CHAPTER 17 JOLENE

They've been here the entire time, and I've avoided looking in that direction.

I've barely touched my salad, but Jonah is chowing his burger and fries. I push around tomatoes and cucumbers and bacon bits and sunflower seeds. It's my favorite salad, and the ranch dressing here is second to none.

But I can't eat. I try to focus on Jonah and his enjoyment of his burger, but I can't.

All I can focus on is keeping my eyes from wandering over to Lincoln Nash.

I need a minute. I need a breather. He's too close. He's here at my bar and it's just not okay.

And since it's my bar, I'm not taking my breather in the bathroom. I excuse myself and head toward the break room where I used to sit and write college essays when I wasn't sitting in one of the booths and working to the din of the restaurant.

I lean against the wall back there and stare up at the exposed ceiling and the network of pipes and beams and structural elements up there.

Focus, Bailey. Focus.

It's day-fucking-one and I'm already having a panic attack over having Lincoln Nash in the same town as me. How the hell am I going to get through this entire season unscathed?

Maybe that's my answer. I won't.

Not unscathed, anyway.

The door directly to my left swings open, and I don't have to remove my gaze from the ceiling to know who it is.

I smell him the second he walks in.

"You can't be back here," I snap.

"Then how come you are?" His voice is a rich, deep, raspy challenge.

I move my eyes from the ceiling to him, but I don't move from where I lean on the wall. "Because this is my fucking bar."

His brows rise. "You own it?"

I shake my head as I straighten my posture, squaring off against him. "My father does."

He draws in a sharp breath.

"Now get the fuck out," I demand.

Instead of listening to my demand, though, he does the opposite. He takes a step toward me, and the woodsy bergamot is overpowering.

It smells like him.

It smells like our history.

It smells like the pain and heartache I endured at his hands.

It smells addictive.

I try to breathe out of my mouth so I don't smell him, but it's useless when it has already infiltrated my senses.

My body betrays me and my thighs clench together as an ache throbs between them.

My body wants him, but my heart can't take it.

He's already too close, and he takes another step closer to me. "God damn, Jolene." He winces a little as my name rolls out of his mouth. "How are we going to do this?" He closes the gap between us, and fire races up my spine at his proximity.

His hips press to mine, and suddenly I'm shoved up against the wall again. My pulse races as every sense is taken over by him. He's all I can see, hear, smell, and feel, and I want more than anything to have one more taste. One more kiss.

Just one.

Just to get it out of my system.

In this moment, I feel like I need it like I need to breathe.

But that's not something I'll ever admit to him.

"We're going to be professionals," I whisper, and the words come out more like a question than a confident answer. I can't have confidence when I'm this close to him. I can't even think straight over the rushing in my ears and the thundering beat of my heart.

His hips shift against mine, and I know he's affected. I can feel just how affected by the way his erection shoves against me, and that ache between my legs pulses again.

What I wouldn't give to feel him one more time…to see just exactly how good time has been to him.

He takes my left hand in his and links his fingers through mine, his eyes falling down onto our joined hands before he lifts my arm up and braces his arm still holding my hand on the wall above me.

His free hand grips onto my hip, and my arm comes up to hold onto his bicep. His thick, muscular, sexy bicep.

Oh dear Lord.

He leans down so his nose brushes against mine, and my chest lights with butterflies as I think he might kiss me.

He doesn't. Instead, he grits out more words. "I don't know if I can do that with you, and I can't let you fuck this up for me." Frustration is evident in his tone, and I just don't know if he's frustrated with me or with this entire situation we find ourselves in.

"I can't let you fuck up my job for me, either," I say, running my nose along his, too, as I shift my lips mere millimeters from his.

His breath mingles with mine. We're so close.

Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.

So close.

I nearly catch his lips with mine, but I can't. I find myself needing him to make the first move—a total contradiction to the aggressive, career-minded woman I've grown into. But because he was two years older than me back then, I always let him take the lead. I liked when he took the lead.

And when he was no longer there to take it, I stepped up and learned how much I could do myself.

It's strange to see myself reverting back to the girl I always was with him, but what's even stranger is how easy falling back into that old role feels right now.

I rock my hips against his.

It's been too long—too long without him, too long without any man as my focus has shifted from my personal life to my son and my career.

Anybody but him. The Aces could have hired anybody. But it had to be him.

And now we have to face our history, or maybe we just let it explode right here in the break room on top of that old table where I used to write essays.

God, I'm a puddle of need right now. I think this might be the single hottest, most erotic moment of my life.

He leans down, and his lips graze my neck. He takes just the tiniest nibble there that's like a bolt of electricity directly to my vagina before he straightens and stares down at me, our eyes saying something to each other in a language I'm no longer familiar with.

I wish I was.

I wish I could decode what he's thinking right now.

But the moment passes. His eyes cloud over, and he drops his hand from my hip and pushes himself away from the wall.

"I didn't know you had a kid," he says softly, his eyes averted to the ground.

And he takes those words with him as he walks out of the break room, leaving me a hot mess that needs to pull myself the fuck together before I head back to said kid at the table out there waiting for me.

I'm not sure why that matters. I'm not sure why that changes things. We're already enemies. We already hate each other. It's not like me having a kid has anything to do with that, but eventually it clicks that he doesn't know I'm not with my kid's dad.

He might think I'm in a relationship.

It's almost…chivalrous?

Did he just do the right thing?

Not that I'd give him credit, but still.

I wait a beat to walk out of the break room, smoothing down my dress and fluffing my hair a little as I do my best to pull it together.

But…what the actual fuck was that?

Was he going to kiss me? Is he as affected as me, or is this all in my mind?

Did it really even happen?

It did. The scent of wood and bergamot is still in the air. He was here. His body was pressed to mine, and I think I can smell him on my clothes.

I want to smell him on my clothes, but it's wrong.

Especially here. This is my dad's bar. Merely interacting with someone from the Nash family is a slap in the face to my own family, and just because there's a history between us and clearly still heat between us doesn't mean I'm going to give in.

Lincoln wants his new job to go off without a hitch, and I really think that's all this strange encounter was about. Does he want me? Does he hate me?

Or is it a little of each…sort of exactly how I'm feeling?

There are intense and deep feelings there between us. That's about the extent of how I can categorize this right now.

I need to get back to Jonah.

I draw in a deep breath as I brush that feeling of whiplash off, and I open the door Lincoln walked through less than thirty seconds ago, still flustered as I smooth my hands down the front of my dress again even though nothing happened back here to have wrinkled my clothes. Nervous habit, I guess.

But sitting at the table closest to the break room is none other than Ryan Rivera.

He definitely misinterprets that nervous habit to have meant something else entirely.

He looks at me, his eyes widening a bit as he puts two and two together even though four is not what just happened. Or fore…play. Or whatever. Nothing happened except his nose brushing mine and ancient history being dredged up to the surface and sparks flying between us. I'm just not sure if they were the sexy, hot sparks or the sort that are capable of igniting a raging wildfire.

Ryan glances back at Lincoln, and then his head whips back to mine before a sly smile forms on his lips.

Shit. I don't like that one bit.