“Are you kidding? I’m going for a dozen next time at least.”
Her smile lit up the entire Dead Zone and made me wish I had taken the chance to kiss her before we started. Then again, I’d been waiting to kiss her for so long, what were a few more weeks? “I’ve created a monster.”
“You’ve created a something.” She stood up as the horn signaled the end of the round. “You coming?”
Not yet, thankfully. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
For the next three rounds, she battled her way through people, racking up more kills each time. Some of the guys eventually banded together to take her down, which sucked. I only hoped she was watching as I surgically removed each and every one of them from the game.
As we hid before the fifth round, she leaned close, her face a mess of sweat and blood and paint spatter. She’d never looked more beautiful to me. “Since neither of us made the fourth round, I guess this is our last go.”
“I guess it is.” Which meant it was almost time to take her home, and I still hadn’t found a chance to fill her in on the plan. She was enjoying herself so much, I hated to complicate things.
“In case I forget to say it later…not the worst non-date ever.” She grinned at me, and I wished like hell we were post-breakup-plan so it could be a real date.
“Does that mean you recant the first and last date thing?” Please say yes, because I’m going to ask you again someday—and it will be for real.
For a second, she bit her lip like she was going to lean in for another go at that missed kiss. Then she whacked my faceplate, and it snapped closed. “It means we’re still not on a date, and if we were, I’d expect dessert and coffee afterward no matter how I look or smell.”
I tried not to be disappointed that she hadn’t jumped on the opening—the plan to get rid of Adam needed to come first anyway, at least if I wanted to save my sister from him, too. Time to return to our regular version of solid ground. Smart-assery to the rescue. “Then since we aren’t on a date, I won’t insist you shower before said dessert.”
The air horn sounded, saving me from any retort she might make. I needed some time to get my head on straight. “See you in thirty or less.”
My wanting Jenna wasn’t the reason I’d brought her out tonight. First and foremost, we both worked for her dad and needed to get along there. Not to mention, my hope that she and Lacey could salvage whatever was left of their friendship. Beyond that, I wanted her as a partner in crime—which would put those other things at risk. As much as I wanted something more with Jenna—as much as I wanted Adam the hell away from Lacey—maybe I couldn’t ask her to get in the middle. It could end up ruining everything. Which meant I needed to back the hell off and, if the two of them regaining their friendship didn’t fix things, I’d come up with another plan B.
For the first time all night, my round went flawlessly. Almost as though realizing I needed to let Jenna leave Adam behind on her own terms had released the tension in my body and mind. There were three people left in the arena when I looked at the counter. Excitement over potentially winning a round made me careless. I caught movement from the corner of my eye and turned, knowing damn well I was too late.
Jenna stood there, her gun leveled at my chest, but she didn’t pull the trigger, she just stared. The heat I’d imagined earlier radiated from her across the yards of dirt between us. The kind of thing that, under the right circumstances, would end with clothes being flung everywhere.
The kind of thing I should ignore.
I’d spent this round certain that keeping things between us solidly in the friend zone was the answer. Yet here I stood.
And then I heard a pop. Red splattered across Jenna’s chest, and she staggered backward, tripping over an obstacle and falling, her eyes wide. I was running toward her before I remembered it wasn’t real. Before I realized I could have won.
The last shot of the game caught me behind the knee, the extra force making it crumple as I ran. I fell over the obstacle to land on top of Jenna. She let out a grunt just as the horn sounded. Though I’d caught most of my weight on my arms, I was still a lot bigger and heavier than her.
“Are you okay?”
“Nope,” she said. “Pretty sure we’re dead”
I laughed as I rolled off her. “Guess so.”
She twisted toward me, staring for a long minute. The heat was back in her eyes, and her brows pulled together as if she were confused. God knows I hadn’t helped with anything other than releasing her aggression tonight. Not with the way I’d wanted to kiss her or how I’d encouraged her to seek revenge on her ex.
