Chapter 7
Destiny
“You can’t tell how deep a well is by measuring the length of the pump handle.”
~ Grandma Dixie
As we swayed together in time to the music I tried to regain my bearings. JJ had thrown me so off-balance that I wasn’t sure which way was up. His little news flash had been a serious shock to my system. I had no idea how to wrap my mind around the statement he’d just made or the fact that being in his arms felt better than a full-body massage after pullin’ seven double shifts at the Spoon.
For a second, I’d thought he was joking. But, when I’d searched his eyes, which Gram always maintained were the windows to the soul, all I’d seen was openness. Vulnerability. Sincerity. Three words I had never in my life associated with JJ. In fact, if someone would have told me that he was going to display even one of those traits, I would have laughed in their face and asked what drug they were on.
Jefferson James Briggs was a lot of things. Talented. Sexy. Arrogant. Sexy. Funny. Sexy. Annoying. Sexy… Did I mention that he was sexy? Open, vulnerable, and sincere just weren’t in his DNA. Or so I’d thought.
Since he’d walked into the Spoon this afternoon, he’d been acting strange. I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it before now. But, now, I knew what was different. He seemed raw. No bravado. No cocky a-s-s-ness.
That meant that my heart, which had already been shattered by him and was not fully mended, was in serious danger of being totally demolished. My only viable option here was to guard that sucker like it was the Hope Diamond—which meant some protective walls clearly had to be erected immediately. An internal security detail needed to be on the job around the clock. No breaches. No break-ins. No surrender.
And I was going to get right on putting all of those measures into place, too…after this song ended. Because being in JJ’s arms felt more right, more perfect, than any other moment in my life.
Closing my eyes, I absorbed the emotion radiating off JJ and the intoxicating feeling of the roughened pad of his thumb rubbing circles on the base of my lower back. He began softly singing along to the song, and I let myself indulge in listening to the words as his lips brushed against my ear.
As his deep voice serenaded me with the lyrics of the song, talking about this not being a race and how he was playing for keeps, his mouth grazed my sensitive skin with each word, sending all kinds of seductive signals throughout my body. Warning alarms started beeping and flashing in my head. Sensory overload. This was too much to take. I needed to get as far away from this man and the sex appeal he effortlessly exuded as fast as possible.
Pulling out of the strongest arms I’d ever had the pleasure to be wrapped in was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. But self-preservation had overridden my silly attempt to walk on the wild side and share an intimate dance with the only man I’d ever loved. Without sparing him even the courtesy of a glance, I spun away from him and beelined it off the crowded dance floor.
Each step I took proved to be more precarious than the last. My legs had turned to wet noodles and my head to a balloon on the precipice of floating away. Also, fun fact: The room was spinning. As I shouldered my way through couple after couple, my chest began constricting. My brain was telling me that there was not enough oxygen to fill my lungs.
Air. I needed fresh air.
Through the buzzing in my head, I heard my name being called several times by people I passed as I rushed out of the barn, but it barely registered. I gave little waves and kept plowing forward in my mission not to pass out and make an even bigger spectacle of myself than my hasty exit was most likely already causing.
Thankfully, the second I walked through the large, double doors and around the side of the barn, my senses started returning to normal. Inhaling the fresh night air, I kept sprinting until I’d made it to the shed that, like the barn, was deceptive in its name. The Briggs’ shed was larger than my apartment, had a full kitchen—including a walk-in refrigerator—and a skylight that took up half the roof. It did have the tools its title would imply though—in its attached garage.
Growing up, Harmony, Cara, and I used to play house out there. We’d pretend that we were making dinner for our husbands, who were out working on the farm. I hadn’t needed much of an imagination for that particular flight of fancy since the only man I’d ever dreamed of marrying had, as a matter of fact, been out working on the very farm where we were playing the game.
Peering over my shoulder, I was happy to see that no one—JJ—had followed me out of the party. I’d made a clean escape. As I pushed the six-digit security code to unlock the door, my hands were shaking something fierce. It was more than a little irritating that that man could just waltz into my life and effortlessly spin my body and my soul out of control. The arousal humming through me was scary enough, but the thing that really concerned me was that my heart was swelling with an emotion I refused to name.
