by S. E. Harmon
I cleared my throat. “So that’s all you have to say about my awful cooking?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I get it. I’m supposed to say something judgmental so you can hate me, right?” He smiled smugly. “Nice try. You’re just going to have to keep on liking me.”
“Don’t get too smug. I like ABBA and boy bands, too. My taste is pretty questionable.”
“Your chocolate sauce looks gritty,” he said loudly, and Chef DuPont’s head swung around like an animal spotting prey in the jungle. That beady gaze narrowed in on me.
I swallowed, putting down my crepe fork. As DuPont stormed toward our station, I stirred that sauce like my life depended on it, sending Jackson a meaningful glare. If I was allowed to live, I was going to tell DuPont about someone’s salty ass crepes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The next Saturday, it was his turn to be surprised on our non-date. I picked him up early, taking a moment to appreciate how he filled out a pair of navy cords and a crisp white button-down as he got in the car. He leaned over and gave me a kiss, and I promptly handed him a sack of McDonald’s.
He looked at me over his aviator shades, raising an eyebrow. “I know I’m a cheap date, but really?”
I grinned, putting on my own shades against the morning sun. “Eat up, buttercup. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
He groused but by the time we’d reached our destination, he’d hoovered down two sausage biscuits and a pile of hash browns. I shook my head. If I could steal his metabolism and replace it with my own, I totally would.
“The museum?” Jackson’s nose was practically pressed to the passenger side window as I pulled in the busy lot. “Really?”
“What? Is that too boring? I was worried that you might have already been to this one, but if you don’t want to go, that’s fine.” I realized I was talking way too fast and took a breath. “You said it had to be something different,” I finished lamely.
He looked at me for a moment, head cocked to the side. “You remembered my story, huh? About my mother?”
“I have a good memory,” I said defensively.
“Uh huh.” His stare intensified. “I’m guessing this museum also has a lot of baroque art?”
Well, yes. I’d specifically researched online for a museum that would have baroque art. There was no point in creating a museum experience if I couldn’t replicate it exactly like he’d remembered it. And so what if I’d brought brie and crackers and grapes in a small cooler in the backseat? I pulled at the mandarin collar of my blouse that suddenly felt a little too tight. I wanted to give the cooler a small kick—hopefully to the Bermuda triangle—before he noticed it.
I really hadn’t thought this through. Mostly because when you examined it from all angles, it seemed a little over the top for casual. It seemed like something a girlfriend would do. I flushed. “Yeah. Why not?”
That gaze damn near burned my skin as I searched for a parking spot. I looked longer and harder than necessary, passing three perfectly acceptable spots just to keep busy and avoid those knowing eyes. When I finally found a space near the front, I had no choice but to pull in.
I put the car in park, finally risking a look in his direction. I sent him an overly bright smile. “Ready?”
His voice was a bit introspective when he spoke. “You know, I talked to one of the partners about your idea regarding more pro bono?”
“Oh yeah?” I was confused about the turn of conversation but grateful. I’d talk about chickens playing tic-tac-toe at this point. “What did he say?”
“She. We haven’t spoken to Rawlings yet. But the partner I did speak to seemed very receptive to the idea, especially when I told her I felt like I was burning out.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“Isn’t it? She told me that she’d gone through something similar. She also had some advice for me. She told me not to make the law and my career my whole life. To make room for someone who makes it all worthwhile. She told me that since she found that someone, she always has a touchstone…something to help her achieve that balance.”
“Did she?” I asked faintly. “Balance is good.”
He gave me an assessing look, as if he was making sure I knew we weren’t making random conversation. Then he gave me a slow, lazy smile that said he was satisfied I was getting his subtext loud and clear. As I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the door, his hand landed on mine. Tightened. He pulled me in for a long, deep, thorough kiss that was no less devastating for being brief. His mouth slid down to my neck, placing several kisses there that made me shiver, and my hand reflexively tightened on his shoulder.
When he spoke, his voice was a soft rumble near my ear. “I’m playing along, AJ. We’ve been going at your speed, and doing this your way.” His teeth sank into that soft juncture between my neck and shoulder and I gasped. “But you’re running out of time.”
And then he let me go. “You ready?”
I couldn’t help but wonder if he was talking about more than going inside. I could only nod.
*
The museum was busy, considering it was a Saturday morning, and the majority of the crowd seemed to be excited kids and their parents. We spent most of the morning wandering around the museum in no particular order, viewing exhibits and reading various plaques of information to one another.
As we left a particularly interesting exhibit on comets, I said, “I don’t think I’ve been to a museum since college. We had an assignment at the art museum on campus, and I dragged Julian along.”
Jackson grinned. “I remember him telling me about a lot of things you made him do. Foreign films for extra credit. A poetry slam contest. A trip to monkey jungle?”
“That was for Ecology lab. Somewhere on my computer, I have pictures of Julian giving marshmallows and grapes to a curious capuchin.”
“Were you really into nature?”
“Not really. Just one of those things you do when you’re trying to find yourself. I had to take a bunch of classes to fill requirements, so I chose the most interesting ones in the bunch. I took Ecology for the same reason I took three semesters of French. I was curious.”
