It hadn’t occurred to him until now that Gia might have a date for this wedding. He’d assumed she was following the same unwritten rule: no bringing dates around the ex.
Guess not.
“The tablet update is nearing release,” he said, guiding the conversation back to the safe, neutral ground of ThomKnox. Where he and Gia were concerned, work might well be the last frontier of neutral territory. They’d had their differences in the past—namely him working hard to make her happy and her resisting his every effort—but here they had the same goal.
ThomKnox was the number one priority in their lives. They’d always do what was best for the company.
And, in this case, he thought as he took a seat to tell her about the latest software update in detail, the best thing for the company was Gia and him getting along.
Together or not.
Two
Six months ago at Bran’s wedding
This is crazy.
You’re crazy.
We’re both crazy!
But oh, did Jay taste good. Really damn good. After being without sex for so long, Gia was beginning to worry about ill effects. She’d gone on a few random dates over the summer, since not dating would be admitting she wasn’t over her ex, but each of those dates had ended with a good-night kiss that had only made her think of Jayson Cooper. So while he was totally over her, evidently she was still affected by him.
Case in point.
His tongue, though. Who could deny how good he was with it? Either tangling with hers or gliding down her neck. He suckled on her pulse point while his fingers lifted her dress to do what he was best at: pleasure her.
Fingers in her panties, he slipped along her folds, driving her wild. She moaned into his mouth. He kissed her harder, trying to quiet her. Possibly the only part crazier than carrying on with him was doing it in her parents’ vineyard mansion after her brother’s wedding. When she saw the guests filtering outside, either to leave or enjoy cocktails around the fire, she’d rushed him into the nearest spare room.
No one had noticed them missing. Nor would they if she could keep her moaning to a minimum. A challenge, given his touch was sending her into an orgasmic stupor.
It didn’t take long.
She gripped his shoulders hard, pulled her mouth from his and came. She allowed herself a breath or two before her hand was shakily finding its way to his pants. She had his belt undone, zipper down, and was cradling several inches of his budding erection when it happened.
A scream of pain shattered the air—coming from the back patio and from, she guessed, a very pregnant Taylor.
Jayson snapped his mouth from Gia’s, blinking hard as if trying to focus. She held her breath and listened. A going-into-labor Taylor shouted again.
Talk about a buzzkill.
“Damn,” he said, which is probably what Gia would have said had she been able to speak after her powerful release.
And, oh, was her orgasm a good one. She’d been in charge of her own pleasure since she and her ex went kaput. It was irksome to be reminded of what she’d been missing.
“Get dressed, G,” he said, his raspy voice dancing along her nerve endings. He moved her hand out of his pants, flashed her a smile that made her knees weaker, and then kissed her palm.
“What did we do?” she muttered. There was no good end to this night if they slept together, intellectually she’d known that. Yet look how close they’d come to actually sealing the deal!
What was she thinking?
She wasn’t thinking. Plain and simple...
* * *
Gia, chin in her palm, eyes unfocused and gazing into the distance, blinked back to reality.
Her blue cheese–stuffed-olive dirty martini was half gone, but then she’d arrived at the bar early on purpose. She hadn’t intended on daydreaming about her ex-husband, or reminding herself that she’d been without an orgasm of that caliber in over six months. She’d arrived early and drunk down half a martini for one reason: she needed to bolster her confidence before meeting her celebrity date.
Blinking the bar into focus, she sucked in a breath and blew it out. Other couples dotted the room, drinks in front of them, the low candles on the table setting the tone: romantic. Why did she choose someplace this romantic? She should have invited him to coffee...
Denver “Pip” Pippen, skateboarding superstar and hot cult god, was about to be interviewed for the role of a lifetime: to be her date to Royce’s and Taylor’s wedding.
Not that he knew that.
No, she hadn’t had a date when she’d marked the RSVP card. But, with Jayson standing there looking as gorgeous and distracting as ever, she realized that attending another wedding without a date could land her in the guest bedroom with him again.
That.
Could not.
Happen.
She’d found Pip’s profile on Divinely Yours, a dating app for the wealthy and elite. Not quite A-listers, but not D either. The app was recommended to her about a year ago by a well-meaning friend. At the time she’d shrugged it off, too focused on the ThomKnox tablet launch to dream of throwing herself to the wolves on a dating app. But after filling out Taylor’s RSVP card under duress, Gia decided that the dating app might not be the worst idea ever.
Tonight, she’d find out.
She spotted Denver the moment he breezed through the entrance. He carried with him a certain amount of charisma that turned more than her head. As the hostess walked him over, Gia tested her own reaction. She’d seen photos, and videos, online, but this was Denver Pippen in the flesh. That was always a different experience.
His longish dark blond hair was messy and wavy. He wore a baggy T-shirt and jeans—casual but designer, and Converse sneakers. He shot her a smile that took up most of his face in the most charming way imaginable.
Yes. He’d do nicely.
“You must be Pip,” she said, offering her hand.
She hadn’t expected a demure kiss to the hand and wasn’t disappointed. Instead he said her first name, dragging it into a prolonged “Jee-ahh” and kissed her on the cheek.
