Something to Talk About (8 page)

He found her hand, running his finger over the outline of her red nail with a light touch. “Speaking of, how long have you worked for Call Girls?”

Work. She could talk work, if he would just stop rubbing sensual circles along her fingers. Em cleared her throat. “Just a few months as GM. I worked for our local lawyer, Hank Cotton, as his legal secretary before that. Dixie hired me when Cat retired to have a baby.”

He nodded his head, letting it roll to the headrest. His throat, long, strong, was exposed, every tendon, each muscle making her breathing hitch. “Right. I remember Caine saying you were a mediator when there was some contest for ownership of the company between him and Dixie. Caine said the two of them had to start their own phone-sex lines and win clients, right?”

“The phone-sex games. That’s what the girls and I call it.”

“Hah!” He barked the laugh. “Caine had to talk dirty to
men?
Can’t wait to tell the guys at our college reunion.”

Em’s head bobbed at the memory, her grin wide. “Actually, it was women he claimed he was doin’ the talkin’ to. He was so sure he’d win he bet Dixie he could take the harder road. We all thought he was gonna smoke her with all those celebrity voices he does, especially Sean Connery, but come to find out, he never talked to a single woman. Not one. He had some college friend hack the system to make it look like he was getting a bunch of calls.”

Jax winced, ducking his dark head playfully. “Confession time. That was me.”

“It was
you?
Well, it all makes sense now. You bein’ a software developer.”

“Well, not me, but I’m guilty by association. I was in a bad place when he called me and asked me to help, so I referred him to a buddy of mine. I feel stupid for not making the connection. Swear it was all on the up-and-up, though. Caine just said he was doing something to win back the woman he thought he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. I didn’t pry.”

A bad place was all she garnered from his confession. “So you know the rest of the story, then?” Somehow in her excitement over retelling the tale, she’d moved closer to him, let her fingers curl into his.

Jax brought his fingers to his chin and rubbed them against the accumulation of dark stubble. “There’s more?”

“All that time we thought he was locked away in his office, building his clientele, he was really devisin’ a plan to win Dixie back. He was calling her line and pretending to be someone else entirely so he could get to know the newly changed, not so mean girl anymore Dixie.”

Jax whistled. “Wait. Dixie was a mean girl? Dixie Davis?”

She grinned, her eyes skimming his. It was so much easier to talk Dixie. “The meanest. Anyway, that’s how Caine reacquainted himself with her.”

Jax grumbled his approval. “Smooth. Very smooth. Gotta give it to Caine, he knows what he wants. Must have been something to see.”

“I can verify, as their court-appointed mediator, it was a sight to see. The two of them always trying to one-up each other. But it all worked out in the end, and they’re happy now.”

“Bet there was no funny stuff while they were on your watch. You can be pretty forceful.”

Her cheeks grew hot. She was a bag of hot air. All bluster, no substance. It was all just a show so people wouldn’t feel sorry for poor, divorced-by-her-cheating-husband Em. “The girls call it my stern teacher’s voice.”

“I never had a teacher that looked like you.”

“I’m convinced there was funny stuff from the two of those devils, and I just wasn’t clever enough to find them out. But make no mistake, Dixie and Caine were a handful.”

“And now they’re in love and getting married. It’s good to see Caine so happy.”

“Dixie, too. Life’s funny, isn’t it?”

“And Landon was responsible for all of that?”

“Did you know Landon?”

“Only met him a few times when he came to see Caine back in college. Nice guy. Bought us all a steak dinner and tickets to the Falcons game.”

“Landon was one of the most amazing human beings I’ve ever known. Kind, loyal—”

“And a little eccentric, if I remember right.”

Em laughed with the fond memories Landon had left in his wake. “Yes. He was all that and more. Some people say he was crazy. But I choose to believe he was crazy about love, and life, and when he knew his was ending, he decided to ensure Dixie’s and Caine’s futures. So he threw them together in the one way he knew they’d never be able to resist just so they could find each other again. It’s probably the most romantic gesture I’ve ever witnessed. How many people do you have in your life that would go to such extremes, from the grave no less, to do something like that for you?”

“He sounds like he was something else.”

