by Julia London
Whitney’s mouth gaped a bit. Then she said, “Wow. That was a spectacularly bad invitation.”
He cringed. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know if you want me to eat with you or not.” She sounded more curious than offended. “Do you?”
He nodded. “Yes, I do.”
Whitney suddenly smiled, and the warmth of it shifted the mood in the narrow little hallway.
Jack suddenly didn’t feel so stupid. He felt pretty damn good.
“Yes, Jack, I will eat with you. I don’t know why, because you’re a little kooky, but yes, I will. Would you like me to come back later after you’ve turned on the oven?”
“Okay.” That was not what he’d meant, but he’d go with whatever she wanted.
“That was a joke.” She shoved her rolling cooler by the door and shrugged out of her jacket. “I am not going out in the rain for an hour just to come back. You’ll just have to put up with me. I mean seriously, what is wrong with you?” She smiled, and gave him a playful little push as she walked past him and into his apartment.
Buster, made incredibly happy by this turn of events, woofed at her. Jack would have woofed, too, if he hadn’t been so damn nervous.
“I know, buddy, I know,” she said soothingly to his dog. “Things are just a little weird up in here.” She glanced over her shoulder at Jack, her eyes sparkling. “But I kind of like it.”
Ten
“I think we should open that bottle of wine,” Whitney suggested. She stood in Jack’s kitchen again, her hands on her hips, surveying the lay of the land. Uptight Ernie was going to need a little help loosening up, seeing as how he could hardly hold it together to ask her to stay. His fumbling of it had endeared him to her, but she was not going to spend the evening dragging each and every word out of him.
“That wine has been there for three months,” Jack said.
“Then it should be perfectly aged.” She arched a brow at him, daring him to disagree.
He looked at the wine.
“What’s the matter, you don’t drink?” She opened a drawer for a wine opener. She knew where everything was in his kitchen.
“I drink,” he said. “Or I did. I guess I’ve been kind of tied up in a piece I’m working on and haven’t had a drink in a while.”
“You ought to get out more,” she said.
He pressed his lips together. “Yeah, I should.”
“This must be some piece or whatever that you’re working on.” She removed the foil from the top of the wine bottle.
“It is,” he agreed. He still stood at the wall, his back pressed against it.
If he wasn’t going to talk, this could very well be the longest dinner of her life. “Were you always going to be a writer?” she asked in an attempt to rev the conversation.
“Never crossed my mind. I wanted to be a Marine.” He looked at his hand. “So when I finished college, I went into the service. I figured out the writing thing later.”
“A Marine, huh?” Whitney said, impressed.
“Yep.”
She waited for him to say more, but of course he didn’t. “Okay, I’ll bite—where were you a Marine? Here? Overseas? In your backyard?”
“My backyard…what? No. I served two tours of duty in Afghanistan.”
“Oh.” She popped the cork and looked at him. “That sounds heavy.”
He shrugged.
“Is that where you got the limp?”
He looked surprised, as if he didn’t know it was an obvious limp. “Yeah,” he said. “Took some shrapnel.” He gestured lamely at his leg then shifted his gaze to the window.
It didn’t take a savant to see that his leg was a sore subject for him. “How long have you been out?” she asked.
“Two years.”
She poured two glasses of wine and set them on the bar. She went to the fridge and removed a block of cheese she knew was in there. It was weird, being so familiar with a man’s kitchen and not so familiar with him. She put the cheese on a plate, added some grapes, and some nuts from the pantry, and placed them on the bar. She looked up at Jack, who watched her with a look of amazement.
“Do you mind? You have like three bricks of cheese in there, and a drawer full of grapes.” She walked around to take a seat at the bar.
“I’m on grocery delivery.” He smiled a little. “You probably won’t be surprised to know that I order the same thing every week.”
She laughed and slid onto a bar seat. “You’re right, I’m not.”
Jack remained at the wall. She gestured to the barstool beside her. “Am I that scary? I promise not to attack you.”