When he backed away she noticed the silver scar on his eyebrow, and another on his upper lip. She knew from videos of his skateboarding stunts that Denver also had plenty of scars on his upper arms and calves. Somehow, on him, the messy hair and scar combo worked.
“Fancy place.” His lazy speech was half surfer dude and half stoner.
“I ordered already. I’m terribly impatient.” She fingered the stem of her martini.
“Rad.” He flagged down a waitress and ordered a beer. He was polite and brought forth a genuine smile from the waitress. Nice. Had he been rude, Gia would have had to leave and gone back to square one. He was doing well so far.
“So, ThomKnox. Computers. Cell phones. All that techy stuff.” He wiggled his fingers as if he were talking about sorcery instead.
“That’s the gist of it.”
“What’s your jam over there?”
“I run the marketing department.”
“Rad.”
She sipped her martini, hiding a smile. Rad, indeed. She’d always thought that with her MIT degree she’d be running the tech team, but that position had gone to Jay.
Her father had assured her that Jayson was the right fit, and that he’d preferred Gia to be in a higher position, one of more prestige at ThomKnox. But when Jack’s own CEO position had come up for grabs, Gia was content to let her brothers duke it out. Literally, as it were.
Newly divorced, she’d cashed in on another interest and opted to run Marketing instead. On good days she stood behind her decision to nurture her need to lie low. On bad days, she wished she’d insisted on taking over the department she loved.
Pip rapped his knuckles on their table to the beat of the music and drew her from her musings. With her eyes, she trac
ed the scars on his hands.
“How did skateboarding become a passion?” she asked.
“My dad bought me a board when I was twelve. He used to do it. He was killer. Once I landed my first big jump, I was hooked.” He held up one injured hand, where his middle finger bent at an unnatural angle. “Never deterred by danger.”
“I guess not.” From what she’d read on his Wikipedia page, Denver Pippen had broken bones. A lot of them. “Once I crashed, I’d be done. I’m not much of a risk taker.”
She winced at the truth behind that admission, recalling the way she’d ducked out of the tech department after the divorce. She’d loved her job, but after she and Jayson split she couldn’t bear to be “under” his authority another second. She needed space, and while she didn’t have it in physical form, since her office was still on the tech floor, at least they weren’t quibbling over who ran the weekly meetings.
“Why would you risk ruining those beautiful brains?” Denver flipped his palm over and motioned for her hand. Intrigued, she slipped her hand into his. Rough. Calloused. “I looked you up. MIT, smarty-pants. You’re the prize Knox. So why’d you swipe on my mug on Divinely Yours?”
Good question. She’d waded through a sea of billionaires, millionaires, actors and video game creators. Pip was wildly different from someone she would normally choose—different from who anyone would choose for her. Pip was a guy who would be a good short-term solution to a problem. Since she wasn’t ready to submerge herself entirely into the dating pool, she figured he’d be a perfectly good date to the wedding. He wouldn’t have the wrong impression about how serious they were, and he’d likely walk away without looking back.
Instead of telling him he was a convenient solution, she went with a more palatable answer. “I liked your face.”
He grinned. It was a handsome face.
“I like your face, too, Jee-ahh. So what’s up? Drinks on a Monday at six o’clock? This screams trial.” He drank from his beer glass. “What’s the real gig?”
He was sharper than he wanted others to believe. And direct.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Now who’s the smarty-pants?”
His laugh was a low, rolling chuckle.
She held on to the stem of her martini glass and told him the truth. “I need a date for my brother’s wedding. It’s next Saturday.”
“And you thought of me?” Humor radiated off him. “You want to piss off your parents or make someone jealous?”
She wasn’t trying to make Jayson jealous. Nor did she care if her parents were upset by her attending solo or with a date. What she did care about was the seemingly undeniable lure of her ex-husband.
The way Jay could look at her from across a room and make her heart skip a beat and her brain forget their checkered past. An innocent, polite dance at the last wedding reception had turned into more when his hand moved to her lower back and he’d laid his lips against her ear.
She couldn’t let that happen again.
“A bit of both,” she lied to her date.
“I’m your guy.” Pip held up his beer glass in a toast.
He wasn’t, not permanently, but he’d fill a much-needed void. Smiling, Gia tapped her glass with his.
Three
The woman lying in the sand was tall, given the way her limbs splayed attractively into a pose as she leered at the camera lens.
Gia’s claim she was dating a celebrity had given Jayson an idea. He’d called his stepbrother, Mason, later that day and, as luck had it, learned that Mas had a photoshoot scheduled with a supermodel.
Cha-ching.
Mason squatted in the sand in front of the woman and gave her commands like “sultry, now sweet, give me a smile” while the shutter clicks from his camera fired.
Jayson had heard enough teasing over the years to last a lifetime. Mason and Jayson, are you two twins or something? The answer was obvious just by looking. Jayson had a wider, thicker build than his brother. Mason was tall and slim, with an added four inches of height. They’d both had goatees years ago, but Jayson had abandoned his. Now he either shaved or didn’t and those were the only two options.