Em’s eyes grew watery remembering Landon. “I spent some time with him...in the end before he passed, taking care of things for him, getting Dixie here for the reading of his will. I can’t ever seem to put into words his kind of generosity. How...how
hard
he loved everyone in his life. I didn’t know him much growing up—he was two years older than me and always with Dixie and Caine—but it didn’t take long for me to recognize, Landon knew his heart. He knew how to love people, and he knew how to show it.”

Jax sat still, his eyes on her face, his fingers moving over her arm.

Too intense. Too intimate. Way to frighten the man while you’re just bein’ you. She drew her hand back, embarrassed by her obsession with a romantic tale. “Sorry. I’m just a silly romantic who loves a happy ending. Sometimes I get carried away.”

Jax pulled it back into his grasp and held it there. “Personally, I think it’s attractive on you. Especially the way your eyes light up when you talk about it. It sounds like you grew to love him as much as everyone else seemed to. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

His approval was so warm in her ears, so unlike Clifton’s disapproval when she found a cause she wanted to support, or became too loud in her defense of something, that was so intense she had to change the subject.

“You have a beautiful house,” she said, craning her neck to get the full view of the old farmhouse with a wraparound front porch that went on for days. It needed work. The paint was peeling, the windows were sagging, the trees and shrubs were overgrown and out of control, but Em didn’t see that. She saw the possibilities.

His chuckle was thick when he leaned over and gently shifted her chin to point her in the direction of the full view of the house. “Are you kidding? Do you see what I see? It’s a dump. It doesn’t need a renovation, it needs a bomb squad.”

Em shrugged and smiled, lost in her mind’s revival of Jax’s home. “Well, you see what you see, and I’ll see what I see. What I see is beyond that, and this amazin’ house has tremendous possibilities. It could be a real showstopper. Add in the gorgeous location, the creek and the two acres of land, and it could be a divine place to hang your hat. That porch for instance, can’t you just see it in the summer? Close your eyes and picture ivy climbin’ up the trellis at each end. Hanging plants all along the porch full of petunias and trailing geraniums. Potted plants lining those wide steps in the fall in a riot of colorful mums and big fat pumpkins carved for Halloween. Maybe a vegetable garden over there where that patch of dead grass and leftover bricks are. Antique white rocking chairs to sit on with a glass of sweet tea while you listen to the creek. It could be magnificent—just breathtaking. And think about how much Maizy would love a swing right over there in that big oak.” She pointed to it with her finger, closing her eyes and exhaling to stop her rambling.

When she opened them, Jax’s eyes were crinkling up into another smile, an indulgent one. “You know, when you describe it, I can almost see it. You really like the DIY thing, don’t you?”

Realizing her enthusiasm had taken over again, probably making her sound rabid, Em toned it down. She lowered her voice a notch when she said, “I do. I love taking nothing and making it something. I love fixing what others think is unsalvageable. And I like knowing I did it myself.”

“Where does that come from?”

“What?”

“The need to say you did it yourself?”

Em pulled back. “Did that come out like someone was stopping me from doin’ what I like? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that it was anything more than me stopping myself. But nowadays, I just have a lot of...free time.”

His eyes pierced hers, blue and intense as he drew her back toward him, his hand strong on her arm, his face so close to hers she could see the twitch in his hard jaw. “You mean since your divorce?”

A hard knot had formed in her throat, one she had to fight the words around to get them out of her mouth.

She lifted her shoulders in a “maybe” shrug. “I guess.” Once the boys were in bed, it was just her and a long, lonely night. She’d decided early on, she could fill those nights with regret and sorrow, or she could fill them with projects and self-improvement.

“Em?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to do something right now. Something that might piss you off. But I’m gonna do it anyway. Because it’s driving me damn crazy.
You’re
driving me crazy.”

Em flinched. Just when you thought your small talk skills had hit a new low, you aimed lower. “I’m talking too much, right? Boring you to death with my enthusiasm over something that obviously doesn’t interest you.” Her heart drove against her chest; embarrassment flooded her cheeks.
Good heavens, Em. Will you never learn babbling’s not high on a man’s list of endearing qualities?

Jax’s breath was on her face, warm, coming in quick bursts, his hard features outlined by the blue glow of the dashboard lights. “Not even close. You’re enthusiasm interests me—makes me want to grab a hammer and start pounding nails. Chew some wood up with my teeth, maybe. Something we both know, and the evidence shows—” he held up his bandaged hand “—I just shouldn’t be allowed to do. That aside, everything about you interests me. And that’s why I’m going to do it. Too soon or not be damned.”

