Borrowing Trouble(34)

Even the thought of those words made Landon shudder.

“Somebody walk over your grave?” Jay asked. Landon turned to look at Jay’s smiling face, sitting like a man without a care in the world in his cheap plastic chair on his new deck next to Landon. Landon chuckled and stretched out his legs in front of him, working out some of the soreness from working so long that day.

“Just got in my head a bit. ‘Borrowing trouble’, as you say.”

Jay huffed. “I’ve done enough of that lately without you doing the same.” Jay fell silent and they both looked back out toward where the sun made its final descent, dipping their part of the world into night. The sound of Jay’s coffee cup plopping on the cable spool they were using as a side table drew Landon’s attention back to his friend—lover? Jay’s face morphed into a frisky smile as he stood and came to straddle Landon’s lap.

“Hello,” Landon drawled. “Did you want something?”

“Thought I’d show you one of my favorite new tricks for getting out of my head.”

Landon tilted his head, wondering briefly if that meant before, Jay was too in his head during sex, but he had no desire to think on Jay’s sex life with women. Also, the thought was a silly one to base any further hope on. And the warm, lightly chapped lips on the column of his throat made him concentrate solely on that point of pleasure and his steadily rising cock.

But suddenly, Jay hopped off Landon’s lap with a hissed, “Damn it.”

Landon blinked for a moment, trying to catch up with Jay’s reason for switching gears so quickly. Still a bit lust drunk, Landon just barely noticed the sounds from behind him inside Jay’s house, until a light flicking on from inside startled him.

The squeaking of the French door to the deck opening, had him schooling his face much better than Jay, who looked a bit like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. Thankfully, other than that, Jay didn’t look like anything had been going on. Landon turned nonchalantly to the teenage boy in the doorway.

“Hey, dad,” Clint said. Landon quirked a brow. The boy looked suspicious. Surely they hadn’t seen anything. It’d been dark outside. Landon kept his face neutral, hoping Jay’d gotten his shit together unless he wanted an awkward conversation with the bouncing preteen girl who followed Clint out and flung a hug around her dad’s waist. They were both shortly followed by the deck light getting flicked on and Bethany popping her head out.

“Oh, my goodness! Landon Petty? When did you get so big?” She came out, smiling broadly, hugging Landon with the same enthusiasm her daughter had hugged her ex-husband. Landon winced, but hugged her back. Clint still eyed the scene carefully, but came to hug his dad and give him a hello.

“Hey, Bethany,” Landon greeted.

“You all are back early,” Jay stated, a little dumbly, but he seemed to have recovered, curiosity being the most prominent emotion displayed on his face.

Bethany stepped back from Landon and put a hand on Jay’s forearm. Landon had to bite down on his tongue as jealousy flared up in him. What could he even say? Of course she would be comfortable touching Jay. She didn’t know she was being forward in front of his … hell, Landon wasn’t really anyone, officially.

“I’m so sorry, Jay. We tried to call a couple of times today when we were on the road. Clint forgot he had a project to do and everything for that class was here at your house, so I had to bring them early.”

“Oh, it’s no problem. We were working on the deck, so I didn’t pay much attention to the phone.” Jay’s last statement was a little chagrinned.

Bethany looked around the new deck. “It looks great. Y’all did real good.” She smiled fondly at them both, then to Landon she said, “That was nice of you. I’m sure you had better things to do than hang out with this old bore.”

Landon wanted to snap, deny her words. But coming off defensive was probably dumb, and Jay’s eyes communicated a plea to play nice. “It was no trouble at all. We just finished up, actually.” And now real life had come to call. Early at that. As Jay said earlier, damn it.

“It was nice to see y’all. I’m sure you got catching up to do. I’ll get out of your hair,” Landon said as he made an excuse to leave. He turned to Jay with a sad, but hopefully understanding, smile. “We got everything put away, right?”

Jay smiled back, apologetically. Thankfully, Bethany was rounding up the kids to go inside to find something for dinner, so they didn’t see the silent communication going on between the men.

“Yeah, we got it all put away. Anything we didn’t isn’t important enough to worry about tonight.”

Landon gave a nod and went for the door, but Jay grabbed his arm. He watched over Landon’s shoulder, probably checking for prying eyes, before he turned his imploring gaze on Landon. “I’m so sorry.”

“No. I get it. It was a while-the-kids-are-away thing.” Landon didn’t know why he was letting Jay off the hook for everything. Jay seemed confused by his blanket statement as well.

“I told you, even if I was with a woman, I’d take my time before telling my kids. This is a bit more complicated.” Before Landon could speak, Jay squeezed Landon’s forearm. “I’m sorry our night got cut short. I do want to see you again.”

“We’ll see each other at work, of course.”