Outside The Lines (6 page)

Garrett paused, and Jules tried not to choke on the cloud of uncut testosterone filling the small room. “With ladies like Ms. Shaw
planning to be in attendance, how can I say no?”

“Great.” Blake delivered the word with all the enthusiasm of some
one who had just been served with a tax audit. “I’ll go ahead and put you on the list.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Garrett tossed a quick wink in Jules’s direction before making his exit, and she swiveled her gaze at Blake, brows upturned.

“Are you okay?
Or do you need a second to beat on your chest to get the rest of it out of your system?”

Blake’s sandy brown lashes went wide as he returned her surprised laugh, the tension of a few minutes ago gone. “Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you actually fell for that pseudo-charming bullshit? The guy is a territorial asshat.”

“Why Blake Fisher,” Jules drawled,
leaning forward in her chair to nudge his knee with her own. “Is that a bit of professional jealousy I detect in your voice?”

“Please,” he scoffed, nudging her right back. “There’s nothing professional about it. Cross can’t even hit on
you properly.”

Jules came dangerously close to snorting.
“What, is there some sort of man credo for that stuff? What’s the proper way to hit on a woman?”

But t
he second the sarcastic question breached the confines of her lips, she wanted it back, because Blake shifted his weight to deliver the full force of his smoky green stare. “You have to be sincere about it. It’s not enough to tell a woman she’s beautiful, even if she is.” He coasted his fingers over her forearm, and the move sent sparks all the way to her shoulder even through the barrier of her sleeve.

“So what are you supposed to tell her, then?” Jules’s voice
came out thick and velvety, like honey from a jar, and even though her protective instinct told her to look away, something deep beneath the surface guided her closer.

“You’re supposed to say that she’s exquisite.” Blake’s hand follow
ed the trail of heat blazing up her arm until he reached the collar of her shirt, rubbing the material against her skin with just enough friction to make her breath hitch. “And stubborn and pure and strong.”

He pressed forward, his lips just shy of hers as he cupped her face in a set of firm, capable hands.

“You’re supposed to tell her that you’ve wanted her for eight long years, and you’re done waiting.”

#

Even though he knew it was reckless as hell, Blake lowered his mouth over Jules’s in one fluid sweep. The heady taste of her surprise swirled hot on his tongue, and suddenly, reckless became the word of the day.

Christ, this woman was an addiction.
The more Blake was around her, the harder she pushed at his seams, daring him outside the lines with her throaty words and tough demeanor.

And the harder she pushed, the more he wanted to have her.

Sliding his fingers into her hair, Blake deepened the kiss even more, re-learning the nuances of her mouth as his hands found the pins holding her curls captive in their tidy, professional twist.

“You are so hot dressed
up like this.” The streak of want that had rolled down his spine when he first saw her standing at the triage desk in that sheer white blouse and three-inch heels made a repeat performance, becoming more insistent as it shot through him again. In an instant, the pins hit the floor, her flame-colored hair uncoiling in a riot over both of their faces as she kissed him back with equal measure.

“Really?” Jules wrapped her arms around his neck, rising with him as he stood from his chair to gain better access to her body.

“Yes. All this propriety makes me want to undo you, piece by piece.”

The glint in her eye
s was unmistakable, and it burned a direct path to his cock as she said, “Then do it. I’m not big on propriety anyway.”

Her mouth returned to his, hot and greedy as she kissed him hard enough to make him groan. Led by nothing but impulse, Blake reached down low
over Jules’s hips, reveling in the swell of her perfect ass for a long, lust-blown second before pulling her off her feet. Her legs knotted tightly around his waist, the heat between her thighs hitting him in the exact spot that begged to be inside her, and holy shit. He’d never wanted a woman—not even
this
woman—so badly in his entire thirty years.

And he was done waiting to have her.

“Jesus, you are gorgeous.” Blake swept an arm blindly over the desk behind their entangled bodies, lowering Jules to the polished wood before moving his hands over the line of tiny buttons on her shirt. He pressed his lips to the delicate hinge of her jaw, smiling into her skin as her breath unwound in a sigh.

