Page 18 of I’m Not Yours

“Let’s talk over dinner, Allie.”

I sank onto my dad’s couch with my mother’s red-and-white flowered quilt on it, my head in one hand, my phone in the other.

I had returned late last night from my trip and I knew Jace was not happy.

He was a kind man, but he was a proud man, and he was frustrated with me, with us.

He did not like getting the runaround. I got it.

“Jace . . .”

“I have calzone and salad and I’m bringing it down to your place.”

“Jace—”

“Jace what?” he snapped.

“I’m—”

What to say? I thought of you my entire trip and I’m wiped out and I have no resistance against you at all .

. . I can’t wait to see you . . . I can’t believe I’m thinking very seriously of moving, because then I would never see you; but it would be another form of hell to stay here and be near you as your life goes on .

. . I have missed you since Yellowstone .

. . I love you and I want to jump into bed with you more than I’ve wanted anything.

“You’re what, Allie? No, hold that thought. I’m coming down and you’re going to eat Italian with me.” He hung up.

I stared at the phone, then looked up at his architecturally stunning, warm, safe house on the hill. He would do what he wanted to do. He would be here in five minutes.

I ran for my closet and my lipstick.

It is amazing what a woman can do for her looks in five minutes, if pushed.

“How were the interviews?”

“They were fine.” I missed you. I put down my fork.

I love calzone, but I could hardly focus on it with Jace sitting across the kitchen table from me looking all manly, the sun plopping down over the horizon.

I had lit my scented candles. He looked even lustier by candlelight, and that beat down my resistance to him even more.

“And? Are you moving?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you offered jobs?”

“Yes, two offered me jobs and I received a call this morning from the third.” The salaries were impressive. The workload would be incessant, draining, and no Jace.

He nodded, those brown eyes guarded, not happy.

I had a quick vision of me underneath him on his couch the other night . . . how far we’d gone, how yummy and toe tingling it had felt.

“I would be selling expensive clothes to expensive women again. Traveling, too.” How frivolous.

How lonely. I was wearing a burgundy sweater with a deep V, jeans, and crystal earrings, my hair up in a loose ponytail.

I will not admit that I wore a black push-up bra so my cleavage would be up and out for Jace.

I was so much more comfortable without the tottery four-inch heels I wore during the interviews.

“Would you be happy doing that?” he asked.

“No.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Do you not like me?”

I like you and I love you. “No. I like you.”

“Good. I like you a lot. You’re my favorite person. Let’s play a game.”

“A game?”

He pulled his chair over until our knees were touching. “If you don’t kiss me, we don’t go to the barn dance together. If you do kiss me, you’re my date.”

“I’m not going to kiss you.”

He grinned.

“For heaven’s sakes, Jace.”

I stood up, he stood up close to me. I moved to the left, he moved to the right. I moved to the right, he moved to the left.

He knew I was starting to feel waves of luscious desire rolling on through. I could feel my own blush. He knew what he did to me. He bent that dark head, his mouth an inch from mine. He pulled me close, hip to chest.

“That’s not fair. You can’t touch me.” My voice was all whispery, breathless.

“That’s not part of the rules.”

I took a few steps back. He backed me into the wall. I put my hands on his shoulders and laughed; couldn’t help it. Sexual tension did it, I was sure. We were pressed up close to each other. “One kiss, Allie,” he murmured. “One.”

He pressed up even closer, tight and warm, and I wanted to wrap my legs around his hips. I could smell him. Mint, pine trees, yum. His mouth was inches from mine.

“I missed you,” he said. “Missed your smile, your laugh.”

My eyes fluttered closed and I breathed in deep. The man was overwhelming.

“I looked down the hill and your lights weren’t on. You weren’t there.”

I was revved up about as high as I could go. I could feel his heart under my hand.

“I thought of you not being there, and I think I’d have to sell my house, honey, if you moved.”

Desire zigged and zagged through my body, and I felt weak.

“Maybe we should discuss this kiss in bed, babe?”

“Ahhh . . . not in bed.”

“Kiss me, Allie. One kiss. For the barn dance.”

I couldn’t help it, I was shivering for the man. I put a hand behind his head and brought his lips down to mine.

“Please don’t leave, Allie,” he said, between marvelous kisses that traveled all over.

My dad kept holding open the door with his urn.

I didn’t know what to do with his ashes.

People often spread their loved ones’ ashes.

But where would I spread my dad’s? He was not a “loved one.” He was a scary, manipulative, drunken loser. Did I even owe it to him to spread them?

