Between the Lines

by Lauren Hawkeye

  “I only wear coats when it reaches minus twenty.” Jo held up the kerchief thing. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Tie your hair back.” He gestured with his hands. “Otherwise it’ll get in your face.”

  Puzzled, Jo struggled to arrange the scarf on her head. Breathing out on a chuckle, Theo rounded the desk, taking it from her hands.

  “Like this.” Turning her with the press of a hand on her lower back, he stroked his fingers through the sleek, chin-length strands of her hair. Her pulse stilled as he tucked them behind her ears, brushing over the tops of her ears.

  A rough breath escaped her as he arranged the silk over her hair. When he tied it in a knot at the base of her skull, he whispered a light touch down the back of her neck, tracing a line to the top of her spine.

  Just a simple touch, but she felt it over her entire body. Her breasts swelled, aching, and she arched into his hands.

  “There. You’re ready.” Breaking the connection, Theo stepped back, put some much-needed space between them. Her heart was hammering so hard that she spoke extra loud in order to be heard over it.

  “Ready for what?” And she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready at all.

  He grinned, then dangled a set of car keys. “Ready for a ride in the convertible.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “JO, YOU MIGHT as well relax. We’re going to be in the car for a while, and you’re going to get a headache if you keep clenching your jaw like that.”

  Theo had his eyes on the road ahead but was aware of every movement, every breath Jo made in the passenger’s seat of the low-slung F-Type Jaguar.

  She’d been tense since they’d left the office, navigating through the congested streets of the city and onto the interstate. He could still feel the heat of her skin, branded onto the tips of his fingers from when he’d helped her with the scarf, and he didn’t think the tension was because she didn’t want to be there. In fact, he knew it—he knew Jo.

  He knew that breathy little sigh, the same one she’d made when he was inside her. She was tense for the same reason he was—because she still wanted him. She wanted him, and she was confused about it.

  He hoped that what he’d planned for today would help her clear her mind.

  “Where are we going?” She’d asked this approximately every ten minutes since they’d left Boston, making him grin. Patience had never been one of her virtues.

  “You’ll find out when we get there.” Luckily for her, he had patience enough for the both of them. “For now, let’s go over that list of article ideas. Pull it up and let’s see what grabs you.”

  Huffing out a breath of exasperation, she wriggled her phone out of her pocket. He watched from the corner of his eye, enjoying the view of her thighs and her slim hips, wondering how on earth she’d managed to fit anything into the pocket of pants so tight.

  “‘Wildest one-night stands,’” she read. He expected her to make some kind of sarcastic remark—in fact, he was looking forward to it—but instead she nodded thoughtfully. “I could work with that.”

  What?

  “What is the main purpose of Crossing Lines, as far as your marketing goes?” She sank her teeth into her lower lip, and he wanted to do that himself. “Is it for casual dating? Relationships? Or is it like that one site...what’s it called? Timber?”

  “Tinder.” He pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh, since he could see that she was being serious. “And it’s for all of the above. But the hope is that by having you blog about all kinds of interesting topics relating to sex and love, it will set us up as being more cutting-edge than our peers. More avant-garde, the ones with our finger on the pulse of what the cool kids want.”

  She nodded, returning to the list.

  “‘Sugar dating—dating on your terms.’” She cocked her head, curious. “What’s that? I know I’ve read about that, but I’m a little unclear on the details.”

  “Ever heard the term sugar daddy?” She nodded. “There are a number of sites to connect people who are looking for that kind of situation. Sugar daddies—or mommies—who don’t have the time or inclination for a relationship will post, seeking an arrangement with a sugar baby, mostly women, but there are some men now. In return for company and, most of the time, sex, the sugar daddies will fulfill wishes on the sugar baby’s list—often that’s someone to cover the rent, to help with student debt, to fund travel.”

  “So we could do an article about why it’s called dating when, really, it’s a form of sex work?” She chewed on her lip as she thought about it, and he fought to keep his eyes on the road against the distraction those pink lips provided.

  “That could work,” he said, taking a moment to look the other way, away from those sexy lips. Unfortunately, the endless field of grass didn’t have much to offer that could hold his attention.

  “I don’t think we should do this one. It will make readers curious about these arrangement sites, driving them away from yours. We want to write about things that get them excited about exploring what they’ve read about, eager to meet people...but to meet people on Crossing Lines. Right?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” he said, surprised. She was right, of course, and John would have likely said the same thing if he’d reviewed the list before Theo had sent it to Jo. “That’s a good point.”

  Jo tapped a finger to her temple, grinning. “Not just air in here, my friend.”

  A dart of warmth—not heat, not lust, but warmth—spread in Theo’s chest. This was the first genuine smile that Jo had given him since he’d returned. Something twisted in his rib cage, causing a bone-deep ache.

  “‘Erotic fire cupping. Naked summer pool-hopping. Marijuana lube.’” She continued reviewing the list, commenting as she went. When she was halfway through the list, she paused, letting out a sexy little sound that made his dick sit up and pay attention.

