One of These Nights (7 page)

Without thinking, she drew her lower lip into her mouth to wet it and his eyes went dark, hot. Her heart skipped in her chest.

“You need a shave,” she blurted, desperate to banish the sudden sense of intimacy. She immediately wanted to kick herself.
Yes, Zoe, too smooth. Let him know you're staring at that nice square jawline of his. That will definitely make things less awkward.
Jason's brows lifted a little, but he still didn't seem annoyed. Just thoughtful. And he didn't move away.

“I guess I do. I'll get to it by tomorrow,” he said, lifting one hand to rub at his chin for a brief moment. “So, are we going to talk about my hygiene next, or can we eat? Because that smells great.”

“Yes!” Zoe said, inwardly cringing a little at the forced brightness of her voice. That, and the fact she'd nearly shouted the word. “Let's, ah, eat.” She took quick steps back and turned toward the counter, tucking a few curls behind her ear. “I didn't know what you'd like, so I got a bunch of things—lo mein, egg rolls, dumplings, some sesame chicken, General Tso's, hot-and-sour soup. Um, sweet-and-sour . . . something. I think. What is this?” She removed cartons from the plastic bags and put them on the counter one by one, examining several before she remembered exactly what she'd bought. Jason said nothing while she worked. When she finally turned her head, he was staring at the cartons incredulously.

“Wow. That's . . . that's some food.” He looked down at his stomach, then back up at her. “You trying to tell me something?”

She felt her cheeks heat. “No. I just figured you could use some leftovers in the fridge, since you can't drive and that has to be a pain.”

“It is.”

“Then don't complain.”

“I'm not.” A long pause, then, “Thank you.”

She looked up from opening the cartons, startled to find him wearing an expression that suggested she'd just challenged him with a particularly hard riddle. If she wasn't careful, she'd end up flustered all over again, and that was
not
how this evening was going to go. Jason would get the help he needed, she would get to work him out of her system from a position of power, and they'd both go away happy. Well, in Jason's case, as happy as he got. That was the deal.

Just because he wasn't in on it didn't make it any less valid.

“You're welcome. Now tell me where the plates and forks are and go sit down. You're no good to me in here.”

She saw the mulish glint in his eyes, but then he glanced at the steaming food. Hunger won out. “Corner cupboard for the plates. Drawer to your left for silverware.” He hesitated, as though about to say something else. After a moment, though, he shook his head and creak-thumped his way out of the kitchen and toward the table. Rosie stayed put without looking a bit conflicted about it.

“Where is your loyalty?” Zoe asked her as she got out a couple of plates.

“It's not in her stomach,” Jason called over his shoulder.

It wasn't, either. Rosie followed her back and forth between the dining area and the kitchen several times as she got their dinner together. By the time she slid into the chair across from Jason, his dog heaved a sigh that sounded distinctly annoyed before resuming her groundhog pose, this time at Jason's side. Zoe eyed her.

“I suppose you're going to tell me you don't feed her table scraps.”

“I don't. I feed her high-quality, nutritional food,” Jason replied, stabbing into some pork lo mein with his fork. “Some of it just happens to come off of my plate.”

“And what does Jake have to say about that?”

“Not sure. He has this weird affliction where sometimes he opens his mouth and the only thing that comes out is a
blah-blah-blah
sound.”

Zoe opened the top of one of the containers of hot-and-sour soup and dipped into it with her spoon. “Sounds like you may have a hearing problem.”

“No, I'm just surrounded by people with the same disorder. There's a high concentration in the Cove, seems like.” Only his cheeky grin saved him from having some noodles flung at him. She put the spoonful of soup into her mouth, closed her eyes, and swallowed.
Bliss.

When she opened her eyes, she was staring into his. The heat in them was back, pulsing between them like a living thing. Why hadn't she ever felt this from him when he was in the gallery? Maybe she just hadn't noticed because it was her place. It was safe.

