The Closer You Come

His pupils expanded, the black spilling over the emerald. “Are you offering?”

Yes. “No.” She shook her head, determined to mean it. “Never.”

He ground his teeth and took a step back, breaking the spell. “Good.”

“Yeah. Good,” she repeated softly. She scratched at her ears, cleared her throat. “Well,” she said and cleared her throat again. “Like you said, I should go.”

His nod was clipped. “I’ll walk you out.”

She offered no protest, knowing it would do no good. “Thanks.”

Outside, the air was a perfect blend of warm and cool. The moon hid behind clouds, a few stars glinting from their perch of black velvet. The only swath of light came from the single-bulb lamp on the porch.

Jase opened her car door, and as she moved around him, misjudging the distance, she accidentally brushed her shoulder against his arm. Both of them hissed, as if they’d just been burned.

Tremors rooted her in place. She stood in the open space between door and car, peering up at him. In the darkness, with thin ribbons of golden light seeping from the car’s interior and falling over him, the wind caressing strands of his hair over his brow, he could have stepped straight from her fantasies.

The scent of him enveloped her...honey and oats, like the soap he used...and it was both pleasant and comforting; she only wanted to get closer to him. Her blood heated, and her skin tingled. She forgot the discomfort in her ears. Forgot all the reasons she’d told herself to avoid this man.

Like he’d done in the kitchen, he reached out and pinched a lock of her hair between his fingers. A compulsion? She hoped so. A lance of pleasure sped through her, and breath snagged in her throat. What would he do next? What did she want him to do?

His head lowered...lowered a little more...coming closer and closer to hers. Anticipation consumed her, the heat and tingles growing worse.

His fingers moved to her jaw and tipped up her face. Preparing her for his kiss. She knew she should close her eyes, but she didn’t want to miss a moment of this.

For a long while, his mouth hovered over hers.

She breathed him in. He breathed her in. She tensed, eager for contact. Ready for it. Her belly quivered. She’d been kissed before—of course she had—but this would be her first kiss with a man so intense, so closed off, yet seething with such quiet savagery. And it would be wrong for her, wrong of her, but almost...necessary.

“Jase.” Do it. Please.

The sound of her voice caused him to stiffen. He dropped his arm to his side, severing contact.

“See you tomorrow, Brook Lynn.”

Just like that, he walked away. Leaving her confused, angry. Determined.

The only problem was, she didn’t know what she was so determined to overcome. Her attraction to him...or his resistance to her?

CHAPTER NINE

SLEEPING PROVED IMPOSSIBLE for Brook Lynn. She tossed and turned in bed, thinking of nothing but her almost-kiss with Jase.

Why had he stopped?

Did it really matter?

Sometime between falling onto her mattress and rising to take a shower, she’d made a decision: she would overcome her attraction to him, and that would be that.

There were too many problems stacked against them, anyway. Jessie Kay. Brook Lynn’s employment. His attitude. Oh, his attitude! Smoldering one moment, ice-cold the next. Always annoying.

Besides, she still wasn’t interested in a fling. Give me long-term or give me nothing.

Right?

“Jessie Kay,” she called, banging on the girl’s bedroom door. “What do you want for breakfast?”

Silence greeted her.

She peeked inside—no one was in the bed draped with sheets covered with silly pandas or anywhere else. Peachy. Had her sister even come home last night? Brook Lynn tromped to the kitchen...where she found a note. And a glass jar with a giant spider trapped inside.

Dude! Do you see what was waiting in the kitchen for me? The devil! I managed to catch it—you’re welcome. Now you get to kill it. All I ask is that you check for a pulse afterward to make sure he’s really, really, really dead. Love, JK

PS: I would have killed it myself, because I’m tough like that, but I was in a hurry to go out and make us some dough. You’re welcome x 2.

“You are deathly afraid of spiders, and you know it,” Brook Lynn muttered to her absent sister. And Jessie Kay, out making money? I’ll believe it when I see it.

After freeing the spider outside, Brook Lynn decided to forgo breakfast and made her way to the Rhinestone Cowgirl. Strawberry Valley was just beginning to rouse. Shop owners were outside, dusting off sidewalks while Closed signs flipped over behind them.

She waved to Mr. Rodriguez. Virgil hadn’t yet arrived to begin their next checkers game. There was Wanda Potts, taking pictures of her storefront to post on Twitter and Facebook. She sold “designer” clothing—meaning, she’d designed them. Next door, Donut à la Mode was being unlocked. It was nice, seeing the same people, the same sights, every morning. Comforting.

When Brook Lynn stepped inside the RC, she was ten minutes early and more fatigued than usual. Her eyes burned, and her feet dragged. And her ears! The itching had only gotten worse. If this kept up, she’d have to call her doctor and pay for a checkup she couldn’t afford.

Maybe she could get an advance from Jase...

No! No way. She wasn’t going to treat him like a piggy bank. He was her boss, and he was a person. A distant person, sure. Gruff, but a natural-born protector. Look how quickly he’d stepped in front of his friend simply to stop the guy from yelling at her.