“Beautiful, Natasha,” Mason praised the model as he lowered his camera. Beautiful Natasha was an apt nickname. The bikini-clad goddess with sand stuck to her boobs had graced many a magazine. She was on the cover of last year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. This year she’d been replaced on the cover, but was still featured inside, and today she was shooting her own calendar.
Landing the Natasha Tovar was a big win for Mas. He’d started his career taking family portraits, made a brief foray as a wedding photographer—Jayson and Gia’s wedding, actually—and then Mason had stumbled into shooting models, which was harder than one might imagine in California.
“We have it?” Natasha brushed sand from her supple body before slipping on a white “robe,” for lack of a better term.
Jayson could see right through it and when the cups of her bikini top wet the robe, they were a pair of fluorescent orange globes he had trouble looking away from.
“Who’s this?” She toweled her hair and walked every inch of her mostly legs body toward Jayson.
“This is my brother, Jayson Cooper. Goes by Cooper.” Mason slanted a glance from Natasha to Jayson, his eyebrows winging upward as if to say I told you she was perfect.
“Nice to meet you, Cooper.” She extended a hand, which he accepted. She left sand in his palm. She didn’t introduce herself and Jayson figured it was because she didn’t have to. He possessed a penis therefore he should know who she was. She excused herself and walked up the beach toward a trailer.
“She’s putting that wiggle into her walk for you,” Mason said. He thumbed through some of the shots on his Canon while the lighting guy left behind his umbrellas and reflector panels to seek out the food truck parked in front of the more populated part of the beach. “You hungry?”
“Always,” Jayson said.
“That food truck sucks—” Mason tipped his head to indicate the direction his lighting guy went “—but I brought Chester’s homemade tamales.”
Jayson’s stomach roared. Mason’s husband made the best tamales on the planet. “I am not above eating half your lunch. Especially if Ches made it.”
“He’s a keeper.” Mason smiled.
At eighteen years old, after he graduated high school, Mason had come out officially. Jayson’s response? A nonchalant shrug. He couldn’t have been less surprised.
Mason’s father, Albert, was alarmed, which helped Jayson realize that his stepfather rarely paid attention to life outside of work. But, Albert was also a good man and, while it took him longer, he accepted that his son was gay. Jayson’s mom, Julia, was as unsurprised as Jayson. She’d helped Albert realize the truth: Mason was still Mason, no matter who he loved.
Anyway, that was ancient history. Mason and Chester had wed two years ago and were now like any boring married couple. Or, what Jayson thought a boring married couple should be like. He and Gia hadn’t made it to “boring.”
The brothers split a pan of tamales—thankfully, Mason had two forks—while sitting on a piece of driftwood watching the waves crash on the shore. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
“Can’t believe you drove all this way to meet her. You must be desperate,” Mason said around a final bite.
Jayson tossed his fork on the empty pan and swiped his teeth with his tongue. How to respond to that? Mason knew Jay needed a wedding date—an impressive one—but Jay hadn’t told him why.
He hadn’t shared with his brother that he’d brought Gia to orgasm six months ago and since then she’d shut him out like it’d never happened. It wasn’t unlike right before their divorce hearing, when they’d had car sex. Unplanned, mind-blowing car sex. Then, five days later, Gia showed up at court with ice in her veins like she hadn’t felt the earth move.
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But mind-blowing car sex could not a marriage save. Whenever they were arguing, and that became more and more often near the end, she claimed she couldn’t be with someone who “controlled” her. Jayson, whose real father had controlled their household with fists and fear, never reacted well to that accusation.
“Want to tell me why you need a supermodel as your wedding date?” Mason asked.
Well. What the hell.
“Gia is bringing a date to her brother Royce’s wedding. I’m not showing up alone.”
“How mature.”
“Gia and I almost had sex not that long ago, Mas.” Jayson shook his head. “Could have set us back years. Plus, the guy’s famous. I had to step up.”
“Famous?”
“Denver Pippen,” Jayson said through his teeth. Apparently, Gia had met him for cocktails and things went well. Not that Jayson had been lurking around the office, but okay, he’d been sort of lurking. And he’d heard Gia excitedly telling Taylor that her date was going to be none other than skateboarding legend, Denver “Pip” Pippen.
“He’s hot,” Mason said. “That sports drink commercial where he leaps those cars...”
“Not helping.” Jayson stood, frustrated. “What could Gia possibly have in common with a guy who’s broken nearly every bone in his body? She’s all brains and he pounds his into the pavement.”
“And you thought Natasha would make her as jealous as you are.” Mason smirked.
“I’m not jealous of that joker-smile idiot.” He frowned, considering. “But if I see him kiss Gia, I’m going to give him a new scar.”
Mason laughed. “It’s past time you both got out there, Coop. You’ve been out of the game for a while.”
“Thanks for the reminder.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “It’s not easy to date when your ex-wife is in your social circles.”
Mason gave his brother the side-eye. “You two stay in each other’s circles. You still act married. Divorced people move on. You two moved sideways.”
Jayson shook his head, but he wasn’t committed to it. Mason had a point. It wasn’t easy to move on when the wound was fresh.
One Last Kiss Page 2
