Just then, she was struck by the fact that she was surrounded by him—things that smelled like him, what he liked to look at and taste—and was overwhelmed. Even though she’d found herself stammering and a little awkward around him, she found that she liked being surrounded by him and his things and the way he smelled. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
Her words were croaked out, and then he winked at her. He might as well have just taken the bones out of her legs right then. “Have a seat. Bourbon okay?”
“Bourbon is great.” She sank onto the butter-soft leather of his couch and stared up at the ceiling when he turned to mix their drinks, extracting an orange and ice from a minifridge next to the bar.
As he worked, she had the opportunity to stare at his gorgeous, perfectly round ass as he bent and straightened and shook their cocktails. Everything he did seduced her. He didn’t even have to mention sex to make her feel like he was putting moves on. She was so screwed.
If she did manage to keep him interested in her for two whole weeks, she was going to miss him when things eventually fizzled out.
The whole reason that Jack had asked her out was that she was an überconfident bitch on wheels. The more he got to know her, the less she tried to be perfect, the less he would like her. Either that, or she would get tired of the whole façade and just want to be herself: sometimes an überconfident bitch, sometimes just a girl who asked rude questions and liked bourbon on the rocks with a hot man.
For a moment, she wished that this was an entirely different scenario. Maybe that she’d met him years ago, before she’d met Noah. If they’d gone out then, she could have swaggered and told dirty jokes and captivated him with how flipping cool she was without worrying that she couldn’t be herself with him.
She shook that thought out of her head. Didn’t need to be thinking about what it would be like to date him for real. This whole production was for one purpose, and one purpose only—to get him to fall in love with her and secure a promotion. Whatever happened afterward didn’t matter.
If he liked a bitch on wheels who flipped him off one moment and kissed the hell out of him the next, that’s what she would give him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHEN IT HAD COME time for Sean Nolan to give a birds-and-bees talk, he hadn’t wasted any time. Michael had been ten and Jack had been eight.
All three of them sat down in the family living room, Sean in his easy chair and Michael and Jack on the sofa facing him. They’d each had a beer—root for Michael and Jack.
Sean ran his work-hewn paw over the rapidly graying stubble on his face, looked them each in the eye, and said, “Ladies first.”
Michael and Jack looked at each other and then back at their dad. Sean continued, “I found the porn on the computer, and you need to know that it’s all bullshit. That’s not how sex should work. Mostly because it’s supposed to be fun for both of you. And to have it be fun for both of you . . . ladies first. Any questions?”
Jack and his brother had remained silent for a long moment. They’d telepathically decided that they were probably better off finding out more information from one of their mom’s romance novels, and mostly relieved that neither of them was getting in trouble for watching porn. So they shook their heads.
Sean nodded, took a swig of beer, and added, “Also, wrap it up, for Christ’s sake.”
* * *
—
HANNAH HAD SETTLED ON her plan to remain a mercurial harpy to keep him interested, when Jack swaggered as he brought her drink over. She didn’t even call him on it, and she was for sure losing her edge. The spark that passed between them when he passed her the drink might have shorted out her bitch circuits completely. And not even the cold bourbon and slight tinge of bitters and orange could bring them back.
He took a seat at the end of his couch, close enough that she could touch him if she reached out, but far enough that it was clear that he wasn’t trying to crowd her.
“So.” Just one word. Then he took a swallow of his drink and she watched his throat work. Over dinner they’d mostly covered pop culture and politics, so she knew that he was publicly neutral but privately liberal, that he liked Game of Thrones the TV show more than the books, and that he was a serious foodie. His love of tacos and choice of restaurants weren’t just flukes.
“How’d you get into journalism?”
“A girl.” He gave her a wry laugh and looked at her under his too-long-for-a-man lashes. “Every bit of trouble I’ve ever gotten into happened because of a girl.”
“Oh, really?” She took a sip of her drink, trying out her words as the liquor made its fiery way down her throat. “Do you think I’m trouble?”
“Definitely.” The certainty in his declarative statement combined with his smile made her feel as though they were back into flirty-first-date mode and out of the awkward swamp she’d been wading through for the past few hours.
Maybe it was the extra drink, or the ease in pressure from not being out at a superfancy restaurant. Or the intimacy of it being just the two of them. But the magic that she’d felt the first night they’d met was back in action, that feeling that she could do no wrong, that he saw her and liked what he saw.
And it was more intoxicating than an eighteen-course meal and wine pairings. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”
He scooted toward her on the couch so his bent knee touched her thigh. She fought off a moan of pleasure at the contact. First, his manners were going to get her off, and now his touching her thigh? She’d definitely been out of the sex rat race too long if this was going to be her reaction.
She was like a fourteen-year-old girl with a poster of Freddie Prinze Jr. in her room again. Except—like the current Mr. Sarah Michelle Gellar and all-around silver fox—Jack wasn’t a teenage boy; he was one hundred percent, full-fledged man.
“I like the kind of trouble I could get into with you, Duchess.”
“Why ‘Duchess’?”
“Just popped into my head, I guess.”
“No one else would have that pop into their head when thinking of me.” She couldn’t be further from royal material.
“You look kind of like the new one.” He skimmed a fingertip, cool from holding his drink, on the exposed skin of her thigh, making eye contact to make sure she was on board with it. “But that’s not why I called you that.”
“Why did you?”
“That first night we met, you might have been flipping me and my buddies off, but there was something kind of classy about it.”
She nearly choked on her drink. Classy? Her? Never in her life had anyone described her that way. Assertive? Yes. Mouthy? Of course. A total raging bitch? On more than one occasion.