Chapter Sixteen
Jake left Liz’s office dazed, not quite sure what had just happened. One second they had been talking, the next he had been kissing her like his life depended on it.
She’d exploded as soon as their lips met.
Soft and sensual, like he’d imagined, but with this incredible sexy confidence.
The idea of what she might be like in bed was playing on a reel in his head.
He shook the thoughts away as his dick nudged at the zipper on his jeans, reminding him that he’d just walked away from a done deal.
He needed a cold shower, right now.
Last night he’d fought the urge to kiss her, but just now, when their hands had met and she had given him that saucy look, he’d lost what little control he’d put in place.
All his inner caution about following his attraction to her evaporated.
Mind you, all the blood had drained from his head to his . . . well, yeah. And she knew it.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve opened the damned Pandora’s box.”
He turned left and exited into the sunshine, squinting and putting his ball cap back on his head, not really paying attention to his surroundings. He was entirely focused on controlling the urge to stride right back into her office, strip her, and fuck her senseless across her desk.
Was he ready for this? Ashley entered his head the moment he thought it, dousing some of the heat coursing through his body. Liz was the first woman he’d kissed since Ashley.
He’d never had an immediate physical response to his ex-wife like what had just happened with Liz.
Ashley and he had been more of a slow burn.
Friends first, they’d fallen into a mutually comforting relationship and satisfying, albeit vanilla, sex.
He’d assumed it was love, and so had she—they were both looking for that next logical step to secure their lives and spend less on rent, anyway. So they’d gotten married.
Nothing he shared with Ashley had been anything as spontaneously passionate as what had just happened.
He’d had heady flings with sexually uninhibited women before his marriage, which had been about the adventure and the release.
But that, in there, with Liz? He had no idea what he was getting into, except that it had fried his brain like an egg in a hot skillet.
“Hey, New York. Heads up, man.”
Jake looked up quickly as Brady walked around the corner of the barn on a horse and stopped short of bumping into him. He was obviously just back from a ride, the horse sweaty, Brady smiling ear to ear. Jake blinked. That was a side of his brother he hadn’t accounted for.
“You ride?”
“We all do. Part of the deal, growing up here. Sometimes I like to work on things that don’t have bolts and pipes.
” Brady chuckled and stepped down from the saddle, pulling the reins over the horse’s head.
He swiped his dusty straw cowboy hat off to wipe his forehead.
He was in full chaps and boots, and his T-shirt was emblazoned with a faded red stampede ’07, several frayed holes along the hem.
Jake suddenly felt overdressed in his Rag they were polar opposites otherwise.
Peony was strong. She had a will of steel but it was wrapped in velvet, her kindness something he never saw in his mother.
His mother had unashamedly used people to get what she needed, which he had always excused as a survival instinct from being poor in New York; one he sometimes couldn’t blame her for while at other times he despised her for it.
Jake had tried his best not to go down that path of hardness, hating the destruction and bitterness that came with it.
Even as he got older and she would use him the same way, he would turn a blind eye.
She was his mom; how could he say no? He said yes every time, until one day he couldn’t anymore.
He’d put her in an Uber to a rehab place up in the Hudson Valley, sending both her and his money into an unknown outcome.
That was over a year ago, and he hadn’t heard a thing from her except confirmation of the transfer clearing.
Peony’s shaking had brought him up short, the memory of his mom’s tired, bony hands trembling uncontrollably when holding a prep knife.
The images of her strung out in the back kitchen of a restaurant, barely able to prep veg, Jake stealing in to take over so she could sit and mainline coffee—or worse, gin straight out of a faceted blue bottle that flashed in the fluorescent lighting every time she tilted it up.
He could still hear the slosh of the liquid in his memories sometimes, remembered furiously chopping carrots and peppers for a dinner rush, hoping not to get caught by the kitchen manager.
He’d been ten when he’d started covering for her. Kicked out of more kitchens than he could count by the time he was thirteen, he’d started working as the prepper, and his mother was the one who would steal in the back door of wherever he was working, squatting in the corner, asking for handouts.
She was no longer his burden, and to compare the vibrant Peony to her was unjustified, considering his mother had utterly failed whereas his father’s widow had not. His need to help Peony was instinctual from the years of being the responsible adult to the one parent who had kept him.
Peony telling him that Brett had looked for him was throwing his resentment into a new, utterly foreign direction, and that was spurring this overanalyzing of everything that was happening now.
His mother had kept him from a family that had wanted him.
He hadn’t felt that kind of hurt in a long time, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it, thankful that the pain felt less sharp than it did as a kid.
Perspective, understanding, and age would give it depth, perhaps.