Outside The Lines

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “That’s not…helping my concentration,” Blake ground out, capturing both of her hands in his even though his cock threw every swear word in the book at him for his trouble. “I want this to last more than thirty seconds.”

  “Bet I only need twenty,” she said, moving to free her hands, but he clasped her wrists in a tight, one-handed grasp.

  “Bet I make you come first.”

  Blake slanted his mouth back over hers, kissing her with every intention of not stopping until they were both good and naked, but a knock sounded crisply against the door, and he broke from her lips with a frustrated groan.

  “Still in a committee meeting, Dr. Cross.” God, he officially hated Garrett’s guts right now. All of them. “You’re going to have to wait.”

  But the too-late sound of the doorknob coupled with a distinctly feminine and definitely irritated throat being cleared froze Blake to his spot on the carpet.

  “Well. I suppose it’s good to see you’re taking your research for the carnival committee seriously.”

  Jules went absolutely rigid under Blake’s hands as the words cut across the room with surgical accuracy, and he screwed his eyes shut for just a split second before he stepped back and set his gaze on the threshold over her shoulder.

  “Good morning to you too, Mom.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Blake cleared his throat in a nonverbal request for a moment of privacy, but his mother’s sharp expression served as a definite I-don’t-think-so, leaving him no choice but to chisel his way through the giant slab of awkward she’d just dropped into the room. He straightened his doctor’s coat over his scrubs, grateful for the singular mercy of the baggy clothes. Not that his hard-on hadn’t taken a lightning-fast hike at the sight of his mother standing in the doorway, but at least it gave him a second to think.

  Nope. He’d been uncharacteristically impulsive, and the only way out of this was to face the music.

  “Sorry. We were, ah. Just finishing up our meeting.” Blake flicked a glance over Jules, who had slipped quietly from the desk to re-order the buttons on her shirt but had yet to turn around. “You remember Julianna Shaw, don’t you? It turns out she’s the manager at Mac’s Diner. She wrote the catering proposal for the Carnival For A Cure.”

  Both women flinched, but his mother recovered first, her eyes tapering over the weary shadows lining her cheekbones. “Well, this is a surprise. I can’t say I expected to see you again, Ms. Shaw.”

  Blake’s brows shot upward. It wasn’t like his mother to tip her hand so openly, and it damn sure wasn’t like her to show emotion. Not outwardly, anyway. Then again, she was probably just as shocked as he had been when Jules told him the proposal was her handiwork. After all, his mother had no way of knowing Jules managed the diner since Serenity put in the bid, and owner-based proposals were standard fare for contracts like this.

  “I can’t say I expected to be seen,” Jules said, earning both his and his mother’s attention as she turned around. “I didn’t know Blake was organizing the carnival for the hospital until after Mac’s won the bid.”

  “Yes. Well, perhaps it would be best if we rectified that. We wouldn’t want any past discomforts getting in the way of planning a successful event.”

  Understanding slung through Blake like a delayed reaction as his mother’s words rattled into place in his brain. “You can’t be serious.”

  His mother’s arctic expression proved him dead wrong.

  Blake scraped in a breath, scrambling for thought. Okay, so Jules had left him abruptly eight years ago, and yeah. Even though he’d tried to hide it, his mother had seen the emotional fallout. But even though her snap-judgment intentions might have a shred of honorability, Blake wasn’t about to let her pull the plug on this project, or his contact with Jules.

  He needed to fix this. Fast.

  “Let’s not get carried away.” Blake stepped out from behind the desk, gesturing to the papers that scattered the far end. “Look, I know Jules and I have…a past history together. But we’ve come up with some great plans for the carnival, and most of them have been her idea.”

  “I see you’re clearly still compatible in some regards.” His mother’s tight smile loosened something territorial in Blake’s gut, and he opened his mouth to protest, but Jules beat him to it.

  “I don’t want my placement on the contract to be a problem.” Her hands blurred into motion as she gathered her notebook and her purse with lightning-fast speed. “I’ll just give Serenity my notes, or she can probably come up with better ones, and she can take my place. It’s okay if you want to fire me, just don’t pull the contract from Mac’s.”

