Rising from the Ashes (12 page)

Ben gave a little chuckle before tucking his hands in the pockets of his designer slacks as he leaned against the doorframe. “Where’s your mind been the past few days?”

Nowhere I want to admit to you
. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately. But don’t worry, I won’t let it affect my work.”

Embarrassment washed over me at the idea that I’d been so transparent to someone who didn’t even know me that well. Just because I didn’t
need
my job financially didn’t mean I didn’t
want
it. I liked what I did and who I worked with, so I always tried my hardest not to let me personal life bleed into my professional life.

Ben pushed off the wall and made himself comfortable in the only other chair in my office. “I’m not worried about your work. I’m more concerned about you. You’ve been…on edge for several days now.”

I could tell by the twitch at the corner of his mouth that he’d wanted to phrase that statement very differently. “You mean, I’ve been acting like a raving bitch?” I asked with a smile of my own.

“Hey, you said it, not me.”

I threw my head back and laughed for the first time in days. If I couldn’t appreciate the humor in my situation, it was going to drive me batshit crazy. “Yeah, sorry. It’s been a trying few weeks, I guess you could say.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

The last thing I was going to talk to Ben about was my sex life—or in this case, the lack thereof. “Nah, I’m pretty sure everything will work itself out soon.” Either Jeremy and me were going to go at it like rabbits soon, or one of us was going to end up in jail.

Ben stood from the chair and headed for the door. “Okay. Well, I’m here if you need me.”

His sincerity made me happy that we’d been able to stay friends after his failed attempt at a date. “Thanks, Ben.”

“I’m heading to the deli around the corner to grab some lunch. Want to go with me?”

My stomach let out a sound, selling me out to the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast. “Yeah, that sounds good.” I grabbed my purse from the bottom drawer of my desk and shut down my computer. “Let’s go.”

I’d managed to get away from the garage long enough to grab a bite to eat. The last thing I’d expected to see when I turned the corner on Briar Street was Savvy walking into Briar Deli with that dickhead, Ben. That was all it took for the fine thread my control was hanging by to snap. Before my brain could register my actions, I was storming through the door and straight up to the table where they were sitting, looking all fucking cozy.

“Well, don’t y’all look too cute?” I spit out before I could think about what I was saying. The only things I could concentrate on were Savannah looking like a walking pinup model in a tight ivory skirt that should be illegal with her legs and the twat who was sitting way too close to her.

She looked up at me with surprise and confusion in her eyes. “Jeremy? What are you doing here?”

The innocence in her voice just made me want to wring her neck. I’d been busting my ass at the sake of my poor neglected dick for weeks, and she was sitting there with another guy, looking like they were on a damn date?

I don’t think so.

“Well, sugar, I thought I’d stop in for a bite to eat. Didn’t know I’d be interrupting something here.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she muttered under her breath. “Jeremy, stop being an ass. You aren’t interrupting anything. We’re just having lunch.”

Bull-fuckin’-shit
.
I decided I needed to cut this off at the source. Turning to Ben, I responded, “You’re sittin’ a little too close to my girl, buddy.”

That caught his attention. “Your girl?”

I pulled a chair over and forced it between the two of them. “Yeah, my girl. You didn’t know we got back together?”

His eyes bounced back and forth between me and Savannah. It was obvious his discomfort with our little trio had just grown. “Uh…no, I didn’t know. We’re really just having lunch, man. Nothing’s going on here.”

I put my elbows on the table and leaned in, so he had no doubt how serious I was. “Damn straight, nothing’s goin’ on here because you’d have two broken arms if there was.”

The sound of a chair scooting back broke the lock I had on Ben. I turned to see Savannah standing up and grabbing her purse.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” she said between clenched teeth as she grabbed my arm and tried to jerk me up. “I’m so sorry for this, Ben.”

“Why the hell are you apologizing to this asshat?” I cut in.

Her gaze shot to mine, and her eyes narrowed. I was instantly afraid for the safety of my balls.

“Shut the hell up, Jeremy, before I break both of
your
arms.” She turned back to look at the douche she’d been having lunch with. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow. I’ve got to take care of this little problem.”

Ben stood, still obviously uncomfortable. A quick glance around the deli showed that we’d garnered quite a bit of attention.

“Yeah, I’ll see you later. You two have a good day.”

“Oh, we will,
Benjamin
,” I replied even though I knew nothing good was about to come from the conversation Savannah and I were about to have.