The green light flashed before the lock clicked open. As I pushed my way inside, I wished that I had a six-digit security code for my heart. If I did, the last person in the world I would hand it out to was JJ Briggs. But, knowing him, he’d be able to crack it anyway.
I reached to flip on the light switch as the door clicked shut, but decided against it when my eyes were drawn upward to a blanket of stars twinkling through the glass of the skylight. I let my head fall back against the wall beside the door as I took in the spectacular sight and tried to let it soothe my tortured soul.
I hadn’t traveled much. Or at all. But, despite my lack of passport use, I was absolutely certain that a Texas sky should be added as the eighth Wonder of the World. There just weren’t words to describe its majesty.
After a few minutes, my heart rate began to return to its natural rhythm and my brain felt less JJ-clouded. I figured I should go back to the party, check on my cupcakes, and then get the heck out of there. I would go home, feed Captain Pickles, take a hot shower to scrub the intoxicating scent of JJ off my body, and then fall into bed and forget that this night and that dance had ever happened.
I was pushing off the wall when I heard the beeping sound of someone punching the code into the keypad followed by the lock clicking open. Knowing that my short reprieve was about to be interrupted, I began mentally preparing how I would explain to one of the waitstaff, who was probably coming in to retrieve something out of the stocked fridge, why I was in here.
But being a psychic was obviously not my calling, because behind door number one was not a server. It was the person who had sent me into hiding.
I was face-to-sexy-face with JJ.
Unlike me, he didn’t appear at all surprised that we were face to face as he stepped inside. Panic rushed through me though, and I felt the same way I had when Harmony, Cara, and I had been caught smoking under the bleachers at a Friday-night high school football game—busted. Caught.
I reminded myself that I was not a kid doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. Then that pesky inner voice piped up and said that, if I wasn’t careful, I would be an adult doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. Team Play it Safe was back in full effect.
“How did you know I was in here?” I asked, frozen in place by JJ’s piercing gaze.
After closing the door behind him, he stood directly in front of me. I leaned back against the wall as far as I could. Even with my wedges on, I barely stood at chest level to him, so I had to drop my head all the way back to look into his eyes. The musky, earthy smell that had always been uniquely his drifted through the air, and it was all I could do not to drool.
“You are so beautiful,” he rasped as he brushed a stray piece of hair off my cheek and tenderly placed it behind my ear.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Okay, there was a tremor in my voice, but I was happy that it had sounded stronger than I’d thought it would.
Even though every cell in my body was alive with arousal at JJ’s nearness, his touch, his smell…I tried my darnedest to stay on track. My brain train was headed to self-preservation station, and I refused be redirected onto a bow-chicka-bow-wow detour.
The warmth of his sweet breath fanned over my face. My pulse quickened as a hot, wild tremor ricocheted through me. None of his body parts were touching any of my body parts, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t closer to having an orgasm than I had been in so long that I couldn’t even remember.
Stay. On. Track.
Shaking my head slightly, I fought to suppress my traitorous body’s reaction. I’d been down this road with JJ before, and it led to a whole lotta heartache with a huge helping of embarrassment on the side.
“Damn, I’ve missed you,” he spoke softly as he moved just a millimeter closer to me.
Why? Why did he have to go and say things like that just when I was gathering up my defenses? Talk about playing dirty. Well, if he wanted to go there, even though I had been trying to avoid it, I guessed we needed to go there.
Gathering all the zip-a-dee I could muster in my doo-dah, I stared directly into the pools of his coffee-colored eyes and placed my hands on my hips for good measure. “Yeah, you mentioned that on the dance floor. Just out of curiosity, did all that missing start after you took me to prom, went down on me, gave me one of the best orgasms of my life, and then pushed me off of you and told me I was ‘too young’ and ‘nothing more can happen between us’? Or was it after I asked if you were serious and you laughed—laughed at me—and asked if I seriously thought that you would be interested in me!? Was that when you started ‘missing’ me?”
This was good, it was helping. I’d tried to bury that night deep in my subconscious, but digging it up and dragging it to the surface was causing all kinds of righteous indignation and anger to bubble up inside me. I could definitely use some of that.
Anything was better than arousal.