Burn for You (Slow Burn Book 1)(37)

I looked back at the road, gripped my hands around the steering wheel, and tried to breathe. I said, “My mother’s been sick for a long time.”

Bianca sucked in a breath. “Really? Oh, no! Is it . . . is it bad?”

Why yes it is, I didn’t say, and it’s all my fault. “She had a stroke several years ago. She mainly stays in bed now. Has trouble speaking, needs constant care.”

That’s pretty much all I got out before my throat closed and I stopped talking.

“Oh, Jackson,” said Bianca. “I’m so sorry to hear that. How hard it must be for you!”

When I didn’t respond to that, she said hesitantly, “Or are you two not close?”

I briefly closed my eyes. This was something I hadn’t spoken about to anyone, ever, but Bianca had just shared something very personal with me, and it felt like the right thing to do to share in kind.

“We used to be. But that was before I became such a disappointment.”

“A disappointment? You? But you’re so . . .”

Expecting a nasty joke about my character, I looked over sharply. But Bianca was looking back at me seriously with her brows pulled together, searching for a word.

Finally she declared, “Well I don’t know what the right word is, but anyone who adopts a special-needs child and raises money for charity and keeps his end of the deals he makes isn’t a disappointment in my book.” With a smile she added, “Even if you are stuck-up higher than a light pole.”

“Stuck up! I am not stuck up!” I exclaimed, pleased as fuck by what she’d said, even if it did end with a jab.

Bianca waved a hand in the air. “Oh please, Jackson, you’re so highfalutin, you think your shit tastes like sherbet.”

Then she slapped her hand over her mouth and stared at me in horror.

I threw my head back and laughed.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “That was just classless and rude.”

I kept on laughing, so hard tears formed in my eyes. Her expression was classic. Had anyone else said that to me, I’d have exploded in fury.

She begged, “Please tell me you’re not going to put a retroactive stop payment on your check!”

“That’s not even a thing,” I said between gasps of air.

She buried her face in her hands and groaned. “If my mother knew I’d said something like that, she’d knock me into next week.”

Unthinking, grinning like a lunatic, I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been giving me grief since the minute we met. I think I’m starting to like it.”

She raised her head and looked at me. Then she looked at my hand on her shoulder.

I snatched my hand away so fast it was a blur. “Sorry,” I said gruffly, my face reddening again.

After a minute of excruciating silence, she said, “Turn here.”

Wishing for a time machine so I could undo my colossal mistake of touching a woman who hadn’t invited me to do so, I turned the corner into Bianca’s neighborhood. A few more turns and I found her street.

“The white one on the left with the red door,” she said, pointing to a house.

As I pulled to a stop at the curb, Bianca cried softly, “Oh!”

I followed her gaze out the window. A man sat in a chair on the front porch of her house. When he saw her, he rose and stood next to the door, waiting.

At one o’clock in the morning, there was a man waiting for her to come home. A young, handsome man by the looks of it. Though the porch light was dim, it was bright enough to see that.

Shit.

Crushed by disappointment and an irrational, unwarranted jealousy, I said stiffly, “Your boyfriend?”

Bianca’s head shake was violent. She recoiled from the window. “Ex-boyfriend. So very, very ex.”

Her disgusted tone revealed exactly how she felt about the man on the porch. Obviously whatever had happened between them had left her angry, bitter, and with zero desire to see him again. My jealousy was replaced by outrage and a need to protect her that was so strong I almost snapped the steering wheel in half.

“I’ll get rid of him,” I growled. I reached for the door, but Bianca stopped me.

“No.” She turned to me with an intensity I’d never seen in her before. She laid her hand on my forearm. “I have a better idea.”

Then her gaze dropped to my mouth, she leaned toward me, and my heart stopped dead in my chest.





FOURTEEN

BIANCA

Before you judge me, let me just say in my defense that my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders on account of the sexual tension between Jackson and me in the kitchen, fright over how erratically he’d been driving, making him laugh (a beautiful, unexpected sound), having his big, warm hand settle on my shoulder in a gentle yet distinctly possessive grip, and seeing Trace standing on my front porch in the middle of the night.