Jake Harrison is the right guy for me.
CHAPTER 23
Jake
I stare out at the view from my balcony, watching the people milling around below. The sun is setting, the sky transitioning to inky black.
There’s a quiet knock at the door. I know exactly who it is. She stayed behind by the beach as I came up here, had a shower, freshened up. I wanted her to come up to my room with me, but she insisted we not be seen together.
Whatever. I want to be with her any way I can.
For me, this is way beyond just physical. Sure, she’s totally gorgeous. But it’s more than that. She’s a woman with her own brain, whose identity isn’t all wrapped up in how she looks or the latest celebrity whatever. She’s fun, smart, driven. She’s her own person, confident, together.
Women like her are about as common as . . . well, they’re not common at all.
I push through the fine fabric of the curtains into the room and stride over to the door. I pull it open and see her standing in front of me. She looks breathtakingly beautiful, and I don’t hesitate to pull her into me and kiss her, crushing my lips against hers with all the passion and anger and pent up feelings I’ve been carrying around inside of me.
I kick the door behind us without skipping a beat as our mouths blend with one another’s, my desire for her “firming up.” Oh yeah, my body knows exactly what it wants right now.
“That’s quite a welcome,” she says.
“We’re only just getting started.” I lift her dress up over her head as she tugs at my trunks.
There’s no messing around. She wants me, and I want her. Before you can say “naked, sexy time,” we’ve discarded our clothes, and we’ve got our hands all over one another. I could explode with my urgency to have this woman, so I waste no time getting her to the bed. We fall onto the bed and she lets out a squeal—of excitement or pain, I’m not sure which.
“Did I hurt you?”
Her laugh tells me she’s fine. “You’re heavy.”
“Scoot up the bed, and I’ll kiss you where it hurts.”
She shoots me one of those smiles of hers that melts my insides as she slips from under me. Once she’s lying comfortably in the middle of the bed, I can’t help but gaze at her. I get to work on her beautiful breasts. I love the way she responds, and before long, she’s moaning and writhing, just the way I want her to be.
“Protection,” she says after she’s given me a particularly intense kiss with her hands roving to where I most want them to be, rendering me cross-eyed with want.
“I’m on it.” Cross-eyed or not, I don’t need to be asked twice. I reach across to the nightstand and grab a packet I’d put there earlier in expectation of this very moment.
Once I’m ready to go, I position myself, ready for the magic inevitable. And my God, does it feel freaking incredible to be back inside her, her legs wrapped around me, every fiber of my being focused on her, on this feeling, on never wanting this to end. And I forget about hoping she feels the same way about me, I forget about Tim’s warning, I forget about those men in orange shirts on the beach. Everything is her. Everything.
And it’s exactly where I want to be.
Afterward, we lie together, catching our breath, our bodies hot, thoroughly satiated. I push her hair away from her face and kiss her forehead. “I love you,” I whisper in her ear.
Her body jerks as she sits bolt upright, my words clearly breaking through her post-coital exhaustion. “Say that again.”
I smile, warmth spreading through my belly. I will gladly repeat it, today and every day. “Taylor Jennings, I love you.”
I watch her face as she processes my declaration. If my assessment is correct, she runs through a gambit of emotions, from shock to disbelief to curiosity with perhaps a hint of relief thrown in for good measure. And then, finally, a great big Cheshire Cat grin beaming down at me. “You do? You love me?”
I pull her back down to me and wrap my arms around her. “Of course I do. Taylor, I’ve loved you for a long, long time.”
She pushes herself up on her elbow to look into my eyes. “You have?” I nod. “But when? How? When?”
I laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this happy, this complete. “Since the kiss in the chair swing. I mean, I fought it, God, how I fought it, but I knew. From that moment, I knew.”
“But-but I was only sixteen then, and I’m almost twenty-seven now. That’s over ten years. Ten years, Jake!”
