Lexi was laughing so hard tears gathered in her eyes. Then the video cut out, and the room went dark again.

“Oh my God, you two are hilarious. How old is he?” she asked. “You call him kid.”

“Twenty-four.”

“And you’re twenty-nine?” she confirmed from their earlier texts.

“Yep. You?”

“Twenty-eight. When’s your birthday?”

“July 7th.”

“Mine too. July, I mean. The 14th. We’re both Cancers.” Her voice smoothed and softened. “Homebodies. We’d both rather be home, but…here we are.”

Jax didn’t really have a home. Not in the traditional sense. He hated LA as a city. Hated what it stood for. But it was the hub of the career he loved. His own family wasn’t what people thought of when they thought of family. He was closer to the guys he worked with than his siblings or parents. And his house, while gorgeous, was big and empty.

“Home is where you make it and who you make it with.” He reached down and turned her face toward his. He kissed her mouth, which was still curved with laughter. And now he’d gotten a glimpse of that mouth. A tiny flicker of her eyes.

Keeping the lights off was truly the way to go. He shouldn’t have looked. Because when he put it together with everything else he’d learned about her in their short time together, he didn’t want to let her go.

“Do you realize your birthday is 7-14?” he asked. “The same numbers as this room? I think you’re right where you belong.”

“Oh my God.” She turned to face him, and he could imagine the wonder drifting through her eyes. “You’re right. That’s…”

“Fate,” he whispered, rolling to his back and pulling her on top of him. “Tonight, baby, this is home.”

Fourteen

The ring of Jax’s cell pulled him from a deep, dreamless sleep. He blinked as the morning light hit his eyes. He was worn to the bone, and his mind wouldn’t start.

He stared at an armoire with a flat-screen television inside. Another goddamned hotel. Christ, where the fuck was he now?

He rolled to his stomach and groped for his phone on the bedside table. Lamp, clock, hotel phone…no cell. Just as he realized the sound was coming from a different direction, the damn thing stopped ringing.

Jax let his arm fall. It missed the bed and dangled alongside. The stretch felt good, and Jax sighed. The sensation nudged his brain, but he resisted. Didn’t want to think. Didn’t know why, just knew he wanted to avoid it.

He pushed both arms over his head, stretched his shoulders, his back. And groaned. He felt good. Sore, but good. His mind nudged again. He let it float, and the memory came back slow, languid. Hands on his back, relaxing every overworked muscle. Sweet thighs straddling his hips, working out knots in his neck. His shoulders. His ass.

Lexi.

The entire evening came back to him at once, like an explosion. He flipped to his back and pushed himself up. “Lex?”

His gaze held on the door to the bedroom.

Please walk through that door.

He swallowed and called again. “Lexi?”

He already knew it would go unanswered, but sat there, propped up by his hands, waiting. Hoping.

The room remained silent. And he brought her exit back from his memories, the way she’d come to the side of the bed before she’d left.

“Lex,” he’d whispered to her in the dark as she’d leaned over to kiss him good-bye. She’d been dressed in one of his T-shirts that hit her midthigh because she’d refused to take his jacket and didn’t have anything else to wear back to her room. He’d slipped his hand up the back of her thigh and squeezed her ass. “Please say you’ll see me in LA.”

He’d kissed her long and slow and tender. Rolled his tongue with hers, eased his hand between those soft, toned thighs from behind and fingered her, still slick and swollen from his cock. She’d groaned, rocked that sweet pussy into his hand, then abruptly stepped out of reach. “I’m sorry, Jax, I—”

“We can keep it just like this, baby. No one has to know.”

She’d thought about it for two full seconds before she’d denied him again and walked out of his life.

His one night with a woman as close to perfect for him as he ever hoped to find was over.

“Fuck.” He dropped back to the bed and threw his forearm over his eyes.

His phone rang again.

“Jesus.” Jax rolled toward the sound and gropped for it on the opposite nightstand, eyes still closed. He answered with a grouchy, “Yeah.”

“Dude, you out partying late last night?” Wes’s voice registered instantly. “You sound like you just woke up.”

“I did. I don’t have to be on set until noon.”

Jax glanced around the room. His gaze caught on the pillow next to his and a pair of red lace panties perfectly laid out on the white casing. His stomach clenched. Chest tightened. But a smile quirked his mouth as he reached for them.

He slid the fabric through his fingers, fisted it, wishing he could have held on to Lexi as easily. Her little memento didn’t make him feel any better about not being able to convince her to see him again.

“Hel-lo. Chamberlin, dude? You fall back to sleep on me?”

“No. I’m here.” Jax kicked the sheet off his legs and sat up on the edge of the bed. “What did you say?”

