Page 120 of Burn for You (Slow Burn 1)
It had been popping up in my head and on his lips for the past hour like weeds through cracks in the sidewalk. I had to remind myself that this was a business deal. He was here for his inheritance, I was here for my mama. It wouldn’t do to get ahead of myself and start attaching deeper meaning to things on account of hot shower sex.
Hot, emotional, vulnerable, soul-searing, life-changing shower sex.
“Uh-oh,” said Jackson. “I smell smoke. You’re thinking again.”
“Ha ha. Can we please go get some food before I eat that bar of soap?”
He pushed away from the doorway and wrapped his arms around me, resting his chin on top of my head. “Yep. But you have to promise if this little breakdown you’re having gets any worse, you’ll talk to me, so I won’t have to hold you down and tickle it out of you.”
I gave him scary crazy-lady eyes. “You will not tickle me. Ever. Understood?”
He tilted his head and whispered in my ear, “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s not in the contract.” Then he dug his fingers into my ribs.
I screamed and tried to twist away, but he was too strong. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me clear off my feet so we were nose to nose, my arms pinned to my side, my feet kicking uselessly around his shins.
“It isn’t fair that you’re so giant,” I groused. “And freakishly strong.”
“I’m not that strong, but thank you.”
“Honey, you’re holding up my entire weight like I’m a loaf of bread. One of the airy kinds, like sourdough.”
He chuckled and kissed the tip of my nose. “Honey?” he drawled.
He lowered his lashes, smug as all get-out. I wondered with irritation why those kind of thick, silky, black eyelashes were always wasted on boys who didn’t appreciate how lucky they were to have them.
I sniffed like a snooty aristocrat. “It was a slip of the tongue. I’m getting lightheaded from lack of food. I could faint at any moment.”
He pressed a soft kiss to my lips and chuckled
again. “I see. You’re still in fibbing mode. All right, I’ll let it go until”—he checked his watch, which meant he was now holding me up with one arm—“noon. Deal?”
I muttered, “Showoff.”
He laughed and set me on my feet. “After breakfast,” he said, leading me by my hand from the room, “you have your choice of horseback riding, bowling, tennis, fishing, boating, or touring the botanical gardens or rickhouse.”
“Rickhouse?”
He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “It’s where we house all the ricks, obviously.”
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”
The rest of the day was a fairy tale, and I was Cinderella.
We ate breakfast in a sun-filled room Jackson called the “solar,” serenaded by songbirds flitting in dozens of large cages hung at various heights around the room. The hovering servants seemed friendlier today, even daring to smile pleasantly at us when they brought our food and cleared out plates. Even more surprising, Jackson smiled back.
He seemed like a different man than he was yesterday. Lighter. Less burdened by ghosts. His parents seemed different, too, though they didn’t hover. They greeted us warmly when we came down to eat, made light conversation, and then took their leave with a promise to see us for dinner.
I got the feeling they were leaving us alone together and not avoiding us, which are two very different things.
Jackson gave me a tour of the estate on a golf cart emblazoned with a giant B on the front, rear, and roof, which I found hilarious. As if anyone could mistake who it belonged to. The botanical gardens were a marvel of engineering, designed by an anal-retentive botanist with a fetish for nude statuary and hedge mazes. Had I been there alone, I would’ve been hopelessly lost in five minutes.
We drove by the stables at top speed. Jackson pointed them out with a jerk of his thumb. I was glad I hadn’t taken him up on his offer to go riding, because there were obviously still a few of his ghosts lurking in the tack room, waiting to shriek and rattle their chains.
Lakes. Trees. A beautiful white church topped by a steeple. Acres upon acres of wooded pathways and hidden putting greens and spectacular sweeping vistas dotted with wildlife. More than once we had to swerve to avoid a startled jackrabbit or white-tailed deer. Moonstar Ranch was a placed steeped in magic, and my feeling of being immersed in a fairy tale grew as the day wore on.
All the while my engagement ring flashed and winked on my finger, sending prisms of light in starburst patterns everywhere like a promise of good things to come.
We talked, laughed, held hands shyly, smiled at each other with our eyes. In the rickhouse—a massive concrete rectangle where the family stored their private reserve—Jackson kissed me in a cool, shadowed corner behind a soaring wall of bourbon barrels stacked twenty high on metal racks. We ate a picnic lunch under the shade of an enormous willow tree on a hill overlooking a sparkling lake. We made plans to have dinner with his parents. I wanted to make them Mama’s famous jambalaya with a blackberry-and-bourbon cobbler for dessert.
