Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)

by Tessa Bailey

  It took Jasper a few beats to collect his thoughts, being that he’d never spoken of the incident out loud. Now that it had come time to share with another person, sourness ran rampant in his stomach. “One night, a couple years back, I was on a bender. Nothing new for me—I was probably on a bender more often than I was off one.” He glanced at the wall separating the eatery from the Liquor Hole. “Anyway, I fell asleep in my office. Woke up the next evening and headed out to the bar for a glass of water, but the space had been booked. Women were taking up most of the bar with these giant sub sandwiches and Norah Jones music. Back then, I didn’t schedule events of that sort. Really, I just let the place run itself, so I figured one of the bartenders booked a party.”

  He checked to make sure Rita was still with him, found her listening with cautious interest. “It was a wedding shower, turned out. And they were…talking about me.” He cleared the rust from his throat. “Comparing notes. Laughing about me always being available for a quick visit. But—and I quote—it was obvious from my shit-hole of a bar that I wasn’t good for much else.”

  “Jasper…”

  “The bride-to-be asked if I was going to be the paid entertainment.” Relating the story didn’t even hurt anymore. More than anything, it was the icy-cold shock he remembered. He’d never been in a serious relationship with any of the women with whom he’d made time, but the revelation that they all thought of him as nothing more than a punch line had forced him to look back. To remember those blurry encounters and how he’d always woken up alone. Or how the experiences had always been hurried. Hurry, before someone finds us. Faster, I have an appointment.

  “I stopped getting drunk after that. Kind of stepped back.” Jasper ran a hand down his face. “My customers—hell, my own employees—couldn’t have a serious conversation with me. I’d just become their good time. But they sure as shit didn’t respect me.” He focused on Rita a moment, thinking of the women approaching him on the dance floor. “You saw it last night. And that was an improvement.”

  Rita stood, running her palms down the sides of her skirt. She closed the distance to him halfway and stopped, appearing to weigh her words carefully. God, she was beautiful in the partial light, surrounded by his restaurant, shifting on the creaky floorboards. If he wasn’t a semirational man, he might have tied her to the waitress station and forbade her ever to leave.

  “Everyone does things they regret. Believe me, I know. You should Google me sometime.” She blew out a breath. “Those women should regret not getting to know you. And you will get respect with this place. I know you will.” A sad smile passed over her lips. “You had mine before you even unlocked the door.”

  Instead of a sense of completion at having earned Rita’s admiration, a hole in his stomach yawned wide. “Why do I hear a ‘but’ in there?”

  “Because we’re at an impasse, Jasper. I’m leaving tomorrow.” She shuffled backward a step and that one, simple movement almost sank him. “I understand that you need more from a woman now—”

  “Wrong. Wrong, Rita. Just you.”

  “I can’t offer what I can’t give.” She glanced toward the door. “This road trip is important to me and my family. I think maybe there’s something at the end of it for us. My mother never did anything without a reason—that’s why we had to respect the wish. Time is something I can’t offer. There’s…school and finding a new job. A noncooking job. I’m running from a restaurant and you’re opening one.” She blinked as if everything had come into startling focus. “So I think, maybe—”

  “Don’t say it,” Jasper husked.

  “This is good-bye.”

  Rita’s smile was sad as she turned for the exit—

  But she was brought up short when a crash sounded in the adjacent bar, accompanied by shouts. Raised voices Jasper didn’t recognize, but apparently Rita did, because she wasted no time sprinting for the Liquor Hole, Jasper right on her heels.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rita’s heart banged around in her chest like sneakers inside a washing machine. That was Belmont’s pissed-off voice she’d heard, followed by Aaron’s. Christ on a cracker. If pent-up sexual frustration, followed by a hefty swing into regret and sadness—courtesy of Jasper Ellis—didn’t kill her, the shock of seeing her brothers brawling in the Liquor Hole just might.

