Traded by Lisa Suzanne
CHAPTER 18
I head to bed once we’re docked on our sandbar for the night. Smaller boats jetted some of the party guests back to the marina, so it’s just Ben’s closest friends and the women they either brought with or picked up at the party who are staying overnight.
Jack is still playing cards and I’m beat after a day in the sun drinking beer. I trust that he’s not going to get arrested. He and his buddies are a little rowdy, but it’s mostly just good, loud fun as they exchange chips back and forth across the table as each of them attempts to win the pot.
Jack will win. I don’t need to sit there watching their game to know that. He’s a champion through and through, and he never backs down until he brings home the victory. It’s just who he is, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a friendly bet with his buddy or a poker game or a football game.
The gentle sway of the boat mixed with the alcohol and fresh air of the day lulls me quickly to sleep, but I’m pulled from my slumber when the bed shifts under Jack’s weight. My heart races.
We’re in the same bed. I can smell him from here, that same woodsy, masculine scent that was stamped in my memory from that night we shared, but this time mixed with the distinctive malty aroma of beer instead of gin. Even after a day in the water, he still smells like him.
Sharing this bed is innocent, but we’re both a little drunk, and a huge part of me wants to turn in his direction and just...I don’t know.
See where it leads us.
It takes everything in me not to do that. We have too many lines to cross, but the raw sexual magnetism between us is hard to ignore.
I only sleep in short patches after that. I try not to toss and turn, but how do I sleep when I’m overwhelmed by his scent? By him?
When morning comes, I wake to find us each on our own sides of the bed. Part of me thought we’d shift closer and closer to one another through the night and wake up holding each other close, and then he’d realize Michelle is all wrong for him and we’d just ride off into the sunset, maybe each holding a cup of coffee from Dunkin’.
Reality sets in. What a ridiculous dream.
I get out of bed when the need to use the bathroom becomes overwhelming, and when I return to our bedroom, he’s still asleep. I watch him for a beat, and then I grab my phone and head out to the kitchen. It’s deserted. I head up to the party deck to sit in one of the chairs facing the water, but I find Ben enjoying the hot tub by himself. He turns when he hears me.
“Morning,” he says. I walk over closer to him instead of sitting in the chair I’d been thinking of, and I sit on the edge of the hot tub and dangle my feet in. “Sleep well?”
I shrug.
“Rough night sharing a bed with Jack?”
I chuckle. “It’s completely professional between us.”
He winks at me. “Sure it is. That’s why he got all defensive when I offered my bed to you yesterday.”
I lift a shoulder. “He’s just...looking out for a friend, I guess.”
“Sounds like more than friendship to this outsider,” Ben says, his tone suggestive, and my curiosity gets the better of me. He knows Jack. Did Jack say something about me? Does he have feelings for me? “He told me you two met once before.”
Oh God. I cross my fingers that the stupid cat burglar meme doesn’t come up in this conversation. “Yeah,” I hedge, not sure how much he knows.
“Sounds like you had a hell of a fun night before Michelle showed up.”
“Yeah,” I say again, not sure what, exactly, he’s trying to dig out of me or what Jack told him. We did have a hell of a lot of fun, and he heard the story from Jack’s point of view. What did he mean by a hell of a fun night? “But that was a long time ago. They’re engaged now.”
“Not happily,” he mutters.
“Doesn’t matter. She’s wearing his ring, and that makes him off-limits.”
Ben glances up at me and shakes his head. “Damn. Fine as hell and a moral compass. A rare combination in this business. Good for you, girl.”
I blush as I laugh, and a throat clears behind us. We both turn to look and see Jack standing there looking no worse for the wear considering how much he drank last night.
“Am I interrupting something?” His voice is hoarse from sleep and he’s extra sexy this morning.
Ben laughs. “We were talking about you.”
My cheeks heat further.
“Oh?” Jack asks. He saunters a little closer to us and stops beside the hot tub. “What about me?”
“How drunk you got last night,” Ben says. “Feeling the effects this morning?” He taps his temple to indicate a headache.
Jack shakes his head. “I’m only thirty-three, dude. I can still hold down a few beers and not wake up hungover.”
I laugh. “I can’t. I’ve got a massive headache this morning.” I think that has more to do with restraining myself in a bed all night as Jack Dalton slept soundly beside me...or possibly from sleeping on a boat in a lake.
“We’ve got a nice breakfast spread coming out shortly,” Ben says, and he leans his head back. “The coffee should be ready down in the kitchen if you need some. Help yourself to anything.”
It feels like the end to our conversation, but Ben’s words are stuck in my head now as I wonder what, exactly, he meant.
I follow Jack down to the kitchen and we help ourselves to coffee. The breakfast buffet is already set up, and we each grab scrambled eggs, a bunch of fruit, bacon, and pastries.
We enjoy our breakfast on the deck, and it feels like a date as we look out together over the water. I’m awkwardly silent as I think about the hell of a fun night we had a few months ago, and he seems to be lost in quiet thought, too.
I wish I could get into that head. I’ve only been here a few days, and I already know it’s going to be a hard road fighting my feelings for him.
But other times...he makes it pretty damn easy.
Once we’re back at the marina, we say our goodbyes to Ben and the rest of the friends we met on the boat, and we head back toward home. He blasts Motley Crue the whole way, and I can’t help but wonder whether he does it so he doesn’t have to talk to me.
And when we get home, it feels like all the progress we made over the last twenty-four hours is completely lost when we open the door and find Michelle sitting at the kitchen table.
“Welcome home, honey. Have fun with your little friends?” she asks snidely.
“I did,” he says shortly. I notice they don’t greet each other with a kiss the way you’d expect a betrothed couple to do. He glances over at me, and then he says, “Except it felt like I had a babysitter the entire time.”
I raise a brow. That is my role here, but we haven’t shared that with Michelle. She thinks I’m his assistant.
“Kind of strange to bring your assistant along,” she notes, her tone hinting how she thinks something might be going on between the two of us.
“Seemed like a nice bonus,” he says. He glances at me, and his expression is unreadable. “But you’re right. Next time the assistant stays home.”
We both know it’s a lie since I need to tail him everywhere, but it still manages to punch a hole right through the fledgling friendship I’d thought we started to form.
