Finding Dandelion (Dearest #2) (19 page)

I don’t get a chance to respond before he says he’s going to jump in the shower and will be out in ten.

It takes me every one of those ten minutes to get a hold of myself. I’m more than glad my panties can’t talk. Because they want Jax. Now.

When he comes out of his bedroom, he’s wearing jeans and another t-shirt, but the water droplets on his neck remind me of what he must have looked like a moment ago in the shower. And dear God, do I want to run my hands over that body.

“I hope you like apples.” I push a plate in his direction as I grab my crutch with one hand and my food with the other.

He looks down at the pancakes, curious.

“I shredded apples into the batter. If you don’t like it, I can make you something else.”

“I’m sure I’ll love them.”

We sit at the table, and his beaming smile dazes me.

As he drizzles syrup over the stack, he licks his lips. “Pancakes are my favorite food.”

I watch him take a bite. As he chews, he moans. “Jesus, Dani, these are good.” He shovels in another big bite. And there’s another moan.

Pancakes shouldn’t make me think about sex, but all this moaning makes me want to crawl up him naked.

He shovels in a few more bites and says, “How about you come over every weekend and make these for me?” His enthusiasm for something so simple makes me melt even more.

“If you ate pancakes every weekend, you’d get tired of them.”

“Not a fucking chance.”

I can’t help the lust-filled smile on my face.

He waves toward his plate with his fork. “Besides my sister, you’re the only girl to ever make me pancakes, and these are better. Hers were always a little burned, but don’t tell her I said that.”

There it is. He thinks of me like his sister. Probably a little sister since I’m the size of a hobbit. Trying not to let my smile falter, I nod. “It’s my mom’s recipe. I can’t take credit.”

I’m not hurt. I’m not. I’m good. We’re friends. I can do this.

Grabbing my fork and knife, I slather on a little butter and then carve a grid into my food before I pour syrup into all the nooks and crannies.

“Whatcha doing there, tiger?” he asks with a cocked eyebrow.

Ah, the disdain for my method rears its ugly head.

“I’m going to ignore your mockery and let you take a bite so you can see there’s a method to my madness.”

He eyes me suspiciously, like I’ve committed sacrilege for not simply drowning my pancakes in a river of syrup.

I spear through three perfect squares and hold it out to him. “Here. Tell me this isn’t better.”

He opens his mouth, and I watch the food disappear between those beautiful lips.

“Oh my God. You’re right. This is amazing.” Jax stares down at his stack, unsure why our food tastes different.

“Cutting the grid allows for the syrup and butter to drench all of those hard-to-reach places.”
The way I want you to drench all of my hard-to-reach places.

Stop, Dani!

After closing my eyes to clear my head, I slide my plate over to him and take his half-empty one away. “I have a ton more in the kitchen. Take mine.”

He looks at me like I’m an alien, and then he laughs. “You make me pancakes
and
cut my food into bite-sized pieces.”

Nice, Danielle. Now he sees you as his mom.
#Awesome

“Shut up and eat.”

As he scarfs down three servings of pancakes, we chat about yesterday’s games, transitioning seamlessly from football to basketball and then soccer. In a moment of silence, his brow furrows. “How’s your knee?”

“So much better. All that ice yesterday really helped because it hardly feels swollen now. It didn’t hurt that much when I got up, but I put my brace on anyway.”

“That’s good. We’ll ice it again today.” The way his eyes pass over me makes me squirm, and my eyes drop to my plate.
He clears his throat. “Dani, I’m really glad you’re feeling better. When I saw you on the pavement, I was so afraid your injuries were more serious.”

I get it. This is Jax making sure I’m feeling better. “I’ll be okay,” I say, suddenly interested in my napkin.

“At the very least, I thought you had a concussion. You were so out of it.”

Biting my lip, I mumble, “I hadn’t eaten, so I was probably light-headed.”

He looks up with a sheepish expression. “Is it terrible that I was hoping you wouldn’t remember the whole ordeal?”

Laughing, I shrug. “I think it would take more than a knock on my head to forget that.”

His head tilts slowly, like he’s deep in thought, as he runs a finger along his hairline. “I don’t know. You’d be surprised.”

“You have a few memories you’d like erased?”

“Mm. Maybe one or two.” His eyebrows lift. “Okay, who are we kidding? Probably a boatload.” He laughs. Shaking his head, he says, “Concussions suck. I’m glad you don’t have one.”

“Let me guess. You got one while you were torturing your sister. She knocked you over the head with a brick for being a weenie.”

His laughter rings through the apartment, and the sound carves into me the way a rainbow cuts a swath across the sky. “Ha. That would’ve made sense. I probably deserved a good beating from her for all the crap Daren and I pulled. No, I got one this fall, and the headaches suck. I still get them, and it’s been a while.”

I look at him sideways. “When did you get a concussion?” Wouldn’t Clem have said something if her brother had been injured?

He laughs weakly. “My birthday.”

I try to keep my jaw from dropping open.
He was with me on his birthday.
I doubt he would’ve been drinking at a club if it had happened earlier in the day. My heart starts to race.

“What… what happened?” Goosebumps line my skin as I wait for his answer.

He shakes his head like he’s embarrassed. Maybe he got hammered that night after all. “My neighbor got locked out of her condo, and her four-year-old daughter was asleep inside. Hannah left something on the stove and was freaking out, so being the genius that I am, I scaled her balcony but slipped as I was crawling over and hit the grill with my head. Had to get four stitches, a tetanus shot and an MRI. It was a great night.”

“That’s a bummer.” I swallow and try to wrap my head around what he just said. Trying to joke, I say, “Bet the MRI made it memorable.”

