She also remembered what it had felt like after he’d left, in the days and weeks and months when she’d missed him so much it felt as though she’d been stabbed with a ragged shard of glass. It had taken everything she had to move past that—was it worth feeling that again, in exchange for just a few moments of pleasure?
No. No, it was not.
Pulling back abruptly, she pushed him away and broke the embrace. Her breath came fast and hard as she made space between them, wiping sweaty palms on the thighs of her jeans.
“We’re not doing this.” If only she felt as sure as she sounded. If he so much as crooked a finger at her, she’d strip off all her clothes and lie down on the desk for him to play with. “It’s not fair to ask that of me.”
Theo looked as though she’d clocked him in the head. He, too, was breathing hard, and when she saw the outline of his erection pressing against those fancy suit pants, she almost gave in again.
“I have to go.” Shaking her head, she blindly pushed her way out of the office, heading straight for the elevator doors. Once inside, she turned and saw the satisfied smirk on Ava’s face, realizing that she must have been the woman she’d caught with Theo. She should have felt jealousy, but instead the memory sent another bolt of heat through her. So long feeling nothing, and the sudden onslaught meant she was about to self-combust. But she held firm, and as the elevator doors closed, she pressed her damp forehead to the chilly steel of the elevator wall.
What the hell was she going to do?
* * *
“Want to explain to me what that was about?”
Theo was slouched in the chair at his desk, a can of icy club soda open in front of him. He desperately wished that it was three fingers of hideously expensive scotch.
“Is this where you spank me for not telling you that I knew Jo?” he asked wryly as John came in, closing the door briskly behind him.
The other man rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a drama queen. But yes, I’d like an explanation. You’re paying me a lot of money to help get this company off the ground, Theo, and I’m not interested in being blindsided with whatever shit that was that you just pulled.”
Theo took a large swallow of his club soda. It was flat and tasteless—why did he drink this shit, anyway?
John remained silent. Theo knew the tactic well—he often used it himself to make the other person talk first, to establish power.
He didn’t have enough energy to fight it.
“Jo was my girlfriend when I was nineteen, but I’ve known her family since I was a kid. We lived next door to each other.”
“And what did you do to piss her off like that?”
“What makes you think I did something?”
John snorted inelegantly. Reaching across to the sleek minifridge, he pulled out a club soda for himself. He grimaced after he took a sip. “This stuff is nasty.”
Theo shrugged. “I realized that I wasn’t good for her, and I left.”
John cocked his head, as if waiting for the rest of the story. When he realized that there wasn’t any, he slammed his can down on the desk.
“Let me guess—you haven’t talked to her in all this time, am I right?” Theo didn’t answer, but John was already building up a head of steam. “And you lured her here with a job offer in the hopes that—what? She’d be so thrilled at your return that she’d jump right back into your arms?”
Well...yeah, that had essentially been his plan. Hearing it come from someone else, though, made Theo wince.
He hadn’t thought that out very well. With Jo’s legendary temper, he was lucky she hadn’t pushed him through the window.
“You.” John pointed a finger at him before rising to pour the rest of his club soda into a plant. “You don’t approach her about the job again. I’ll handle that end so that we have a hope in hell that she takes the job, assuming you haven’t fucked that up beyond repair. That blog of hers is the ticket to a successful launch, Theo, and that is my very expensive, professional opinion.”
Theo cast his colleague as a sidelong stare. “You done yet?”
“Not even a little,” John replied cheerfully, sitting down again and bracing his elbows on his knees. “Now, as someone who is an absolute magnet for the ladies—”
Theo interrupted him with a snort before waving his hand through the air. “Sorry. Carry on, Casanova.”
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, you can’t just come back after something like that and expect a woman to jump for joy at your mere presence.”
“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?” Theo burst out, frustrated. “She’s the most difficult woman in existence, ever.”
“Ah, but the greater the challenge, the sweeter the reward.” John grunted when Theo furrowed his brow. “You know, for the brilliant, maverick owner of a start-up valued at over ten million dollars, you can be an idiot.” Standing, he tossed the empty can into the recycling bin, then leaned over the desk to pat Theo on the shoulder.
“Woo her, my man. Woo her like you’ve never wooed before.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHEN JO GOT HOME, she headed straight for the garage. The small space housed her sister Beth’s mechanic shop, and the sister she was closest to could almost always be found there during work hours.
She didn’t want to be alone, but she wanted someone she could be silent with.
“Beth?” She strode into the garage, throwing her arms up at the last second when she saw her sister, who was very much not alone. “Oh shit! Sorry! I’ll go!”
“No, no. Stay.” Beth pushed Ford away with a mock-stern stare and pulled her coveralls back up to her waist, where she tied the arms in a knot, then straightened her tank. “Mr. Handsy here was just trying to convince me to take a break, but I have too much to do.”
Beth stopped when she caught sight of Jo’s face. Jo thought she’d done a pretty good job at masking what she felt, but her sister knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t all right. “For you, I’ll take a break. Sit.”
