Could she explain why not without sounding like she just wanted to sleep around for the sake of quenching her lust for sex? But Dixie would worm it out of her any old way.
So she just said it. “Because I don’t want to get involved with anyone. Not now. Not so soon after the humiliation of Clifton leavin’ me. I think I’d just like to...make the business. No flowers or fancy dinners or anything but...well, you know.”
“Oh.”
Em’s mouth fell open. “Oh? What kind of an answer is that?”
Dixie sipped at her coffee—meaning, she was weighing her words. “I’m just wonderin’ if you’re cut out for sneakin’ around in cars.”
“Jeeps.” Just the way she remembered Jax’s husky voice saying it made her shiver.
Dixie’s glare was impatient. “Whatever. So you’re telling me you want nothing more than a sexual relationship with him?”
“Yes.” The admission exploded from her throat.
She was going to do it. She was going to ask the only person she knew who understood men and their brains. Well, mostly. “I want to ask you something, but I want to do it without recrimination, especially from the devil’s favorite playmate. I’m asking you a very sensitive, very private question, you being my person.”
“I’m getting whiplash, honey. Why don’t you just tell me what’s really going on—what’s really eatin’ at you, and I’ll try to help in the best way the devil’s favorite playmate knows how.”
Jax had to be the most experienced man she’d ever met, even if she hadn’t met many. Or made love with many. Or even if she’d only made love with not so many. Okay, just one and a quick grope from Delroy Green at a football game.
If last night was any indication, Jax knew things she wanted to know. He did things she wanted to do again. If she could just get past the disapproval in her head, give herself permission to explore...
Em smoothed the edge of her bathrobe, licking her lips nervously. “Do you think Jax is the kind of man who’d just like to fool around? You know, without feelin’ like he has to buy me dinner or take me to the movies?”
Dixie’s eyes were confused for a brief moment before they gleamed. “Well, you can ask him at dinner tonight at the big house. He’s coming, by the way.”
“You didn’t...”
“Oh, no. I didn’t. I would have if Caine hadn’t beaten me to it, but did I personally hand him the invitation? Innocent.”
How would she ever look him in the eye after sprawling across him like a Sealy in a Jeep last night?
A Jeep.
*
“So are you going to call that bitch back?” Tag pressed, unlacing his work boots and kicking them off.
Jax knocked his brother in the shoulder with the heel of his hand. “Don’t call her that, Tag. Maizy’s right in the other room. Jesus.”
Tag’s hard face turned to granite under the new recessed lighting he’d just installed in the kitchen. “Well, it’s what she damn well is. I’m just callin’ it like I see it. She hasn’t bothered with Maizy for five years and ten months of her life. What’s so damn important now?”
Jax scrubbed his jaw with his hand. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. “I don’t know.”
His jaw hurt from clenching it. When he hadn’t been trying to sweep the message from Reece under the carpet labeled “refuse to acknowledge” today, he’d been thinking about Em and last night. Why now? On both the Reece and Em fronts? It was like the good and bad colliding at exactly the wrong moment.
Add to that, it pissed him off that he was being such a pussy about facing his biggest nightmare. Reece.
Tag, the latest owning-your-crap-out-loud convert, said it for him. “You don’t want to know.”
Anger, more that his brother was right than anything else, made Jax return with rapid fire. “Oh, save your AA bullshit for someone who needs it, huh? No. No, I don’t want to know. Is it okay by you, preacher man, if I keep it to myself until I can process it? Or do I have to slice my gut open and throw my spleen on a table in some church where they serve you shitty coffee and tell you to take it one day at a time in order to earn my chip like you did?”
Shit. The minute he said the words, he regretted them. He was bagging on his brother for using the only device that had helped him begin to fix himself.
He regrouped, gripping the edge of his shiny new center island. “That was uncalled for. I’m sorry, but we have to face the fact that Reece does have rights—”
Tag shoved the ladder left from installing the lights out of the way. It clattered to the ground with a noisy bang. “Nah. Forget it. You have a right to still be angry with me, brother. But Reece? She has no goddamn rights, Jax. She gave all of them up when she skipped off to wherever the fu—”