Hot for the Jerk, page 10
I met Jagger’s amused gaze for a moment, but as soon as my cheeks grew hot, I quickly looked away. Not wanting to be the only one not doing anything, I grabbed a pair of scissors from the knife block and opened up the bag of mixed veg, dumping them into the pot with the onions. Then I opened the cans, rinsing the beans before adding them to the pot. Lenora was back in the freezer, digging around and muttering to herself.
The air between Jagger and I seemed to grow increasingly awkward the longer we both stood there in the kitchen. I hated small talk, but the quiet was worse. “So you abandoned the puzzle?” I asked, just as a roar of laughter from the drunkards in the sitting room flitted into the kitchen.
“Just taking a break,” he said, lifting up the cutting board and scraping the onions into the pot, while also blinking a bunch behind his glasses.
“There you are, you little suckers,” Lenora said, yanking out a bag of frozen dinner rolls. “I knew I stuffed you back here.” They landed on the island next to the soup pot with a thunk. “Hopefully they’re not freezer burned too badly.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” I said. “Otherwise, we can always make pan-fried bread dough in a skillet on the woodstove. I’ve done that before.”
Lenora’s head tipped to the side. “You might have to show me how to do that, dear.”
After we finished adding the stewed tomatoes and seasonings to the pot, Jagger and his muscles carried the heavy pot out to the living room and set it on the woodstove.
“We’re cooking like they did in the Wild West, huh?” said Bernie with a chuckle as he took a sip from his beer bottle, letting out a satisfied, “Ah.”
“I think they cooked over a campfire under the stars, with scorpions crawling through their bedrolls,” Jagger said, opening up the woodstove to check on it and adding another piece of firewood.
Bernie’s laughter quickly turned into a hacking cough which prompted Effie to whale on his back like he was choking on a chicken bone.
“While we wait for the chili,” Lenora said, sneaking up behind us, “here are some mixed nuts, pretzels, and some of my canned homemade pickles—bread and butter, and dill.” She set the tray of hors d’oeuvres on the coffee table, and immediately, the tipsy guests all leaned forward to grab various bites.
“Gonna be a bit before the chili is ready,” Jagger said, standing up to his full height and giving me a curious look. For some stupid reason, I was right behind him. Me being there was entirely unnecessary, and when he turned around to the way he was now, we were practically chest to chest.
I cleared my throat and took a giant step back. “Right.”
“Might as well get back to the puzzle,” he murmured, still giving me that bewildered, but also amused look as he stepped around me. It wasn’t my face that was hot now, it was my entire body. Hot from embarrassment, hot from the reoccurring images of him shirtless and swinging an axe, and hot from just how hot I was for this jerk.
This was the makings of an absolute disaster.
Maybe Effie and Bernie would let me crash on their floor tonight. It might be safer than sharing a room again with my sexy bearded enemy.
Jagger sat back down at his seat at the table with the puzzle pieces spread out in front of him and jerked his chin at me. “You coming, Elsa?”
With a huff and burning cheeks, I reclaimed my seat on his right. “Why do you keep calling me Elsa?”
His lips twitched beneath his beard. What would it feel like to have that beard against my cheek? Against my skin?
Snap out of it!
“It’s mean, and I should stop,” he said. “It’s because Elsa is the Ice Queen. And, well … up until this so-called truce of ours, you’ve been pretty damned frosty toward me. However, I … I’m sorry.”
I sat there in quiet contemplation for a moment, mulling over not only his insult, but his apology. There were certainly worse names to be called, and I’d given him plenty of reasons to use them in reference to me. Frozen was a good movie, and in the end, Elsa turned out to be good. The longer I thought about it, the more I didn’t hate the nickname. The more I actually kind of liked it.
My mouth twisted as I scanned the puzzle pieces. “I don’t … hate the nickname. I have been, as you put it, rather ‘frosty’ toward you. It’s fitting.” Hedging a glance upward at him while still staring down at the puzzle pieces, I caught him smiling.
