Page 18 of Jason
“Did you grow up here?”
She was trying to diffuse her anxiety and exasperation with small talk.He would play along.“I grew up in Boston, actually, but we spent our summers here.You can put your backpack down, you know.”
“Huh?”She turned slightly, as if trying to see her back.As if she’d forgotten she was carrying the backpack.She slid it off her shoulder, wincing when she did, then looked around, uncertain where to put it while she tried to massage her own shoulder.
“For heaven’s sake,” Jason said.He walked around from behind the kitchen bar, took it from her, and plopped it into a chair.
“Thanks,” Mallory said.
“I can help with that,” Jason said.
“With what?
“Your shoulder.Your muscles are tense from carrying it around all day.I could massage it out for you.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said.
He shrugged.“Fine.But it would feel a lot better.”
“Okay,” she said.“It’s really tight.”
“I can tell.”Jason made a circle motion with his finger.“Turn around.”
She presented her back to him and Jason put his hands on her shoulders and began to knead the tension from her muscles.
“Oh,” Mallory said.“Oh!” She dropped her head.“Oh myGod,” she breathed.
Jason clenched his teeth.He wished she wouldn’t make moaning sounds quite like that.They sparked through him, making him think of things he did not want to be thinking about with his assistant.Jesus, he’d just fired Darien!He’d just been mentally chastising himself for the night in his office.But her neck, slender and smooth, was exposed to him, and he could not stop looking at it.Could not stop thinking about pressing his lips against it.
He was such a pig.
“Wow, Jason,” she said.
“Why are you sotight?”he asked.He was also tight.Wound to a tight coil imagining his lips lingering at the top of her spine, then moving down that spine, one vertebra at a time.
Mallory groaned loudly when he dug this thumbs into the spot where her shoulders curved into her neck.She began to whimper—he could feel the tension releasing from her muscle.“You’re surprisingly goodat this.”
“Surprisingly?”He chuckled.
“I wouldn’t have guessed you as a massage kind of guy.I would have guessed you the kind of guy who is always on the receiving end of a massage.”
She wasn’t wrong.“Fair,” he said.He wondered if there was anything about him Mallory hadn’t figured out.“But I know how to give a massage—I’m not a heathen.”Except when he was.He sighed.“So listen, I’m really sorry about last night.I wasn’t thinking.”
“Technically, it was this morning, but thank you.”She tilted her head to one side.“In all honesty, I had a speech I was prepared to make, but my shoulders haven’t felt his relaxed in weeks.So you’re off the hook.”
He smiled at the back of her head.He stopped kneading her muscles and let his hands drop.Mallory didn’t move.She stood in the very same spot with her back to him, swaying a little.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”She turned around with a smile of gratitude, but he was standing so close that she almost bumped into him when she did.They were standing so close that he could actually feel the pull between them.It felt strangely magnetic, and it was the same he always felt around her.
It didn’t help that Mallory’s lips were slightly parted, and her blue eyes were shining through her glasses.Jason was totally there for the sexy vibe, but it felt as if an elephant was trying to squeeze in between them.“Mallory, I feel like I—”
“Hell-oooh!”
Mallory jumped back so fast that her centrifugal force nearly knocked Jason off his feet.In the next moment, Pam O’Reilly, the estate’s housekeeper, appeared carrying a dish in a quilted insulation bag.“Oh!I wasn’t sure you were in,” she said.“I have a delivery for you.Lobster risotto!”
Jason looked at the covered dish.It didn’t look like any delivery service he knew.“Where’d that come from?”
