One of These Nights (17 page)

The corners of his mouth curved up, but there wasn't much humor in it. “She called it French country. I called it fussy.”

Zoe was silent a moment. “She was into toile, wasn't she?”

He closed his eyes. “If I never hear that word again, it will be too soon.”

“A little goes a long way,” Zoe agreed. She'd seen people go crazy with the pastoral French prints before, which was a shame because done well, French country could be beautiful. “And here you are, with your whole rustic-log-cabin aesthetic going on. Did she let you have a room, at least?”

He leaned back, stretched, and she could tell they'd reached the end of this particular subject. “No. So I got a whole house instead.”

“Fair enough.” It was more information than she'd expected, and Zoe didn't feel right pushing for more. How had he ended up with a toile-addicted control freak for a wife? she wondered.
Probably had a bunch of ugly botanical prints all over the place, too. And white furniture nobody was supposed to actually sit on.
It was unkind, especially since she didn't know this woman from Adam. But she couldn't feel all that charitable toward someone who'd obviously messed Jason up good before walking away. She shifted her weight, repositioning herself against the counter.

“So . . . are you still coming to the stupid bonfire tomorrow night?” he asked.

She nodded. “It's on my calendar. Stupid Bonfire written in big red letters. Unless—”

“No. I want you to come.” He interjected it so quickly and forcefully that Zoe completely forgot the rest of what she'd been about to say.

“Oh. Well, then, I'll be there.” Their eyes locked, and she felt herself flush. She'd gotten used to his particular brand of intimidating, though, and long experience let her hold his gaze instead of looking awkwardly elsewhere.

His smile was slow and easy now, though it lasted barely any time at all before Jason dropped his shaggy head forward, shoved a hand through his hair, and then peered up at her with a pair of puppy-dog eyes every bit as effective as Rosie's. She was glad she had the counter behind her to prop her up; otherwise, she thought she might wind up nothing but a puddle on the floor.

“Listen, I didn't call you tonight because I didn't want you to have to deal with any more of this than you already are. When I said you needed a night off, I meant it. My family is no picnic. Every time one of them visits I want to sleep for a week once they leave. And I'm
used
to them. That's all I meant, Zo. Jake's family, so he gets it. I just needed a break.”

“I'm sorry it's like that.” What else could she say? She wasn't sure it was the right thing, but at least it wasn't the wrong thing.

“You and me both.” He reached down to ruffle the fur on Rosie's head. Zoe smiled when the little dog ducked and gave him what appeared to be a dirty look, probably because she was still trying to beg and he was ignoring it. Jason must be used to it. He didn't seem to notice. “She'll leave eventually. Might be later than sooner at this point.”

“Hmm. I need to step up my efforts, then.”

One of his eyebrows quirked up. “I didn't know you were slacking.”

“I'm not. I just don't think me hanging around is going to be enough. Maybe it would be different if she were really here to help you, but that's not exactly the impression I'm getting.”

“She's . . . kind of helping.” He lifted one shoulder. “When she feels like it. Mostly I'm just sorry for dragging you into it. Now you're stuck for no good reason.”

He was, hands down, the most exasperating man she'd ever come across. And as she had brothers, that was saying something. Zoe exhaled loudly. “Let's get something straight. I don't get stuck anywhere I don't want to be. Okay?”

“Oh yeah? You
want
to be stuck with me now?” His voice was laced with humor, but there was something in his eyes that demanded an honest answer to the question. Zoe considered her options—calling him an idiot, smacking him upside the head—and quickly settled on the one she would normally have avoided. Her mama had raised her to be a lady, damn it, with manners and a decided preference for being pursued over giving chase when it came to men. But given that Jason was determinedly thickheaded when it came to her, and since she hadn't been able to shake the memory of what his mouth had felt like on hers, just this once she chose the direct route.

Zoe approached him slowly, her eyes locked with his. She saw the way his gaze slid down to her feet and then all the way back up to her head, saw the heat that kindled there. It was like being caressed by invisible hands, and when she spoke, her voice came out in something like a purr.