Shit. I needed to get her home. Shaking my head, I shattered whatever stillness had been stretched tight between us and stood.
“Am I supposed to thank you for trying to save my corpse?” She took the hand I offered and let me pull her to her feet.
“Nope. You can curse my stupidity, though.”
“Perfect. Consider yourself duly cursed. Is it ice cream time yet?”
She didn’t let go of my fingers as I moved toward the exit, catching up instead to walk by my side. More than one guy eyed us with something that smacked of jealousy. They needn’t have bothered. The hand-holding was little more than an illusion. We were friends—that was it—and that’s what we needed to be, no matter how much I didn’t want to let her go.
At the car, she whipped off her helmet and turned her face to the breeze. Sweat trickled from her brow and her chin was still bloody, but she’d never looked happier. Not wanting to disturb her, I stowed my gear before moving to the zipper of her vest. Her eyes shot toward my fingers. “If you don’t want help, that’s fine. I’m only trying to get you to that ice cream you mentioned.”
When she didn’t respond, I kept pulling on the tab until it was completely unzipped. She still didn’t move when I slid it off her shoulders. My heart thundered. This was a bad idea. Completely not in line with being only friends. But my hands had their own agenda and found the hem of her borrowed shirt.
Then she started to tremble.
Bad idea. Really bad idea.
My inner voice had the phrase on repeat. Yet the instant I started to let go, her fingers were over mine, holding them in place as she guided the shirt over her head. I hadn’t imagined a damn thing. Her insistence that this wasn’t a date had been more question than assertion. No matter how much either of us tried to deny it, there was something palpable between us.
The tank top she wore beneath clung to her body, the heat from her skin making the urge to touch her almost impossible to resist. Then she tipped her chin higher, and the voice in my head shut up.
I brushed a kiss across her mouth, and the contact—after the years of wondering—was electric. The kind of current that would shock a man and he’d hold on to the wire, desperate to feel it again and not caring if it burned him up inside. Her arms tangled around my neck, and I pulled her closer, her body pressed against the length of mine as I flicked her lips with my tongue.
She opened to me without hesitation and, at the first taste of her mouth, I hungered for more. I crushed my lips to hers, desperate for a closeness I hadn’t found yet, and she cried out, shoving away from me.
I tasted copper, and then I caught her face in the glow of passing headlights. She was bleeding again, and looking at me with wide, panicked eyes. I worried for a minute that she’d bolt into the exiting traffic. Instead she raised trembling fingers to her mouth, touching the cut lightly.
She took a step away from me and whispered, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Without another word, she rushed to the passenger side and climbed into the car. We’d both wanted the kiss, both enjoyed it, but the way she’d looked at me, I’d suddenly become another mistake for her. That was the last thing I wanted, and one more thing I needed to set right when all this was over and done.
Plus, the whole reason I’d come home would eventually come out. If she thought she was just another woman to me… I�
�d be just as bad as Adam in her mind.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the lid of the trunk. The voice returned with a vengeance.
Definitely a bad idea.
Chapter Five
-Jenna-
I kissed Sutton. Of all the fucking people in the whole damn world, I kissed…Sutton. More than twelve hours later, and I was still dwelling on it.
If I’d consciously done it as some weird get-back-at-Lacey-for-stealing-my-man thing, maybe I wouldn’t have panicked as much—but he would have had to have been her ex, not her brother. Besides, if Sutton was right and she really wanted to be friends again, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. And I didn’t think she was as bad as Adam—because I knew exactly how easily he could charm women to get them to do what he wanted—but I wasn’t sure I could forgive her yet, either. The part of last night I couldn’t come to grips with was the fact that I’d kissed him for no other reason than because I wanted to. Because I felt like we had some sort of connection.
And I hadn’t stopped until we’d made the cut on my lip hurt and start bleeding again. Without it, I probably wouldn’t have stopped.
Half a workday over, and I could still feel him on my mouth.
The thought made me feel sick.
Or that might have been the BLT I was choking down for lunch.