His eyes widened for a breath of a moment, but then a smile slowly spread across his face. “You’re not that scary.” He pushed away from the wall and walked with that slight limp to take a seat beside her.
Whitney twirled around to face him. She picked up her wine glass, motioned for him to do the same, and clinked her glass to his. “To new friends.”
“Are we friends?” he asked.
“Don’t overthink it, just drink.”
He drank. He drank a lot. He drank that wine as if it were water. He drained the glass and she poured him more.
“And you sure you’re not an alcoholic?” she teased him.
“Wasn’t until today,” he said, and his smile deepened to a point where Whitney could imagine swimming in it. It made her feel tingly. He had awesome brown eyes, glittery and inviting. His lips were full and delectable, and feelings stirred in her that she was sure Scaredycat Sam would not like.
She drank some wine, then popped a grape in her mouth. “Okay, you came back to Seattle when you left the Marines, right?”
“Right.”
“Are you from Seattle?”
“No,” he said. “Eagle’s Ridge. Do you know it?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a couple of hours from here, a small town in the Blue Mountains.”
“Aha,” Whitney said.
“Aha?”
“Aha, you’re from a small town. The photo of those boys on your shelf looks like a small-town picture.”
He looked over his shoulder at the photos on his shelves.
“Eagle’s Ridge, right? Which one are you?” She hopped off her stool to fetch the photo.
When she returned with it, Jack pointed to a kid with a crooked smile, a dark mop of hair, and a black eye. “Had a fight that day,” he said. “Fists swinging, legs kicking, the whole nine yards.”
“About what?”
“A girl, what else?”
Whitney laughed. “Look at you.” She touched the frame. “You look like trouble.” He looked so cute. He looked pissed.
“I was trouble,” he said. “That picture was taken in detention. Those are my best friends.” He pointed them out. “That’s Noah. He kicked my ass that day because Lainey broke up with me.” He chuckled. “She’s Noah’s cousin, and he thought I’d dumped her.” He gave Whitney a sidelong look. “I had a reputation,” he said sheepishly. “But the truth was that Lainey dumped me.”
“She did? What’d you do?”
“Nothing, really. But I was best friends with Noah, and she was smart enough to know that she and I were not going to work out, and if it went on too long, it would ruin our friendship.”
Whitney looked at the photo again. “I guess she was too late.”
“Actually, the three of us became really close. Really close.” He swallowed. “Lainey has cancer. Noah called me up to let me know she’s dying and I…” He swallowed again. He picked up his wine glass and drank. “I haven’t made it back to Eagle’s Ridge yet.”
He felt guilt about that, she could sense it. She stared at the photo of the boys. “How long were you in detention?”
“That time? A couple of months. But we liked it,” he said with a lopsided smile, and looked up, present again.
“You liked it?”
“The teacher was hot.” He pointed at the photo. “Those pubescent boys wer
e actively in love with her.” He laughed.
Jack Carter had a warm, inviting laugh, and it was such a contrast to the man Whitney had come to know that she was both startled and titillated by it. “So where are these guys now?” she asked.
“Mostly Eagle’s Ridge,” he said, still studying the photo.
“What about your parents?” she asked. “Are they in Seattle?”
He shook his head. “Dad had a heart attack and died while I was in Afghanistan. Mom still lives in Eagle’s Ridge. And Christie lives in the North Beach area.”
“It’s just you and Buster, huh?”
“Yep.”
That seemed really lonely to Whitney. And a little curious, to be honest. Jack had everything going for him—he was so hot, and he was a veteran, and a writer, and he lived in a fancy downtown building and had an awesome dog. Under any other circumstance, that would be solid gold on the dating circuit. But there was something a little off about Jack. She couldn’t put her finger on it, exactly. He wasn’t standoffish so much as he was reserved. He wasn’t flirty and handsy, either, but seemed almost afraid of touch. He was an interesting, curious man, and she wished he would relax.