“I'm right where I want to be,” she said, putting one hand on the table and leaning down so that her face was inches from his. His breath fanned her face, his long, dark lashes lowering, and she wished she could simply climb into his lap and wrap herself around him. That would traumatize Sam and Jake, though, and she really wanted to be allowed back. Not only that; she didn't think going to bed with him now, when he was still acting like this strange thing of theirs had an expiration date, was a great idea.

He didn't seem to know what he wanted from this. That made two of them. The only certainty was the heat that rose between them, such that the air seemed to crackle and snap with the intensity of it. It was a start. But it couldn't be everything, and she suspected that Jason knew it as well as she did.

“I wonder,” he murmured, and then stopped himself. He couldn't seem to take his eyes off her mouth, and she used it to her advantage, drawing her lower lip in to wet it. She could actually
feel
him tighten, though no part of her touched him.

“What do you wonder?” she asked.

“What you do want.” His voice was soft, breathless. The power in having pushed him so far made her bold.

“One of these nights,” she said, “you might just find out.” Then, before she lost what fragile grip she still had on her self-control, Zoe stepped back and walked away.

J
ason woke up late Friday morning to the sound of the television blaring and the vacuum cleaner being run.

“Oh my God,” he groaned to no one in particular. “Why?”

No answer was forthcoming. Probably, he decided, because there wasn't one, other than “because you were stupid enough to come home last night.” He was just lucky. His little island of sanity had been turned into a funhouse, he had no current viable way of escape, and he'd spent the night tossing and turning while he imagined Zoe leaning over him, her voice full of dark promise:
One of these nights . . .

Yeah, well, it hadn't been last night. She'd gone back to Sam and painted her fingernails like nothing had happened, and he was left to watch TV in the half-finished basement with Jake and Tucker the wonder mutt, nursing a beer and trying to keep his mind on the conversation. By the time he'd come up, there was nothing left of her but an empty teacup and the faint scent of vanilla.

At this rate, he'd be hard every time he walked by a bakery. He'd never be able to go into Petite Treats again.

He'd been so flustered, having Jake bring him back so he could think about Zoe naked somewhere he wouldn't feel pretty awkward about it had been the only real option. So here he was. The sexual frustration added a new dimension to his post-broken-leg funk.

Miraculously, it was making him even more miserable.

After lying there with the noise pounding at him for a few minutes, he hauled himself out of bed and stood. Rosie looked less interested in getting up, but she did with a little prodding and the promise of breakfast. Jason pulled some old athletic shorts on over his boxers, braced himself, and then opened the door to head out into the kitchen.

His mother was vacuuming, wearing athletic gear that told him she'd already been for a run. He had to tamp down the ugly twinge of jealousy he felt at that. It would take him a while to get back to running, he knew, even after the cast came off. But he'd get there. By then, he'd have his space back. And maybe—

Don't even go there.
He shut down all thoughts of Zoe before his imagination could run anywhere with her. She'd be around in some capacity. He'd learned not to count on more, and this should be no different.

“Morning,” he said, but of course she didn't hear him. With a sigh, he went to let Rosie out, then started to get her breakfast together. When the vacuum shut off, he knew she'd finally noticed him. He found himself tensing and tried to stop it. It was an old reaction—and oddly, the thing that helped him relax was imagining Zoe calling him Treebeard. Drawing his mother's attention
had
always been a little like finding the Eye of Sauron upon him.

“You look happy this morning,” she said. “Excited for the bonfire tonight?”

“Sure. Hey, can you turn the TV down? I don't really need to know how to make a decorative fruit bowl, and it's like they're shouting it at me.”

She rolled her eyes but obliged him. The volume went lower than he'd expected, actually, which meant she wanted to talk.
Great.

“So, what was last night about? The way you left was pretty rude, son of mine.”

He looked around, nodding slowly. “Yes. Yes, it was. Know what else was rude?”

“What?” Her chin went up, arms crossing over her chest. Defensive in an instant, because she knew exactly what else was rude. She just didn't give a damn.

“Throwing a girls' night in my house without asking me. You know, the son you supposedly came out to help and spend time with? In the house you always complain is too small? It was either leave or lose my mind.”

“You could have said something,” she said flatly.

“I tried. When the doorbell rang. You ignored me.”

