by Laura Drewry
And it was all of him, still buried inside her, and both of them so very happy to keep him there.
“Well,” she sighed, tucking her face up against his neck and breathing him in. “Was it worth the wait?”
“You make it sound like we’re done,” he murmured. “We’re just getting started, but hells to the yeah it was worth it.”
—
If it wasn’t for the fact that Pete had been alone at the hotel for way too long, Jack would still be in Maya’s bed with her, still touching her, still tasting her, and still grinding out her name whenever she ran her fingers down the length of him.
Just thinking about how many times she’d done that made her smile into her pillow.
The only time they’d let go of each other was when she got up to throw his clothes in the dryer, but even then he’d followed her out to the machines and pressed himself against her back while he leaned in to kiss her neck. And those hands…ho-ly…they didn’t touch, they worshipped, and her breasts had been their altar.
She’d slept a little after he left, but it was a rare day she stayed in bed past seven anyway, even on Sundays when her shop was closed. She didn’t know what time Jack would be back but she couldn’t look like this when he got there.
God, looking the way she did, it was a wonder he hadn’t run screaming out of there hours before.
She needed to be clearheaded when he got back, because she needed to tell him about Griffin, and she needed to do it without scaring him off. Before that, though, he needed to tell her what happened last night. He’d muttered something about going to Genie’s, but that was as much as she’d gotten out of him before he’d rolled her over and put his mouth to much better use.
Her girlie parts were still tingling.
Showered and dressed, and with the sheets in the wash, Maya had just taken a bite out of her piece of toast when the doorbell rang. Giddy, she almost fell as she rushed down the stairs. She twisted the lock, yanked the door open, and once again cursed herself out for not using the peephole first.
“Griffin! Hi!”
“Hi.” As good an actor as he was, he didn’t even try to pretend he didn’t notice her reaction, just blinked his piercing blue eyes and winced a little. “I left you a message last night saying I’d be in town, but I’m guessing you didn’t get it. This is a bad time, isn’t it?”
Worst imaginable and yet so perfect.
“Uh, no, it’s…it’s fine. Come on in.” Before closing the door behind him, she poked her head out and looked around the parking lot, then grinned at him. “What? No entourage today?”
His mouth lifted in a half-smile. “Lip like that’s part of the reason you’re still single, you know.”
“I know.” Apparently her choice of sleeping attire was the other, but that would never be something Griffin had to worry about.
Just like the other times he’d come over, he was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, this one all black, from the jacket to the shirt, right down to the shoes. And just like the other times, she still couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the fact that Griffin-freakin’-Carr was sitting in her living room.
After the requisite hostess bit of making small talk while she brewed him some coffee, they sat down and got straight to business.
“So,” he said, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Have you decided?”
Maya swallowed hard and nodded. If he’d shown up twenty-four hours earlier, she’d still be nodding, but the answer would have been completely different.
“I’m sorry, Griffin. I can’t.”
He didn’t look surprised. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised.
“You have no idea how close I came to saying yes,” she said. “Or how much it kills me to say no.”
“Then say yes.” He sat back in his chair looking wholly uncomfortable. He’d once told Regan he wasn’t used to people telling him “no,” and apparently that hadn’t changed. “We both want this, Maya. You said yourself that after what happened with your ex, it would take one hell of a miracle for you to trust anyone like that again, that adoption would be harder as a single parent and—”
“I know, I said all that, and I was right, too. The thing is…” Did she want to tell him about Jack? No. It was still new, still too new to share, especially with someone outside her core circle, especially when she wasn’t even sure what was going to happen with him. “On paper, it’s ideal.”
“But?”
Maya sighed, resigned to the fact that Jayne was right. “But I want more.”
“More what? More money?” A glimmer of hope sparked to life in his eyes. “The paperwork I sent you outlines all that: the house, the monthly support payments, schooling, medical expenses.”
“We’re in Canada,” she said, laughing lightly. “Medical expenses aren’t the problem.”
“Then what? You want a new car? Done. You don’t trust that I’ll make good on these promises? No problem, I’ll give you a lump sum payment right now, just tell me how much to make the check out for.”
“It’s not the money, Griffin, though you’re making a hell of an argument. When I said I wanted more, I meant more, like the whole kit and caboodle. I want the fairy tale.”
The glimmer flickered a second longer then died. “You understand, of course, there’s no such thing anymore, and that as two single parents both focused on the care of our child, we stand a much better chance of making it work than we would if we were married.”
“Married?”
“I’m not saying we should get married.” He took a slow sip of his coffee, winced, then set it down again. “I’m just saying that most marriages end in divorce, and most of those divorces are vicious. With this arrangement, there wouldn’t be any of that, because we’ll have agreed to terms beforehand, and once I sign a deal, I never renege.”
“I’m sorry.” And she truly was. If he wanted to have a child half as much as she did, she knew exactly what this was doing to him, but the difference between her and him was, of course, blindingly clear. “You understand, of course, that you’re Griffin-freakin’-Carr and there’s probably a million women out there who’d be only too happy to have your baby. I mean, seriously, step outside—you’ll probably meet half a dozen in the first block.”
