Insecure. That was what Jason had suggested about Dominic. Was it true? He’d certainly made her feel insecure. He had a way of keeping her off balance so that she was always looking to him for cues. Was he in a good mood? Did he need some space? If she got it wrong, would he make her feel like shit?
She tried to picture Jason deliberately trying to make her feel like shit, and nearly laughed out loud. It was unimaginable.
Jason ambled back into the bedroom, his partial erection bobbing between his legs. He pretended to stop dead at the sight of her in his bed. “So it wasn’t just a fever dream.”
“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “We had sex. And it was top-notch, in case you forgot that part too.”
He climbed into bed and pulled the covers over himself. “Next question. Are you a big spoon or a little spoon? Or anti-spoon?”
She rolled onto her side and plastered herself against his warm skin. Oddly, her mind wasn’t already turning a mile a minute, racing onto the next thing she had to do. That was what usually happened after sex. “I don’t have an official spoon policy.”
“Fair enough.”
“Do you?”
“I think it depends on the specific people and how their bodies fit together. Should we test it out?”
“Okay. I’ll be big spoon first since I’m already facing that way.”
He rolled over and she wrapped her arms around him and snuggled close. His warmth penetrated all the way through the front of her body. She could float there for hours.
“Well?” he asked.
“I like. How is it for you?”
“Your beautiful breasts are pressing against my back so I have no complaints.” She liked how the rumble of his voice vibrated into her skin.
“Let’s try the other way.” It took a few moments of awkward adjustment for both of them to roll onto their other side. His body curved around hers like a shield. His arm came over her, more comforting than a weighted blanket. But… “I like the other way better,” she said. “This is a little claustrophobic for me.”
Instantly he removed his arm and they shifted back the other direction.
“Better. Thank you.” It wasn’t just better, it was positively blissful.
“So you don’t like to feel trapped, is that it?”
“Something like that.”
She could sense him absorbing that, taking a mental picture the way he had of her panties.
“Can you promise me something?” he murmured.
“I can. Don’t know if I will.”
With a chuckle, he shifted his butt against her groin. Warm comfort surrounded her and she felt her eyelids begin to droop closed. She still had a few things to talk to him about. There was a list she’d composed in her mind on her way over from his house, after Holly’s revelation. But couldn’t remember it now.
“Can you promise me that if anything I do makes you feel trapped or claustrophobic or any other bad thing like that, you’ll tell me? Don’t keep it to yourself, is what I mean. I want to know.”
“That seems fair.”
It seemed like something more important for a real relationship instead of a rebound. But speaking up for yourself was always a good thing. Her parents had taught her that, and she’d always tried to live up to it.
Until Dominic.
That was the worst thing he’d done, she realized in a flash. He’d stolen her business plan and dumped her without a second thought, but even worse than that, he’d made her stifle herself. She’d taken a back seat to him and his charisma and his brilliant future. She’d allowed self-doubt to sneak into her heart and soul.
But Jason had the antidote. Or maybe he was the antidote. Right now she didn’t even care that she’d bungled the town manager job. She didn’t care about Explastica, she didn’t care about Dominic. She didn’t care if she was a failure at everything except orgasms.
She hugged her body to Jason’s, contentment penetrating into every pore.
Sexual healing. Maybe that was what a rebound was all about.
Fifteen
Two weeks later, at the height of the summer season, Jason was sworn in as fire chief. Thrown into the deep end, so to speak. Summer was when kids set off unauthorized fireworks, young partiers got into jet ski battles, and campfires sometimes got out of control. He knew the drill, since he’d always loved summer in Lake Bittersweet.
As fire chief, Jason had to choose more carefully when to joke around and when to take things seriously. For instance, when he stumbled across Brent insisting that all new volunteers had to shave a loon into their hair, he had to regretfully put a stop to the prank.
He had to break it to Peggy, the part-time firehouse office assistant, that if she was going to bring her African grey parrot to work, she couldn’t allow him to bark commands when people were on the firehouse phone. Callers were getting confused.
“Really?” Her lined face brightened with glee. “Someone really thought Pepper was a person?”
“In emergencies, people panic. Our job isn’t to make them more confused.”
“Did you hear that, Pepper? You did it!” She gave her parrot a high-five through his cage; he lifted one claw in response. “You sound like a human being! Better than some humans,” she added under breath, “because you don’t hear him making up crap.”
“You understand what I’m saying, right, Peggy?” Sometimes he had to make extra sure the communication loop had been completed.
“I understand that you don’t understand how smart this bird is.” She offered him a treat, which he grasped in his claw and brought to his beak. “He could probably teach these new kids around here a few things.”
“Maybe we can bring him in to assist with some trainings,” Jason said gravely. That satisfied her, and she stopped bringing Pepper to the station with her.
Fire chief-ing involved a lot more paperwork than he’d ever imagined. He hated paperwork, for obvious reasons. It probably took him twice as long to do things like budget projections as it had ever taken Thomas Cooper. On the bright side, he did it very thoroughly and meticulously, and caught several errors that the interim fire chief, a retired firefighter who couldn’t wait to get back to his fishing, had made.
To help him get through the more mundane paperwork, he hired a part-time assistant. Amber Kenosha was a bright high school student who was training with Gina Moretti to try out for the Olympic canoe sprint team. She needed some extra money and flexible hours, which suited Jason perfectly. All he wanted her to do was summarize reports for him, and occasionally write a rough draft of a presentation. Having a starting point helped him enormously.
Hiring Amber had been Kendra’s idea.
“That’s what I would have done if I got the town manager job. Did that sound bitter?”
“No. But you don’t have to give your ideas away for free, not anymore.”
It burned him up that not even her outstanding performance on the news had changed the minds of the hiring committee. Jason still didn’t understand why, but he was determined to find out. He was on the inside now, after all.
“It’s only for you, Jaybone. I have another idea for you.”
He’d stopped by the Blue Drake for lunch, and sat at the bar munching on fries and waiting for the brief moments when she had time to chat.