think you’re attracted to me or something.”
“An amazing voice, gorgeous body, great in bed, a talented cook and smart. Who wouldn’t be attracted to you?”
Shade scowled. Smart? Not even. He’d take credit for those other traits—they happened to be true—but he wasn’t smart. He could barely read.
“What did I say?” Amanda said.
God, he kept forgetting he wasn’t wearing his fucking sunglasses. “Nothing.” He shoveled several pancakes onto a plate and added more batter to the pan.
“I said something. You’re broody all of a sudden.”
“Your pancakes are ready.”
She sighed. “You don’t have to be guarded with me, Jacob. I’m not going to poke holes in your oversensitive ego.”
He chuckled. He’d never had anyone accuse him of being oversensitive. Just the opposite. Cold. Self-centered. Hard. That’s why the sunglasses came in so handy.
“Go eat your pancakes.”
“I want to eat with you. I’ll wait.” She pressed her forehead to his shoulder while he flipped the pancakes in the pan.
“You’re not supposed to get attached, Amanda.” And neither was he. Damn. What had he started here? Something he couldn’t possibly finish. Boneheaded move, Silverton.
“I’m not.” Her hands slid up over his belly. “My hands just refuse to trade the feel of this luxury for something as ordinary as a fork.”
He smiled. How did she do it? Make him feel so good about himself? Just being in her company made him happy. And had him contemplating ways to see her again.
See? Not smart. He turned off the burner and scooped pancakes onto a second plate.
“I suppose this means I have to let you go now.” Her hands wandered up his bare chest.
“I did go to the trouble of making you breakfast.” Which went against all his rules about morning-after routines. Get them up and out of the house as fast as possible. Or better yet, leave on the tour bus as soon as the sun rose over the horizon.
“I appreciate that. I definitely worked up an appetite last night.” She stepped away and smacked his ass.
He sat across from her at the small round table in the breakfast nook. It overlooked the pool, so he stared out the window instead of meeting her eyes.
“You regret it,” she said after a long moment of uncomfortable silence. Neither of them had even touched their meal.
He jerked his gaze from the pool and concentrated on his breakfast.
He did regret it. Not the amazing time they’d had together, but the complications it brought. He wasn’t sure how to proceed, because all signs pointed to getting her out of his life as soon as possible, but his foolish heart was breaking at the very idea. He could get by without ever having sex with her again but never seeing her smile or hearing her laugh or having her tease him mercilessly in a way that no one else dared to? Those were the things about her that he couldn’t do without. And by making things physical between them, he was certain that he’d have to give up everything else he adored about her.
“What in the fuck is your problem this morning, Jacob?”
He didn’t look at her. Didn’t want to see her righteous anger. “No problem.” He took a bite of his pancakes. He had a hell of a time chewing and forcing himself to swallow.
“What? Do you think I’m going to try to force a commitment out of you? I know you don’t have it in you. I knew that from the beginning.”
Her words should have appeased his fears. Instead they slashed his soul. But she was right. He didn’t have the ability to commit, so why did her saying it hurt? He should be relieved. He had a powerful need to put on his sunglasses. She had to be able to see the turmoil in his eyes. He supposed he should be glad that she’d misinterpreted it for once.
“That’s a relief,” he said and forced a laugh that he hoped didn’t sound as false to her ears as it did to his.
“You don’t look relieved.”
So much for fooling her.
“I didn’t mean to get intimate with you, Amanda. It just sort of happened.”
“Well, I meant to get intimate with you,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to bone you for years.”
She grinned at him, and his heart took its first unrestricted beat since he’d opened his eyes that morning. He attempted a smile. It felt slightly more natural. His shoulders and back, however, were still all sorts of tense.
“So where in the world did you come up with the idea for making your bed into a stage?”
He blushed. Lord, no one ever made him blush. “Uh, Adam and I used to frequent this sex club in New Orleans. It’s performance based. There’s a stage and a director who tells you how to fuck your partner. People watch. It’s quite a head rush. I liked the performance part, but not having a director.”
“That’s because you need to be in charge.” She smirked at him.
The tension continued to slowly drain from his body. He found he could chew naturally and even swallow without activating his gag reflex.
