* * *
By the time I’m dressed and ready to go the next morning, Jack’s already waiting for me at the car with a smug look and a to-go cup of coffee in his hand as he leans against the hood.
“Told you so,” he says, handing me the hot drink.
“You were wrong about me not waking up until noon,” I defend. “I actually woke up at 11:35 a.m. So there.”
“No, I said I’d see you at noon and…” He looks at his phone. “It’s 12:01 p.m. right now.” He looks up. “So yeah. I told you so.” There are shadows under his eyes like he’s exhausted, but his grin is anything but.
“Whatever,” I mumble, taking a sip of coffee and thanking all the coffee gods for creating this amazing beverage that instantly gives me happiness. I nod at Jack’s empty hands. “Where’s your coffee?”
Pulling away from the hood, he straightens to his full height. “Unlike you, I woke up at the crack of dawn so I’ve already had three cups and checked us both out of our rooms. You got the keys?” He holds out his hand. “I’ll drive first today.”
Pulling them from my purse, I place the keys in his big hand and frown. “You couldn’t sleep?”
Jack might not sleep in the way I do, but he certainly doesn’t wake up with the roosters.
We get in the car, me in the passenger’s seat and Jack in the driver’s, and he starts the engine. “I slept fine.”
He doesn’t look at me as we back out of the motel parking lot and I know something’s wrong.
“Did the stuff with your brother keep you up?” I ask.
Pulling onto the freeway, we head east. “I told you. I slept fine.”
I watch him for a moment. “You never talk about your family so I never pry, but you’re obviously stressed-out.” Tucking my coffee into one of the console cup holders, I turn to face him. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “Just family drama. That’s all.”
Irritation courses through my veins at his refusal to confide in me. “Family drama. Okay. Sure. Be vague. That’s cool.”
He smiles humorlessly. “What, you want to bond now? That’s ironic.”
My blood pressure rises at what he’s insinuating. “If you have something you want to say, Jack, just say it already. I’m sick of dodging these softballs you keep throwing my way.”
He glances in the side mirror and switches lanes. “That’s just it, Jenna. It doesn’t matter what I say, you’ll just find a way to step around my words. Because that’s what you do. Dodge.”
If he wasn’t so totally right, I’d pop him in the jaw.
Of course I dodge him. If I didn’t dodge him, I’d end up throwing myself at him. And if I thought that would help matters, trust me, I’d do it. But after what happened the last time I let my guard down around Jack and his hot body, I don’t trust myself.
Why I let him get so close to me, to my heart, I’ll never know. But I’ve been trying for months to undo the emotional connection I inadvertently created that night, and here Jack is, drudging up the past like it’s common conversation for us.
I can’t risk getting any more attached to him than I already am—or worse, falling in love with him. And the only way I can be sure to avoid such things is by staying away from anything and everything that might suck me in—including conversations about what happened between us.
But here I am, scrambling to find some sort of comeback that will beat him down and save me from responding at the same time, and I’ve got nothing.
“You don’t want me to dodge? Fine.” I shrug in frustration. “So we slept together. Once. And it was…” Hot. Erotic. Amazing. Intense. “Different,” I finally say. “It was different.”
A muscle flexes in his jaw. “It was different.”
I shrug angrily. “For me, at least. It was probably same ol’ sexy time for you.”
His eyes dart to mine. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
My temper rises. “It means I’m not going to sit here and debate the right adjectives for what happened between us because I don’t feel like pinning myself to your board of sexual conquests.”
“You think I consider you a conquest?”
“It’s fine. Really. You have conquests, I have conquests. It’s all the same thing. That’s just how it goes. I’m not pissed about it. I just don’t feel like chatting about it.”
He nods darkly. “So you sleeping with me is the same as you sleeping with that lousy bartender—what was his name? Greg? Gary? Some shit like that.”