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Chapter 10
Fuuuuuuck. He’d had no intention of doing that.
Yes, the cocktails were for her. He had wanted to see her smile, make her feel confident in herself near him, but he had never intended to take it further. He had wanted to, but he had every intention to withstand the desire, the need. He could blame those fucking cocktails for getting to a point where he just couldn’t resist kissing that unstoppable mouth of hers with that freckle at the edge of her upper lip that drove him mad when she spoke about something she loved. And once he had started, he couldn’t stop. He had a pretty good inkling of how it would have ended if they hadn’t been interrupted.
Jesus, he wanted her. And no, he couldn’t blame alcohol.
And it wasn’t even her looks that had done him in. Cute as she was, he had never gone for cute. It was that she was the woman with the most heart in her eyes. Those eyes betrayed everything she felt, and she might have even known it, though she couldn’t do much about it. And in those large greens that were half screened by the copper bangs that kept falling into her face, he had seen that she had wanted him to kiss her.
And he had longed to do it. So he had. But he shouldn’t have.
That was why he had apologized. Because someone like him shouldn’t be involved with someone like her. She had too much on the line for him to risk. A man whose first instinct had been to treat a pregnancy as a public relations problem and had never celebrated a two-year anniversary with anyone shouldn’t fall for a single mother who probably had enough shit to deal with as it was.
He was just unable to force himself to stop thinking about her. Not even two days later.
Driving to Fred’s to meet with Luke, Jordan smiled to himself when he thought of that rubber thingy she’d had on. Was it rubber? It had felt like rubber, but it couldn’t be, right? He had peeled off thick pantyhose before, a corset even, but never that … thing.
Hidden under that sexy blue dress of hers, it was probably aimed at stifling her curves. She looked her age and her life experience reflected on her, and he loved it. She wasn’t like the million and one fresh-out-of-college assistants and assistants to assistants who swarmed into D.C.’s halls of power every year. In recent years, he had felt that they were getting younger, but it was just that he was getting older.
He wasn’t interested in their clean slates and lost patience with their I’m-still-learning-to-be-me place in life. While figuring yourself out was a lifelong journey, he wanted someone who at least had decent mileage on that path, someone who knew what it was like to stumble and fall, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going.
Hope Hays ticked all those boxes and so many more. But he wouldn’t tick most of hers. And that was the problem.
Parking his mother’s barely-used car, which she had let him borrow for as long as he was in California, Jordan went inside to find his brother already seated alongside the long bar. He looked around, but no clay-splattered redhead was there.
A beer and short chitchat later, Luke watched him closely.
“You look more lost now than you were when you first arrived. What’s going on?”
Jordan breathed out a puff of air in place of an answer. Was he becoming readable, too?
“Class president, homecoming king, head of your class in Cornell, top of your game in D.C.; what more do you want, Jordan?”
He turned his head to look at his younger brother. “Everything else.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know yet, but you probably do.”
A big grin spread on Luke’s face, the one he now often wore, especially when Libby was near or when she was talked of.
“Ambition, money, competition, winning, being wooed from job to job, offered more weight in decision making, fancier car, better pay, closer to the zenith of power—it’s not enough anymore,” Jordan said. “Not even knowing that the projects I pick have a good aim.”
“So, what’s stopping you from going after everything else?”
Jordan threw his head back and sipped the last of his bottle then plunked it down on the wooden surface. “I don’t score as high on other scales. I’m pretty shit at it.”
Luke nodded. “Dad will wonder what he did wrong raising us. As far as he can see, there’s nothing more to want.”
Jordan scoffed. “Yeah. Did you notice that, between him and Mom, you and I took after Dad then did a one-eighty?”
“I don’t think we’ve ever been like him. But are you doing a one-eighty, or a three-sixty with a stop here on the way?” Luke asked, his lips hovering over his beer bottle.
“I don’t know if there’s something here to keep me.” He hadn’t expected it to hurt, but saying it out loud did.
“Libby thinks you’re interested in Hope.”
“She does, does she?” Jordan grinned, though his heart hammered quicker.
