Reading His Mind (13 page)

She glanced over my shoulder, caught a glimpse of all the spectacular genetic hotness, and thought she would have to be insane to pass up an opportunity to get to know those boys up close and personal. “Okay.”

I bussed a couple of tables, fought off a few tips designed to drop down my top, then dragged her outside where the guys leaned against the brick of the building.

“It’s about time.” Pushing off the wall, Dylan started walking. “I was set to leave you here, but lover boy wouldn’t have any part of it.”

Jace ignored him, but I shot him a wiggly browed grin. “So, you moonlight as a waitress?” he asked after the introductions had been made and we’d scrunched into a cab. Katie sat between the two men while I squirmed a bit more than necessary on Jace’s lap.

“I am a woman of many talents.” My knees crushed into the door handle while my bottom nestled against the part of Jace enjoying the seating arrangement most. One of his arms cradled my waist, the other lay across my thighs. My dress rode up close to the danger zone, and the skin-to-skin contact caused my voice to be breathy and deep all at once. “So, where are we going?”

The cab lurched, sending my head into the screen separating the front and back seats and Jace’s face into my chest.

“You smell amazing,” he whispered. “You are….” He looked me up and down, emitting a low whistle. I squirmed again, this time on purpose, and he groaned. “If I died right now, I would go with a smile on my face.”

I smiled down at him. “Don’t die, Jace. I wanna go dancing.”

His fingers trailed down the inside of my thigh, stopping just before they crept under my dress—
damn it
—then reversed direction.

“What are you doing?” I whispered because actual sound fell beyond my grasp.

“Turning the tables.”

“Oh.” My voice choked out around a lump in my throat. “Okay.”

The sun peeked over the horizon before anyone yawned, and another hour or so passed before we decided to call it a night. We’d danced, drank, and gambled the night away. Dylan and Katie didn’t make a love connection, but they had a good time and, as trained by his mother, he hailed a cab to take her home. Jace and I kept each other right on the edge of decency all night long. Resisting him proved almost futile. He had an arm around my waist while he bent down to nuzzle my neck with his chin.

“Come to the hotel with me.” His whisper preceded a gentle kiss below my ear. I shook my head. “Tell me you don’t want me. I’ll take you home.”

I turned toward him, ready to say the words, but when I looked at him, all rational thought escaped into an abyss in my mind. “I, uh….”

He ran his finger down my cheek. “Come to the hotel with me.”

As I opened my mouth to give in, someone tapped my shoulder. “Lyric? Is that you?”

You have got to be kidding me
. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard my own thought or Jace’s, but I know I thought it. I spun around to find Wyatt six inches closer to me than he should be. I took a step backward, bumping into Jace’s chest. Pulling his arms from his sides, I wrapped them around my waist. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m enjoying a long Saturday night in the casino.” He frowned. “I thought you were home in bed.”

I ignored that. “Wyatt, this is my boyfriend, Jace.”

He squinted, and as quickly as the shadow crossed his face, it disappeared.

“Baby, this is Wyatt. He is one of the defense attorneys on the case I’m working on.”

Jace extended a hand Wyatt ignored. “I’ll see you at court on Monday.” His voice blazed razor sharp.

“I’ll see you then.” I spoke the words to his retreating back.

“So, I’m your boyfriend now?”

I stumbled across his thoughts as I searched for an explanation. He thought there were worse things I could have called him. “Well, I could explain it to you, which would take a while, or you could try talking me into your hotel room.”

“Oh. You’re my girlfriend now. You have to come to my room. It’s the girlfriend thing to do.” He led me outside, his thumb rubbing small circles against my skin. He whistled for a cab.

After we’d climbed inside, the driver turned around in his seat “Where to?”

Jace looked at me in question. I considered giving him my address, but somehow, the name of his hotel came bursting out.

Jace grinned, his lips captured by mine. The rest of the ride passed in a sensual blur of touching and kissing. We pulled up, Jace paid the fare, and we all but ran inside the hotel. Since the elevator car was full and people were jostling for space, we restrained ourselves, riding to his floor in silence.

Outside his door, he stopped and turned to me. “I don’t want to pressure you.”

