Jack woke up with one hell of a hangover.
Shit.
And he had no one to blame but himself. The bottle of scotch seemed like such a good idea at the time, but as he stumbled into the shower he was re-evaluating his thought process. His head hurt like hell, his mouth was disgusting and the pain that was rolling across his forehead was the kind of pain he’d not felt in a long, long time.
He was too old for this shit, and he reminded himself of that again when he caught sight of his bloodshot eyes in the mirror as he was taking care of the disgusting mouth thing.
Outside, the sky was blue and the sun was shining and when he glanced at the clock beside his bed, he swore, his already foul mood, darker. It was later than he would like, and he pulled on a pair of black board shorts, slipped his feet into worn sandals and scooped up a white T-shirt from his suitcase. He was surprised that Harry and Morgan weren’t already knocking at his door.
Just thinking of the kids made his gut turn, and he made his way down the stairs, surprised to smell cinnamon—burnt cinnamon but cinnamon nonetheless…
“I guess hell froze over when I wasn’t looking,” he said walking into the kitchen. “You made French toast?”
Donovan was at the sink scrubbing furiously. She didn’t answer him, and he crossed the room wincing as a fresh wave of pain kicked around inside his head. Reaching into the cabinet for some pain meds, he grabbed the orange juice container from the fridge and downed the entire thing, taking the pain meds along for the ride.
“You look like shit,” Donovan said, tossing a green and yellow scrub pad back into the sink.
“Yeah,” he replied, eyeing her up. Couldn’t say the same about her, because Donovan looked damn good.
A pair of jean cut-offs, a plain white T-shirt and the florescent lime green strings peeking out the top were enough to make him pay attention. He wondered if it was the same bikini she’d had in Belize. The one that had damn near driven him to distraction.
He took another look. Yep. Damn good.
Too damn good.
“And yes I made some French toast, but I burnt more than I was able to save and even then, well.” She threw up her hands. “I have no idea why it’s so darn hard to make food. God, my grams used to make the best biscuits ever and her pie crust? To die for. I have no idea why those particular talents weren’t passed along to me.”
Jack glanced at the pan. He needed grease and he needed it now.
“Have you eaten?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I was trying to get the stupid pan clean so that I could take another stab at it.”
“I’ll make us eggs.”
“But…I wanted to…I was going to try to…”
“Do we want to starve or eat?”
“Eat,” she grumbled.
“Make me a cup of coffee, and I’ll get some food into you.”
Jack got busy making a couple of omelets. He was the king of eggs and had always found cooking to be a stress reliever. Right now, he only wanted to think about food. He didn’t want to dwell on Brett and a future that was never gonna happen. Didn’t want to think about a guy who’d been robbed. He didn’t want to think about Sabrina and the kids alone.
And he sure as hell didn’t want to think about Donovan and their own unique situation. Fucking life. It was always throwing curveballs and not all of them were strikes.
Once he was done, he set a plate down in front of her while she pushed a mug of coffee his way. They ate in silence, and right now it was what he needed. Silence.
His eyes fell on Donovan.
He watched her pick the green peppers out of her omelet and push them to the corner of her plate. Hell, that was a memory he’d forgotten. Donnie didn’t like green. She hated peppers, broccoli, and peas.
An image of Donovan wearing nothing but one of his old Harvard T-shirts, leaning against the counter in his beach house as she picked all the greens off a piece of pizza floated in front of him.
“So your friends seem real nice.”
Image gone, he nodded but didn’t answer, hating the way he felt. Pissed off at the way the world looked today.