Or maybe she'd just wanted to think so.

“So,” she said, trying to break the spell. “Let's get down to business. I can work while we eat.” She slid a slim notebook out of the purse sitting beside her chair, unclipped a pen from it, and opened to a fresh page. “Your mother is Molly, right?”

Jason looked at the notebook as though it were a foreign object. “You're taking notes? What do you think she's going to do, give you a quiz?”

“I'm thorough. If we've been dating a few weeks, I should know more about you than where you live and what you do for a living.”

He shrugged. “She knows I'm not big on small talk.”

“Then what would she think we've been doing all this time?” She knew the instant the words left her mouth what the answer was, and Jason's smirk was anything but innocent. “Oh, come on!” she said, picking up a wad of paper napkins and throwing them at him. “She has a dirty mind on top of all the other things I'm supposed to deal with?”

Now he wrinkled his nose. “If she does, I don't want to know. Okay, maybe write down to avoid that subject with her completely.”

“I don't even need to write that down.” She sketched a small doodle, took another bite of soup, and tried to reorganize her thoughts to start again. “Let's start with basics. Molly Evans.”

Jason nodded while he chewed. “Yeah. Molly. Married to Dan. I have one brother, Tommy. He's two years younger than me.”

“Do you get along? I got the impression that you don't.”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“And I was right. I'll keep that in mind.” She wrote the names down.

His voice quickly dropped into his usual surly grumble. “We don't
not
get along. He's busy. I'm busy.”

“Selling insurance. Sometimes to you,” she added, and his smile was rueful.

“No, not to me. Not for lack of trying. But if it wasn't insurance, it'd be something else. He's a born salesman, according to everybody.”

The tone in his voice struck her as a little off, and Zoe watched him curiously as he stabbed at his food with a little more gusto than before. “And what are
you
, according to everybody?”

“Stubborn.”

She had the feeling there was a lot more to it than that, but the look on his face told her to leave that one alone. For now.

“That sounds about right,” she said. He was quiet as she helped herself to some of the sweet-and-sour chicken, and the tension that rose in the silence was almost like having an extra guest at the table. The man frowning at his food across from her looked to be deep in some unhappy thoughts, but those thoughts were as inaccessible to her as they'd ever been.

Maybe if she understood him, she'd find him less interesting.

One could only hope.

He startled her when he spoke, since she'd already resigned herself to having to prod him for information all evening. “There's one thing you probably should know. I'm divorced.”

Zoe went completely still, staring at him as though he'd just spoken something in a foreign language. “Ah . . . okay?” Some important part of the pathway from her brain to her mouth seemed to have short-circuited. Divorced? Her hermit—
not mine,
the
hermit,
she corrected herself—had been married?

Her shock must have shown. Jason exhaled loudly and looked out the window before his gaze found her again. “It was about four years ago. We were married for a couple years before that.”

She had no idea what the appropriate thing to say in this situation was, which flustered her since she was generally good with words. “I'm sorry,” was the only thing that sprang to mind, so that was what she went with. He shrugged.

“It's old news. I'm only telling you because it'll come up. It always does.”

That
didn't sound promising. But it was another piece of the puzzle. A sudden question occurred to her, and its implications were less than pleasant. It was a struggle to keep her voice neutral. “Is she still around here somewhere?” Did she know this person? Had she met her, sold art to her? Had she accidentally been
nice
to her? Not that there was any reason she shouldn't have been, of course. Not at all.

Zoe's hand clenched around the handle of her spoon.

One side of Jason's mouth curved in a halfhearted smile. “Nope. Believe it or not, she didn't think Harvest Cove was the end all, be all.”

An unpleasant mixture of curiosity and jealousy coiled together in the pit of her stomach, no matter how much she tried to banish both. This woman, whoever she was, was gone. And considering Jason's sparkling personality, it wasn't like his marital status mattered much anyway. But the guarded expression in his eyes before he looked down at his plate tugged at her, and her competitive nature reared its head before she could stop it.