  “‘Sex with an ex,’” she read, setting her phone down on her thigh. “‘Exploring kink with an old flame can be easier than getting dirty with someone you want to keep.’”

  He said nothing. He hadn’t added it to the list just to broach the topic, at least not consciously. That said, he’d wondered what she’d say about it, if anything.

  With other women, he was on sure footing. He was charming, he was cocky, he was bossy and it worked—oh, how it worked.

  Jo, though? Jo wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever met. She saw through his charm, laughed at his cockiness, and if he was bossy, well, one nudge too many and she’d kick back like a mule. It didn’t leave him with many options—at least, not ones he’d used before.

  She was silent for a long moment, her thumb rubbing over the screen on her phone. He wasn’t prepared when she half turned in her seat, tucking one leg up underneath her.

  “What would you think about that?” she asked, curiosity thick in her words.

  “What?” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Like...what do I think about that in general?”

  “No.” She drew the word out into three syllables. “You know what I mean. Sex. Us.”

  She’d managed to shock him. He’d thought that she might read that item and tuck it away in that busy brain to think about later. She might even have ignored it entirely, refusing to give him the satisfaction of letting him know that she was thinking about it.

  Never in his wildest dreams—and when it came to Jo, he had a lot of dreams—had he imagined that she would come right out and ask him what he thought about them having sex.

  “I think I’ve made it pretty obvious what I want here.” He cast her a sidelong look. “That’s why we’re in this car, right? This is a date.”

  “It’s a date, but I wasn’t planning on sleeping with you after it,” she replied archly. He made a show of wincing.

  “Way to hurt a man where it counts, Jo. Right in the desperate hope.”r />
  “You’ve never been desperate in your life,” she snorted, tapping her phone on her knee. She was quiet for a moment, and he had to claw back the urge to demand to know what was running through her head.

  “I’m not saying this properly.” She swallowed, tapping her phone faster. “Look. I know that I write about a lot of...stuff. Kinky stuff. And you must think I write about it convincingly, or you wouldn’t have offered me this job.”

  “Right.” He drew out the word, his pulse picking up. She’d always been easy for him to read, but right now he truly didn’t know what she was thinking.

  “You’re going to make me spell it out, aren’t you?” She huffed out a breath, then scrubbed her hands over her face. “Look. I write about kink because I’m interested in it. But I don’t...you know I don’t do all of those things, right?”

  Her words came out in a rush. A terrible, wild hope began to build up inside him.

  “Are you saying that you want to try some of those things?” His attention had been on her since the moment he’d walked into that office, but now it was laser focused.

  “Yes.” His Jo had never been anything but direct, and right now, by God, he appreciated it. “But I don’t... I’m not interested in exploring with most people.”

  “Are you saying that you’re interested in exploring with me?” His hands clenched on the steering wheel.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Turning, she looked up at him with those wide gray eyes. “But I need you to understand that that doesn’t...it doesn’t mean that things are the way they were before.”

  The tiniest dart of pain hooked itself into his chest. He’d known that she wouldn’t welcome him back with open arms, but it still hadn’t killed the evil that was hope.

  He wasn’t a man to settle for halves when he wanted the whole—he was, however, a man who’d learned that nothing was sweeter than something you’d worked for.

  “So what you’re saying is, you want to use me for my body and nothing else?” Her cheeks were flushed, and he knew that it wasn’t from the wind as they flew down the interstate. “I’d be a very stupid man not to take you up on that offer, Jo Marchande. I like to think I’m rather clever.”

  “So you don’t need to do stuff like...this.” She gestured out the window as the Jag swung onto the exit to the town of Concord. “Planning dates. Being charming. You know.”

  “Baby, my charm is natural. You should know I’ve never been without it.” He grinned at her, wiggling his eyebrows, and she giggled, a wholly un-Jo-like sound, but one he was pleased to have pulled from her. “As for the date. Just go with it. You might have been here sometime since I left, but I wanted to bring you here anyway.”

  “Bedford Street.” Letting his GPS navigate them through the town, he finally brought the car to a stop outside a large set of wrought-iron gates. On either side of the entrance were long, low-slung stone walls, worn with age and slicked with moss.

  Jo squinted forward, reading the sign.

  “Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,” she read, her words tinged with confusion. He waited patiently.

  Every other woman he’d dated would have been horrified to be taken to a cemetery on a date, and rightly so. But this truly was someplace he’d wanted to take her for well over a decade, and when the confusion on her face gave way to delight, he knew he’d scored a home run.

  “Author’s Ridge!” Shoving her phone back into the pocket of her pants, she undid her seat belt, then scrambled out of the car. “Let’s go!”

  High on the success of his idea, Theo followed more slowly, catching up with her as she paused to take a picture of the cemetery entrance. “How have you not been here yet?”

  She shrugged, turning to get a shot from the other direction. “Well, I drive, but I don’t trust my scooter to go this far. And no one I know is even the slightest bit interested in going to see graves.”

  “Their loss.” He shrugged. He wasn’t overly pumped about graveyards as a whole, but knowing how much Jo had wanted to come here made it appealing for him. Plus, he thought as he looked around, sucking in the clean air of the wide space, the freshly budding trees and the scent of spring, there were worse ways to spend an afternoon than outdoors, exploring history.

