Читать книгу Just Between Us... - Tori Carrington - Страница 9

MALLORY SWALLOWED HARD. It wasn’t possible that… There was no way that…

The door to the linen closet vibrated again.

“Hello?” a female voice drifted through the wood. “Is somebody in there?”

“Oh God,” Mallory whispered. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

She moved to put her legs down.

Jack only gripped her tighter.

“Jack, I—” She breathed.

He put a finger over her lips, a decidedly wicked look in his mocha-brown eyes. “Shh.”

He moved inside her. One long stroke that made a moan gather at the back of her throat, leaving her mouth eager to let it loose.

He wasn’t… He didn’t…

He stroked her again, long, hard and deep and her ability to think stopped altogether.

She didn’t care if both Layla and Reilly were standing on the other side of that door. She didn’t care if the L.A. police were about to break it in. All she could concentrate on was how very good it felt to have Jack so deep inside her.

“Oooh, oooh, oooh!” she rasped, trying to gain purchase against the moving door even as her crisis built.

“That’s it,” Jack said, leaning in to suckle her neck. “Come for me.”

And she did.

Her orgasm seemed to stretch on and on and on even as Jack stilled and strained in the throes of his own climax.

After long, heart-pounding moments Mallory blinked open her eyes to stare at the man who had given her more mind-blowing orgasms than any ten men combined. It wasn’t even remotely possible that every time just kept getting better and better, was it?

“Hello?” the voice drifted through the wood again along with a loud knock. “Open the door right this instant.”

Mallory swallowed hard as Jack finally allowed her to slide down his length to stand. Her body shivered at the sensation while her mind slowly grasped the levity of the situation.

Layla and Reilly were going to kill her.

She groaned as she stepped into her panties and slacks and tried to find the way back into her vest. “What are we going to say?” she whispered fiercely to Jack, who was putting himself together with one hand while he held the door closed with the other.

She stared at him as he stared back.

“Why not the truth?”

Mallory’s throat closed off air altogether. He wasn’t seriously considering telling them that they’d been sleeping together, was he?

“Are you insane?” she asked.

“Shh.”

She realized she’d nearly shouted the words.

Jack turned so that his back rested against the wood separating them from the persistent person on the other side of the door. He crossed his arms over his broad and impressive chest, looking a little too cheeky for her liking. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I think it’s about time we let them in on our little secret.”

Mallory’s movements slowed as she turned the vest right side out then yanked it over her head. “Okay, it’s official. You are insane.”

“Why?”

She straightened her top then went to work on her hair. “Come on, Jack. We’ve talked about this. Whatever happened to ‘what they don’t know won’t hurt them’?”

“That’s always been your take on the situation.”

She squinted at him, trying to reconcile the man she’d known just a few minutes before with the man he was introducing her to now. “And your take?”

She figured she was as fixed up as she was going to get and folded her own arms over her chest, facing off with him.

“My take is that I’d like to let our friends—our best friends—know that we’re seeing each other.”

Mallory nearly toppled over. “Seeing each other? Jack, what we do is not seeing each other. What we do is have…sex.”

Was it her, or had he just winced?

She uncrossed her arms and gestured wildly with her hands. “I mean, to be seeing each other, we’d actually have to date. And we don’t date. We’ve never dated. You’ve never called me up and said ‘Hey, what’s say we catch a movie.”’

“I bring over DVDs.”

“And that constitutes a relationship? We don’t even get around to watching the damn movies ’cause we’re too busy having sex.”

Again, a wince.

Oh, no. This was not happening.

Mallory reached around him for the door handle. She needed to get out of this room but quick. She wondered if it was possible for claustrophobia to lie dormant then just spring out and overwhelm the victim in a single moment. “We’ll tell them I…spilled wine or something on my vest and you were helping me find something to clean it up with. And…and…the door got jammed.”

“And what? I blew on the spot until it dried and went away?” Jack stayed put, refusing her exit.

She stared up into his eyes. His deep, dark, wonderful eyes that were now looking at her as if she’d just committed some heinous crime.

“What?” she asked, growing increasingly frustrated with his inexplicable behavior.

And feeling increasingly claustrophobic.

He shrugged his shoulders, his arms still crossed. “It’s simple, Mall. If we don’t tell Layla and Reilly, and I mean come clean with everything, then our relationship—excuse me, the sex—ends right here.”

Mallory’s jaw dropped open. “You…can’t…be…serious.”

He nodded soberly. “As serious as I’ve ever been in my life.”

“Hello!” the voice in the hall grew louder.

If there was one thing Mallory had never responded well to, it was ultimatums. She’d grown up with her mother saying, “Mallory Marie, behave or I’ll send you to live with your grandmother in Portland.” And lately everyone seemed to be throwing around ultimatums. “Pay up your rent or you’re out,” her landlord had told her last week. “Pay me last month’s salary or I quit,” her cameraman had said. “Our foundation needs to have final approval or we don’t grant you the money,” she’d heard just this morning when she was pounding the pavement trying to scare up the money for the cameraman’s salary.

But none of the other ultimatums had made her feel like she might be sick. Standing there looking at Jack, and knowing he was serious, made her heart ache in a way that frightened her.

Despite his words, he couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t be. She didn’t have time for a relationship. She didn’t know where she was career-wise. She’d been in L.A. for nearly five years but didn’t know yet if she had what it took to make it in the dog-eat-dog city. Things had worked so well between them the way they were. And now Jack wanted to change everything.

