About That Fling

by Tawna Fenske

  “Yeah. I know that feeling.” Mia rubbed a thumb over a line in the table. Her nails were chipped and chewed down to nubs, and Jenna felt an ache in her gut. “Do you think there’s any chance you’ll get back together with him?”

  “With Sean?” Jenna looked up at the ceiling. Honestly, the answer was no. But hell, maybe Mia had a point. Maybe she’d given up too easily, or hadn’t had the right tools, or—

  “He’s been calling,” Jenna said. “Once last night, and again this afternoon. He says he wants to talk some more. That’s it, just talk.”

  “You think he means more?”

  Jenna nodded. “I think so.”

  “So maybe this is your chance to get it right this time. To not make the same mistakes again.”

  “Maybe so,” Jenna said, closing her eyes.

  But it wasn’t Sean’s face she saw in her mind. And when she thought of regrets, that relationship was the furthest thing from her mind.

  Adam glanced at his watch as the elevator doors opened onto the tenth floor of his hotel. It was after eight, so he really should think about getting dinner. He’d left Jenna’s place in such a hurry that he’d barely heard Aunt Gertie chasing him down the driveway, urging him to come back so she could fix him a Tupperware container of pot roast and mashed potatoes.

  “I’m fine,” he’d insisted, smiling down at the old woman. “I’ll just grab something in the hospital cafeteria. I need to go back there anyway.”

  “But I promised you a home-cooked meal.”

  “And I promised you free legal advice. If we both break our promise, we cancel each other out, right?”

  He’d been trying for a lighthearted tone, but Gertie had just looked at him with sadness. “I’m sorry, Adam.”

  He wasn’t sure exactly what she felt sorry for, but he shook his head anyway. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He probably should have gone right back to the grocery store after that, but he couldn’t resist the siren call of work. He’d returned to the hospital and spent several hours sifting through documentation. Though the talk of a nursing strike had quieted down, the tension still bubbled hot beneath the surface. One of the union reps had started passing out protest stickers for staff to wear on their name badges, and the landfill had turned up more illegal waste. Intentional, someone suggested, though Jenna had done a good job keeping it out of the press.

  She’s damn good at her job. Damn good at covering things up so everyone can go about their business like nothing ever happened.

  Adam sighed as he stepped into the hotel hallway and started toward his room. He couldn’t fault her for it. He’d known from the start who she was. Well, maybe not from the very start. But even now, knowing everything, he wanted her still.

  He also wanted that damn pot roast. Hell, he could still smell it. He probably should have taken Aunt Gertie up on her offer. Maybe that takeout place down the street would have pot roast, or maybe he could grab a TV dinner with some half-decent mashed potatoes, or maybe—

  Maybe Jenna will be sitting in front of your door with a giant bag of leftovers.

  He blinked twice, making sure he wasn’t imagining things. She must’ve heard his footsteps, because she turned then and hit him with the full force of those bright blue eyes.

  He watched as she stood up in seeming slow motion, unfolding herself from a tangle of limbs and disheveled hair. She held up a white canvas bag, the cartoon dog on the front of it looking cheerfully out of place in the dim hallway. Her face broke into a half smile, half grimace that made Adam feel like someone had slugged him in the gut.

  He stood frozen, still far enough away that he could run if he wanted to. Still far enough she had to raise her voice to call out to him.

  “I don’t want to say I’m sorry, because I feel like I’m forming a bad habit here,” she called. “Of showing up at your doorstep all weepy and remorseful and trying to apologize for the way I’ve acted around you in front of other people.”

  Somehow, Adam found a way to make his legs work. He took a few steps toward her, then several more until he was standing close enough to feel the warmth of her body.

  “It’s okay,” he said, breathing in the scent of Jenna and the pot roast, not sure which he craved more.

  “It’s not okay.” She shook her head, letting the bag drop to her side. “I’ve been thinking.”

  He glanced at the bag. “Would you think better at a table with that food on plates in front of us?”

  She laughed. “Hungry, are you?”

  “I didn’t realize how hungry until you showed up.”

  Her laughter faded to a sad little smile, and she looked at him oddly for a moment. “Funny how that works.”

  “Are we talking about something besides pot roast?”

  “Come on,” she said, gesturing to his door. “We can talk about pot roast and regrets and everything else once we get inside.”

  “Deal.” Adam moved past her and slid his key card into the slot, his arm brushing the side of her breast as he twisted the knob and pushed open the door. He felt her close behind him as he moved into the room, but he didn’t turn around. Part of him feared he’d scare her away. Part of him feared he’d give in to temptation and say to hell with it all, throwing her back onto the bed and making love to her again the way he’d been dying to for weeks.

  He headed for the kitchenette and pulled open a cupboard. He kept his back to her as he gathered plates and silverware. “Did you bring that apple pie?”

  “Two slices. Want me to put it in the toaster oven to warm up while we eat?”

  “That would be perfect.”

  Adam grabbed a few napkins left over from his pizza run last Friday. Christ, was that less than a week ago? His time at Belmont was flying by.

