Page 26 of Attraction & Repulsion

Even as she dropped her hand, Carson didn’t back away. Blood raced through her veins as her gaze dipped from his eyes to his lips. Why wasn’t she moving away from him? Then a crazy idea flashed into her mind. When she peered back up at his eyes, they were bright with curiosity.

Before she could talk herself out of this second chance, Carson bent in and lightly kissed him. As soon as their lips connected, Jax’s body froze. Carson put a hand on his cheek, his facial hair pricking her palms, and deepened the kiss.

That was his cue. Putting a hand on the back of Carson’s neck, Jax kissed her back.

Spinning. Carson’s mind was spinning like the dust devils that swirled in her front yard. It was nothing like she remembered, but it felt right. It felt safe and electrifying. She expected it to feel wrong. It didn’t. Kissing another man after the death of her husband should have felt wrong . . . right?

It was a short, innocent kiss. That was all Carson could handle. She could tell that Jax was waiting for the end as well, because the second shebegan pulling away, he instantly released her.

Slowly, she removed her hand from his face, clenching it into a fist in her lap.

“That was . . . unexpected,” Jax breathed.

“It was unexpected for me too,” Carson confessed, her lips still tingling from the pressure. Embarrassed, she began to scoot back to the passenger seat. As Jax stared at her curiously, she sensed he wasn’t going to ask for an explanation for her erratic behavior or for more kissing or both.

Unsure of what to do at that point, Carson reached up behind her to put the seat belt on. With a chuckle, Jax shook his head, then put the truck into gear and pulled out onto the dirt road, back toward her dead dirt bike.

Chapter nine

As soon as the blade touched Carson’s arm, her phone rang, causing her to spasm and the knife to slice through her skin like butter. A curse escaped her lips, and she quickly ripped tissues one by one from the box sitting on top of her desk and pressed them firmly to her forearm.

What she should have been doing was taking advantage of an empty office to prepare a mediation brief or tackle the pile of cases on the corner of her desk. All day the blade she had stashed in her desk drawer had been flaunting its sharpness. Eventually, Carson was seduced by its tantalizing power, not having the patience to wait until she was well hidden behind the walls of her home.

The phone continued its shrills until she answered the incoming call.

“Hello?”

“Carson?”

“Jax?” Hearing his voice brought back the memory of kissing him the day before, causing tingles in her gut.

“Hey, do you have a second?” he asked.

Pulling the tissues away, she inspected her arm. Blood continued to pool and drip down her skin. A single droplet fell and splashed onto her pants, saturating the charcoal fabric.

“Shit.” The tingles vanished and Carson grabbed more tissues andpressed even harder, shooting pain up her arm and into her shoulder.

“Is this a bad time?”

“No. No. I just, uh, spilled something on myself.” It wasn’t technically a lie.

“Oh. I was calling to see if you would like to go out to dinner with me.”

“Tonight?”

“If that’s alright. I know it’s kind of last minute.”

The phone began to slip from between her cheek and shoulder. “Can you hold on a second?”

Without waiting for a reply, Carson leaned forward and let her phone fall on the desk with a thud. As the blood flow slowed, she discarded the wadded tissues and ripped out more, stacking them on her new cut. The tape dispenser zipped as she pulled a long piece of tape and wrapped it around her arm one, two, three times. It was a crude wound dressing, but it would have to do until she got home.

Shoving her arms back into her blazer, Carson ripped a few sheets of paper from her notepad and flung them into the trash. A sad effort to cover the massacre.

Before picking up the phone, she adjusted her blouse, smoothed down her hair, and straightened her spine.

“Sorry ‘bout that. What did you need?” Why was her voice so high? She cleared her throat.

Jax took a second before answering. “I was hoping you would have dinner . . . with me . . . tonight.” Each word he enunciated, similar to the way her colleague Dan would slow down his legal explanations when clients got blank expressions on their faces.

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