“Wow. That’s really nice of you . . .” He shifted his weight, but didn’t move to put the infusion jar down. Finally, she registered his raised eyebrows and expectant look, putting two and two together to come up with the sum of duh.
“Carly! I’m Carly.”
“Jackson Carter.” He lowered the lemonade and glass to a soft patch of grass and extended his hand, which outsized hers three to one. “I’m not bothering you too much with the noise, I hope.” He dipped his chin in order to look her in the eye, and she noticed the slightest cleft in his clean-shaven skin.
“Um, no. Not too much,” Carly clarified with a sardonic quirk of her lips. “Anyway, I wanted to apologize. You know, for yesterday.” Her face flushed, but she pressed on, eager to get the apology over with. “I shouldn’t have thrown the remote at you. It was a stupid thing to do.”
“No it wasn’t.” He cocked his head at her, blond crew cut glinting in the sun.
“Excuse me?”
An all-American smile took over his features, causing the heat that had bloomed on Carly’s face to migrate down her neck.
“It wasn’t stupid. For all you knew, I was some stranger sneaking around your property with bad intentions. I’m glad the screen door was shut, though. You’ve got a killer arm.”
She resisted the urge to wince. The remote had been so far beyond repair, she hadn’t even bothered trying. “Still. I feel bad about your elbow,” she said, twisting a small patch of grass under the toe of one flip flop.
“What, this?” He flipped a thickly muscled arm up, pointing his elbow at her with a grin. “It doesn’t even hurt.”
Carly gasped at the sight of the three-inch bruise staring her in the face, and her gut settled into its new home somewhere around her knees. “Oh, God. It left a mark?”
“Hey, seriously, it’s no big deal. I’m just glad I didn’t hurt you when we bumped heads.”
His expression suggested he really meant it, but her embarrassment took over nonetheless. She was about to make a hasty retreat into the cool haven of her kitchen when Jackson caught her with his now-familiar boyish smirk, and the twist of his lips rendered her legs useless.
“So you’re an Islanders fan, huh?” His eyes flickered to her shirt, and Carly automatically smoothed her hands over the front to hide the coffee stain.
“Well, seeing as how there’s probably a permanent imprint of seat 14 in section 102 at Nassau Coliseum somewhere on my butt, I’m going to go ahead and say yeah. I’m a fan.”
Annnnnnd now there was no way he wasn’t going to look at her butt when she walked away. God, she should just not speak.
“Wow. And I thought driving into the city from all the way out here a couple of times a season was devotion,” he drawled, his half-smile melting into something a touch more reverent.
“It’s a four-hour drive, at least,” Carly replied, confused.
“Only ninety minutes, actually. But I think we’re talking about different cities.”
As far as she was concerned, there were no other cities. Carly pictured Pine Mountain’s location on the map in her mind’s eye, letting her focus travel outward past the Blue Ridge . . .
“Oh, hell no. Please tell me you’re not a Flyers fan.” Great pecs or not, Jackson was gonna have to go.
The kick of his lips returned in all its hot-man glory. “That I am.”
Carly groaned. “Well, everyone has their cross to bear, I guess.”
Silence settled between them for a noticeable beat, and it pressed her to go back inside. She’d offered her apology, he’d accepted in his own weird and flirty little way. Said, done, pick up your parting gifts at the door.
Wait, was he flirting with her?
Carly mashed down on the thought. Travis had flirted with her, too, in the beginning, and just look what that had gotten her. Keeping her mind on the kitchen was the only thing that was important here. Getting warm and fuzzy over the contractor was just plain stupid.
“Well, Jackson, I’m glad you’re okay, and sorry again for yesterday. Enjoy the lemonade.” The absence of her trademark composure was really starting to get under her skin, and she turned to make her long overdue retreat.
“Hey, Carly?”
She stopped to look over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me next weekend.” Jackson paused for a second and blinked, almost as if he’d been surprised to actually hear the words. “If I promise not to make any sudden movements,” he tacked on with a smooth chuckle that made her cheeks burn.