We paused in front of a giant scale with the Earth on one side and the moon on the other. Jackson squinted as he read the sign. “This station shows curious space cadets how much they’d weigh on different planets. Without the factor of gravity, how much do you weigh?” He glanced at me. “Do you want to know your space weight?”
“I don’t want to know my Earth weight. And if you know what’s good for you, you don’t either,” I said, arching a pertinent eyebrow. “How about those moon rocks over there?”
We stopped in front of the moon rock display to get a better look. “So you never said.” I nudged his shoulder as we stared down at the silvery rocks. “What about you? What were some of your college curiosities?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t really have any. I was too focused on finishing as quickly as possible to really enjoy the journey. Hell, I didn’t even know I was supposed to be enjoying the journey until it was over. I’m pretty sure there’s a saying about that. Probably something wise.”
“Aren’t they always?” Those sayings made for good Internet memes, but wise advice was a bitch to implement in real life. “What about after college?”
“I went straight to law school and got my J.D. I had an internship lined up for me before I really even had time to think about anything else.”
“I don’t know how you had that kind of focus. There are just so many things out there. So many things you could be.”
“For me, there was really only one option. My father loved law. He was a lawyer and so was my grandfather. It only made sense that I’d be one as well.”
“That’s not really fair,” I murmured. It was the mild version of what I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to malign Jackson’s folks. After all, I’d never even met them.
“They didn’t demand that I become a lawyer.” He smiled. “I wanted to. It wa
s always so hard to get close to my father, and I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted something to talk to him about. He was a very proud, austere man. Some would say—”
“Cold?” I interjected. “Trust me, Julian has no lack of adjectives to describe that your father.”
“Julian was more like our mother that way. He’s free-spirited and always says what he’s thinking…always,” Jackson emphasized, and we shared a meaningful look. Boy, did he ever. “Jules drove my father crazy with that. Truthfully, I think our father…envied him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He envied him for being able to say what he was thinking and tune into whatever he was feeling. Julian always made his own path. He and our father may not have always seen eye to eye, but he always respected Julian for that.” He shrugged. “I wanted to be just like my dad, and my dad loved the law. His dream kind of turned into mine.”
“But what about you?” I’d been kind of lucky that way. My parents hadn’t cared what I did as long as I did something worthy of my time and education. “What about what you wanted to do? Don’t you love the law?”
“I do now.” He smiled. “Providence, I guess.”
“Predetermination, if you ask my philosophy professor from college.”
He grinned. “Ohh, I definitely had one of those. He wore dark shades even though our class was at night, and answered all questions with questions.”
“Mine was kind of young, and ditto on that questions with questions thing. He was my first professor that really cursed…like really cursed. Not just the occasional ‘damn.’ Everything was ‘fuck this’ or ‘fuck that.’”
“He sounds like an angry man.”
“He was a blast. At least, I thought so as a freshman whose high school teachers had been pretty square. As an adult, I think he was just a young graduate who’d realized the limitations of a philosophy degree.” I sighed. “English Lit students go through the same thing.”
He grinned. “So do Poly-Sci majors.”
As we strolled and talked, we visited various exhibits that caught our attention. He squinted again at an exhibit sign and I handed him my glasses. He looked at them, surprised. “I don’t think we’re the same prescription.”
“Our prescriptions are close, and this is better than nothing. Besides, I’ve had enough of you squinting like you’re looking into the surface of the sun.” I held them out again, stubbornly, until he took them. “If you have to read every exhibit sign they put up, you need them more than I do.”
He groused, but put them on. He turned to me and made a face. “Happy?”
“Yes, actually.” Luckily, my black frames were unisex. The square frames actually looked really good on him. To be perfectly honest, most things did. I glanced at my watch. “We need to get a move on if we’re going to make the light show. I want to get a good—”
I broke off as I came to a complete stand still.
He looked at me questioningly. “What’s wrong?”
I pointed at the sign. “They have virtual reality space tag.”
We stared at one another for a moment before hustling off. We suited up with a bunch of kids and two chaperons, distributing the adults among both the Martian and Earthling teams for fairness. I worked my finger on the trigger of my laser experimentally. That was fine with me. There was only one Martian I was interested in tagging, and I was fairly certain he’d just disappeared behind that replica of a moon rock.
It was nothing personal. But there was no love in space wars.
*
“Generally, when someone’s sensor goes off, you stop shooting at them.” Jackson glared at me as we walked back through the museum toward the exit.
“I didn’t have my glasses,” I said, waving a hand airily. “To the winner go the spoils. You owe me a souvenir.”
“I made that bet before I realized you take no prisoners at laser tag,” he grumbled.
We spent some time in the gift shop, searching for anything with our names on it. Jackson got lucky with a keychain, and I found a mug with Jupiter on the front. We also managed to buy space food and a tiny snow globe with a replica of the space shuttle inside.
Headed for the car in the parking lot, I glanced over at Jackson and had to grin. He looked like a little kid leaving Disney World. He was gnawing on some of the space food we’d bought, a NASA ball cap low on his head.
