18. Stone
STONE
Zane is still working, and my stomach is not okay with that. My belly grumbles as I check the latest message from him.
Zane: One more quick run-through.
Stone: Quick run-through? Your run-throughs aren’t quick.
Zane: You want this thing to go right, don’t you?
Stone: Of course I do. Take all the time in the world. I’ll just gnaw on the leg of this poker table while I wait.
Zane: Awesome. Be sure to get pics. The paps will love that. Anyway, I should be done in a half hour, and I’ll meet you somewhere then.
I groan as I slump against the wall by the high rollers lounge. “It’s official. I’m going to die.”
“We all are,” Jackson deadpans. “Welcome to the club.”
I tug on my eyelids, the lower ones. “Check my pupils. Can you tell if the starvation madness is setting in? Zane can’t meet me for dinner yet.”
He peers at my eyes. “Seems it set in . . . right around age fourteen.”
“What the . . .?” I pretend to be aghast, but then I am curious how he picked that age. “Why do you say fourteen?”
“I’m guessing that’s when you became a tad dramatic,” he offers dryly. “I mean, give or take a few years. But I’m betting on puberty as the onset.”
“Fine,” I grumble. “Then there’s no point pretending I’m not as hungry as a horse.” I tuck my phone into my front pocket.
He adopts a surprised look. “Oh, sorry. Were you actually pretending you weren’t hungry? Because it didn’t seem that way to me. It was pretty blatant.”
“Whose side are you on, man?”
“The side of rational thought. Along those lines, are horses that hungry? Like, in the scope of animals that have big appetites, are horses truly the hungriest? More than elephants? More than sharks?”
“I bet lions are hungrier than horses.”
“And probably hungry for horses,” he says, surveying the scene, his eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary.
I just finished my rehearsal. It’s nearly six o’clock.
The show opens tomorrow night, and I am ready.
The last several days have been hard, but I’ve battled through them like the fighter I am.
I have not touched Jackson, have not tasted, have not licked. I’m like a goddamn warrior.
Just need to get some vittles. “Fine. So I’m as hungry as a lion for a horse.” I pat my belly. “Owning it. Want dinner? Like, now?”
“You’re not going to wait for Zane?”
I shake my head as my stomach growls again. “Lions can’t wait. I’ll tell Zane we’re getting sushi. The avocado rolls are the best.”
I grab my phone and text my brother that I’m heading to Konu. As we walk, my phone pings with his reply.
Zane: This is going to take me longer than I thought. Start without me? Just tell me where to meet you in forty-five minutes.
Stone: But I’ll be missing you the whole time.
Except that’s not entirely true. Because the best parts of my days lately start and end at four and midnight, and I’m still in that delicious window of time.
Putting my phone in my pocket, I clap Jackson on the shoulder and say, “You are my dinner date.”
Jackson barely cracks a smile as I indicate the path to the sushi joint.
But a bright idea lands a few seconds later. I stop in my tracks, and he halts alongside me.
“Wait.” I meet his eyes and tip my head toward the other end of the long hallway. “Since you’re my date, let’s do Italian.”
And the smile he barely cracked? It splits wide open.
After fifteen minutes and a text to Zane with the new location, we’re in a quiet corner of Rosa’s, all the way in the back, far from crowds. Not quite a private room, but definitely a nook that’s out of the way of prying eyes.
Jackson orders chicken parmigiana, and I opt for the penne pasta and a glass of red wine.
We thank the waiter, and when he leaves, I run a hand across the back of my neck, still getting used to the absence of hair there. The haircut this week was the best trim of my life. And it had nothing to do with the way I look and everything to do with the man across from me.
From the way he looked at me in the mirror.
How his fingers slid through mine.
And from his offer to cut my hair if I need it.
I need to get it together. Need to focus on reality, not on my runaway imagination.
Jackson’s hazel eyes follow my hands. “How are you managing with the new look?”
I drag my palm along the back of my head. “I think I’m used to it now. She was good with the scissors.”
He clears his throat. “She was good with talking too. I have been meaning to ask. You and Lola . . .”
I fill in the gap with a question. “Are you jealous?”
He rolls his eyes. “Man, why don’t you let me compliment you?”
I set my chin in my hand and bat my eyes. “Oh, I’m all ears. I had no idea you were heading down Compliment Road. Do continue.” I cup my hand around my ear.