“Shut up, Jace.” Taking the key card, I slid it into its electronic lock. I pushed the door open in a
whoosh
of air and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, yanking him in after me. “I think if we talk, we ruin it.”

We didn’t say another word until late in the afternoon.

***

“So, tell me what’s going on with the weird guy from last night…the one whose name you keep calling me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I called you his name in anger, thinking you were him calling me. You moaned her name after you kissed me. There’s quite a distinction there.” When he opened his mouth to speak, I put a finger over his lips. “I think the best way to explain what’s going on is to show you my phone.” I climbed out of bed, pulled on his shirt, and snatched my purse off the floor. I tossed the cell onto the bed beside him. He considered it with squinted eyes and tightly pressed lips. “Go ahead.”

“You have seventeen new texts.”

I nodded while he read them aloud.

“
How could you flaunt your boyfriend in my face after all I did for you
? Number two….
Why are you ignoring me? Call me
. And three….
We need to talk
. Four….
I don’t think we should work together anymore. I’ll let my dad know you decided not to take the case
.” His eyes widened. “That’s just the first four.”

“I know.” He looked as freaked out as I felt.

“This guy is nuts.” Sitting up in bed, he continued to scroll through the texts. “He could be dangerous. Maybe I should call Dylan, see what he can dig up.”

I took the cell. “Don’t. He’s an old boyfriend who thinks he can bully me into a second chance. I can handle him.”

“No. He could hurt you or worse.” He pulled me down onto the bed, facing him. “Let me call Dylan. He doesn’t have to do anything. Just let him dig around a little bit.”

Another text arrived. I turned my eyes to the screen.

Wyatt:
I am at your house. I am not leaving until we talk.

I dialed, my entire body shaking. “Hey, George.” I didn’t wait for a reply. “Is
he
there?”

“Yes. He said you were having brunch with him, but I thought
we
were having brunch, and then I went into your room to find you missing in action. So, no one got brunch.”

“I am sorry. I went out last night and I—”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You gave your rose to bachelor number one. I get it. Bachelor number two is feeling somewhat scorned, I think.” His voice dropped, alerting me he’d ventured out of earshot of his houseguest, or my houseguest, depending on how we looked at it. Actually, not a guest at all.

“I know. He’s text message crazy. It’s madness.” I downplayed the severity of the situation.

“My big question for you, my love, is how do I get rid of this maniac? He’s pacing a hole outside your bedroom door.”

My head dropped to my hand. “I have absolutely no idea.” I paused. “Shit, George. Let me talk to him.” A second later, Wyatt came on the other end of the line while Jace shook his head like a kid having a tantrum. “Wyatt, what the hell are you doing?”

“Waiting for you to get home. We need to talk.”

“No. You need medication.” I wanted to see how he reacted to my playing a little rough.

“Why are you doing this to me?” His voice sounded pained.

“I’m not doing anything to you. I’m not yours.” I hated hurting his feelings, but he freaked me out more than I cared to admit.

“Well, you’re not his.” His anger bounced from satellite to satellite, landing in my ear.

“You didn’t want me when you had me. You wanted everyone else. I moved on.”

“Well, I want you now.”

I knew his past. He’d always been a spoiled rich boy who’d never heard the word no in his life and had no plan to handle it well. “If wishes were horses.”

“Lyric, we
are
going to talk.”

I cringed from the threat in his tone. “We are
not
going to talk. As a matter of fact, I want you out of my house, out of my building, and out of my life. I’ll call your dad and tell him something else came up, but you have to leave me alone.”

“I don’t remember you being this cold.”

“I don’t remember you being this creepy.”

“Creepy?” His voice jumped two octaves. “I’m creepy?” It didn’t seem so implausible to me, but to him, the idea sounded foreign.

“Yeah. Over the top, more than spiders creepy.”

“Really, now?” Disbelief etched his voice. He blew a loud breath into the phone. “I am sorry. I don’t know what my problem is. I hope you and
Jace Laugherty
are very happy together.” He hung up without another word, leaving me to glare at my screen in confusion.

“What the hell?” I wondered aloud.

“Babe, let me call Dylan, okay?”

I nodded, and he made his call while I continued to stare blankly.