“Yeah, I don’t take directions well. I was told that if I couldn’t follow the director’s instructions, then I shouldn’t come back. I haven’t been back since. I think Adam still goes. He likes to be watched. I just love to perform onstage; I don’t need the audience to get off. Some woman said how her biggest fantasy was for me to fuck her onstage during a concert—to sing to her—and have every move displayed on the big screens in the stadium so everyone could see it. That’s when I decided to turn my bedroom into a private stadium. I like to please the ladies.” He winked at her.
“And we thank you for that.”
“Did you enjoy your time on stage, Miss Lange?”
“You deliver an amazing performance.”
Pleased by her compliment, he smiled broadly and took another bite of his pancakes.
“I wouldn’t mind another encore,” she said.
He choked.
“What time do you have to meet the tour bus?” she asked.
“Around noon.”
She grinned. “I’m not sure if two hours gives us enough time. I’ve never met a man who could go at it as long as you can.”
“Practice makes perfect.” He paused. Why had he said that? Expecting retaliation, he cringed and forced himself to meet her wrathful glare.
She was grinning at him. “I’m willing to volunteer my body to help you perfect your skills.”
Again he relaxed. She always put him at ease. “I thought I’d already perfected them.”
“I’d definitely give you an A,” she said.
He chuckled. She could stroke his ego all day; he never tired of it.
“But with a little extra credit, you could get an A-plus.”
“Extra credit, huh? How much work are we talking about? I’m satisfied with an A.” He cocked his head at her and licked pancake syrup off his thumb.
“I wouldn’t want to tell you what to do and stifle your creativity, Mr. Silverton, but seeing as I didn’t bother to put on any panties this morning, it wouldn’t take much effort on your part to get into them.”
He grinned, completely at ease now. How did she do it?
“So how much extra credit would I earn if I bent you over this table and fucked you from behind?”
“I couldn’t say until I saw the quality of your work.”
He moved swiftly. Her naughty teacher act already had his cock straining against his swim trunks. He pulled her from her chair and pushed her face down on the table. He lifted her shirt up over her ass and sought the heat between her legs with his fingers. She was as turned on as he was. He yanked his swim trunks down to his knees and rubbed his cockhead against her opening.
Fuck, he needed to get a condom out of his bedroom. He couldn’t just plunge into her unprotected, no matter how much he wanted to.
“Hold that thought,” he said.
She grabbed his wrist before he could move away and stuffed a condom into his hand. The little minx had planned this all along. Unlike him, she
thought ahead. And he loved that she knew how to get what she wanted. He quickly applied the condom and then filled her with one deep thrust.
She rocked back to meet his thrusts. “Take me, Jacob.”
His balls clenched at the sound of his name on her lips.
“Jacob.”
The doorbell rang.
Amanda tensed. “Who could that be?”
Shade thrust harder, trying to regain her attention. “Don’t know, don’t care.” He rotated his hips. Amanda moaned and relaxed against the table.
The doorbell rang again and then someone pounded on the door.
“Jacob, get the door,” Amanda pleaded.
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“Yeah, me. Now go answer the door.”
“Bossy damned woman,” he grumbled and pulled out with a wince of protest.
The doorbell rang several times in rapid succession.
“This better be fucking important,” he grumbled as he stripped off the condom, pulled his swim trunks up and tucked his stiff-as-a-board cock inside them.
“If it’s not, I’m going to kick someone’s ass,” Amanda said as she pulled his shirt down to cover her beguiling ass.
Damn, she looked good in that shirt.
More pounding. Shade stomped off to see who dared interrupt his attempts to earn extra credit with Amanda against the kitchen table.
Shade opened the door to Adam. Should have known he’d be responsible for Shade’s discomfort.
“This better be an emergency,” Shade said.
“I need to talk to you.”
Shade took a moment to look Adam over more carefully. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before, and he looked as if he’d slept in them. Or as if he hadn’t slept at all.
“You look like shit,” Shade said. He stepped aside and allowed Adam to enter the house.
“Yeah, that sometimes happens when you’re up all night.”
“Let me guess: you drove back to Dallas to hook up with your counselor again.”
“Actually I was in the emergency room, but that’s not why I’m here.” Adam’s gaze moved to a point behind Shade, and his eyes widened. “Amanda?”
“Hey, Adam,” she said. “Did I overhear that you were in the ER? What happened? Are you hurt?”
“No, my dad’s in the hospital.”
