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Jackson shook his head. “I know you work your ass off, but I swear you have all the luck. Those GTOs are entirely badass.”
“Yeah, not gonna lie. Just thinking about the thing kinda gives me a hard-on,” Shane said over a laugh.
Hell if that wasn’t dangerous territory for Jackson right about now. “Well congratulations, man. Only you would land a rebuild on a GTO as your first really big resto job. Outside of your Mustang, I mean.”
Shane’s 1969 Mustang was the best kind of bad, all sleek metal and hard lines. The fact that he and Grady had restored it by hand from frame to fender didn’t hurt.
“Yeah. Bellamy’s working tonight, so I was going to mess around with it for a while. You want to come out and give me a hand? I could use your muscle when I pull out the old engine block.”
Jackson pondered it for all of two seconds. “Sure.” What better way to get back to normal than a badass distraction on wheels. “I’ll be there in ten.”
“Cool. Oh, hey, I almost forgot. Congratulations on striking gold in the girlfriend department.”
Jackson’s breath jammed in his lungs, and he pulled back with a start. “Dude, it was only one kiss.”
Okay, so the kiss had been really fucking good, but come on. One kiss, no matter how hot, didnota girlfriend make.
“Uh…when did you kiss Jenna?”
Recognition slapped Jackson upside the head just in time for him to fill the totally awkward buzz of silence filtering through his truck’s speakers. “Oh, shit. You meant for the party next week.”
“I did, but clearly you had someone else in mind. Care to share?”
Shane’s knowing grin was practically audible through the phone, and although his tone suggested he wasn’t going to drop the topic without either an answer or an argument, Jackson hedged. The kiss had been a one-time thing. Plus, Carly was Bellamy’s boss. He doubted Bellamy would gossip, but still. He and Carly had agreed to forget about it.
Not that he was holding up his end of the bargain there.
“I, ah. I kinda had breakfast with the woman renting the bungalow out on Rural Route Four. I’m rebuilding her deck. The kiss was, uh. Kind of impulsive.”
“Sounds like a hell of a breakfast,” Shane said.
Jackson had to laugh, which was actually a good thing, because he was in serious danger of taking this Carly thing way too seriously. “Yeah. In hindsight, it was a bad idea, but it’s really no big deal.”
“So, do you maybe want to ask this woman to the party instead? I’m sure Jenna would understand,” Shane said.
Jackson’s pulse thwacked at his throat. The big, fat negative that Carly had offered up in response to his invitation rang in his memory, and it hammered home the fact that this whole thing had gone far enough. Getting tied up in knots over a woman was a spectacularly bad idea anyway. A woman he barely knew? Even worse.
“Not at all. I’m still in for taking Jenna to the party. Like I said, this morning was nothing major.”
The untruth tasted like a mouthful of motor oil, but Jackson stuffed it down. The only way he was going to get back to business as usual was to knuckle up and actually forget about Carly, the sooner, the better. He swooped in for the full-frontal subject change before Shane could get another word in edgewise.
“Listen, I’m going to stop by Joe’s Grocery and grab a sandwich or two on my way to the garage. You want me to grab something for you?”
After Shane had taken the bait and given him a short dinner order, Jackson hung up and blew out a breath. He’d done his best not to think about taking Jenna to Dylan and Kelsey’s engagement party, but the reality was it would be way easier to pull off a one-time-only girlfriend charade than to even consider bringing a real date. Once this party was a thing of the past, everything in Jackson’s world would be right back to normal.
Just like he wanted it.
6
Sloane turned her designer sunglasses up to the dappled sunlight in the backyard and happy-sighed, wiggling her fresh pedicure as she propped her feet up at the end of her chaise lounge.
“I gotta admit it. While there might not be a Starbucks within a forty-mile radius of this town, the Zen going on out here is totally first rate. There’s something to be said for lolling around outside in your pajamas on the Fourth of July. It’s like a whole new version of Independence Day.”
Carly inhaled a breath steeped in Saturday-morning sunshine and let it percolate in her veins before releasing a sigh of agreement, about both the Zen and the pajamas.
No two ways about it—the new design of the yard was something else. Rather than jutting off the back of the house in a ho-hum square like its predecessor, the upgraded deck took both the footprint of the house and the feel of the yard into consideration. Thick, honey-colored boards ran the length of the modest bungalow, making the deck look like a seamless extension rather than the tacked-on afterthought it had previously been. The new structure, partially shielded by a verdant canopy of gold-veined oak leaves, allowed plenty of room for two chaise lounges and small side tables on either end. With finishing touches like Carly’s potted herb garden and the delicate wind chimes Sloane had discovered in a flea market clearance bin in Bealetown, the whole setup was nothing short of beautiful.
Kind of like the man who’d created it.