I shrug, because what else can I do? Ten years of loving her from afar, ten years of watching her date other guys, guys who weren’t worthy enough to lick the dirt off her shoes, guys who should have been me. “Crazy, I know. I mean, what kind of idiot falls for a girl he’s only kissed once when he was a teenager? I thought I was meant to play the field, date a bunch of women, work out what I wanted. But you know what?”
“You decided to do that anyway?”
“Only because I couldn’t have you. I told myself to forget about you, that you were just some sort of teenage crush I’d grow out of. I never did.”
“But you dated all those tall, skinny blondes that look nothing like me.”
“Exactly. I compensated. Some would say over-compensated.” She rolls her eyes, and I’m certain she’s thinking of my player reputation. I don’t care. For me, that’s all in the past, right where it belongs. “I’d say I buried myself in enough women who looked nothing like you, who acted and thought nothing like you, so I could try to forget you.”
“But it didn’t work.”
I shake my head. “After all this time—”
“After all those women,” she interrupts, a glint in her eye.
“Okay. After all this time and all those women, it turns out I’ve known exactly what I want since I was eighteen years old.”
She bites her lip, her face glowing. “Me?”
I cup the back of her head with my hand and brush my lips against hers. “You.”
She crushes her lips against mine, wrapping her arms around me and pressing her hot, naked body against mine. As wonderful as this is—and as much as my downstairs department wants it to continue—I need to know how she feels.
“Taylor?” I say between kisses.
“Mmm?”
By now, she’s trailing kisses down my neck while her hands skim over my chest, and abs and I tell you, I can barely see straight. “God, that’s good.”
“Oh, I’ve only just begun, Harrison.”
As one of her hands shifts lower down my body to hit its new target, it takes more inner strength than I ever thought I was capable of to pull hands her off me. “Taylor.”
“You don’t like it?”
I nod at my crotch where things are standing to attention, ready for Phase II. “What do you think? I love it. I love you. It’s just—”
She looks down. “You want to know how I feel.”
I place my fingers delicately under her chin and lift it so I can see her beautiful face. I suddenly feel nervous. “How do you feel?”
Her eyes flash to mine, and her features suddenly appear solemn. “This is all so new, but,” she pauses, and I hold my breath, “I-I think I love you, too.”
My happiness threatens to burst out of me. I lift her up and settle her in my lap and kiss her so hard and so long, we’re at risk of both ending up with Mick Jagger lips by the end of it.
I can’t get enough of this woman. She’s invaded my every thought, and my heart is full.
And I never want to let her go.
CHAPTER 24
Taylor
“When did you say you’re due to land?” a very stressed-sounding Julia says.
I move my phone to the other ear and steal a glance at Jake’s broad back as he stands by the airport conveyor belt. He insisted on collecting my luggage as well as his own, so I’ve taken the time to check my phone—which I had completely ignored for the last couple of days, what with all the emotional craziness, declarations of love, and wild sex I’d been hav
ing in Cabo.
Priorities, my friends, priorities.
Last night with Jake was, well, it was nothing short of incredible. And I’m not just talking about the sexy times, although being with Jake is easily the best of my life, no comparison. Telling me he’d loved me all this time completely blew my mind. Seriously, I was almost surprised not to see my brain splattered all over the walls of his hotel room after that declaration.
Those three little words, followed by another one of those spectacular show and tell sessions in the privacy of his hotel room, filled my heart almost to the brim. I say “almost” because although I feel it too, although I know I’ve fallen in love with him, I still have this tiny, minuscule, barely perceptible inkling of doubt, hanging on in there by its shredded fingernails. I don’t want it to there, but it is.
Call it self-protection, call it an inability to trust a man whose reputation with women is more of the short-term thrill variety than the long and steady, dependable and secure type. This is Jake Harrison we’re talking about here—Jake Harrison telling me he loves me and always has. If this brand new, amazing thing between us goes belly up, not only will I have lost him, but I could very likely lose Ashley and the entire Harrison clan in one fell swoop.
