Except friendship was not what he wanted from Jenna Hodge.
He liked that she hadn’t pulled away from him when he’d come up behind her in the diner’s lobby space earlier, and that she’d allowed him to keep his hand against her skin for that brief time. He’d liked the feel of her heartbeat thrumming beneath his fingertips a little too much, really.
Same as he liked the view following her out once they finished their late lunch.
Jenna was tucked into a pair of illegally fitting blue jeans that cupped her rounded ass and lifted it like a damn offering. An offering he wanted little more than to accept enthusiastically. She’d been shy about her figure as a teen, and she dressed modestly as an adult it seemed, so he wondered if perhaps she still struggled with some of those insecurities.
He knew entire platoons of men who would line up for women that looked like her. What the hell kind of jackasses had she been dating that she hadn’t learned to be confident in herself?
He had to shake the question from his head before it accidentally slipped off his tongue. The last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable. She was single, somehow. Or single enough, and if there was a man on the periphery of her life, he wasn’t doing his job right. Either way, he had a potential opportunity he hadn’t expected, and he couldn’t fuck it up.
So, first, they had to reestablish a baseline friendship. He needed her to remember that she could trust him. Because whether or not he still wanted to fuck her, he would never hurt her.
“Seriously, at least let me pay next time,” Jenna whispered as Jon handed over his card.
“Not happening.”
The lady at the register paused, her gaze fixed on his card. “Johnson?” Finally, she lifted her gaze, looking him over, and offered a smile as she handed the plastic back. “You related to Old George?”
Jon grunted. “Unfortunately.” He didn’t recognize the woman, and he would prefer not to make a scene just then. Although LeeLee’s was a great place to be discovered as not dead. Maybe he should have told Mrs. Bell who he was.
The woman gave an awkward laugh. “He’s not that bad,” she said as she passed over the receipt and a pen with a cringeworthy topper.
Jon held her stare for a beat. “He’s never convinced an entire town that you were dead.” Then he bent forward, scrawled his proper signature on the dotted line, and tucked away his wallet. Really, lying about his death didn’t even rank in the Top Five of worst things his father had ever done, but Jon wasn’t about to get into that. Instead, he scooped his fresh milkshake off the counter and shifted his focus to Jenna. “Let’s get out of here.”
Jenna smiled, her own milkshake in hand, and let him lead the way.
He tried not to wonder if she was looking at his ass like he had hers.
There were still a fair number of vehicles in the parking lot, and Jenna hadn’t even had a vehicle when he’d left town before, so Jon paused to let her reach his side once they hit the sidewalk. “I’ll walk you to your car, but give me a second to double-back to my truck after so I can follow you out.”
Jenna laughed and nudged him with her elbow. “That’s sweet, Jon, but this is Misty Glades, not L.A. or something. I think I can make it fifteen feet on my own.”
He hummed, sweeping his gaze around the lot. “Right. Nothing violent happens here, what was I thinking?”
“Okay, that was unnecessary.” She sighed, tucked her purse higher on her shoulder, and pointed with her free hand. “I’m literally right there. Blue SUV next to that tree.”
He spotted it easily. A midsize SUV, less than a decade old, pulled into a space almost directly across from them. Three spaces down and across the lane from his truck. He gestured to the truck at the end of the row. “That’s me.”
Her head turned, and after a moment she said, “It’s green.”
He blinked. “Yeah?” It was a deep green that fell somewhere between forest and combat fatigues.
She tipped her head back to look up at him. “I would have thought you’d get something blue.”
He grinned before he could stop himself. He didn’t have to ask why she thought that, of course. Instead, he leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Yours is blue.” He held the position long enough to watch her cheeks go red, forced himself to straighten, and stepped around her. “But you’re right. You should be clear. I’ll follow you out.” He got all the way to his truck, door open and milkshake set inside, before Jenna shouted across the parking lot to him.
“It came this color! That’s all!”
He chuckled to himself as he ducked into the driver’s seat, eyes on his rearview mirror as he rolled the engine over. He watched her taillights come on, threw his into reverse to signal he was ready, and idled until she was out and moving forward. It hadn’t been his intention to even mention the letter, but sitting with her at the diner had pulled up too many feelings. And he hadn’t lied. He’d been sitting in a gas station parking lot, staring at that damn letter, debating whether he should hop out and get himself whatever greasy food they had in stock before or after he read the thing when her text came in. So, it had felt like a sign.
Snagging an invitation to her apartment—thereby not having to abuse skills learned for warfare to find out where she lived—was icing on the damn cake.
A handful of turns and four minutes later, Jon’s misplaced excitement ebbed. It wasn’t that he’d expected her to be living it up in the lap of luxury. Misty Glades didn’t have true luxury apartments. But Misty Glades had better apartments than the damnable dive she pulled into. It didn’t look like the owners had done a single repair since the days Jon and his friends had joked about it being haunted.
Why the fuck did Jenna live there?
He nearly forgot the damn letter as he jumped from the truck. His truck wasn’t new, though it was clean since it was only a few hours off the lot, and it stood out like a sore thumb. If she had homebody neighbors, they would notice.
