“They can put it in the storage room in the back of the building for now,” Mimi said. “It’s city property so if anyone needs a desk, they can have that one.”
“Wish me luck!” Jenna said on her way out the door. She hadn’t taken two steps into the parking
lot when she ran smack into Ben. Literally.
“Oh!”
He held her shoulders to steady her. “You all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine.”
He looked like he just walked off the cover of GQ magazine. Navy blue suit, white shirt, gray tie. All starched and crisp and beautiful. And as usual, he smelled divine. What cologne did he wear? It wasn’t overpowering but just enough to wake her up. In all the right places.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“I came to talk to Pilar about her counter-offer.”
“I’d thought you’d already turned that down.”
“I did.” He grinned. “This is really just an excuse to come see you.” He noted her purse and the keys in her hand. “Are you done for the day?”
“Um, yeah, actually I am.”
“Would you like to come over to the beach house and have dinner?” When she didn’t answer right away, he put his hands up in the air like he was surrendering. “Just a friendly meal with Rachel and my mom.”
Dinner with Ben and his family sounded wonderful. Jenna couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do, but she had to see Doug Wentworth in person. She just had to. Otherwise, she’d always have a niggling itch in the back of her mind that she hadn’t done everything to follow through with her suspicions.
“Tempting, but I’m actually on my way somewhere.”
“Running some errands? We can eat later if you—”
“I’m going to the jail to see Doug Wentworth. The forensics audit came back clean, but I still think he did something shady and I want to see if I can trick it out of him. So you were right about the dog with the bone thing, too. Only I’m not going to apologize for it.” There. She’d said it. Now the fireworks would start all over again.
“I see.” He glanced back at his car. “Then let me drive you.”
This was not the reaction she’d expected.
“What happened to this was the craziest idea you’d ever heard of?”
“I’m not going to lie, I still think it’s crazy, but I’ll feel a whole lot better about it if you let me tag along.”
She considered his offer. The county jail was almost a forty-five-minute drive. It would be nice to have company. Especially Ben’s. “Okay, but you’ll have to stay in the car. You absolutely can’t go see Doug with me. I have to take him by surprise when I tell him about the audit. That’s the only way I can gauge his true reaction.”
“Not a problem,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Obviously, yeah, he’d lied, because this was a problem. Jenna slid into the front seat of his car and buckled herself in, tugging at her skirt until it lay down primly. She wore standard female business attire—black skirt, lavender silk dress shirt, black heels. All fairly conservative and nothing out of the ordinary.
The problem was standard female business attire had never gotten him aroused before. She might as well have been wearing nothing. Add to the fact that while she usually wore her hair up during the day, it now lay down her back in a riot of long, sexy curls that made his fingers itch. He imagined himself behind her, grabbing onto those curls as he thrust—
“It’s really nice of you to offer to drive,” she said completely oblivious to the fact that she was sitting less than two feet away from a raging hard-on.
“Sure.”
Only there was absolutely nothing nice about his motives. Driving her to the county jail was completely and one hundred percent instinctual. Born from the sole desire to protect his woman. Just the thought of Wentworth or any of the rest of those losers locked up in the jail even looking at her made him a little crazy.
If Jenna could read his thoughts, she’d probably go feminist bat-shit bonkers on him. And he wouldn’t blame her one bit.