Luckily the blonde didn’t seem to mind. “Hey. You’re Jacob, right?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“I’ve been waiting for the chance to talk to you. I would have gone up to the bar but—” She leaned forward to share some of her cleavage with him. “—I’m way too shy.”
Sure she was.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Mandy.”
He grimaced. Mandy sounded a lot like Amanda. Too much like it. A thin layer of his pleasant inebriation burned off at the thought.
She patted the seat next to her. “Come sit with me.”
He sat. He needed to order more drinks. He couldn’t let himself sober up. Not tonight.
“I have to be honest.” Mandy’s gaze slowly traveled the length of him. “You went out with my sister Emily last year and she couldn’t stop talking about how amazing you were in bed.”
“Oh yeah?” He racked his mind for anything that might clue him in to who Emily had been. The fact that nothing came to mind did not make him proud.
“Mm-hmm,” Mandy wrapped her hand around his left knee and began to rub. “I guess I just wanted to find out for myself.”
He nodded stiffly. “Sounds good to me.”
“You don’t know how good.” Her red lips curled into a sexy smile and she leaned forward to kiss him as her hand boldly moved up his thigh.
Mandy wasn’t bashful, that was for sure.
And he wanted this. A gorgeous blonde with a sexy little body throwing herself at him? Giving him every indication that she was ready, willing and able even without having to use his empathic ability to get a read on her true feelings? That sounded like a very good thing indeed.
At least it did in theory.
She moved away from him and frowned when she realized that he wasn’t kissing her back. “Something wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Don’t you find me attractive?”
“You? You’re hot. No question.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
That was an excellent question.
“I don’t know,” he said.
That was not an excellent answer.
“I want you to take me back to your place,” she whispered, and wrapped her arms around him so her large breasts brushed against his chest. “I’m not normally this forward, but I really want you, even if it’s just for tonight. I’m okay with one-night stands.”
Hot blonde. Hot body. Willing to have sex with him with no strings attached.
And he had never been less aroused in his entire life.
Something was seriously wrong with that picture.
He pried her arms away from him. “This isn’t going to work.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He grappled for a response. “Because I’m not in a good place tonight. I need to get my thoughts together.”
Understanding came over her face. “Is this a girlfriend issue? Because I can be very discreet.”
The woman was every heterosexual man’s wet dream come true.
But Jacob knew that a simple night of sex was not in the cards for him at the moment and it wasn’t just because of the alcohol. It was because of the picture seared into his brain.
A picture of Amanda.
A hot line of annoyance burned the rest of his buzz away.
That was Amanda for you, he thought. The ultimate buzz kill.
Then he gripped the side of his chair as another thought occurred to him.
This had to be a part of the curse. The clock was still working its magic nearly twenty-four hours after they’d first come in contact with it. Amanda could read his thoughts and he could make her tell the truth. They were compelled to be together sexually if in close proximity for too long.
And he could not get it up for anybody other than her.
He was in serious trouble.
CHAPTER 8
Jacob stayed at the bar for another half hour before he decided to call it a night. He wasn’t sure exactly what tomorrow would bring, but he knew he had to find an answer. He had to find a way to break the curse and the invisible ties that seemed to bind him to Amanda so tightly that he could barely look at another woman.
He emerged into the warm night air and began walking down the sidewalk. His house was less than a mile away and his chosen route there was through the populated area of the small town. Strip malls, restaurants and a multiplex theater.
He didn’t want to think about Amanda or what she was up to that night, but he couldn’t help it. He absently fished into his pocket and pulled out the digital camera, flicking it on and scrolling past the pictures he’d taken of the grandfather clock. There it was. That’s what he was looking for.
It was the shot he’d taken of Amanda in the hall outside the bedroom. She looked over her shoulder at him, her bright-blue eyes burning right into him from her beautiful face. There was a longing in those eyes. A deep, aching need that only he could fill.
Then again, he had had a lot to drink tonight. He was probably seeing things that weren’t there at all.
“What am I going to do about you?” he asked the picture very seriously.