The words he spoke didn’t quite sink in. She didn’t understand where he was going. She only knew, their lips were so close she was slightly intoxicated by the heady heat between them. “Do...do what?”

“This,” Jax muttered, gravelly, sexy-low as he cupped her neck and pulled her as close as he could with the barrier of the bulky armrest in their way.

Em froze—stilled until her muscles ached from the tension.

He wasn’t going to...

Her?

Why would he want to do that with her?

Six

“K
iss you. I’m going to kiss you, Emmaline Amos, and I think I might do it without your permission if you keep holding things up. Interested in knowing why?”

Jax’s chest constricted when she clammed up. This was the adorably freaked-out Em. He’d had glimpses of this Em all through mattress shopping and right into dinner.

Every time he’d touched her, even just brushed against her, she couldn’t decide whether to enjoy it or run away from it. “Okay, then, I’ll tell you. Because your mouth is driving me crazy.”

Her eyes were so wide—so full of disbelief, he almost laughed. Had no one ever told her how damn hot her lips were? Well, he’d just be the first.

Snap out of it, man. This is not the road that leads to no dating. You have other things to worry about—like Reece.
But Em was like kryptonite, and forcing Reece from his mind was easy when he looked at Em’s lips.

She winced, her beautiful features lining with disgust. “You mean my mouth is big, don’t you? You want to shut me up because I talk too much? I do that sometimes. I forget myself. I’m sorry.”

Her apology made him chuckle. Whoever had given Em the impression her enthusiasm, her ability to draw you into what brought her happiness, was annoying, made him want to beat the shit out of them.

Cupping her jaw, he said, “No. I mean your hot mouth is driving me crazy—words and all. I don’t care what’s coming out of them.”

Letting his tongue finally caress the soft flesh of her lower lip, his gut tightened on impact when he glided over the silky surface, tasting, testing.

Christ.

She stiffened beneath his hand, so he eased his grip, caressing the back of her neck, stroking the soft skin until she relaxed. “Is that okay, Em? If I kiss you?”

“Why would you want to kiss someone like me?”

She said it like those lips weren’t amazingly kissable. Fuck. Who’d messed with her head like that? Jax nibbled on the corner of her mouth, smiling against it when she shuddered then leaned into him. Just a little, but enough to signal her body language was adjusting to his touch. “The question here is, who wouldn’t want to kiss you? I can’t imagine watching your mouth move and not wanting to kiss you.”

And then she was softer, her shoulders relaxing in a downward slope. Though her eyes strayed everywhere but his face. “Look at me, Em.” He tried to keep the demand soft, but it was using up what little self-control he had.

Em was just as attracted to him as he was to her. Whatever was holding her back, it wasn’t lack of sparks. He might have been out of the game for a while, but he knew chemistry. “I’m going to kiss you. Question is, do I have your permission or are you going to pretend you don’t really want me to? Because I won’t, if you don’t want me to. Your move,” he coaxed with a grin.

Her lashes lowered to brush her cheeks, thick and full. They were like the fourth or fifth thing on his list of what he liked about her. Right behind the demure but sexy as hell clothes she wore, and her waist. He liked that, too. The way it pinched sharply inward before it sloped into the curve of her hip—hips that swished with an enticing rhythm—and made him smile.

“So, that kiss?”

Jax didn’t wait long after Em gave a slight nod. Pulling her head to his, he inhaled her sigh, breathed in her scent, traced the outline of her lips with his tongue before putting his mouth on hers.

He didn’t move. He just wanted to feel them against his own. Memorize them, taste them. Hot rushes of blood coursed through his veins when Em let him take the lead with a tremble and the surrender of her mouth.

Just this connection, this contact, and Jax was on fire. He had to hold back, control the need he’d been fighting with all night or he was going to scare her off.

But when he felt Em melt into him, reach for more of him by scrunching either side of his jacket in her fists, sigh again into his mouth, that damn predatory streak welled up in his chest. Made him grip the steering wheel with one hand to keep himself in check.

He slanted his mouth over hers, letting his tongue glide into the heat held behind the object of his fixation.

