Some Girls Don't (Outback Heat Book 2) (15 page)

“Shh,” he said, his fingers playing across her mouth again. “Just listen for a moment, okay? I love you, Selena. It’s only ever been you for me. And I know,
believe me
, I know how crazy that sounds. But you’re under my skin. You’re … inside my bones, my
cells,
my DNA. You’re in
every
good memory I have, Selena. God,” he muttered, his fingers brushing some hair off her forehead, “this last month has been hell without you, and when I saw you running towards me today, I thought my chest was going to bust open.”

Selena knew how he felt. But that had been
relief
. Right?

“It’s okay,” he said, “you can stop looking so panicked. I know you don’t feel the same way about me anymore, but I’m not going to pretend that I don’t feel the way I feel to make you comfortable or to make me look less crazy.”

“I … don’t think you’re crazy.”

“Yeah?” He smiled. “You sure look like you do.”

“It’s just—” What? Too big. Too much. Too damn close?

“Yeah,” he nodded, as if he could read her mind. “But are you seriously going to lie there and tell me you don’t feel
anything
for me? That I’m just some walk down memory lane for you? Because I’m calling bullshit on that. I saw your face today, when you were running towards me. That wasn’t your
pleased to see me
face, Selena. Or your,
relieved that I was okay
face. It was more than that. You forget how well I know you.”

Selena stilled. What had she given away today? There’d sure as hell been a whole bunch of emotions rattling around inside her as she’d made that dash to his side. None of them she’d wanted to examine too closely at the time. But she didn’t have that luxury here and now. Jarrod wasn’t going to let her shy away from any of it.

And maybe she should stop trying.

She wasn’t seventeen. She wasn’t running scared any more. She was a successful career woman. And Grandy was right. Jarrod was still in her system. He always would be.

Because she loved him. She’d never
stopped
loving him.

“Of course I have feelings for you, Jarrod.”

He smiled, his finger trekking from her mouth along the line of her jaw. “You do?”

Selena nodded. “I
love
you.”

His finger stopped, his green eyes boring into hers. “You do?”

“Yes,” she whispered, giving in to it. Giving in to the truth of it. “I don’t know that it solves anything but—”

His mouth cut her off. His lips covering hers in a long, lingering kiss, his fingers gliding into her hair, his thumb caressing her cheek.

It was so pure and sweet, tears scalded the backs of her eyes. If only their situation was as simple as the physical pull she felt for him.

That
she knew what to do with.

He broke off the kiss, his gaze roaming over her face. “I’ve missed kissing you.
Being
with you.”

Selena nodded. “Me too.” For fifteen years she’d been lying to herself about just how much. Kidding herself that sex was physical—mechanical—and therefore pretty much the same from one man to the next. It took fifteen years, and making love to Jarrod again, to see that there was a whole lot more to sex.

That it could touch you on a far more profound level if you were with the right person.

“I don’t want to lose this again, Selena.”

“This?”

“Us.”

God help her, she didn’t either. But she was torn between wanting him—wanting an
us
with him—and the goal she’d been working towards ever since she’d left Jumbuck Springs.

Both were all or nothing kinda gigs, and Selena didn’t want to be half-assed about either of them. She didn’t see how she could have her cake and eat it too.

And she didn’t want to look back in twenty years and have regrets like her mother had. She didn’t want to die wondering what she’d missed out on. At the age of fifteen she’d stumbled across her mother’s diaries hidden in the back of Grandy’s closet and finally understood why her grandmother had been such an advocate for Selena following her dream.

She’d known how unhappy and depressed her daughter had become and didn’t want the same for her granddaughter.

Sure, her mother had loved her—it was evident in her writing—but she’d been miserable all alone out on an isolated property with just a baby for company and a man she’d loved but had felt smothered by.

“Neither do I but it’s … complicated and—”

His finger pressed against her lips. “You don’t think we could make it work? We’re smart people, we must be able to figure something out. I’m over being without you, Selena.”

A tiny little hope flared to life inside her chest. The conviction in his voice, on his face, was compelling. Maybe they
could
make it work? She travelled a lot. But she had days off. So did he. She was occasionally within a few hundred kilometres of Jumbuck Springs. Brisbane—her apartment—was only two hundred kilometres away. They could figure it out.

People managed worse relationship hurdles. They just had to commit.

“Would you come and live in the city with me? Get a job at a city station?”

Surprise flickered in his eyes and there was a brief moment of hesitation. “Are you in Brisbane much?”

“Usually once a week. Sometimes more.”

“But sometimes less … right?”

“Yes,” Selena conceded. “But I’m there a lot more than I ever am in the vicinity of Jumbuck Springs.”

“So … you want me to move on the off chance I’ll see you maybe once a week?”

Selena searched his face. He didn’t look annoyed but he sure sounded it. “Yes. Or did you mean that I had to make all the sacrifices when you said we could figure it out?”

“No, I—” Selena’s phone rang, cutting him off. Jarrod groaned, dropping his chin to her chest. “Don’t answer it.”

“I have to. It might be Grandy.”

Or work. She was used to phone calls at all hours of the night from her boss. News was a twenty-four-hour cycle and if something broke in the middle of the night, then journos were woken up.

She plucked it off the bedside table. “It’s work,” she said as the word
Phil
flashed onto the screen and she swiped across it to answer. Jarrod didn’t say anything. He put his mouth to better use by applying it to the rise of her breast.

“Hey,” she said to her boss as Jarrod’s mouth closed over her nipple and she shut her eyes in appreciation.

“We need you back here by morning for the anchor job.”

Selena’s eyes flashed open. That was Phil. No cheery greeting. No preamble. But … the anchor job? “What?” She’d have asked him if he was joking except Phil never joked. “What are you talking about?”

