Dare To Love Series: Dreaming Up a Dare (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Catherine Gayle Page A

it. “What are you doing?”
    “Trying to make you feel better.”
    “This isn’t what we do. This isn’t who we are.”
    “No?” Jackson squeezed my arms before releasing me. “Maybe we should be.”
    ~ * ~ * ~
    I spent the day nursing my hangover and trying to sort out all the crazy thoughts racing through my head. Maybe Jackson really had meant to kiss me like that. Maybe he felt the same way about me as I felt about him. Maybe the alcohol had only served to loosen us up so we could finally be honest with each other.
    It was a nice thought, but I was still more than simply wary about allowing myself to think along those lines. Getting my hopes up only to have them come crashing down on me again wasn’t what I needed right now.
    I needed a job.
    I needed direction in my life.
    I needed to find a way to move on from gymnastics, to find some new passion. Gymnastics and Jackson Maddox were the only two things in my life I’d ever been passionate about. Now, I’d lost one of them, and I was on the verge of losing the other. In fact, I might have already lost Jackson, too, because I’d been a big, fat idiot last night. Gymnastics had been taken from me in a flash, but I was going to lose Jackson slowly. I wasn’t sure which was more painful.
    Those were the reasons I was here, not to hook up with Jackson—something I reminded myself of over and over again once my headache and nausea finally started to clear up.
    Tomorrow, I was supposed to go up to the Miami Thunder headquarters and meet with Alex Dare. That should, at least, be productive in terms of finding somewhere to start figuring out the job part of things. But that meeting wasn’t until tomorrow. Today, I didn’t have to do anything other than get over my hangover and maybe go to Jackson’s game tonight, a thought that was both liberating and annoying.
    By the time he came home from the morning skate and team video session, my headache was down to a dull throb and my nausea had passed. I was even hungry enough that I’d started making lunch.
    He came into the kitchen and grinned. “Smells good. Feeling better, then?”
    “Some.” I took out a spoon and filled it with some of the pasta sauce I’d loaded with veggies and lean proteins and a ton of flavor, holding it out for him to taste.
    “I meant you smell good,” he said, tasting the sauce anyway. “This is good, too, though, just like everything you make.”
    I decided to ignore his comment about how I smelled. “If only I could find a way to put my skills in the kitchen to use.”
    “Who says you can’t? I know plenty of guys who don’t know how to cook but need to eat right.”
    Hmm. There was a thought. Not that I had a clue about how to get started along that path. Still, it was something I could bring up tomorrow with Alex. He seemed to think he knew how to get me pointed in the right direction for whatever I wanted to do, so this could be a way to test that theory.
    “You feel better enough that you’ll come with me tonight?” Jackson asked, filling a couple of glasses with water.
    The pasta water had started to boil, so I emptied the box and threw in a bunch of salt to season it. “Will you be mad if I don’t?”
    “I think you know by now that I’m never mad at you. At least not for long.”
    “Not for long?” Something lurched in my stomach. I focused all my attention on preparing lunch, not looking in Jackson’s direction in case he could read the anxiety in my eyes. “Does that mean you’re mad at me now?”
    “Not mad, exactly. Frustrated? Something like that.”
    “Why are you frustrated?” I asked, even though there were any number of reasons he could and should be annoyed with me after last night.
    “Because you still want to believe everything that happened between us last night was only a product of all the booze in your system.”
    That only made the lurching turn to flutters and tingles.
    “What are you saying?” I forced out.
    He slipped behind me, his