A moment later, he wrapped me in a soft hug, rubbing my back. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“I’m not scared, Jace.” I looked at him. “When I first moved here, I was alone. I had no George, no friends, only this thing I can do. It’s not like a superpower that I can call on when I’m in trouble. By the time I even figure out I’m
in
trouble, it’s usually too late for it to be any good to me.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I was here alone, and I had to take care of myself. I can shoot a gun. I own pepper spray. I even know how to use my shoes, if I still had any, to cause some pretty serious damage.”

“But you won’t.”

“No, but I can. I also know where to kick a guy if I need to or how to use my keys to poke his eyeballs out if the need should present itself. I know, okay? I’ve been taking care of myself since I was sixteen. I don’t need Captain FBI to look after me.” I smiled. “Or his little brother.” When he started to protest, I leaned forward to press a soft kiss to his lips. “I love that you want to, but I got this, okay?”

He stared at me as though trying to memorize my face. His thumbs brushed along my eyebrows then trailed down my cheeks to my lips. “I just found you again, Lyric.”

“As usual, Mr. Laugherty, you have your facts all mixed up. I found you.” Had it really only been four days?

He grinned. “We found each other.”

“Yeah. I like that better.”

“Promise me you’ll be careful.”

I nodded.

“What about your job?”

I shrugged. Handling that would be tricky. Charles & Charles and Associates was a big firm, and I didn’t want to alienate anyone who could give me work or spread around that I was hard to work with. “I don’t know. I guess I have to call Mr. Charles and get out of it. I feel bad though. They don’t care one bit about the girl. Her thoughts are too random to know if she is guilty of what they are saying or if she was too naive to know how to get help to leave.” I pursed my lips. “That’s a lot more than I’m allowed to say.” My frustration at the events of the weekend caused a motor-mouth phenomenon on my part.

“Who am I gonna tell?”

“No one. Absolutely no one. I would lose all credibility. I have a lot of new shoes to buy, so I kind of need to work.”

“I’ll buy you new shoes. I have a fantasy about you wearing a particular pair of red heels I saw in your apartment the other night.”

I snuck into his head, knowing as he spoke the words he would be thinking about the fantasy. It wasn’t nearly so naughty as I guessed it would be, but enough to be OMG hot. “Wow. You have a very sexy imagination, Jasper.”

Instead of bringing a smile to his lips, my words caused a frown. “I can never have a secret from you.” He said it softly, as though it had just occurred to him, the idea surprising him. After I considered it for a minute, my expression matched his. I wanted a relationship without secrets, and couldn’t imagine why he would want one with.

“I would never be able to surprise you or buy you a gift you didn’t know about.”

“Yes you could. I’m not in your head all the time.”

“But how would I know when you are?” He was pulling away from me, withdrawing into himself. I shivered as I sat alone on the bed with him right beside me.

“You would have to trust I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He nodded, not believing I wouldn’t. Who could blame him? He didn’t want me poking around in his thoughts, yet there I sat, doing it again.

“Maybe I should go and give you some time to….” To what? “Just give you some time.”

“I don’t want you to leave.” But he did. I couldn’t seem to stop myself from reading his mind.

“I’m going home.”

“You’re not safe there.”

“I am. I have George and a brand-new alarm loud enough to at least burst the eardrums of anyone who even thinks about coming in my door uninvited. I’ll be fine.” I borrowed his shirt and a pair of sleep pants, so I didn’t have to bother trying to squeeze myself back into that damned dress. The clothes smelled like Jace, and I considered giving them back before I took another withering look at the sequins and spandex. I would borrow clothes from a friend if I’d gotten drunk and spent the night. Of course, none of my other friends smelled like heaven and shared the scent with his clothes. And, I hadn’t slept with any of my other friends and then peeked inside their thoughts to find regret. Well, his bad judgment for having those thoughts around someone with my skill set would cost him one pair of pants and a Bon Jovi T-shirt. I took a deep breath and twisted the shower faucet. After refreshing my outlook on the friend/lover debate skittering around my mind, I stuffed my legs into his pants, pulled the cotton shirt over my head and ran his comb through my hair. Screw this. I was keeping the clothes.