Don't Lie to Me (35 page)

“You talk to Marcus, yet?” Macy asked after our initial ‘what-in-the-fuck-did-we-just-we-see’ conversation starters were completed.

I ran a hand through my hair and then took a sip of my wine. Straight from the bottle again. Why dirty a glass when you don’t have to?

“No. Although I thought of calling him.”

“What about Jack?”

“I haven’t heard from him.” I said with a bit sharper tone than I intended. Thankfully, Macy loved me enough to let my slight bitchiness slide.

“I can’t believe Marcus was on stage looking pissed as all get out. It has to have something to do with Jack. Why else would he be standing up there with his dad?”

She was right. To the few of us that knew my connection to Marcus and Jack, it was just a little too slick to have Marcus standing there with his dad like the supportive son, when we all knew how much Marcus despised his dad.

Besides that, even Macy couldn’t deny how much he absolutely adored Logan. If Marcus was standing by his dad’s side, it was all for show. It had to do with protecting Logan at the very least.

“I don’t know,” I said with my voice trailing off and staring off out the windows.

“What happened last night at the club? You never told me.”

I snorted. “That’s because you couldn’t remove your mouth from Tate’s face long enough to take a breath, much less have a conversation.”

“I know, I know…I’m such a slut with my fiancé. But we already knew that, so tell me what happened.”

“Nothing. He came over, got pissed that Dean was touching me and kicked me out.” And told me there were some photos of us having sex on top of one of his hotels.

“That’s it?” She asked doubtfully.

My face flushed as I thought about the way he touched me. His strong hands on my hips when he pulled me to him when Dean had walked away and he whispered roughly into my ear about the photos and the desire I saw in his eyes when he pushed me back away. His eyes roamed and drank in every inch of my body. I could almost watch his struggle to stop himself from unraveling my silly braids and messing them up in his hands the way he always did when he played with my hair.

“You gonna answer me?” Macy’s laughter brought me back to reality and I forced another swig of cheap red wine down my throat.

I cleared my throat as her knowing laughter rang through the line. “No, I don’t think I am, Mace. Listen, we can talk all night about what this is about, but the truth is, until I hear from Jack – if I hear from him – none of it means anything to me.”

“All right. But call me when you know.” I was just about to hang up the phone when she spoke again. “And just so you know, Jack has been so freaking miserable the last few weeks, and I know he’s totally crazy about you. This will all work out and you guys will be back to having hot crazy sex before you know it.”

“How do you know we have hot crazy sex?” Did I even want to know how she knows that? Probably not. “Never mind,” I say as she starts laughing through the phone. Who in the hell knows what she heard during phone conversations Jack and I had while he was at work. “I’m going to turn in. I’ll let you know if Marcus tells me anything, K?”

We hung up and just a few seconds later, my phone rang again.

“I am not talking about my hot sex with Jack, Macy.” And then my jaw dropped, my mouth went dry and I immediately reached for my wine bottle as the sexiest laugh bellowed softly through the line. Every nerve ending in my body instantly came alive as soon as I heard Jack’s soft laughter. That’s what I get for answering the phone without checking the caller ID first.

“Hot sex? That’s what you tell Macy we have?” He paused for just a moment. “It’s a bit more than that, isn’t it? Somehow I don’t feel like you’re giving me enough credit.”

He was so right. Hot sex didn’t begin to describe the moments I’d shared with Jack. Passionate, fire-starting, orgasms exploding so powerfully I saw stars and passed out. That was much more in line with the sex Jack and I had. And then the tender moments of him making love to me slowly but still forcefully as he slid into me and filled me so completely that I thought I would burst from the inside out.

The very thought made me shiver, and thank god that Jack wasn’t standing in front of me to see my body turn to mush and my legs start shaking nervously as I remembered the first time he told me he loved me while he was buried deep inside me in that limo.

Shit, that limo night was amazing.

And gone. Which I had to remember.

“What do you want Jack?” I asked, probably a bit more breathlessly than I should have been so like the classy girl I never claimed to be, I took an even larger swallow of my cheap wine and set it forcefully down on the counter.

“I need to see you.” He said it so matter of fact; I thought I had missed some important part of the conversation. He sounded like he was asking me to take care of his dry cleaning, or handing me over his grocery list and my stomach dropped to my knees at the very thought that all passion, all want and desire – and even love – he felt for me, really was gone now.

“When?” Man I hoped my voice sounded as emotionless as his did when I answered.

TWENTY-FIVE

“Now.” He said it softly and just a few seconds later, I heard a soft knocking on my apartment door.

“I’m busy right now.” A slight smile tilted one corner of my lips and I tried not to move a single muscle knowing Jack was just a few feet away from me, on the other side of the door.

I looked down at my rumpled clothes I had been in all day long and decided I at least had a few minutes to change into something else a little better for an encounter with him this late at night.

Moving slowly so I didn’t giveaway that I was in fact, at home and doing nothing besides drinking alone, I shuffled quietly down the hall to my room.

“You’re not busy. And if you are, you need to get home so I can see you.”

I tsked twice. “I’m not sure you get to boss me around anymore, Jack.” But I was smiling, and the humor in my voice gave me away immediately.

He didn’t miss a thing.

