Her eyes flared, she didnotlike being told no. Wow. Noted.
“Yes,” she insisted.
Since it didn’t matter to him one way or the other, he told her, “I was thinking people don’t like to hear rich people problems.”
Her face scrunched in the most adorable way. “How is that a rich person problem?”
“There’s one car in the parking lot, but I don’t know if someone at the airport saw me and has been following me all day. Or if the cook recognized me and is calling his brother, and they are going to decide to try something stupid tonight to rob the billionaire. Or if I’m going to get contacted by the FBI at three a.m. to let me know there is a group of people who have been meeting for months and plan to kidnap me or someone I love to hold them forransom and their phones are pinging within a mile of me. Which has happened. More than once. When you have the kind of money that I do, that my family had, it puts a big target on your back. It always has.
“On my first day of first grade, I went to the bathroom and got jumped by three ten-year-olds who told me if I didn’t bring them each a hundred dollars to school every day, they’d beat me up every day. Which they did, because I didn’t have that kind of money. After about two months, another kid joined in, and he aimed for my face. I couldn’t hide my injuries like I had been. I got home and my mom took me to the hospital. I had a broken nose, a fractured eye socket and had to get three stitches over my right eye, but they did x-rays and through the exam they discovered I had older injuries: a fractured rib that had healed and some bruised internal organs. I told my parents, the doctors, everyone, I fell off the top of a metal jungle gym.”
“Sonothinghappened to the boys?”
Deacon smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked.
“Cillian, he figured out what was happening. Followed me and beat the shit out of them with a baseball bat. He put two of them in the hospital. One with a broken jaw and two with broken ribs the doctors said they were lucky they didn’t have brain bleeds or brain damage. They never messed with me again.”
“IloveCillian.”
“So, do I.” Deacon knew that she didn’t mean she loved, loved him, but he was still jealous that Jenna was declaring her love for Cillian before him. If things did work out between him and Jenna, he would never tell him that. He would take that to the grave. Cillian would never let him live that down.
She must have noticed his reaction to her saying thatshe loved his best friend because her big blue eyes fluttered up at him as she asked, “Can we call Cillian so I can tell him I love him?”
“No.” Deacon walked past her to the bathroom.
“Please?!” she begged.
He shut the door. His bathroom routine was over in less than five minutes, but he lingered wondering if he should just sleep in the bath. Some pillows, a blanket, his back would hurt the next day, but if he went out in that room, he worried his blue balls might become a permanent condition.
It was her eyes. Her smile. Her hair. It was her.
His sweats were not going to be able to hold or conceal what she did to him. He wished there was a gym in the motel. He needed to burn off energy. That’s what he needed to do. He wished he could do some sit-ups, pull-ups, push-ups, and run for ten to eighty miles. That wasn’t really an option, so he settled on walking the two steps back and forth in the closet-sized bathroom. Was it working? No. But it was time he wasn’t spending with Jenna, and at this point that was time well spent.
He was scared she might give him a heart attack. One smile. One graze of her hand. He was so close to the edge. It wasn’t her fault. Although he knew she knew what she was doing some of the time. Not all but some.
She was totally unaware of how effortlessly sexy she was though. The way her head tilted when she concentrated, the way her lips pursed a little right before she smiled, the way she sucked in a tiny breath right before she laughed as if it surprised her.
But then she did torment him on purpose.
Can we call Cillian so I can tell him how much I love him?
Those big blue eyes. Those lashes fluttering. Theplease.
Come on, she knew what she was doing.
“Hey, everything okay in there?” Jenna asked, knocking on the door, then turning the doorknob, which was locked.
“Hey! What if I was taking a shit?”
“Then you should be in the circus, ’cause that means you can shit, pacing back and forth.”
He flung the open the door and found her standing on the other side with her arms crossed.
She looked him up and down. “I see you went bottoms, no tops.”
He glanced down at his sweats and then back up at her.