  “What? No.” Realization slapped him in the gut, and damn it, he couldn’t let her run away again. “The proposal has been approved, and we’ve already done the groundwork. It would be a major setback to start over, with a new caterer or a new contact.”

  Blake winged a glance at his mother, who after an interminably long moment, nodded her agreement.

  “Unfortunately, replacing Mac’s as our vendor would present problems that would be difficult to overcome at this stage in the planning. But this…” She paused, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Behavior is unacceptable. If you’re going to work together, you’ll need to maintain a certain level of decorum, especially here at the hospital.”

  His mother pointed a glance at the far end of the desktop where Blake had swung Jules into place just a few minutes earlier, and okay, so maybe he’d gotten a little carried away with the whole now-right-now thing. While he hadn’t expected to get walked-in on, the fact of the matter remained that he did still work here. And Jules was technically a contractor with the hospital, at least until the carnival.

  “Understood,” Blake said. “But for the record, it—”

  “It was totally my fault, Mrs. Fisher,” Jules interrupted, her impenetrable demeanor locked over her like a streetwise suit of armor. “I was out of line, and I apologize. Believe me when I say it won’t happen again.”

  “See that it doesn’t, or next time I won’t be so generous. With either of you.”

  Without another word, his mother turned and walked out the door.

  #

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, dude, but you look like hammered shit.”

  Blake tightened his grip over the handle of his racquetball racquet and gave his cousin Aaron’s serve a satisfying thwack. “Is there a right way to take that?”

  “Probably not,” Aaron conceded cheerfully, the tattoo covering most of his right upper arm flexing as he made a one-handed volley like nothing-doing. The dickhead. “So are you going to tell me what’s got your panties in a twist, or are you going to let me use my imagination? Because seriously. I have extremely vivid mental acuity.”

  “I ran into Jules Shaw a couple of weeks ago.”

  The racquetball sailed past Aaron’s drop-jawed stare, bouncing to the blond wood floorboards behind them. “Damn, man. Not even I am that vivid. Is she…I mean, are you…”

  Better to just come out with it now that the lid was off the jar. “Yes, she’s still drop-dead gorgeous, and yes, she still makes me crazy.”

  “Nothing makes you crazy.” Doubt flashed behind his cousin’s black-coffee eyes, and he went to go retrieve the racquetball from behind center court. “You’re the most composed guy I know. No offense.”

  Only Aaron would find the insult in maintaining control. “None taken. And unfortunately my composure disappears when it comes to this woman. She’s like Kryptonite, only with really hot shoes.”

  Blake shoved back the memory of Jules’s shiny black heels and walked over to the far corner of the court where he’d stashed his water bottle, since their game was obviously on a holy-shit delay. Not that it wasn’t warranted. After all, not only had Blake blown past all reason in an effort to seduce his ex-fiancée on top of cheap office furniture, but after her heated affirmation that it would never happen again, she’d barely said two words to him as he walked her polite
ly from the building.

  Yeah. Holy shit might even be a little tame.

  “So how’d you run into her?” Aaron asked, redirecting Blake’s attention back to the squeak and shuffle of the glass-enclosed racquetball court.

  “We’re working together on the Brentsville Hospital charity fundraiser committee. She’s in charge of the catering.”

  Aaron whistled in both amusement and surprise. “I bet your mother had a kitten. Come to think of it, how’d that get past the board, anyway?”

  Blake froze, his water bottle halfway to his lips. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the board of trustees is pretty protective of their own. Especially when the man in question just happens to have a last name that starts with F and ends in isher. I’m just surprised they let that fly.”

  Shock ricocheted through Blake’s chest. “Jules wrote an unbelievably good proposal. Look, I know the board can be...”

  “Totally biased with regard to preconceived notions?” Aaron skimmed a hand over his tattoo, a wicked smile breaking over his face.

