Beg, Borrow, or Steal (When in Rome, #3)(7)

“You know what I mean. Why are you back here in Rome? Aren’t you supposed to be off gallivanting down the aisle at your wedding right now?”

“I’ve never gallivanted in my life. And there is no wedding.”

I narrow my eyes. “Why?”

His expression never changes. “Because I’m six four. I’d look like a giraffe charging across the plains if I gallivanted.”

I breathe in deeply through my nose. “I could murder you right now.”

“But then we couldn’t keep pretending I don’t know that you already know that I called off the wedding.” His eyes never stray. “Your hair is about to drip on my laptop.”

I’m surprised he so easily confirmed that he called off the wedding. Normally if I want information from him, I have to strategically pry it from him as if I’m a skilled interrogator. The fact that he just laid it out on the table like that is throwing me.

I straighten and cross my arms, deciding to see how much info I can get while he’s in a chatty mood. “Are you two rescheduling the ceremony?”

“No.”

“Are you and Zoe still together?”

A pause. His eyes dip to the ends of my hair and back up. “No.”

No. There it is. Confirmed. Jackson Bennett is no longer in a relationship. I don’t know what to do with this information. Not that it has anything to do with me.

“Hm. So you and Zoe are over, and you’ve come back to Kentucky to steal my table?”

He tips his head, eyes sparking. “I didn’t see a sign before I sat down, but it does appear that way.”

No, no, no. Aside from all the messy feelings I’m having at the moment, it’s completely unacceptable for him to be screwing up my routine like this. But this is what he always does. What he lives for: pulling the rug out from under me and delighting in the chaos.

Still . . . one thing is eating at me more than the rest. One ridiculous thing I can’t let go of. One thing staring me right in the face that I need answers to. “Jack . . . why are you wearing glasses?”

He’s momentarily caught off guard, then smiles in the right corner of his mouth. “So I can see your jealous scowl more clearly.”

It would be so much fun to kick him.

Enough is enough. The lid of my Treasure Chest of Doom rattles. Growls. Begs to be freed.

He can tell and his eyes glitter with anticipation.

Aha! Maybe this is the source of these conflicting feelings over his return . . . maybe I’m not relieved to see him. I’m just relieved to have my sparring partner back. Because like it or not, Jackson is my equal match in every way. He’s the one person in this entire world who doesn’t shrink from the sharpest words I could throw. He catches them between his fingers and lobs them right back.

The heavy weight of striving for perfection falls away when he gets near. It’s the only reprieve I ever get from it.

“This is my table, Jackson. Ask anyone in town and they’ll tell you. I come here nearly every Saturday to sit at this little table and sip my little coffee and type on my little laptop and enjoy my little day. So if you think I’m going to be sympathetic to the fact that you’re recently heartbroken and forgo my favorite table because of it, then you’re wrong.”

Jackson doesn’t so much as flinch. “I don’t, and I’m not.” When he sees my confusion he expounds, adjusting in his seat to somehow look even more comfortable and unfazed. “I don’t expect your sympathy and I’m not heartbroken.” His gaze drops to follow the water droplet from my hair as it splats against the table, an inch from his laptop. He looks at me again, but I feel his attention flitting across my bare face and soggy hair. “Seems like I should be, but I’m not—which tells me calling off the wedding and ending the relationship was the right choice.” There’s so much more here he’s not saying. “So now I have all the time in the world to come sit at the coffee shop you talked up so often at school.” He gestures lazily to something behind me. “There’s a table over there you can sit at.”

He opens his laptop once again, effectively dismissing me.

And there it goes: the hinges on my Treasure Chest of Doom fly off. He twists and burrows under my skin until I have no choice but to let those word-spears fly. Maybe it’s because some vicious part of me recognizes the vicious part of him—even if the rest of the world is too enamored with his charm to see it in him too. We’ve perfected and fine-tuned our hatred into an art form.

I snap the lid of his laptop shut so fast that he barely has time to remove his fingers before they’re guillotined. “I won’t be banished to the Arctic Circle in my own town.” I tip forward and point behind me. “There’s a vent directly above that table and the air never stops cranking. To sit at that table is to accept hypothermia. Plus I need an outlet, and this is the only table near one.”

He shrugs—that grin nearly giving way to a dimple under his smug satisfaction. “Well then, Emily, I guess you’re out of options and have to go home.”

“You’ve been here long enough—you go home.”

“I only got here a minute before you.”

“And that’s plenty of time to inflict your presence on the world.” It was meant to cut but he’s clamping his lips together trying not to laugh. “This would have been my table right now if Shirley and the entire salon hadn’t been gossiping about your breakup.”