That’s my inkling of doubt. That’s why I can’t completely give myself to him, no matter how well he kisses. And oh, my, does that man know how to kiss.
Maybe if he’d been wearing a blood-red orange shirt to go with his tropical ocean green eyes that day our gazes locked outside Kosmic Kandi’s tent, my doubt may be dealt a fatal blow?
But even then, there’s so much at risk here for me.
“Hi, Julia. I’m at S.F.O, collecting my luggage right now. Why? What’s up?”
“More like ‘who.’ Jorge Dvorak. It looks like he might be about to jump ship.”
Placing Jorge Dvorak in the Trikal Head of Marketing position would be a major coup for our little recruitment agency. On the other side of the coin, losing him would be a major coup of a different kind, particularly as photos of Julia and Jorge have been popping up in industry media over the last few days, which she’d been proudly sending to my neglected phone.
Jake appears at my side, our luggage in tow, and we begin to walk to the exit together. “What do you need me to do?” I ask Julia.
“Get in here to the office. I know you had another day’s vacation planned for today, but Taylor, I need you.”
I won’t deny it, Julia telling me she needs me makes me feel pretty darn good. “I’ll be there in,” I glance down at my strappy sundress and flip flops, hardly professional recruitment wear, “an hour. Okay?”
“You are a lifesaver, Taylor. See you then.”
I hang up. Maybe my career and my love life have taken a turn for the soooo much better?
“I’ve got to go to work. Julia needs me,” I say.
He pulls a face. “But I’ve got plans for you today. Plans that involve very little clothing.”
“Oh, really? Not entirely naked?”
“Well, I had hoped you could put those shiny, black high heels on you wore to that club a few weeks ago.”
A shot of anticipation reaches my belly. “That sounds interesting. Please continue.”
“And maybe you could get hold of a riding crop?” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
I let out a laugh and hit him playfully on the arm. “A riding crop? Seriously?”
“Nah. Just you naked but for the shoes would be more than enough to do it for me.”
“And what will you be wearing?”
“I thought . . . maybe just a smile?”
My laugh is low, the image of Jake in nothing but a smile giving me tingles in places I shouldn’t be having tingles in while at airports surrounded by thousands of people. “That sounds perfect. Rain check?”
“The restaurant doesn’t open until tomorrow, so I’ll be dressed as discussed when you’re done at work.”
I grin at him. “Perfect.”
We walk through the glass doors out into the San Francisco morning air. It’s a good twenty-plus degrees less than Cabo when we flew out soon after sunrise this morning, and I shiver in the thin material of my dress.
“There you two are!” Ashley says once she’s waved us over to her and Tim. They’re standing in a line of people waiting for taxicabs. “Want to share a cab back to the apartment?” she asks me. “I’m hoping to catch some z’s before I’ve got to go into work for a few hours this afternoon.”
My eyes flash to Jake’s. This is all so new, and with my worry about him, about us, I don’t want Ash or Tim or anyone to know about us. Not until I’m sure, not until that doubt has been extinguished. He shoots me a quick smile, and I return my attention to Ashley. “Sure. Sounds good, Ash. I’ve got to go into work myself, so you can sleep the morning away.”
She narrows her eyes at Jake and me, and I shift my weight, uncomfortable. “What’s going on, you two? Are you planning something?”
“Yup, you caught us. It’s for the wedding, right, Jake?” I give him a “play along or you’re dead meat” glare, which luckily he’s smart enough to pick up on.
“That’s right. And no more questions, got it, sis?”
She chucks her brother on the arm. “Aw, you two.”
I shoot Jake a grateful smile.
“You know she only needs to catch up on sleep because I tired her out last night,” Tim announces with more than a hint of pride.
“Brother,” Jake says as he points at himself. “I don’t need that image in my head, thanks.”
“Get used to it, Harrison. I’m marrying your sister in five days’ time, and then it’s the honeymoon.”
