When the night finally wound down, the kids were in bed, and the dishes were put away, Nancy pulled Jake down for a kiss on the cheek.

“You’ll be in the guest room, Grace. And Jake’s in his old room, of course. Your room is the best room in the house as long as you don’t mind my sewing machine and Bob’s treadmill, which he touches about once a decade.”

“More than you touch that sewing machine,” Bob grumbled back from his spot on the couch. His wife ignored him. They were adorable.

Separate bedrooms, then. That was cool.

That was better.

Grace 2.0 could stop worrying that she’d drag Jake down the aisle just because she liked his family, and Grace 1.0 wouldn’t even be remotely tempted to sleep with Jake just because she liked him.

Win-win.

Jake had other ideas. “Hey, Mom, I was going to take Grace for a drive. Show her the neighborhood and stuff.”

“Now?” Nancy looked scandalized.

“It’s just after nine, Mom. And it’s not even a school night.”

She gave a sheepish smile. “I forget that you’re from the city that never sleeps.”

“Yup,” Jake said as he helped himself to another piece of apple pie. “And we all call it that too.”

“He always was the sarcastic one in the family,” Nancy said in a loud whisper. “You watch that about him. Come on, Bob, we’re going to bed.”

“Oh, are we?” Jake’s dad didn’t move.

Nancy marched over to the TV and turned it off decisively. “The kids need alone time. We talked about this.”

Grace pressed her lips together in amusement.

Grumbling, Bob pushed himself up from the couch, giving Grace a peck on the cheek before he clapped his son on the shoulder. “Night, Jake. As proud as we are of your hotshot life, it’s always good to have you home.”

Grace watched curiously as the same odd expression went across Jake’s face that she’d seen on the porch earlier that afternoon.

Bob trailed after Nancy, and neither Jake nor Grace moved until the creaking of the stairs stopped, followed by the click of a bedroom door.

“Finally,” Jake muttered as he and Grace wandered into the kitchen.

“They’re great,” Grace said, leaning on the counter and watching him polish off the pie.

“Uh-huh. If by great you mean prying, interfering, and being all-around pains in the ass. I specifically asked them not to read my stuff.”

“If Jamie was a big-shot journalist writing about her personal life, would you read her stuff?”

“Hell, yes! Jamie has horrible relationship sense.”

“Unlike you and that … what was that model’s name? She sure was nice.”

He picked at a flake of pie crust. “Sure. But now I have you.”

“Only till the end of the month,” she said quickly. Playfully.

Grace 2.0 gave her a reluctant, praising pat on the head.

He nodded. “Right. Only till then.”

Grace ignored the pang. “So, you want to show me your ’hood?”

Jake gave her a pitying look. “Are you trying to be hip right now?”

“Is it working?”

“Not even remotely close. You ready to go?”

“Sure … where we going?”

“Not here, Brighton.” He pointed his finger, sweeping it in a circle to encompass the whole kitchen. “My mother has ears everywhere.”

“And I take it we’re planning on doing something she wouldn’t approve of?”

His smile was wicked. “Definitely.”

* * *

“Wow, your old school. How romantic.”

“Heather Tanner used to think so,” he said as he put the car in park in the deserted corner of the school parking lot near what looked to be the baseball fields. “Nobody liked to park here because of the trees. Bird shit everywhere. But it makes a nice hiding spot from the main road at night.”

“And you came here to … study?”

“Of course,” he said, strumming his fingers on the steering wheel and looking a little nostalgic as he took in the darkened landscape of his high school. “They redid the backstop.”

“Did you play?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was all right. Good enough to be their starting shortstop. Smart enough to know nothing would ever come of it.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Baseball?”

“No … Wisconsin. This city. Your home.”

He looked briefly surprised by the question, and she wondered if anyone from New York had ever seen this side of him, the small-town boy.

“I love coming back,” he said finally. “There’s always that moment when the plane descends and I see that familiar landscape, and the warmth I get when I pull into my parents driveway and see my family for the first time in months. But it’s not home. Not anymore.”

“But New York is?”

He hesitated. “For now.”

“You have plans to leave the city?” She kept her voice light even as her heart felt heavy at the thought of New York with no Jake Malone. It seemed wrong somehow.

Jake’s head turned so that he was looking at her. “I didn’t bring you here to talk, you know.”

“Am I not as good a conversationalist as Hannah Tanner?”

“Oh, you’re a better conversationalist, all right. I seem to remember her being overly fond of the phrase ‘Oh, totally!’ But let me tell you … Hannah Tanner knew a thing or two about kissing.”

“Did she now?”

His eyes were on her lips. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Well, where is this stellar kisser now?”

“Twice married, once divorced. Three kids. Lives on the outskirts of town. Still says ‘Oh, totally’ from what I’m told.”

“However did you let her get away?”

“Guess I was destined to kiss someone else.”

“Or someones else,” she said, trying to keep it light. “Do you keep a rating system written down in your underwear drawer?”

He tapped his temple. “All up here. It’s like a kissing vault.”

“I see. And where do I rank?”

Grace 2.0 rolled her eyes.

Jake scrunched up his face as though trying to place her. “You know, I remember it being pretty damn good, but—”

“You really want to but a woman who can destroy your entire reputation with a few carefully chosen words on a blog?”

He grinned. “But our kissing encounters have been few and far between. I really can’t properly evaluate you without more research.”

“More research.”

“Yup.”

“And what do I get out of this so-called research?”

Jake’s teeth flashed, white in the dark night. “Come over here and find out.”