  Jenna twisted a knob on the toaster oven and turned away, moving toward the small dining table near the window. He’d left the curtains open, and Portland’s city lights spread out below like a sheet of black felt sprinkled with glitter.

  “So I’ve been thinking,” Jenna said again. He turned to look at her and watched her move his pile of books and spreadsheets to an empty chair. “About my Aunt Gertie.”

  “Oh?” Adam carried the plates to the table, his hand brushing hers as she began to unpack the canvas bag of food.

  “About the look on her face when she told me how hard she’d worked. How badly she wants this.”

  “She does seem passionate about it.”

  “I know. And I feel bad that I’ve been holding her back. That I’m the reason she writes under a pen name and hasn’t claimed any of the fame she’s worked so hard to earn. She loves what she’s been writing.”

  “I could see that,” he said slowly, not sure where she was headed with all this. “Your aunt seems like a very passionate woman.”

  “She is. And even though I’m scared about what’s going to happen, I’m excited for her, too. I’m proud of her for going after what she wants.”

  He set the plates on opposite sides of the table, anchoring napkins beside each one with a knife and fork. He watched Jenna’s hands as she unpacked the food, pulling out glass containers of pot roast and mashed potatoes and roasted veggies. His mouth was watering so much he feared he might drool on the floor.

  “What do you want, Adam?”

  He blinked. “The pot roast.”

  She smiled and handed him the container. “I meant out of life. Your career, your relationships, your place in this world.”

  “That’s a pretty heavy discussion to have on an empty stomach.” He filled his plate with mashed potatoes, piling it with two slabs of pot roast and dousing the whole thing with gravy while he thought fondly of Aunt Gertie and of the niece who’d brought him this feast.

  He grabbed half the roasted veggies, then took his seat and picked up his fork. “I guess I want happiness. Stability. Some caree
r milestones to be proud of, people around me who make me laugh, and the ability to go to bed each night and think, ‘I made a difference for someone.’”

  He forked up a bite of pot roast and chewed as Jenna stood watching him, not taking her seat yet. She nodded, her fingers lightly touching the corner of the table, seeming to hesitate there on the edge. “I want all that, too,” she said. “And also, I want you.”

  Adam choked on his pot roast. Jenna reached over and tried to whack him a few times on the back, but he waved her off. He stood up and made a beeline for the kitchenette where he leaned over the tap and guzzled at least twelve gallons of water before stopping to fill two glasses. He made his way back to the table as Jenna watched him, her expression somewhere between amusement and uncertainty.

  He set one glass in front of each plate and took his seat. Picking up his fork, he cut off a piece of meat and chewed thoughtfully, spearing up some veggies as he watched Jenna’s eyes flit from the table to the bed and back again.

  “I want you, too,” he said. “Very much. Sadly, we can’t do anything about it.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “But I’ve also been thinking about my aunt. About the look on her face when she talks about her writing. About the passion she feels when she does something she’s really good at. I’m good at my job, Adam, but it’s not the same thing. I want the other kind of passion.”

  “The sweaty kind?”

  “Right. I mean, something like that. I want the kind of passion I felt with you.”

  Adam swallowed his next bite, not sure what else to do. He speared another bite of potatoes, then another, before he took a sip of water and washed it all down.

  “I remember,” he said. “Our little fling was pretty phenomenal in the grand scheme of flings.”

  “I know!” She smacked the table with her hand, something he’d started to recognize as her trademark when she felt strongly about something. He was used to seeing it at work, but seeing it here with the knowledge that he had something to do with rousing her to this state—

  Adam took another bite of pot roast and ordered himself to think rationally. “So what are you suggesting?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I just know I want that feeling again.”

  “You’re propositioning me?”

  She stayed poised at the edge of the table, twisting a napkin in her hands. “I’m not sure. All I know is that I loved the way I felt when I was with you. Alive. Inspired. Amazing.”

  He swallowed and picked up his water again, not sure whether to lunge for her or let her keep fumbling her way through this awkward seduction attempt. “Are you always this analytical when it comes to passion?”

  “I don’t know. It’s kinda new for me.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Look, I’ve had only one other one-night stand my whole life, Adam. Obviously the fling thing isn’t my forte.”

  “Maybe we’re meant to be something besides a fling.”

  “Maybe.” She bit her lip. “Or maybe we just need another go at it. I want to feel that again. The desire, the heat, the energy. Seeing that kind of emotion on my aunt’s face—I want that, Adam. I really, really want that.”

  “Here’s a seduction tip for you,” he said, cutting a final bite of meat and chewing it slowly. “Maybe stop talking about your aunt. It’s throwing me off my stride.”

  She gave him a funny half smile. “Okay. There’s also Mia—”

  “No ex-wife talk, either. And maybe put a kibosh on the seduction attempts until the guy you’re seducing is done with dinner.”

  “So does that mean you’re considering it?”

  He set his fork down and rested his hands on the table. “Honey, I’ve been considering it every moment of every day since I first walked into that wine bar and saw you sitting there with your shoes kicked off and your hair in your face.”

  Her eyes flashed with a heat he remembered from their night together, and he suddenly wanted her so badly he ached with it. He wasn’t hungry anymore. Not for food, anyway.

