Page 52 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
Whatever her brain was doing, her body got the message loud and clear, her heart thumping hard and her belly warming and buzzing in anticipation. But her mouth was too connected to her brain, and all that came out was “Why?”
His brows arched up. “Why do I want to have sex with you?”
Kate shook her head. “No, I mean… why now? You rejected me last night!”
“Last night when you were drunk off your ass and said we were making a huge mistake?” Jake asked. “Thatlast night?”
“Okay, fine, but what about two years ago?” Kate demanded. She lowered her voice, as if anyone might overhear them alone in the attic. “What aboutthe incident?”
Jake leaned in, his expression intent. “Whatincident?”
Great. Fucking great. The biggest regret of her life and he didn’t even remember it. Of course he didn’t, he was Jake Freaking Hawkins. He probably had to fend off girls throwing themselves at him all the time. They probably blurred together.
Kate gave a huff of impending embarrassment. She was really going to have to recount the whole sordid thing for him. “Theincidentwhere I tried to kiss you in my apartment and you totally turned me down. That incident?”
Jake’s lips screwed up in a contemplative frown. “Are you talking about the night you made those awful watery margaritas?”
“It was the blender’s fault!” Kate protested. “And, yes, I’m talking aboutthat night.”
Jake crossed his arms, studying her for a long moment. “What exactly do you remember about that night?”
Oh good, they weren’t done reliving her humiliation. “I remember you coming over to pitch ideas for a thirdWandering Australianbook, and I remember talking about the novel I’d sold to Spencer.”
Jake nodded. “The first Loretta book, I remember. Go on, what then?”
“Are you really going to make me do this?” Kate whispered.
“Oh, I definitely am. What happened next?”
Kate sighed to the ceiling, digging back into that awful memory she’d buried for two years. “I remember you talking about a new business venture, too. That you were going to join up with your friend… I want to say his name was Trout? But that’s not a human name.”
“Trent. Go on.”
“Trent! Yes, Trent. So, Trent was starting this new extreme adventure tourism company, and he wanted you to join as a partner and lead the expeditions. Which meant you’d be gone six months at a time.”
Jake’s gaze was steady, unrelenting. “And then what happened?”
“I… remember I accidentally emptied the whole bottle of tequila into the next batch of margaritas because I thought it would somehow make it less watery? Which, in hindsight, is ludicrous, but I’d already had three of them by that point. And I remember you saying you’d have to call an ambulance instead of a rideshare if you drank any more of them, so I said I would finish off the batch because it was good tequila and I couldn’t let it go to waste.”
Jake tilted his head to the side in question. “You see where this is going?”
Kate huffed out a sigh. “So, I got a… little drunk.”
“A little?” Jake gave a disbelieving laugh. “Kate, you tried to prank call thepolice. Lucky for both of us you dialed 822 instead and got some weird answering machine. On which you left, if I recall, averyracy voicemail.”
Kate winced. She didn’t remember leaving a voicemail, but she did have a sudden memory of advertising mustache rides for a dollar.
“And then you swore you could climb the fire escape to the roof to look at the stars, despite it being rainy that night and your building not even having a fire escape. And, if all that wasn’t bad enough, you tried to kiss me while promising it was just for the night and nobody would find out. Like I was some kind of… shameful secret. You were a complete mess, Kate. I told you last night I wouldn’t take advantage of you likethat, and I wouldn’t have done it two years ago, either. We were friends, Kate. I cared about you. And, yeah, maybe it could have been something more, but you were always going on about maintaining a professional relationship, not crossing professional boundaries. I figured it was your way of telling me you weren’t interested. And after I left and I heard you and Spencer started dating, I knew that was it.”
“Jake, are youcrazy?” Kate could have laughed, if it weren’t all driving her crazy, too. “I only said all that stuff to remindmyselfnot to make a move on you, which obviously didn’t work when it came down to it. You had all these stories of your wild adventures and the girls you’d been with. I knew if I let you, you would…”
Well, she couldn’t come out and say he’d break her heart and ruin her for any other man, could she?
“Meanwhile,” Jake continued, “I get a call from Spencer two days later saying they were putting another cowriter on theWandering Australianbook because you were too busy with Loretta edits to write a third book. And it pissed me off, sure, but I wanted you to succeed. I thought Loretta sounded brilliant, and I knew you’d do a cracking job with it. And you did. But you dodged my calls and texts, you iced me out when I came to your apartment to talk to you, and it was like I just… it was like you couldn’t give a fuck about me. Like you’d had your success out of me, and now you were on to bigger and shinier things. It fuckinghurt.”
Kate’s eyes went wide. “You think that was over Loretta?Youwere the one who asked to stop working withme.”
“What?” Jake said, incredulous. “I never said that. Why would you think that?”