Play Fair (The Devil's Share Book 3)(21)

“I don’t know, you tell me.” She cocked a perfectly shaped brow.

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Dylan, just drop it, okay? Jacks and I are friends. I’m here to help him out with his daughter. He isn’t into me, not like that.”

“You’re blind. He’s so into you he can’t even think straight.” She held up her hand to stop my protest. “Just be careful, okay? I don’t want Jacks to end up hurt because you get bored.”

She wasn’t wrong, even though I really wished she was. “Will you please drop it?”

She was quiet for a minute before she finally answered me the way I’d wanted her to in the first place. “Life with Smith is…perfect. He’s so kind and thoughtful. And it’s the best sex I’ve ever had. Ever.”

Lexi came down the hall, grinning. “What are we talking about? Sex? I want to talk about sex.” She perched her pregnant butt up on the stool next to Dylan and put her chin on her hand. “Dash is the best sex I’ve ever had too.”

I chuckled. “Is ‘great at sex’ a prerequisite to being a rock star?”

Lexi nodded. “Like I’ve told Dilly before, these guys f*ck like it’s their job, because it kind of is.”

I liked Lexi, she was funny and easy to talk to. She reminded me a lot of Mikah. The youngest and the most carefree of the three of us. “From the stories I’ve heard, Jacks likes his job.” I grinned. “Although, from what I’ve seen of this area, there aren’t really any good bars to go to work at.”

Dylan looked at me. “Jacks hasn’t been going out at all.”

Lexi stole Dylan’s tea and took a sip. “You know, now that you mention it, he really hasn’t.”

She took it back. “There is caffeine in that. Make yourself a cup of the mint.” Lexi rolled her eyes, but got up to make herself a new cup.

Dylan looked toward me and held my gaze. “He hasn’t gone out once since before the music festival in New Orleans.”

“He went out with Luke last night.”

Dylan snorted. “He came home two hours later. That only proves my point.”

Oh, here we go again. “So that’s what you’re basing all this on? The fact that Jacks has gone a month without whoring it up? That’s insane, Dylan. Maybe he just needed a break. A detox.”

Lexi’s eyes shifted from me to Dylan and back again. “What’s happening? Why do you both have on angry faces?”

“Dylan thinks that Jacks is in love with me, and that’s why he hasn’t been partying and why we are friends, why he asked me to come here.”

Lexi cocked her head, tapping her chin. “Interesting…”

“No. Not interesting, ridiculous. Besides, I have a boyfriend.”

Dylan turned to me, full of attitude. “Oh yeah? What’s his name?”

“Shepard Kensington.”

Lexi snorted. “He sounds like a tool.”

Dylan ignored her. “And how does he feel about you flying out at the drop of a hat to see another guy?”

I took a deep breath. “Well, I don’t know how he feels about it. Because I didn’t ask for permission.”

Lexi put her fist in the air. “Good for you, sister.”

Jacks came down the stairs before Dylan could ask any more questions. His bed head was sexy and his sweet, sleepy smile was making me weak in the knees. Neither of which I’d ever admit. I didn’t need to give Dylan any more ammo. He came straight to me and kissed the top of my head before going to the coffee machine. “What are you girls gabbing about?”

“Bryan’s boyfriend.” Dylan leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. She was getting more irritated by the second and Jacks’s casual morning kiss hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Jacks wrinkled his nose. “Who? Shep?” He looked over his shoulder at me. “He’s a tool, she’s dumping him.”

Landry came walking into the kitchen. “What’s a tool?”

Jacks picked her up and sat her on the island next to me. “It depends on the context. If I were to say, Buttercup, can you hand me that tool over there? That would mean I was asking you for an instrument used to fix things. But if I said something like B’s ex-boyfriend was a tool, that would be different. That would be me using the word in a negative connotation to describe someone’s less-than-sparkling personality.”

Luke walked in, holding his hand up to Jacks. “Parenting. Nailed it.”

Jacks slapped his hand and then went back to the coffeepot. Was it wrong that I felt no urge to defend Shep? He wasn’t a bad guy; he just didn’t seem to be the guy for me. We’d been together two months; I’d slept with him, then immediately started to get bored as hell. Dammit. Dylan was right. Sort of. I let out a deep breath and then tickled Landry’s ribs. “What do you want for breakfast, sweet girl?”

She giggled and squirmed. “Uh…muffins? Can we make muffins?”

She’d asked me to buy muffins at the store yesterday. I told her we could make better ones ourselves and then piled the ingredients in our cart. I nodded. “We sure can. Blueberry or chocolate chip?”

“Blueberry. I don’t eat chocolate for breakfast.” I turned to the pantry and laughed when I saw Jacks with a cookie halfway to his mouth.