“It’s nothing, really. With my kind of money, it’s a drop in the bucket.”
I studied his face and sure enough, his usual calm, no care demeanor had returned. “Oh.”
“All right?” His feet shuffled, the connection between us suddenly severed. “We good?”
“Twenty G,” said Ben’s deep bass voice softly from somewhere behind me.
“I’m not taking your money again,” answered Mal. “It’s too easy.”
“Fine, forty thousand says they’re through by Christmas.”
“Why are you always betting against true love, Benny? What’s with that?”
“It’s all bullshit,” Ben muttered.
“Ben,” said Jimmy. “Watch your f**king mouth.”
“Sorry.” Some grumbling from Ben. “Didn’t realize they could hear us.”
“Of course we can hear you, you idiot. We’re not deaf. Enough of this.” Jimmy stepped back, hands gently but firmly disentangling me from him. My grabby hands never stood a chance. He was just too strong, damn it. “Time to get back to work.”
“Wait.” I wrapped my hands around my sides, so they’d feel less bereft. “Did you mean it, what you said before about me maybe trying being Pam’s apprentice on tour?”
“Yeah. She suggested it, so talk to her. She said you had a natural talent and could do with another pair of hands helping her out.”
“But I thought you wanted me to keep working for you as your assistant?”
He drew his lips to one side, in query almost. “Figure you’re gonna probably get sick of that eventually. You’ll get bored. You work with Pam, then you can still work for me and do other stuff as well.”
“So it’ll be like a second job?”
“Sure. Why not.”
“I’ll give it some thought and have a talk to Pam.”
“You do that, and then take the opportunity. It’ll be a great experience for you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“What about sex?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“I want to have it again. With you.” his voice dropped low. “What do you say?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
He stared into my face, saying nothing for a good long while. Agitated fingers started tap, tap, tapping against the small of my back. Eventually, he said, “We still haven’t gotten each other out of our systems yet, have we? So the original reasons still hold.”
My heart stopped. “We, huh?”
“Yeah.” He paused, sighed. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is. It’s nice to hear it.”
“So, I think we should do it, try some different positions, and mess around a bit. Might fix things, you never know.”
“You genuinely believe that giving scissors, the butterfly, or dragon a whirl is going to fix things between us?”
His eyes glazed. “Lena…ah, man.”
“What?”
With the motion of his hand, he directed my attention downward. Huh, things were definitely happening in his pants.
“That’s not my fault if you can’t control it. It’s not like it’s attached to me.”
He groaned. “Well, us having sex’ll definitely fix one thing.”
“True.” Whoa, there really was a hell of a bulge behind his fly. And there went my panties. Cold thoughts. Boring thoughts. “But you didn’t react well to good sex with me last time.”
“That won’t happen again. I promise.”
“You do, huh?”
“Absolutely.” He stepped closer. “Boy Scout pledge and all that.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who was in Boy Scouts.”
“I wasn’t. But I can still tie a hell of a knot.”
My mouth opened, but yeah … nothing. Oh, the evil dirty thoughts dancing behind his eyes. I longed to hear all about them in detail.
He grinned. “That’s about the first time I’ve ever seen you lost for words.”
“Shut up.” My face, it felt flambéed. I cleared my throat a few dozen times. “Anyway, I’d just like to take this opportunity to say how awful I personally feel that you enjoyed ha**ng s*x with me. No really, Jimmy. I’m sincerely apologizing on behalf of my vagina, here.”
“Yeah, okay.” He turned his face away, trying to repress a smile. “Now you’re enjoying this a little too much now.”
“Impossible.”
“And I know about the flowers you sent to Liv from me.”
“You do?” My ecstatic fell back a few notches to something more subdued.
“She called, sounded pretty damn happy about them. How much did you spend exactly?”
I forced out some laughter. “You said money wasn’t a big deal, you’ve got lots more.”
He gripped my shoulders. The harsh line of his mouth suggested much crankiness in the immediate future.
“Hey, I did a nice thing for another human being to help her feel good about herself. I just happened to do it with your money. But Jimmy, you were not nice to her when she left, and I felt … you know, you invited her up here and then …”
He just looked at me.
“Can we go back to the part where I’m in the right and you’re in the wrong? Personally, that was more fun for me.”
Footsteps sounded, coming down the stairs behind me.
Company would save me, hooray!
But Jimmy didn’t seem to care if there was an audience to his throttling of me or not. Instead, he wrapped his hand around my ponytail, tugging gently until I tipped my head back.
“I don’t care about the flowers,” he said, leaning in and pressing his cheek against my forehead. Damn that felt good, I had no idea foreheads were so receptive to sensation. My body went weak, awash with good vibrations. It was basically like having one big happy spot smack bam on my face, mildly embarrassing but ever so rewarding. Imagine if he’d actually kissed me there, I’d probably have come.
“It was a nice idea,” he said. “You did the right thing. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Don’t care about the chairs either in case you’re wondering.”
I smiled and held perfectly still as he stroked his knuckles over my cheek. It was so nice being touched by him again, getting to be this close.
His gaze rose, going straight over my head to whoever stood beyond. “Hey, Dean.”