Carly’s pulse ricocheted through her veins. The word yes tasted sinfully good as it formed in her mouth, and for that split second, she actually considered saying it. But the memory of her phone call with Travis threaded through her brain, weaving over the yes with a whole bunch of reasons why she’d be nuts to say it. She’d come to Pine Mountain to run a kitchen for a little while and leave just as quickly. Men—even crinkly-eyed ones with traffic-stopping muscles—weren’t part of the deal.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. Not that I’m not flattered. And not that you’re not . . . well . . .” She trailed off, closing her eyes as she exhaled. “I’ve just got a lot going on with my job that keeps me pretty tied up. So I’m sorry, but I’ll have to pass. Thank you, though. It was nice of you to ask.” Carly had never babbled in her entire life, but boy was she making up for lost time.
“No problem. Sorry if I was out of line.” Jackson took a step backwards even though there was plenty of space between them.
“No, no. It’s fine. Just . . . yeah.” Ugh. How fast could she get back to the house?
“Well, thanks again for the lemonade. I’ll make sure to leave the infusion jar on the front porch when I’m done, if that’s all right with you.” Jackson nodded toward the jar at his feet, but she noticed that his smile had lost some of its zing.
“Oh, thanks. And, I guess . . . you’re welcome.”
The walk back to her house had never taken so long.
“Okay, so I need some help with a little problem, and it’s kind of a weird one.” Jackson sat back in his best friend Shane’s tiny kitchen, his chair creaking in disapproval at the seconds he’d had for dinner. Shane’s girlfriend Bellamy was training under some fancy New York chef at the Italian restaurant in Pine Mountain Resort, and she took her job seriously with a capital S. Whenever they hooked up for dinner, seconds were a foregone conclusion. Thirds were an even fifty-fifty.
“Oooh, this ought to be good.” Bellamy propped her elbows on the table and leaned forward to listen, green eyes sparkling with interest.
“Screw good. This scares me,” Shane quipped, draping his arm over the back of Bellamy’s chair.
She rolled her eyes, blond lashes sweeping up and around in a familiar gesture. “Ignore him, Jackson. What do you need?”
“I need a nonexistent girlfriend.”
Shane’s mouth popped open. “You need a huh?”
Jackson released a long breath. “Either that or the mother of all believable excuses. Take your pick.”
“Um, okay. I’m not really sure I follow,” Bellamy prompted, brow drawn tight over her confusion.
He gave a slight grimace. “I kind of shot my mouth off over at my ma’s the other day. It was an act of self-preservation, I assure you,” he added quickly. “But now she’s got this wild idea that I’m bringing a date to Dylan and Kelsey’s engagement party on the Fourth, and I don’t have one.”
“I don’t get it. If you need a date, why don’t you just ask somebody?” Bellamy wondered out loud, but Jackson cut her off with an emphatic head shake.
“I don’t want a bona-fide date. Any woman I ask to a family event is going to read way more into it than she should, and not wanting a girlfriend is what got me into this mess in the first place.”
Except that you asked someone just this morning, didn’t you, Romeo?
Jackson’s inner voice had niggled at him all day, even though he’d done his best
to stuff it down. Asking Carly out had been impulsive at best, and even now he couldn’t peg exactly why he’d done it. Except she’d looked so unassumingly pretty with her dark hair framing her face, and who could resist a girl in a lucky T-shirt, of all things? The softness of her beauty offset her fiery demeanor in a way that made him want to pull back all of her layers to find out where the two met. Something about her had whispered to him, and he would’ve thought for sure that he was losing his mind if the words hadn’t made so much damn sense.
Feed her, the voice had said.
Not that it mattered in the long run. Of course she’d said no, and why wouldn’t she? The notion that a total stranger would want to go to his brother’s engagement party with him skirted the edges of pretty fucking ridiculous.
But not as ridiculous as how badly he’d wanted her to say yes.
The edges of Bellamy’s lips twitched upward in just a hint of a smile, and she got up to slide an apple pie from its perch on the countertop. “Do I even want to know why you’re anti-girlfriend?”
