“Never.”
“So this was your first time.” She smiled back.
“I get where you’re going with the whole Virgo metaphor.”
“I’m jealous of your cello. All those hours alone with you.” She closed the distance between them, standing near enough that she had to look up at him. “You said on the phone you wished you could hold me.” Taking his hands, she put them on her hips and wound her arms around his shoulders, resting her head on his chest. “So hold me tonight.”
He knew what she expected, but he felt resistant. Perhaps the thrill of the chase had diminished, or perhaps he felt depleted from playing Bach for her, letting her see a part of him no one else had. Jasper’s arms tightened around her and his mouth dipped to meet hers. He felt the tension uncoil, the tightness that came from being away from her, from fighting so hard for control. Hannah felt him relax and burrowed into him.
“It’s about time you calmed down,” she teased, kissing him. He led her to the couch, pulled her down beside him.
“I’m tired, but I don’t want you to go,” he admitted.
“So I’ll stay. Here on the couch or in bed with you?”
“Couch,” he said decisively. He laid his arm across the top of the sofa so she could scoot closer. He gathered her against him. She pulled a cashmere throw over her legs and made a contented sound high in her throat as she settled in to sleep on his shoulder.
Hannah stirred in the night, a crick in her neck, and when she opened her eyes, disoriented, Jasper stroked her hair soothingly. He was there, solid and strong, beside her. She felt a relief she didn’t dare analyze for fear she’d embarrass herself. He whispered into her hair. “Sleep well, mockingbird.” For once in her recalcitrant life, Hannah did just as she was told.
Chapter 7
Hannah
Hannah woke up alone on Jasper’s couch, hair across her eyes and a fairly strong conviction she’d been snoring. By her phone it was only seven, but he was long gone. She tried to shake the anxious feeling all the way home. The instinct that kept telling her he didn’t want her. He wanted her from a distance. In Dubai, he couldn’t get enough of her…but in person, he kept her at arm’s length.
She knew she’d thrown him off his usual pattern, but he was obviously capable of resisting her. She knew she wasn’t the knockout her sister was, but she hadn’t been turned down a lot in the past and she found that she hated rejection.
At home, she found a Zumba video online and did the whole thing, feeling like an uncoordinated jackass the entire time. Maybe, she thought, if she was in better shape. Maybe if she waxed her eyebrows, highlighted her hair. Maybe if she were polished and blonde and after his money instead of a mouthy brunette gunning for his heart. By noon, all she had to show for her day was a mountain of self-doubt and not a minute of work, but she had identified the truth and decided to confront it. She was only significant to Jasper Cates as a novelty, a challenge. Now she was a sure thing, his interest waned.
She crept under the duvet and cried a little. When the phone rang, she seized it and then spent the entire call whining to Becca, who had the misfortune of not being the person her sister really wanted to talk to.
“Even I decided not to get mixed up with him. Anyone who does that phone thing is inherently damaged, babe. Give it up,” Becca counseled. Through her tears, Hannah nodded. She hung up with her sister and texted Jasper.
I’m done being your conquest, your sometime girl. Dial up someone who fits the mold. Goodbye.
Hannah crawled out of bed, walked down the hall to the trash chute and dropped the disposable phone in it. That way she couldn’t dig it out if it rang, the way she knew she would have if she’d thrown it away in her apartment. She drank a glass of water and went straight to her studio to loop dialogue.
Two hours later, her cell phone rang.
“My sometime girl? Hannah, what the hell?” he demanded.
“How did you get this number?”
“Miss Hollingford got it. As soon as I got your stupid text, I set her to work on your contact information. You can’t cut me off like that.”
“Don’t call me again. Don’t text me. Don’t send me shit or show up at my door. Leave me alone.”
“I won’t do that. I don’t know what’s got into you. You were fine last night. I’ll take you out for noodles later. You can tell me exactly why I’m an ass this time, and everything will be fine,” he said patronizingly.
“Leave me alone, Jasper. For good. No stalking. No Mrs. Hollingford antics. Goodbye.”
