SAVANNAH WAS READY to fall asleep on the floor right next to Lily. The baby hadn’t slept at all the night before, which meant Savannah hadn’t, either, and then for some reason Lily had defied every reasonable expectation and hadn’t napped the entire day, either. She really hoped this wasn’t indicative of what was to come.
Finally, the little wiggling thing had fallen asleep on her blanket, and Savannah was stretched out beside her, the ceiling spinning above her head as she fought to stay conscious.
Jackson would be back soon. She had already texted him to warn him that she wouldn’t be cooking dinner. She simply didn’t have the energy. She had managed to eat a few grapes while spoon-feeding Lily some squash, but that was it. She was hungry and exhausted. She wasn’t sure how she was going to go on.
And while she lay there, her thoughts turned to Jackson.
That was the biggest problem with being sleep deprived. She had almost no control over her thought process. All damn day she had thought of him. Of the way he talked about how it was a man’s fault if a woman didn’t find pleasure in bed with him.
It made her wonder.
Wonder a whole lot of things that were half-formed and blurry. Wonder a lot of things that she knew she should have a better handle on, but she didn’t. Because her curiosity about sex had basically shut down over the past few years. She felt like a failure at it. A failure as a wife. And instead of trying to figure it out with Darren she had just locked everything away. Pretended that she didn’t care. It was better—she had rationalized—than being her parents. Always unhappy and yelling and screaming.
But then she had discovered just how quiet unhappiness could be. How many forms bad marriages could take.
She had tried so hard to be different, and it had ended up the same.
Well, not quite. Her husband had actually cut her loose. Her parents didn’t have the common decency to set each other free. They just suffered together in misery. Savannah could honestly say she felt her choice was the better one. Or rather, the choice that Darren had made for the both of them. Though, she refused to be grateful to him.
But there was Jackson.
His lips were beautiful, and they made her want to kiss them. Kissing she had liked. At least at first. It had always sparked in her stomach the promise of something that she could never really have. So, eventually she had stopped liking kissing quite so much.
She wondered if kissing Jackson would be any different.
He was rarely clean-shaven. Somehow, he always seemed to have a perpetual five-o’clock shadow, and it looked like it would be rough to touch. She licked her own lips in response to that thought, closing her eyes and allowing her vision to fill with images of him.
She heard the front door open and close. Her eyes popped open.
“Hello,” said Jackson softly, looking down at her position on the floor.
“Don’t wake her up,” she said. “I’m desperate.”
“Yeah, your text seemed a little bit on the desperate side.”
“I haven’t slept.” She sat up, rubbing her face.
“Do you need to take a nap?”
“Yes,” she mumbled. “But I need to eat. I haven’t eaten today, either.”
He frowned. “If it’s ever that overwhelming you should call me.”
“You hired me to take care of things. I’m not going to call you away from work. This is my job.”
“Which you won’t be able to do if you’re not functioning. I don’t expect you to be working twenty-four hours a day. That’s not reasonable.”
“Well, I’m fine,” she said, stretching and then standing. “Just tired. And hungry.”
“I did bring food.”
He held up a bag and she sniffed the air. “What did you bring?”
“Burgers,” he said. “From Mustard Seed. I brought regular fries and sweet potato fries. I didn’t know what your philosophical stance was.”
“I will put any French fry in my mouth. All of them. So, I hope that you got two orders of each. Because if you didn’t... I’m still eating them all.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I got four orders.”
“Perfect,” she said, standing up and rubbing her hands together. She really was starving. Beyond reason. And suddenly, all she could think of was how perfect it would be to eat a hamburger.
Which was much less unsettling than pondering the merits of devouring Jackson’s mouth.
He set the paper bag down on the table and she crowded around, digging inside and pulling out one of the containers of fries. The sweet potato. She dug into them immediately while Jackson sorted through the rest.
“Beer?” he asked, heading toward the fridge.
“Coke,” she said. “A beer is just going to put me to sleep.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said, but returned with a beer for him and a Coke for her.
“I need to be able to wake back up if Lily needs something.”
He frowned. “Let me take a shift tonight.”
“No. I already told you. This is my job. And I really don’t mind doing it.”
“And I told you that I don’t expect you to work twenty-four hours a day. I want you sharp enough to take care of her tomorrow. That means you need to sleep tonight.”
“Jackson, I will tell you when I need you to be a mother hen. That time is not now.”
His lips quirked upward into a smile, and she recalled the fantasies she’d been having about those lips not long before. “A mother hen?” He shook his head. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of that.”
“Well. You’re being ridiculous. I’m a grown woman, and if I need something I have no problem letting you know.”
“Is that right?” His dark eyes burned into hers and her heart leaped up in her chest. It was not a caring look. It was...loaded. It made her stomach tighten. Made her fingers feel numb.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, stuffing a French fry in her mouth and chewing indelicately.
“Like what?”
“You know. If I... If I know, then it’s really not very subtle, Jackson.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything,” he said. “Because things need to stay professional between us. I was pondering that earlier today.”
“Were you?”
“I was.”
“Why did you...” She hated herself for asking this question, but she was going to anyway. “Why did you come to that conclusion?”
“Because I was having some decidedly unprofessional thoughts,” he acknowledged, his voice getting rough, the heat in his eyes intensifying.
She shifted, stuffing another French fry in her mouth.
“That...” She cleared her throat and reached down for the burger that he had put in front of her. “I hope this has onions on it.”
He chuckled. “Believe me. Onions are not a deterrent. The fact that you’re taking care of Lily? That is.”
