Chapter Five
D on’t roll over,” Jake warned, but it was Sage, so of course she did exactly what he’d asked her not to and ended up sprawled on top of him while they rode the waterbed’s waves as if they were on a blow-up raft on a choppy sea.
Sage slapped a hand over her mouth, making gagging noises.
He appreciated the distraction. If she didn’t sound like she was seconds from hurling, he might be focusing on how good her warm, curvy body felt lying half on top of him.
“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me,” he said, knowing hell would freeze over before the woman in bed with him would listen to a single word he said—but he needed to give it the old college try.
The rolling mattress wasn’t helping the pounding in his head.
He had the mother of all hangovers. “Stay still, and the bed will stop rocking.”
She lifted her head from his bare chest, removing her hand from her pouty lips and peeking at him through a heavy fall of auburn hair. Silky-soft auburn hair, he amended as her shoulder-length locks brushed across his chest.
“Please tell me we didn’t do anything stupid last night,” she said, her voice a husky rasp.
Some people were instantly attracted to a face, to a specific part of a person’s body, or to their personality, but not him.
At seventeen, he’d fallen hook, line, and sinker for Sage’s voice.
The attraction didn’t last long, though.
All it had taken was being on the receiving end of her eviscerating wit to dull the appeal.
As he knew from following her career online, time had only served to sharpen her cool, dispassionate insults to a razor’s edge. The woman was a ball-breaker, something that made Alice inordinately proud.
Thinking of Alice hurt more than he’d thought possible. She’d been a mother to him, far better and more loving than his own. He wasn’t ready to let her go. He didn’t know what he’d do without her strong, guiding presence in his life.
He’d opened his eyes to the midmorning sunlight filling the spare bedroom at the farm, positive yesterday had been a bad dream. But reality hit him like a sucker punch in the chest when he saw Sage curled up beside him.
He brought his attention back to her. She pushed her hair from her face, looking at him through panicked, bloodshot eyes.
He knew what she was asking, but even with his head feeling like it was about to blow off, he couldn’t resist the urge to tease her just a little.
Another distraction before they dealt with the reality of their mutual loss.
“I’m pretty sure drinking nearly a bottle of tequila qualifies as the epitome of stupidity.”
She covered her mouth again, making more gagging sounds before getting them under control with a hard, desperate swallow. Then she said, her voice even huskier than before, “Don’t ever say that word again in my presence.”
Her voice was getting to him, probably because she hadn’t insulted him yet.
He needed to get on that. “Epitome or… tequila ,” he said, knowing full well that the latter was the word she meant.
Even he felt a little queasy saying it, and he’d been notorious with the guys in his unit for his cast-iron stomach.
Sage lost what little color she had left on her face, rolled off him with her hand covering her mouth, and kept on rolling thanks to the waves.
If not for the bed’s raised leather-wrapped frame, she would have rolled right off.
As it was, she kicked her way out of the tangled sheets while trying and failing to push herself off the undulating mattress.
He reached over, half lifting, half pushing her off the bed. She landed on the hardwood floor with a thunk .
“Sorry.” He felt bad not only for practically tossing her out of bed but also for teasing her.
“You don’t have to worry. We didn’t have sex.
We just passed out in bed together.” She was already halfway down the hall, so he raised his voice, repeating what he’d just said in order for her to hear him.
Instead of calling out her thanks for alleviating her worry, he heard her say, “Hi, Mom. Yeah, just give me a second,” she added before flying back into the room, skewering him to the bed with a glare. “Are you trying to embarrass me on purpose?”
“Come again?” he asked distractedly as he took in what she had on while at the same time trying to be respectful about it, which wasn’t easy given that she was standing directly in line with the sunlight coming through the window while wearing his white T-shirt and…
nothing else, apparently. Then again, his T-shirt hung almost to her knees. But that wasn’t the point.
The point was, why was she wearing his T-shirt and nothing else? They hadn’t had sex, had they? No way. It didn’t matter how drunk he’d been, he’d remember having sex with Sage. Anybody, he’d remember having sex with anybody.
“I can’t believe you just said that to me.” She fisted her hands on her hips, looking like a woman ready to do battle in a T-shirt that all but guaranteed her male combatants would fall at her feet. “Grow up, Walker.”
