Sexy, gifted, and loyal, PI Jacob Decker is a tall, cool drink of perfection who had Emmanuelle Holmes at "hello." His relationship with Emme's best friend kept them apart for years, but things have changed. Now that a case has brought him to Gnaw Bone, Colorado, the road is wide open for Emme and Deck to explore something hotter and deeper than Emme dreamed possible. So why is she sabotaging the best thing that's ever happened to her?
It isn't easy to catch Deck off guard, but Emme does just that when she walks back into his life after nine long years. The curvy brunette had her charms back in the day, but now she's a bona fide knockout . . . and she wants to rekindle their friendship. Deck, however, wants more. Emme's always been the one; she excites Deck's body and mind like no other woman can. But a dark chapter from Emme's past overshadows their future together. Now only Deck can help her turn the page-if she'll let him . . .
I dropped my leg so I was sitting
cross-legged in the couch and leaned into him. “Honey, you remember everything
so I don’t have to remind you I haven’t seen you in nine years. I dig it that
we reconnected and I love having you back.” I again threw an arm out, this time
toward him and back to me. “This is great. You and me spending time together,
shooting the breeze. I missed that. And I get it that friends make gestures,
but this is too much.”
His eyes warmed during this speech
and he took his arms from the couch, bent his legs, leaned into them, and me,
and put his elbows to his knees, never releasing my eyes.
“Baby, I want you warm and liquid.
The first bein’ physically, the second bein’ financially. You stop payin’ so
much for heat, you’ll have more money for the rest of the shit you gotta do.”
This made sense.
But he’d again called me “baby.”
And I needed to address that.
So I asked, “What is that?”
His head cocked and his eyebrows
drew together. “What’s what?”
I drew in breath and on the exhale,
stated, “You calling me baby.” Then I went on quickly, “Not that I don’t like
it. It’s sweet. It’s just not…” I hesitated, “us.”
Something happened to his eyes, his
face, his whole big body and that something made me brace at the same time it
made my heartbeat escalate.
“You know what it is,” he said
softly.
I didn’t.
“I don’t,” I shared.
His eyes stayed locked to mine and
I knew him relatively well, or I used to. But even if we hadn’t been separated
for years, I still would not have been forewarned to the fact he was about to
blow my mind.
“Before, we had Elsbeth between us.
My head was fucked about that, about her, and it took almost a decade to get it
unfucked. Lookin’ back, havin’ you back, I now know and I reckon you know,
that’s the way it was. She was between us. She knew it too. And she didn’t like
it. But it didn’t matter. My head was fucked so I couldn’t see clear of her and
not doin’ that, I didn’t see you.”
I knew my lips had parted. I also
knew my eyes got big. And last, I had no clue what to say.
So I said nothing.
“Now she isn’t between us,” he
finished.
It was then I knew what the “baby”
business was.
I just had no idea how to react to
it because I never considered it. He was beautiful. He was kind. He was smart.
He was funny and interesting and affectionate.
But he was my best friend’s
boyfriend.
That didn’t mean my mind didn’t go
there in vague ways, not stupid enough to wish for something I could never
have, just silently covetous of what Elsbeth had. And, because of all that he
was and that Elsbeth had it, in the end, infuriated she threw it away. Angry
enough to end an important friendship because of it.
Sitting there, all that was Jacob,
and all that being spectacular sitting across from me, holding my eyes, I
finally understood that the reason I was angry at my friend was because, in
throwing Jacob away, she took him away from me.
And now I had him back, but also,
he was saying I’d always had him a different way, we just didn’t go there and
he was going to take us there.
Yes. I had no clue what to say but
my body had a clue how to feel. Warm and there were a lot more tingles.
“Jacob—” I started on a whisper.
But he interrupted again.
“You saw me, asked me out to dinner
that same night, no fuckin’ around. Since then, you’ve called twice for no reason
except to connect, and, baby, before you freak that I noticed that and what it
said, I’ll tell you, I’m fuckin’ glad you did and I’m also fuckin’ glad about
what it said. The boyfriend you were on the fence about, you got off the fence
in less than twenty-four hours after seein’ me again and decided to get shot of
his ass. And you didn’t waste any time gettin’ me right where I am tonight.
That is not friends reconnecting. You know it. So do I.”
“I—”
“Don’t deny it.”
I shut my mouth.
And, just because I love this book so much- I'm going to give you another one ;)
I looked out my office window, down
to the yard, my eyes to the bustling activity, and I did this tapping my phone
on my desk.
I should be working but I wasn’t
thinking about work.
I was thinking about Jacob.
More precisely, I was thinking
about calling Jacob, had an overwhelming urge to do so.
I was also trying not to do so
because I had a boyfriend, even though he was a boyfriend I wasn’t all that
sure about. He was sweet, he was into me, but he was just… off.
Then again, I didn’t have a lot of
experience so what did I know?
