“Because I’m going in for a minute.” He picked up the trap with the tabby kitten inside, the muscles in his arm flexing. “I can get you some.”
“What about...” She waved her hand around.
“Should be fine. I don’t have time to get to the shelter this morning, but the cabin’s cool enough. I’ll leave food and water.”
Her jaw jarred open. He thought she was talking about thecat?
But no. Lauren’s eyes narrowed. This was a pattern. Intimacy and retreat. He’d done it before.
The kitten lurched as the trap swung, pressing its skinny gray body against the wire. Separated from its—litter? nest? colony?—the poor little thing was frantic for contact. Even human contact.
Jack reached through the bars, rubbing the scruffy head with one broad finger, and Lauren’s heart turned into this gooey mass in her chest thathurt.
She cleared her throat. “Will I see you later?”
“Probably.” He set the cage on some newspaper inside the cabin door. “Unless Marta’s made coffee for the staff meeting.”
“Who’s Marta?”
“New dispatcher,” he said as he went inside.
She watched the shadow of his head, the silhouette of his shoulders, as he moved efficiently in the small galley. Getting food and water, she guessed, for the cat.
She gulped her cooling coffee. She’d only known Jack a week. She’d only slept with him once. (Four orgasms, her body whispered.) Pride, practicality, and hookup etiquette all demanded that she let it go. Let him go.
But wasn’t the whole hookup thing a retreat from intimacy, too? To accept sexual pleasure while ignoring any emotional connection. To pretend she didn’t care.
You care in an uncaring world, Jack had said.That takes a kind of courage most people will never have.
He came out on deck, buttoned up and beautiful in that controlled masculine way, and she took one ragged breath for courage and said, “I meant tonight. We could do dinner or something.”
“Can’t.” At least he had the manners to look briefly regretful. “I’m tied up. Matt Fletcher’s throwing some kind of bachelor party for Luke tonight.”
“Oh.” She exhaled, deflated. Well, she couldn’t argue with that.
“Things should wind down on the early side. I’d like to stop by. Or call.” Jack’s eyes met hers, and her heart betrayed her by skipping a beat and then rushing to make up for lost time. “If it’s not too late for you.”
Her smile started in her chest and radiated outward, a big goofy glow that spread all over her face. She was getting mushy over a booty call. But she was so glad she got to see him again that she mostly didn’t care. “Not too late at all.”
***
“LAUREN, DO YOUknow where the other sugar dispenser is?” Jane asked as Lauren moved through the tables, cleaning up after the lunch crowd.
Sugar dispenser?Lauren tried to focus. It was like there were two Laurens today, Lauren the stirred-up mind and Lauren the thoroughly satisfied body, both absorbed in remembering and processing the unfamiliar events of last night. Neither focused on the bakery at all. Every breath, every stretch, every thought recalled Jack.
She struggled to keep herself together. “Yeah, sure, it’s in the... It’s not on the coffee station?”
“You put it in the refrigerator,” Thalia said. She took out the dispenser and grinned. “Right next to the milk.”
“Oops.” Lauren smiled apologetically. “I guess I’m a little distracted today.” An understatement.
“I’m really sorry,” Jane said. “It’s my fault.”
Lauren blinked.Concentrate. “Why?”
“I should have given you the passcode. You must have totally freaked when the alarm went off.”
Sirens blaring, stabbing, vibrating through her like electric shocks...Lauren took a careful breath. “Why should you? You had absolutely no reason to think I would need to be in the bakery after hours.”
