9

Chapter 504 Anticipation

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Jax was excited that he and Scarlett were finally going to get some special alone time until her father invited himself to join them. He did kind of make it sound like an invitation. He almost fell off his bar stool when Deck began to talk about all the fun the three of them would have together especially when all he could think of was how much fun he and Scarlett were going to have alone together.

He'd looked at Scarlett. He was her father, so it was up to her to do something. He couldn't very well tell Deck that he wasn't allowed to come to his own lake house because he and Scarlett were planning to take their relationship to a whole new level.

He was sending her mental thoughts to stop her father, come up with some excuse for him not to come to the lake house this weekend, but her father kept going on and on. And Jax saw his special alone time with Scarlett slipping further and further away.

He had been good and he had been patient. Waiting wouldn't kill him, but they both had been looking forward to spending a romantic weekend together. Another delay felt like a punch to the gut, but it was actually more of a punch to the balls.

When Scarlett figured out that her father was playing them, he couldn't feel relief until he made sure that Decker wasn't going to be at the lake house with them. The relief flooded his body and all he could think about was finally getting to be with Scarlett. He left them to talk while he went to bed.

He was exhausted. It had been a long night. He was disappointed about not getting the chance to physically express his fury over Esai attempting to grab Scarlett. He knew exactly what Esai planned to do with her. It scared the hell out of him every time he thought about it.

If she wasn't so careful with her security, Esai might have succeeded in taking her too. For once, it was good that Scars had a psycho ex and she was always on alert. The surge of anger flowing through his veins gave him an energy rush. He felt wide awake.

He brushed his teeth and got into bed, hoping Scarlett would be along soon. A few minutes later, she appeared.

"So what's happening this weekend?" he asked.

"You and me all alone at the lake house," she said with a big grin before heading into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

When Scarlett opened the door of the bathroom, Jax found his lips tilted up into an automatic smile. It tended to happen whenever he saw her. He hoped he wasn't sitting up in bed grinning like an idiot, but she smiled at him, so she must not mind.

"My father was torturing us. He figured out that we wanted to have a nice romantic weekend alone."

"He isn't going to think it's even funnier if he shows up?"

"Don't worry," Scarlett said getting into bed. "He knows better than to do that."

"When he invited himself along, my heart just sank. I was hoping that you would say something to him. You tried, but he kept going on and on," Jax said.

"That's how I finally figured out he was playing us."

"You're father could have a new career as a birth control device," Jax said.

Scarlett burst into laughter, savoring the ability to laugh without having to wrap her arms around her body to keep the muscles from pulling. She wasn't sure when that got better, but that was the way physio worked; you made slow progress until you had these little moments when you realized you could do something that used to hurt.

"I can just picture him going through college dorms or motel rooms knocking on the doors and asking for his daughter or wife."

"I was picturing him never leaving us alone."

Scarlett smiled and kissed Jax lightly on the lips.

"Don't you worry about that. I wasn't going to let him ruin our plans for the weekend."

"I thought of telling him we'd meet him at the lake house and then hide out here or my house for the weekend."

"No worries. I can handle my dad. He won't ruin our weekend, I promise."

"I've already told Clay and the guys I'm going to be gone for a few days. The guys were getting restless being confined to Charming. Even Happy said he's going to be gone for a few days and it's not to visit another charter."

Jax's thoughts of Scarlett and sex were momentarily pushed aside while he wondered what was going on with Happy. He was acting mysterious lately. It must be some girl he'd met and he was slipping off to see. Happy liked unique girls from a voodoo priestess to the girl that liked to dress up like a plushie deer and run in the woods. When the guys found out about it, they teased him about dressing like a deer and mating in the woods deer style. Jax suspected they played more of a hiding seek game with Happy playing a hunter and then having sex with her while she was wearing the plushie deer costume.

"I'm going to do my brief work out at the clubhouse tomorrow before work. Do you want to come?"

"Sure," Jax said.

Scarlett was sitting on the bed facing Jax who was sitting up with his back against the bed's padded headboard. She looked down at the sheets stroking the cotton with her index finger.

"My dad suggested that I ask you to help with my therapy. He said if I didn't ask you, he would start showing up and helping me."

"And you would rather have me help you," Jax said seriously.

"If you wouldn't mind too much. I can't lift my legs. My therapist puts my leg over her shoulder and has me press against her hand with my foot."

Jax leaned forward and kissed Scarlett quickly on the lips.

"Of course I don't mind. I just don't want to do anything that can hurt you."

"The only thing you can do to hurt me is drop my leg. That will cause the muscles to pull and tear. You have to raise and lower my legs for me."

"Why didn't you ask sooner?"

"I wanted to be stronger and it's embarrassing not being able to lift my legs."

