“Sorry, am I crushing you?” He pulled out and collapsed on the opposite end of the couch. Then he grinned at her. “Well, that was interesting.”
“Yep.” She sat up and pushed herself off the couch on wobbly legs. Feeling vulnerable and hating it like hell, she headed straight toward the powder room off the living room without another word.
Splashing water on her face, she stared at herself for a minute in the mirror. Her cheeks were red and she had a post-sex glow. “Get it together, girl,” she murmured. “He ain’t all that and a bag of chips.”
Except that he was. He was the damn chips and the hot sauce on top. She jumped when he pounded on the door. “You all right?”
“Yes, I’m peeing.” She lifted the toilet lid with a loud clang to prove her point.
He walked in while she was popping a squat.
“Get the hell out of here!” she yelled, outraged. She couldn’t do anything with him watching her.
“What? It’s not a big deal.” He lifted his penis into the sink and splashed water on it.
“You know, the shower would work better.” Men were just goofy. She had no other explanation for why he was doing what he was doing. Though she had to admit, it was a good view of his tight ass. “You’re giving me stage fright.” She rested her arms on her knees and felt as awkward as she had while changing in the locker room in seventh grade.
He snorted. “You, stage fright? That’s ironic. And I don’t want to take a shower. I want to lie back down with you for a little while still.” He turned and winked. “If you’d let me go bareback, I wouldn’t even do this.”
“Sometimes your logic is ass-backward,” she said wryly, abandoning her project and standing up. The aftermath of sex was always a little messy, but she didn’t need to be reminded of that fact. She shoved past him to wash her hands. “And if that is your roundabout way of asking me whether you can skip the condom, you’re either drunk or an idiot. You know I’m not on birth control. So don’t you even think about coming near me with that penis unless it’s wrapped.”
He smacked her ass with a loud pop. “If you want to tap it, you got to wrap it.”
Jolene stared at him. She had let down her wall and let him in a little bit, and she’d thought when they were staring into each other’s eyes that he was feeling something, and now he was acting like a twenty-year-old at a frat party. Not that she’d ever been to a frat party, but she could imagine. He didn’t even sound like himself. He sounded light and happy and ready to brag to any guy that he had just gotten laid.
Shaking her head at him, she left the bathroom and went for clothes. Firmly covered again in fabric, she padded into the kitchen. “I think we need to save the fishing for tomorrow. We still haven’t eaten. I need to fix some dinner.”
“That’s probably wise.” Chance had pulled on his boxer briefs and wandered into the kitchen looking sexy and sleepy, his hair falling in his eyes. “Can I help?”
Yes. He could help by explaining himself. Or better yet, falling in love with her and marrying her and living with her happily ever after.
Jolene reached for the bottle of wine. “Open this. Pour me a glass. Throw my phone in the pond.”
He took the bottle from her. “You have no idea how much I would love to toss your phone in the pond. Or a garbage disposal. Or down a sewer grate. Off a roller coaster. Set it on fire.” He got a gleam in his eye just talking about it.
She raised an eyebrow and pulled open the refrigerator and got out the fixings for a salad. “I had no idea your feelings about my phone were so violent.”
“They really are. That thing is attached to your hip.”
Rolling her eyes, she made a face. “You don’t see it anywhere near me right now, do you? Besides, I have a job, you know. People need to reach me.”
“I have a job, too.”
“You’re also Buck Rivers’s son. People forgive you a delay in response the way they won’t just another bottle blonde from the sticks.” It didn’t make her angry. It was just the facts. She had to be available twenty-four/seven, and she had to stay on top, because if she tumbled down, she’d never climb her way back up.
“I don’t believe that.”
“Then you’re as naive as you are cute.”
“I’m not cute at all.”
“The hell you’re not.” Jolene efficiently chopped romaine lettuce and diced a tomato. “But that’s all I’m saying on the subject.”
“If you promise to let me toss your phone in the pond, I’ll give you anything you want,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her in wicked enticement.
Chance was pulling out the cork slowly, in a way that was somehow sexual and dirty and intriguing. Jolene’s body responded by becoming heavy, with a pit forming in her core, and she cursed her hormones. “No. I am not ditching my phone. I have work to do.”
“All that matters right now is writing this album.” He lifted the wine bottle to his lips and took a sip. “I would like your undivided attention.”