“Can I ask you a personal question … Elsa?”
“You can ask any question you’d like, doesn’t mean I have to answer it.”
He snorted. “Where’s Marco’s dad?”
Jagger certainly wasn’t the first person to ask me that question, and he definitely wouldn’t be the last. Very few people knew the long version of this story. In fact, I could count the number of those people on one hand—and one of those people was dead.
“You don’t have to say, if it’s too hard,” he quickly added. “I just … nobody really knows how four cousins—all single moms—ended up inheriting Dolores’s vineyard. Everyone knows what happened to my brothers—losing their wives in that car accident. But are you all widows too?”
“I’m a widow,” I said softly, glancing into the sitting room when an outburst of laughter rattled the chandelier overhead. “So is Naomi. Gabrielle and Danica are divorced.” There was a lot more to Gabrielle and Danica’s husbands and just why they were divorced, but those weren’t my stories to tell.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently, and I suddenly found his hand on mine, his eyes soft and beseeching behind his glasses.
Clearing my throat, I carefully moved my hand out from beneath his like I was certain I found two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly—and his hand on mine wasn’t making my belly-dwelling butterflies get all excited. “Thanks. It’s been a few years now—seven, actually.”
His brows climbed toward his hairline. “Is that why … was I going to be … Ohhhh, this is making more sense now.”
“What is?” I snapped, instantly regretting my tone.
“Was I your first date after you lost him?”
Technically, yes. My head bob confirmed it.
He nodded too. “That makes sense now. You weren’t ready to get back in the saddle. And definitely not with a stallion like me.” His quick flash of a smile and salacious brow bob was absolutely meant to disarm me, but all it did was charm me. And irritate me. Because he was right, and I hated that he was. He would have been my first date since Josiah died, and seeing Jagger in that café made me realize that I wasn’t ready to date, or at the very least, date someone as intimidatingly good-looking as he was.
I absolutely would not let him know that was the truth though. No way, no how. I was sober and planned to stay that way. It was the only way I could keep my wits and the truth about me.
“Have you dated anyone since?” he asked, reaching right in front of my chest to grab a puzzle piece that matched with the one in his hand.
I studied the puzzle pieces, doing my best to subtly calm my nerves and my unexpectedly raging heart rate. “No,” I finally said, after a long, awkward pause. “I haven’t dated anybody.” I was too nervous to glance up at Jagger. Instead, like a coward, I stood up. “I need to check on the chili.” I blurted out, my throat scratchy. “Tea?”
“Uh, sure. Thanks.”
I nodded once, then I was out of there, leaving him sitting with the puzzle pieces, a puzzled look on his very symmetrical, very ruggedly handsome face.
CHAPTER NINE
Jagger
This explained a lot.
Raina’s husband was obviously the love of her life, and his death ruined her. She tried dating apps, which is where we initially met, but then she must have realized she wasn’t ready to date when she saw me. While she certainly could have been more polite about it all, and not ghosted me—or turned into an icicle toward me—I understood where she was coming from. There was no timeline for grief. My brothers all found new relationships when they were ready.
And Raina would too.
Maybe.
She spent a considerable amount of time in the sitting room, stirring the chili and making small talk with the rowdy grandparents, but eventually, either the room got too warm for her liking—it was too warm for me—or she felt the alluring pull of the puzzle again, and she rejoined me. Bringing with her two steaming mugs from the kettle Lenora must have put on the woodstove.
“Thank you,” I said. Even though I was too warm for tea, I appreciated the gesture. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” She sat down and tucked her seat in, gently knocking my knee below the table. That caused her to instantly scoot it back out a bit. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore if you don’t want to. I appreciate you answering my initial questions though. Thank you.”
With her head down, eyes laser focused forward, like she was trying to see one of those 3D hidden pictures, she merely shrugged. But it was what she didn’t do that really struck me as peculiar.