“Well, that’s the one reprieve I got. The whole night is a blur, but I’m told I had a great time.” 

#HolyShit

That’s what happened! It doesn’t explain why he ran off with that model, but at least I can stop making myself crazy by thinking I was too insignificant to register on this guy’s radar after we hooked up.

“You did,” I whisper. He looks at me, and I realize I said that out loud. “I’m sure you did. You were, what, turning twenty-one?”

“Yeah.”

He didn’t forget me because he got drunk.
He got injured!

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

- Jax -

When the phone starts ringing, I’m so distracted by the thought that Dani made me pancakes this morning that I don’t bother looking at the caller ID.

That’s a mistake.

“Jackson, were you planning to tell me you struck someone with your car?” My mother’s scratchy voice snaps me out of my good mood. In true Joselyn Avery fashion, she doesn’t give me a chance to respond. “I’m sending my attorney over there right now.”

I sigh, pressing the heel of my palm into my temple. “Over where, Mother?”

“To her apartment to get her to sign a non-disclosure. The last thing we need is for this story to end up on every gossip website. I’m closing a deal, and I don’t need the bad press.”

My mother keeps bitching, and I tune her out. I close my eyes, hatred seeping from every pore in my body as I curl my hand into a fist. An evil smile spreads on my lips. “That’s fine because she’s not at her apartment. She’s here.” Taking a nap. In my bed.

The gasp on my mother’s end gives me some small degree of pleasure. She’s always trying to ruin my life, so it’s the least I can do. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she hisses. “She can sue us, especially once she gets to know you and sees all of your dirty laundry.”

I don’t bother telling her Dani already knows plenty about our lives. Dani heard my sister and me arguing that day, and I’m sure she’s learned all kinds of juicy details from living with Clem. I usually hate for people to learn about the shit that’s gone on with my family, but for some reason, it suddenly doesn’t bother me that Dani knows. “Mother, you think everyone wants to sue us.”

“Don’t be a fool, Jackson. When you’re worth as much as we are, everyone does.”

I’ve often wondered what made my mother this paranoid bitch. I can appreciate that running a multi-million-dollar corporation must be taxing, but she’s always been this way, even before she inherited my grandfather’s company. I suppose her father hating her and adoring Clem might have twisted her up, but fuck, she’s the adult. Shouldn’t she act like one?

Putting my mother in charge of the trust fund was the last thing my grandfather did. Then he died of a stroke. I tend to think relinquishing control of all that money to Joselyn killed him.

Something slams in the background. “Jesus, Jackson, did you fuck her?”

In a parallel universe, I have a soft-spoken mother who bakes me cookies and has the good sense to not delve into my sex life. In that world, I have healthy relationships with women because the one who birthed me is not the spawn of the devil.

In this moment, I’ve never hated anyone more than I hate this woman. Three more years of taking her bullshit so I can get my trust fund suddenly seems like a long damn time. But if I stop playing her game, if I tell her all of the things she deserves to hear, I’m screwing myself and my sister because even though she’s cut off Clem financially, Joselyn is too selfish to know I plan to give my sister half of what I inherit.

My jaw unclenches. “No, I didn’t sleep with—”

“Actually,” my mother says with a spine-chilling laugh, “maybe that’s better. Sweet-talk her and get her to sign. Once she sees the check, that will seal the deal. As we both know, every girl has her price.”

Goddamn her.
Of course she’d bring up Giselle right now.

“Don’t waste your time, Mother. I don’t think Dani will sign. She’s not that kind of girl.”

If she were, all she had to do was tell the cops the truth—that I was on the phone when I plowed into her with my car—and I’d be in the middle of a shit storm right now.

It’s Joselyn’s turn to laugh, and the sound makes my skin crawl. “After everything, I can’t believe you’re still so naive. I thought I taught you better than that.” I laugh at the thought that my mother tried to impart anything of emotional value to me. “I hope law school teaches you a thing or two next year.”

That’s the bitch of it all. To play her way, I have to give up soccer. Not that my head has been in the game this fall, but it’s the only dream I’ve ever had.

My skin is clammy when I hang up. There’s only one place to work this out in my head. I go back to the treadmill.

A few hours later, Dani and I are back in the saddle, lounging in front of the TV in the living room and cueing up another movie.

“So you don’t regret missing out on Black Friday shopping?” I ask incredulously.

She scoffs. “I hate Black Friday shopping.”

“I thought girls lived for that shit.”

She wrinkles her nose. “One, I hate crowds. Two, who needs to get up at two in the morning to save five dollars on some piece-of-crap game console that will be obsolete within the next six months? And three, if I were shopping right now, I’d be missing out on scary movies, and I love scary movies.”

If making breakfast this morning didn’t make me fantasize about taking her on the kitchen table, this does. She’s everything I’d want in a girl—she’s funny, thoughtful, doesn’t hold any punches, is drop-dead gorgeous, and doesn’t have a vain bone in her body. And even though I nearly killed her two days ago, she’s as sweet as can be. Bonus.

Wait. When did I start thinking about what I’d want in a girl?

After watching
28 Days Later
and
Shaun of the Dead
, both movies she’s seen before, I pull out all the stops.

“Have you seen
The Descent
?” I ask as I put a giant bowl of popcorn on the coffee table in front of us.

She says she hasn’t, and I smile because this is straight out of my high school playbook, back when I thought I could like a girl for more than just a fun night.

The thought jars me—if anything happens here, this thing with Dani would be so much more than sex. That scares the shit out of me because Giselle was the only girl I’ve ever had a relationship with, and she fucked me over so royally that this is the first time I’ve gotten close to considering another one. And it’s been nearly four years. Never mind that my sister will skewer me if this goes to hell and she has to bear the brunt of the fallout.