Love the One You're With (22 page)

“Well, okay,
I
like her. But I also saw the way that Jakey looked at her. And he likes her too.”

Jill topped off Grace's wine.
Smart woman
, Grace thought. “Is it true? Does he like you?”

Grace might not have sisters, but she knew a trap when she heard one. “I'm pretty sure that's a question for him.”

“But you're a relationship expert. I've been reading
Stiletto
forever, and I can't tell you how many crappy relationships you've helped me through. You helped me figure out why one guy wouldn't call, you helped me figure out that another was being distant because he didn't like that I bought him clothes. And your article ‘Ten Ways to Tell if He's Cheating' pretty much
saved my life.”

“Dylan met eight of your warning signs,” Jennifer whispered.

Grace immediately fixed a smile on her face to ignore the stab of embarrassment, although she was glad she'd been able to help Jessica see the light. She just wished she could have seen the light before, well … red panties in her bed.

“Soooooo,” Jamie said, leaning forward. “Do you like him?”

“I …”
Crap
. “Um.”

Nancy laughed delightedly and slapped her hand on the counter. “I knew it. You
do
like him.”

“Well, duh, Mom. She came to Green Bay, Wisconsin, for him.”

“Which
you
told me might have been for the story,” Nancy said with a scowl at her oldest daughter.

All five of them turned to stare at Grace, silently demanding that she answer the question once and for all.

She took a deep breath.

“Yes, I like Jake too. And that darn website has nothing to do with why I'm here.”

But despite her pronouncement of affection for their golden boy, none of them was looking at her. All eyes were locked on a spot over her shoulder.

She knew he'd be there even before turning around.

And from the stunned look on his face, he'd heard every single word.

Grace 2.0 began making submarine siren noises in the back of her head.

* * *

Jake never mentioned what he'd overheard, and Grace told herself she was relieved. Instead, they'd merely gotten sucked into the vortex that was a Malone family get-together.

Dinner was a noisy, messy affair. Jackson and Matt were adorable, if a bit rambunctious on the eve of their joint birthday party, and Nancy Malone's chili—topped with Wisconsin cheese, naturally—had been the spicy, casual kind of meal that Grace's own parents would never have even considered had it not been for some sort of chili cook-off fund-raiser, the Fourth of July, or any other time it was “acceptable” to have a meal one ate entirely with a spoon.

Grace loved it. She loved the way the Malones squabbled and drank one too many beers in the name of celebrating. Loved the way they loved Jake. They teased him mercilessly and badgered him constantly for not visiting more often, and once the cat was out of the bag that they were in fact aware of his and Grace's little website scheme, they'd given him crap about that too.

Of course, Grace had had her fair share of explaining to do. Nobody messed with “Jakey” and got away with it. But they'd done so with the good-natured badgering of someone who was already part of the family.

It scared the crap out of her. Mostly because it felt so natural.

Still, as welcoming as Nancy Malone was, she was old-fashioned about some things. Namely, bedrooms.

When the night finally wound down, the kids were in bed, and the dishes were put away, Nancy pulled Jake down for a kiss on the cheek.

“You'll be in the guest room, Grace. And Jake's in his old room, of course. Your room is the best room in the house as long as you don't mind my sewing machine and Bob's treadmill, which he touches about once a decade.”

“More than you touch that sewing machine,” Bob grumbled back from his spot on the couch. His wife ignored him. They were adorable.

Separate bedrooms, then. That was cool.

That was
better
.

Grace 2.0 could stop worrying that she'd drag Jake down the aisle just because she liked his family, and Grace 1.0 wouldn't even be remotely tempted to sleep with Jake just because she liked him.

Win-win.

Jake had other ideas. “Hey, Mom, I was going to take Grace for a drive. Show her the neighborhood and stuff.”

“Now?” Nancy looked scandalized.

“It's just after nine, Mom. And it's not even a school night.”

She gave a sheepish smile. “I forget that you're from the city that never sleeps.”

“Yup,” Jake said as he helped himself to another piece of apple pie. “And we all call it that too.”

“He always was the sarcastic one in the family,” Nancy said in a loud whisper. “You
watch that about him. Come on, Bob, we're going to bed.”

“Oh, are we?” Jake's dad didn't move.

Nancy marched over to the TV and turned it off decisively. “The kids need alone time. We talked about this.”

Grace pressed her lips together in amusement.

Grumbling, Bob pushed himself up from the couch, giving Grace a peck on the cheek before he clapped his son on the shoulder. “Night, Jake. As proud as we are of your hotshot life, it's always good to have you home.”

Grace watched curiously as the same odd expression went across Jake's face that she'd seen on the porch earlier that afternoon.

Bob trailed after Nancy, and neither Jake nor Grace moved until the creaking of the stairs stopped, followed by the click of a bedroom door.

“Finally,” Jake muttered as he and Grace wandered into the kitchen.

“They're great,” Grace said, leaning on the counter and watching him polish off the pie.

“Uh-huh. If by great you mean prying, interfering, and being all-around pains in the ass. I specifically asked them not to read my stuff.”

“If Jamie was a big-shot journalist writing about her personal life, would you read her stuff?”

“Hell, yes! Jamie has horrible relationship sense.”

“Unlike you and that … what was that model's name? She sure was nice.”

He picked at a flake of pie crust. “Sure. But now I have you.”

“Only till the end of the month,” she said quickly. Playfully.

Grace 2.0 gave her a reluctant, praising pat on the head.

He nodded. “Right. Only till then.”

Grace ignored the pang. “So, you want to show me your 'hood?”

Jake gave her a pitying look. “Are you trying to be hip right now?”

“Is it working?”

“Not even remotely close. You ready to go?”

“Sure … where we going?”