She wanted to understand the current running in him—he wasn’t like any man she’d ever met before.
At least he was talking now, and she liked it. Maybe the wine had loosened him up. It had loosened her up, too, and she was finding it difficult not to ogle him. His shoulders and arms filled his shirt, and she could see the curve of muscle that defined them.
She was imagining what he would look like without that shirt when he said, “Your turn,” and put aside the photo of the boys. “Where’d you go to law school?”
“Ugh. Law school.” She told him about UCLA, and the family law firm, and the sprawling mansion in Orange County the Baldwin family of litigators called home.
“Why didn’t you open a bakery in Orange County?”
“I looked at several places. I chose Seattle because I’ve always liked it, but also for the demographics and the business climate. I didn’t choose Orange County because my dad does not approve.” She waggled her brows. “Like, really doesn’t approve. He wants me to fail.”
“Come on,” Jack said in disbelief. “What dad would want his daughter to fail? What could he possibly have against bakers?”
“Not fail, exactly,” she clarified. “My dad is one of those guys who thinks whatever his children do reflects on him. He can’t stand the thought of having a daughter who is making cupcakes when she could be a big important lawyer.”
“That must be hard for you.” His gaze had traveled upward a bit, to her hair. And then to her mouth, where he lingered.
“You have no idea.” She felt a little fizzy suddenly.
“I guess I’m not the only one rattling around Seattle on my own.” His gaze slipped to her neck.
“Guess not.” The fizziness turned into a tiny little fire. She liked the way he was looking at her—with interest. The tension in him was changing from day to dusk. Easing. Quieting. Now she could see his hunger.
Hunger.
Whitney was reminded of the casserole and glanced at her watch. “Oops…time got away from me.” She hopped off the barstool.
Jack slid off his stool, too, and suddenly, they were standing mano-y-mano, so close that their shirts touched. “Where are you going?” he asked.
The tiny fire in her spread and bloomed, stirring up all sorts of feelings and desires. “I have to turn on the oven,” she said to his lips.
“Right now?” He touched a lock of her hair, pushed it back over her shoulder.
“It has to warm up,” she said to his chest. She wanted to touch it, to lay her palm flat against it and feel the heat in his skin, the beat of his heart. The fire in her crackled and swirled in a sparkly little vortex around them. Was he going to kiss her? He looked as if he wanted to. She would be on board with that, and lifted her chin slightly to help.
“It warms up quick.” He touched her chin, tracing a path up to her ear. “You’d be surprised how quick.”
Kiss me! she shouted in her head. But Jack didn’t move. He kept looking at her as though he wanted to cover her in ice cream and eat his way to the bottom, but now his hands were in his back pockets, as if he was intentionally holding himself off. What a strange, funny man he was. Whitney realized that if she had to wait for him to make the first move, she might be standing here all night. She was on the verge of bursting. So she took matters into her own hands, grabbed his head between her hands and said, “Brace yourself,” and kissed him.
She thought Jack tried to pedal backward, but she wasn’t going to let that happen. She put her arms around his neck, rose up on her toes, pressed against him and moved her lips on his, touching the tip of her tongue to the seam of his lips.
After a moment’s hesitation, Jack grabbed her and pulled her hard into his body. One arm encircled her waist with the strength of a steel band. His fingers splayed across her cheek and he lifted his head, his eyes searching her face. “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked roughly.
She didn’t think it required explanation. “I’m kissing you.”
“You get where this will probably lead.”
Oh, she got it all right. “Are you in or out?” she demanded, unwilling to debate the significance of this kiss, or anything that might follow.
“So in,” he said, a little breathless. “But don’t ask me a lot of questions. Just go with it.”
“What?”
“Trust me on this,” he said.
“Okay, but—”
He would not allow a but. He walked her backward as he smothered her with steamy kisses, firing up all the cylinders in her that desired hot, molten sex, and moved her down the hall.