  “Keep your issues to yourself, dude. I was going to say selective. But my mother isn’t that exclusionary. She wouldn’t turn down the right proposal just because of the name attached to it. ”

  As if to plant a fast-growing seed of doubt, his mother’s words from this morning slammed through his memory with the force of a wrecking ball in full swing.

  Perhaps it would be best if we rectified that.

  No way. She might’ve said she’d replace Mac’s as the vendor in the heat of the moment, but his mother would never orchestrate something so calculated or cold.

  Would she?

  “You know what, you might be right. That seems a little callous, even for the powers-that-be,” Aaron said, wiping the sheen of sweat from his dark brow. “So Jules is making you crazy, huh? Are you two…”

  His cousin waved an expectant hand through the air, but Blake deflected it with a shrug. “We’re not dating again, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Jesus, you’re so formal.” Aaron’s wicked smile did double-time. “You might not be dating, but something tells me Jules isn’t ruining your Rock-of-Gibraltar composure by keeping things all business. So do you want to tell me the truth here, or should I use my aforementioned imagination?”

  Shit. If Blake didn’t give him something to go on, Aaron would probably have half a porno written in his head in about fifteen seconds. “Okay, fine. We might’ve, uh, gotten a little carried away this morning in one of the conference offices at the hospital.”

  Aaron’s quick burst of laughter echoed off the ball-scuffed walls of the racquetball court. “Damn. Here I thought you were all calm and composed.”

  “I told you. Kryptonite.” Yeah. He really needed to forget about her shoes, too. Freaking ankle straps should be against the law.

  “Relax, Superman. At least one of us is getting laid,” Aaron said, but Blake cut the notion to the quick.

  “Sorry to break the illusion, my friend. We got interrupted.” Blake kept the by-who part to himself, knowing full well he wouldn’t live it down until he was ninety if he admitted he’d been cock-blocked by his own mother.

  “Argh, you’re kidding me,” came the sympathy groan, but thankfully Aaron didn’t follow it up with a bid for details. “So how’d you leave it with her?”

  “I didn’t, really. It was pretty awkward, and Jules kind of rushed off before we could talk about it. She’s still…” Guarded. Headstrong. Mine. “Hard to read,” Blake choked out, and where the hell had that thought come from?

  “Why don’t you just ask her?”

  “Huh?” Blake shook off the surprise of his clearly addled brain to peg his cousin with a stare.

  “You mean to tell me that with all those fancy Ivy League degrees you’ve got, you can’t figure this out? I mean, you dig her, clearly she digs you. For the love of God, man, it’s not that complicated. Go find the woman and talk to her. Clear the air one way or the other.”

  Blake opened his mouth to argue, to let loose a laundry list of reasons why impulsively going to find Jules to hash this out headlined the list of Flawlessly Shitastic Ideas.

  But then his mind coughed up a memory, eight years old but still sharp around the edges, of the note Jules had left on his kitchen table, full of vague excuses why she couldn’t move to New York City with him, why they couldn’t get married and why she didn’t want to see him again. Angry, confused, and okay, yeah, desperate, Blake had called her apartment for twelve hours straight, determined to find her and get the truth.

  But she never answered, and he’d realized he might well have the truth, right there in his fingers. Reading her words had been devastating enough.

  Hearing her say out loud that she didn’t love him would have ruined him, and so rather than fight for her, he’d packed his belongings and let her go.

  No way in hell was he doing that again.

  “You know what, Aaron? That is a brilliant idea.” Blake capped his water bottle and snatched up his racquet with way more speed than finesse. “Sorry to cut out on the rest of our game, but I’ve got to go.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You can thank me later.” Aaron shooed him toward the door, but the grin on his face canceled out his feigned irritation.

  “I will,” Blake said, his eyes on the door. “Right after I finish what I started.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jules leaned across the narrow work table bisecting her cozy apartment kitchen, the muscles in her forearm tightening with sweet, familiar tension as she grated the last of the mozzarella cheese from her fridge. Her burn had healed down to a slightly tender patch of skin, still protected by a large Band-Aid when she cooked, but that was a lot more manageable than the gauze and tape of last week.