“Not here, Brighton.” He pointed his finger, sweeping it in a circle to encompass the whole kitchen. “My mother has ears everywhere.”

“And I take it we're planning on doing something she wouldn't approve of?”

His smile was wicked. “Definitely.”

* * *

“Wow, your old school. How romantic.”

“Heather Tanner used to think so,” he said as he put the car in park in the deserted corner of the school parking lot near what looked to be the baseball fields. “Nobody liked to park here because of the trees. Bird shit everywhere. But it makes a nice hiding spot from the main road at night.”

“And you came here to … study?”

“Of course,” he said, strumming his fingers on the steering wheel and looking a little nostalgic as he took in the darkened landscape of his high school. “They redid the backstop.”

“Did you play?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was all right. Good enough to be their starting shortstop. Smart enough to know nothing would ever come of it.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Baseball?”

“No … Wisconsin. This city. Your home.”

He looked briefly surprised by the question, and she wondered if anyone from New York had ever seen this side of him, the small-town boy.

“I love coming back,” he said finally. “There's always that moment when the plane descends and I see that familiar landscape, and the warmth I get when I pull into my parents driveway and see my family for the first time in months. But it's not home. Not anymore.”

“But New York is?”

He hesitated. “For now.”

“You have plans to leave the city?” She kept her voice light even as her heart felt heavy at the thought of New York with no Jake Malone. It seemed wrong somehow.

Jake's head turned so that he was looking at her. “I didn't bring you here to talk, you know.”

“Am I not as good a conversationalist as Hannah Tanner?”

“Oh, you're a better conversationalist, all right. I seem to remember her being overly fond of the phrase ‘Oh, totally!' But let me tell you … Hannah Tanner knew a thing or two about kissing.”

“Did she now?”

His eyes were on her lips. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Well, where is this stellar kisser now?”

“Twice married, once divorced. Three kids. Lives on the outskirts of town. Still says ‘Oh, totally' from what I'm told.”

“However did you let her get away?”

“Guess I was destined to kiss someone else.”

“Or
someones
else,” she said, trying to keep it light. “Do you keep a rating system written down in your underwear drawer?”

He tapped his temple. “All up here. It's like a kissing vault.”

“I see. And where do I rank?”

Grace 2.0 rolled her eyes.

Jake scrunched up his face as though trying to place her. “You know, I remember it being pretty damn good, but—”

“You really want to
but
a woman who can destroy your entire reputation with a few carefully chosen words on a blog?”

He grinned. “
But
our kissing encounters have been few and far between. I really can't properly evaluate you without more research.”

“More research.”

“Yup.”

“And what do I get out of this so-called research?”

Jake's teeth flashed, white in the dark night. “Come over here and find out.”

Grace knew what he was doing. He was putting the ball in her court. Putting the decision in her hands. If she wanted him, she'd have to go to him.

So she did.

He didn't move, not when she leaned across the middle console, not when she shifted so she was sitting on one leg to get better leverage. Not even when she pressed her mouth to his, tasting him.

Grace kept the kiss soft, exploring his mouth the way she'd been dreaming of doing since that first date when he'd cheese-plated her. Hell, she'd been wanting to do this since that first day in the cab.

It wasn't until she placed her hand against his cheek, feeling his scratchy stubble against her palm, that he moved, plunging one hand into her hair and using his tongue to press open her lips, exploring her mouth in delicious sweeps that made her gasp.

They kissed until the windows fogged, their hands increasingly more frantic and more bold as they explored each other. Then Jake's left hand reached across the car, hooking behind her right leg and pulling her toward him. Both of them shifted and readjusted until she was straddling his lap in the driver's seat.

“I remember this being a lot easier in high school,” he said, smiling against her mouth as her butt accidentally honked the car horn.

To punish him for even
thinking
about girls he'd done this with in high school, Grace maneuvered until she was lower still, grinding against the hot length of him. Jake groaned and cupped her ass, pressing into her as his mouth found her neck.

His hand slipped beneath the back of her shirt, the flat of his hand running along her lower back before it slid upward, his fingers brushing her bra strap before flicking it open at the same time his teeth grazed the sensitive column of her neck.

She clawed at the buttons of his shirt as his fingers slid around to her front, up under the loosened bra cups, palming her breasts as her nails lightly grazed his nipples.

“This is crazy,” he said, pulling her shirt over her head in jerky awkward movements before closing his mouth around her nipple and sucking hard.

Grace was too lost to care what was crazy. She only cared about what was right, and what was right was clutching Jake's head to her while she ground against him like a horny sixteen-year-old.

Of course
she'd
never been that sixteen-year-old because she'd gone to a prep school where the boys borrowed their daddy's
drivers
, not their daddy's cars, and nobody would have even thought about initiating such a thing with Daniel Brighton's princess daughter.

But Jake Malone thought about it. From the way he was feeling her up, he'd thought about it a lot.

Their touches became increasingly frantic, each fumbling for the button of each other's
pants before realizing the difficult logistics of sex in the front seat of a car.

When she hissed in frustration, Jake swore and roughly lifted her off him. “I can't believe I'm even suggesting this, but …?” He jerked his head toward the backseat, and Grace giggled.

“How old are we?” she asked in a mock-horrified whisper, even as she climbed awkwardly into the backseat, barely managing to wiggle her hips between the driver's and passenger's seats. Jake didn't even try to follow, instead exiting the driver's-side door and climbing in the back door.

Their clothes were off in record time, and he maneuvered their naked bodies until he was above her, his elbows next to her head as he smoothed her hair back from her face.

She arched against him, but instead of answering her unspoken plea, he hesitated. “Grace, this isn't … I didn't …”

Her fingers traced over his mouth, stopping his words. “I want this.”

“You deserve better than the backseat of a car, Grace.”

“So did Hannah Tanner, but that didn't stop you then.”