“You know,” she said stiffly, “I never get back here. Not ever. Your father works, I have a lot of commitments, and your brother—”

“You could come if you felt like it, and Tommy is twenty-nine years old. He doesn't need a babysitter.”

“Not like you'd know. You never even talk to him,” she said.
Ah, here comes the guilt trip.

“I used to, actually,” Jason said, setting Rosie's food down. “He never called me back, so I finally gave up. But you can rest easy, because he does call of his own free will once in a while. Just to keep me caught up on how much better his life is than mine. I also love the texts of his girlfriends in bikinis.” He tried to keep his tone conversational, and was able to mainly because this was just another variation on a very old conversation. Why didn't he do things like his brother, why didn't he go with Tommy and his friends (because hey, he didn't have that many, and the ones he had weren't flashy), why didn't he study something more useful like Tommy had? And on and on and on . . .

He was more interested in how much better his balance had gotten from having to do so much one-legged. “Did you see that? I got her breakfast together and put it on the floor without wobbling once! I'm awesome.”

“You're . . . Jason, don't try to blame this all on Tommy! He's busy!”

“So am I, when I don't have a broken leg.” He glanced at her and saw the wild gleam she got in her eye whenever she thought she was being challenged. Inwardly, he sighed. She was more on edge than usual since she'd gotten here. It was nothing he could put his finger on, but she was thrumming like a live wire all the time. It made him nervous. Maybe he'd call his father about it, if he could catch him. And if he could get him to dig into a topic a little deeper than, say, how the weather was in the Cove, which was tough.

With considerable horror, he heard himself asking the question that never brought forth anything good. “Mom, are you okay?”

“I'm fine.
Fine,
” she repeated, drawing out the
f
almost like a hiss. “I'd just like to feel like you actually want me here. I mean, it's not like I spent every waking moment on you when you were a kid. It's not like you don't ever come visit, right?” Her voice was watery, but her eyes were as hard and bright as sapphires. “You know, I get tired of this passive-aggressive crap you pull with me. I raised you to be strong and say what you think. You know I don't have any respect for people who don't stand up for themselves. If you have a problem, say so.”

He was well aware that this was so much bullshit, since she respected only people who agreed with her in all things, but he still had to take a moment to decide which undesirable path to go down. There were two. On the one hand, he could tell her exactly how he felt and then ask her to leave, which would lead to anger, hate, suffering, and eventually the Dark Side. This would end with him lying about wanting her to stay. On the other hand, he could skip the theatrics, pretend he'd wanted her to stay from the get-go, and then seethe quietly until he got over it. He'd spent his youth doing the latter, and he was damn tired of it.

But this was a small house, and she'd be leaving eventually, hopefully not to be seen for another year. He wished it were different. He just understood that it wasn't going to be. And whatever her underlying problem was, she wouldn't be sharing it with him.

This sucks. Just like always.

He didn't know how Tommy dealt with it. But then, his little brother had a whole life he knew almost nothing about, apart from the jazzed-up, so-much-better-than-yours version of it Tommy occasionally dispensed to him. He was mostly past guilt on that one and had settled into a faint ache that he recognized as loss. As long as only one of them was interested in fixing it, it just wasn't a fixable thing.

That seemed to be a recurring theme with him. It was almost enough to make a guy leery of his relationship choices, he thought with a small, rueful smile. Then, because he supposed he could handle this for one more day so that the bonfire wasn't a complete disaster, he gave in to the inevitable.

“Nothing's wrong, Mom. Just please ask next time you have a bunch of people invade my house, okay?”

“You need more fun in your life,” she said, sidestepping any sort of apology. “Don't you and Zoe go out? Does she entertain? She must, in her business.”

He really had no idea. “I . . . sometimes.”

His mother walked into the kitchen and opened up the fridge, which was now stocked with random things he didn't eat. There were vast quantities of yogurt. She pulled out a couple of packages of hamburger meat and set them on the counter, then went to the pantry and started to pull out what he recognized as the ingredients for barbecued meatballs.

He'd always loved those things. And her remembering that brought on all the guilt he'd successfully avoided before. While that came in for a landing, she chattered.

