Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2) (2 page)

“One less mouth to split the rations with,” she muttered.

It was an inside joke. A personal reference. Lindsay was mad, but she was going to forgive him. He could do this.

He left a kiss on her head and pulled away reluctantly, but there was work to be done. “You say that now, but you’ll need to sleep. Who’s going to take the midnight watch and protect you from the zombies while you sleep?”

Lindsay sank into the velvet sofa beside him, at a distance of approximately two small children away. She placed an envelope onto the glass tabletop in front of them and slid it toward him. “Your contract. You should sign it before my bosses get here.”

“Of course.” One of her hands fished for something in her bag, a pen, but he pulled one out of his jacket pocket, and relished the surprise that came to her face. It was beginning to be worth it, all of this. If he could collect those faces of hers, he would.

He had seen this contract already. The three copies in the envelope, for him to sign, were a formality, but he skimmed through the relevant pages anyway, parts he had specifically commented on. Things seemed to be in order. He uncapped his pen and began to sign, every page.

She watched him, foot tapping, until she couldn’t help it.

“So, what the hell, Jake?”

He had several pages to go and smiled as she seethed. “What?”

“You can’t call to tell me that you’re doing this? What are you trying to prove? If you wanted to work in environment, any agency with more money than God would be knocking over themselves to sign you, and you go with us,
behind my back
—”

“I don’t need to work with people who have
more money than God
.”

“—we could have talked about this. I’m pushing an important project at the conference and if you really wanted to help me you could have told me—”

Last page. Jake happened to like his real signature, the one he used for contracts, and out of habit would lean back to admire it after signing something. There was also a finality to the signature, because it only got used when he committed to something. A job. A location. This piece of paper, and signature, meant three weeks doing work he thought he had already left behind. Beside someone he thought he had already lost.

“Lindsay,” he said, when he was finally done. “I’m here. Officially your colleague, if that’s what it means. If you need my help with anything then you have me for three weeks, let’s do this.”

“Why didn’t you call?” she asked him.

“My flight got in before seven, and I know you don’t—”

“Not just today.” Lindsay’s voice was tight. “Why didn’t you call at all? After I went to Vancouver to see you?”

Of course she wasn’t going to let him go that easily.

He raised both hands. “Officer,” he said. “You’ve got me. I’ll explain everything later.”

“Stop making jokes.”

“Pay attention. This next one I’m dead serious about. Are you ready?”

Then, in front of the hovering hotel staff and everyone else having coffee at the Waldorf Astoria, he made his move. He first leaned into her, mouth capturing hers, and then pulled the rest of her toward him, through the arm he had hooked around her waist. She gasped and instinctively raised a palm to smash his trachea, exactly what they talked about by the way so he was still proud of her, but then her fingers instead curled gently around his throat.

Lindsay kissed him back.

Her mouth opened slowly, taking quick and tentative swipes. She moaned softly when he decided it was his turn and swept her lips open a little more, kissed her a little deeper.

His tongue plunged deep, then retreated, held, and then he pulled back, gently, gracefully. He congratulated himself on that perfect landing and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear.

“What the
hell
, Jake,” she whispered.

“I want things, Lindsay,” he said. “I want to do this. I want to work in environment. You know it’s one of the things I had to give up when I left school but now I can do this. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable so I worked with Krup instead and he put my contract together.”

“I can see that,” she said, still shell-shocked. “We’ve established that. It doesn’t explain—”

“I also want
you.
You. Lindsay Kresta, my zombie apocalypse buddy. You might not believe it because I’ve been invisible all year and more than that if you add everything up but I’m here now. I’ve pulled two and a half miracles so I can spend three uninterrupted weeks with you, because I want
you.
I know it’s not much of a promise, three flimsy weeks, but you’re practical and I think you’ll agree with me that we should probably test this out, being around each other again, before we start any—”

“Hold on a second,” Lindsay said, the frown creasing her brow again. But he was ready for this. He knew this would happen. “You
show up
after dropping me out of your life and then you’re asking for what? An instant relationship?”

“I’ve said it wrong,” Jake said, but smoothly, because the “fumble” was also a prepared move. “I’ll explain it all later, but we don’t have time right now. I wanted to give you the essentials though, before they arrived.”

“The essentials? Before who arrived?”

“Your bosses. We have a meeting in five minutes, right?”

She checked her phone and shook her head. “Damn it.”

“I think I have enough time to say it again. I want
you.
I want a chance to see if we can be good together. You and me. A relationship. We’ve never been physical but I’ve leaned on you for everything. I’m a greedy man and I want it all now—I want you, your lips, your body, your future. If you’re willing to give it. And if you are, I’ve signed the paperwork—I’m yours for three weeks. All yours.”

The first “All-Clear Happy Hour” Jake and Lindsay had together was at the end of August, two weeks after they first met. Jake was twenty-one. Lindsay would be too, in a few weeks.

Before then, they had only really seen each other three times. Once she managed to awkwardly introduce herself to him that early morning (he was
really
nice about it, but didn’t stop his jog), they’d had neighborhood small talk a few times.
Oh you go to Addison Hill too? What’s your major? Do you know ___?
 

Then that Sunday afternoon, she was running an errand on Tram Street (the closest thing to “downtown” for students of AHU, if they needed something done that none of the on-campus businesses provided), and she saw him standing by the curb. Looking dazed.