He dragged his gaze to her face. “What are you talking about?”
“Really.” She raised her eyebrows. “ Come again ?”
“Seriously?” He shook his head as he levered himself up on his elbows, groaning at the blinding pain that accompanied the movement, and then flopped back onto the pillows, pressing his palm to his eyes.
“ Come again , as in ‘repeat yourself.’” He spread his fingers to look at her from behind his hand. “We didn’t have sex, did we?”
She made a frustrated sound in her throat, which was surprisingly sexy, and then grabbed the pillow from under his head and hit him with it. “You just said we didn’t!”
“I know, but when I said it, I didn’t notice you were wearing my T-shirt and no underwear.”
The pillow came down on his face again. “I’m wearing underwear!”
“Good, that’s good. Now stop with the yelling and the hitting.” He reached up and grabbed the pillow from her. “I’m ninety-five percent sure we didn’t do anything… Why are you making that face?”
“I think maybe we did… something.”
He was a little insulted with the face she was making at the thought of them doing… something. “What do you think we did?” he asked while digging through his own alcohol-impaired memories of the night before.
She walked to a chair in the corner of the room and picked up her blouse and skirt. “I was eating ice cream and dropped some on my top.” She held it up as evidence.
“I think I remember.” He’d teased her about eating ice cream with tequila, laughing when she’d upended half of the bowl on herself while attempting to replicate Tom Cruise’s Risky Business dance move across the linoleum-tiled floor wearing a pair of Alice’s crocheted purple slippers.
He’d stopped laughing when Sage started taking off her top. Then he’d started taking off his T-shirt to cover up all her lush curves before he did something he’d regret. They’d regret.
Her eyes met his. “We kissed,” they said at almost the same time.
“It was a short kiss and completely unmemorable,” she added, with more emphasis on the unmemorable part than he thought was necessary.
“Completely,” he said, refusing to be the one to concede that parts of the kiss were memorable now that he was more awake and the drunken haze was clearing from his brain. “Uh, now that I think about it, there might have been some…” He cleared his throat. “Touching involved.”
“It was the tequila.” She looked up from the blouse clutched in her hand. “We will never talk about this again. Not a single word.”
“Talk about what?”
Her lips twitched with an almost-smile as she headed toward the door with her clothes in her hand. Then she turned so fast, he felt like she’d not only given herself whiplash but given it to him too. “How can you be so blasé about this? We kissed, and we, uh, kissed, and you’re married!”
“Wow, you really do have a low opinion of me if you think I’d kiss you if I was still married.”
“It has nothing to do with my opinion of you. We were emotional and had too much to drink. Things happen.”
“Trust me, if I was still married, it wouldn’t matter how much I had to drink. I wouldn’t have kissed you.” Or touched you , he silently added. Or been within five feet of you when you looked as heartbroken as I felt. They’d needed each other. There was nothing more to it than that.
“So how not-married are you?” She sighed when he gave her a look. “You know what I mean, Jake. Are you on a break? Recently separated?”
“Our divorce was finalized fifteen months ago,” he said as he moved to the side of the bed, still bitter at how his marriage had ended.
He had a compulsive need to succeed but there had been nothing he could do or say to change his ex’s mind.
So he’d taken Alice’s advice and let his wife go without a fight.
In the end, he supposed it had worked out for the best. They still had a great relationship, and his ex had moved on with her work husband, who was now a stay-at-home dad to their nine-month-old son. “Happy now?”
“You don’t have to be a jerk about it. I’d just remembered you were married and felt bad that we’d been—” She waved her hand at the bed and then apparently noticed he was about to get out of it, and her leaf-green eyes widened.
“No. You stay right where you are. My mother is out there.” She angled her head at the sound of cupboards opening and closing. “Mom, stop snooping.”
“I wasn’t snooping,” Gia yelled back. “I’m setting the table. Hurry up. You too, Jake. Your breakfast is getting cold, and it’ll soon be time for lunch.”
“She totally came here to spy on us,” Sage muttered. “She knows I don’t eat breakfast.”
“Well, I do, and whatever she brought smells great.” He moved past her to grab his jeans, grinning at the way she tracked his every move. “See something you like?”