Still The One (Family Stone #4 Jack) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense) by Lisa Hughey Read Free Book Online Page A

on the small battered dumpster and started to toss the bag. But the flutter of a newspaper caught his eye. No recycling out here. There were no other bags of garbage inside. And he wondered why the paper would already be in the dumpster. Why would Maria have gone to the trouble to throw the paper away in there?
    He leaned into the stinky, metal container and grabbed the paper. He didn’t even have it halfway out when the headline caught his eye. Jack let the lid slam shut and hustled to the car.
    Bliss was already in the driver’s seat.
    “I think I found why she ran.”
    He held up the paper. The headline read: Fernandez a Shoe In for Top Labor Job .
     
    ***
     
    Who could have predicted that the Holiday Arts and Crafts Fair would be such a draw that all the hotel rooms in the surrounding eighty miles would be booked?
    Bliss cursed all those crafty people out there. They were turning her life into a nightmare. She’d thought she’d at least have the night to regroup after spending the last seven hours in her former lover’s company. Instead they were forced to share a room. And they were lucky they’d found this one. For a while it had been looking like they were going to be sleeping in their rental car.
    They had needed to pay cash, which also limited their sleeping options. They were lucky they found this dump. The wallpaper adorned with tractors and wheat fields in earth tones and bronze metallics, the starburst clock on the wall, and the brown shag carpeting were about twenty years out of date. But it did have two beds for which she was grateful.
    She needed a damn break.
    The toilet flushed in the miniscule hotel bathroom and Bliss slid under the rough, cheap cotton sheets before Jack came out of the bathroom.
    Bliss was trying hard to ignore the fact that was she was in a hotel room with Jack Stone. He’d been the yardstick for every other man she’d been intimate with, and now with him so close again, she wondered, was it just ‘first love’ memories?
    Jack burst out of the bathroom like he was being attacked and Bliss jerked. She’d forgotten how everything he did was physically imposing. He moved and breathed and sucked the air from the universe.
    Jack was big. But more than that, he had a big personality. He commanded attention. Not in an overt way but somehow when Jack was around he drew energy from the air and it nearly crackled around him.
    Of course he noticed her flinch. “You okay?”
    “Besides that fact that I’m sorta wishing I had a black light for these sheets—”
    Jack snorted. “No, you don’t.”
    “I’m...fine.”
    The tension in the room ramped up to a new height as the reality that they were in a hotel room together seemed to hit them at the both time. All day Bliss had been trying to ignore his innate sex appeal. Jack had always been a tactile person. He liked to touch, to stroke, to feel. He’d spent hours exploring her skin, her curves, her mouth seemingly never tired of just...learning her body.
    He’d taken off his t-shirt and stripped down to a pair of basketball shorts. Jack ran hot. She’d never needed a blanket when they slept together, his body was like a raging inferno. He’d kept her warm and safe wrapped in his arms. At least she’d felt safe.
    An illusion, but back then she still had nightmares and sometime the old fear would sneak up on her while she slept. But Jack had made all those fears disappear when he held her in his arms. The feeling of safety had let her sleep at night. And when he’d left, she’d gone back to her sleepless, restless nights for a long time. Until she’d learned to keep herself safe.
    But oh, those nights in his embrace. The way his much larger frame dwarfed hers. The way he put his body between hers and the door. The way he’d made her feel safe without even knowing that he’d given her that gift.
    Bliss’s breath caught as memories bombarded her. “Night.” She rolled over quickly and faced the hideous ancient