  Standing inside the entrance for a few breathless beats, Rita couldn’t move. Since Belmont had gone missing for four days at age ten, Belmont and Aaron’s relationship had been stilted. Belmont had shut down, especially regarding his younger brother, to whom he’d once been closest. But they’d never actively argued as adults, apart from the occasional sarcastic swipes at one another. Par for the course in the Clarkson family. The behavior they were exhibiting now was completely out of the ordinary—but after a quick scan of the bar, Rita had a theory as to what might have been the cause.

  Peggy and Sage stood toward the back of the rapt crowd, which had formed in a thick, pushing semicircle around the dance floor. Sage wrung her hands while Peggy consoled her with absentminded shoulder pats, looking even more shell-shocked than Rita felt.

  “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was playing, making the fight seem like something out of a shitty cable television movie. Rita winced when Aaron landed a right hook, snapping Belmont’s head to the side. Damn. She hadn’t known Aaron was capable of delivering a blow like that. How the hell did her older brother remain standing? Belmont looked almost delighted when blood welled on his lower lip.

  Jasper laid a hand on Rita’s waist, planting a kiss on her neck. “Boys will be boys, huh?”

  “No, this is nothing like them. I think, anyway.” Her throat got tight. “I’m not sure I know either of them as well as I should. I know I don’t.”

  Jasper’s regard caressed the side of her face. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “No, I’m responsible for them—”

  “If you think I’d let you step in between two men with tunnel vision and flying fists, beautiful, you’re crazy.”

  Before she could respond, Jasper weaved through the crowd, everyone collectively sagging in disappointment that the boss had arrived to end the fun. Did Jasper notice their reaction? Did he not see the proof that they’d already learned to respect his authority? “All right, gentlemen. This place is enough of a dive without you wrecking it any further. Break it up.”

  Belmont and Aaron continued their staring contest of death as if they’d never heard Jasper. It was obvious the brothers hadn’t gotten the aggression out of their systems, and just before Jasper could muscle his way between them Belmont swung on Aaron, connecting with his jaw to a symphony of bone crunching. A white object flew through the air, the crowd parting to give it a place to land. Which it did, skittering to a stop at Rita’s feet. A tooth. Not just any tooth, though. Aaron’s tooth.

  “You motherfucker.” Aaron lunged for Belmont, but Jasper and the bartender managed to wrestle him off. Rita picked up the tooth—formerly a component of Aaron’s golden-boy, rising-star politician’s smile. She finally got her feet to move, joining Peggy and Sage across the bar and still cradling the tooth.

  “What happened?” She half shouted because they’d just entered the goddamn fiddle solo of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

  “It’s my fault,” Sage said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  Peggy shook her head, curls bouncing. “No, it is not your fault. And you should be here. Just as much as any of us.” She sighed when Rita made an impatient motion for her to continue. “Aaron put his arm around Sage’s shoulders and Bel didn’t like it.”

  Rita waited for her sister to continue but was greeted only by silence. “That’s it? That’s why they’re fighting?”

  “Little things to other people are just…bigger to Belmont,” Sage said, hitting Rita with serious hazel-green eyes before they landed back on Belmont. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good…” Rita’s warning was left hanging in the air when Sage crossed t
he dance floor, planting herself right in front of Belmont. From Rita’s vantage point, Sage looked like a lamb facing off with a giant. Belmont’s big shoulders were still heaving up and down and his jaw was clenched, blood painting his right cheekbone. But he no longer paid any attention to Aaron, who was slowly being talked down by Jasper.

  Over Aaron’s shoulder, Rita and Jasper’s gazes clashed, and she swore they were communicating without words. At the very least, Jasper’s message came through loud and clear.

  Don’t you dare leave this bar.

  Beside Rita, Peggy whistled through her teeth. “Lots of testosterone floating around this place. Let’s go order a cosmopolitan before we start growing hair on our chests.”

  Rita shook her head. “I can’t. I’m holding Aaron’s bloody tooth.”

  “I can’t argue with that excuse.” Peggy examined the object in question. “Gross. I’ll drink your cosmo for you.”