She jerked me toward the door, no doubt to my imminent castration. She walked at a fast clip to the door, her shoes clicking on the tile floor the whole way. I might have been in fear of what was to come, but I was still a guy. That meant I was walking a few paces behind and admiring just how perfect her ass looked in that tight skirt and fuck-me heels. The burn-in-hell look she shot at me over her shoulder had me going from semi to fully hard instantly.

She finally made it to the sidewalk outside the deli and turned to face me. “Be at my house in fifteen minutes, or I swear to God, I will hunt you down and beat the ever living shit outta you.”

Oh, I’d be there
.
This shit between us was going to end today. Seeing her with another man was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She was going to admit what was going on between us
today
, or I was going to tie her ass to the bed—preferably naked—until she did.

He was dead—so freaking dead that it wasn’t even funny!

I’d already wanted to kill him for the past two weeks, but that little show back in the deli was just the icing on the cake. I pulled my little Lexus into my driveway and shut it off just as Jeremy pulled in behind me. I slammed the door and headed into the house without even looking back. I’d just thrown my purse onto the loveseat in the living room when I heard the front door bang shut behind me. Completely prepared for a fight, I spun around to see he was just as geared up as I was.

“I can’t believe you just did that. Ben is an attorney at my firm. Do you not get that? You could have just cost me my job!”

I could actually see him losing some of his steam at that statement. He’d been so consumed by jealousy that he hadn’t even taken into account that Ben was technically one of my bosses.

“What the fuck was that about, Jer?”

He roughly ran his hands through his hair and collapsed on my couch. “Why do you insist on making this so damn difficult, Savannah?”

The desperation in his voice and the fact that he’d called me Savannah instead of
sugar
didn’t sit well with me. It hurt me to see him in distress. And I hated that I’d caused him to feel that way.

I took a seat on the other end of the couch and let out a heavy sigh. “Why are you pushing this so hard? It’s been seven years, Jeremy.”

He turned to me with a look of anger. “That’s bullshit. Yeah, we might have broken up seven years ago, but we fucked a couple months ago. Stop acting like there hasn’t been something between us this whole time!”

I felt a lump forming in my throat. “Jeremy, please…”

He stood and pulled me to him, wrapping his fingers in the long strands of my hair to force my face to his. “You belong with me and you know it. There’s no one else out there for you. Just like there’s no one else for me. I’m not letting you go.”

I cocked my head back, shocked at how sure he sounded. “Excuse me?”

Jeremy ran his fingers through my hair and rested them on the nape of my neck, all the while looking unflinchingly into my eyes. “Seven years ago, I was stupid enough to let you walk away from me, and I’ve been letting you do it every day since. I’m tired of trying to convince myself that the little bit I have of you is enough. It’s not. I want all of you. I
need
all of you. And I know you need me too.”

I swallowed audibly past the tears clogging my throat. Everything he said was one hundred percent true. I did need him. But I couldn’t have him.

“Jeremy, you know this won’t work. Our past—”

He cut me off with a gentle kiss before pulling back again. “Our past doesn’t matter. I don’t care what happened seven years ago. I’m talking about right now, sugar. I don’t want to look back. I want to move forward, and I can’t do that if I’m not with you. I tried to move on, and I failed miserably. I’ll say it again—there’s no one else for me.”

Every wall I’d worked so hard to build over the past seven years started to crumble, and I was having a hell of a difficult time holding the pieces together. “You know it’s not that easy,” I pressed.

“Do you love me?”

If only it were that simple…

Standing so close to him—the only man who could ever piss me off and turn me on all at the same time—was torture. I loved everything about him—his milk chocolate eyes, his burnished hair, those rippling muscles, each one earned from the years of back-breaking work he’d put in at his garage. Everything about him was rugged and sexy as hell.

“It’s not that easy, Jer. You know that.”

He dipped his head and ran his lips from my collarbone up to my ear before whispering, “But it
is
that easy, sugar.”

His breath on my skin sent a shiver through my entire body, and I knew he could feel it. He was too close not to.

“Do you love me? Because I’ve loved you since I was fourteen. I’ve loved you every single day that’s passed since the day I met you.”

I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. When he told me he’d never stopped loving me, all my instincts to fight him flew out the window. I lunged, wrapping my arms and legs around him as tightly as I could, effectively ripping my pencil skirt in the process.