After a three-hour workout in Zilker Park Monday morning, they’d returned to the food truck park where they’d first discussed working together. Unlike their previous trip there, the area had been packed with the lunchtime crowd, which meant they had to perform their happy couple routine.
As she held his hand while waiting at her favorite smoothie truck, Taylor had leaned over and told him a stupid knock, knock joke. Jamar had refused to laugh, which only made her try harder. He returned with a silly joke one of his agent’s kids had told him about a snowman and a vampire, but Taylor wouldn’t bite.
It became a competition—because when it came to Taylor,everythingwas a competition—to see which one of them could make the other laugh first. She’d won, but not because of a silly one. It wasn’t until she’d shocked him with a dirty joke that Jamar had cracked.
Was it all really just a pretense for her?
Why wouldn’t it be? That’s what they’d agreed to, wasn’t it?
He was the one who’d allowed that kiss to consume him these last few days. He couldn’t blame Taylor for the uneasy heaviness that had settled in his stomach. She’d kept up her end of their bargain so far. This was all on him.
As he extended his gait to reach one of the steeper steps, a sharp pinch shot through his knee.
What the fuck?
He brought his other leg up and just stood there, unsure. Anxious.
Taylor peered over her shoulder. “Hey, you tired already? I thought you could break my record in your sleep?”
Jamar looked up at her. “What?”
She stopped. Her eyes narrowed with her frown. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, waving off her concern. “I decided to let you win this one. It wouldn’t be fair for me to win them all.”
“Whatever,” she said with an amused eye roll. When she turned to continue her climb, her foot slipped on the slick stone. She yelped as she fell forward, bracing her hands against the limestone steps to cushion her fall.
“Whoa. I got you,” he said, hooking an arm around her waist. He hauled her up, her back against his chest. “You okay?”
He had to take a minute to claim some control over his senses. It felt way too good to have her body this close to his, to have an up-close-and-personal view of that tiny tattoo he’d noticed peeking from under her shirt collar. It was a butterfly.
She looked back at him. “Just get it over with.”
Jamar’s stomach pitched sideways. Was she asking . . . ?
“Just say it,” Taylor taunted. “I told you so.We should have worked out at the gym today like you said.”
Jamar blew out a shuddering breath. He nudged his chin forward. “We’re almost there. It’s too late to back down now.”
He helped her regain her balance, and they continued the climb up the staircase. Once they reached the summit, he took the lead, guiding her to the wood and stone pavilion at Covert Park, the greenway that covered the top of Mount Bonnell. It wasn’t until he let go of her hand and noticed the red smear on his own that Jamar realized she was bleeding.
“Hey, come here,” he said, walking over to the ledge that served as a bench.
“It’s nothing. I just scraped it a little.”
He took her hand in his and turned it palm side up. It didn’t look too bad, just a couple of surface scratches, but it had to sting like a bitch.
“Too bad it was my idea to come out here,” she said. “I can’t demand hazard pay if I’m the one who put us in harm’s way in the first place.”
“You had good intentions,” he said. “Here, it shouldn’t take much to clean this up.” He used the bottom of his shirt to dab at the cuts.
“Let me take a wild guess,” she said. “You were planning to become a doctor if you hadn’t gone into football.”
“A doctor? No way.”
“Why not? You said you were so smart in school.”
“I said I did all right,” Jamar replied, knowing he was being modest. He graduated valedictorian of his high school class and magna cum laude from UT. “My degree is in marketing, which is as far from medicine as you can get.”