Beth gestured to her workbench, then shot Ford a look with eyebrows raised. He took the hint, buckling up his pants as he entered the house through the door that joined the two.
“I’m not going to bug you if you’re busy,” Jo started, but Beth waved her off.
“You can talk while I work,” she said, ducking under the hood of the car she was working on. Jo saw something spark and took a cautious step back, out of range.
“It’s nothing. Really,” Jo insisted, but she didn’t leave, instead opening up the mini fridge that Beth kept in the corner. The door was lined with shiny glass bottles of kombucha. So gross. Jo wrinkled her nose and shifted things around, finally locating a can of Diet Coke in the back corner. She didn’t love soda, but she did like having something to do with her hands.
When she closed the fridge, Beth was watching her. Her sister’s skin was still flushed from what she and Ford had been doing when Jo entered the garage, and Jo felt a pang of what was undeniably loneliness.
She wanted what Beth and Ford had. Not just the companionship, either, damn it. She wanted the lust, the can’t-keep-your-hands-off-each-other headiness.
And the only person who had ever done it for her was Theo.
Fuck her life.
“I’m going to take a wild guess and assume that it’s Theo who’s gotten that crazy look in your eyes.” Beth eyed Jo’s drink, then crossed to the fridge and retrieved a kombucha for herself. Jo couldn’t hold back a grimace when her sister downed half the bottle. Sure, it was supposed to be good for you, but it had little floaty things in it. Yuck.
“So, tell me.” Beth gestured with her bottle. Jo squirmed. She’d come here because she’d wanted to rant to her sister, absolutely. But after seeing Beth and Ford together, she felt more like curling up into a ball in her room. Alone.
“How can you drin
k that?” Both Jo and Beth jumped when the door Ford had just disappeared through banged open, smacking into the unfinished drywall of the shop. “It has chunks in it.”
Beth arched an eyebrow at the bottle of beer Meg carried. “But beer before noon is okay?”
“It’s craft beer.” Meg smiled sweetly. “Doesn’t count.”
Looking to Jo for support, she stopped short. “What’s going on?”
“Theo,” Beth supplied before Jo could answer.
“Damn it.” Meg handed Jo the beer. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.” Jo scowled. She’d come here wanting to talk to Beth, but now she didn’t know what the hell she wanted.
“Hello?” All three sisters turned at the sound of the male voice. Jo felt awkwardness weigh down on her like wet wool as she saw John Brooke standing in the open door of the garage. His pristine suit looked completely out of place against the oil-stained walls.
“Mr. Brooke.” Shit. Jo had no idea what the social nuances of a situation like this were. She also had no idea what the hell he was doing here.
“Miss Marchande.” Sidestepping a slick of oil on the floor, John closed the distance between them, offering her a hand. “I don’t feel that we had an adequate discussion of the position at Crossing Lines. I’d like to remedy that. Perhaps we can try again, tomorrow morning?”
“What?” Jo blurted, ignoring the hand that he still held out. “But didn’t Theo tell you about us?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” John arched his eyebrows in a way that he suggested he didn’t want to know, either. “If you need time to think about the offer, I can give you twenty-four hours. But I don’t think you were informed of the compensation for the job, which might influence your decision.”
He named a sum that made her two sisters gasp and left Jo gaping. It wasn’t astronomical, but it was far more than most writers made...ever.
“Apologies—I didn’t think that it might be crass to drop numbers in front of others.” He looked over at her sisters as he spoke, then did a double take at Meg. She looked right back, and the smirk that curved her lips said she liked what she saw.
“Thank you,” Jo said, a little too loudly, but this time her volume was on purpose. John cleared his throat and forced his attention back to her. Working on anything connected with Theo was a bad, bad idea, but she was human, and she had no money. The sum he’d named had her mind spinning wildly with possibilities.
She could maybe, possibly awaken that dream of going back to school. At the end of the day, she supposed that she was like most people—money was a powerful motivator.
“If I come in tomorrow to discuss this, will I be speaking with you?” She chose her words carefully. The last thing on earth that she wanted to do was discuss her complicated history with Theo with his business partner, so she was relieved when he simply nodded.
“Yes. I’ll go over the job with you, what we hope it will bring in terms of visibility to the company.” Tucking his hands into the pockets of his well-tailored trousers, he looked her in the eye. “But there will also be some input from the owner on the creative side.”
“I see,” she replied slowly, swallowing past a dry throat. Could she really do this? Could she work at a job where she knew she’d have to see Theo every day?
For that kind of money—life-changing money—could she not?
She could feel her sisters watching her—well, Beth was watching her. Meg was staring at John while licking her lips. She sucked in a deep breath, then nodded decisively.
“I’ll see you then.”
Beth jumped in place as John turned and exited the garage. Meg stared blatantly at his ass. And Jo felt as though all of the air had been sucked from her lungs.
What had she done?
* * *
Theo heard them as soon as he turned his ignition off. Taking advantage of the warmth of the early spring day, he’d taken his convertible, leaving the top down. He’d meant to pull his car into the yawning garage of the estate, which he had to do manually since he had no idea where the fob was—his dad had left an insane amount of personal things to sort through. But when he heard the feminine laughter, he was reminded of all the times he’d hung out with the Marchande girls on the very same lawn that they were on now.