Jace came by at seven o’clock the night of the barn dance.

“I told you I’m not going to the barn dance.” Heck no. “I don’t dance anymore, and you tricked me with those smokin’ hot kisses.”

He laughed, walked into my house, and shut the door.

I had showered with apple-scented body wash and apple scented shampoo, not because of the barn dance and Jace, but because I like apples, and for no other reason.

Same with the apple-scented lotion I spread all over afterward, too.

I also put on a low-cut, lined, white lace shirt; a pretty yellow bra; my tighter blue jeans; cowgirl boots; and lipstick, because I was tired of being frumpy, and surely Margaret and Bob—he who hates squirrels—would appreciate my efforts.

“I don’t dance, Jace. I don’t need to meet people, I don’t know how to play the fiddle, and Marvin, Bob, and Margaret need my company.

They’re lonely. And I need to find Margaret’s pink stuffed bear.

She can’t sleep without it.” By the time I stepped back from Jace’s smokin’-hot kisses that night, all my clothes were on the floor and he was shirtless.

Oh, how I loved that sweet man naked . . .

“I’m lonely for you, too, Allie. You kissed me last time, and that makes you my date for the barn dance, per our agreement, and you look .

. . you look . . . absolutely gorgeous.” Jace’s chest heaved up for a second, and his jaw was held pretty tight.

“As for the dancing, I know you dance, I’ve seen you dance, you have perfect rhythm, you don’t need to know how to play the fiddle, and the animals have had you all day.

Marvin wants me to tell you to go to the barn dance. ”

I looked at Marvin. He meowed. I refrained from meowing back in front of Jace. Marvin meowed again, irritated with my lack of conversation.

“I’m staying home to embroider.”

Jace studied me and I studied him back. He had on jeans, a blue shirt, a cowboy hat, and well-worn cowboy boots.

Man, if he was any sexier, I would pass out, I would.

I so loved that weathered look he had, too—that tough, rough, I can round up cattle, ride a horse, and sew your leg up if you need stitches look. My heart beat like a fool.

Jace smiled, free and easy, the tough-guy face softened by indulgence and humor. “You’re going to stay home to embroider? Well, okay. We’ll stay here together. I’ll hand you the thread.”

“I can’t embroider when people are watching.”

“You can’t embroider at all, Allie.” He winked.

“That’s true. I think I’m going to dust.”

“Looks clean enough in here to me”—he glanced around—“plus housework bores you out of your mind.”

“And I’m going to take a toothbrush to the wood floors and clean them.”

“I’d like to see that. Maybe you could do it naked.”

“I have told you not to make comments like that.” Stop, foolish heart!

“Okay. Well, you could be naked and so could I. We could clean about a foot of floor and then do something else.”

Full-blown, 3-D images of what he and I could do after we cleaned a foot of floor, nude, filled my mind. My gaze went to his chest. Wide, strong , safe . Then his hips. Ah, how they moved . “I’m trying to stay out of trouble with you, Jace.”

His face became serious, but I saw the kindness there. “We’re not going to get in any trouble together, Allie. We never did, we never would. We’d be together. That’s it.”

That would not be it. He doesn’t know. He is so irresistible.

Jace wrapped his arms around me. On instinct, I hugged him back, our temples together.

That big bazooka then started to dance me around my family room, past the magical apple tree painting, singing a country song.

I got that giddy, breathless, smiley feeling and gave in, my feet following his. What else could I do?

I rode the first wave of desire, starting from my brain and heading toward the nether regions.

I sucked in my breath and pulled away before I stripped and handed him a toothbrush.

“Okay, Jace.” I laughed. “Yes to the barn dance.”

He shook his head mockingly. “Shoot. I was thinking it would be better if we stayed home and worked on that embroidery pattern.”

“No, oh, whew. No.” My whole body was now throbbing, all drummed up. “Can’t do that.” I turned and grabbed my keys. “Let’s go, cowboy.”

He chuckled, deep and sweet, but I didn’t stop to catch that inviting gaze again. I couldn’t.

I might turn around and head for the bedroom.

The red barn was decked out in white twinkly lights, hay bales, and a few chickens who wandered in and out.

An amazingly good honky-tonk band belted out one country song after another on a stage.

The barn was jammed with people in jeans, cowboy hats, and boots, and rows of tables holding traditional American barn-dance types of food— fried chicken, baked beans, chili, cornbread, corn, and salads.

In typical American fashion, there was also Asian, Mexican, and Italian thrown in.