—it had been an amazing kiss—but she had a box of toys in her closet that she hadn’t bothered with since before the triplets were born, and last night had seemed like the perfect time to dig it out. Of course, she’d been interrupted before she could use one of them, but she considered it a step forward. A huge step and one she had Jack to thank for. There would be no more kissing Jack, however. And as long as that was the case, there was no need to mention any heat-of-the-moment activities to Nate.
At least that was her justification as she decided not to share. Deke, unfortunately, was watching her as she thought this. “You okay?”
She turned to him. “What?”
“You look a little flushed,” he said, watching her carefully.
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Or at least I will be as long as no one hurts my contractor.”
There was a distinct snort from Jason’s direction. She turned to him with a glare she’d honed even before she’d become a mom. Of course, being that every single one of these guys had her number, he just grinned and raised his bottle in her direction. “I think it’s really great you’re buying the house, though. It’s about time it had your name on it.”
Much better.
Deke, however, did not seem to be getting the same hint. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked first at her and then at Nate. “So, if we’re all ‘Kumbaya’ with Ox now, why are you hitting Lola’s ‘contractor’?” He actually used air quotes.
Letting the “Kumbaya” comment go, Nate shrugged. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.”
“Would the ‘this’ or ‘that’ have anything to do with the way he was eyeing up Lola the other night?” Deke asked.
Lola planted her hands on the counter and glared at him. Was he seriously getting protective again? “Eyeing me up?”
Completely ignoring the this-is-none-of-your-damn-business signals Lola was sending, Deke said, “So, Ms. Not-The-President-Of-His-Fan-Club, are you saying there isn’t something happening between you guys?”
“Of course not.” Because there wasn’t. One kiss did not a “something” make. Plus, Lola had a whole lot of issues all on her own, and Jack Oxford had about a thousand times more. So, yes, maybe the kiss was explosive enough to set off a whole array of thoughts running the gamut of the raunchy scale. But that didn’t mean she was interested in anything beyond the purely physical.
“Wait.” Wash’s temper climbed right back up to pissed off. “There’s something going on with Lola and Ox?”
“There’s not something going on with me and Jack,” Lola answered.
“Nate hit the guy!” Wash yelled. “I’m guessing there was something.”
“Hold on,” Deke said. “What happened to not having sex again until your eggs shriveled up and died?”
“Who said anything about sex?” Lola asked, possibly a bit too defensively. “And anyway, when did I say that?” Although it did sound vaguely familiar.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Deke answered, pretending to be all innocent and nice. “Maybe the time when the triplets were playing hide-and-seek under the table at Thanksgiving and you threatened to cut up their binkies into little pieces and sprinkle them over their beds like some serial killer?”
“I never told them that!” Lola swatted him with a towel.
“No, but you sure as hell told us.” He looked at Fitz for confirmation.
Fitz raised her eyebrows at him. “Maybe you should pick a different example. Like the time she said it after driving all over Iowa to find the exact replacement of the teddy bear Luke lost and then spent all night ‘distressing’ it so it looked exactly like James’s and Emmet’s.”
Yes, Lola did remember that. She’d had to drag it around outside in the dirt, run it through the washer, and then roll one of Dave’s weights all over it. She did remember saying something about hating her ovaries after that.
“Or in May,” Dorie added, “when she had a 102 degree fever, but had us hold her up so she could see Silas march in the Memorial Day parade.”
Yep. Then, too. That had been a miserable day. Except for the Silas marching part.
Seeing he wasn’t getting any assistance from the ladies in the room, Deke turned back to Lola. “He slept with his best friend’s fiancée, Lo. A guy like that is not relationship material.”
“Did you honestly just say ‘relationship material’?” Jason asked Deke. He shook his head. “Dude...”
Now Lola wanted to throw her hands up in the air. “Who said anything about a relationship? Maybe all I want is to have sex again at some point in my—”
Deke slapped his hands over his ears. “Please stop.”
“You started it!” She didn’t want to be talking about any of this in the first place.
