“I was looking for you,” Meg said to Lauren, picking up the wine bottle. “Your agent called.”
The laughter in Lauren’s face died.
Jack fought an absurd impulse to go to her. To comfort her. But he didn’t know if the gesture would be welcome. He had no real place in her life, any more than she had in his. He didn’t know what she wanted from him, besides sex.
“Guess I better get to work, then, huh?” she said in a bright, brittle voice.
Jack frowned.Was that what she wanted?“We all should,” he said.
“You okay to drive, Chief?” Luke asked with a glance at the wine.
Jack gritted his teeth. He hadn’t touched the wine. Or anything else. Hardly.
This was why he didn’t have a personal life. It was too damn messy.
“I’m good. We need to talk anyway.” He needed to bring Luke up to speed on the bakery situation.
He glanced at Lauren. She was watching him with those dark, observant eyes, her chin slightly higher than usual.
She would be all right, he thought with relief.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, still pink and swollen-looking, and the ground shifted under his feet just enough to let him know that he was not, in fact,good. He was not in control.
And maybe she wasn’t as all right as she pretended, either, because she wasn’t smiling anymore and there was a pucker between her brows.
Hell. He was not kissing her good-bye with an audience. Wasn’t making a date in front of one, either.
“I’ll...” What?I’ll call youwas out. “I’ll see you,” he said.
Her lips firmed. She gave him that look, like she could see right through his excuses to the back of his skull. The look that promised they weren’t done here. “See you.”
He said his good-byes and left with Luke. It wasn’t like he was running away, he told himself. He had things to do. Real things. Paperwork. E-mails. Finding Tillett.
Things he could control.
***
“SO, YOU ANDJack Rossi...” Meg’s voice trailed off as she settled into the cushions of the lounger. Sunlight streamed through the jasmine twining over the porch trellis, firing the pollen in the air to floating motes of gold. “Is that a good idea?”
Lauren gulped her wine. She couldn’t believe he’d left her like that. Well, yes, she could.I don’t have a personal life, he’d said.
Yeah, because he was running from one as fast as he could. His rejection flicked heat to her face.
Okay, not rejection. What was he supposed to do, sayExcuse me, throw her over his shoulder, and haul her upstairs so that the entire Fletcher family could listen to her headboard banging against the wall?
The thought made her warm all over for entirely different reasons.
It was just bad luck that Tess had interrupted them before they went upstairs. Just bad timing.
Kind of like everything else in her life.
Lauren knew better than anyone that sometimes things didn’t work out as planned. Fathers died. Educations were put on hold. A simple run to the bank turned into a three-day ordeal in front of television cameras. Life was too uncertain for her to get hung up on some guy. Any guy.
But somehow all the relationships that had come before—the missed connections and botched communications and guys who failed to follow through—had not prepared her for Jack. He was different.
Or maybe she was the one who had changed.
She shifted uneasily on the couch. “Couldn’t we talk about something else? You said Patricia called.” She really had it bad if talking about her agent was preferable to dwelling on Jack Rossi.
