Flirting with Disaster (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 2)

By the time Isabelle got out of bed, Sophie and Lauren were long gone. They were both used to rising at a scheduled hour. Isabelle woke when she wanted to. Sometimes early to catch the light. Sometimes late when her commissions were in and she could stay up until 2:00 a.m. painting what she wanted.

Today she went through the motions, making a big pot of coffee and nibbling on a piece of cherry pie for breakfast and trying to pretend her heart was as hard as it had always been.

But even that was a lie. Her heart had once been as soft as jelly and about that smart, too. She’d loved Patrick and trusted him implicitly, and he’d waited until her lowest moment and then dealt the killing blow.

She’d been so stunned by her father’s arrest and the initial wave of charges that she hadn’t quite noticed Patrick pulling away. She’d been too consumed with panic. A month later, he’d still been awkward and distant, but that had been her fault, hadn’t it? She was the one with the criminal father. Worse yet was that her father’s captain was Patrick’s dad, and now Captain Kerrigan was under scrutiny, too.

She’d felt so awful about that. Captain Kerrigan hadn’t even been her father’s direct supervisor, but her engagement to Patrick Kerrigan had likely drawn the attention of the FBI. That was what Patrick had claimed, anyway. That was what he’d yelled at her one night when she’d complained that he was being cold.

If she’d been the woman she was today, she would have told him to stuff it. She’d have told him she was the one living this nightmare, not him.

But she’d still been that stupid girl, so she’d felt guilty and tried to make it up to him any way she could. She’d stuffed down her own grief and terror to sneak into his apartment for sex. Still, he’d always made her leave in the middle of the night. “You don’t want the press reporting on this, do you?” he’d asked.

She’d acquiesced every time, when all she’d really wanted was to stay and feel safe and know that someone was there while she slept.

He’d finally told her the truth, four months later. That her family name was going to affect his career. That he hated her for dragging him down. That he’d waited this long to end it only because his dad had asked him to keep an eye on her after her father had skipped town. Patrick had dumped her, and she’d still loved him. He’d had to push her away in disgust when she’d tried to hug him.

The two men in her life who were supposed to protect her, her father and her future husband... They’d both walked away.

Isabelle protected herself now. She’d done a good job of it, yet somehow her defenses were slipping.

She opened the doors to her studio and let the smell of paint wash over her. The weight that had settled over her lifted a little. It wanted to lift, because it wasn’t really fear. It was hope.

Useless hope. Tom Duncan was a US marshal, and if she trusted him with her heart and body on some primal level she couldn’t understand, it meant nothing because she couldn’t trust him with the truth.

Isabelle tried to shake off her sorry thoughts and get to work. She could normally lose herself easily in painting, but she kept thinking of Tom. She created the latissimus dorsi on the white canvas, building it out of reds and creams and blues and yellows, drawing out each individual muscle fiber until it became a human back. But then it was Tom’s back, stretching and moving as he held his weight off her body and fucked her.

Most people would find that morbid. Tom would find it morbid. That she could perfectly picture the way the naked muscles of his back would contract and relax as he made love to her. But she thought it was beautiful. She wanted to trace those muscles, follow the muted lines of them along his skin, knowing exactly what they looked like beneath it. How could they not be beautiful when they’d let him do what he’d done to her?

She stepped a few feet away to get a better look at the picture, realizing that she’d painted way more than she’d planned. A glance at the clock made her chin jerk back in surprise. It was nearly 4:00 p.m. She’d been painting for over five hours.

Maybe Tom was good for her. She smiled at the thought, surprising herself so much that she pressed a hand to her mouth to hide it.

She couldn’t love him. For so many reasons. Or maybe she could love him a little despite them. Maybe she could trust herself to know another person now, to see who he really was. Maybe she could trust herself to recklessly love him just a tiny bit, even if she couldn’t ask him to stay. And maybe she’d have to sleep with him again to find out.

This time when she smiled, she didn’t cover it. Instead, she started on the left gluteus maximus and pictured Tom’s ass tightening.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TOM STARED AT the text from Isabelle, willing it to go away so he could practice some self-control. He’d hoped she wouldn’t get in touch. The sex had been casual. She’d made that clear.

But then she’d texted him, asking if he planned to stop by, and the push-pull of it had nearly snapped him in two.

His body was shouting yes. Screaming it, really. Yes, stop by. Drop everything and go over now. Tell this judge and this trial to fuck off. What you really need is that again.

If he’d been eighteen years old, he might have imitated the Road Runner in his eagerness to indulge in a second round. A dust cloud would have poofed up around his feet.

But he had a little more control now. The bigger problem was that his brain was telling him to hightail it over there, too. To press her a little. See where she was tender. Find out if he could discover that weak point in her defenses and get her to let him in.

His body agreed, because his body still had all the nuance of that eighteen-year-old boy.

But his conscience...that was a trickier beast. His conscience told him he was an asshole. That he never should have touched her in the first place, not while he was checking up on her.

Despite that, he hadn’t had the strength to say no. So he’d given her an out instead.

I’d like to, but I’m not sure when I’ll get out of here. It could be late.

She’d say no. Or blow him off. That was what he’d told himself. She was a beautiful woman who liked to be alone; she didn’t need a half-assed offer of sex from a guy who’d leave town in a week. He was nothing to her. Last night had meant nothing.