“Did you grow up in this house, Jake?” she asked, trying to make it look like she’d turned to him to ask him this totally innocent question.
“Nope.” He picked up his fork with his right hand.
So he was going to retreat into his Mute Jake persona. She refrained from rolling her eyes, but only just.
“I moved here after my first wife—Jake’s mom—died,” Art said. “We lived just a block over. I wanted to stay in the neighborhood, but I didn’t need that big a house anymore.”
Jamila smiled at him affectionately. “We thought about upsizing after I came on the scene, but Art has this idea that we’re going to buy an RV and live like vagabonds after I retire, which is at the end of this school year.”
“You say ‘idea’ like you’re not into it, but you know you’re into it,” Art teased. Nora thought back to the way they had bantered at the flu clinic.
“Oh, hush.”
“She’s even designed the interior,” Art said. “She’s a pretty serious antiques collector.” He beamed with obvious pride. It was adorable. “This is going to be the best-looking RV in the history of RVs.”
“If this place is anything to go by, I suspect you’re right,” Nora said. “Your home is beautiful.”
“You have any luck finding a new place?” Jamila asked. “Don’t forget I can lend you furniture.”
Nora winced. She hadn’t even started looking. She was too busy working to make time to go on the hunt. Okay, no, that wasn’t true. She was too busy getting it on with Jake to go on the hunt.
“I haven’t.” She glanced at Eve. “I really need to get on that.”
“Not on my account, you don’t,” Eve said. “It’s been awesome having you at the inn. And you’re making it possible for us to go on vacation.”
“Well, thanks. You really saved me there.”
“I like the idea that my old room is being put to good use.”
Jake coughed. “Yeah, it’s good to…put things to use.”
She knew he was thinking of the same thing she was—hitting “first base” in that room the day of the Anti-Festival.
Everyone looked at Jake curiously, probably in part because it was a cryptic thing to say. But no doubt also because Jake was not one to make observations, cryptic or otherwise, unprompted.
He was messing with her again.
And it was working. Her cheeks heated. They were probably as pink as the room. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
“That was delicious,” Eve said after they emerged from Art and Jamila’s. She looked around. “Do you have your truck here, Jake? We can take you to the end of the beach.”
“Nah, I walked, and I think I’ll walk back, too, but thanks.” Jake eyed Nora. She was still annoyed about the hand-holding, he was pretty sure. And she had come in the car with Eve and Sawyer and Clara. So this was probably goodbye for the evening.
Which was more than a little disappointing.
“A walk sounds good, actually,” Nora said. “Walk off some of that dinner. If you don’t mind company.”
Jake had to tamp down a smile.
Nora waited until Sawyer’s car was out of sight to whirl on him. “What the hell was that?”
He played dumb. “What the hell was what?”
“Oh, come on, Jake. Holding hands under the table?”
“Eh, it’s fine.” She did not understand how deeply ingrained his reputation was in town. People saw what they expected to see. “No one noticed.”
Except maybe Sawyer. He was starting to worry that Sawyer was onto him. But that was more of a long-standing worry, predating the evening’s renegade hand-holding.
But Sawyer aside, people did not expect Jake to be holding the new town doctor’s hand under the table.
“What happened to not doing romance?” she asked. “Because I”—she stopped and smacked her chest. It was a quiet, still night, so it echoed across the dark street. “I am not interested in romance.”
“That wasn’t romance.”
“Then what the hell was it?”
Good question. All he knew was that every once in a while—or, okay, a lot of the time—he was seized with the absurd desire to grab her hand.
He always resisted. Because she was right. They weren’t doing the relationship thing. Grasping hands while they were having sex was one thing. While they were walking along the beach? No.
So he always managed to resist. But when suddenly thrust into a situation where he was already holding her hand, he just…hadn’t let go.
But Nora was right. What they were doing was not romance. Luckily, there was another explanation.
“That was me trolling you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You said it yourself. We’re friends with benefits, but we’re also friends. Sometimes I like to prank my friends.” Which had been true. Like fifteen years ago. “One time in high school when Law’s parents were out of town and he was supposed to be minding the bar—he’s a few years older than I am—Sawyer and I drained one of the kegs and filled it with water.” Never mind that that was the last “prank” he could think of.
She shook her head. “You are the worst.”
But she wasn’t saying it like she meant it.
They walked on in easy silence until they turned onto Main Street. The inn was a few storefronts up.
“I’m fine from here,” she said.
“You say that like you don’t want me to blow your mind this evening.”
She snorted.
“Well, okay then. If you’re fine…” He started walking backward. “Good night.”
“Jake.” She stopped with her hands on her hips, shaking her head like she was a schoolteacher trying to cover her amusement by faking annoyance.
“Nora.” He kept walking backward, but he slowed down. God, she was so easy to tease. She was fun to tease. Which was, for him, rather extraordinary.
“Come on, Jake.” She crooked her finger at him.
He jogged back to her. “I’m not sure I understand. Your words aren’t making sense. You might have to use body language.” He held out a hand. “You might have to take my hand and show me what you want me to do.”
“Jake.” With that single syllable, her tone shifted. Lurched, really, from light and bantery to low and needy.
He shifted to accommodate it. They were done playing.
This happened to him, with her. They’d be cruising along just fine and suddenly there would be this giant swerve. She would do something or say something, or even just look at him the wrong way—the right way?—and lust would just…slam into him.
It happened to her, too, he was pretty sure. She walked briskly and purposefully up the sidewalk, but she radiated need. He did, too, he suspected, because taking her hand or not taking her hand was suddenly the least of his worries. His entire body felt like it was pulsing to an unseen rhythm. It was an invisible force that was bigger than he was. All he could do was obey it. It wanted him to touch her, and not just her hand. It wanted him to be inside her.
“Nora,” he bit out as she kept going, past the Mermaid. He sounded like he was mad at her, which wasn’t quite right, but where was she going? They hadn’t talked about it overtly, but they seemed to have entered into an unspoken agreement to keep the fact that they were hooking up to themselves. Which meant no hooking up at the Mermaid, where they would risk Eve and Sawyer finding out. So they’d been spending a lot of time at his place.