Love Is the Drug (8 page)

Jason took the flask from his pocket and unscrewed the cap. “So—as far as I’m concerned, we’ve talked about Connie.” While he poured a slow stream of the amber liquid into first one glass and then the other, he continued, “Since you’re more media savvy than I am—how do you propose that we ‘spin’ the story of why we’re working together?”

Julie nibbled on her lower lip and then lifted the glass and took a small sip. It burned going down and she had to swallow an answering cough. “I don’t know,” she said, placing the glass back on top of the kitchen island and crossing her arms over her chest. “Let me think a minute.” She swallowed again, trying to sooth the liquor burn at the back of her throat a bit more.

She really hadn’t wanted anything else to drink, but her ploy to diffuse Jason’s irritation at learning about Connie’s publicist’s nosing into his business had completely backfired on her when he’d followed her in here a few minutes ago. She would have dearly loved to keep that little gem to herself as well, but she couldn’t think of another way to convince him why she would trust him—other than admitting to having
proof
that he was innocent, of course. Yes, giving away that piece of unsavory information about the publicist had been her only good choice.

And, thankfully, seeing his more familiar, relaxed behavior now, it had done the trick. “We could focus mostly on the financial benefits of our partnership,” she said. “You know, really press home how our enterprise is going to increase income in the entire community.”

He downed the whiskey and held the back of his hand to his mouth a second before answering. “Good. I like it. And we’ll say that this was a dream of my dad’s—which both of us wanted to see fulfilled.”

Julie nodded and looked over Jason’s left shoulder as she thought some more. “Yeah. Yeah. And I’ll tell them that in the last few months of her life, and as part of her drug addiction treatment, Connie had owned up to her own responsibility regarding things that had happened in her life.” Julie lifted her eyes to him once more. “Which she did, by the way.” And then she shifted her gaze to the countertop saying, “I’ll also say that, as part of the healing process, she had forgiven everyone whom she believed had done harm to her and that she would embrace this partnership as a way for both of our families to mend our differences.”

Her gaze focused on him again. “Which I think she would.”

Jason picked up Julie’s abandoned smiley face glass and downed the remainder of her whiskey. “Well,” he said then, “if they ask me if I tried to drug and rape her—I’m standing by what I said five years ago: No I did not.”

“Fine,” Julie answered. It was only fair, after all,
since he really
hadn’t
done it.

* * *

“You’re not still planning to go to Dallas tonight, are you?” Julie asked as Jason took the steps down off her front porch a few minutes later.

He glanced at his watch. The hands and numbers glowed bright enough that she could almost read them from where she stood. “Yep,” he said. “It’s only eleven-thirty and Dallas is just a little over an hour from here.”

Julie stepped further out onto the porch. “What’s the rush? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until morning? After you’ve had a good night’s sleep?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, but…” he sighed, stopped, and turned to face her with his hands on his hips. “Look, Julie. Here’s the deal: I’m not going to Dallas on business. I’m going to Dallas for
pleasure.
Get me?”

Julie’s brows drew together. It took her a minute to figure out what he was talking about, and when it finally struck her, it hit with the force of a one-ton weight against her chest. She actually stopped breathing for a second. “Oh. I see. Yeah.” She blinked. “I get you, sure.”

The way he’d acted earlier at the bar, when they’d danced together, when he’d seemed miffed at Mike for spending so much time with her, and then, especially, when he’d held her to him—real protective like—when they came upon Nora Lee. Well, she’d thought, maybe, he was,
possibly,
a little attracted to
her
too
.

Jason turned toward his car. “Good. I’ll see you on Sunday.” He was almost at the Vette’s rear bumper when he turned around again. “You’ll be alright now, dealing with the questions while I’m gone, right?”

She gave a small sigh but nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” She fluttered a brief wave in his direction. “Take care, Jason. Drive safely.”