“What's her name so I can execute a lip curl if your mother brings her up?”

“Sara.” A hint of humor softened his expression. “Lip curl. That'll win you points.”

“Was she awful?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, though she instantly regretted it. Jason's faint smile vanished as though it had never been, replaced by the hard lines she was used to seeing.

“No. She's just gone.” The finality in his statement meant that this line of questioning was now over with, Zoe knew. And truth be told, she'd just as soon find something else to talk about. She wracked her brain, which was suddenly full of nothing but images of Jason and this mysterious, unexpected ex-wife. Was she gorgeous? Probably. In her head he spun a skinny blonde around, the two of them looking like they'd stepped out of a Hallmark Channel movie. He'd shaved and cut his hair. The woman wore a sundress and fabulous shoes. And they looked at each other like they were completely, madly in love.

She didn't know if the image was right—close enough, she decided, even if the real Sara had been a brunette who'd favored coveralls—but the way it made her feel was completely unacceptable. For once in his life, Jason was right. This person was gone. She, however, was here. And she was completely, one hundred percent in control of the situation.

“Well, good to know,” Zoe said, keeping her voice smooth. “Now, I think it would be a good idea for you to tell me what kinds of things you like. Movies, TV, food, sports, anything you can think of. Then I'll give you a short list of mine, and we can compare.”

“What is this?” he asked, looking slightly horrified. “It sounds like homework.”

“That's because it is,” she replied, beginning to get exasperated again. The mention of his ex-wife had dampened his mood, and naturally, she was going to bear the brunt of the shift. Joy. “Apart from my knowing your tastes in art, Jason, and where you work, I don't know a damn thing about you. Somewhere, somehow, we've got to have at least a few things in common. Otherwise, your mother isn't going to buy this at all, and I don't know why I'm sitting here.”

“I can already tell you we don't,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Have anything in common,” he said. “We're nothing alike, you and me. And she'll buy it for exactly that reason.”

She dropped her spoon onto the table with an irritable little
smack
and steepled her fingers beneath her chin.
Serenity,
she commanded herself. “This is the part where I remind you that you don't know a thing about me, either. Nowhere near enough to make a judgment like that. But I do have to ask why, if you think we're such a horrible match, you asked me for help in the first place.”

He looked as though he wanted to shout, but he refrained. Instead, Jason spoke in a low voice that fairly thrummed with his annoyance. “Two reasons. You're what she'll want, and right now, you're all I've got.”

Her own temper rose to match his, and Zoe could feel them slipping into their regular pattern. It was different this time, though. It was, Zoe realized through the haze of her own anger, the first time he'd managed to find a chink in her armor and hurt the feelings beneath. That was unacceptable.

“That's right,” she said, her voice going as cold as ice. “I am all you've got. So, it'd be nice if you tried to remember that instead of working on making me head right out that door. I don't need a sale that badly.” She heard her accent thickening up, the way it always did when her emotions got the better of her, until it was sweet, syrupy fury. She knew she was an outsider here. She'd been “Zoe, that nice black girl from Atlanta” for three years now, and for all the progress she'd made, her status wasn't fixing to change anytime soon. She was from a small town. She knew how it worked.

But having Jason classify her as some kind of incompatible stranger carried a different kind of sting. They might not be friends, but their lives had plenty of shared threads. It would be surprising—to her, at least—if they didn't find a few more.

He seemed, finally, to have realized that he'd overstepped. The look on his face was somewhere between embarrassed and stricken. “Zo—”

The sound of her nickname on his lips was too much right now. “Mmm-mmm,” she corrected him, index finger raised. “You don't get to call me that. Not right now, and maybe not ever. That's for my friends.”

“Zoe,”
he began again. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but no words came. Finally he dropped his fork beside his plate, dug his hands into his hair, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Shit.”