Wes gave an exasperated sigh. “Do you remember the conversation we had on the way to the airport, or are you missing too many brain cells?”

Jax winced. The airport. What did they talk about?

When he didn’t answer, Wes prodded, “About finding you a girl like my Kayla?”

Wes’s question temporarily rendered him completely dumb. What in the hell—?

Oh…that. Oh…shit.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, “I remember.” Fuck. “Listen, Wes, I don’t think that’s—”

“We found the perfect girl,” Wes said. “She’s absolutely fantastic. And, dude, I know your taste. You’re going to like her. She’s super pretty and really smart. And she’s got a sweet streak that makes you want to eat her up.”

Jax winced. This was so not the time to talk about another woman, because there was only one he wanted to eat up. “Hey, Wes, listen—”

“I know what you’re going to say—if she’s so great, why isn’t she with someone? Well, she was, which, honestly is why I’m not dating her. Not now, I mean, ’cause I’m crazy about Kayla, but I met Tawna before I knew Kayla and would have totally gone for her, but she was in this long-term thing then.

“She’s been out of it about six months now, lying low to make sure the guy was out of her system before she dates again, which I think is really smart, you know, balanced. And when Kayla and I told her about you, she was game.

“So what do you say? We’ll double when we get back from this gig next week?”

Jax was staring at the beige carpet, Lexi’s panties crushed in his hand. “Are you done?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was excited to find out Tawna was free. I really think you two are a good match.”

“Thing is, bud, I hooked up with someone here.”

A beat of silence filled the line, then, “What? I just left you at the airport. You flew six hours, hauled your ass to the set for twelve, and should have been too tired to do anything but sleep for the rest. When did you have any time to hook up with someone?”

Jax rubbed his eyes. Dropped back to the bed. “I’m not really awake yet, Wes—”

“I imagine not, considering what you’ve been doing. Fuck, Jax, this is so you. You know, if you want to keep making the same goddamned mistakes, fine. Just don’t bitch about the fallout. You pick up women so fast, you don’t take the time to even get to know them. Then they screw you over and—oh shit, look at that, what a fucking surprise.”

Jax sighed. “Why are you yelling at me like a mother hen?”

“Because you’re my friend, asshole, and I’m sick of watching you let women walk all the fuck over you.”

Guilt layered on top of his misery over losing Lexi. Wes was right. And Lexi was gone. She’d made the word no very clear in a dozen different ways.

“Look,” Jax said. “You’re right. It was a fluke thing. We started talking, hit it off. But it’s…it’s nothing. Just a one-night. I just…really liked her.”

“Dude, you really like them all at the beginning.”

“You really should let me have coffee before you gut me. Give me a fucking break. I haven’t had any in over a month, she was hot as hell and offered. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same.”

He needed to get Wes off his back, and that seemed to make the guy at least think a minute.

“So you flipped one, no big deal, right? You’re not going to see her again, right?”

Jax hated that term. Wes applied the term flipped, as in flipping houses—getting hold of one, working it over, then getting rid of it—to one-night stands.

Jax looked at the ceiling and forced himself to say the words, hoping they’d sink in and he’d get over…whatever this was. “No, Wes, I’m not going to see her again.”

“Okay, then, no big deal. You can still meet Tawna. Right?”

“Right,” Jax said. He’d deal with this later. “Sure, why not, right?”

“Right. Now you’re thinking. I’ll bring pictures of Tawna with me. You won’t even remember the other girl by the time I get there.”

Jax disconnected, dropped his phone to the bed, and raked his hand through his hair. Wouldn’t even remember her? Jax wondered how he could possibly forget her. He closed his eyes, brought the panties to his nose, and pulled in her scent. The spicy, floral, musky smell of her burst at the center of his body and radiated electric waves outward. Memories of every minute with her flooded his brain. Her laugh. Her playfulness. The way she’d fed him the Godiva, bite by bite. The way she’d licked every inch of his body just as she’d promised. The way she’d kissed him good-bye, as if she didn’t want to leave him.

He knew, without a doubt, he’d never wanted a woman like this. Which he understood, somewhere in his psyche, stemmed more from the fact that he couldn’t have her than the fact that she was as perfect as she seemed. Had to be. At least it had to be what he told himself.

His phone rang again, breaking into his memories. “Fuck. I can’t even wallow in my misery in peace.”

He sat up, glanced over at the rumpled sheets where Lexi had been lying just a couple of hours ago.

“I told you in the very beginning, Jax. I just can’t have any complications in my life right now.”

He’d gone from an asset that every woman wanted to use to a complication Lexi wanted to get rid of.

“I need to find some kind of happy medium,” he muttered as he picked up his phone and answered, “What now?”

“Whoa.” Ty laughed the word. “Dude. Who stole your mojo this morning?”