Or the fact that I was eating lunch right across from him and those soul-devouring lips.
I had never in my life thanked God for my father’s presence as much as I did today on the job. Sutton kept trying to corner me “to talk”—because obviously the whole “Let’s grab our ice cream through the drive-through” wasn’t clear enough last night. Fortunately every time either of us had a minute’s break, Dad had something to fill it. Until now.
God, I hated lunch.
If I so much as looked at Sutton, my stomach started to churn, the sandwich curdling. And my damn lips burned. I shouldn’t have wanted to kiss him again. I mean, for crying out loud, it had hurt. Shouldn’t that have been warning enough?
But…something about his mouth on mine. I forgot the other bullshit for a minute there with him. It was only the two of us and there was no Adam or Lacey or whatever revenge scheme he’d been cooking up. The world had narrowed down just to the feel of his lips and, as much as I hated it, I couldn’t imagine anything better than that in my life.
And I wasn’t ready. Not to stop being angry at Adam, and definitely not to move on—especially not to Sutton. It wasn’t even that he turned me down before. I was damaged goods right now. That coupled with the Lacey thing only made any potential relationship far too complicated.
Oh, and we both worked for my father.
Dad dusted his hands on his jeans and stood. “Okay, you two. We pinned down the wiring in the bathroom and the drywall is precut for the outlets. Get it up while I deal with the plumbing issue in the kitchen.”
I choked on my sandwich. “Don’t you need me to help you? Get…plumbing…stuff.”
The look Dad shot my way lingered on my split lip. It carried the unfortunate message of “Did he hurt you?” No matter how badly I didn’t want to be left alone with Sutton, it was very much not for that reason.
Still, I didn’t really want to explain to Dad that I was having deviant thoughts about his assistant. Or that I’d kissed him. Especially after announcing the breakup last night.
Next time I get engaged, I’m not telling anyone until the wedding. It’s just going to be a show-up-for-a-party invitation. That way if he bails, I still have friends and booze and no one will be the wiser. And no one will care if I decide to run off with another guy that night.
Dad was still staring at me with that look on his face. Way to go into a freaked zone-out, Jenna. Oops. “Or not. I forgot you don’t trust anyone else with the plumbing.”
“Is there a problem then? Can you work together on the bathroom?”
Sutton sat there, leaving it for me to answer. I’m not sure if he read the same message from Dad or if he liked the idea of putting me on the spot. Either way I was stuck wording my response more carefully than I would under normal circumstances. “Yeah. It’s fine. I was worried about the cramped quarters is all.”
“And I’m worried you took a paintball to the head. That bathroom is bigger than your bedroom, sweetie.” Dad leaned close and pulled down the skin under my eyes—to check my pupils, I assumed.
Whatever his reason, I shifted away. “I’m fine. You said ‘bathroom,’ and I forgot we were in a mansion. It happens.”
Dad stared for a minute longer, then grunted something that sounded like kids or girls or some other single syllable filled with the frustrations of being a parent and walked away.
Once Dad was at the other end of the basement, Sutton turned to me. “So. About that chat?”
My stomach took a ride on the roller coaster my intestines had been building since we sat down. I shoved my garbage into the mini-cooler and stood. “About that bathroom.”
Maybe if I got him working, he’d give up. Once we were inside, I headed straight for the stack of drywall, trying to remember where the one marked “1” went as I hefted.
“Starting to think you did take a paintball or ten to the head at close range.” Sutton took the other end of the drywall. “Together, remember? Stop trying to prove you can do everything yourself.”
My grip on the sheet slipped, and I scrambled to grab hold again before it hit the floor and broke. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He clenched his jaw and twisted his head away so I couldn’t see his face. “Never mind. You don’t want to talk, remember? Let’s just get this done.”
Nothing like a guy giving you exactly what you say you want. It wasn’t supposed to suck. As the minutes of silence stretched into an hour where my only company was the twisting in my gut accompanied by the melodic sounds of grunts and pounding hammers, I hit the point where I couldn’t deal anymore.
