Jack was leaning against a pillar at the top of the porch stairs watching me. His arms were folded across his chest, one booted denim-clad ankle crossed over the other, and he made no move to come in. Light spilled out from behind me, casting a warm glow. Dammit, why did he have to be so attractive? I caught his green eyes for a second, which felt like about all I could stand, and then I stepped back to the side looking anywhere but back at him. I waved my arm in a single sweeping gesture into the house and tried to sound bored. “Come on then.”
Jack pushed off the pillar and started toward me. My pulse increased in tempo with every step he took, and I swallowed hard over my nerves. I could do this. I really could. I just had to hang on to my anger. It was suddenly very clear how damn weak I was. I grit my teeth.
He paused as he got to the closest possible space in front of me. I made the mistake of glancing at him before resolutely looking at the wall across from me. He was breathtaking. Consequently, I didn’t. Breathe. His hair really was darker and longer and curled around his ear. He seemed much less the boyish but intense Jack I knew from before. Now he seemed simply … intense.
A few elongated and excruciating seconds ticked by, and then he stepped past me and into the house.
Jack Eversea was in my house again. He paused in the hallway and did a slow three sixty turn, his eyes taking everything in and ending on the K A Butler original light fixture above him. His face broke into a small grin, and he nodded as I closed the front door.
By his reaction, I expected him to say something, but he continued appraising the freshly painted walls in pale grey, white moldings, and slip covered furniture I’d sewn from canvas drop cloths. Coupled with the antique pieces that belonged to Nana, it looked amazing, and I’d worked hard to get it there. His eyes dropped to the beautiful warm dark wooden floor beneath our feet. The floor he had tried to pay for me to have refinished. That I still owed him for. Irritation surged through me.
I figured it was safe to look at him since he was staring at the floor. It didn’t help. Jack Eversea still flipped my insides over and made me feel like a star struck fan who desperately wanted to know him, but couldn’t. In fact, it seemed he was more of a stranger to me right at that moment, than he’d been before I’d actually met him.
It had been seven months since I’d seen him in person. Seven months. “Shouldn’t you be having a baby any day now?” I asked before I could stop myself. Wow. I needed to engage my mind with my mouth, and quickly.
His head snapped up, green eyes locking with mine.
“I’m sorry, that was a totally insensitive thing to say.” I looked away. Gah, I’d already put myself at a disadvantage in this conversation, and everyone knows your rational mind takes a vacation between two and four in the morning. This idea to talk now, rather than later, was looking dumber by the second. And I couldn’t even hold eye contact with him. The weight of his gaze was just too much for me.
“It’s fine. I deserved that.”
“No. Nobody deserves a thoughtless comment like that. Especially when I have no idea what … happened. I’m sorry.” I turned and headed for the entrance to the kitchen. We’d stood in this very hallway the night we almost kissed. The night that started it all, and I realized there was the potential for far more than friendship going on between Jack and me. That night, I’d shocked us both by asking him not to kiss me. For what good it did me.
If we stayed in this foyer any longer we would both be reminded, and I didn’t need that. He was here to do the overdue it’s not you, it’s me and my pregnant girlfriend talk that he’d been too cowardly to do properly last time. “Let’s get this over with.”
Jack followed me into the kitchen. “Let’s get what over with?”
Seriously? Hmmm. Where to start? “I get that you’re sorry about the way things ended between us, how you handled it or whatever, or that you even got together with me in the first place.”
He folded his arms back across his chest again, tilting his head to the side.
I swallowed nervously and busied myself getting us some water. “And I get that you want to spend time here in Butler Cove, and you don’t want it to be awkward, having some ex …” I paused. Lay? Notch? Groupie? I flipped my hand in the air. “Conquest, or whatever, around. But I can promise you I’ll stay out of your way. As long as you stay out of mine. We can just agree to be … friends, or acquaintances that need never interact ever again.”
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Actually? No. While you’re listening, you should know I’m not pregnant, but thank you for checking on that, by the way.” I looked over at him.
Jack went pale, his eyes widening.
It was satisfying.
“What?” There was a protracted silence, and he slumped back against the wall right inside the kitchen door. “But I, we—”
“Used protection? Yeah, I’ve heard that’s always one hundred percent guaranteed.” My sarcasm and bitterness was becoming an almost physical thing. I needed to rein that in. It wasn’t a comfortable outfit.