Now she wanted him to share more than reptile facts and polite conversation. An urge tugged below his skin, to tell her about David Industries and his father’s cancer, details he hadn’t even shared with Marco. The pull was confusing and hard to fight.
“I stuttered as a child,” he told her. Not the thing he wanted to say. The safe thing, though still difficult. “It got worse in my teens, made those years hard for me—which I’m guessing Tami told you about.”
Clementine had the decency to look guilty. “She might have mentioned something.”
“I can always count on her.”
“You don’t stutter now.”
“Speech therapy helped, but ultimately, singing cured me. Focusing on the notes and rhythms loosened something in my brain. I’ve never seen my father so proud as the day I sang an Elvis song start to finish, not a stutter in sight.” Don’t ever stop singing, son, he’d said. Hearing your voice brings me joy. Jack hoped it would bring him that and more at this year’s festival, as long as he completed his research.
Clementine angled more fully toward him. “Tell me another.”
Her eyes kept flitting to his thumb, making him aware of his absentminded movements. She made him aware of the speed of his breaths—deeper and faster since sitting beside her. He’d become attuned to the chafing of his jeans along his thighs, the pressure of his laced boots. With her, all his senses heightened.
His thumb slid up and down his beer, drawing a slow circle, moving the condensation around. Was that a whimper from dear Clementine?
He smiled to himself. “I’ll give you another secret if you give me one of yours.”
The tiniest flinch darkened her face. “Who says I have secrets?”
A shaky question from a woman who’d lied about her name. “Here I was, just starting to like you, and you go being annoying again.”
She glanced around dramatically. “Who, me?”
“No. The other mysterious woman with strawberry-blonde hair and a bearded dragon named Lucy.”
“Does this kind of flattery get you far with the ladies?”
“If you listened to Tami, you’d know the answer to that.”
A covert smile tilted her lips. “Want a tip?”
“I’m all ears.” He was curious where Clementine was going with that sultry look of hers, the intimate drop in her tone.
She leaned in close, her warm breath ghosting against his lips. “From one idiot to another: when a girl avoids a question, calling her annoying won’t help your cause.”
He nodded sagely. “Who said I had a cause?”
She shrugged a shoulder, nursed a slow sip of her beer.
He mirrored her pose, facing the bar. Their thighs brushed slightly, and he continued dragging his thumb up and down his bottle. She passed her beer back and forth between her hands, leaving a wet streak on the bar. They snuck a look at each other at the same moment. He raised an eyebrow.
She rolled her eyes, then sighed. “I’m the reason my mother died of an overdose.”
It was his turn to flinch. She’d offered her startling truth pragmatically, no more emotion than if she’d said I don’t step on sidewalk cracks or I’ve never eaten an oyster.
“How was it your fault?”
“My father died the year before,” she said, still matter-of-fact. Emotionless. “My mother worked two jobs, barely keeping up with bills. We’d moved to an apartment and our rent was behind. I was ten and fending for myself.”
“Did you have siblings?”
She shook her head. “An only child, and not a very smart one. All the idiot awards belong to me.”
“I find that impossible to believe.” He wanted to fold her in his arms, let his warmth dull the bite of her painful memories.
A sad smile cracked her stoic façade. “I fucked up heating pasta sauce, so, yeah—idiot of the century. I forgot that I put the pot on the stove to reheat. Got busy reading one of my father’s old car magazines. I pored over them like him, desperate to learn everything I could about classic cars, learn what he knew. It wasn’t until smoke filled my room and the fire alarm blared that I remembered. Then our landlady came banging on the door. When she realized I was home alone, about to start a fire, she called child services.”
“They took you from your mother?”
She stared dead ahead. “They didn’t care that she was the only family I had. Just ripped me out and tossed me in the foster system. Six or so months later, I got the news. She’d OD’d. Couldn’t handle life without me. All because I burned pasta sauce.” Although her voice had remained impassive, Clementine was all hard lines and edges, as though readying herself to withstand a blast of wind.
He couldn’t fathom what she’d endured, but her resilience was as fierce as her posture, and gratitude swamped him. Sharing this brittle piece of herself had taken trust. “I could tell you it’s not your fault, that a ten-year-old shouldn’t have to remember to stir her pasta sauce, but that won’t change the past.” When she remained impassive, he leaned toward her ear. “I don’t know what you’re like at work or how you live your life, but I see a strong woman who fixes cars and keeps pace with my superior jogging and who loves her bearded dragon unselfishly, even if she’s annoyingly secretive at times. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re not a woman who’s risen above her past. I’d say you’ve risen because of it.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled.
He frowned. Had he said the wrong thing? Of course he’d said the wrong thing. It was in his DNA to say the wrong thing to women. But when she faced him and opened her eyes, the glassiness and lift of her brow told him that just maybe this time he’d said something right.
“Tell me another secret,” she whispered.
This one left before he could contain it. “I want to kiss you.”
10
Clementine almost slid off her stool. Boneless. He’d turned her boneless with nothing but five words. No, not five. Every word he’d just offered had loosened the bitter hold she kept on her past. Lucien, the only other person who knew her story, had never given her that kind of salve. He’d told her to forget it, that it wasn’t her fault. That the system was to blame. Yet here was Jack, telling her to embrace her awful, not bury it. Accept what had happened, her fault or not, the system’s fault or not. Accept it and live with it and let it shape you.
Now he wanted to kiss her.
God, she wanted that, and so much more. To experience sex with someone who knew pieces of her puzzle, who didn’t pity her but lifted her up. If he got his skilled hands on her, she feared and thrilled at what could happen.
The burning desire shot her back in time, to them standing over his stalled Jaguar.
“You’re certainly good with your hands,” he’d said.
“Best if one of us is, or you’d be stuck waiting for a tow.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t good with my hands.”
“You can’t fix your own car.”
“I’m good at other things.”
Other things. What things? All the things? Some things? Which damn things? “You said you couldn’t ask me on a date,” she said, voice shaky. A pitiful attempt to force their distance.