the rush of young love. That giddy feeling of wanting to spend every moment together. The urgent heat of lust. The way my stomach had dropped every time he’d looked at me. First love. I’d never felt anything even close to it since then, so I’d assumed that’s all it had been, puppy love.
Apparently, I’d been mistaken. He still got to me in the exact same way. Goddamn it.
But. But. If I wasn’t mistaken, I wasn’t the only one unaffected by this unexpected reunion. Sure, Eric was pissed. He wanted to yell at me, I could tell. Luckily, Eric would never make a scene in public.
Underneath his annoyance, however, was stunned disbelief. And possibly desire as his eyes ran over my body from head to toe and back again.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
A perfectly logical question. Quick, brain, an answer. “I was showing some clients around.”
He looked over at Leo and Davis and then back at me. His face had switched from anger to ‘don’t start with me, Jake,’ an expression of his with which I had once been intimately familiar. I hid a smile. That meant he wasn’t truly angry.
“Let me rephrase the question,” he said. “Were you seriously planning on being in town and not telling anyone?”
“No,” I said, relieved to be able to tell the truth. Though it might sound counter-intuitive, the more truth involved, the better the con. “I was going to call my mother. This was all very quickly planned. (Another truth.) “I didn’t know what our schedule was going to be.”
“Uh-huh. And were you going to call me?”
Was that a touch of hurt I saw in his eyes? “Of course, I was.”
We were attracting quite the audience.
“You must have recognized me on the golf course. You were behind us all day. You couldn’t say hello then?”
“It’s been fifteen years,” I said as if that were an explanation.
“You had to have recognized my father, at least. And I saw your mother and Sammy pass right in front of you.”
“I did recognize you,” I admitted.
“So why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t want to interrupt. You and Ryan seemed very cozy.” I tried to keep the rancor out of my voice.
His eyebrows rose and fell, and a corner of his mouth quirked up. “Jealous?”
I snorted. “As if.”
“I’m sure Ryan would be thrilled to see you.”
“Excuse me for not wanting to chat with fucking Ryan Kantor,” I said not even trying to hide my rancor now.
Who’s Ryan? Breck asked over the coms.
Beats me, Ridge said.
Boyfriend, I think, Danny added. At least he acted like it. He’s kind of a dick.
You don’t know the half of it, I said sub-vocally over the coms, covering my mouth with my hand and pretending to yawn.
Oh, man, this is awesome. I should have bought popcorn, Breck said.
Leo laughed.
“I was going to call you tomorrow,” I said. I probably would have. Definitely would have.
“Sure you were,” he said. “Did you know I was golfing in this thing?”
“Not until yesterday,” I admitted. “I’d hoped I might see you.”
“But not talk to me?” he asked, definitely hurt now.
“I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me,” I said honestly. “Plus, this gave me a chance to check you out without you noticing.”
“Oh, I noticed.” He glared at me. “Anyway, I’m sure there are better ways of checking up on me unnoticed than walking behind me on the golf course.”
That’s what I said, Leo commented more than a touch smugly.
“Probably,” I agreed with both of them. “But it’s more fun this way. You make those horrible shorts look good.”
“Well, you look like shit in yellow.”
He’s not wrong, Steele said in my ear.
“And I’m not a fan of the facial hair,” Eric said, continuing with his critique of my appearance. “Or the hair. Or the outfit.”
My gaze dropped to my shirt. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”
“It’s so…generic. So not you.”
It was a far cry from the Jake he’d known, that much was true. In my late teens, my style had fallen somewhere between emo/goth and scene kid from a trailer park, including long hair, dyed black, and covering half of my face. I must have looked like a fool. At least that would make it difficult to identify me from old pictures.
Eric had liked the long hair, though. Right before Bob had kicked me out, Eric had adopted this toe-curling habit of wrapping my hair around his fist and using it to move me where he wanted me during make-out sessions. I’d had zero complaints