Whenever my brothers spoke of their late wives, their postures changed. Their shoulders rounded a little, their lips pressed tight, and they swallowed more like they were trying to keep down the rising tide of emotion. Their eyes would go a little glassy, even their voices would get softer. You could feel the love they had for their wives in every breath, in every syllable of their words. I wasn’t getting any of that from Raina. And yes, everyone grieved in their own way, but there was something else. Something … odd.
“My husband was quite a bit older than me,” she said quietly with a deep exhale, cradling her mug in both hands and blowing the steam off as it rose toward her nose. “I was his third wife.”
“Oh.” I didn’t see that bit coming.
“Josiah wasn’t exactly a nice person. He was verbally and emotionally abusive. He yelled a lot. Threw things. He was sexually selfish, and a massive misogynist. He believed women were good for three things: cooking, cleaning, and having babies.”
My mouth dropped open, but before she looked up, I snapped it shut. “Fuck,” I breathed. “I’m really sorry.”
She lifted a shoulder. “He’s dead. I don’t have to deal with him anymore.”
Fuck, the way she said that had me wondering for half a second if she offed the guy herself just to be rid of him. But as much as Raina Aaronson was a redheaded pistol of a woman with brass ovaries, she didn’t give me murderer vibes.
Glancing sideways, she made sure the seniors weren’t listening before she started speaking again. “It’s kind of ridiculous … stupid really, that my preferred porn,” she whispered the last word which made me smile, “is what it is, considering Josiah never did that. Considering … I’ve never done that. Or … had a man do that for me … to me … whatever.”
Now I was unable to stop my mouth from dropping open like a goldfish with a broken jaw, nor could I snap it back closed.
“I ghosted you because when I saw you, I got scared. That I wouldn’t be enough. That I would be too naïve. Too inexperienced. Too … sheltered. Our chats were great, but seeing you in person … with your beard, your glasses, your blue eyes, and way too many muscles bulging out of your T-shirt, I realized, I needed to start with a tricycle, before I tried riding a unicycle.”
At that very moment, I’d decided to take a sip of my tea. Big fucking mistake. I sprayed it all over the table and puzzle pieces. “Shit,” I exclaimed, standing up at the same time as Raina, both of us running to the kitchen, but getting stuck on the threshold of the doorway between the dining room and kitchen because it wasn’t meant for two people to go through at the same time.
Her growl made me stand back so she could enter first. She snatched the tea towel from the oven handle and rushed back out to where I was already blotting the mess with a stack of napkins I found on the console table.
She wouldn’t look at me as we cleaned up my mess.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, unable to keep the smile from my mouth or voice.
“It’s fine,” she dismissed with a huff. “Not sure where that diarrhea of the mouth came from.” Her head shook, and she rubbed furiously at the table, even though the spot she focused on was now dry. “Just ignore me. Forget what I said.”
“It’s, uh … it’s hard to forget a confession like that. And me without my priest’s costume.”
Her snort was cute and seemed to ease some of the tightly growing tension around us.
Reaching forward, I rested my hand on hers, making her stop her scrubbing. “Raina, look at me.”
She hesitated at first, so I growled just a little and her gaze snapped to mine.
“Good girl.”
Fire ignited in the green of her eyes, and she swallowed.
“There is no need to be embarrassed about anything you just told me. I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry your marriage was so terrible. That your sex life was so … unfulfilling.” I shrugged. “I mean, I watch alien porn, and it’s not like I’ve ever had sex with aliens.” I narrowed my gaze for a moment. “That I can remember anyway. I did wake up one morning after a very strange dream and my butthole did feel looser.”
She fought the smile for as long as she could, the quiver around her eyes betraying her. But my charm eventually won out and she smirked. Then came the eye roll and the headshake.
Okay, good. We were back on track.
I removed my hand from hers and we finished cleaning up my mess.