“Hardly.” His face softened as he sighed. “I wanted it to be you, Maya, because you wouldn’t be like those other million women. The fact that you took this long to think about it proves that. And even if there were a million women—which is a nice stroke to my ego, thank you—how many of them do you think would agree to it because they want a child as much as I do, and how many would do it just to get their name in a magazine?”
“Okay, well, you might be on to something there, but still.”
Griffin let his head fall back against the couch and stared straight up at the ceiling, his fingers tapping out an uneven rhythm against his mug.
“What’s with the women in this town anyway?” After a long moment, he finally lifted his head and laughed, shaking his head slowly. “A year ago I offered Regan a job as my personal stylist and she refused, and now you’re refusing to have my baby. Is there something in the water here or are all you Canadians so disagreeable?”
She started to laugh, then stopped when she heard the door open downstairs.
“Oh boy,” she murmured. “Okay.”
“What?”
A second later, Pete charged into the room, tail swishing, tongue hanging out, and headed straight to Maya first, then over to sniff the new guy.
“Who’s this?” he asked, lifting his mug out of Pete’s reach while he gave him a one-handed chin rub.
“This is Pete, most handsome boy ever.” She pushed off the couch and made it to the apartment door just as Jack stepped inside. “And this is Jack.”
“Holy shit.” Jack stopped dead in his tracks, mouth open, not even blinking. “You’ve got Griffin Carr in your apartment. Griffin-freakin’-Carr’s petting my dog.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “A
nd he’s going to be covered in dog hair if you don’t do something about Pete.”
Maya wrapped her hands around his arm and tugged him in a little farther.
“Jack Rhodes, Griffin Carr.”
As Griffin pushed up off the couch to shake Jack’s hand, his eyes narrowed and his head tipped slightly.
“Jack Rhodes. Why do I know that name? Jack Rhodes.”
While Griffin went back to his spot, pondering that, Jack’s eyes widened at Maya in a silent kind of “what the hell” question, but she just shook her head.
“So, uh, Griffin…can I call you Griffin?…What brings you to—”
“Jack Rhodes!” Griffin exploded. “No way…You’re not…Apollo1-and-2-Jack-Rhodes are you?”
“Uh, yeah.” With a look of uncertainty, Jack’s gaze flicked from Griffin to Maya and back. “Is that bad?”
“Holy shit—Jack Rhodes! I love those games! My nephew got me hooked on the first one when it came out—before TMJ picked it up—and then I made my assistant stand in line for six hours to get me a copy of the second one the day it came out.”
“You did not.”
“No shit. Dude almost quit on me that day. My nephew’s going to stand in line for me for the third one.”
“That’s…” Jack’s grin kept getting bigger. “Griffin-freakin’-Carr plays Apollo. I don’t believe it.”
“I don’t believe I’m sitting here talking to the guy who came up with the idea for those games! Mercy’s the best!”
“Okay,” Maya muttered over an eye roll. “I’ll just leave you two to your mutual fan club meeting and go finish my toast.”
Neither one of them even looked up and for the next little while she puttered around the apartment, moving the sheets into the dryer and finishing her toast as they went back and forth over how to get past the Nygaard patrols in Level 3 and how brutal Griffin’s routine had been to get in shape for his last movie.
“You know what would be really cool?” Griffin asked, then plowed ahead without waiting for Jack to say anything. “If you guys could make the games into an app or get it online like WoW or League of Legends, that way we could play it anywhere, not just when we’re at home with our consoles.”
“Yeah, that’s a whole different thing,” Jack said. “And right now we can’t do anything until I get some of the next one written.”
Griffin leaned over his knees again, his expression intent on everything Jack said. “What’s the problem? What d’you need?”
“I need ideas, characters, missions…you name it.”
“Are you going to have new characters in the next one?”
“A couple, yeah.”
Maya couldn’t tell who grinned first or who grinned biggest, but suddenly they were both nodding and laughing and guy-handshaking until Griffin’s phone interrupted. He scanned the text quickly, stuffed the phone in his pocket, and pushed himself to his feet.
“I gotta go, but I’m totally in, Jack. You just let me know what you need and when you need it, and we’ll make it work.”
“Great!” Jack punched Griffin’s number into his contact list and laughed, shaking his head the whole time. “Griffin-freakin’-Carr’s going to be in my game. Holy shit.”
Maya followed Griffin down the stairs then smiled up at him when he hesitated at the door.
“Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
“Sorry.”
He bobbed his head in a shallow nod. “It’s him, isn’t it? You think he’s going to be your fairy tale.”
Is that what she thought? No. Is it what she hoped? Hell yeah.
“We’ll see.”
It took him a second but eventually he flashed her one of his runner-up-for-the-sexiest-man-alive smiles.
“There were a couple other women at that ball game last summer,” he teased. “Those other friends of yours…they both seemed unaffected by the whole Hollywood thing, too. Think either of them would consider it?”