  “Come on!” More animated than she’d been since he’d come back, at least to him, she grabbed a paper map from a box affixed to the gate. “Did you know that Ralph Waldo Emerson gave the dedication speech when the cemetery first opened? And that he’s buried here?”

  Theo chuckled as he followed after her. Watching Jo study the map, her brow furrowed, something settled in his chest, something that he recognized as contentment.

  He’d missed this. He’d missed her. And he understood why she was wary when it came to her feelings about him, but once he’d seen her again, he’d known that this was it.

  He just had to convince her that this—them—was it, too.

  He enjoyed the walk through the cemetery, which reminded him of one of the gorgeous, slightly overgrown gardens that he often saw in Europe. The stones were weathered but well taken care of, and the greenery was lush and wild. It was peaceful, he realized.

  One thing he’d never really had in his life was peace. It was the thing that had been lacking among the countless other luxuries he’d once taken for granted.

  He caught up with her when she paused, staring with barely concealed excitement at a stone marker. “This is it. This is Author’s Ridge.”

  He didn’t entirely understand why she was so excited that she was trembling a bit. He didn’t have to understand to respect it, though, so he stayed silent, his arm brushing companionably against hers as they started to weave their way among the graves.

  “Henry David Thoreau.” She pointed to a simple stone that, rather than being marked with the last name, displayed the first in blocky letters. “Wow.”

  “What’s with the pencils?” Scattered among the bouquets of flowers and votive candles that showed that something noteworthy lay here were pencils—singles, bundles wrapped with ribbon, even whole boxes, the cardboard warped and faded from the sun and the rain.

  “Thoreau and his father ran a big pencil company before he was a writer,” she murmured, capturing the image with her phone, then consulting the map. “And just over here should be...holy crap. It’s Louisa May Alcott.”

  “Little Women, right?” He followed Jo over to where she’d stopped at the base of a plain stone set into the ground. Around it were more flowers as well as a handful of apples and paper—so much paper. Dog-eared books, shiny new copies, torn book covers, what looked like art.

  “That’s right.” Jo’s voice was hushed, and he understood that this particular grave was why she’d so badly wanted to come here once upon a time. “I don’t even know how many times I’ve read that book. I still have my first paper copy, the one I had as a kid, but it’s so tattered you can’t read it anymore. But I feel like... I almost feel like part of myself is in those pages, because they gave me so much growing up. That sounds stupid.”

  “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.” A lightbulb went on in his brain. “Was she what inspired you to start writing?”

  “Yeah.” Jo nodded, then looked up at him with a wry smile. “She wrote a classic American novel, beloved by millions. I have to wonder what she’d think about me writing a sex blog.”

  He grinned. “If you found so much inspiration in her, then I have to think she was pretty cool. She’d probably say that as long as you were writing what made you happy, it was all good.”

  The look Jo cast over her shoulder at him then was almost shy, and he felt something in the vicinity of his heart squeeze, just the littlest bit. Turning, she closed the space between them until she had just enough room to place a hand on his chest, the other behind his neck.

  “No matter what else happens with us, thank you for this.” Drawing up on the tips of her
toes—he really had forgotten how small she was—she drew him down for a kiss. It was a sweet brush of the lips, almost chaste, but the bolt of emotion he felt as she sighed against his lips nearly set him back on his heels.

  He’d thought he’d loved the girl that she once was, but he saw right now, with clarity, that what he’d felt then paled compared to the potential of what he could feel now.

  He looked down into her eyes, where she was watching with curiosity and a hint of wariness. He wanted to pull off the scarf she was still wearing, to grip that sleek hair and plunder her mouth with his tongue, but he figured that was probably inappropriate when standing at the grave of her idol.

  Still, the moment seemed to call for something—something to pin it in place, bookmarked for the future.

  “You know why I had to go.”

  “Of course I know.” Angling her chin up, she regarded him with those big eyes. “We fought. You realized that we didn’t fit. That we never would.”

  “What?” His fingers squeezed her shoulders as the words hit him like a bat. “You think I left because we fought? Is that seriously what you’ve thought this entire time?”

  The sneaky snake that was guilt coiled in his belly and settled in. He’d thought the reason for his leaving was so obvious, he hadn’t left a note. Hadn’t emailed. Hadn’t said a damn word to anyone, not even his dad.

  No one had come after him, either. Years later, that still hurt.

  “That wasn’t why you left?” Jo pushed lightly on his chest, enough that she could look up at him. “What on earth was your reason, then?”

  “I left because you were right.” He slid his hands down until he held her by her upper arms, somehow needing the connection.

  “I was right?” Her brow furrowed.

  “I was throwing my life away. Drinking and partying and wasting money that wasn’t even mine.” He rubbed his hands up and down her arms, as though to warm her, though he was the one feeling a chill. “I looked at how hard you were working to achieve your goals, you and your sisters. The way I was must have just rubbed it in your face that I was squandering what I had, and what you so badly wanted.”