  He shoved his plate aside and reached for her. It wasn’t hard, since she hadn’t bothered to sit down yet. She gave a little gasp of surprise, then came willingly into his arms. He pulled her onto his lap, loving the way her body melted against his like she’d done this a thousand times before. Maybe she had, but never like this. Never the way it was between the two of them. He felt sure of it.

  She slid her legs around his thighs, her body tight and hot against his. There were too damn many clothes between them, but he didn’t want to pause long enough to remedy that. All he could think about was kissing her, feeling her mouth against his, her breasts warm and heavy in his palms as he slid his hands beneath her sweater.

  “Jenna,” he murmured. “Bed.”

  “Yes.” She slid off his lap, wobbling a little as she found her feet. He caught her hand and stood up, pulling her to the other side of the room where the white duvet was spread open and waiting. He caught her around the waist and pulled her to him again, falling backward onto the mattress with Jenna on top of him.

  The exquisite weight of her body left him breathless, all curves and softness and a dense heat that enveloped him as he drew her down to claim her mouth again. She moaned and twined her fingers in his hair. He could feel the heat between her legs as she ground against him, the seams of their jeans making him mindless with their incessant friction.

  He rolled against her, flipping her so she was on her back. Her hair spread wild and tangled on the pillow, and her eyes held a question he didn’t want to answer right then.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, and pulled her sweater over her head.

  Jenna smiled and reached for the button on his jeans. Their clothes seemed to fly off with no prompting at all, a shoe here, a belt there, a random jumble of cotton and leather and satin sailing through cinnamon-tinged air. Adam gave a brief thought to the apple pie warming in the toaster oven, and decided he didn’t care about any of it. Let the goddamn kitchen burn. He just wanted her.

  Somewhere in the haze of his brain, he had the good sense to fumble for the condom he’d stashed in the nightstand two weeks ago. It had been a fleeting thought, a far-flung hope that Jenna might come back to him again.

  But he’d never imagined it like this. She was hungry and wild and burning with an urgent heat he’d never seen in her before. In any woman.

  She arched beneath him as he slid into her, and he watched her eyes go wide.

  “Adam.”

  She gasped his name like it was the only one she’d ever said before. The only one that mattered.

  In that moment, he felt sure it was.

  Afterward, they lay sweaty and satiated in a tangled mass of sheets and limbs. Jenna turned to look at him, admiring the stubbled line of his jaw, the faint dusting of curls on his chest. He was beautiful, if that was the right adjective to use for a man.

  Adam rolled toward her and propped himself on one arm. He slid a possessive hand over her hip and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Planning your escape strategy?”

  “What?”

  “Just wondering if you’re going to freak out like last time and run from the room like you’re being pursued by a herd of rabid lemurs.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Last time was different. I was late for breakfast with your ex-wife. Not that I knew at the time she was your ex-wife. Not that—”

  He slid a hand from her hip to her bottom and gave a light squeeze, forcing Jenna to abandon that train of thought.

  “Stop that,” he said. “No talk of exes right now. No regrets. No what-ifs. No fretting about what’s going to happen or what happened before or what might have happened in some alternate universe if we’d met in third grade and shared an ice cream cone and lived happily ever after. Just be here in this moment. Savor the afterglow for a minute.�
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  “I’d be savoring it more if I had apple pie.” She grinned and vaulted out of bed. She walked slowly toward the kitchenette, trying not to think about whether her thighs jiggled or if it was unseemly to eat dessert naked in bed with a man she’d only known a few weeks.

  She pulled open the toaster oven, relieved to see the pie hadn’t burned to a crisp. It felt like they’d made love for hours, but the practical side of her felt relieved that was only how it worked in romance novels. In real life, it was just enough time to warm a couple pieces of pie.

  “You’re thinking again,” Adam said behind her.

  “What?”

  “Your shoulders get tense when you’re thinking.”

  She smiled as she shoveled the pie onto two plates, then grabbed a pair of forks and returned to the bed. She tried not to bounce as she sat down beside him, dragging a pillow over so she could prop her plate on something besides Adam’s bare chest.

  Now there’s a thought . . .

  He rolled over and grabbed the second plate, picking up his fork and giving her bare knee a soft poke before using it to stab into his pie.

  Jenna laughed and wriggled away, forking up a piece of her own pie. “I was thinking, you’re right.” She took a bite of pie. “This was amazing, obviously.”

  “The pie or the sex?”

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled around her next bite. “I know the timing isn’t right. Maybe not until your contract is over and things settle down with Mia’s life and—”

  “What’s wrong with Mia’s life?”

  “Nothing,” she said, feeling a pang of disloyalty. It wasn’t her place to tell Adam anything was going on in Mia’s marriage, even though part of her wondered how he’d take it. Would he feel vindicated? Sad? Smug? Disappointed? She honestly couldn’t guess.

  “The pregnancy hormones have been tough for her,” Jenna said, which wasn’t untrue at all. “Anyway, it won’t be long before the contract is over and the baby is here, and maybe, just maybe—”