51. Chapter 51
It wouldn’t be Graham fucking up this time.
Jase didn’t know how it happened. Yesterday he was a man alone. Today he was responsible for the well-being of a woman, and that woman was responsible for his future.
It was an enormously heavy load to carry on too little sleep.
Still, seeing her on the bench outside the diner, bent over the smutty book that saved his ass, he was overwhelmed by something he didn’t usually feel looking at a woman he’d already slept with. What was it? Pity? No. She wasn’t pitiful. Compassion? It was too unfamiliar to tell.
Love?
No, he wasn’t in love. But he appreciated her for loving his dad enough to face a nightmare at Jason Sr.’s request. Jase would pull every trick from his own playbook to keep her until the end.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Dark clouds had sprung up while he was inside. Jase spent enough time in Texas to know it had some of the worst storms in the country.
It was going to be a bitch of a day.
He sat beside Lindsey, leaving a few friendly inches of bench between them.
A hundred things that needed saying hung in the humid air, but he was distracted by how the sleeve of her sundress had fallen down one shoulder, exposing the creamy skin of her chest and tiny freckles on her neck—details he hadn’t seen in the dark.
Desire. That’s what he felt. Not just the kind that ripped off clothes, but a genuine want to make her glad she stayed.
“Was she pissed?” Lindsey asked.
He cleared his throat. “And then some.”
“Good.”
She closed the book on his father’s inscription.
“Here.” He handed her the to-go cup, having already dumped two creams and two sugars inside. “I thought you could use it after last night.”
She took it, her forehead furrowing.
“You know, we should probably talk about…what happened,” she said.
“You mentioned something about a morning blowjob?”
This got a surprising laugh out of her that became a groan. “Jase.”
“I know,” he said. He wouldn’t be climbing into her bed as easily as he had last night. “Don’t worry about it.”
“About what? The blowjob?”
“The hotel.” Jase shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
No big deal they’d been insatiable, and every time they climaxed, they kept kissing until they were wound up again. That he’d spent almost the entire night inside the woman who’d rather look at the ground than at his face.
No big deal that she came so hard the first time, she cried.
“Hm,” she said. “I almost forgot who I was talking to.”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t the kind of thing I do a lot.”
“Sleeping with my brother’s girlfriend was a new one for me too, babe.”
“Babe,” she snorted. “I don’t fuck men I barely know.”
The bluntness, the word fuck from a mouth that didn’t swear often, wiped the smile off his face.
“Point taken,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by what I said. I don’t know how to do this.”
He motioned to the space between them, the two inches separating his thigh from hers which might’ve been an impassable mile.
“Do you regret it?” she asked.
It was something he should’ve been asking her, since she didn’t fuck men she barely knew. They’d spent, what? Four days together? He’d already known her longer than most women he slept with.
“Do I regret it?” Jase repeated, a little miffed she didn’t know. “Hell no. Do you?”
“I probably should,” she said. “But no. You were…good.”
Wait, what?
“Did you just say I was good?”
He tilted his head at the upturned corner of her lips.
“I hope I was more than good,” Jase fired back.
“You were,” she said. He didn’t think the pink tinge in her cheeks was from the heat. “You were better than good.”
“You’re getting closer.”
“Fine, you were great, Jase,” she exclaimed. “Mind-blowing. Is that what you want to hear?”
“I think I earned a mind-blowing review, yes.” His dick had literally brought her to tears.
“Do you have a website where I can leave a five-star rating?”
“A five-star rating.” He shook his head and got it.
It. Her. Why his dad loved her. Why Graham strung her along for so long.
Why Jase ended up outside of her hotel room, even though he knew better than to knock.
He’d been so very wrong when they first met, and he’d assumed she was sticking around hoping for the ring his brother had shoved on Helen’s finger.
This woman, who had no business smiling today after everything Graham put her through and everything she faced now, was laughing with Jase about the mind-blowing sex he couldn’t wait to repeat.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered through tears from laughing and being tired—but not too tired to go another couple rounds tonight. “You know, five stars isn’t fair. It gives me nothing to work up to.”
A heavy sigh shattered her laughter and Jase’s hopes in one breath. “You know, Jase, if I’m going to stay, we can’t do it again.”
We can’t?
Thank Christ he had enough sense not to ask. He wasn’t desperate. But this was a door he didn’t want to close yet.
“I don’t know how to do this either,” she said. “You’re my only friend here, and I don’t want things to get weird.”
“And they’re not weird already,” Jase murmured with a sip of the coffee she set on the bench, in the inconsequential, definitely impassable space.
“Weirder. You know what I mean,” Lindsey said. “I don’t know if I can do this if things get…”
“More fucked up than they already are,” Jase finished for her. “I get it.”
He did, he guessed, it just wasn’t what he wanted watching the flesh of her neck pebble with sweat he could practically taste.
If this was what it took to keep her, to cash in, he’d do it.
“Are you mad?”
“No, I’m not mad.”
“I guess I should’ve given you a blowjob this morning after all.”
Lindsey nudged him with her elbow, and he did the dumbest, most reckless thing he could’ve done, and took her cheek in his hand and kissed her.
It was quick. The time they spent inches apart afterward, in the beat of silence where he hoped she was reconsidering her decision, was longer. She opened her mouth to speak and was interrupted by the bells on the diner door jingling.
They stood, and the coffee lid caught on Jase’s jeans, tipping the cup over.
He brushed coffee off the sides and handed it to Lindsey. She took it, staring at Helen emerging from the diner in Graham’s shadow.
A sudden wind and another low rumble of thunder ushered in the changes in weather and Graham’s relationship status.
As past and present traded places, a loaded look of distrust and disdain passed between the women.
Jase braced himself for the inevitable collision of worlds that never came.
Graham pulled Helen to the car without a word and Lindsey looked at Jase, her eyes pleading with him the same way they had last night telling Jase she needed him.
“I can’t do this.”
The panicked edge to her voice raised Jase’s hackles with the keen instinct to protect her—and his millions.
“You can.” He put his hands on her arms and leveled his eyes with hers. “We do it together.”
“You’ll sit by me in the car?”
“Every mile.”
“What about Graham?” Her voice hitched even higher. “This trip was supposed to be for the two of you. I can’t take that away from you.”
She was looking for a way out. Already.
He leaned in until their foreheads nearly met. Jase felt his brother’s eyes on him through the car window and he lifted one of his middle fingers off Lindsey’s arm to remind Graham to fuck off and let Jase work.
“No, I already told you. He made his decision. The old trip’s over. It’s you and me now. I got your back, babe. I promise you.”
She nodded, finally, and he gave her arms one last squeeze.
Nadine was running, the old air conditioner—another aftermarket add, no doubt—buzzing in its attempt to keep up with the heat.
Jase packed Lindsey’s bags into the station wagon and urged her into the back seat, climbing in beside her.
With the map to Lubbock as their guide, a new trip began on day five.
There were six unopened letters left to go.