“Well, let’s see. One’s married and the other one’s basically living with a cop. What do you think?”
“Damn. And you’re sure—?”
“Griffin.”
“Okay.” Lifting both hands, he stepped outside, where a black sedan sat idling. “But if you change your mind…”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
With a parting smile, he pulled open the passenger door. “Make sure Jack calls me!”
Maya waved him off then headed back upstairs, where Jack was still shaking his head, still grinning, and still sitting right where they’d left him.
“So,” she said, lowering herself to the cushion beside him. “About last night.”
Chapter 14
“I just grabbed a spoon.”
Ross Geller, Friends, “The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate”
At first Jack thought she’d meant what they’d done last night, or how many times they’d done it. Or what he’d promised he was going to do to her tonight.
Clearly he was wrong.
“Come on, you can help me make the bed while you tell me.”
“Why make it if we’re just going to mess it up again?” He wagged his brow at her, but she just shoved the pillowcases at him. “But later, right?”
“Definitely later.” She laughed. “Now talk. What happened at Genie’s?”
Jack didn’t want to talk about it, mainly because he still wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it. There was too much anger and too much frustration clouded together to sort out yet, and right smack in the middle of it was Maya, who hadn’t done anything wrong yet somehow ended up in the eye of the storm.
And now bent over the corner of the bed, pulling up sheets he’d help mess up last night, her butt right there, right where he could just reach out and…
“Later, Jack.” She didn’t even look up when she said it, which just made him grin stupidly.
“Yeah, can we narrow down terms on what ‘later’ means?” Moving in behind her, he leaned when she leaned, his body hovering just above hers. She smoothed the sheet a little, then set her hands on top of his and pulled his arms tight around her waist.
“You’ve been here over an hour, Jack, and you haven’t even kissed me yet, so you’ve got some work to do before we get anywhere near these sheets again.”
“You’re right.” He eased her hands up around the back of his neck, made sure they were linked together, then slid his own hands slowly down her arms, muttering quietly when she wiggled her butt back against him.
Her head rolled to the right and Jack was there, kissing his way down the side of her neck while his hands moved to her stomach and inched their way under the hem of her shirt. There, that little shiver of hers, that catch in her breath, the satiny softness of her skin, that’s what he needed, that’s what fueled him, made him want more, and made him want to give her more.
“Jack.” His name was hardly a breath on her lips, but it slammed him hard, sending him staggering back a half-step, and in that time, she turned in his arms, pushed up on her toes and kissed him, her pretty little mouth sapping him of every ounce of muscle he’d worked so hard to build.
He’d never be knocked down by another fist, but the simple touch of her lips against his and he was useless.
“Is it later now?” he groaned.
Snort-laughing, she dropped back to her heels and shook her head. “Come here.”
With one pillow half-stuffed in a case and the other not at all, she propped them up against the headboard and motioned for him to sit.
“Clothes on,” she said. “For now.”
“What?” Whining, he kicked off his shoes and sat up on the bed with his legs stretched out. “What kind of bullshit is this?”
“Hold your horses, you big baby.” She slipped out of the room and came back a few seconds later with his half-full coffee mug in her hand. “Now tell me what happened at Genie’s last night.”
“Come on, Snip.” He went to reach for her again, but she scooted to the other si
de of the bed, where she sat cross-legged, waiting for him to start.
“It’s important, Jack. Something happened, and I’m guessing it wasn’t good, which is why you came back here to me last night.”
And she’d let him in even though he’d left her hanging a few hours earlier. Just like how she’d let him back in to her life after he’d left her hanging for two years.
He didn’t deserve her, but God almighty he loved her. Always had. And now that he had her, he’d do anything to keep her…which was why he didn’t tell her everything.
“Oh my God.”
He’d lost track of how many times she’d muttered that as he’d gone over what Genie had told him, but her expression went from shock to anger to sadness a few times before he was done.
Her fingers rested lightly on Jack’s knee when she finally shook her head. “I had no idea Burt had been through anything like that.”
“No one did. Will and Tammy still don’t.”
“Why?” She squinted through her question as if that would make the puzzle easier to understand. “Why keep it a secret?”
“I don’t know, but he must’ve had his reasons.”
“And if Genie was so grateful to you for helping him turn that corner, why would she say such an awful thing about you at the rehearsal dinner?”
“She’d had too much to drink,” Jack said, staring down at his hands twisting in his lap. “She didn’t mean it.”
Maya scooted closer to him and took his hands in hers. “I’m so sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” He spread his hands wide and smiled down when she pressed hers against his, palm to palm. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Maybe not, but I know how much you love Genie, so it couldn’t have been easy hearing all that from her.”
Her hair fell forward when she looked down, so Jack eased it back over her shoulder.
“What are we doing to do?” she asked.
“We?”
“Well, yeah, I sort of thought we were a ‘we’ now. Aren’t we?”
“God I hope so,” he breathed.
“Okay, then. Do we do what she asked and wait until after the wedding to tell Will?”