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Am I ready for the truth? To trust him?
It was a yes-or-no question. But my lips were tight. Breathing had to be done solely through my nose as I stared back at him.
“Sometimes, you have to let go and simply feel it.” Mom’s words popped into my mind. I was sixteen again, sitting behind the wheel of her Mustang. My fifth driving lesson from her that summer.
“What if I can’t trust myself?” I’d asked her, terror filling my lungs. Sweaty palms gripping the leather wheel.
“Then you shut your eyes. Only for a second,” she’d said while wrapping her hand around my wrist, urging me to look at her. “Sometimes all it takes is a second for you to know which is the right way to go.”
My eyes fell closed. But in that second, Mom’s other reminder shot through my head hard and fast. “But when it comes to men, there is only ever one direction to go. The other way.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHARLOTTE
“What are you doing?” I planted my hands on my hips, watching as Jack maneuvered around the inside of our jungle treehouse, carrying a small cylinder-like metal tube that looked more like it belonged under the hood of a car.
“Ensuring there really aren’t cameras in here,” Jack whispered.
This feels very FBI-like. And just that thought gave me chills, so I shifted the mosquito netting surrounding the bed to the side and sat, allowing it to collapse back together in front of my face.
“Okay, we’re good,” he declared a minute later.
With his back to me, he bent forward, presumably to hide his device in his bag. And the excellent view of his ass in those jeans was a pleasant distraction from the fact he had spy gadgets on him.
I flicked the netting where it sat on my legs, pushing it away so I could grab my thighs and knead the sore muscles a little. The day’s events were catching up with my body. I hadn’t realized just how much we’d done until I’d kicked off my wedges to climb the ladder into the treehouse and my calf muscles had screamed in protest.
“So, if we’re good, does that mean you’re ready to talk?” There was no point in wasting time now. I needed answers, and I’d run out of any patience I had from waiting all day for them.
“Yeah,” he said, his back still to me.
I continued working the knots in my thigh muscles, waiting for him to follow up his “yeah” with some information. I peered up at the fan over the bed, which was doing little more than knocking hot air around the room. And there was only so much dead air I was willing to tolerate. “So . . .” I lowered my focus back to find him finally facing me, and my stomach growled, loud enough for him to hear.
“You should’ve eaten dinner.” His eyes went to my hands on my legs as he added, “I grabbed some fruit before we left the dinner table. It’s in my bag. Will you eat?”
“Eventually,” I promised.
Eyes still lingering on my hands just above the edge of my white sundress, he asked, “Sore?”
“Are you trying to deflect and distract by offering me a massage?”
His brows lifted, eyes shooting to my face. “Do you want my hands on you, Charley?” The seductive edge there had me almost forgetting he needed to tell me something important. “A massage, I mean.” An adorable throat clear later, he added, “Would you like one?”
Yeah, I want your hands on me. All over me, in fact. “The truth for now would be a good start.”
That desire radiating from him only a moment ago slipped away, and in its place was a dark look.
Part of me wanted funny Jack for this moment to help me get through it. The guy who’d made me laugh my ass off back at that bar in Cape Town. Quite literally, too. I’d almost slipped right off the barstool. But he’d swooped one arm out, catching my hip to right me back on the seat before I’d fallen.
This Jack, though, was all hard lines, angles, and intensity. Not that I didn’t find broody Jack hot and sexy—hell, broody Jack could eye-fuck me into orgasm—but if he kept looking at me with those worried, haunted eyes much longer, he’d trigger my fight-or-flight mode. And I truly didn’t want to run from him, which said volumes considering my typical MO.
One hand left his pocket, but it was only to grip the nape of his neck.
“You’re stressing me out,” I blurted. “Please. Don’t drag this out.”
He nodded an okay, or maybe it was an apology, as he lowered his arm to his side. “You’re right about us. We all work together.” He swallowed, and I did the same. Because damn. “And we’re here undercover because women have been going missing after each competition. We’re trying to find them and prevent it from happening again.”
My world spun off its axis was an expression I’d honestly understood a few times in my life. Like now. “I’m sorry, what?” My palms were officially sweatier than when Mom taught me to drive on my sixteenth birthday. And not drive-drive. No, I already knew how to operate a vehicle. Drive as in if I was—
