Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(32)

“Why did you move things around?” Belmont clarified, a hint of impatience in his tone, which sent Sage’s fingers back into their attempt to start a blaze. Peggy started twirling her hair, too, which didn’t escape Belmont’s sharp attention, and it became obvious to Rita what her brother was trying to ascertain. If they’d asked Sage to come because of the way he’d been acting. Which they had, of course. But it had gone unspoken that he wouldn’t appreciate that information.

Just as Rita was beginning to get desperate to fill the silence, Sage’s entire body lifted with a deep inhale and she turned around. Belmont went back a step. And time seemed to freeze again. What in the hell?

“I needed a vacation,” Sage murmured, chin lifting, then dipping again. “Is that allowed?”

With his eyes narrowed on the tiny wedding planner, the desert behind him and his jaw ticking, ticking, ticking, Rita thought her brother looked like an old Clint Eastwood movie poster. “You do something to your hair?” he asked Sage in a gravelly voice.

“I got bangs.”

“Bangs,” Belmont repeated, as if it were some awkward, foreign word. “I don’t think I like them.”

Peggy gasped. “Bel—”

“Any longer and they’re going to hide your eyes,” he pressed on, ignoring his sister. Ignoring everything—but Sage. “Could be any day now. Could be any day that they’re hidden from me.”

Sage shook her head. “No, I won’t let them be.”

Belmont was doing his best to stare Sage into the pavement, but he seemed to realize it and glanced back toward the parking lot. “Have you checked in yet?”

“No.”

Without looking, he gestured toward the building. “This side is better lit than the other.”

“Okay.”

“Tell them to put you on this side.”

After delivering the order and waiting to make sure Sage acknowledged it, Belmont seemed at a loss. He started to back toward the motel-room door he’d left open, but reversed his direction suddenly without telegraphing his intention. He circled Sage slowly, scrutinizing her hair, her neck, her clothing. And she let him, somehow maintaining her poise. Until he brushed their shoulders together and her eyes closed. Just for a second, before popping back open, wider than before.

None of them said anything until Belmont was back in his motel room with the door closed. At which point Peggy clapped her hands together, breaking the slow-motion spell. “So”—she interlocked her arm with Sage’s—“was there a movie on the flight?”





Chapter Sixteen



Thirty-three years old and this is my first date.

That kind of made him a virgin in a way, didn’t it?

Even Jasper had to laugh at that comparison. He pulled his truck into one of the numerous empty spaces at the Hurley Arms and ran a hand through his hair, not surprised to find himself feeling edgy. He’d be spending the next while in the company of an intelligent woman. An interesting woman. And he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d jumped the small-talk hurdle with a member of the opposite sex. Twenty minutes from now, he could very well be asking Rita her favorite color, but he hoped like hell it didn’t come to that.

On the way to pick up Rita, he’d stopped into the Liquor Hole to ask Nate what women like to talk about. After the bartender had finished laughing over Jasper asking him for advice on women, he’d mustered up a one-word answer: themselves. If that were true, Rita talking about herself suited Jasper right down to the ground. He just didn’t find it realistic. In fact, he reckoned she’d probably turn his questions right back around on him, the stubborn woman. The stubborn—gorgeous woman.

His small talk might have been so underwhelming in the past that it had been the deciding factor in deeming Jasper good for one thing and one thing only. Rolling in the hay without delay. Hell, for all he knew, Rita felt that way, too. Although she didn’t strike him as the type to suffer a man she didn’t like, even if he was a good lay. He’d have to trust that gut instinct.

Okay, the longer he sat in the truck, staring at Rita’s motel-room door in the rearview mirror, the more shitty scenarios his brain would conjure up. Time to move.

Jasper climbed out of the truck and traversed the parking lot, running a hand around the waistband of his jeans as he went, making sure everything was tucked in. Not for the first time since leaving his house, Jasper commended himself for rubbing one out in the shower. Because, Lord. He didn’t even have Rita in his sights yet and the blood in his veins pumped faster. That full, deep beat played in his ears, muffling the traffic that passed behind him on the road.

“Man alive, you’ve got it bad,” he muttered under his breath.

That sentiment became the understatement of the year when Rita answered his single knock. Yeah, he had it worse than bad. He was fucked up beyond all recognition. The first thing that hit him was the hanging scent of a shower. Not just any shower, though. A woman’s shower. The scents of peaches, pears, and oatmeal soap floated out through the doorway and hooked him like a trout.

But that was before Jasper let his gaze drop from her parted—excited?—lips, to everything beneath. “You smell that good under those clothes?”

“What?”

Rita breathed the word, doing this little writhe move just inside the door. The tight, red denim skirt she wore shifted along with her hips, dipping low enough that Jasper could make out the indentation of her belly button beneath the black tank top. “Please tell me you’re not alone in there. Tell me there’s a brother or sister watching reruns of Cheers somewhere.”