To Catch A Player

It was about managing Jackson and his faux attraction.

“I’m coming, hold your horses.” I pulled the door open while he was mid-fist pound, and his face twisted in a dark, angry scowl.

“What the hell? I thought maybe you’d fallen or something.” His chest heaved and with a closer look, I could see that his face was red and he’d set down the paper bag he’d brought.

“I’m fine, Jackson. Really.” It wasn’t smart to touch him after all that talking I’d done to myself before he showed up, but he needed the comfort so I placed a hand on his bicep. “I had to turn down the pots on the stove. And the slow cooker.”

His hazel gaze scanned my face and then the rest of my body; every inch his gaze touched was left hotter than he’d found it until he made his way down to my bare feet. “You have bumblebee toes.”

I looked down and wiggled the yellow toes with black stripes. “Tulip’s Tributes are doing a mani-pedi fundraiser to help with the statue since they aren’t allowed to buy the dumb stupid calendar. Bailey’s words, not mine.”

Finally, the tension in his shoulders and on his face relaxed. “You mean I could have painted a few nails and been done with all this? I feel like I’ve been had.”

His dry words pulled a laugh from me and I stepped back, nodding for him to enter. “By a bunch of little girls, no less.”

Jackson arched a brow at me as he walked past me and down the hall. “Smells amazing in here. What’s in the slow cooker?”

“I wondered how long it would take you to ask that question.” The whole placed smelled like Texas cuisine—tangy barbecue sauce and the sweet smell of spicy beef chili.

“Well?”

“Chili with nacho fixins.”

Jackson turned to me with heat in his eyes. “I guess that kiss left an even bigger impression than I hoped for.”

I rolled my eyes. “First of all, you wish. Second, this was not about that, which we are not talking about. This is me feeding you because this isn’t your job, it’s charity.”

“It’s not charity.”

“Sure, it is,” I told him easily and skirted around his big body to give the sauces a quick stir. “This is part of your Hometown Heroes assignment, and because of that and nothing else, I’m feeding you. After the work is done.”

“Eager to spend more time with me?”

I snorted a laugh but I said nothing, because I wasn’t a liar. “We have quite a bit of work to do this evening. Starting with the garlic.” I pointed to the mountain of garlic heads on a cutting board at the island.

“Garlic, seriously? Not even one little kiss first?”

I pointed and, to his credit, Jackson tried not to smile. “No kissing at all.”

He held his hands up, his smile turned playful. “Got it. No kissing until all the work is done.”

I threw my hands in the air and let out a little growl that apparently amused Jackson because he laughed. “Work. We have work to do.”

“Okay. Work.” Jackson took his position in front of the garlic and took the offered apron with a grin. “You seriously need all this garlic?”

“Yes. I’m making a garlic sauce, not wasting food to torture you.” Although that was a good idea and no red-blooded woman who called herself an environmentalist could possibly hold it against me. “Mince, mince.”

He looked down at the cutting board in confusion. “Where’s the knife?”

“No knife. That’s why I said ‘mince, mince,’ though I guess technically I should have said ‘press, press,’ because you’ll be using this.” I held up the big silver garlic press. “It’ll make the job easier, but it will still take some time.”

“Good. You can keep me company while I do all the hard work.”

Fine. He wanted to chat, we could chat. But if I didn’t steer the conversation, it would stay in the gutter. “How was your day? Catch any bad guys?”

“You know the job doesn’t work like that, right?”

I shrugged and stirred, starting a new batch with root beer syrup. “I’m not a detective, so how would I know? I always see cops arresting people on the side of the road, at the big box store off the highway.”

I heard his chuckles and chose to ignore them. “I didn’t catch any bad guys today, no.”

“But you are still hunting for Jarrod?”

“Not me, personally, but I’m helping out a task force dedicated to getting him and his buddies off the street. Why?”

“Making conversation.”

“You could ask me about myself. My life.”

Yeah, I could have—and I would have, if not for our past. “If you wanted me to know, you would have told me.”

“I guess that’s fair, but you could have asked. If you were interested.”

I didn’t know if he was fishing or just making a point. “Then I guess that’s where we’re at, then.” We worked in silence for a long time and surprisingly, it wasn’t a tense silence, even though I was more than a little aware of how much room he took up in my spacious kitchen.