“So,” Dorie interrupted, “Nate and I are having Ox come over tonight for the game and we were thinking it would be great if some of you joined us.”
Lola was pretty sure jaws actually dropped. Including, perhaps, Nate’s.
“We are?” he asked.
Dorie glared at him. “It was your idea.”
“I said I was thinking about it. I didn’t...” He shook his head, almost as if talking to himself. “You’re right. We are. And I hope you guys can come.” Then he turned to Lola. “Everyone. Bring the kids.”
“It’s Thursday Night Football,” Deke snapped, glaring at Nate even though he was still clearly on thin ice. “Lola needs to work.”
“Lola isn’t on the schedule,” Lola snapped back, because Deke wasn’t her boss, and now he was on thin ice with her, too. He was fully aware she was off at four today since she was working a double on Sunday. Although it was probably the worst idea ever, she said, “I’d love to come.”
* * *
Several hours later, she was regretting her enthusiastic response. This time it wasn’t the younger boys giving her a hard time, but Silas, who refused to get out of the car once they arrived. It was colder than Lola had realized, and she wasn’t dressed for a ten-minute interlude of standing outside in the driveway in the bitter wind. So on top of being frustrated, she was freezing her ass off. And losing her patience.
“Silas, I need you to come inside, and I need you to act like the big kid you are,” she said with as even a tone as she could manage, considering she’d just unbuckled all three of the younger boys and they were going to start in on each other if they didn’t get out of this car.
Silas, however, clearly sensed the balance of power had shifted, and knew that he held them all in his hands. His eyes stayed glued to the video game she had foolishly allowed him to play.
He shrugged. “Daddy let me play whenever I wanted to.”
The Daddy card? Dave had been dead almost three years and Silas was pulling it out now? He wasn’t even old enough to remember what Dave did or did not allow, although Lola was pretty sure he was right. In those last few months in particular her big, strong, take-no-prisoners, Army Ranger husband had been much more willing to take the path of least resistance than anything requiring an argument or creating conflict of any kind.
“I understand that, honey,” she answered, tears of both sorrow and frustration coming to her eyes. “But right now Uncle Nate is counting on us to come inside and be good guests and help him welcome his friend to Inspiration.”
She probably shouldn’t have added on that last part for a lot of reasons, the least of which was that it was flat-out manipulation of her
seven-year-old. But the words came out and his eyes brightened and she stashed the regret away.
“Uncle Nate’s friend? Iceman?”
“Uh huh,” she affirmed, resisting the urge to close her eyes and berate herself.
“Is he here yet?” He peeked out past the door frame.
And just as if he’d been summoned, Lola could feel a heated presence behind her.
“Hey, buddy.”
“Where did you come from?” Silas asked. “Where’s your car?”
“I left my car back at the other house,” Jack said, and Lola turned to see he was wearing the same type of running gear he’d been in the last time she saw him, the other day after they’d kissed. She searched his face for traces of where Nate had hit him, but there was nothing beyond the faint shadow of a bruise along his jaw. Then she realized he was watching her closely, his gaze staying on her long enough for all sorts of places inside her to come to life.
Goddamn it. She may have talked a good game in front of Deke, and, holy hell, that kiss, but she truly had no intention of anything further happening. None whatsoever. So all those places inside her needed to settle the hell down.
“I was hoping to see you here tonight,” he said, turning to Silas, and Lola’s heart started racing in a whole new way. It hadn’t escaped her notice he’d been distinctly distant toward the triplets the day of the flat tire, although he’d seemed to warm up to Silas fairly quickly. But he clearly knew how to handle seven-year-old boys.
“You were?” Silas’s eyes bugged out.
That right there was a problem Lola would do very well not to forget. This was not something she could mess with. Her boys were her life and, yes, she would go full-fledged Mama Bear if anyone hurt them. No matter how much she tried to fight it, however, it was impossible to deny her body’s response to the man as she turned to see him smiling at her. And it wasn’t nice and standoffish in the way a baseball superstar should be toward the mom of one of his biggest fans. No. This was the smile of a man who knew wicked, carnal things—and who kissed in a way that promised he could deliver.