Seduce Me by Jill Shalvis Page A

because…”
    â€œBecause then maybe they’d show up when you didn’t want them to,” he guessed.
    â€œYeah. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
    â€œI understand, believe me, I do.”
    She imagined he did, for close to the same reasons. “I have some herbal lotion upstairs, made bya friend who really knows what she’s doing. I could put some on your sore knee, see if it helps.”
    He blinked once, slow as an owl.
    â€œI mean, unless you have something else—” Feeling silly, she turned away, reached for the door handle, but he stopped her and turned her back to face him.
    â€œI’d love to come up.”

8
    T HE EARLY EVENING ocean breeze had kicked in. It whistled over Sam and Jack, along with the sounds of the waves hitting the beach and the traffic on the highway.
    Jack followed Sam up the back steps of the café to her apartment, watching as she pulled her keys from her tiny purse and unlocked the door. She stepped aside, holding it open for him, and in the swirling jade depths of her eyes he saw good humor, intelligence and…hunger. For him.
    Thank God, he thought, and would have dug right in if it hadn’t been for what he also saw there.
    Affection.
    Not the love-your-body, or make-me-feel-good-tonight kind of affection, nothing as shallow or as easy as that, but something far more, far deeper. He took a shuddering breath, wondering how to react.
    A part of him wanted to run like hell.
    Another part wanted to stand still and do as he’d never done before—absorb it, go with it.
    Nurture it.
    Clearly he was losing his mind. No woman had ever really gotten to know him for his sake, and no woman was likely to start. Not even Sam, who lived on the busy highway above a cramped lunch café and didn’t seem to care about his celebrity or money—a woman who, until a week ago, wouldn’t have known him from any other Jack.
    But she knew who he was now, and if he’d learned anything over the years of being hounded by the public, by the press, by every single person around him, few people were unaffected by his celebrity.
    Nope. As he’d told her during their midnight swim, he didn’t want a relationship, no matter how tempting. Glorious as Sam was, and stimulating and beautiful and amazing, that hadn’t changed.
    â€œStop thinking so hard, Jack,” she said softly. “This isn’t complicated. I just want to help soothe your pain.”
    Another confusion, as he hadn’t told her his knee ached today. In fact, they hadn’t really talked about that, or what he used to do for a living. She had just teased him about being retired.
    He was used to dates who expected him to be the “star” the press had made him out to be. The simple truth was, women liked his celebrity, theywanted the perks that went along with it, and they expected him to provide them.
    He’d known from the very beginning that Sam would be different. She still had no idea how damn attractive that had been to him. But now she’d casually mentioned his knee, which meant she had more than just a passing knowledge of him.
    â€œYou’re not going to fit in here very well, it’s really tiny.” She took his hand and pulled him into the kitchen, which though as small as a closet, was warm and inviting. The floors were scarred hardwood but clean. Her table was made of wood, too, with two mismatched chairs that somehow worked in the place. Her cabinets had no fronts. Inside them, everything was neat as a pin.
    â€œHow long have you lived here?” he asked.
    She lifted a shoulder. “Since I started working for Red full-time.”
    â€œYour uncle?”
    â€œYeah. And when he retired a few years back, buying this building was a natural fit for me. Of course, I’m mortgaged to my ears and I’ll be paying out of said ears even after I am dead and buried…” She laughed. “And sometimes the