"Pretty much the whole time I've known you, you've been injured. That hasn't scared me off. As messed up as you are, you still took care of me when I needed you. We help each other."

"Thanks," she said, smiling shyly. "When I go to therapy on Monday, I'll tell the therapist about my plan and you can come in and work with us."

Scarlett laid down getting ready to watch videos while she waited for her pain and sleeping meds to kick in.

"I'm going to stay at my place tomorrow night. I need to do laundry. You think you're going to be OK on your own?" Jax asked leaning on his elbow to look down into her face resting on her pillow.

"Jax, I've spent more nights alone than I have with you. I think I can manage to stay out of trouble for a night."

"How about I come by about 11:30 Friday morning and we go out to lunch and then we'll head to the lake house?"

"Can we stop by the grocery store? I'd really like to have watermelon. I can't lift a watermelon and I thought later you could help me cut up the watermelon with your big knife."

"Sure, we can do that. Maybe we could stop and get some of those sandwiches you got the first time we went to the lake house."

"OK."

"Good night," Jax said kissing her. He broke the kiss off because it was getting harder and harder to share a bed without being physically closer. Before Scarlett's father arrived for his visit they could at least enjoy fooling around.

"Good night."

His desire for Scarlett was building. He'd felt lust before but it was always so quickly satisfied he never felt much of a build up. He missed the physical pleasures of sex, but sex with a random girl wouldn't do anything to quench his desire because Scarlett was the only woman who could give him the release he needed.

When she told him that they needed to be exclusive because she needed to feel close to him to have sex with him, he agreed. He'd been with other girls after meeting Scarlett. While physically satisfying, he felt bad afterwards. He hadn't minded being exclusive to her when he knew that she wanted to feel closer to him with the end goal of having sex.

He and Tara had been friends who started having sex. They had been close, but not like he and Scarlett were close. It was the difference between friendship love and romantic love. It wasn't something he knew the difference between back in high school.

He thought back to the time she'd passed out in her motel room and how calmly she'd handled it. No hysterics. Just a simple request to get her a Coke. She'd invited him to dinner telling him that if he didn't want to go, she'd just order pizza delivered to her room. He'd liked that confidence. When he took her back to the motel, it occurred to him that he needed to get food for her to keep by her bed. He wanted to take care of her.

Back on that terrible night when he discovered Bela wasn't his child and she was dead, he'd gone to the convenience store with poor tragic Louise behind the counter. The second he saw the reacher, he'd thought of Scarlett. He could have waited to give it to her, but he'd wanted to see her.

Somehow, she knew that he needed to be with someone. She'd invited him to stay the night with her making it clear that it was platonic. It showed a tremendous amount of trust and he accepted her offer. He hadn't wanted to be alone and she was so easy to be with asking no questions beyond asking if SWAT was going to come and blow up her door.

When Scarlett thought a kidnap team sent by her psycho ex was coming to grab her when they had gone to the lake house, she'd told him to get away. He remembered the look in her eyes. She'd meant it when she told him to leave. She expected him to leave her. There was no way he was going to leave her to fight off a team or kill herself.

He didn't even know when he fell in love with her. He just realized that he loved her. He'd never felt such intense happiness. It was just odd to always feel so happy. Now, he knew why Juice walked into walls when he was in love.

He opened his eyes just enough to see Scarlett. He never thought romantic love could feel this good. He'd first begun to question if he'd felt romantic love for Tara when he wasn't upset that she'd left town. He'd actually felt relief because he could finally be young and single. If he lost Scarlett—he couldn't even imagine something that awful.

"Are you spying on me?" she asked. "I can see your eyes are open just a slit."

Jax opened his eyes.

"I wasn't spying on you. I was just thinking."

"Uh-huh. What were you thinking about?"

"What do you think?" he asked, a smile playing at the corners of his lips.

"What men are always thinking about," she said with mock annoyance.

"Yes, but I was thinking about it and you. There's a difference."

Scarlett's face flushed. She was sexy as hell without even trying.

"This is why women are going to take over the world. We don't think about sex all the time."

"We think of sex and other things at the same time. We multi-task."

"That's a relief."

"Now, I'm really going to sleep," Jax said closing his eyes completely.

He thought more about sex with Scarlett. Sex was pleasure. Just physical fun. It didn't have any emotion attached to it. He'd had sex with girls he hadn't even liked. He thought the term making love to describe sex was a joke. A girl meets a guy and has sex with him fifteen minutes later and talks about making love. Love has nothing to do with sex when you've only known a girl fifteen minutes. It's just straightforward meaningless sex.

With Scarlett, sex wasn't going to be just physical. There was going to be this huge emotional component because they waited until they were in love. For the first time in his life, he was actually going to make love with a woman.

Nothing short of an MC war was going to keep him from that weekend at the lake house with Scarlett.