“Oh, God, Blake,” Jules murmured,
arching her body toward his chest, trapping his hands between them with urgency. Her nipples were tight peaks against the hint of lace beneath her shirt, and oh yeah. He was going to taste each one until she screamed. “Please touch me. Right now.”

Blake rumbled out a low chuckle
, pausing from his ministrations to run a thumb over one nipple through the fabric still in his way. “I’m trying, sweetheart, but your shirt is killing me.” Honestly, how many buttons did one blouse
need
?

“Not as much as you’re killing me.”
Jules lowered her hand to the snug space where their hips notched together, fitting her fingers over his rock-hard length, and oh fuck. He was going to die right here in this room.

“That’s not…helping my concentration,” Blake ground out, capturing both of her hands in his even though his cock threw every swear word in the book at him for his trouble.
“I want this to last more than thirty seconds.”

“Bet I on
ly need twenty,” she said, moving to free her hands, but he clasped her wrists in a tight, one-handed grasp.

“Bet I
make you come first.”

Blake
slanted his mouth back over hers, kissing her with every intention of not stopping until they were both good and naked, but a knock sounded crisply against the door, and he broke from her lips with a frustrated groan.

“
Still in a committee meeting, Dr. Cross.” God, he officially hated Garrett’s guts right now.
All
of them. “You’re going to have to wait.”

But the too-late sound of the doorknob coupled with
a distinctly feminine and definitely irritated throat being cleared froze Blake to his spot on the carpet.

“Well. I suppose it’s good to see you’re taking your research for the carnival committee seriously.”

Jules went absolutely rigid under Blake’s hands as the words cut across the room with surgical accuracy, and he screwed his eyes shut for just a split second before
he stepped back and set his gaze on the threshold over her shoulder.

“Good morning
to you too, Mom.”

CHAPTER SIX

Blake cleared his throat in a nonverbal request for a moment of privacy, but his mother’
s sharp expression served as a definite I-don’t-think-so, leaving him no choice but to chisel his way through the giant slab of awkward she’d just dropped into the room. He straightened his doctor’s coat over his scrubs, grateful for the singular mercy of the baggy clothes. Not that his hard-on hadn’t taken a lightning-fast hike at the sight of his mother standing in the doorway, but at least it gave him a second to think.

Nope. He’d been uncharacteristically impu
lsive, and the only way out of this was to face the music.

“Sorry.
We were, ah. Just finishing up our meeting.” Blake flicked a glance over Jules, who had slipped quietly from the desk to re-order the buttons on her shirt but had yet to turn around. “You remember Julianna Shaw, don’t you? It turns out she’s the manager at Mac’s Diner. She wrote the catering proposal for the Carnival For A Cure.” 

Both women flinched, but his mother recovered first
, her eyes tapering over the weary shadows lining her cheekbones. “Well, this is a surprise. I can’t say I expected to see you again, Ms. Shaw.”

Blake’s brow
s shot upward. It wasn’t like his mother to tip her hand so openly, and it damn sure wasn’t like her to show emotion. Not outwardly, anyway. Then again, she was probably just as shocked as he had been when Jules told him the proposal was her handiwork. After all, his mother had no way of knowing Jules managed the diner since Serenity put in the bid, and owner-based proposals were standard fare for contracts like this.

“I can’t say I expected to be seen,”
Jules said, earning both his and his mother’s attention as she turned around. “I didn’t know Blake was organizing the carnival for the hospital until after Mac’s won the bid.”

“
Yes. Well, perhaps it would be best if we rectified that. We wouldn’t want any past discomforts getting in the way of planning a successful event.”

Understanding slung through Blake like a delayed reaction as his mother’s words rattled into place in his brain. “You can’t be serious.”

His mother’s arctic expression proved him dead wrong.

Blake scraped in a breath, scrambling for thought. Okay, so
Jules
had
left him abruptly eight years ago, and yeah. Even though he’d tried to hide it, his mother had seen the emotional fallout. But even though her snap-judgment intentions might have a shred of honorability, Blake wasn’t about to let her pull the plug on this project, or his contact with Jules.

He needed to fix this. Fast.