Woo her like you’ve never wooed before.
His partner’s words reverberated in his head. He wanted to balk—he was Theo Lawrence. He’d made something of himself, even though no one had ever thought he could. He could have any woman he wanted, and he frequently did. He didn’t have to woo.
Those women weren’t Jo.
“How the hell am I supposed to woo her?” He waited for inspiration to strike, and when it didn’t, he reached for his phone. A few taps later, and his screen was filled with images of flowers, chocolates and people eating dinner with napkins in their laps.
A date. He should ask her on a date—a real one.
An unexpected pang of nerves shot through him, and he mercilessly squashed it down.
He needed to approach this like he would approach a business meeting, confident in his success.
As he strode back down the driveway, the rosebushes that had grown wild since his father’s death caught his eye. Among the tangle of branches were a handful of early blooms.
He’d never given Jo flowers. What an ass he’d been.
“Ow!” The branches were thorny, but he managed to gather enough stems to make a small bouquet. Arranging them clumsily in one hand, he took a deep breath and headed for the house next door.
“It went through!” Triumphant, Meg brandished a...was that a croquet mallet? Yes, they each had one, and there were thin wire hoops set up all over the lawn.
“No good! You weren’t holding your drink!” Amy pulled a fresh can of beer from a small cooler and tossed it to her eldest sister before taking a long drink from her own. “This is how you do it!”
Holding her can in one hand, Amy waved her mallet in an inelegant arc that somehow managed to connect solidly with a black ball. It flew through a wire hoop and smacked against the orange ball that Meg had just hit. “Yes! Two extra strokes for me!”
“From what I’ve heard, you don’t need any extra strokes to get the job done.” Beth grinned wickedly at her youngest sister, waving her mallet in the air like a pointer finger. “Who is it this week? Mason? Caroline?”
“A lady never kisses and tells,” Amy sniffed before sending a ball through the next hoop. Jo snorted in response.
“Since when are you a lady?” She’d been lying out flat on the grass, but now she propped herself up on her elbows, shielding her eyes from the sun. He could tell the moment she spotted him, because her spine straightened, her body tense. “Oh.”
“What?” Beth turned to look in the same direction. “Oh. Theo.”
“Hi, Beth. Meg. Amy.” He nodded at each of them in turn, suddenly feeling as though he was facing a firing squad. He’d never met an opponent he couldn’t best in the boardroom, but facing these four women that he’d known a lifetime ago made him wish for a drink. “May I ask what on earth you’re doing?”
“Playing beer croquet. Obviously.” Amy looked him up and down. At least he was assuming it was Amy—he could see whispers of the girl she’d been in the lines of her face, but this woman had blond dreadlocks and so many tattoos that he could barely see the ivory of her skin. “Wanna join?”
“Amy!” Meg glared at her sister, gesturing toward Jo with her head in a not-at-all-subtle manner.
“What?” Amy tossed her mallet to the ground with exasperation. “We’ve known him forever. You can’t just erase that because he went on some rich-boy rumspringa and grew up.”
“That’s right.” The sound of his own voice surprised him—he hadn’t intended to say anything. But as all four of the women looked at him curiously, he cleared his throat an
d continued, flying by the seat of his pants. “You can’t erase it.”
He focused in on Jo, offering her the bouquet he’d plucked. “Here.”
The expression on her face wasn’t one he’d seen before, a cross between confusion and terror. “Did you pick these?”
“I—yes.” Damn it. He should have thought this through better. Gotten something made up at a fancy florist. Something spiky and tropical, with lots of wild greenery—something that suited her better than a bunch of garden roses. “I’m here to woo you.”
“What?” Jo threw her hands in the air. Behind her, Meg choked on her swallow of beer, and Amy cocked her head, watching him intently. “Woo? What the hell does that mean? Who says that anymore?”
“Shush, Jo.” Meg wiped the back of her hand over her mouth. “Or you won’t be able to hear the wooing.”
Jo growled at her sister, who smiled beatifically back at her. The fact that Jo’s sisters hadn’t run him off the property with their mallets restored the smidgen of confidence that had been misplaced by doubt.
Jo hadn’t told him to leave yet, and the heat of her skin was still on his lips. She wasn’t immune to him, and her sisters hadn’t chased him away. He was going to take that and run with it.
Shutting out the other women, he crossed the lawn to Jo. Her expression was stony, but he saw her swallow thickly when he got close.
He held out the roses. She looked like she’d as soon eat them as accept them, but she reached out a wary hand.
“I want to take you on a date.” She sucked in a sharp breath, and he felt a stab of vindication. No, she wasn’t immune. “Tomorrow night. Dinner. You and me.”
Jo opened her mouth but never got a chance to speak.
“She’ll go!” Meg and Amy shouted at the same time. Jo turned to glare at them, but her gaze stopped at his hand.
Between the Lines Page 7