Jackson shook off his strange thoughts of Carly for the umpteenth time. He exchanged a nanosecond’s worth of a glance with Shane, but then resorted to his default easygoing shrug-and-smile combo. “It’s nothing personal. I’m just happy being single. I mean, can you really see me picking out china patterns?”
Bellamy tipped her head in a nonverbal you may be right as she put the pie on the table and went back for plates. “Okay, fair. What about a stand-in? You don’t know anyone who would be willing to fake it for you, just for one night?”
Jackson and Shane both snorted. “Babe, that is so not something you should say to a guy. Ever,” Shane emphasized on a laugh.
“Oh, for the love of . . . I’m being serious!” She put the plates on the table and swatted Shane’s arm, which only made him laugh harder. “Stop being a smartass and cut this pie, would you? I mean it, Jackson. Maybe there’s a girl out there who would be sympathetic to your cause and wouldn’t mind a little acting.”
“Eh, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. The cloak and dagger thing isn’t really my style,” Jackson pointed out.
“Would you rather be thrown under the relationship bus? It doesn’t look like you have a whole lot of options,” she replied with a tart grin. “Unless you want to come clean or bring a real date.”
Shit. How come women were so frickin’ smart? “Good point. But it’s not like I can go to Rent-a-Girlfriend or something. How am I going to find a date who’s not a date in four days?”
“How about Molly O’Brien?” Shane asked.
Jackson shook his head. “She’s going out with Marcus Lawrenson.”
Shane made a face like he smelled something rotten. “Never liked that guy. Michelle Pierce?”
“Went out with her last year. She asked me to meet her parents on date three.”
“Okay, that’s a no. Come on. There must be somebody.” They sat in silence for a minute, both of their faces bent in concentration. Finally, Jackson had to admit defeat. As much as he wasn’t crazy about telling his mother the truth about his bachelor-and-loving-it lifestyle, he wasn’t really wild about telling another out and out lie, either. Coming clean was the only way out of this mess.
“What about Jenna?” Bellamy asked, and Shane smacked the table in a that’s perfect! manner.
Jackson considered the possibility. He’d met Bellamy’s friend from Philadelphia a handful of times, and she’d always been fun to hang out with. The fact that she lived a hundred miles away was a bit of a bonus—he could always blame a fake breakup on the distance. No harm, no foul.
Then why didn’t it feel right?
Jackson hedged. “Do you think she’d do it?”
Bellamy sat back in her chair wearing a triumphant grin. “She might. You want me to call her?”
The whole web of deception thing had a way of backfiring the minute it got past the little white lie stage, and Jackson was clearly crossing the line with this charade. He should just forget it and tell his mother the truth. He was an adult, after all. And she’d get over the disappointment eventually.
Except he’d done nothing but disappoint her so far in this arena. And she had really good reasons for wanting to see him happy. Ones he didn’t want to contemplate.
In the grander scheme of things, how many ripples could one fake date really cause?
Jackson blew out a breath and pasted a smile to his face. “That would be great. If she’s willing to come out for the weekend, I’d love to take Jenna to the party.”
Chapter Four
After trying everything from covering her head with both bed pillows to playing one of the meditative CDs Sloane swore by for relaxation, Carly bit the bullet and got out of bed. The banging coming from her backyard wasn’t horribly loud, but the source of the noise seemed to vibrate within her like the hum of a tuning fork.
A really sexed-up tuning fork. Whose titillating thrum reminded her that almost a year had passed since she’d experienced an orgasm that hadn’t been self-inflicted.
It was way too early for this.
Carly pulled a pair of yoga pants and a freshly-washed T-shirt from the top of her clean laundry pile and put them on. No way was she going to get caught without clean laundry—or worse yet, without a major article of clothing—again. She’d spent her few spare hours before work yesterday separating darks from lights and letting the detergent do the talking. Sadly, it had only taken three loads to wash just about every stitch of non-work related clothing Carly owned.