“Let’s not get carried away.” Blake stepped out from behind the desk, gesturing to the papers that scattered the far end. “Look, I know Jules and I have…a past history together. But we’ve come up with some great plans for the carnival, and most of them have been her idea.”

“
I see you’re clearly still compatible in some regards.” His mother’s tight smile loosened something territorial in Blake’s gut, and he opened his mouth to protest, but Jules beat him to it.

“I don’t w
ant my placement on the contract to be a problem.” Her hands blurred into motion as she gathered her notebook and her purse with lightning-fast speed. “I’ll just give Serenity my notes, or she can probably come up with better ones, and she can take my place. It’s okay if you want to fire me, just don’t pull the contract from Mac’s.”

“
What? No.” Realization slapped him in the gut, and damn it, he couldn’t let her run away again. “The proposal has been approved, and we’ve already done the groundwork. It would be a major setback to start over, with a new caterer
or
a new contact.”

Blake winged a glance at his mother, who after an interminably long moment, nodded her agreement.

“Unfortunately, replacing Mac’s as our vendor would present problems that would be difficult to overcome at this stage in the planning. But this…” She paused, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Behavior is unacceptable. If you’re going to work together, you’ll need to maintain a certain level of decorum, especially here at the hospital.”

His mother poi
nted a glance at the far end of the desktop where Blake had swung Jules into place just a few minutes earlier, and okay, so maybe he’d gotten a little carried away with the whole now-right-now thing. While he hadn’t expected to get walked-in on, the fact of the matter remained that he did still work here. And Jules
was
technically a contractor with the hospital, at least until the carnival.

“Understood,” Blake said. “
But for the record, it—”

“It was totally my fault
, Mrs. Fisher,” Jules interrupted, her impenetrable demeanor locked over her like a streetwise suit of armor. “I was out of line, and I apologize. Believe me when I say it won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t
, or next time I won’t be so generous. With either of you.”

Without another word, his mother
turned and walked out the door.

#

“Don’t take this the wrong way, dude, but you look like hammered shit.”

Blake tightened his grip over the handle of his racquetball racquet and gave his cousin Aaron’s serve a satisfying
thwack
. “Is there a right way to take that?”

“Probably not,” Aaron conceded cheerfully, the tattoo covering most of his right uppe
r arm flexing as he made a one-handed volley like nothing-doing. The dickhead. “So are you going to tell me what’s got your panties in a twist, or are you going to let me use my imagination? Because seriously. I have extremely vivid mental acuity.”

“I ran into Jules Shaw a couple of weeks ago.”

The racquetball sailed past Aaron’s drop-jawed stare, bouncing to the blond wood floorboards behind them. “Damn, man. Not even I am that vivid. Is she…I mean, are you…”

Better to just come out with it
now that the lid was off the jar. “Yes, she’s still drop-dead gorgeous, and yes, she still makes me crazy.”

“Nothing makes you crazy.” Doubt flashed behind his cousin’s black-coffee eyes
, and he went to go retrieve the racquetball from behind center court. “You’re the most composed guy I know. No offense.”

Only Aaron would find the insult in maintaining control. “None taken. And u
nfortunately my composure disappears when it comes to this woman. She’s like Kryptonite, only with really hot shoes.”

Blake
shoved back the memory of Jules’s shiny black heels and walked over to the far corner of the court where he’d stashed his water bottle, since their game was obviously on a holy-shit delay. Not that it wasn’t warranted. After all, not only had Blake blown past all reason in an effort to seduce his ex-fiancée on top of cheap office furniture, but after her heated affirmation that it would never happen again, she’d barely said two words to him as he walked her politely from the building.

Yeah.
Holy shit
might even be a little tame.

“
So how’d you run into her?” Aaron asked, redirecting Blake’s attention back to the squeak and shuffle of the glass-enclosed racquetball court.

“We’re working together on the Brentsville Hospital charity fundraiser committee. She’s in charge of the catering.”

Aaron whistled in both amusement and surprise. “I bet your mother had a kitten. Come to think of it, how’d that get past the board, anyway?”

Blake froze, his water bottle halfway to his lips. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, the board of trustees is pretty protective of their own. Especially when the man in question just happens to have a last name that starts with F and ends in isher. I’m just surprised they let that fly.”