He offered me a piece of space food that I waved off. “We need some real damn food.”
I cleared my throat uncomfortably, knowing he was going to give me a hard time for what I was about to say. Well, he was going to be touched and then because it was us and that was what we did, he was going to give me a hard time. “I kind of brought a picnic.”
I could feel the weight of his gaze on me even as I fumbled with the key fob and unlocked the doors. When I finally risked a glance in his direction, he was giving me that look, his eyes crinkled with the force of his smile. “Oh God,” I muttered. “You’re going to say things now, aren’t you?”
“Things about you remembering my story about my mother and replicating her picnic? Things about you being one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known? You bet.”
“Sweet?” I was aghast.
“Sweet,” he confirmed.
“Can I at least get food first?”
He laughed. “Be my guest.”
I sighed. “Why can’t you be like other guys and just want to have sex?”
“Because I’m not like other guys, AJ.” He whistled as I unlocked the doors. “The sooner you realize that, the better off we’ll be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
When I’d pestered Jackson about what kind of outfit I should wear for our date, he’d told me really casual. I was mystified, but I figured you could never go wrong in jeans. I checked my jeans in the mirror to make sure they made my ass look big. Check. I was never above an optical illusion to make my waist look smaller, and I was honest enough to admit it. The doorbell rang as I was spraying some body splash and walking into the perfumed cloud.
“Coming!” I called out with no idea if he could hear me or not.
I flipped my hair upside down and spritzed a little on the underside. In the commercials, when they flipped their hair back, they had the perfect amount of volume. When I flipped my hair back, I looked like a wild animal. The doorbell rang again as I was smoothing my hands over my Lion King-worthy mane.
“Coming!” I repeated. Again, no idea whether he could hear me or not. Judging from the way he pressed the doorbell again, I was leaning toward not. I grabbed my wedges in one hand and headed for the door.
I opened the door to Jackson standing on my front porch, hands jammed in the back pockets of his stonewashed jeans, as if he hadn’t been the one ringing my bell like a demented Quasimodo. His AC/DC shirt molded to his well-muscled torso like a second skin, and he had a Cubs baseball jammed over his hair, which I promptly took off to annoy him. I tipped up my face and he leaned down to give me a brief kiss, his face more than a little amused.
“Please don’t tell me you were doing the hair thing again.”
“They make it look so easy on the Aussie commercial,” I said wistfully.
“I think your hair looks fine the way it is.”
“And that’s why I keep you around,” I informed him. “You coming in?”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“It’s the thing to do, Jackson.” I blinked at him innocently. “Someone shows up at your door, you invite them in.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” he repeated with a sweet smile. “Because I’m going to come in and you’re going to do your Avery thing, and as usual, I won’t be able to resist. We’ll be naked in less than five minutes.”
“But—”
“So grab your purse and keys, and let’s get going.”
“Fine,” I grumbled, sticking my feet in my wedges. I grabbed my purse off the table by the door, stuck my keys in my pocket, and stepped out
on the porch. I flipped the lock and pulled the door shut behind my back. “Do I at least get a real kiss?”
He stepped in closer, and the intense look on his face had me stepping back a pace almost automatically. Those eyes were suddenly alight with promise and heat, and I realized he wasn’t quite as unaffected as he pretended to be. I came up against the door, the wood warm and solid against my back as he placed a hand on either side of me. My breath stuttered in my chest as he leaned down slowly, his mouth taking mine, all hard and soft at the same time. One kiss blended into two, which quickly turned into three as we devoured one another right there on the porch. And despite the fact that we were providing quite a show for any neighbor who bothered to look, I couldn’t seem to stop kissing him back.
Finally ending the kiss, he stepped back, putting some distance between us. He cleared his throat. “Come with me.”
“Where we going?” I managed.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Will I like it?”
“Better than the other things I want to do to you? I doubt it.” He grinned. “But you’ll have fun nevertheless.”
I scowled and jammed his cap back on his head. I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved hat hair more.
We made idle talk as he drove, in no particular hurry to get to our destination. He told me about his work at Legal Aid that day, and the back-to-back consults he’d had nearly all day. He was now pretty sure he’d romanticized his legal clinic years because they’d been in the rearview window, but he was still happy with the new direction his work was taking. Which was good to hear. Frankly, I was always a little worried when I made a suggestion that the person would blame me when if it didn’t work out. Like when I’d made a simple suggestion that a teenaged Lane would look better with a perm. Some things you just never lived down.
When he inquired about my day, I told him about Julian’s horror when a customer spilled a jumbo-sized Jamba Juice on our intake counter. Jules had nearly had a meltdown, pushing back the rush of peach smoothie with his fingers from a customer’s iPad and screaming for paper towels. Walter, one of our intern techs, had rushed in with some of the threadbare paper towels from the bathroom and Julian had screeched, “For the love of God, someone bring me some Bounty! Does this not look like a better picker upper situation to you?” Jackson laughed over the visual for a good five minutes, clearly enjoying someone else being saddled with his brother’s dramatics.
