Waking Up in Vegas(55)

“You know, Tack,” he said, accentuating every syllable with a point of his tented fingers, “my sense is that you don’t have to do anything grandiose and clichéd.” Look who’s giving me advice against being a cliché. I rolled my eyes but he was too deep into his sermon to notice. “Showing someone you care is as much in the little things as in the big ones. Sometimes even more so.”

He droned on–I’d never realized before how much he sounded like Ben Stein–and it took everything I had to not get up and wander around his office. “Love is in the details, the actions you take to show that you’re thinking of her happiness and comfort…” I know he carried on for a while longer, but once he said the L-word, my ears closed up in self-preservation.

After another ten minutes of blah-blah that had me nodding and not listening, I agreed to not do anything huge and foolish.

Yet.

I still had no insight into Jensen, but I at least had an outline for myself.

I’d just be myself. Screw my recent lovesick puppy routine–it was the original me that hooked her, and it was high time I went back to what worked.

I’d already resigned my position as Vegas’ Most Highly-Sexed Man, but the new, downtrodden pansy-ass version wasn’t working out too well, either. If even I didn’t like him, I couldn’t expect her to.

Armed with a loose collection of ideas and no real plan, I shot Jen a text to let her know I was stopping at Von’s for a few things on the way home.



“Were they out of your usual?” Jen asked, pulling the bag of Gevalia Mocha out of the grocery sack. “Not that I’m objecting. This is my favorite.”

That was precisely why I got it.

“Just trying to make our mornings go a little smoother.”

She sniffed the little vent-hole on the bright yellow package with a sigh, then plopped it down next to the coffee pot as she turned to face me. “A happier Jensen is easier to deal with?”

I stopped unloading the Von’s bag and stared at her until she noticed the silence and met my eyes. “You, my dear, are never easy to deal with. Especially when you’re hopped up on sugar and caffeine.”

I caged her against the counter and leaned in close. “You tend to throw my crap right back in my face.” Bringing my lips a breath away from hers, I felt her sway into my body. I was feeling a little off-kilter, myself. “That’s one of the things I like most about you.”

I pushed off from the counter and took a step back.

She mumbled, “Tease,” and that one simple word pushed me right over the edge. I was back against her so fast it made my own head spin. Her eyes went wide and my voice rasped, “I’m right here, sweetheart. All you’ve gotta do is reach up and grab me. But I’m warning you,” I dropped my head to her hair and muttered into her ear, “this time, I’m playing for keeps.”

She whimpered but instead of meeting me halfway, she tucked her chin into her chest and whispered, “I can’t make that promise, Tack.”

My hands itched to peel off her clothes and use my body to convince her to stay. Instead, I stepped back and stalked down the hall to my office.

As excruciating as it would be, I made the decision to remain strictly hands off. Until she came to me and said she was staying, there would be no more shared showers, no more sneaky kisses in an alcove at work, no touching at all. I still had eleven days to chip her determination into dust.

I hoped I could hold out that long.



***



Well, screw me sideways. How do I make her understand that Tack-and-Jen today is not the same as Tack-and-Jen from last week? I must not have made myself clear in the kitchen when I withheld that kiss. Because as soon as we retired to the living room, she flopped down onto the couch and used me as a footrest. I laid my forearm across her ankles, but only because there wasn’t any place else for it to go. I heard a contented little sound from her end of the couch, but I refused to read too much into that. She could have just been comfortable. And then, as usual, when she fell asleep on the couch, I carried her to bed.

Her bed.

I got lucky; she’d left the covers in a tangle when she got up today, so getting her settled under the blankets was a breeze. She might not be happy come morning to find she was still in her jeans, but there was no way I could trust myself to strip them off of her.

And, again, I hung out in the doorway for a while, staring at my version of Sleeping Beauty, before going to my own sleepless bed.





When four-forty-five rolled around, I tried waking her with noise at first, and then by turning on the lights. It wasn’t until I brushed my lips over her forehead that she stirred, and I only did that because I’d run out of ideas. Gentle shaking hadn’t done a thing, and neither had getting Lita to jump up on the bed. Repeating yesterday morning’s dog-treat-orama was out of the question.