He grinned and shook his head but then he nodded and gave her a salute. “Yes, ma’am.” He was in his car and peeling out of the makeshift space before she had time to blink. As she walked back inside and shut the door, she had to take several very deep, very long breaths to fight the self-pity that threatened to take hold.

After another moment, she walked into her kitchen and brought out all nine ingredients for making fudge brownies.

* * *

Jason let up on the gas and slowed the Vette, preparing to make the turn onto Julie’s gravel drive. It was late Friday morning, and an early return from his not-so-stellar attempt at escape. Escape from the questions. And escape from his attraction to the wholly inappropriate person of Julie Del Mar.

Yes, now that he’d failed—big—he could admit that part of the reason he’d fled to Dallas had been because of her. And, now, the
entire
reason he’d returned—only a day and a half later—was also because of her.

He was almost to the house before he noticed the all-too-familiar black Mercedes sitting in his usual parking spot next to Julie’s red Chevy truck. He came real close to slamming his car into reverse and high-tailing it back onto the farm-to-market road, but guilt—and, he admitted it, curiosity—curtailed that impulse. He whipped into the space—more weedy turf than gravel— next to the Merc and cut the engine. He was just getting out of his car when he heard the front door of the house slam and Nora Lee’s over-done Texas drawl descend upon him.

“Why, Sugar, Julie was just sure you wouldn’t be back ‘til Sunday.”

He looked past Nora Lee to Julie. Dressed in a sexy little short-cropped white tank and faded cutoff jeans, she stood on the porch, one hand wrapped around a blue post and the other resting along the top of the white picket banister that enclosed the porch on three sides of the farmhouse. She appeared to be a little lost and a whole lot confused as she stared back at him. He lifted his hand and cocked his head back briefly in silent salute to her before turning his attention to the near-blinding zebra-stripes and Insta-tanned cleavage coming toward him.

“Hi, Nora Lee. Why are you here?” Okay, so maybe that was a little blunt, but really,
why the
hell
was she here??
The only reasons he could come up with were not good. Not good at all.

“I was just welcomin’ Julie back to town, is all.” When she was just a pace or two away from him, she dropped her voice a few decibels and said, “Are you sure you can trust her, Jason? I mean, what if this is just some ruse to get revenge on you for what you tried doin’ to her sister?”

If Nora Lee were a man, he’d have slugged her. Instead, he clamped his jaw shut tight and narrowed his eyes at her.

“Hey, Sugar, don’t get mad at
me!
” she said, holding up both hands. “I’m just lookin’ out for your best interests.”

“Go home, Nora Lee.” He took hold of her upper arm and ushered her, not too gently, around to the driver’s side of her Mercedes. This was getting way too common an occurrence as far as he was concerned. He opened the car door and waited for her to get inside.

“Well! This is a fine how-do-you-do,” she said as she rammed the key into the ignition. She looked up at him then. “I was only tryin’ to help you, you know.”

Jason felt a pang of guilt. Maybe he was being too hard on her. Maybe her intentions were purer than he was giving her credit for. “Look, Nora Lee. I appreciate it. I really do. But, for the record, I trust Julie. She’s a good kid—and honest. I’m sure you can see that, now that you’ve had a little more time to get to know her.”

Nora Lee surprised him when she chuckled. It came from deep in her throat and kinda put his nerves on edge. “Honey, it’s the quiet,
unaffected
ones that you should trust the least.” The engine came to life then and with a trace of a wave, she peeled out of the space and gunned it down the drive, throwing dust and gravel in her wake.

* * *

“What was that all about?” Julie asked as Jason climbed the steps to the porch a couple of minutes later.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he replied.

Julie shrugged and looked back at the drive. “I don’t know really. She came knocking on the door about a half hour ago.” She shifted her gaze back to his. “It was strange. She was perfectly pleasant, but after I gave her a glass of iced tea, she kind of started grilling me.”

“Shit.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.” He strode past her and opened the front door, holding it that way until she passed through. “What’d she ask you?” he said as he followed her inside.