When Em’s fingers clenched his hair, Jax gave up on restraint with a growl and instead focused on getting her closer. His fingers went to the armrest between them, lifting it up, grunting his pleasure when Em helped him, her fingers gripping his forearm.

Then he was pulling her willing body to his, adjusting the setting on his seat, positioning her to straddle his lap.

Em’s arms went around his neck, her lips never leaving his, her soft tongue sliding along his in hot passes designed to make him harder than a rock. With leverage on her side, she wedged herself into his lap, her long legs draping on either side of his hips.

His hands found the small of her back through her winter sweater with the ruffles that framed her face, gliding over the swell of her hip, all the while, his hard-on driving at the seam of his jeans.

“We’re in a car,” she husked out between hungry pulls on his lips.

He silenced her with more hungry drawing, suckling the soft flesh of her bottom lip until she let one of those heady moans escape from her throat, gritty and breathless.

Em pulled away enough to allow words to flow more freely from her mouth.
“A car...”

He knew this wasn’t Emmaline’s bag—getting raunchy in a car in someone’s driveway. Just by observing her all this week, he knew.

Emmaline Amos was a lady. At all costs, the perception of her reputation should remain sterling. And he was fucking that all up with his dirty thoughts. He saw the war she was having in her mind with her body. It was in the way she tried to stop kissing him by pulling back, filling the void between their lips with words, only to seek his mouth again.

He brushed her crooked red beret away from her eyebrow. “It’s a Jeep. But that’s just me being picky.”

Again, she dipped her head back down, her liquid eyes glazed with moonlight and doubt. “This is crazy.” More protests, more driving him insane with the press of her breasts against his chest, enhancing that insanity when she inhaled with a ragged breath.

“Jeeps? I think Jeeps are conservative. Crazy would be a Smart Car.” Jax draped his hand over the top of her hip, using the heel of his hand to keep himself from latching on to her ass and grinding against her.

But Em did the grinding for him. Hard, pressed together grinding.

His cock scraped against the seam of his jeans in a painful pulsing response to her pussy, just a slip of a dress and a pair of panties away.

She used the heels of her hands to lever herself upward a little, her chest rising and falling. “Not Jeeps. Making out in a car.”

Jax put his hands around her wrists and caressed the width of them. “A Jeep.”

She gathered handfuls of his jacket, leaning her forehead against his, huffing out sharp breaths, sinking deeper into him. “Is there really a difference?”

Jax lifted his hips and hissed his appreciation. “Is it because we’re not in the confines of some dark room where I wouldn’t be able to see your lips do that thing where they tremble just before you plant them on mine?”

More evasive eyeballing before pretty Em whispered, “Ye...yes.”

“Then I’m glad we’re in a Jeep. Because I wanna see. As much as you’ll let me.”

If glowing in the dark were humanly possible, Em achieved it by flushing red. So Em wasn’t used to having someone lavish her with the proper attention a woman like her deserved? He’d be happy to be the first.

Knock it off, Hawthorne. Last you said, this wasn’t a date—now you want to reassure her she’s sexy? What next?

“You want me to show you how much I wanna see it?” His fingers stopped roaming over her hip. If she said no, he was going to have a helluva night alone in the shower—but he wanted to earn her trust—not scare the shit out of her.

Earning her trust isn’t how you “don’t” date, buddy. You say thanks for dinner, see you at the office. Not how can I make you feel more secure while I rip your clothes off?

He ignored the flash of red flags and tugged on her lips with his mouth. “You okay?”

She was shy again. Torn. Pulling away, leaning in. “Yes,” she exhaled the word, blowing it across his mouth with her warm breath—shivering.

Jax didn’t hold much back this time, splaying his hand over her back and crushing her against him until she made a soft sound. Her curves seeped into his like caramel over an ice-cream sundae, sticky sweet and hot.

He let his hand travel along her spine, smiling when she reacted to his touch by tightening her muscles in rigid increments.

He dropped the seat and slid it back, giving Em full access to spread out on top of him. Her surprised gasp when their bodies met lengthwise filled Jax’s ears as he began to peel her sweater off her shoulder.

* * *

The Lord will punish your wanton ways, Emmaline. Ladies do not fornicate in cars.

Jeep. It’s a Jeep, Mother.

You say tomato, I say no fornicating in anything with wheels. This will be frowned upon
.