He shakes his head in amusement. “I was going to say you were great with her. You have a real ease with talking to people. I hope you don’t mind that I heard most of your conversation.”
“Not at all. You were right there just a few feet away.”
Jackson scrubs a hand across his neatly shaved jaw, taking his time with his words. “You’re very attuned to people,” he says, and there’s vulnerability in his tone, a sound that I like a lot from him.
I take the compliment and save it in a special place. “I’ve always tried to be. Thanks for noticing. Means a lot to me that you did.”
He exhales deeply, like he’s processing all this. “I don’t think I realized it at first. How connected you are with people.”
“At first? What do you mean?”
“Early on, when I started with you.”
“That I try to listen? To pay attention?”
He lifts his water glass, takes a drink, and sets it down, like he needs the liquid courage to say the next thing. “I didn’t . . . see it at first.”
“Maybe you didn’t want to realize it?” I offer that up gently. There’s no gotcha in my tone.
Though I have a damn good feeling why he didn’t want to see that side of me. But I’d rather hear it from him. So I stay quiet, letting him lead this conversation around the next bend, since he’s the one taking it out for a stroll. I’m simply the guy enjoying the walk.
Jackson strokes his chin, like he’s considering my statement. “That sounds about right.”
“Why’s that?”
He heaves a sigh. “It was easier, to be honest. Easier not to realize that about you.”
I pin my gaze to his because I don’t want to let this topic go. I want to parachute off this cliff, see where we land. “Easier to see me as self-centered?”
“It was a lot easier for me.” He doesn’t look away, and the intensity in his eyes speaks volumes.
But so do words. “Why? Why was it easier, J?” The question comes out a little breathy. Hell, I feel a little breathy right now. A little warm, as we jump.
“It’s not easy being attracted to your boss,” he says heavily. “At all, or even this much.”
And I’m warmer now.
Yes, I know he’s attracted to me.
But it doesn’t get old hearing it.
Fact is, hearing it gets better every damn time. I lean closer. “You want to know how it was for me?”
He nods, his eyes practically screaming Yes, tell me.
“I couldn’t let myself be attracted to you at first. Sure, I have eyes.
And I knew empirically that you were a stone-cold fox.
” He dips his head and smiles, and I go on.
“But I didn’t let myself think about you in that way.
At all. Wouldn’t. You were off-limits, even in my head, until the night you told me. In the hall, remember?”
He laughs, leaning back in his chair, rolling his eyes. “You think I forgot that night?”
I shrug sheepishly. “Maybe I’m just glad you didn’t.”
He scoots in closer, setting his elbows on the table, hooking his gaze with mine again. “I didn’t forget a single detail.”
The hair on my arms stands on end. My skin tingles as the delicious memory whips past me. “I didn’t either. I definitely haven’t forgotten how shocked I was.”
The corner of his lips curves up in a grin. “You had no inkling? No radar? No idea?”
Laughing, I hold out my hands in admission. “I thought you were straight as an arrow.”
Jackson laughs too, smirking. “More like gay as a . . .” His brow furrows. “Gay as a guy who loves sucking cock?”
I crack up, then raise my wineglass, tipping it against his water glass in a toast to that simple and perfect analogy. “Yes. That gay.”
“That’s pretty gay,” he says, his eyes sparking with laughter.
“It is. That’s my kind of gay.”
His lips part as he sweeps his gaze over my face, my chest, my arms. Then back to my eyes. His are glimmering with desire. His voice drops to a low register, lower than usual and full of smoke. “And it’s one of my favorite things to do.”
I groan recklessly, loving the image. I stare at his lips, so lush and full. Lips that would look fantastic wrapped around me. Take me out of the oven. I am cooked. Roasted. Charred probably. “Aren’t you just a dirty little flirt?”
One eyebrow climbs. “You mean . . . big flirt?”
“The biggest.” I take a beat then ask another question. “So when you started working for me, it was easier to see me as a cocky, self-centered guy?”
“I had to,” he says, so matter-of-fact as we slide back to the topic. “It was the only way to get through eight hours a day on the job being attracted to you. Arm’s length and all.”
Not going to lie. I sizzle all over, learning that his attraction has been simmering for that long. Learning that he felt that way about me from the start. And I can’t resist. I have to go fishing. “Did you like anything about me?”
“You were entertaining. You were always wildly entertaining.”
I wiggle my brows. “Damn right. Still am.”