“Victoria’s father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given three months to live. She’s taken four months leave, but it could be longer. She’d getting the first flight to the UK in the morning. We want you to stand in while she’s gone.”

Jarrod’s tongue swiped back and forth but the unexpected news was like a bucket of ice water. “Oh God, that’s terrible,” she said, sitting up, displacing him.

“What’s wrong?” Jarrod whispered from behind her, his palm sliding up her back to rest between her shoulder blades.

Selena ignored him as Phil said, “Yes, it is. It’s absolute shit, but her bad luck is your opportunity.” It was said in Phil’s usual matter-of-fact manner. He wasn’t heartless, he just played the hand he was dealt and left the gnashing of teeth up to others. “I know you’ve wanted this for a long time. You up for it?”

‡

U
p for it?
Selena’s pulse whooshed through her ears, magnifying the silence in the Weston house. She’d been up for it from her first day at the studio as a production assistant.

She didn’t hesitate for a second. “I’ll be there at eight.”

There was a grunt and then a, “See you tomorrow,” and Phil was gone.

Jarrod’s fingers drew warm patterns between her shoulder blades as she threw the phone on the mattress in front of her. “Everything okay?”

Everything was better than okay. Everything was falling into place. She’d have never wished what Victoria was going through right now on her worst enemy, but Phil was right—it was an incredible opportunity.

“Victoria Turner’s father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She’s taking four months off.”

“Oh God,” he said and she could hear the frown in his voice. The concern. “That’s awful.”

“Yes.” She looked over her shoulder at him. The sheet was hitched to his waist, moonlight slicing in through the window shining a celestial spotlight on his belly, leaving everything else in shadow. “I’ve just been offered her anchor job.”

His fingers stopped their caress. “And you took it?”

His expression was hard to define with the night hooding his eyes.

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Congratulations,” he said after a beat or two, and he smiled. But it didn’t exactly blaze out like a beacon in the dark. “You finally cracked it.”

“You don’t seem that enthused.”

“I guess I’m wondering what that means for us, now.”

Selena blinked. “Us?” she echoed. She’d barely wrapped her head around the enormity of
this
. It had been a night of surprises.

His hand slid from her back. “Yes, you know, that thing we were discussing before your phone rang.”

“Right. Sorry.” She shook her head, trying to order her thoughts.

“You didn’t even think about it, did you?”

“I …”
Shit.
“I’m sorry. The offer came out of the blue. It kinda blindsided me.”

“So you just said yes.”

“Well … yeah.” Selena frowned.
He
more than anyone had to know what this offer meant to her. “Hang on … you’re
pissed
at me?”

“You said yes without giving
us
a second thought. Without even talking to me.”

Selena’s pulse spiked as her temper flared. She rose from the bed and threw on the T-shirt and underwear she’d dragged off the bathroom floor earlier. They smelled like smoke. But what didn’t? It’d probably take a week to get the smell out of her nostrils.

She turned to glare at him. “Without
talking
to you?” She shoved her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t aware that I needed your
permission
, Jarrod. This job, news anchor, is what I’ve been working towards since I was seventeen.”

If she didn’t take it up now then her leaving here and the emotional havoc she’d wreaked all those years ago would be for naught. It would have meant
nothing
.

“Of course you don’t need my permission,” he snapped, sitting up in bed, his torso bathed in moonlight now, his face out of the shadows, his green eyes blazing. “I just thought you might want to have a
conversation
with me about it. So we could talk about what it might mean for us. That’s what
couples
do. Couples talk things over. They don’t make unilateral decisions.”

Couples
.

Was that what they were now?

Apart from the first time around with Jarrod, Selena hadn’t ever really had a couple kind of relationship. The guys she’d been with had been from the same industry. They understood that the job came first. That the
news
came first.

Maybe she was just too used to being on her own. Too set in her ways. Not cut out for coupledom.

Her eyes roamed over the planes of his face, beautifully delineated by the moonlight. In fact all of him was—the width of his shoulders, the broadness of his chest, the flatness of his abdomen—his pale skin almost alabaster in the splash of light from the window.

“It wasn’t the kind of phone call where you said, hang on let me just consult with the naked guy in my bed first.”

He slowly nodded his head. His hair more a washed-out rust than red-gold. “So … that’s all I am. Some naked guy in your bed?”

Selena shut her eyes. “No. Of course not.” Her eyelids flicked open and her gaze locked with his as her heart crashed in her chest. He was pissed at her and she was … what?

Torn.

“I
love
you, Jarrod.”

“But? Sounds like there’s a
but
coming.”

“No.” Because what kind of person would that make her? What kind of woman? Wasn’t she supposed to swoon at his feet and beg him to be with her? Didn’t love mean wanting to be with him
absolutely
?

“I’m just … trying to process this whole thing. I don’t really need to tell you that this job offer is a really big deal for me.”

“No, you don’t.”

“And I want to take it, Jarrod.”

“I’m not saying you can’t.”

“No. But it seems a lot like you’re asking me to choose between you and it.”

Even beneath the layers of his whiskers, Selena could see his jaw clench. “Don’t put words in my mouth,” he said as he threw off the sheet and climbed out of the bed, his buttocks an alabaster flash before disappearing into shadow. He stalked to the cupboard, pulled out some boxer briefs, and stepped into them before facing her.

“I just thought I might factor into your decision somewhere, but apparently not.”

“Jarrod …” Selena’s head spun. How had this changed so quickly? Ten minutes ago they were talking love and tentative futures and now they were glaring at each other across his bedroom. “I’ve been single for a long time. I’m not used to factoring in other people. So no … I’m sorry, I didn’t think about you or us when Phil offered me the job.”