Shock ricocheted through Blake’s chest.
“Jules wrote an unbelievably good proposal. Look, I know the board can be...”

“Totally biased with regard to preconceived notions?” Aaron skimmed a hand over his tattoo, a wicked smile breaking over his face.

“Keep your issues to yourself, dude. I was going to say selective. But my mother isn’t
that
exclusionary. She wouldn’t turn down the right proposal just because of the name attached to it. ”

As if to plant a fast-growing seed of doubt,
his mother’s words from this morning slammed through his memory with the force of a wrecking ball in full swing.

Perhaps it would be best if we rectified that
.

No way. She
might’ve said she’d replace Mac’s as the vendor in the heat of the moment, but his mother would never orchestrate something so calculated or cold.

Would she?

“You know what, you might be right. That seems a little callous, even for the powers-that-be,” Aaron said, wiping the sheen of sweat from his dark brow. “So Jules is making you crazy, huh? Are you two…”

His cousin waved an expectant hand through the air, but Blake deflected it with a
shrug. “We’re not dating again, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“
Jesus, you’re so formal.” Aaron’s wicked smile did double-time. “You might not be
dating
, but something tells me Jules isn’t ruining your Rock-of-Gibraltar composure by keeping things all business. So do you want to tell me the truth here, or should I use my aforementioned imagination?”

Shit. If Blake didn’t give him something to go on, Aaron would probably have half a porno written in his head in about fifteen seconds. “
Okay, fine. We might’ve, uh, gotten a little carried away this morning in one of the conference offices at the hospital.”

Aaron’s quick burst of laughter echoed off the ball-scuffed walls of the racquetball court. “Damn.
Here I thought you were all calm and composed.”

“I told you. Kryptonite.” Yeah. He really needed to forget about her shoes, too.
Freaking ankle straps should be against the law.

“Relax, Superman.
At least one of us is getting laid,” Aaron said, but Blake cut the notion to the quick.

“Sorry to break the illusion, my friend
. We got interrupted.” Blake kept the by-who part to himself, knowing full well he wouldn’t live it down until he was ninety if he admitted he’d been cock-blocked by his own mother.

“Argh, you’re kidding me,” came the sympathy groan
, but thankfully Aaron didn’t follow it up with a bid for details. “So how’d you leave it with her?”

“I didn’t, really. It was pretty awkward, and
Jules kind of rushed off before we could talk about it. She’s still…”
Guarded. Headstrong. Mine.
“Hard to read,” Blake choked out, and where the hell had that thought come from?

“Why don’t you
just ask her?”

“Huh?” Blake shook off the surprise of his clearly addled brain to peg his cousin with a stare.

“You mean to tell me that with all those fancy Ivy League degrees you’ve got, you can’t figure this out? I mean, you dig her, clearly she digs you. For the love of God, man, it’s not that complicated. Go find the woman and talk to her. Clear the air one way or the other.”

Blake opened his mouth to
argue, to let loose a laundry list of reasons why impulsively going to find Jules to hash this out headlined the list of
Flawlessly Shitastic Ideas
.

But then his mind
coughed up a memory, eight years old but still sharp around the edges, of the note Jules had left on his kitchen table, full of vague excuses why she couldn’t move to New York City with him, why they couldn’t get married and why she didn’t want to see him again. Angry, confused, and okay, yeah, desperate, Blake had called her apartment for twelve hours straight, determined to find her and get the truth.

But
she never answered, and he’d realized he might well
have
the truth, right there in his fingers. Reading her words had been devastating enough.

Hearing her say
out loud that she didn’t love him would have ruined him, and so rather than fight for her, he’d packed his belongings and let her go.

No w
ay in hell was he doing that again.

“You know what
, Aaron? That is a brilliant idea.” Blake capped his water bottle and snatched up his racquet with way more speed than finesse. “Sorry to cut out on the rest of our game, but I’ve got to go.”

“
Yeah, yeah. You can thank me later.” Aaron shooed him toward the door, but the grin on his face canceled out his feigned irritation.

“I will,” Blake said, his eyes on the door. “Right after I finish what I started.”