Grace knew what he was doing. He was putting the ball in her court. Putting the decision in her hands. If she wanted him, she’d have to go to him.

So she did.

He didn’t move, not when she leaned across the middle console, not when she shifted so she was sitting on one leg to get better leverage. Not even when she pressed her mouth to his, tasting him.

Grace kept the kiss soft, exploring his mouth the way she’d been dreaming of doing since that first date when he’d cheese-plated her. Hell, she’d been wanting to do this since that first day in the cab.

It wasn’t until she placed her hand against his cheek, feeling his scratchy stubble against her palm, that he moved, plunging one hand into her hair and using his tongue to press open her lips, exploring her mouth in delicious sweeps that made her gasp.

They kissed until the windows fogged, their hands increasingly more frantic and more bold as they explored each other. Then Jake’s left hand reached across the car, hooking behind her right leg and pulling her toward him. Both of them shifted and readjusted until she was straddling his lap in the driver’s seat.

“I remember this being a lot easier in high school,” he said, smiling against her mouth as her butt accidentally honked the car horn.

To punish him for even thinking about girls he’d done this with in high school, Grace maneuvered until she was lower still, grinding against the hot length of him. Jake groaned and cupped her ass, pressing into her as his mouth found her neck.

His hand slipped beneath the back of her shirt, the flat of his hand running along her lower back before it slid upward, his fingers brushing her bra strap before flicking it open at the same time his teeth grazed the sensitive column of her neck.

She clawed at the buttons of his shirt as his fingers slid around to her front, up under the loosened bra cups, palming her br**sts as her nails lightly grazed his nipples.

“This is crazy,” he said, pulling her shirt over her head in jerky awkward movements before closing his mouth around her nipple and sucking hard.

Grace was too lost to care what was crazy. She only cared about what was right, and what was right was clutching Jake’s head to her while she ground against him like a horny sixteen-year-old.

Of course she’d never been that sixteen-year-old because she’d gone to a prep school where the boys borrowed their daddy’s drivers, not their daddy’s cars, and nobody would have even thought about initiating such a thing with Daniel Brighton’s princess daughter.

But Jake Malone thought about it. From the way he was feeling her up, he’d thought about it a lot.

Their touches became increasingly frantic, each fumbling for the button of each other’s pants before realizing the difficult logistics of sex in the front seat of a car.

When she hissed in frustration, Jake swore and roughly lifted her off him. “I can’t believe I’m even suggesting this, but …?” He jerked his head toward the backseat, and Grace giggled.

“How old are we?” she asked in a mock-horrified whisper, even as she climbed awkwardly into the backseat, barely managing to wiggle her h*ps between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Jake didn’t even try to follow, instead exiting the driver’s-side door and climbing in the back door.

Their clothes were off in record time, and he maneuvered their na**d bodies until he was above her, his elbows next to her head as he smoothed her hair back from her face.

She arched against him, but instead of answering her unspoken plea, he hesitated. “Grace, this isn’t … I didn’t …”

Her fingers traced over his mouth, stopping his words. “I want this.”

“You deserve better than the backseat of a car, Grace.”

“So did Hannah Tanner, but that didn’t stop you then.”

He let out a little laugh and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “Only you would talk about a girl from twenty years ago at a time like this.”

Her legs wrapped around his waist, tilting up to him. “A time like what?”

“Grace,” he uttered as she wiggled against him.

In response she reached a hand down to where he was hard and ready for her, stroking him twice before leading him to her opening.

“Grace, can we just talk about—”

She thrust her h*ps up again, only this time the wanton movement took him inside her, just barely, but enough so that they both groaned.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Shit.”

He pulled out long enough to dig a condom out of his jean pockets, ripping the wrapper and rolling it on in one smooth motion. He maneuvered them again, moving between her legs, his hands on her knees as he pushed her legs as wide as they would go given the constraints of the backseat.

She watched him over the rise and fall of her breasts, watched the way his hand slowly slid over her inner thigh until he was cupping her, his thumb moving relentlessly as his two fingers slid easily inside her.

“I love the way you feel,” he said, his eyes never leaving the hand that was working her over. His fingers circled and teased, bringing her to the edge repeatedly without ever letting her go over. When he finally moved above her, their eyes locking for a split second before he thrust all the way inside her in one smooth stroke, Grace wound her legs around his back as his hands cupped her ass.

Instinctively her hands went above her head, bracing against the door as he began to thrust roughly into her, the rhythm savage and needy and deep. His arms came around her, moving up until he cupped her head, holding her protectively even as his body slammed into hers.

Her nails found his back, clawing, knowing that she was leaving marks, and not caring.

“Jake.”

He hissed as she said his name, rolling his h*ps into her. “Again.”

“Jake.”

His fingers clenched in her hair, once, twice, and then he went over the edge, calling her name on a hoarse cry as he spilled into her. She found her own release seconds after, her cry echoing through the tiny closed space of the car as she clenched around him, her h*ps moving in smaller and smaller jerks until the shaking finally subsided.

They held each other through the aftershocks, her hands smoothing the scratches on his back as he gently massaged her scalp.

“You’ve got to stop playing with my hair,” she said after long minutes. “You’re making me sleepy, and then I’ll fall asleep, and then your mom will know I didn’t sleep in the guest bedroom with her sewing machine.”

He brushed a kiss against her temple. “Always the good girl. Always following the rules.”

“Good girl? We just humped in a rental car.”

He pulled back then, grinning down into her face. “Did you just say humped?”

She blushed. “It seemed … fitting.”