Page 30 of Don't Game Me
“Laos saved us.” She couldn’t believe he remembered what she’d eaten two years ago.
She leaned in a grabbed a fried sweet potato, beating his slow-moving hand to the prize. His hand brushed hers as it descended toward the tempura container, unleashing a wave of tingles up her arm. He scrutinized the other fried vegetables, perhaps in search of another sweet potato.
She held her claimed sweet potato between them. Her eyes met his, and both of them froze. She pushed the sweet potato into his mouth. Why had she done that? It’d been spontaneous, a gut reaction.
She’d never fed a man before. It seemed almost unbearably intimate. As he drew in the morsel, he flicked his tongue across her finger on purpose.
She gasped and pulled her hand away. What’d she say after that? She didn’t even have a good explanation for why she’d even done it.
“Tasty.” His tongue flicked over her lips.
She didn’t know if he meant the sweet potato or her finger. The lightness in his gaze indicated he was teasing and enjoyed her unease. Her mortification vanished.
She giggled. “You really are very bad.”
“Magazine-certified badness.” His confidence alluded to a haven of safety, a refuge from everything so far out of her control.
A shiver worked its way down her spine. To hide what he might read on her face, she ducked and took a bite of rice.
“Thanks for grabbing the drinks.” He unscrewed a bottle of water. After a swig, which emptied half the bottle, he devoured his plate of food. Afterward, he released a contented sigh.
She nibbled on a sweet potato. “They don’t do it like this in San Diego.”
“San Diego?” His face scrunched up with confusion.
Oops.“I meant when I visited down there for Comic-Con I went out for Thai, but it wasn’t like this.”
He continued to eat in silence without comment. Had he bought her coverup? She needed to distract him from further questions.
“More?” She waved her hand over the multitude of barely touched boxes.
“No, I’m good. I’ll have Kylie see if there’s any staff around who might enjoy it.” He drank the rest of his water and unscrewed a second water.
“Why didn’t your phone call go well?” She unwrapped one of the mints at the bottom of the bag and handed one to Jake.
He reclined back against the chair and sighed long and hard. He squished the plastic wrapped candy between his fingers. “It’s complicated because there are six different groups involved in the launch of the goggles in Europe and Asia. Everyone has different ideas. No one wants to cooperate. Dates aren’t convenient for everyone. It’s minutiae. I’ll make it work.”
“Sounds like something you could delegate. You have a whole marketing department.”
“You’d think they could deal with it. Our marketing manager is good. I tried having him deal with this a few days ago, but these Europeans treat anyone other than me like shit. My marketing guy flipped out on the German. It wasn’t pretty.”
“That doesn’t sound like the best marketing guy.”
“He’s an old friend and a good guy. You’re right. We may need to shift him to another department.”
Not fire him? Jake was such a loyal, good guy at heart. “Why do you even deal with these people if they’re this difficult?”
“A necessary evil.” He smiled, but it looked forced.
She fiddled with the top of her soda bottle. “You sounded like you were pretty good at what you do when on the phone. Noah’s lucky to have you to deal with this for the company. He sucks when it comes to diplomatic things. Noah’s overall a pretty great person, but he has no patience for playing nice when someone isn’t doing what he wants. Trust me, I know from back when he’d negotiate in popsicles and M&M’s for my participation in his and Michael’s space wars games.”
Jake laughed. “M&M’s, huh?”
She rolled her eyes. “I demanded a lot of peanut M&M’s to be the helpless Princess Leia every single time. And my brothers wouldn’t ever give me a weapon. The real Leia always had a weapon.”
He reached across the coffee table for her hand. In a playful yet serious tone, he said, “That must’ve been tough.”
“Scarred me for life, obviously. I hoard M&M’s.” She remained locked by his blue gaze, which promised the kind of pleasure she wasn’t likely to recover from. The kind she’d had a taste of twice;she craved the whole sundae, not just the toppings.
