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Still didn’t stop him from smiling back. Yes, he knew Lili quite well and the memory of her coming apart for him so many times would have to fuel him for the next few days. She had wrung him dry and left him boneless. He would sleep well on the plane.
“So Lili seems nice. Did you have fun?” she asked, still with the impish grin.
“None of your business. Back to you.”
“I’ll be here when you return.” She left this suspended between them, the implication being that he would whisk her away to New York in some fairytale resolution to all their problems.
“You know how busy I am. How much I travel. Wouldn’t it be better to stay with John and Daisy? They can look after you.” He sure as hell couldn’t. So proven multiple times over.
“I know you think I’m a burden,” she said, scoring a direct hit on the guilt center of his brain. “But I can get a job.”
“You’re not even legally able to work here. And you need to stay off your feet.”
Her mouth wobbled. “Jack, I’m not a little girl anymore. I can look after myself, but I have to get out of London.”
Again, that ominous dread trickled through him.
“Why?”
She looked shifty. “I just do. I need the change.”
“Is the father—” He gestured to her stomach, still not quite believing the magnitude of her situation. If he said it a million times out loud, it would take him an age to comprehend it. Pregnant. His baby sister was going to have a baby. “Is he giving you a hard time?”
“I haven’t told him.”
Of course she hadn’t. “Who is it?”
“I told you it’s no one you know.”
“Jules,” he warned.
“He’s married,” she pushed out quickly, then held up her hand in a calming motion that had the opposite effect. “And before you ask, I didn’t know.”
“Married? Oh, Jules.” His skin prickled at the thought of his sister with a taken man and this piece of shit getting off scot-free. “Married or not, he needs to take responsibility.”
Her face shuttered to blank, a vacuous expression she’d perfected when she was a teen. When she pulled that one out, he knew the conversation was over. Maybe she’d be okay here with a generous, loving family who could do for her where he was incapable. The bitter tang of failure oozed from his overheated skin. Rage seething through him, he stood to leave and barely restrained himself from kicking a large potted plant on the deck.
“Let’s talk in a few days, Jack,” she said, sounding like the mature one. That was just perfect. “And bring back some decent tea. The stuff here tastes like cat piss.”
Thirty-Three
Lili’s eyelids were stuck together, but finally they cracked apart. A flick to the clock on her nightstand. Late again.
She searched for clean panties, but nothing was doing, not even the old-lady ones she usually shoved to the back of her underwear drawer. That’s what happened when you ignored laundry for three weeks. Wrenching on a crumpled tee and skirt, she bounded to the door and almost collapsed with pleasure.
Mouth-watering scents filled her apartment. Wow, that gorgeous Brit knew how to hit her where she lived. He’d gone all out this morning with not just her favorite lemon-ricotta pancakes, but also the apple-smoked bacon she’d picked up at Green City Market yesterday morning. Delish.
Rounding the corner, her breath caught as it did every time she found him standing at the stove. While there was nothing sexier than a man who knew his way around a kitchen, this was just ridiculous. Faded blue denim, slung dangerously low on his hips, skimming the floor around his bare feet. Back muscles rippling—not too much, but rippling all the same—while working the bacon. And just about the sexiest ass she’d ever seen on a man.
She would never get sick of the view.
Though he could only manage a couple of days in between tapings, the last two weeks had lived up to their billing. Mornings were spent like characters in a sixties New Wave French movie. Eating, making love, planning bank heists. Well, not the criminal conspiracy part, but it was just as thrilling and more than a little terrifying.
He wanted to hear all her stories, from anecdotes about her embarrassing relatives (a bottomless well) to her inspiration for her upcoming art projects (he thought sexualized vegetables had a certain je ne sais quoi). On his trips away, he called, smugly announcing he had won the Jack of All Trades challenges in New Orleans and Austin. Seemed only the Italians played dirty. And while the phone sex was off the charts, it couldn’t replace the man himself.
Waking up with Jack sliding into her was the hottest alarm call a woman could want.
The singing still left something to be desired. The man had to have some fault. Now, his voice cracked as he stretched for one of those notes that even a Bee Gee would have trouble reaching. Squashing a giggle, she grabbed her phone off the cracked granite countertop. Just the twentieth voice mail in the last two weeks from Shona Love, entertainment correspondent at the local news affiliate, but otherwise, nothing.
