With a slow grin he held up his own key—room eight to her room seven. “Neighbors! Think they have thin walls?”
“Gosh, I hope so,” she gushed sarcastically, taking another sip of wine, slightly larger than the last, he noticed. “It’ll be so much fun for me to hear whatever adolescent girl you manage to pick up giggle when she sees the tiny little thing you’ve got masquerading as a penis.”
Jason narrowed his eyes as he pulled the ever-present cinnamon Tic Tac case from his front jeans pocket. He flipped the lid open with a thumb, watching Leah as he tilted three of the little candies into his mouth.
The tip of her tongue flicked out almost subconsciously, touching the center of her bottom lip briefly, before she jerked her gaze away. He wondered if she was remembering his taste as vividly as he remembered hers.
“Still on those, huh?” she asked, jerking her chin toward the Tic Tacs.
Jason lifted a shoulder in confirmation. The red breath mints had started out as a replacement for cigarettes back when he’d quit smoking eight years earlier. He rarely got the urge for a smoke anymore, but the craving for cinnamon was constant, especially when he was agitated.
And being around Leah McHale ensured that he was always agitated.
Leah blew out a tiny, irritated sigh. “Look, I thought we agreed that we’d do this job with as little contact as possible.”
“Huh,” he said, leaning forward. “See, that’s not how I remember it. I actually remember showing up at the restaurant for a business meeting just in time to watch you have a temper tantrum over a misunderstanding that happened a year ago.”
“Misunderstanding?” Her voice went low and angry as she leaned forward. “A beautiful woman opens your boyfriend’s front door at seven a.m. on a Sunday morning wearing nothing but a shirt that I bought you. Tell me how I misunderstood that.”
Jason leaned forward, happy to meet her confrontational posture. “Easy there, Red. You missed your chance to let me explain that when you ran away and then dodged my phone calls for a month.”
It still burned.
And Jason had never been the type to lick his wounds.
Not when an endless string of foster families had kicked him to the curb. Not when his biological mother had reappeared out of nowhere, only to disappear when she realized that playing mom to a surly thirteen-year-old boy wasn’t as “fun” as she’d expected, throwing him back into the loop of temporary families all over again. Not even when his Army Ranger career had ended in the blink of an eye, when an Afghan car bomb killed several of his friends and destroyed Jason’s knee in the process.
But Leah’s desertion . . .
That had stung.
Not only because he’d thought they’d had something, but because she’d made it very clear that Jason Rhodes wasn’t worth even an ounce of complication. He was used to it by now. Mostly. But damn if this woman didn’t ignite a temper he didn’t even know he’d had since the day he’d laid eyes on the stunning redhead in a photography shop on Eighteenth and Sixth.
Jason had been helpless against her pull on him, and before he could register his intention to talk to her, he was standing in front of her, asking her to grab a cup of coffee.
Coffee had led to a good-natured debate on the merits of Nikon versus Canon cameras. Which had led to lunch. Which had led to dinner.
Which led to the hottest affair of Jason’s life.
Nothing had burned hotter than him and Leah together.
And nothing had been quite so cold as the year that followed, when Leah had iced him out of her life entirely.
Until now.
Now she would be within arm’s reach for the next three days, and for the life of him, Jason wasn’t sure what he wanted to do about that.
Or rather, he did know, but his body and his brain had very different plans in mind. His body was demanding he take her by the hand, drag her to one of their respective rooms, and put his hands on every inch of that pale, smooth flesh.
His brain wanted to punish her. Wanted to swipe at her the way she seemed determined to swipe at him, as though they were two enemies on the grade-school playground.
As for his heart—fuck his heart. Damn thing had done nothing but gotten him into trouble.
“Look, Rhodes—”
He held up a finger to halt whatever stick-up-the-ass comment she was going to fling his way and crossed toward the small bar cart in the corner of the room. He splashed some bourbon in a glass for himself before pulling the white wine bottle out of the ice bucket and crossing back to her.
Leah didn’t protest when he refilled her glass—she even managed a surly thank you.
When he sat back down, he lifted his glass toward her.
She rolled her eyes. “What do we possibly have to toast to?”
“How about the fact that we’ve made it nearly five minutes without you losing that darling temper of yours and throwing water on my crotch?”
Leah gave him a withering look. “That’s what you want to toast to? The fact that you have a dry crotch?”