  She scattered the fat, fluffy strings of cheese over the ten-by-fifteen tray of still-unbaked lasagna in front of her, a tiny smile playing on her lips at the dish. Mac’s night cook, Nate, and his wife were having a baby any second now, and a little lasagna would hit the comfort food spot when they needed a meal. The four dozen oatmeal cookies Jules had whipped together to go with it were just an added bonus.

  The fact that they’d kept her mind on butter and brown sugar rather than how unbelievably right Blake’s hands had felt on her this morning didn’t hurt, either.

  “Damn.” The whisper pushed its way out from her chest, where her idiot heart had begged her all day to consider that Blake was right. Her little apartment here on Ninth Street might not be much to brag about, but it was clean and bright and, most importantly, hers. She’d worked hard to move here four years ago, and even though her delivery was sometimes tough and her hand-written methods unconventional, she really was passionate about her job.

  Even if Blake’s mother was still passionate about thinking Jules wasn’t good enough.

  She snapped the lid over the disposable lasagna tray and slid it into her fridge, pushing away the thought. Although she didn’t regret kissing Blake this morning, that still didn’t mean it had been a good idea. She’d come dangerously close to losing the job for Mac’s, and after Serenity had taken a chance on Jules four years ago when her resume was all attitude, no experience, a repeat performance with Blake was a risk Jules simply couldn’t take.

  No matter how much she wanted to believe him.

  A knock on her front door startled her back to reality, kicking her intrinsic defenses into high alert. Both Serenity and Violet were working tonight, which exhausted the list of people who would come knocking on her door unannounced. Then again, on rare occasions, her elderly neighbor came by for help opening a stubborn jar, and oooh, maybe Jules could send her home with some cookies for later. She smoothed her hands over her threadbare T-shirt and flour-streaked yoga pants before heading toward the door, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that her neighbor was too nearsighted to tell she was slumming it this evening.

  But as soon as Jules got her eye to the peep-hole, her questionable attire was the last
thing on her mind, because Blake Fisher was standing on her threshold, and the intensity on his face made it clear that it wasn’t for hospital business.

  “Hi,” he said as she swung the door open, and oh God, could that smoldering green stare be any sexier? “I’m sorry to barge in on you. I didn’t have your number, and, well, I wanted to talk to you.”

  “I don’t have a number. I mean, other than my cell.” She tugged in her brows, digesting her surprise in tiny bites. “How did you find my address?”

  “It’s listed in the Brentsville directory online. I went to Mac’s first, but Serenity said you were off tonight.”

  “Oh, yeah, I was just…” Jules frantically searched her mind for something to say other than trying like mad to forget how much I want you. Which would’ve been exponentially easier if her lady bits weren’t still vibrating at the thought of their earlier kiss. “Baking! Baking. Yup. I’m baking. Is everything okay with the carnival planning?”

  A sudden sliver of panic bloomed in her chest, her palms going slick. Surely the board wouldn’t send him here to fire her at eight-thirty on a Thursday night, would they?

  But Blake was quick to give a nod to the affirmative. “The planning is fine. I just…” He paused to take a breath, and his brows cinched together. “Are you baking oatmeal cookies?”

  The peal of laughter working up from her throat laid waste to the tension she’d been harboring like a fugitive all afternoon. “I just pulled them out of the oven ten minutes ago. Are you hungry?”

  Blake’s silence lasted just long enough to bust him. “Oh, no, that’s okay. I didn’t come here for…well, shit.” His return chuckle slid through her like butterscotch over ice cream, and how could this be wrong when it felt so vital and good? “Yeah, I haven’t had anything since lunch. But I really do want to talk to you. Can I take you to dinner?”

  “I’m not really fit for the public,” she said, biting her lip as she tugged at the hem of her ratty blue T-shirt, and awesome. There was a smear of butter on it to go with all the flour. “But I’ve got four dozen cookies and a pantry full of food right here. Why don’t you come in and I can make you something.”