Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(56)

“Ooh!” Peggy dove off the bed and lunged for her purse, which was hanging on the back of the room’s single chair. “Nate gave me a brochure for this nightly drive out into the desert. You make a bonfire and the guide tells ghost stories. …”

Sage held up a finger. “Actually, that’s not exactly the way Nate described it—”

“Who is Nate?” Rita asked.

“The bartender at the Liquor Hole,” her brother answered, his tone dripping with impatience. “Nothing to do in this town except get shit-faced, so we’ve become well acquainted.”

“Yeah, well it worked,” Rita shot back. “Your face does look like shit.”

“Guys.” Peggy stepped in between them, waving the brochure back and forth. “I say we do it. Nothing could be as bad as sitting around bickering.”

Another knock at the door. Stupidly, Rita’s heart went bonkers, thinking Jasper might be standing on the other side. She must have betrayed her feelings somehow, because the room’s three other occupants watched her with interest. “It’s probably Bel,” she said, taking the few steps toward the door. After a cursory peek through the hole, Rita’s heart sank, but she managed to school her features in time to let Belmont into the room. “Hey.”

Belmont gave her a brisk nod as he stepped into the cool darkness. His gaze immediately zeroed in on Sage, who tugged the hem of her dress down under his regard, cheeks flaming. “Food?” Belmont asked.

Rita noticed that the brothers refused to look at one another, but, surprisingly, Aaron answered. “I could eat.”

Peggy turned in a circle, holding up the desert-excursion brochure like it was Simba from The Lion King. “Hot dogs and s’mores are included in the price. Come on, you guys. Adventure awaits.”

With a sigh, Aaron plucked the brochure from his sister’s hands. “It leaves from the church parking lot in thirty minutes.” He laughed under his breath. “No idea where the church is, though. Only the bar.”

“It’s not far,” Sage murmured. “You can see the steeple from the parking lot.”

“A bonfire.” Crossing his arms, Belmont frowned at Sage. “Is this something you want to do?”

Sage glanced at a frantically nodding Peggy and smiled. “Yes.”

“I guess that settles that.” Aaron hopped off the dresser, throwing Rita a measuring glance. “Let’s go start a fire.”





Chapter Twenty-Five



Jasper hadn’t been on a bender in two years, but he sorely needed to break that streak. He hadn’t moved from his office chair after collapsing into it sometime after Rita had left. No. Not left. After she’d been kicked out. By him.

Outside in the bar, bottles of whiskey and beer clinked together, probably Nate filling the ice bins, marrying new liquor with old in preparation for the Friday night crowd. It would have been so easy to tuck one of those bottles—preferably one containing gold liquid—into his waistband and spend the night forgetting what had happened with Rita, but it would be the coward’s way out.

So he would sit there and remember every brutally perfect second. Let the touch and feel of Rita drill into his gut, over and over. Or, worse, the way she’d recoiled when he’d blown up. What had she expected? For him to beg and plead for her to stay, like some weak-willed asshole? Much as he’d wanted to, he’d refrained. And wasn’t it ironic that the strength of will that had been cemented on the mesa this morning was the very thing that had forced him to send Rita away this afternoon?

Yeah. He reckoned it was. He just couldn’t break through the dread of never seeing Rita again to figure out what it meant. Or if she’d imbued him with enough confidence to break it off, maybe he just didn’t want to know, because it was too big a kick in the teeth.

Jasper dragged both hands down his face, then gave up the battle to keep from staring at the desk. Seeing Rita as she’d been, body tightening as he slipped a hand around her neck. Trusting. So trusting of a man she’d been in the process of gutting. Or had it all just spun out of their control? He’d spent enough time with Rita to know spitefulness was out of character, so he must have underestimated the loop she’d been thrown for with the cooking demonstration.

The man Jasper had been when Rita arrived in town—the man who’d only been hoping to prove something to himself by spending actual, quality time with a woman—his knee-jerk reaction was to chalk up what happened with Rita as a failure. Proof that he was a good time, nothing more, nothing less. But something must have changed along the line, because new Jasper beat back that belief with a flaming baseball bat of fury. Fuck that. He wasn’t the town’s entertainment anymore. Rita hadn’t broken him this afternoon…

…and had she really wanted to? Would she have stayed if he hadn’t told her to get lost?

Pain lanced his stomach, doubling him over. No. No, he couldn’t do this to himself. Agonizing over a woman whose actions had been so clear earlier. Over. She’d wanted it over, whether his gesture had been all kinds of wrong, or she simply needed to move forward in a different place, far from Hurley, and hadn’t known another way to cut ties.

Jasper pushed up from his desk, restlessness alive in his blood, wishing for the hundredth time he’d just slammed the door this afternoon and had it out with Rita. Hell, a good old-fashioned argument might have been exactly what they’d needed.