Horse Play (Horse Play #1) (30 page)

Chapter 21. Smile, You’re on Candid Camera

E
ver the gentleman, Jensen opened my truck door for me and closed it once I was safely inside. Apparently his parents had raised him right, because I had never known a man to open doors for me. Not even on first dates when they were trying to impress me. 

“What?” Jensen inquired with a smile as he fastened his seat belt. 

I shook my head. “It’s silly.” The look in Jensen’s eyes told me we weren’t going anywhere until I told him what I was thinking. “The whole opening-doors thing. It’s all very sweet. No one’s ever done that for me before.” 

Chuckling, Jensen pushed the key into the ignition and started the ancient truck. It came to life with a roar. “My mother was a stickler for making sure I knew how to treat a lady.” 

“Well, I’m glad. While I never thought of myself as the type who needed to be doted on, I quite like how it makes me feel. Keep it up and eventually you’ll get lucky,” I teased, poking his muscular thigh as we turned out of the driveway. 

“Eventually, huh?” 

I laughed. “Well, you’re the one who said your virtue needed to be protected from my corruption.
But
, I’m sure I’ll eventually be able to bring you around to the dark side.” 

Reaching over the console, Jensen held my hand, lacing our fingers together. “First
Star Trek
and now
Star Wars
.” He took a deep breath, releasing it with a chuckle. “Landry, if you’re not careful, I will have to pull this car over and show you just how susceptible I am to your personal brand of corruption.” 

Curious to see just how serious he was, I smirked. “You think making mention of
Star Wars
is arousing? Makes me wonder how you’d feel about my gold bikini get up.” 

Stifling my laughter, I watched him carefully as he swallowed thickly and kept his wide eyes trained on the road so as not to kill us as he sped down the highway toward Savannah. “Please, for the love of everything sci-fi, don’t let that be a joke.” 

“Baby,” I cooed, stroking the back of his thumb with mine. “I assure you it most definitely is
not.
” 

He exhaled another shaky breath. “May I ask how you came to acquire said bikini?” 

“Willow. We went to a Halloween party a few years back. She knew all the guys would dig it—fans of the franchise or not.” As Jensen shifted in his seat in what I assumed was an attempt to hide his
appreciation
for my little story, I laughed. “Play your cards right and I’ll show you sometime.” 

“That,” he rasped, “would be
awesome.
” Jensen quickly changed the subject to something a little less stimulating for him so that we could safely get out of the car without being the talk of the town. 

“So, where do you want to eat?” he asked as the car entered the town limits. 

“Well, there’s the diner,” I suggested. “It’s always pretty great.” Having visited the area when he was younger, he didn’t need directions and found the diner within minutes. 

Jensen parked the car, and I had just unbuckled and reached for the release on my door when he rushed around to open it the rest of the way. “You’re killing my efforts to remain chivalrous, here.” 

“Sorry,” I said, genuinely apologetic. “Like I said, I’m just not used to it.” 

Holding out his hand for me, he winked. “Well,
get
used to it.” 

With our hands tightly twisted together, we walked into the diner and found a booth by the window. Deciding to sit across from one another, we waited for the server to come and take our drink order. 

“Hi there!” a cheerful voice said to my right. “What can I get for yo— Oh. My. God! Madison? Madison Landry?” 

Raising my eyes, I met the deep brown stare of Tiff Thorne, one of my old high school classmates. “Tiff, hi. How are you?” 

In high school, Tiff and I weren’t friends, but we weren’t
exactly
enemies, either. While I was focused on my studies and self-deemed too klutzy for anything that required coordination, Tiff was Little Miss Everything. Cheerleader, outstanding athlete, class president. There was nothing she wasn’t good at. It was a classic case of keeping your friends close and enemies closer. I often tutored Tiff in Algebra—and by tutored, I mean she paid me to do her assignments. I didn’t mind, actually. The reason being because when the time came for tests, she had no clue what she was doing, and that wasn’t my problem. I tried to teach her. Multiple times. 

Even with all of her successes in high school, here she was … waiting tables. Not that I was judging; maybe she enjoyed her job. Anything was possible. 

“I’m good! How about you? No longer single, I see?” Her eyes drifted to Jensen, and I
definitely
saw the look she gave him. She was looking at him like he was something to eat. The only thing that kept me from not jumping up and shredding her corneas was Jensen. The entire time Tiff was eyeballing him, he was staring at me, holding my hands in his across the table so I would focus on him.

“No,” I told her, even though it was a lie. Jensen and I weren’t an item, but I felt like I had something to prove to her. Like I could be capable of having something she didn’t for once. Besides, I didn’t hear Jensen object. “Not single.” 

“How long have the two of you been together?” she asked, and through my periphery I could see that she was still staring at Jensen. I may have wanted to punch her in the throat. 

“Um, not long. A couple weeks?” 

“Still time for everything to go south then, huh?” she asked, trying to pass her tone off as a joke, when really I knew she was just being a total bitch. 

Jensen’s eyes narrowed before he turned to her for the first time. “Here’s an idea, how about you take our order before you cut your tip in half …
again
.” My stomach flipped and my heart pounded excitedly in my veins as I watched Jensen put Tiff in her place. “And then, if you can manage to keep focused on your work, I
won’t
feel the need to talk to your manager about your shitty job performance and etiquette.” 

Tiff was still staring at Jensen, but it was no longer in an attempt to seduce him. She. Was.
Pissed
. After jotting down our drink order, she turned on her heel and stormed off. 

“I’m sorry,” I said, releasing his hand and sitting back in the booth.

Jensen looked at his empty hands before folding them on the tabletop. “For what?”

“Using you like that. Saying we were together when we’re not.”

“Oh.” He smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t mind.”

