Finally she'd given him an opening and he sure as hell didn't want to screw it up. Not just because he wanted more from her, but because it was tearing him up to see her indomitable spirit bent.
He scrounged for what his brother would say and came up dry. Hell, he'd just have to go with his gut and pray. "When I was a kid, we always spent summer days with Grandma Korba. Me, my brother Tony and our sisters. Our parents both had to work to keep the dry-cleaning business in the black. Child care was too expensive, and of course Grandma Korba... well, she said she'd watch us and nobody argued with her."
Monica smiled that gorgeous grin that made her perfect high cheekbones all the more prominent, exotic. "I think I would like her."
She would. If they ever met.
He left the statement unspoken. "Every summer, Grandma allots five days for her pilgrimage."
"Pilgrimage?"
"To Graceland."
Monica poked him in the gut with one finger. "You're making this up."
Jack raised his hands in surrender. "Believe me, no way would I make up anything this out-there. She would stuff all four of us in her green Pinto and leave Chicago behind for Tennessee. Now in order to afford the nights in a motel, she packed her own food. A jug of Kool-Aid, loaf of bread, peanut butter, jelly, and cereal for breakfast."
He smiled at the warmth of the memory and at the pleasure of sucking Monica in until she wasn't looking out the window anymore. "Frosted Flakes were messy if you ate 'em dry, so we saved those for the motel and cracked open the Froot Loops first. We'd pass that box around and around. By the time we hit the Tennessee state line, we were fighting over the prize at the bottom of the box."
She laughed, smiled, lighter. "I thought you said we weren't going to laugh?"
"Well, what can I say? I'm me." He hooked his hands on his h*ps to keep from touching her. "And I still love Froot Loops and the King, thanks to those summers. But I don't like small cars. Or even small planes, for that matter, after being wedged between Tony and one of my sisters for five hundred miles."
Distance be damned. He let himself slide a hand behind her neck, cup it with firm insistence as he made his point. "Childhood affects us. Good and bad, nobody's fault. There's just no way around it."
She flicked his zipper tab with one finger. "Since my childhood's a walking advertisement against marriage, you're shooting yourself in the foot here with this argument."
Maybe. Maybe not. "Yeah, I know. But I learned something in Vegas a few months ago."
"Never drink tequila with a girl from Red Branch, Texas, unless you're prepared to say 'I do'?"
He definitely didn't feel like laughing over that one. "Not funny, Mon."
She released his zipper and let her hand rest on his chest. "Then what, Jack?"
"I only want you if you want me, too." A truth he'd only just realized himself and it definitely scared the laugh right out of him.
Her fingers fisted against his heart, green eyes full of weakness he could exploit. "It's not that I don't want you."
"Stop." He tapped her mouth closed. "We don't have to do this now. As a matter of fact, I'm mighty damn sure we shouldn't."
"Why did you come in here, then? I can tell you're still pissed with me over the Yasmine thing."
He shrugged, walked over to her neat-as-a-pin duffel. His fingers played with a Ziploc full of cotton balls beside another bag sealing up facial cleanser. While his anger might have deflated, it hadn't disappeared, even with fault on both sides.
Damn. He was tired. Tired of measuring his words around her. Tired of holding back and wondering and waiting—a helluva statement on his frustrated state of mind given he considered himself one of the most patient men on the planet. >Until their mother came to visit. And left again.
The next year, bringing a new baby girl with her. Again leaving of her own free will.
As a confused teenager, it had been easy to hate the spoiled brat their mother chose to keep with her. As an adult, Monica found her feelings for Yasmine more complex. But even with the tempering of years, they'd never been what anyone would deem as "close."
Yasmine pinned her with an accusatory glare. "Even if I had been allowed to call, I have no reason to trust that Monica would be willing to help me."
Monica let herself soak up Jack's soothing touch for two exhales before forging ahead. "Well, ouch, Yas, that stings worse than when you tried to rip out one of my earrings."
"I was four at the time. As I recall, Sydney had hold of the other earring."
Monica gasped. How could Yasmine be so cruel as to mention Sydney offhandedly?