Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(61)

“Jasper—” Rita started, but he cut her off.

“I’ll just ask for one favor from you Clarksons, if you don’t mind.” He pushed Rita’s hair back behind her ear, memorizing the texture against his finger pads. “Hearing the way Rita—and you all—talk about Miriam, I know going to New York is important. Rita wants to learn a new trade and there’s no better place to do that.” God, he was still hanging on. Still pushing for more. Maybe he wasn’t capable of giving up. “But I need one more day. I need Rita there when I open Buried Treasure tomorrow night.”

As expected, Aaron was the first to protest. “You’ve got nerve. I’ll give you that.” He started to turn away, but his gaze snagged on Rita. Whatever he saw in his sister’s expression made him do a double take and sigh up at the desert sky. “Ah, fuck it. One extra day, right?”

Peggy jumped up with a series of fluttering hand-claps. “All of us can help out. If the Clarksons know one thing, it’s the restaurant business.”

“She’s right,” Rita husked, a smile playing around her mouth. “We all had summer jobs at Wayfare, even before I went to culinary school. They’ll be a big help if they don’t annoy you to death first.”

“I’m sold.” Damn, Jasper was so glad that haunted look was gone from her eyes that he was considering going to church on Sunday to give thanks. There was nothing holy about what he wanted from Rita tonight, though. Not a single thing. He leaned in to whisper against her ear. “Come sleep in my bed, Rita.”

She was nodding before he finished speaking.

Everyone had stood to leave, all appearing slightly shell-shocked in their own way, when Glen’s voice brought them up short. “Hell’s bells. The exercise worked.” He whooped loud enough to flicker the fire. “Do y’all mind leaving a Yelp review?”





Chapter Twenty-Eight



Showing his house to a woman was a first for Jasper. Rosemary had been over a few times to fuss, way back when he’d purchased the property. But having Rita walk the old floorboards, her eyes roaming over his couch, his bread box, his wall of old maps—that was something different altogether. Her voice made his living room softer, somehow. Made the lights glow like lanterns. Made his furniture seem more inviting. Oh, mother of God, he loved having her there. She accepted a glass of wine from him in the kitchen and something began to sing in the back of his mind. A comforting hum with an underlying note of steel that insisted handing Rita wine in his kitchen was an activity meant to be performed as a routine.

Stop. Stop thinking like that. You have Rita here now. Don’t waste time wishing for the impossible or being greedy. Just savor the moment.

“I can’t believe they didn’t yell or… God, they didn’t even seem mad,” Rita breathed over the rim of her glass, referring to her siblings. She smiled to herself a moment, then appeared to shake herself. “How much did you pay the mechanic to lie about the Suburban?”

“Well.” Grinning, Jasper braced himself on the kitchen island. “He had a bar tab at the Liquor Hole as long as my arm. Let’s just say we called it even.”

“Very crafty.” Her eyes sparkled. “If Belmont hadn’t busted Aaron’s tooth, would you have made a second bribe?”

“My firstborn. Without hesitation.”

She laughed and Jasper about buckled over the way the sound slid down the walls of his home, filling it with life. “Thank you.” The words from her own mouth seemed to startle her, but, maybe in the spirit of the evening so far, she kept going. “For bribing someone to keep me around. For wanting me around so badly.”

Jasper’s feet carried him around the island until he was in his favorite place: within reaching distance of Rita. He tunneled his fingers through her hair, drawing her the remaining foot toward him. Promises dug like tiny tractors in his gut, excavating vital components of what impulse directed him to say, leaving messes behind. Allowing anything to go unsaid when so much had been admitted already tonight, when they were barefoot in his kitchen, seemed like a damn travesty. I would make a new bribe every day for the rest of my life if I thought staying here would make you happy.

He couldn’t say those words out loud, lest she balk at the pressure. But he could sure as hell show Rita how they made him feel. How she made him feel. “Thanking me for wanting you around is like…water thanking a man for taking a drink…on the hottest day of the year.” When Jasper pressed their mouths together, she went a little breathless, making his head buzz. “I’m sorry about this afternoon, Rita. I’ve been tied in a goddamn knot.”

“No. No.” Without looking, she set her glass of wine down on the island behind him, before crossing her wrists behind his neck, elevating onto her toes. “I can’t believe I haven’t apologized yet. Maybe I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

“Forgotten?” Jasper reversed their positions in the space of a second, pushing her backside up against the island. Using the hair around his fingers for leverage to tug her head back. It allowed him to look down at her, because, yeah, she liked that. Liked when the dominant part of him came out to play. “You think I’ll ever forget the way you lifted your ass at the end and tightened your pussy muscles?” He growled deep in his throat. “A man doesn’t forget coming so hard he forgets his own name. A man doesn’t forget a woman like you gasping when she sees his cock.”