“Open your door, Emma.” His voice was just a little bit tighter, a little bit tenser and I knew I was running low on time before he started flipping out on me. Five minutes, tops.

“I’m not at home, Jack.” I removed my pants, slowly sliding my panties down with my nasty and faded black yoga pants. I don’t know what in the hell came over me but my fingers paused just briefly at the apex of my thighs and I could feel how turned on I was.

Jack did that to me, always. I didn’t even know if there was a future for us, but just hearing the smoothing timbre of his deep voice coming through my phone as I wiggled out of five year old sweat pants was enough to turn me on.

“Don’t mess with me, tonight, babe. It’s important. Now open your door.”

I detected the slightest amount of humor in his voice and laughed just a little bit.

“You have about thirty seconds to get to this door before I start banging on the door so loudly it wakes up your neighbors and Logan; and then you’ll have to waste your entire night getting him back to sleep.”

I smiled. “Ah, but then you wouldn’t get to talk to me like you so desperately want to.”

His frustrated growl came through the phone. I moved it away from my ear and threw on my robe. The one he hated. The one he had told me he didn’t want me wearing ever again.

“All right, all right,” I feigned irritation and began moving toward the door. “I’m coming.”

“Not yet.”

The line went dead and I froze, just staring at the phone in my hand while I saw his name blinking on the screen.

I stumbled over my feet and blushed at his innuendo.

I wanted to be mad. I wanted to scream at him for being such an ignorant ass and hurting me so badly.

Except mostly, I just wanted him. Flaws and all, I just wanted his hands on me – at least one more time.

My cheeks were flushed and my body was warm when I opened the door and received one more surprise for the night.

Jack looked disheveled as he leaned against the doorframe to my apartment. His silver tie was roughly pulled away from his darker grey dress shirt that had the top button undone. The shirt was wrinkled and his suit jacket looked like it had spent the last four hours crumpled into a ball and shoved into a plastic garbage bag. His hair was mussed, and for the first time it wasn’t in that sexily perfect way I loved so much. But what I noticed most was the dullness in his eyes and the tiredness that surrounded them. His piercing dark brown eyes just look blank.

It wasn’t in the emotionless, professional blank way where he could just stare right through you and you knew he didn’t give a shit one way or another what he thought of you.

This time, he just looked….sad. And maybe a touch scared.

He stood up a little bit straighter as I opened the door and with one hand that was behind his back, held out one cala lilly.

“Someone told me I sucked at this whole dating thing. I thought this might help.”

God I’d never seen Jack look like this. His voice wavered a little bit as he pushed off the door frame and stood, timidly, in front of me.

I wanted him. I loved him. I just needed answers first.

Slowly, I pulled the calla lilly from his fingers and inhaled the sweet fragrance.

“Come on in.” I turned from him and began looking for a vase. Not finding one, I emptied the red wine from the bottle into a couple of glasses, filled the bottle with water and stuck the lilly in there.

“Nice,” Jack said with just a touch of humor.

I handed him a glass of wine and set my new faux vase in the middle of my table. “I’m a classy girl, what can I say?” I winked and moved to my couch, waving him over as I passed him. “What’d you want to talk about?”

He looked uncomfortable, almost nervous as he stood next to my small and chipped wooden kitchen table. His hands were in his pockets and he rocked back and forth on his heels, not making eye contact with me. In fact, he was looking at every single thing in my small and hand-me-downed apartment except me.

“Logan sleeping?” He finally asked and brought the wine glass to his lips. I watched him swallow slowly, becoming more antsy with what he really wanted to say, and trying to resist the urge to wrap my hand around his tie and wrinkle it up.

I licked my lips and just nodded. I didn’t miss the hazy look he had in his eyes as he watched. I wasn’t trying to turn him on right now. It was just a nervous tick, but it made me smile and feel all sorts of warm inside knowing he was that affected by me.

Who was I kidding? I loved it.

“Did you see the news conference that went on earlier?”

I nodded again, a small smirk forming on my lips. “I did. My sympathies go out to the Senator and his family during this time of transition.”

Jack shook his head but I didn’t miss the gleam in his eyes. “Smart ass,” he muttered and slowly began walking towards the living room. My apartment was small, allowing him to reach a chair that suddenly seemed much too small once he sunk his large frame into it. It looked like a children’s chair and he was the giant. “Do you want to know why he stepped down?” He looked at me with a questioning gaze.

I was thinking of Jack in that tiny chair and thinking of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. ‘This chair is too big, this chair is too small, this chair is just right….’ I frowned into my wine glass and slowly set it on the coffee table. I must be drunker than I thought if the only thing on my mind right now, with Jack back in my apartment and not yelling at me was nursery rhymes.

I sighed heavily and looked to Jack, remembering he had asked me a question.

“What?”

“How drunk are you?” He frowned.

I wrinkled my nose. The room wasn’t spinning yet, but my tongue felt slightly larger and thicker than normal. “Just a little bit,” I finally deduced, hoping my words weren’t slurring. “You were talking about the Senator.”

I tightened my robe across my breasts and held my hands there a little bit longer than necessary feeling my nipples harden. Jack’s eyes dropped to my hands and a small smirk lifted on one side of his mouth, his dimple appearing.

God I loved that dimple. I wanted to lick it.