“Ouch.” She giggled. “Sibling rivalry?”
Now I chuckled. “Not at all. But what did the DJs tell you she’s doing right now?”
“Uh, in a band with her brothers, right?” She’d said it, but I didn’t think it fully clicked just yet. Ten seconds later, it did. “Holy crap. So you’re in the band with her?”
“Yes. Pushing Daisies.”
“Right. They played one of your songs and it was really good.”
“Jurnie.” I brought her focus back to me. “That’s why I’m only here for a week. We’re on tour right now and go back in six days.”
She looked like she understood, but then she cocked her head to the side and bit back a smile. “Are you saying that I’m on a date with a rock star right now?”
8
Bonham
A loud laugh bubbled up from my chest and exploded out of my mouth. “I wouldn’t say that, but other people would. You’d really never heard of us before?”
She shook her head. “Not until the DJ played your song. What do you play? In the band, I mean.”
“Drums.”
Her head wobbled back and forth. “That’s kind of sexy.”
I snorted. “Not kind of, baby.”
Her giggle was infectious, but the best part was, it didn’t change a thing. She was just as easy to talk to after she knew who I was as before. Jurnie also didn’t spend the time asking about Daisy, which I’d been prepared for. After telling me how amazing my sister was, we went back to getting to know each other.
Unless she revealed some ugly part of herself in the near future, this woman was fucking perfect.
“My brothers thought you might be unfortunate-looking,” I told her when we were back in the car.
“Me? Why? I’m unfortunate-looking?” The horror on her face was totally real. As if Jurnie didn’t know or realize just how fucking beautiful she was.
“Definitely not. You’re beautiful, but you had such a great personality on the radio that they assumed it meant you wouldn’t be. That’s how they say it normally works.” And yes, I was going to ignore my part in that conversation. I wasn’t proud of it and didn’t want to revisit it, either. “Please tell me you’re not ready to go home.”
“I’m definitely not.”
“Good.” I pulled into the parking lot across the street. Sure, I could’ve chosen to take her for a drink or to a movie or something else that every other guy had probably done. But I realized that Lexi and Daisy’s idea had been a good one. Yesterday Jurnie had come to the store for a reason, but she’d left empty-handed because of that douche. Time to rectify that.
When she looked around and realized where we were she began bouncing in her seat.
“You brought me back to the bookstore?”
“Yeah, well, I figured you came here for something yesterday and didn’t get it. Plus, is there ever a bad time to walk the aisle of a bookstore?”
“Never.” She undid her seatbelt, then her small hand rested on my shoulder as she leaned over. Her lips touched my cheek, all warm and soft. “Thank you,” she whispered.
I brought my hand to her face and ran my thumb over her jaw. “You’re welcome.”
Damn. Lexi and Daisy had been right.
Jurnie was out of the car and bouncing over to me and she really needed to stop the bouncing. Watching the movement of her tits was working for me in all the right ways, but this wasn’t the time or the place. I slid my hand into hers and led her into the store. If I was holding her, then she couldn’t be bouncing everywhere.
“So, I have a little bit of a system,” she told me as if she were confessing something crazy. “I amass all of the books that I think I want then decide which I want right now and am going to buy.”
“My arms are yours to use. I’ll carry as many as you’d like.”
Looking for books shouldn’t have been as intimate of an experience as it was. I stood behind her sometimes, my chin resting on her head as she read the back of the books that interested her. Sometimes, I’d wrap an arm around her, letting my hand rest on her hip. She didn’t shy away from any of my touches and fuck, I just wanted to be touching her any way I could.
If she were someone else, I would’ve made moves toward us sleeping together tonight, but not with Jurnie. I didn’t hook up much and sure as fuck didn’t want her to be a hookup.
After another hour, we were at a table in the café, each with a coffee as she began going through her pile of maybe a dozen different books. All romance. She and Daisy would get along really well on that front.
“I have an e-reader,” she told me. “But there’s something about holding a book that I can’t break away from.”
“Then you shouldn’t. What are you doing?” I asked. She was stacking them into two different piles.
“These”—she set her hands on one stack—“are the ones I really want right now. These”—she moved to the other—“are the ones I really want but can probably wait for. I’ll then go through the right-now pile and narrow it down to the two or three I absolutely can’t live without.”
“Interesting system.”
She narrowed her eyes on me. “No making fun of my system or you don’t get a kiss goodnight.”
There was clearly something wrong with me because my dick stirred in my pants at the idea of kissing her tonight. I leaned closer to her across the table.
“You plan on kissing me goodnight?”
There was a moment when her breath hitched and that was probably due to my hands under the table. I’d set them on her knees and began rubbing circles on the inside of her thighs. Low on her thighs. Not anywhere close to where I wanted to be.
“Well, yeah.” Her voice sounded different, full of desire, lust. If merely touching her knees got her to this point, I couldn’t imagine how little it’d take to really turn her on. Fuck, I could imagine how little it’d take for her to turn me on. She was doing it by sitting there and going through books.
Her auburn hair was down and wavy. I wanted nothing more at that point than to fist my hand through those locks.
I needed to get my brain back on the moment in front of me.
“I wasn’t making fun of your system. I’d never do that, especially now that I know what’s at stake,” I said. Her shy smile appeared again. “I meant to ask why don’t you just get them all?”
She snorted. It was cute on her when it’d probably be ridiculous with someone else. “I don’t have a rock star salary, remember?”
I tapped a hand against my chest. “I’m buying them for you.”
She froze and her eyes slowly lifted to mine. “Uh… no.”
“Yeah. I am. That’s why we came here. Did I not mention that?”
“No, Bonham. You didn’t mention that. If you had, I never would’ve picked out eleven books to look at. I’ll just narrow it down. You don’t have to buy me books.”
“I know I don’t have to,” I told her, but the idea that she hadn’t known I wanted to or that she would’ve been more choosy with her selections if she had just driven home the fact that this woman wasn’t with me because of who I was. Even though she knew now. “I want to. This was my plan.”