Additionally, after my dinner with
Jacob last night, within an hour, I’d called him after ten at night and now it
was only eleven thirty the next day.
I didn’t want him to think I was
psycho, and calling him would imply psycho behavior. Further, when I called him
last night, I’d asked him to dinner, which was dinner two nights in a row with
a woman he hadn’t seen in nine years, a woman with a boyfriend, and that was
semi-psycho.
Okay, maybe it was totally psycho.
I didn’t want Jacob to think I was
psycho.
Ever.
But I wanted to hear his voice. I
wanted to connect with him on the phone. I’d missed him and I liked having him
back. I liked it a great deal.
I also missed him a great deal.
And I needed to ask him something.
Further, he was the only one I could ask.
I looked from the yard to my phone.
My mind telling my thumb not to do it, my thumb not listening, I found Jacob’s
contact and hit go.
I put it to my ear.
“I’m a psycho,” I whispered and
luckily finished whispering two seconds before Jacob’s voice sounded.
“You okay?” he answered.
He kept asking that mostly, I
figured, because I kept calling when I didn’t need to so he probably thought
something was wrong.
Or that I was a psycho.
“I need to know if you don’t eat
anything,” I lied.
Actually, it wasn’t a lie. Although
I remembered a lot about Jacob (most everything, in all honesty), I couldn’t
recall if there was something specific he didn’t like to eat.
I could recall how beautiful he
was, how tall he was, how strong he was. I could recall how smart he was and
how funny he was. I could recall how cool he was with me. I could also recall
how much I missed him. But I couldn’t recall if he didn’t like chicken.
But that wasn’t the only thing I
needed to know. I needed to know something else too.
Much like last night, when he
didn’t make me feel like a psycho, in fact, the opposite and sounded like he
was happy to hear from me and would be willing to talk all night, he again
sounded like me psychotically calling him yet again in a precursor to stalker
way was no big deal.
“I don’t eat it, I’ll pick it off.”
“You can’t pick it off if I cook
with it in it or if the mainstay of
dinner on the whole is what you don’t eat,” I informed him.
“You makin’ Indian food?” he asked.
“No. Don’t you like Indian food?” I
asked back.
“Love it,” he answered.
“Then why’d you ask if I was making
Indian food?”
“ ’Cause I hoped you were.”
I burst out laughing.
No, Jacob definitely didn’t make me
feel like I was being a psycho.
When I quit laughing, I told him, “Sorry, honey, I don’t
know how to make Indian food.”
“Shame,” he muttered, a smile in
his deep, attractive voice, and if I was on an infrared scanner, specific parts
of me would have shown up hotter.
You
have a boyfriend, Emme! I told myself.
For
a while, I answered myself.
Jacob
is also your ex–best friend’s ex-boyfriend, Emme! I reminded myself.
So?
I asked myself.
I shoved those thought aside,
thoughts that, if anyone knew I was talking to myself in my head might prove I
was indeed a psycho, and pointed out to Jacob, “You haven’t actually answered
the question.”
“I’ll eat what you cook, Emme. Cook
what you like.”
He was such a nice guy.
He always was.
Nice. Tall (very tall). Handsome (unbelievably handsome). Smart (so damned
smart). Funny. Interesting. Gentlemanly. And a repeat of nice because it was
worth a repeat since he was just that nice.
I liked all that about him. I liked
that he wore his dark hair way too long. I liked that sometimes a thick hank of
it fell over his forehead and into his eye. I liked that he was who he was and
didn’t wear designer jeans or put gel in his hair. I liked that, even
considering he was extortionately intelligent, in fact, a genius, he never made
anyone feel less than him because they weren’t as smart. I liked that he never
acted superior or arrogant and with all that was him, looks, body, brains, he
was one person who could. And I liked that he liked to do what he liked to do,
he did what he liked to do and wouldn’t get pushed into doing something he
didn’t want.
Like Elsbeth tried to do.
He’d lost her to that and he’d
accepted it. I knew it killed. He’d loved her to distraction. But he refused to
be the man she wanted him to be and instead was the man he was.
She should have seen she had it all
even if he didn’t make bucketloads of money and thus couldn’t give her the life
she was used to getting from her daddy. Country clubs, tennis lessons,
vacations in villas in Italy and beaches in Thailand, fabulous homes kept by
maids and fabulous meals cooked by cooks.
She didn’t see all she had.
Stupid.
Kristen Ashley grew up in Brownsburg, Indiana, and has lived in Denver, Colorado, and the West Country of England. Thus she has been blessed to have friends and family around the globe. Her posse is loopy (to say the least) but loopy is good when you want to write. Kristen was raised in a house with a large and multigenerational family. They lived on a very small farm in a small town in the heartland, and Kristen grew up listening to the strains of Glenn Miller, The Everly Brothers, REO Speedwagon, and Whitesnake. Needless to say, growing up in a house full of music and love was a good way to grow up. And as she keeps growing up, it keeps getting better.
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