“She's not as friendly as I was hoping, you know. I mean, she's on-the-surface friendly, but I just find her cool. Not that she doesn't seem to treat you well. She's certainly underfoot enough, and I can see she's been helping you. I just—I don't know. A
gallery owner
.”

He'd been hobbling over with the idea of giving her an awkward hug—most of her hugs fell into that category—but that drew him up short. She finished mashing up the hamburger with a few seasonings and started rolling meatballs, oblivious.

“Yes, she is. Is something wrong with that? I thought you'd find it interesting.”

“Oh, I do. You know, my friends are always saying I should get into that sort of business. Small scale, but I have a great eye, according to them. I'd love to pick artists and pieces to showcase. Not,” she added, turning her head to regard him for a second before returning her attention to the meatballs, “that I'd do anything like what Zoe has. The old Hamilton House has been transformed for sure, but the selection . . .” She pulled a face. “It's very Harvest Cove—I'll give it that.”

“It definitely is,” Jason agreed. That was one of the reasons he'd walked in there the first time. The other was Zoe. “They're all local artists, Mom. There are plenty of different styles in there. Anyway, you
like
Harvest Cove. You're always saying that, and you're from here.”

“Oh, honey. Of course I do. But there's a great big world out there. Now, where did Zoe move from?”

“Georgia.” If he was going to be quizzed, he wished he'd asked Zoe for a spare notebook to fill out. It occurred to him all at once that Zoe knew a lot more about him than he did about her. He'd been too busy deflecting her questions to ask any of his own.

“Huh. Well, why did she come here, of all places?” She shook her head before he had to try to scrounge up some sort of answer and came up with one herself. “She'll get tired of it. Out-of-towners always do.” She turned her head to give him a meaningful look. “You're going to want to be careful of that. I thought maybe you'd found some nice local girl. Somebody more . . .” She waved her hand as though she might catch the appropriate word out of thin air, but there was nothing, and Jason was pretty sure he didn't want to know what she meant.
More your speed,
maybe?

“You know, I could see if the Fiores' daughter is still in town, Chessa. They could bring her. I mean, it's not like you're serious yet, right? She was always a beautiful girl, very stable, good family . . .”

He didn't have the energy to be angry with this sort of thing anymore. It was an unpleasant realization, but true nonetheless. This was just par for the course. Whatever he did, it was never going to be quite right, never going to be good enough. He couldn't do what Tommy had done, couldn't follow her blueprint for his life so exactly. He should have known that rather than see Zoe as a catch, she'd just feel threatened by her. It had been that way with Sara, to some extent, though he couldn't blame his mother for destroying that. She hadn't had to try. It had been a mess all on its own.

Zoe's different.
But he wasn't. And that was what worried him.

“I'm with Zoe,” he heard himself saying, calmly, with only a hint of the weariness he felt. “I don't want to be with anybody else, so it would be nice if you tried to get to know her instead of making a bunch of assumptions.”

The irony wasn't lost on him. It was advice he hadn't followed himself where she was concerned. Maybe he should start.

“Oh,” Molly said, and for once, she didn't appear to have anything to add when she turned her head and gave him a curious look before continuing to make the meatballs. He didn't know what about his statement had silenced her, but the fact that it had was good enough for now. He was beginning to hobble away when she piped up once more. “It's only because I care about you, you know.”

She sounded almost tentative, wholly unlike her usual brash statements. He even believed her. She did care, in her way. So he turned, made his way back to the counter, and with a sigh dropped his chin on top of her head. “I know,” he said. She stiffened, then relaxed as much as she ever did when he touched her. She'd never known what to do with him . . . but there was still a part of him that wished she would figure it out. He didn't want much.

“Well, go on and shower. We've got a busy day ahead, and I've got some things I have to go get in a bit. You don't have to come,” she said quickly, “but you should get dressed. It's good for you to have a routine even though you can't work.”

He knew her well enough to be suspicious, but also well enough to understand that he wouldn't know what she was up to until she sprang it on him . . . whatever fresh horror it happened to be.

Before he got in the shower, he picked up his phone on a whim and texted the only person he had much interest in having a conversation with this morning.

I miss tracking dirt into your gallery. Just saying.

He thought about it for a moment, then decided to sign it in a way that would make her smile.