Page 8 of Jett in Jeopardy

“Last night, when you came into the bar, I asked you what was wrong, and instead of answering, it was all sexy smiles and innuendo.”

I tilted my head. “You think my smile’s sexy?”

Brody glared at me, but I grinned and reached for my coffee. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself.”

“What happened last night? What was bothering you?”

I sighed loudly. “I got fired yesterday. Happy?”

“Of course not.” Brody forked in another mouthful of pancake.

“It wasn’t my fault,” I blurted, unsure why I cared that he believed me. It’s not as if this was the first job I’d been fired from. “Someone complained that I’d said something inappropriate to customers, but I never did. I wouldn’t do that.”

I’d been let go from jobs for turning up late for shifts, or forgetting to show up at all, but never for hitting on customers. I mean, I was always polite, friendly, but not flirtatious—at least, I didn’t think so.

“I don’t know. Maybe I was flirting with them,” I said sulkily. “Since, according to you, I do it to avoid genuine conversation.”

Brody shot me that all-too-familiar scowl. “Do you evenknowwhen you’re flirting with me?”

“Of course,” I said, turning my attention back to my pancakes. Though, because my appetite had pretty much shriveled up, I just moved the pieces around my plate.

“Then if you said you didn’t do it, you didn’t do it. Do you need someone to speak to your manager for you?”

I jerked my gaze up to his, trying to read his expression to see if he meant it or just fucking with me. “Are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”

“I’m okay,” I said, dropping my gaze back down to my plate. I could count on one hand the number of people who’d ever offered to take up for me in my life, and all three lived under the same roof as me—or had until recently. “If someone complained and Paula just believed them without talking to me first, I don’t want to work there, anyway.”

I’d find something else. I always did.

“One other thing,” I said, pushing my plate away. I couldn’t possibly eat anything else. “Me hitting on you. It’s not all just to avoid awkward conversations, by the way. I would very much like it if you reciprocated.”

“Believe me, I don’t think you’d like it as much as you think you would,” he said.

My eyebrows raised. “Really? Now I am intrigued. What don’t you think I’d like?”

A slow, wicked smile curled his lips and it shot straight to my dick. “I think if you really knew the things I wanted to do with you, to you, you’d make a run for it.”

The low rumble of his voice shivered over my skin.

He stood abruptly and started gathering the plates, carrying them over to the counter. I stood too. There was no way I was going to let him back down now.

He set the plates down in the sink, then turned and leaned back against the counter. I closed the short distance between us until my bare chest was just inches from his.

He looked good this morning, but then he always looked good. His long hair was loose, falling past his shoulders in a soft wave, and his dark brown eyes fixed on my face. He was dressed in his usual t-shirt and battered blue jeans, and I’d never wanted to see them in a pile on the floor more than I did just then.

“So?” I said. “Whatisit you wanted to do to me? Because I’d bet money, I’d like it.”

His eyes flared, but other than that, his expression remained stoic. “And what if I told you that after last night’s shenanigans, I’d want to put you over my knee?”

My cock thickened between my legs. Instead of answering, I turned and crossed to the sofa and bent over the arm of the sofa so my backside was in the air. “I guess I’d say do your worst.”

I heard him come up behind me, and I grinned, half expecting him to tell me to cut it out. Instead, he grabbed both sides of my pants and yanked hard, thin fabric pooling around my ankles, my bare ass exposed.

My breath lodged in my chest, my cock going from intrigued to rock hard almost instantly, pinned between me and the leather arm of the sofa. Brody stood directly behind me, his big hands grasping both cheeks of my ass, squeezing, kneading, and pulling them apart so cool air teased my exposed hole.

“Holy shit,” I gasped when I could speak again.

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