  “You’re a saint,” Rita mumbled, heading toward Jasper and Aaron. On the way she couldn’t help but observe Belmont and Sage. They weren’t speaking to each other, but Belmont seemed to be inching closer, little by little, forcing Sage to crane her head back. And then he did something Rita didn’t see coming. He dropped his chin onto Sage’s head—and just kind of deflated. Their arms remained straight at their sides, but both sets of their lips parted, dragging in oxygen. It was such an intimate moment that Rita had to look away.

  She sidled up beside Aaron. “I am the keeper of the lost tooth.”

  Aaron plucked the tooth from Rita’s palm, his laughter lacking any form of humor. “No way I can show up in Iowa missing a tooth. This is fucked.”

  “Yeah. It is.” Since she’d barely spoken to her youngest brother since their roadside shouting match—mostly due to irritation at herself for letting him get under her skin—displaying any kind of sympathy felt unnatural. Oh, who was she kidding? It would have felt unnatural under any circumstances. They might as well be distant cousins.

  “I bet you love this, don’t you?” Aaron asked, poking the vacant space in his mouth. “Your asshole brother finally gets what’s coming to him, right?”

  Knowing Jasper could hear every word, Rita spoke in a hushed tone. “You incited Bel—”

  “Right.” Aaron swiped away the blood beginning to seep from his nose. “Yeah, I incited him. So what, Rita? At least I got a reaction out of him. That’s the most he’s talked to me in twenty years.”

  A knot tightened in Rita’s stomach. She remembered the radical shift in her brothers’ relationship when Belmont came home after the incident. Remembered Aaron attempting to resume their usual antics and being closed out, just like they all had. Maybe—similar to the funeral—they’d all coped separately, not taking the time to understand each other’s methods. “I didn’t realize it was bothering you.”

  “My brother not talking to me?” He used the hem of his shirt to wipe sweat from his forehead. “Yeah. I can’t imagine why I would be bothered by that.”

  Seeing Aaron through different eyes—despite his always-handy sarcasm—Rita frowned. “Aaron, I—”

  “Jasper,” Aaron said, cutting her off. “I need a dentist. Someone who can work fast. And I need him yesterday.”

  “Now that’s going to be a problem,” Jasper drawled.

  For the first time, Rita noticed that Jasper was watching her with concern. “Why?” she asked. “There has to be someone local.”

  “Oh, there is.” Jasper nodded toward someone over Rita’s shoulder. “But he’s half shit-faced at the bar.”

  “Fuck. Me.” Aaron dropped his head into waiting hands. “I should never have left California.”

  Guilt would apparently be the fourth loop on her emotional roller coaster tonight. She’d been the one to press the road-trip idea and everyone was paying the price for her impulsive decision. Her relationship with Aaron was contentious at best, but losing the opportunity in Iowa would be bad for his career. It was her responsibility to fix the situation, even if the word responsibility made her gills turn green. “Um, okay. Jasper, we need to store that tooth in a cup of milk. I think that keeps it…fresh, so it can be…reinstalled.” She was grateful when Jasper nodded without giving her grief about her lack of dental lingo. “And then we need to sober up that dentist.”

  Jasper checked his watch. “Might take until the morning.” His cheek jerked as if he were trying to subdue a smile. “And then there’s the surgery, the recovery…”

  Aaron shifted. “What are you getting at?”

  “I know what’s he’s trying to say.” Rita couldn’t ignore the wings flapping in her chest, especially when Jasper’s mouth finally lifted in a grin. “We’ve got another day in Hurley.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Well, son of a bitch.

  If this wasn’t a sign, Jasper didn’t know what constituted one. Rita had been in the process of kissing him good-bye and divine providence had shown up like a goddamn superhero. Right about now, Aaron and Belmont were third and fourth on his list of favorite people, under Rita and Rosemary. If they weren’t coiled tighter than rattlesnakes on either side of Jasper as he walked the Clarksons back to the Hurley Arms, he might have pulled them into a group hug, unmanly or not.