She could feel his erection between them, could feel the skin of his arms heating beneath her touch. He walked her into a bedroom, kicked the door closed behind him—“Sorry Buster,” he said—and in a move that defied physics, picked her up and sort of vaulted with her through space and onto his unmade bed so hard that they bounced.
“You’re not going to freak out, are you?” she asked as he began to unbutton her shirt.
“Can’t make any promises,” he said without missing a beat. He yanked his shirt off his body.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, look at him. She didn’t care whether he freaked out or not—she was the one who would have a meltdown. His skin was taut over muscle, and on his right pectoral, he had a small tattoo, the symbol of the Marines with the letters USMC. He was a beast. A mouth-watering, sexy beast. Her body thrummed along at a little clip and she wasn’t going to power down. She sat up and pulled her shirt free.
He took one look at her breasts. “My God, you’re perfect.” He cupped one breast, nibbled at the red lacy strap.
“No, I’m not,” she said. “But say it again.” She nuzzled his neck.
“You are perfect.” He kissed the swell of her breast.
A little hyperbole in the bedroom wasn’t going to hurt anyone. Frankly, Whitney was so horny and it had been so long since she’d had great sex that he could say she was a doughy muffin and she’d still be turned on. She reached for the button of his jeans, but Jack was ahead of her. He managed to unbutton them and kiss her breasts at the same time.
He kicked off his shoes and grabbed her leg, lifting one up so he could pull off a boot, and then the other. He began to slowly slide his hand up her leg; little shivers raced up her spine. “You’re not hiding anything under that skirt, are you?” he asked as he reached her thigh.
“Like what?”
“Like…anything.”
“I have the usual equipment,” she said. “I’m not hiding a penis, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Jack’s hand stopped moving. “A what? I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it.” She pushed up so that she could sink her fingers in his hair and kiss him.
He continued that torturous slide of his hand up her skirt. He was a
ll soft lips and tongue, all roaming hands with a touch so hot and light at the same time that he was turning her into a quivering bowl of Jell-O. This man could do anything he wanted to her right now and she wouldn’t stop him. She could feel her tights rolling off her, his hand between her legs, his fingers exploring. She slid her hands over his body, down his hips—which were bared now, for somehow, he’d managed to get all their clothes off them with the exception of her bra—and down his leg. She felt something odd and turned her head. She could now see that just above his knee, covering a good portion of his thigh, his flesh was purple and misshapen. The cause of his limp. Jack took her hand from his leg and moved it, to the soft nest of hair and the thick cock between them.
She wrapped her fingers around him and sighed. “I was going to seduce you,” she complained.
He kissed the patch of skin behind her ear and that sent fluttering fits of desire through her. “You started it, but I’m going to finish it,” he murmured. He rolled her onto her belly and began an arousing assault to her senses with his mouth on her skin, pausing to unhook her bra with his teeth—with his teeth—and then languidly continuing on to her hip. He rose back up, kissed the back of her neck, then rolled her over and began again, tracing another sensual path down her body, including both breasts, her belly, and settling between her legs. Sparks flew now—dangerous, explosion-inducing sparks that seemed to be firing from all her fingers and toes.
“See? I was going to do that to you, too, but you ruined it,” she said between pants of pleasure. He chuckled against her thigh and continued to stroke her with his tongue. When she thought she couldn’t bear it another moment, when she thought she would come apart at the seams, he rose up, groped around in a bedside table, and produced a condom.
When he was ready, he braced himself above her and gazed down at her. A moment passed. Then another. Something seemed off. Whitney came up on her elbows and pushed a bit of hair from his forehead. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He dipped his head. “I don’t…I don’t know.”
What the hell was happening? Everything had been clicking along. Whitney couldn’t guess what was going through his strange brain, but he was still rock hard. “Act Two.” She pushed at his chest and forced him onto his back. She straddled him and slid down onto his cock before he could speak.