“What did you want to talk about?”
His hammer dangled from his fingers as he leaned against the newly secure wall. He made me feel naked under his stare, and I had to fight the urge to squirm. “Have a change of heart? Or sick of the silence?”
Mainly a case of the guilts—after all, I hadn’t exactly tried to stop the kiss in the first place. “Yeah. That’s clearly it. You’re my only option for noise that doesn’t fade into the background.”
“I could get the radio.”
“Stop being—” I clamped my lips tight as my stomach twisted in another knot, as if it knew I should shut the hell up. There were a lot of ways to make working together miserable, and I seemed intent on trying all of them on for size. Take twenty-seven. “That isn’t what I meant.” Then again, I didn’t know what I did mean, either. “I don’t know how to talk to you.”
“You talked to me fine yesterday. Or was that a fluke?” He spread glue on the studs for the last section of drywall, like I hadn’t finally cracked and spoken to him. Like this wasn’t a big deal.
“That was me pretending for a few minutes that you weren’t you. And that you weren’t Lacey’s damn brother. Then I remembered I can’t handle any of what it means.”
“Grab the drywall.” He hefted his end and, when I lifted mine, I saw the tight line of his jaw. It looked like I’d struck a nerve, but I wasn’t sure how. Sutton pushed my buttons like no one else, he always had; maybe I’d always gotten to him too and just hadn’t realized it. Neither of us said anything as we stuck the sheet of drywall up and hammered in the first few nails.
Then Sutton broke the non-silence. “I’m not going to fucking tiptoe around you because of your breakup or because I happen to share Lacey’s last name. If you didn’t enjoy yourself last night, I’m sorry for misreading you, but don’t decide to pull a one-eighty and act like this because I kissed you. It wasn’t like you didn’t kiss back.”
And that was the crux of it. I wasn’t pissed at him; I was pissed at myself. How could I be righteously furious at Adam and Lacey if I was m
aking out with the first guy to come along after? Worse was the twisted desperation it took to run to Lacey’s brother—like I thought being with him would piss her off. As if Sutton’s hints at breaking them up had made me hungry for vengeance.
Looking at it in hindsight, I didn’t have a lot of self-respect left. Just a lot of bruises and an ache inside that refused to go away. And an upset stomach to boot. “I did kiss you, and I’m sorry.”
“You’re what?” His jaw was so tight and hard it looked like his face had been carved from marble. The way his brows pulled together over his sad eyes made me feel like I’d kicked him. I had to be honest with him, though.
“I shouldn’t have done it. I’m a jumble of emotions and stupidity right now. I shouldn’t be kissing anyone, least of all you.”
Sutton jammed his hammer into the loop on his tool belt and stalked up to me, the hurt I’d seen deepening. “Least of all me? You mean me, Lacey’s brother? Or me, the guy who wouldn’t take advantage of you when you were sixteen and so trashed you could barely stand? Or me, the guy who took you to paintball last night to try to help you deal with the bullshit you’re going through? Which one of them am I?”
I was trapped between him and the wall—far too literal of a rock and a hard place for my sanity. Mainly because part of me wanted to kiss him again. Wanted to forget all the reasons he was a bad idea.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“Is that your tagline for the day? Because I have to tell you, there are better options.” If he was any other guy I’d have been terrified he’d lash out with the fists clenched at his sides. But I felt safer with Sutton than I ever had with anyone else. And I think that’s what terrified me the most. Whether or not he was willing to throw a punch didn’t lessen his growing anger a bit, though. “How about you try something novel and say what you do mean for a change?”
“I…don’t know how.”
He jerked away from the wall and turned, yanking his hammer free.
It was like Adam leaving again, only worse. Adam had been a slap in the face. Sutton turning away from me was a fist to the gut. Everything roiled and ached inside me. I wrapped an arm around my middle, trying desperately to hold myself together.
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