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“You and Uncle Owen were the only ones who saw the real me. Made me want to be a better person. When you...I mean Violet, pulled that switching stunt, I thought it had all been a game to you.”
I saw Jack's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. He turned and looked at me. Really looked at me with those fathomless blue eyes. I saw ten years of emotion there. Heartache, bitterness, anger. “I loved you, Miller. You were the one. Even if I hadn't told you, even if I hadn't gotten up the nerve to ask you out. I knew. Even at seventeen.”
Tears filled my eyes, a painful lump lodged in my throat. He'd said loved. Past tense. Knowing he'd loved me and then stopped was crushing.
“I realized maybe my parents had been right in leaving me. That I wasn't worth it. I thought the way you'd toyed with me that you didn't think so, either.”
I gasped, realizing how cruel Violet had been. How cruel he'd thought I'd been. An inconsequential thing for Violet to do had affected Jack so deeply.
“After, there was nothing left for me here. Bozeman was just a crappy town to me after graduation. Uncle Owen understood I had to leave and he let me. I took the scholarship for the University of Miami and ran.” Jack laughed humorlessly. “Ten years later, I'm still running. Still bitter.”
14
“Jack,” I whispered as I sat up and straddled his lap again. Felt his hard thighs, his cock, now hard, between us. I took his face in my hands and kissed him. Kissed him with all the passion I'd held back. My tongue met his, tangled, just like I’d written about in my romance book. Ten years of need built between us, Jack's hands running up over my body, caressing, and learning.
Running my fingers through his hair, I nipped at his jaw, my lips sensitized by his rough stubble. “Jack,” I whispered again.
Before I drew another breath, he lifted me about the waist and placed me back on the sofa away from him. I lay there, looking at him, my breathing ragged, my need unmet.
“Jack?”
“Jesus, Miller.” Jack ran his hand through his hair. Through the layers of clothing, I could see he was trying to catch his breath, too. “For the first time in ten years,” he said, his voice rough with need, “I'm going to do the right thing. I want to slide you underneath me and fuck you until we can't figure out where you start and I end. But like you said, I'm leaving.”
His gaze slashed to meet mine. A wildness I hadn't seen before was there, banked by years of anger. Betrayal. Frustration.
The visual of his naked body pressing down upon me, into me, made me flush all over. My nipples tightened impossibly harder beneath all the layers of clothing.
“The one time I want to do the wrong thing,” I said, still cranky. But right then, right there on Uncle Owen's couch, I fell in love with Jack. All over again. There was goodness in him, and Jack was just discovering it was still there, buried under years of hurt.
Jack lifted my feet up and onto his lap so I laid across the length of the couch, my head on a throw pillow at the far end. “The one time I want to do the right thing.” His lip curled up into a half-hearted smile. “I've lost my mind.”
I needed to think about something else besides his hands on me, how my body pulsed in special places. For him. Just for him. “Why...why did you come back?”
His gaze turned to the TV, but I knew he wasn't watching it. There was much more to his trip to Bozeman than just his uncle's house calamity.
“I got fired from work.”
His thumb brushed idly over my arch through my thick wool sock. I doubted he knew he was doing it. I did. Small little circles of pleasure spiraled around at the bottom of my foot. I had no idea it was such an erogenous zone. I imagined what it would be like if we weren't covered head to toe in enough clothes to be Sherpas to Mt. Everest…and if that thumb was circling my nipple instead.
“The company I worked for dealt in high end divorces. Rich and powerful people who didn't want their exes to get a dime. It was my job to make sure that happened.”
“It doesn't sound very ethical,” I commented.
Jack shook his head, his jaw tense. “It wasn't. For five years it didn't bother me. I didn't think twice about what I was doing. What was right or wrong. About whether whatIwas doing was right or wrong.”
Now I understood his earlier words. “Doing the right thing.”
Jack nodded. “I helped a woman use her kid as leverage to get the millions she wanted. She never cared about her son. After the husband forked over the money, she refused to give up the kid so she could get child support.”
This didn't sound good. “What happened?” I whispered.
“The crappy mom got a ten-million-dollar settlement, put the kid in a boarding school in Switzerland, and pocketed thirty thousand a month in child support.”
“Wow.” I couldn't fathom that kind of money, or that kind of selfishness.
“The boy's seven.”
“Holy shit.” I couldn't imagine a seven-year-old in a foreign country, all alone. Then I thought about Jack's childhood.
