Jump Start (Texas Hotzone 1)

“I’m willing if you’re willing,” he said.

She studied him. “I can’t believe we’re going to do this.”

He smiled and rolled Jennifer beneath him. She was small and soft, and warm in all the right places. He was hot in all the right places, too. “You know what I think?”

She wrapped her fingers together behind his neck. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“I think,” he said, “we should make love, then go to Waffle House like we used to every Sunday morning and eat until we are miserable happily overstuffed. After that, we’ll go in search of an Oriental shorthair.”

“You do realize,” she said slowly after a brief pause, “what you suggest completely breaks the ‘only sex’ rule I set.”

“I dare you to break the rule,” he said, his lips lowering, lingering above hers. “Say you’ll have more than sex with me for the day.”

She laughed. “You’re crazy.”

“For you,” he promised and kissed her. It was long minutes later when he sat on the couch, Jennifer on top of him, gloriously naked, the wet heat of her body wrapped around the hard length of him. Her breasts were high and full, her nipples rosy-pink pebbles pressed against his palms, taut against his tongue. Her kiss even sweeter than the addictive honey flavor he’d never get enough of, because he could taste the change in her, he could taste the unbridled passion—and he knew the walls were coming down. But as he spilled himself inside her, felt her spasm around him, cling to him, hold him, he knew she hadn’t given herself fully to him, nor would she until she knew he’d done so to her. She deserved nothing less and he was trying desperately to find his way there.

For long seconds, they sat together, bodies merged intimately, foreheads together until Bobby noticed the cat was sitting on the arm of the couch watching them. “Okay, now,” he said. “This is like some sort of weird voyeurism. We have to train the cat not to watch.”

Jennifer laughed and kissed him. “I’ll tell her to turn her back next time. Now. Take me to breakfast.” Bobby stood up, still inside her. “I’ll take you in the shower first. Waffle House does breakfast all day.”

***

JENNIFER SAT IN THE Waffle House booth across from Bobby and finished up a returned call from a breeder. She hung up, feeling excited. “Finally,” she declared. “We have success. They have an adult ready to retire—”

“Retire,” Bobby said, stabbing a link of sausage. “Isn’t a retired cat setting Marcie and Mark up for heartbreak?”

“Retired from being a show cat,” she said. “She’s only two. She’s a great age. None of the kitten craziness. She’s trained. Sweet and loving. Her name is Ella and she’s at the opposite side of San Antonio. A couple of hours’ drive.”

“Ella it is then,” he said. “You catch me up on the past seven years during the drive.”

“You want another?” the cook asked, a fifty-something man who Jennifer suspected owned the Waffle House franchise.

Bobby patted his stomach. “I’m done in today,” he said and glanced at Jennifer. “But we’ll be back.” Not phrased as “he’d be back” but we. His gaze held Jennifer’s and she almost shivered with the warmth there, telling her he was going to spend every minute with her that he could.

“You better,” the cook-maybe-owner said. “I like a couple with a healthy appetite.”

Jennifer laughed as the man departed with Bobby’s plate. “I bet he does. You ate three waffles, bacon, eggs and sausage. I’ve never seen you eat more than two waffles. You’ve expanded your horizons.”

“Technically, it’s breakfast and lunch,” he said. “We never made it out of the house on Sundays before two.” And they hadn’t today either. He eyed his watch. “Right on time.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “Just like old times.”

“Indeed,” she said softly, nostalgia a bittersweet thing this day but she wasn’t fighting it. She was with Bobby, enjoying their limited time together. “No wonder I never eat a waffle without thinking of you.”

He smiled and paid their check. “Funny,” he said playfully, standing up and offering her his hand. “I’ve never had a waffle without thinking of you either.”

She laughed and grabbed her purse, before slipping her fingers between his. “Glad to know a waffle reminds you of me.”

They strolled across the parking lot, hand in hand, until they reached the passenger side of the car, a weeping willow grazing the roof and offering privacy and shade.

Bobby leaned against the car and molded Jennifer close. “Far more reminds me of you than I think you realize,” he said. “I missed you. I missed us. I swear to you I never meant to hurt you. I love you. I never stopped loving you.”

“The hardest part was not how you left,” she admitted. “It was the seven years of silence.” Her gaze lifted and she didn’t try to hide the hurt. “I’d see something, or do something, that reminded me of you and that silence made me feel you never had those moments about me. You never called. You never wrote. For seven years, Bobby.”