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She stopped to look over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me next weekend.” Jackson paused for a second and blinked, almost as if he’d been surprised to actually hear the words. “If I promise not to make any sudden movements,” he tacked on with a smooth chuckle that made her cheeks burn.
Carly’s pulse ricocheted through her veins. The wordyestasted sinfully good as it formed in her mouth, and for that split second, she actually considered saying it. But the memory of her phone call with Travis threaded through her brain, weaving over theyeswith a whole bunch of reasons why she’d be nuts to go out with Jackson, even once. She’d come to Pine Mountain to run a kitchen temporarily, and she had no intention to stay. Men—even crinkly-eyed ones with traffic-halting muscles—weren’t part of the deal.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. Not that I’m not flattered. And not that you’re not…well…” She trailed off, closing her eyes as she exhaled. “I’ve just got a lot going on with my job that keeps me pretty tied up. So, I’m sorry, but I really can’t. Thank you, though. It was nice of you to ask.” Carly had never babbled in her entire life, but boy was she making up for lost time.
“No problem. Sorry if I was out of line.” Jackson took a step backwards even though there was already plenty of space between them.
“No, no. It’s fine. Just…yeah.” Ugh. How fast could she get back to the house?
“Well, thanks again for the lemonade. I’ll make sure to leave the infusion jar on the front porch when I’m done, if that’s all right with you.” Jackson nodded toward the jar at his feet, but she noticed that his smile had lost some of its zing.
“Oh, thanks. And, I guess…you’re welcome.”
The walk back to the cottage had never taken so long.
* * *
“Okay,so I need some help with a little problem, and it’s kind of a weird one.” Jackson sat back in his best friend Shane’s tiny kitchen, his chair creaking in disapproval at the seconds he’d had for dinner. Shane’s girlfriend Bellamy was training under some fancy New York chef at the Italian restaurant in Pine Mountain Resort, and she took her job seriously with a capital S. Whenever they hooked up for dinner, seconds were a foregone conclusion. Thirds were an even fifty-fifty.
“Oooh, this ought to be good.” Bellamy propped her elbows on the table and leaned forward to listen, green eyes sparkling with interest.
“Screw good. This scares me,” Shane said, draping his arm over the back of Bellamy’s chair.
She rolled her eyes, blond lashes sweeping up and around in a familiar gesture. “Ignore him, Jackson. What do you need?”
“I need a nonexistent girlfriend.”
Shane’s mouth popped open. “You need a what now?”
Jackson released a long breath. “A nonexistent girlfriend. Either that or the mother of all believable excuses. Take your pick.”
“Um, okay. I’m not really sure I follow,” Bellamy prompted, brows drawn tight in confusion.
He gave up a slight grimace. “I kind of shot my mouth off over at my ma’s the other day. It was an act of self-preservation, I assure you,” he added quickly. “But now she’s got this wild idea that I’m bringing a date to Dylan and Kelsey’s engagement party on the Fourth, and I don’t have one.”
“I don’t get it. If you need a date, why don’t you just ask somebody?” Bellamy asked, but Jackson cut her off with an emphatic shake of his head.
“I don’t want anactualdate. Chances are, any woman I ask to a family event is going to read way more into it than she should, and not wanting a girlfriend is what got me into this mess in the first place.”
Except that you asked someone just this morning, didn’t you?
Jackson’s inner voice had niggled at him all day, even though he’d done his best to stuff it down. But asking Carly out had been impulsive as hell, and even now, he couldn’t peg exactly why he’d done it. Except she’d been so nice, bringing him lemonade on such a hot day, and she’d looked so pretty with her dark hair framing her face, and come on, who could resist a girl in a lucky T-shirt, of all things?
The softness of her beauty had offset her fiery demeanor in a way that had made him want to pull back all of her layers to find out where the two met. Something about her had whispered to him, and he would’ve thought for sure that he was losing his mind if the words hadn’t made so much damn sense.
Feed her, the voice had said.
Not that it mattered in the long run. Of course she’d said no, and why wouldn’t she? The notion that a total stranger would want to go to his brother’s engagement party with him was pretty fucking ridiculous.
But not as ridiculous as how badly he’d wanted her to say yes.
The edges of Bellamy’s lips twitched upward in just a hint of a smile, and she got up to slide an apple pie from its perch on the countertop. “Do I even want to know why you’re anti-commitment?”
Jackson shook off his strange thoughts of Carly for the umpteenth time. He exchanged a nanosecond’s worth of a glance with Shane, but then resorted to an easygoing shrug-and-smile combo. “It’s nothing personal. I’m just happy being single. I mean, can you really see me picking out china patterns?”
Bellamy tipped her head in a nonverbalyou have a pointas she put the pie on the table and went back for plates. “Okay, fair. What about a fake date?”