“To be fair though, you did liken having sex with me to riding a unicycle. So me spitting out my tea is not the most ridiculous reaction.” I stuffed the napkins into the garbage under the sink as she tossed the soaked tea towel into the hamper in the laundry room.
“Not sex with you. Dating, in general. God, ego much?”
We exchanged smirks as we sat back down to the table again, our knees bumping underneath for a second time. But what was interesting was, this time, neither of us pulled away. We kept our knees there. Touching.
Lenora flitted into the dining room. “Chili smells good, dears. Probably ready in another thirty?”
“I’d say so,” Raina said. “Did you want me to help you make some fried flatbread? Or did the rolls survive the back of the freezer?”
“Oh, those are already out with the chickens. They were so freezer burned. Only person I’d serve those to would be Walt—the cheating bastard.”
Raina’s gaze met mine, and she stood up again, smiling. “I guess I’m on bread duty.”
“Need a hand?” I asked.
“No. I’m good, thanks. You just keep working on the jaguar there.” Then that perplexing little woman winked at me. She fucking winked.
And my dick fucking jumped.
Goddammit, maybe I needed to start drinking just for this day to make sense, because at the moment, stone-cold sober, it was confusing as hell.
It was two-thirty in the afternoon, and all the grandparents in the room were sloshed and getting sleepy-eyed. The chili was a great idea, and the fried flatbread was delicious. We ate in the living room where it was warmest, each of us cradling a bowl of the vegetable and bean concoction, dipping our bread in it, and for the most part, just silently enjoying a warm meal. I’d eat my salad later.
I glanced over at Raina as she sat squeezed into the middle of a loveseat between Bernie and Effie, carefully holding her bowl and spoon. She looked about as comfortable as a rat in a cat café.
“This is very good,” Effie said, her eyes halfway glazed over, and her wine glass empty. “Just what we need to soak up the booze.”
“Good booze,” another guest by the name of Julian, piped up. “Very good.”
“And free,” Julian’s wife, Cynthia, added. “Free booze is always good.”
“Not so,” I argued. “I’ve had terrible free beer that wouldn’t be worth drinking, even if I was dying of thirst. I’d rather drink warm monkey piss than some of the swill breweries are trying to pass for beer.”
Several of the guests chuckled.
“The states get a bad rap internationally for having weak beer—except for our microbrews. And honestly, I’m inclined to agree with the rest of the world. Coors Light is only good for putting out a car fire.”
More chuckles.
I glanced at Raina. “Wouldn’t you agree the same goes for wine?”
She was mid-chew, so all she could do was nod.
“Expensive wine is not always good, and cheap wine is not always bad. And people are such visual buyers that they’re drawn to the cheeky name or fancy label, then act surprised when the wine isn’t any good. It’s all just smoke and mirrors.” Swirling the last bit of my flatbread around in the dregs of my sauce, I took a bite, shoved it into my cheek, and kept speaking. “That being said, good beer and good wine will also have cheeky names and labels in order to stick with what’s trending. So it can end up making it very difficult for buyers to know if what they’re getting is any good.”
“Do you not also agree that the definition of good is subjective?” Julian asked. “I mean, what I think is good beer, you who run and own a brewery might say, is backwater swap juice. And that’s simply because your palate has become more selective, more discriminatory. I like Budweiser. I know what I’m getting when I buy it. It’s not the best beer, but it’s not the worst. It’s … acceptable.”
I loved having conversations with people about this kind of stuff. Grinning at Julian, I set my bowl down on the coffee table and bobbed my head. “I absolutely agree. Taste and preference are absolutely subjective. I just think it can be frustrating from a consumer standpoint. When you get to a liquor store, see the wall of wines and beers, and everything looks the same.”
“The same could be said for everything nowadays though,” Raina piped up. “I mean, you go to a bookstore, and the covers of the same genre are all designed to market. How do I know which one is good when they all look so similar? I have to read reviews and go on recommendations, which is the same for beer and wine. But I typically buy with my eyes—a lot of people do.”