God, Jack Daniels wasn’t even her type.

She caught the ridiculous thought. She didn’t have a type. But if she did, Jack Daniels would fit the criteria to a T.

Another round of pounding. “I’m going to get security!”

Mallory cleared her throat. She didn’t know what else to say, so she said the obvious. “She’s going to get security.”

Jack stared at her for a long minute. “That’s your answer?”

Mallory’s fear-o-meter shot up another notch. “What? That she’s going to get security?”

“Mmm.”

“Then, yes,” she nodded inanely. “That’s my answer. Because…because…because your question is irrelevant, Jack.”

Her response seemed to stun him enough to allow her to maneuver him out of the way of the door.

She opened it to find that neither Layla nor Reilly were standing outside, nor anyone they knew for that matter. Rather, a woman who was obviously part of the hotel staff looked more than a little hot and bothered that she hadn’t been able to get into the room.

“Excuse me,” Mallory said, pushing past her before the woman could say anything.

Of course, if her need to get out of there quick had anything to do with the tears pricking the back of her eyelids, well, she wasn’t admitting anything.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE FIVE minutes made.

As Jack stood off to the side of the reception room watching the melee unfold before him, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it was the same room he and Mallory had left a short time before. While everyone had been speaking civilly before, smiling, drinking and being merry (well, at least as merry as this mismatched group could get), now clear battle lines had been drawn and the bride’s family and friends were going toe-to-toe with the groom’s.

“It’s off,” Layla said, looking much as Mallory had in the linen closet as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared down her groom, Sam Lovejoy. “The wedding is officially cancelled.”

Sam leaned forward, a tight grin detracting from his handsomeness not at all. “Layla, don’t be ridiculous. We can work all this out after the ceremony tomorrow.” He waggled his brows. “You know, on our way to our honeymoon.”

Layla looked like the dentist had just told her to open wide. “Honeymoon? Honeymoon?” She poked her finger into Sam’s wide chest. “I’ve got news for you, Dr. Lovejoy. There isn’t going to be any honeymoon.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that something monumental had happened to bring about current events. Jack was a stickler for details. It’s what made him such a good columnist.

And, he hoped, it’s what would provide him with the ammo he needed to patch everything up here.

He leaned closer to Reilly where she stood next to him, looking as stunned as he felt.

“What’s going on?” Jack whispered.

Reilly glanced at him. “Jesus, Jack, where have you been? World War III has broken out and you didn’t even witness the first shot.”

Jack resisted the urge to pull at his collar as he looked at Mallory across the room. She didn’t appear to know what was going on, either, but she did look ready to jump into the fray on behalf of Layla at a moment’s notice.

Jack became aware of Reilly’s sharpening interest. “Where were you, anyway?”

He shoved his hands into his pants pockets as he watched Layla work to take off her diamond solitaire engagement ring. “Bathroom. What’s going on?”

Someone—one of Layla’s cousins, he thought—turned to shush them. Reilly ignored her and stepped closer to whisper into his ear. “Remember how Sam used to be Mr. L.A. Chop Doc? The crème de la crème of plastic surgeons?”

Jack nodded. “Yes. Then he took on the position of staff administrator at Trident Medical Group where Layla works.”

“Mmm. Well, it seems he doesn’t much like firing people so he told Layla tonight that when they get back from their honeymoon he’s going to reopen his personal practice.”

Jack grimaced. “Ouch.”

“You can say that again. I don’t think Layla’s quite accepted yet that half the breasts in L.A. bear Sam’s hand marks…”

Jack hiked his brows.

Reilly waved her hands. “You know what I mean. Anyway, knowing that he’s going to be creating more of those perfect breasts, along with pert bottoms, sent her careening over the edge.”

Jack rubbed his chin with his index finger. From what he understood, Layla’s self-esteem when it came to body image had suffered greatly in the initial stages of her relationship with Sam. Throw in that she subscribed to the notion that medicine should be available to everybody, while Sam’s personal motto was “let them have breasts,” and, well, you had a tenuous situation at best.

But ultimately they had worked everything out.

Or so he’d thought.

He took in Layla and Sam bickering like a divorced couple. Had the former harmony between them existed only because Sam had given up performing plastic surgery?

Jack felt himself begin to withdraw emotionally from the situation and wishing he could do so physically. To witness this on top of what had happened with Mallory in the linen closet was a little too much excitement for one night.

Reilly quietly cleared her throat. “By the way, did I tell you that Ben and I had a falling out?”

Jack stared at her as if she’d just taken her head off then screwed it back on.

Oh, no.

That did it.

He was leaving.

Now.

Reilly was nodding. “He wants me to close down Sugar ’n’ Spice and come into business with him. You know, change Benardo’s Hideaway to Ben and Reilly’s.”

Jack suppressed the desire to say, “So?”

What was there some kind of relationship virus going around that he didn’t know about?

He began doing the physical backing away he’d longed to just moments ago.

“Where are you going?” Reilly asked as Jack met Mallory’s gaze across the room.

“Um, the bathroom.”

Reilly looked totally confused. “But I thought you just got back from there.”

He absently rubbed his churning stomach. “Yeah. Something like that.” He eyed the door. “Call me when the storm clouds blow over.”

Then he strode from the room as fast as he could without running.