Maybe we should try cock-warming one of these nights, I mused, as I sat up.
Jack gave a grunt as I left the bed and made a run for the bathroom. By the time I came back out and picked up my phone, he was snoring softly, little rumbles with his face pressed into my pillow. My heart flipped over to see him that way, and I almost didn’t bother checking who had texted me.
What could be more important right then than getting back into that bed and curling up to sleep with the man I…
Well, had a major crush on.
And when I glanced down at my phone, I wished I hadn’t. The text was from my father.
I will arrive tomorrow morning.
CHAPTER31
MILLER
I didn’t wantto go home the next morning, and Jack didn’t seem like he wanted me to go, either, but I could hardly justnotshow up for my father. Whatever else he was, hewasmy dad, and grief did weird things to people. Maybe my father had been using business meetings as a way to cope.
Like I was using sex as a way to cope.
“What’s this?” Jack asked over our coffee-only breakfast, turning around a piece of scrap paper I’d been doodling on the night before.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to grab it back, but he pulled it out of my reach. “Sorry. I know you don’t like me drawing you.”
He looked down at himself, asleep, dead to the world, his mouth slightly open, and I braced myself for another talking-to. But he just snorted. “Think you might’ve missed the drool,” he said, smiling over at me. “Sorry I passed out so damn hard.”
“Hey, you earned that rest,” I told him with a smirk. “Anyway. You can throw out the picture.”Or add it to your collection, I added silently.
He sipped his coffee and looked at it again. “You really do have talent, Trouble.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m a regular Picasso.”
“When we first talked, you told me you were an artist. And it’s true, you know. As much as you talk yourself down, this is what you were put here on earth to do.”
I shrugged it off, but secretly I hugged the idea to myself—the idea that maybe Ididhave some more important purpose than sitting around at pool parties or getting high alone in a big, empty house. That maybe I could live a life different to the one I lived now.
And that maybe, just maybe, Jack could be part of it.
It was a small flame in the darkness that Annie’s murder had brought down around me.
But my heart still dropped lower and lower the closer we got to the house. “I’m gonna have to get my car back from Nate’s some time,” I said with a sigh when Jack pulled the Pinto up to the security box at the entrance to the gated community. I leaned over him to push in the code, taking my time as I did it and waving my ass around in his face.
“You know you don’t have to work so hard to get my attention, right?” he asked. “Anyway, if you give me your car keys, I’ll pick up your car from the Valley.”
He was driving slowly around the streets, and I was grateful for it. I wanted to wring every last second out of the time I had left with him today. I’d need something to hold onto in the coming days. “You’d do that for me?” I asked, surprised at his offer. “It’s pretty out of your way.”
“If it helps you, Trouble, I’ll do it. Although I do think you should call Nate when you can. He’s your friend. He’s worried about you.”
I stared out the window at the passing houses. “Nate’s just…alot. And that’s on a normal day. And he’s gonna beeven moresince Annie’s…”
Jack’s hand, warm and comforting, landed on my thigh and gave it a rub. I looked back to take in his profile. Johnny Jacopo had an unconscious sexiness that came through in everything he did, even just driving the car. I couldn’t look at him and not get distracted by the color of his eyes, or think about the way his mouth moved on mine, or quiver when I looked at the knuckles curling around the steering wheel, reminding me of how those fingers had curled inside me…
“I’ll, uh,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I’ll give you the keys, if you don’t mind picking up the car.”
“I don’t.” He turned his attention away from the road to give me a brief smile, and reminded me of all the other reasons I was obsessed.
Fuck Roxanne Rochford telling me to dump him.
Jack hadhonor. He was fair and he was kind, and he did things not because he wanted a reward, but because they were the right thing to do. It was a simple form of honor that I rarely came across in LA, and never in Hollywood.