“Still wasn’t fair to you. I acted like a dog marking its territory.”

“Madi, really, it’s fine.”

I glanced back over to where Tiff stood, glaring at me, then I looked at Jensen and leaned in to keep from being overheard. “You know she’s probably going to spit in our food now, right?” I told him, knowing exactly what kind of person Tiff was. In a word: vindictive. 

Jensen shook his head. “Nah. She wouldn’t dare. She’s not too hard to read. In fact, I guarantee she’s back there right now trying to find someone to take our table from her.” Jensen paused, looking over toward the back counter. When I followed his gaze, I smiled upon seeing her talking heatedly to a male server as they both glanced over in our direction. “Now, if it had been just you who had spoken to her that way, she likely would have reacted the way you expected. But she’s not used to being rejected. She won’t want to come back to that.” 

Sure enough, as Jensen finished speaking, a male server came over with our drinks. “Hi there. I’m Alex. First, I’d like to apologize for Tiff. She’s not really the easiest person to deal with, and I can only imagine what
really
happened.” 

“Oh, it was nothing,” I assured him. 

Alex was great. He took our order and checked on us whenever he noticed our drinks had gotten low, and also in a way that didn’t feel intrusive when we were eating or talking. As we stood from the table after eating, Jensen tipped him generously before wrapping his arm around me and leading me from the diner and to the car. I thought it was sweet, and maybe even read a little too much into the gesture until I looked over my shoulder and saw Tiff. He’d done it to keep up the façade I’d established. Nothing more.

So why did it kind of bum me out?

We roamed the aisles of the grocery store slowly, grabbing both things that were on the list and others that weren’t. As I pushed the cart, I paid close attention to a lot of Jensen’s impulse buys. As it turned out, the man had quite the sweet tooth. With a couple bags of chocolate chip cookies—the good, chunky chocolate chip cookies—and the ingredients to make homemade brownies in our cart, I watched as he stood and debated which ice cream he wanted.

“You are going to wind up in a sugar-induced coma, Jensen Davis,” I teased.

He laughed, keeping his eyes ahead on the freezer. “Not if you help me eat it.”

“Mmmm …” I said contemplatively. “I’ll be honest, if you want me to eat ice cream, it has to be vanilla.”

Jensen grimaced. “Vanilla? Isn’t that kind of boring?”

“Hardly!” I countered as I left the cart and moved in front of him to grab a carton of vanilla ice cream. “I mean, on its own? Sure, it can be.” I dropped the ice cream in the cart next to all the other junk. “But, with the right toppings it can be anything but dull. Trust me.”

Jensen seemed skeptical, but he walked away from the freezer. “What kind of toppings?” There was something in his tone that led me to believe we weren’t
just
talking about ice cream.

Deciding to play along, I shrugged. “Well, your chocolate chip cookies would be amazing crumbled up on top of a chocolate sundae. There’s also the brownies you’ll bake. Add a few bits of that and I guarantee you’d be in heaven.” We resumed walking so we could go and pick up a few of these toppings. “Then, we’ve got the classics: strawberries, caramel, chocolate sauce … whipped cream …”

Through the corner of my eye I caught Jensen smirking, and I could only assume he was coming up with some deliciously kinky idea of eating an ice cream sundae off my body. While I imagined it would be quite sticky, the idea of hopping in my over-sized bathtub with him afterward seemed even more appealing and worth the mess.

Feeling the need to know if he was thinking what I was now thinking, I nudged him with my elbow. “You know, we wouldn’t even need bowls.”

“Are you trying to kill me?”

“Asks the man who bought enough junk food to force an elephant into diabetic shock,” I challenged. “You said vanilla was boring. I’m just showing you that just because something seems plain doesn’t mean it has to be.”

Jensen grabbed my arm gently to stop me and turned me to face him. “Finally able to see that, huh?” Placing his thumb and forefinger under my chin, he tilted my face up to his, kissing me softly.

If he wasn’t careful, he was going to make me think he had feelings for me. Or worse, treat me so well that mine developed for him.

With a breathless sigh, I thought about what he said in regards to my statement. “I wasn’t talking about me,” I confessed, grabbing the front of his shirt to keep him close. “But, I suppose with the right things on top, even
I
could be a little more exciting.”

“You’re terrible,” he told me with a laugh. “Come on, there are only a few more things on the list.”

After paying, Jensen and I loaded everything into the box of the truck and headed for home. We had just left Savannah when Jensen’s phone rang between us. His eyes lit up as he recognized the number on the navigation screen in his dashboard and he connected the call on the touch screen, activating his Bluetooth system. “Lilah-Bean! How’s it going?”

“Ugh! I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
Her voice as it rang through the car was beautiful. Instantly I pictured someone tall—but not as tall as Jensen or his father—with lighter hair than Jensen’s … not quite the same brown, maybe a little warmer and on the chocolaty side … and the same blue eyes as him.

I watched Jensen as he reacted to what his sister said with a smile so big it caused the outer corners of his eyes to crinkle. “Come on, I’ve been calling you that since you were three. It can’t bother you that much?”

She let out a loud, exasperated sigh.
“No, what bothers me is that Kyle has taken to calling me that now, too.”

Jensen laughed loudly. “Well, I can’t help that. I’m not his keeper.”

“You encourage it!”
she argued.

Scoffing, Jensen looked at me as I silently giggled at their exchange. “Please! I do not encourage his behavior. Besides, it’s not my fault you used to hide your beans up your nose.” 

Lilah groaned, and I stifled a laugh. As an only child, I was completely fascinated by their banter. Willow and I were close, and had been since we were both in elementary school, but this was something unlike what the two of us shared.

“So, what’s up?” Jensen asked. “With the wedding coming up, I know you can’t be calling just to chat. You have to have a ton of shit to get done.”