“Oh, you know,” she replied, walking toward the kitchen, “stuff like, ‘Wouldn’t your sister be angry at you for becoming partners with her abuser?’” At the kitchen island, she turned and faced him and rested her left hip up against it. “Essentially the same type of questions we were expecting from the whole town. And, since you and I had already prepared our story, I was able to take the wind out of her sails, so to speak, pretty quickly.” She ran her hand toward him along the edge of the ancient, slightly chipped, red tiled countertop of the island, then swept it up to settle on its flat surface. “Hey, by the way, the other citizens have been surprisingly mute on the subject. I figured I’d be bombarded these past two days, but I hadn’t had one single visitor until Nora Lee showed up.”

Jason scrubbed his palm over the back of his neck. “Good.”

“So—you’re back early. Weren’t you having a good time?”

Jason cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sure. It was...”
Sshhit!
“Listen, Julie. Here’s the deal: I had it all lined up, was looking forward to it in fact, but then”—he reached out and placed his hand over hers—“I just kept remembering how great it felt to have you pressed up against me, how much I liked having you there.” Her eyes widened and her pupils dilated. He took a step closer. “So, I thought: Why go to Dallas when there’s a super cute, sexy alternative right here in Buffalo Pass?” He moved into her space then and lifted his hand to her cheek. “What say, Julie? You game?”

Her brows drew together as she focused her gaze on his. “Am I game?” Then, before he could answer, her brows lifted and her jaw dropped open a bit. She pulled away from him. “Are you asking me to have an
affair
with you?”

He frowned. “Not really an affair—that’s much more complicated than what I have in mind. This would be more of a—I don’t know—a simple arrangement to feed a natural urge. You know, relieve some stress so we can function better as business partners. And it would be convenient as hell, too.”

Her cheeks turned from pink to red. Then the blush traveled down to her neck and chest. “So, let me get this straight: You want to have sex with me as a
stress reliever
? Because it’s
convenient
?”

Jason couldn’t help it, he smiled a little. “Well, I certainly didn’t mean that it should be
that
utilitarian of an exercise,” he joked as he placed his hands on her shoulders. “It’d be a helluva lot of fun too, I can promise you that.”

She yanked out of his hold and stepped back several paces. He could tell by how rapidly her chest was rising and falling that he’d pissed her off. But good.

He took a step closer, lifting his hand out toward her. “Hey, don’t be offended, okay?” He shrugged. “If you don’t want to do it, fine. It was just an idea.”

She looked away, tucking her hair behind her ear and biting her lower lip. “Okay,” she said, crossing her arms over chest.

He blinked. With a grin, he said, “Okay? You’ll do it?”

She swung her gaze to his. “
NO!
I
meant
, ‘okay, I’ll try not to be offended.’” She dropped her hands to her hips, shaking her head. “God!”

“Sorry,” he said. Okay, back to Plan A.

Except.

That hadn’t worked so well.

Shit.

Plan C it would have to be. It’d probably be cheaper to just buy new bar bells than to have them shipped. He’d donate them to the YMCA or something when he left.

Hey, he could do this. It’d probably even make him finish the designs faster.

* * *

Julie was standing at the kitchen sink a few hours later, cleaning potatoes and carrots for the stew she was about to make. Jason was behind her, seated at the table, his table top drafting board positioned at an angle in front of him, a pencil wedged between his teeth and another one tucked behind one ear. He’d been working on the design for a couple of hours now.

She lifted the colander and let the water drain a second before tucking a cloth underneath and transferring it over to the island where she’d placed her cutting board and knife earlier. For about the thousandth time, she glanced at him, wondering what he thought of her now. And castigating herself a little—just a little—for being so quick to nix the fuck buddy idea. Oh, she knew that’s what he’d been driving at, he’d just refrained from using the more commonly known, far cruder, expression for what he was suggesting they do. Which, she guessed, she should give him credit for, at least.