He didn’t want to know why she was still on set at midnight during the week. Didn’t want to know how she’d been since they’d stopped seeing each other—or, more accurately, fucking each other. Didn’t want to have anything to do with this woman.
Jax lifted one arm and tilted his head back to look at his watch. Typical of Wes to drag his ass when Jax really needed him.
“Have a date?” Veronica crossed her arms. “Who are you seeing now?”
He wasn’t seeing anyone—for the first time in about a decade. Since she’d betrayed his confidence, Jax couldn’t seem to drum up any interest in cultivating another fuck buddy.
He replaced his hand behind his head and massaged the knot in his neck with his thumb. His body still ached from a sixteen-hour day of riding motorcycles in the desert. He’d stood under the hot shower for a full thirty minutes, stretching, but his muscles and head still throbbed.
He’d like nothing better than a beautiful woman with a gorgeous body to distract him from his discomfort. Nothing. The lack of sex after being so sexually active for so long felt a little like what Jax imagined an alcoholic might experience going dry. So the fact that he felt no draw to Veronica standing in front of him in shorts so short the frayed edge barely covered her ass cheeks said something about the state of his psyche.
“I’ve got a hot date with an airline pilot,” he said. “I’m on a red-eye to New York.”
“Oh.” That mouth, Botoxed every three months whether she needed it or not, pouted. She straightened, and her tits stretched the fabric of her hot-pink T-shirt to its limits. “What film?”
“Robin Hood remake.” Then, just because he knew it would make her turn green, he added, “I’m doubling Brad Pitt in the fights, opposite Tyler Manning.”
Her little gasp, the way her lips formed an O, followed by a look of deep disappointment gave Jax a sliver of satisfaction. He’d definitely go to hell now, but he’d been headed that way before this.
“How long will you be gone?”
“At least a week, maybe two.” Probably less, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Why?”
“Why?” Jax laughed, trying to keep this light, but frustration burned beneath his skin. She didn’t deserve the satisfaction of knowing her betrayal had pulled the rug out from under him, or that he was struggling to get back on his feet. “Because a man has to make a living, V. If you hadn’t jumped into Roloff’s bed and spilled our pillow talk, I could have been working right in downtown LA for the next year. Now I’ve gotta go where I’ve gotta go to keep Renegades running. We all do what we gotta do, right?”
Her deep brown eyes flashed with petulance. “You don’t need the money, Jax.”
Snap.
The sound of his patience cracking had to have been a figment of Jax’s imagination. But the tightness in his chest was not. He dropped his feet to the linoleum floor. The thud echoed through the hollow walls of the trailer, and Veronica startled. Her arms uncrossed, spine straightened, nipples tightened beneath the cotton tee. Jax’s balls didn’t even heat.
He sat forward, anger storming through his gut, but he kept his voice low. “I have five guys working for me. Five. They have responsibilities. They depend on the jobs Renegades attracts to get paid. Whether or not I need the money personally is immaterial. If you stepped outside your shell once in a while, you might realize there are other human beings living in this smog pit.”
He didn’t bother going into what had been eating at him on a personal level—how badly he’d wanted that job for the work, not the money, because she’d known. He’d lain in bed after giving her every damn thing she’d wanted, as many times as she’d wanted it, in exactly the way she’d wanted it, and told her how the stunts that movie called for were ones he’d dreamed of performing.
Then she’d sold him out for a new playmate.
Veronica dropped her hands, fisting them alongside her thighs. Fantasy-inducing thighs. Tanned and toned and mouthwatering in Daisy Duke cutoffs. A month ago, Jax would have been drooling at the sight. Tonight, he glanced at his watch again and cursed Wes’s late ass.
Veronica leaned forward, jaw tight, eyes hot. “You weren’t going to let me drive. All I wanted was a tiny part. Just one chance to drive a stunt car.”
Crackle.
Warning flares darted into the darkness closing in on his mind as fumes of anger gathered, just waiting for a spark to ignite.
“You. Aren’t. Qualified.” He stood, shoulders back, hands at his hips. Her size—half of his—became instantly obvious. “And nobody dies on my set.”
She kept her stubborn chin up, but those dark eyes darted away from his.
A horn sounded outside. Jax’s gaze darted to the trailer’s single, dirty window and the headlights of Wes’s truck. Relief swept through him like a breeze off Belmont Shores.
He raised a hand to let Wes know he’d seen him and returned his gaze to Veronica. She pouted like a spoiled child. All Jax felt was residual bitterness at himself for being stupid enough to trust her in the first place. And deep disappointment she’d turned out to be like every other woman he’d been with for the last…
He didn’t need to go there.
“You wanted to drive,” he said. “Congratulations, V. You fucked your way into the driver’s seat. I hope you live to enjoy the experience.” He picked up the duffle beside his chair and strode past her. “Lock the door on your way out.”