She hung up and burst into tears. She had thought she was safe from him, wouldn’t see him or hear his voice. The way he talked, that arrogant roundness to his vowels, the clipped condescension that ended every sentence brought him back to her with force. Hannah didn’t want him tracking her down, having a secretary spy on her. She didn’t want him to plead for her return. She wanted to forget him, dammit. She shoved her phone in a drawer and went to bed at four in the afternoon.
At nine, Becca dragged her out of bed and told her to shower and get dressed. She produced an alarmingly small scrap of cobalt blue fabric intended to cover enough of her sister’s form to appear in public. Scrubbed and made up, she looked like a puffier, blotchier, more scantily clad version of herself. She let Becca take her to a club, miserably tripping on her wedge heels, weaving from side to side in a lame approximation of dancing to trance music under flashing violet lights.
She drank two flaming cocktails that tasted of vanilla and some kind of shot the color of Windex, and danced with a little more animation. A gorgeous sandy-haired pro skier hit on her, bought her another shot, and tried to make her laugh. It took even her slightly intoxicated brain only about four minutes to register the fact that he was dumb. He wouldn’t have known Bach from a box and probably thought Tennessee Williams was a sexual position from south of the Mason-Dixon. She collapsed on a chair with Becca, laughing, and drank whatever was in her sister’s glass when Becca went to dance.
It tasted sweet and lemony, and she ordered another one. Tugging her dress down a bit as she stood, she asked a cute guy with glasses to dance, but he was too tall. Her head never would have fit in the crook of his shoulder the right way, like that perfect niche along Jasper’s collarbone. One dance and she was miserable. With a nod to Becca, she ditched her sister and went home.
Dialing her phone as she climbed the stairs, she called Jasper. A breathy female voice answered on the second ring, her voice husky.
“Jasper Cates’ phone. He’s busy right now. Can I take a message?” She giggled.
“Just put him on the goddamn phone,” Hannah snapped, ready to gag from the scene she knew was taking place. Bright flashes of what he was probably doing to the blonde (of course she’d be a blonde!): things he’d never done to her. The sound of fumbling, and then he answered.
“Cates here.” He sounded gruff.
“Largent here. When you’re done with dial-a-blonde, get over here,” she said, barely choking back a sob. She threw up in the sink, drank a glass of water and brushed her hair, wiped the mascara out from under her eyes.
In under ten minutes, he was at her door, rumpled but present. The second she opened the door, his hands were on her face, in her hair. He was kissing her, shutting the door and pressing her against it urgently. Hannah’s fingers dug into his biceps. She rose on tiptoe to reach him more comfortably, his hands straying to her waist.
“God, Hannah, you had me so scared. I thought I’d never—” He stopped talking to kiss her again. She pushed against him, wriggled away.
“I have to say this,” she said, gesturing for him to sit down on the bed.
“Why is there a bed in your living room?” Jasper demanded.
“I made the bedroom into a studio, so I sleep in here. Focus,” she said, blinking her eyes hard. “I’m sorry I went batshit insane on you today. I woke up by myself and I decided you didn’t want me, that you’d lost interest. I threw the phone away. I’m sorry.”
“I lost interest? I made you eggs. I played the cello for you and let you snore all over me last night. How is that losing interest?”
“I panicked. I spend most of my time alone in a studio, so I’m not the best at relationships or being around people or anything like that. I’d say I’m a loner, but that makes me sound like one of those serial killers that the neighbor always goes on the news, saying ‘she was real quiet and kept to herself’. Anyway, it freaked me out and I didn’t cope with what I thought was a rejection all that well. This is new territory for me. I’m in deeper than you are here and it scared me.”
Jasper reached for her, caught her by the wrist, and pulled her onto the bed beside him.
“Not in deeper than I am,” he whispered and kissed her.
There was something about being stretched out full-length beside him, a closeness she hadn’t realized she was missing. When their legs tangled together, she felt perilously close to tears of relief. Desperate to be even closer, to rip down the final barrier between them, she tore at his buttons, pushed his shirt down his arms. Wriggling and tugging, she couldn’t get her dress off. The scrap of blue was irritatingly stretchy and difficult to remove.