Page 105 of Hot for the Jerk

“We’re also going to let the school know the situation Monday morning so they’re on high alert as well,” Myla added.“But hopefully, we find them before tomorrow.”

Clint and Myla left, and I closed the door, pulling Raina into my arms again.God, she felt good there.Tucked under my chin, her cheek against my chest.I could very easily keep her there forever.

Marco joined us shortly, and we had breakfast.

Then the nieces and nephews were knocking at my door, asking if Marco could come out and play with them again.They had the walkie-talkies and wanted to go amble around the hillside and hide nuts for squirrels who might not have stored enough to get them through the winter.Aya and Talia each had a big bag of peanuts, and the two older kids had the walkie-talkies.

That left Raina and I alone again, and while I would have loved nothing more than to whisk her back upstairs to my bed and replace her worries with orgasms, we bothdidhave some work to do.

“Is it wrong that I really like this?”I asked her as we sat at opposite ends of my kitchen table, each of us on our laptops, a cup of coffee and various binders and paperwork in front of us.“Us, working, kind of together, but also not.”I smirked as I took a sip from my mug.

“So long as you don’t go rooting around my laptop looking for the land proposal,” she quipped.

“Ditto.”

“Any idea when they’re going to reschedule it anyway?”

“All I know is what you know,” I said, lifting one shoulder.“Sometime in March.”

“Oh to be retired and able to caravan down to the Baja to ride out the winter,” she sipped her coffee.“Regarding the subscription box …”

I raised my brows.

“You said you could include a few cans of beer?Bottles?What else do you guys have to offer?”

The way she said, “What else do you guys have to offer?”made me want to laugh.Somehow, my horny brain made it sexual.And she must have picked up on that, because she rolled her eyes.

“Not what I meant.Get your head out of the gutter.”

“It’s mind, not head.”

“I said what I said.”She paused and pursed her lips in thought before asking, “What other things could you toss in?”

I wracked my brain for a hot minute, then Wyatt’s new fry salt popped into my head.“Actually … have you had our beer fries with fermented black garlic and parmesan?”

“No.And why are they not on the table now so I can?”

Snorting, I picked up my phone and shot off an order of fries to Burke in the kitchen.“They’ll be ready in fifteen.Anyway, they’re so popular that Wyatt and Burke have been tossing around the idea of creating their own jarred blend of the seasoning and selling it in the pub.I bet they’d be on board with the idea of putting it in the box.”

She frowned as she mulled it over, her gaze shifting back and forth over the exposed wood rafters of the ceiling.“Go get me those fries and we can talk.”

“You’re lucky you’re such a cute little cactus,” I said, getting up from my seat.“Be right back.”

I jogged down to the pub and arrived just as Burke was tossing the order up into the food window.Chloe, Dom’s partner, was working the bar and greeted me.“Hey, Jagger, how’s it going with the full house?”

“So far, so good,” I said, gabbing a paper bag from beneath the bar since the to-go container for the fries was piping hot.“Marco’s a great kid.”

She finished fixing a Caesar—her speciality—and put it up on the bar.“Yeah, Silas said they all had fun exploring the tide pools and drinking smoothies yesterday.”She made a pained face and my eyes went wide.

“You okay?”I asked.

Nodding, she reached for a glass of water that had a slightly green hue to it.“Yeah, just a little nausea.A dash of pickle juice with my water helps.”

“Why are you working and not my brother?”

“He’s hunting for kidnappers with Bennett and Clint,” she said, her face serious.“I love how strong and capable they all are.But this whole runningtowarddanger bullshit just stresses me out.”

“Why do you think I didn’t enlist?”I said.

---