  He wasn’t even irritated over Rita insisting they didn’t need an escort back, because he’d bought himself some time. Or it had been purchased for him, rather, but this was no time to split hairs. He hadn’t been about to leave three women to break up a second wave of fighting. Nor was he about to let a chance for more Rita go to waste. What she’d said back in the kitchen—Don’t you want me back?—had burrowed under his skin like the gopher from Caddyshack. He and Rita were going to clear that up real quick. Assuming he could get her alone. Judging from the sly conspiratorial looks Peggy was sending him, Jasper thought he might have an ally.

  When they reached the Arms, Belmont walked off into the parking lot. Aaron stared after his brother a moment before slamming into his room. Peggy looped an arm through Sage’s and urged her toward the seemingly endless line of doors. “Come on. Let’s have a sleepover in your room.”

  “W-wait,” Rita sputtered. “Have it in our room.”

  “I can’t hear you…you’re breaking up…” Peggy called back, faking a static noise by using her hand as an imaginary CB radio. “Try again later.”

  “Unbelievable,” Rita muttered, whirling for her own room and shoving the key into the lock. “I’m starting to have that fantasy again where I’m adopted.”

  Jasper barely managed to catch the door and slip in behind Rita. “The one where a rock star and a supermodel show up one day to claim you as their long-lost child?” He smiled, flipping on a light and viewing the room without the cover of darkness. “I had that one, too. Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall was my personal favorite.”

  The personal information slipped out without Jasper noticing, because his focus was on Rita’s possessions. Her flip-flops stowed in the corner, the giant, noise-canceling headphones on her side table. But the curious, yet guarded, expression on her face had Jasper replaying his words. “I just realized I never asked about your parents,” she murmured. “Did your grandparents raise you?”

  “They did.” He picked up a bottle of lotion, noting the scent. Winter Forest. “My parents were more than a little young. Tried to make it work for a while after I was born, but went separate directions.” That particular hurt had been dealt with a long time ago. Built in to become a part of him. When he spoke about his parents with sympathy—two kids who’d been painted into a corner—he couldn’t even remember if he meant the sympathy, or if he’d just begun believing his own patented explanation. Like a callus created over time and forgotten until someone pointed it out. “My mother is fine, living in Texas. Not too sure about my father.”

  He watched as Rita absorbed that information with a line between her eyes, until she kind of shook herself. “We don’t talk to our father, either. Lawrence. We called him that, even as kids. Shook his hand and called him Law
rence. Isn’t that funny?” She smoothed her palms along her thighs. “He split with Miriam after Peggy was born, but he’d stop by every two weeks, take us to this restaurant called”—she scrunched her brow—“That Pizza Place. He’d give us five dollars each for the arcade and take us home when we ran out. Then one day he stopped coming. And none of us ever talked about it. Or him.”

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  She lowered herself onto the bed with a shrug. “Maybe because we’d have to decide how to feel.”

  It took a great effort on Jasper’s end not to pounce all over that statement. It sank down into his stomach, making him wonder if wanting to know how Rita felt about him would only ever be a pipe dream. But he didn’t say that out loud. Instead, he took a turn around the room, noticing documents beneath the headphones on Rita’s side table, a red college logo printed across the top. “May I?” Her hum was wishy-washy, but he was curious enough to pick them up anyway, scanning the contents. “Graphic Communication at Baruch College.”

  “Just until I decide on something more specific.” She glanced at Jasper over her shoulder, then away just as fast. “So, you see, Jasper? Just because we have one more day…”

  Yeah, that was his cue to move. He let the school acceptance letter flutter to the nightstand and went to stand in front of Rita. “Yeah, I heard. You’re leaving. But I need to straighten something out right now.” He took hold of her hair, winding it around his fists. The position put her at eye level with his lap, which was exactly where he needed her to be, in a minute. But just then he kept her head tilted back, needing those eyes up. “Don’t you need me back? Did you actually ask me that, Rita?”

  “Hard to tell,” she whispered, her lips appearing stiff.

  “That right?” Keeping one hand twisted in Rita’s hair, Jasper unzipped his jeans with the other. “Would you like a clear answer?”