She padded out to the kitchen, grateful that she hadn’t been in too much of a bleary, post-work haze to set the auto timer on the coffee pot last night. Although things were really starting to gel at La Dolce Vita, the process of bringing the restaurant from vision to reality had had its share of growing pains. As a result, Carly had been popping off fourteen-hour days like Pez since the New Year. Even then, most of her precious little at-home time was spent in the sunny kitchen of the bungalow, ideas and recipes rattling through her head in various stages of readiness.
But she loved every self-affirming second of running the back of the house at La Dolce Vita, of having her name and her name alone on the kitchen, even if said kitchen was in teeny-tiny Pine Mountain. That success, combined with being far away from Travis while their names untangled, was enough to make putting a whole lot of hustle-and-go into a small-town restaurant worth it. Plus, if she was too busy to even take a bathroom break, then she’d definitely be too busy for those little pinpricks of loneliness that slipped past her defenses when she drifted off to sleep at night.
“Ugh, knock it off,” Carly muttered, wiping the sleep from her eyes. She wasn’t exactly a pity-party kind of girl, and living in Pine Mountain was only temporary. Plus, she had a kitchen. Her own kitchen, one she’d worked incredibly hard for.
So why did she still feel like a square peg trying to shimmy into a round hole?
As Carly poured herself a cup of coffee big enough to do the backstroke in, her eyes shamelessly skimmed the bank of windows on the rear of the house. Jackson’s sun-kissed head was barely visible through the glass, and she creased her brow in confusion. Either he’d shrunk about three feet overnight, or something was seriously amiss in her yard.
What the hell? Carly’s confusion gave way to pure surprise as she moved closer to the sliding glass door for inspection.
The entire deck had been cut away from the house, leaving a drop off of a couple of feet between the sliding glass door and the bare, damp earth below it. Three stout-looking wooden posts jutted up from puddles of long-hardened concrete, the furthest one from the house sporting a huge split down the center. Jackson maneuvered a shovel around the edges of the old concrete, trying to loosen the packed dirt from the murky gray edges, but it barely budged.
Carly watched, captivated. His sinewy shoulders tightened and flexed beneath his T-shirt, which clung to him in just enough places that she had a flash of envy for the cotton and stitching. His face was ben
t in concentration, yet still so open, that she had the strange urge to memorize him and keep him for later . . . until she belatedly realized he’d stopped what he was doing to wave at her through the glass.
Oh, crap. Now she had no choice but to open the door and face her bustedness full-on.
“Hi. Sorry to disturb you. I was just, ah, checking out the progress.” Carly’s inner voice high-fived her quick wits, making a genuine smile more manageable. “It looks like you’ve been busy.” She gestured down to the yard with one hand, watching the sunlight scatter as a lazy breeze ruffled through the trees.
“Yeah, but I can’t take all the credit. One of the guys I work with was out here with me for the better part of the afternoon yesterday. As a matter of fact, I’m waiting for him right now. Seems whoever put these posts in originally wasn’t planning on their ever being replaced. ’Fraid I’m going to have to jackhammer them out of here.”
The mention of heavy artillery quickly chased away the heat of Carly’s less than discreet staring. “Are you serious?”
Jackson’s doleful nod played against his mischievous grin. “Yeah, sorry. I was going to knock to warn you, but I didn’t want to wake you up until my buddy Micah got here.”
“Well, thanks for that,” she laughed. “Somehow I’m guessing I’d have been up either way. Is a jackhammer as loud as I think it is?”
His boyish excitement was obvious, and it zinged a bolt of heat down her spine, finishing with a deep tingle right between her hips.
“Louder.”
Oh. Lordy.
“Do you want to have a cup of coffee while you wait?” Carly blurted out the invitation before she could stop herself. Okay, fine, so it kind of turned the whole avoiding-him plan on its ear, but there was one small fact she just couldn’t get past.
It was in her nature to feed people, and she wanted him to say yes, plain and simple.
Gimme Some Sugar Page 5