“Jake,” she said, wondering where she should tap him. Any kind of touching seemed too intimate, so she settled for his forearm, bundled up in the sleeve of his dark blue shirt. “Hey.”

Even like this, with his eyes sort of glazed over, his mind somewhere else, he was the most handsome guy she had ever been within forearm-touching distance of. No offense to all the other guys ever.

“Lindsay.” He sounded happy to see her, relieved.

“Why are you here on a Sunday?” she asked him.

“I…” He pointed down the street. There was a shop that did alterations. A mattress store. A clinic. Then he shook his head. “Can I hug you?”

“What?”

“Please?”

“Okay.”

Jake went for the middle, like a football player tackling her. She wasn’t expecting that
energy
and she bounced a little, lost her breath a little, and stifled a self-conscious giggle. No one else was on the street (Tram was dead on Sundays) but she still looked around to see if anyone was witnessing this.

Because it was kind of awesome.

His head was resting lightly on her shoulder, and Lindsay thought he’d appreciate something in return. She gave his back several pats.

“What’s wrong?” She had to ask.

When he pulled away, he had the biggest smile. “I need a drink. And there’s nothing wrong, nothing at all. You have time to hang out?”

Lindsay was glad she dropped off her laundry
before
she saw him. “Yes.”

“Drake’s? My treat.”

***

It was happy hour at Drake’s. Jake bought two beers for himself, but set the other bottle down in front of her when he got back to their table.

“Technically, I turn twenty-one next month,” she said.

He shrugged. “They don’t care. I’m happy. And it’s happy hour.”

“Why are you happy?”

Jake gulped first. She watched his throat move, and told herself not to think of touching it. Pressing her lips against it. Sucking at it.

“I want to tell you,” he said, “but I need to ask something first. What’s your position on casual sex?”

Holy shit.
For a second there, she thought he could read her mind. Or that she was thinking about
casual-sexing
his throat so strongly that she was broadcasting it to the bar.

“Have you ever?” he prodded.

“Not really, no,” she said.

“Do you think those who do—or have—will burn in hell?”

Oh so this was an actual discussion. A conversation. Not a recap of her brain activity. “When I said I’ve never, it doesn’t mean...I don’t...no, I don’t think those who have will burn in hell.”

Jake was amused by this. “Great.”

“I think they’ll burn from other things though. Like skin disease. Or bacteria from dirty club bathrooms. Urinary tract infections.”

He laughed. She made him laugh. “Yes, exactly.”

“And that’s why I don’t. But it’s a personal decision.”

“Does that mean you’ll only have sex with someone you love?”

She exaggerated a shrug. “I didn’t say
that.
I’m personally against sex with strangers in dirty places. Love is...I don’t know. People have sex without it. I’m sure I can too. It’s a bodily response. It’s natural.”

“So says the environmental science major.”

“So asks the biology major. Why are we talking about this?”

He hesitated, then placed a piece of paper on the table. “I came from the clinic. Got the results of my test. I’m all clear.”

Oh. She knew from the left corner of the paper what it was. It was one of the tests she took herself, once. A screening for HIV and other common sexually-transmitted diseases. The test was offered free at the university clinic, but if you were paranoid or wanted a bit more privacy you’d have it done at the clinic on Tram. And pick up the results on a Sunday.

“Congratulations,” she told him. “Why so happy now? There was reason to be concerned?”

“Wait a sec,” and he gulped down more of his beer. “I needed that. Yes. I was stupid. It was dark, and I might have had a few drinks, and the condom fell off.”

“
What?”

He shook his head. “I hadn’t rolled it down all the way...anyway. It was stupid. We didn’t even really finish, because I was so freaked out. But I’m all clear.” Jake raised his bottle and clinked it with hers. “Cheers. Thank
God.
”

It was then that it dawned on Lindsay that though they’d met two weeks prior, that didn’t mean it was time to cue the romantic comedy soundtrack. He was a guy. A hot college guy, with needs, with sexual partners, and apparently a lifestyle that got him in this kind of situation.

And though she’d been thinking of casual sex, or whatever kind of sex, with him mere minutes before, something in her shut down. The gates closed.

She liked looking at him. She liked talking to him. She could keep doing that. Just that.

She knew that the boss of them all, Lucien Ramirez, was not happy spending foundation money on an
actor
, but he was very professional about it at the meeting. If anything he was more restrained than usual, and someone who didn’t work with the man every day, like Jake, wouldn’t notice.

Kelly, his deputy director, was probably behind the decision. She would have convinced him that it was the best choice, of the short list, because any dollars spent on Jacob Berkeley would bring in publicity that they wouldn’t have been able to afford. And he was a known friend of the foundation, attending past events they’d had in LA and Vancouver. (Events that Lindsay didn’t even go to, because she was stuck in New York.) Those two events for climate change were the ones that made it to mainstream news via the entertainment section, and they knew why. (Not climate change, sadly.)

Krup, senior consultant, was more of a Water guy. As far she knew they had bonded because of one of Krup’s Amazon river projects, and Jake was really into forests. Trees. He had been majoring in biology hoping to transition into botany and forestry research, but the sudden offer to do TV had him move to Canada without finishing senior year.

(Lindsay, by the way, was the Air girl. Kelly was the Transport woman. Lucien was...everything. The entire planet.)