Em was too stupid drunk with hot need to care what her mother or anyone else would think. When was the last time that had happened?

Never. She’d never been so totally unaware of everything around her when she was making love. She’d never been swept up. She’d never been so carried away the only thing she did hear was the throb of her pulse. Feel the throb of a man beneath her.

Jax shrugged her sweater from her shoulder, tugging at the end of the sleeve to pull it off her arm while her mother’s voice became a distant buzz, clearly masked by her shrieking hormones.

Each touch of Jax’s hands, each slip of his tongue into her mouth stoked the dormant part of her that wanted to forget propriety—forget she didn’t do things like this. Not once in her life had she even made out in a car, let alone allowed a man to slide his hand along her bare thigh until...

Her gasp echoed in the small space.

“You like that there,” Jax murmured, but he wasn’t really asking. He was only echoing what her body was screaming at his.

Yes. She loved the caress of his touch along the backs of her thighs, thought maybe it was what she’d always been living for and was now, after all this time, forced to openly admit it.

Fingers, long and thick, glided over her skin, teasing, pushing, easing away, kneading. Over and over until he skimmed the outline of her panties where her hip met thigh.

Em tensed, mewled a small sound she’d never heard come from her mouth before, but Jax muffled it with his lips.

Mercy, his mouth. Soft and hard in the same breath. Commanding, domineering, gentle with just a hint of the taste of the beer he’d had at dinner. More adjectives than her mind could parse—or even cared to.

His fingers slowed, her frustration mounted. She clung to his jacket in fistfuls of leather, afraid to let her hands touch anything else on his body, anything that would encourage him to continue. Yet, wanting—wanting to climb inside him—devour him.

The ripple of his abs beneath her when he reached over with his free hand and turned the key in the ignition to the off position elicited another gasp from her.

Everything about his body screamed in control, powerful. From nowhere, she wondered what a man like Jax would be like out of control. What he’d be like if she did to him what he was doing to her.

Her shiver brought his free arm back around her again, allowing her to burrow closer, bury her nose in his neck. His scent left her weak—it was man and fallen Georgia leaves and some more man and it left heat whooshing through her veins.

Jax tilted her chin up, stroked the flesh of her lower lip, capturing it with his teeth, a new sensation to her, unfamiliar and sexy—a tweak of pain soothed with the rasp of his tongue.

Her manners were all but forgotten—her everything was all but forgotten when Jax wiggled a finger inside the edge of her panties, letting it rest there so she could adjust to the feel of him.

It wasn’t a long adjustment period before Em could no longer stand the wait. She wasn’t prim and proper Emmaline tonight. Tonight she was possessed by some demon—some part of her that was going to take what she wanted no matter the gossip that would surely ensue. No matter the cost to her stellar reputation.

Her hips became someone else’s when she rolled against the hard length of his finger, coaxing Jax, daring him to hurry up and touch her.

Touch her now.

Jax smiled beneath her lips, a slight tilt upward of arrogance maybe, before he stroked downward, spreading her wide, using another finger to tease her, torment the tight bud at her core until her heart tried to push its way out of her chest.

Pricks of fire teased her belly, turning into flames, licking at her, forcing her to push against Jax’s fingers, whimper against his delicious mouth when he did the one last thing she knew would send her over an edge. An edge she was unfamiliar with—unsure of, but one Em dared to teeter on anyway.

His finger slid into her with hot, wet ease—so easily, she gasped, shuddered, saw stars, brilliant splashes of light. She didn’t know what else to do but cling to him, relish his big hands on her, moan when he used his other hand to push up her dress and find her breast.

Jax cupped it, thumbed it through the material of her bra until that agonizing slow burn was stealing bits of her sanity, pushing its way along her veins, screaming to find relief.

He drove deeper, stroking, thrusting in long pulls, while his musky scent filled her nose. All of her senses were on board Train Jax, every single one engaged in ways she hadn’t known existed.

Suddenly, it was too much—too soon—too everything. Her brain said retreat. It was dangerous to want anything this much—to want
anyone
this much. But her body said “eff your brain, Emmaline Amos” and fell into the dark cauldron of her boiling hormones.

When she fell, it was hard. She rode Jax’s hand, heard his grunt of satisfaction at her slippery descent, pressed so deeply into him, surely the seat would crash through the floorboards of her Jeep.