“Five days?” Ashley’s eyes widen until she looks like Polly Pocket, one of the dolls we both had back in the day. “That’s, like, so soon, and there’s so much to do.” I’m pretty sure this is about the time she starts to hyperventilate. “I have my final dress fitting, and Mom wants to meet the florist again with me, and—”
I rub her back. “It’s okay, Ash. I can help you. You know, this is our last week as roomies.” I feel a stab of sadness at the thought of Ashley moving out after the wedding this Saturday. We’ve been best friends for almost twenty years, and roommates since college. This is a big change for both of us—one I wish I didn’t have to make.
Tears glisten in her eyes. “I’m going to miss you.”
I swallow down a lump forming in my throat. “Me too.”
We reach the front of the line, and Tim kisses Ashley goodbye. Although I’m aching to do the same with Jake, I resist the urge. Our luggage safely stowed in the trunk, we climb into the cab, wave goodbye to the guys, and I spend the entire trip reassuring Ashley that everything will be okay with her wedding.
Once I’ve showered, dressed, and left an exhausted Ashley comfortably propped up on the sofa in front of a Hallmark movie, I catch a cable car downtown to the Sefton’s Recruitment Agency offices. Julia greets me like her long lost twin when I breeze through the doors.
“Taylor, thank God! It’s so good to have you back.” She collects me in a hug, squeezing me hard, and I get a lungful of her perfume—and quite possibly a fractured rib.
I’m so used to being the eager underling, desperate for any crumbs of approval from my boss, desperate for her to see me as anything but the entry-level consultant I was hired to be, her welcome takes me completely by surprise. “It’s, ah, great to be here,” I reply, my voice muffled by her shoulder.
She releases me, and I try my best not to cough as I rub my ribs. She closes the door to her office, takes a seat in one of her comfy chairs by the window, and indicates I sit, too. “As I said on the phone, we have a situation with Jorge Dvorak. Trikal wants him, which is great news, but I think he’s in some serious talks with other recruitment companies. Well, at least one.”
This isn’t good news for our little agency. “How do you know?”
“I bumped into Letitia Brown at that restaurant we went to for lunch last
week.”
“Manger?” That was only last week? I think of everything that has happened over the last seventy-two hours: going to Cabo, looking for the guy in the orange shirt, thinking it was Rob, realizing the depth of my feelings for Jake. Jake telling me he loved me. Wow, I sure packed a lot into a short space of time.
“Manger, that’s the one. Jorge wanted to go back there, said he’d had the best potatoes he’d ever had.”
I smile to myself. Jake would be pleased—well, pleased if it was anyone but Jorge Dvorak if that look on his face when he spotted us at lunch last week is anything to go by. “Guys and potatoes, right?”
“Yes! My ex-husband would live on potatoes if I’d let him. Huh. Maybe I should have? He might not have been able to run off with that waitress if he’d grown all fat.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, I digress. Letitia was at a table nearby, and she came over to say hello, despite the fact we both know she loves nothing more than to look down on me from her comfortable position way up there in Pacific Heights.” She rolls her eyes. Only the well-heeled and well-to-do live in that neighborhood. “So, she arrives at the table, and Jorge immediately stands and greets her.”
“He knew Letitia?”
She nods.
“That can’t be good.” Letitia runs Brown’s, a super successful recruitment agency, and one of our biggest competitors. She’s also a grade-A bitch, which doesn’t help the situation.
“Oh, yes. She had that smug look on her face she gets when she knows something I don’t.”
“So, where do I come in?”
“Jorge likes you. He said you had a ‘connection.’ You ‘understand him,’ apparently.” She uses air quotes.
My eyebrows spring up to my hairline. “He said that?” I think back to our frankly awkward conversation about sightseeing in San Francisco and can’t help but cringe. But, if he got a “connection” out of that, then that’s got to work in our favor.
She nods. “Mm-hmm. So, I want you to front this thing. I’ve reached the end of my capabilities with this one. Do you think you’re up for the task?”
The Right Guy Page 14