“Right.” She took a bite of the burger and moaned. She hadn’t meant to have such an obvious response to eating a burger, but she was starving. When she looked up, Jackson was watching her far too closely.
They ate in silence for a while, a strange awareness settling over her. They had acknowledged it. And he hadn’t denied it. Not at all. He was attracted to her.
It was strange. She didn’t consider herself the kind of woman men like him would be attracted to. She wasn’t stunningly beautiful. She was tall, and some men were into that, but since she had never been big on dating, she hadn’t much explored it. And then, she had been married and found out what a disappointment she was as a sex object, so really, this whole thing with Jackson was weird.
He was attracted to her. She was attracted to him. Right from the beginning. From that first moment they had seen each other in the airport.
The problem was, it was all a lie.
Well, the real problem was Lily. But beyond that, even if they were two strangers that just met... Whatever he thought being with her might feel like...he was wrong.
Whatever her own body thought being with Jackson might do to her, it wouldn’t.
“I’m not that exciting,” she said. “Really. In fact, I think if you’re actually finding yourself attracted to me right about now it’s mostly because of the forbidden aspect to...to us being together.”
“Really?” He raised his brows, and he looked maddeningly unconvinced.
“Yes,” she confirmed, hoping he didn’t know she hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. “You said yourself you...are well-traveled.”
“Is that a nice way of saying I’m the town bike?”
“Well. Yes.” She cleared her throat. “That leads me to believe that not very many things have been off-limits to you. Until recently. And now you find yourself...chained to your house. So... Not traveling as much. So to speak.”
As she said it, it made sense. It made a hell of a lot more sense than this man randomly wanting her for...her.
“You’re not wrong about that,” he agreed.
“And I’m here.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, his face almost comically serious.
“Look, the thing is...maybe Darren is a jerk, but he’s also right. So...even if we...did something...it wouldn’t actually be that fun. I would be prudish and disappointing. And you would be disappointing, too, and it wouldn’t even be your fault. It would be mine.”
Silence fell between them. But it wasn’t awkward, and it wasn’t harmless. It seemed to crackle. With heat and fire.
He leaned forward, his dark eyes intense. “Let’s get one thing straight, honey. I am never disappointing.”
Her cheeks felt scorched. “Well, there would be a first time for everything, and it would be with me.”
Jackson leaned back, taking hold of a French fry and putting it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “The real problem,” he said slowly, “is that I suspect there might just be some firsts between us, Savannah. But they wouldn’t be disappointing firsts.”
Her heart thundered hard. “Good thing we’re not going to find out.”
He shook his head. “It’s very important to me that Lily have stability in her life.”
“It’s important to me that I get some stability in mine.”
He nodded. “Stability is very important.”
Except he was leaning closer to her, and she could smell the aftereffects of his long day of hard labor, mingled with the body wash he used. And none of it was objectionable. Not in the least.
She swallowed hard, feeling dizzier than she had earlier. But right now, lack of sleep had nothing to do with it.
“The thing is,” he continued, “I’m a bad bet.”
“I’m sure you say that to all the girls,” she said.
“I do.” He nodded. “I don’t want to upset what we have here.”
“I don’t, either.”
“Although,” he said, “there’s a couple of things I’d add to that. The first being the fact I’m a bad bet might actually make it a better idea. There isn’t going to be a romantic entanglement, even if there’s a physical entanglement. That’s not in me. Fact of the matter is, I didn’t think fatherhood was in me, and stretching myself to be that... There’s not going to be any more character growth coming for me for quite some time.”
“Noted.”
“And we’ve already talked about it. I’m attracted to you. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I wanted a woman as badly as I want you.”
She hadn’t expected him to say that. He didn’t need to say things like that.
He didn’t need to lie.
“You really shouldn’t have said that,” she said, looking down at her hands.
“Why the hell not? We’ve been dancing around it. So, there it is. Now, those are the first two things.”
“What’s the third thing?”
“I want to send your ex-husband to a fucking early grave for telling you all that about yourself. But since I have a child to think about, and I can’t go getting myself arrested for murder, the next best thing I can think to do is try to erase some of that. You came here for a fresh start, Savannah. I can give it to you. You can stay here with Lily for as long as you want and during that time...if the two of us have some fun, then I consider it an added bonus.”
“Another perk of the job?” she asked dryly.
“Forget the job for a second. I want you. You want something different than what Darren showed you. Right?”
“What if it’s me?” She insisted.
“You need to get over that. That fear. You’re not going to stay here and be Lily’s nanny forever, right? That was never your plan.”
She shook her head slowly. “Well. No.”
“This is just a stopover while you figure out what to do with the rest of your life. And that’s fine. But I assume that in the future you’re going to want children of your own. A husband.”
“Husbands don’t have a lot to recommend them as far as I can see.”
“Lovers then. Who wants to be alone? No one.” He shrugged. “Even I don’t like to be alone at night.”
“Just because you like sex,” she said.
“Sure. But most people do. Let me prove him wrong. You prove him wrong, Savannah. I’ll show you it was him. His fault. You can let that go, leave it behind. Burn it to the damned ground. Isn’t that better than letting his words live inside you like that? Next time you tell someone your ex-husband said you were frigid you can do it with a laugh.”
“But what if... What if...”
He didn’t let her finish that sentence. Instead, he reached out, grabbed hold of her arm and dragged her over to his side of the table. Onto his lap. And then, she didn’t have to wonder about those lips anymore. Didn’t have to wonder about those whiskers. Because Jackson Reid was kissing her, and it wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced before.
It was better.