Free Sing Me Back Home by Eve Gaddy Page B

rest of the night pretending I hadn’t said the ‘L’ word.”
    “I’m impressed that you managed not to say anything else. I’m sure I would’ve had to say something.”
    “I started to ask him if it was too soon, but I didn’t want a repeat of him staring at me with nothing to say.” She smiled briefly. “I seduced him instead.”
    “That sounds like a good plan,” Amy said, laughing.
    “The rest of the night was okay. In fact, it was good. But ever since he left the next morning, things have been weird.”
    “Define weird.”
    “It’s more of a feeling I get than anything he’s actually done. He hasn’t broken things off or anything like that. He hasn’t been mean or combative. He’s been a little distant. Stand-offish. Then last night I asked him and Gina to come over for dinner and he said no. He said he had to make early rounds today.”
    “Maybe he did,” Amy said reasonably.
    “Ha! He makes early rounds all the time. This is the first time he used it as an excuse not to see me.”
    Amy frowned. “When did this happen?”
    Wrapping her hands around her cup, she said, “I told him late Saturday night. Early Sunday morning technically.” She drank some more coffee, stewing over Jack’s reaction to her confession. She shouldn’t have told him. Clearly, he didn’t feel the same. Or, at the least, he wasn’t ready to hear it. Maya didn’t know what had possessed her to blurt out her feelings. She used to have more sense. Of course, she hadn’t ever been so madly crazy about a man either. For sure not her ex-husband. Not that she remembered, anyway.
    At first, she’d shrugged off Jack’s reaction, or done her best to. He’d seemed fine later that night. Better than fine. They spent the remainder of the night, or most of it, having fantastic sex. And if Jack wasn’t on the same page about the great sex, then he was the best faker she’d ever known.
    Amy laughed. “Oh, Maya. You’re overreacting. It hasn’t even been two days.”
    “Trust me, I’m not overreacting. You didn’t see his face.” Nothing had been the same since. “I thought our relationship was going somewhere. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he just wants to have fun.”
    Amy patted her hand. “Why don’t you just ask him? Talk to him, instead of jumping to conclusions.”
    Was she jumping to conclusions? There was one way to find out. “You’re right. I’ll go see him tonight.”
    *
    “Hey, Ms. Parrish,” Gina said, answering the front door. “Come on in. Is Carmen with you?”
    Oh, man. Maya’s here, Jack thought, looking up from the toaster he was trying to fix. Maya. In the flesh. In the very beautiful flesh, wearing tight black leggings, man-killer black boots and a cream-colored sweater that kept slipping off her shoulder. I am so screwed .
    “Not this time,” Maya told Gina pleasantly. “Why don’t you go call her?”
    Gina took off for her room. Leaving Jack, and the toaster, alone with Maya. She walked over and stood beside the couch, looking at the toaster parts spread all over the coffee table.
    “What in the world are you doing to that toaster?”
    “Trying to fix it.” And doing a mighty crappy job of it.
    “I think it’s dead. Why don’t you just throw it out and get a new one?”
    “It was a wedding present,” he said, immediately wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. For reasons he didn’t understand, Brianna had loved the stupid toaster.
    “I see.” She said nothing else, but sat beside him and crossed one long, gorgeous leg over the other. The sweater slipped again and he saw smooth, creamy flesh. Why had he wanted to avoid her? Oh, yeah.
    Maya had told him she loved him.
    “We need to talk,” she said.
    Talk. Exactly what he’d been trying to dodge. He continued fooling around with the toaster, which really was hopeless at this point. Maya was right. He should throw it out, but he knew he wouldn’t. “What do you want to talk about?”
    “I’m fairly sure you know.” Maya