The Has-Been and the Hot Mess - Isabel Jordan Page 0,40
reservations.
And now, after the day from hell, Kendall was leaning heavily against his side as they walked into their suite, eyes at half-mast. Poor thing was dead on her feet.
Jackson understood why. Her family was awesome, but exhausting.
Kendall’s head came up at that point and she blinked at the bed. “There’s only one bed,” she said.
“Yep,” he answered. “This is the honeymoon suite. It’s the last room they had. Apparently, there’s a Star Trek convention in town.”
“Oh. That explains the Klingons in the lobby.”
“I can sleep on the couch if it’d make you more comfortable,” he said. “But I promise, we’re just here to sleep. I won’t try anything. You have my word.”
She raised a brow at him. “You mean you didn’t rent a room in a 5-star hotel, fly me out here on a private jet, and spend the day tolerating my family just to get into my pants?”
Snarky even when she was exhausted and emotionally spent. He loved that about her. “I mean, of course, I want into your pants. But I figured my music and my abs would do all that work for me. The rest is just gravy.”
Kendall burst out laughing, exactly as he’d hoped she would. Because as much as he did want into her pants—and shit, he really wanted into her pants—he wasn’t about to take advantage of her.
“Seriously, though,” he said, “Go shower or take a hot bath if you want to, then you can go to bed whenever you’re ready. I’ll sleep wherever you tell me to. Scout’s honor.”
She squinted at him. “You were a Scout?”
“I was,” he said.
Just because he’d been kicked out for sneaking across the river to the girl’s camp didn’t mean he wasn’t a Scout.
“Hmmm. I’m skeptical. But you’ve been pretty great today, so I’ll take you at your word.”
He chuckled as she grabbed her bag and made her way to the bathroom. She stopped in the doorway and turned to glance at him over her shoulder. “Jackson?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For everything. I wouldn’t have made it through the day without you.”
“You’re welcome, Kendall,” he said softly.
He stood there for another minute, staring at the closed bathroom door, listening to the water run, knowing she was naked in there. And despite his assertion that nothing would happen with her tonight, his body reacted to the thought.
He sighed. Maybe if he’d stuck with the Scouts and followed all their damn rules, he wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
When Kendall emerged from her hour-long soak in the suite’s Olympic-sized bathtub, her skin was pink and prune-y, but every muscle in her body was mercifully, finally relaxed. Her legs felt like overcooked spaghetti as she tossed her hair up into a bun and slipped on a ridiculously fluffy, hotel-provided white bathrobe.
She was totally stealing this robe when she left.
When she walked out of the bathroom with the cloud of steam billowing in her wake like she was in an 80s rock video, something stopped her dead in her tracks.
Jackson, wearing a snug white T-shirt and gray sweatpants, was sitting in the middle of the bed, barefoot, remote in hand, flipping through the channels.
Something as innocuous as gray sweatpants should not be sexy. But they were.
Oh, God, how they were.
Something about seeing an already sexy man in a casual, relaxed state like this increased his innate hotness by at least seventy percent.
That was assuming Kendall had done the math right, of course. Maybe it was eighty? She wasn’t entirely sure. Math had never been her best subject.
All she did know for sure was that she was nearly overcome with the desire to fall on him like a rutting beast and rip those sweatpants to shreds with her bare hands.
He glanced up at her and smiled. “Feel better?”
She nodded and had to dig deep before she was able to find her voice. It must’ve been buried under a few tons of pent-up lust, she decided. “I do. Thank you. What are you watching?”
“I truly have no idea. I haven’t watched TV since, I don’t know, 2000 or so?” He frowned. “When was Firefly cancelled?”
“2002,” Kendall answered without hesitation. She knew because she was still bitter about it. If she ever found herself in a meeting with the Fox executives who’d been on the job back then, they’d be getting an earful from her.
“TV seems to have changed a bit since then, and not necessarily for the better,” he said ruefully. He extended the remote toward her and patted the seat next to him