“Oh,” Amanda said. “Is he okay?”
“Sort of.”
“Shit, man. Why didn’t you call last night? Do you need a few days off?” Shade asked.
“No, that’s not why I’m here. They assure me he’ll be fine. I came over here to talk to you. We need to clear the air, Shade. I can’t take this anger between us anymore.”
“Clear the air?”
“I need to know what you think I did that was so wrong.”
Shade’s spine straightened. He had no idea why Adam would choose now of all times to pick a fight. “What I think you did wrong?”
Adam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Apparently, you think I’ve done something truly horrible, but I don’t even know what it is. So you can tell me and we can hash this out here. Or, if you’d rather, we can keep pissing each other off for reasons I don’t understand.”
Shade was flabbergasted. All this time he’d thought Adam was an inconsiderate prick, selfish and callous about stealing one of the most significant events of Shade’s life from him, and now Adam was saying he didn’t know why Shade had been infuriated with him for years?
“You really don’t know what you did?”
“I’m pretty sure it has something to do with my drug abuse. I was wasted all the time when it all went down, but no, I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember me shoving my finger down your throat in Nashville so you’d purge whatever cocktail of pills you’d ingested that night?”
Adam gave a barely perceptible shake of his head.
“You don’t remember throwing up all over me and me dragging you out of the tour bus because the EMTs couldn’t fit the gurney up through the door?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You don’t remember calling me a meddling asshole and telling me to mind my own business and that you could get high if you wanted to?”
Adam smirked. “I do remember that.”
Shade scowled at him. “You don’t remember dying in the ambulance? You don’t remember them defibrillating you back to life?”
Adam’s jaw dropped. His breath caught. He went white.
“I died?”
“Yes, Adam, you fucking died and while I was watching your own selfish stupidity kill you, my baby was taking her first breath in another hospital. I missed Julie’s birth because you were so insistent on destroying yourself.”
Adam ran a shaking hand through his thick black hair. “Shade, I don’t remember much of anything from those days. I was in a bad place then.”
“Now is different?”
Adam’s hands clenched into fists. “Yes, now is totally different! I’m not doing drugs anymore. You’re too busy to notice. Or care.”
Shade closed his eyes and shook his head. He wished he was too busy to care. He was just so tired of this. So tired of Adam’s denial. His lies. “You’re still doing drugs, Adam. I caught you smoking pot two nights ago. So soon you forget.”
Adam rubbed his haggard face with both hands and then crossed his arms over his chest. “It was just a little. And it was only pot. I mean…” He scowled, obviously still in denial. “You smoke it.”
“I haven’t smoked pot in years, Adam. Not since Julie was born. I grew up while you were stoned out of your mind. You just didn’t notice.”
Adam released a heavy sigh. “I’m not going to do drugs anymore, Shade.”
Shade lifted an eyebrow at him.
Adam stood there with his hands clenching and unclenching. His entire body was tense. Shade had seen this behavior before. Adam got this way right before he started swinging his fists. Shade waited for him to snap. He’d knock him on his ass if he had to. Wouldn’t be the first time. Adam’s intense, gray-eyed gaze bored into Shade’s, but instead of lashing out at him, he said, “Fuck, Shade. Why can’t you give me a second chance?”
Adam was still blaming his difficulties on everyone but himself. Was the guy incapable of seeing reality?
“A second chance?” Shade yelled, unable to keep his temper in check any longer. “I’ve already given you a second chance, Adam. And a third chance. And a hundredth chance.” Shade shoved him in the shoulder, forcing Adam to take a step back. “Just how many fucking chances do you think you deserve?”
Adam’s features hardened. “You don’t believe I’ve changed. You don’t believe I’m taking control of my life. The only one who sees the real me is Madison.”
Shade released a derisive snort. “Your counselor? The one you’re screwing?” Shade shook his head at him. “She’s going to see what she wants to see. She’s become your biggest enabler. There are some women you should never fuck.”
Adam tilted his head toward the doorway that Amanda had graced only moments before. “Such as your ex-wife’s sister?”
Touché. “Fuck off, Adam. You don’t know anything about my life.”
“And you don’t know anything about mine.”
Shade narrowed his eyes. He really wished he could give the guy the benefit of the doubt, but he could only try to put a broken train back on its track so many times before he had to believe the