No, he had been the perfect gentleman. He’d been a good date. He was still trying to be a good date, to the best of his ability considering how ticked off he was.

Somehow, they muddled through, mostly by talking to everyone else at their table. Thankfully there didn’t seem to be anyone sitting with them that Sharon felt the need to provoke, otherwise it probably would have been even more uncomfortable.

Of course, getting back in the car with her was even worse.

Neither of them had had much to drink. Jake had been afraid that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to control some of his responses, and Sharon had needed to be sober to drive.

There was no buffer against the very tense silence. As cool as the massage chair was in the passenger seat, it wasn’t helping him.

It wasn’t a long drive, maybe about ten minutes, but every passing minute felt more like an hour. Halfway there, Sharon broke the strained quiet.

“Go ahead and say it.”

Jake turned his head to look at her, but she was staring straight ahead at the road, both hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Say what?”

She snorted. “Whatever it is you’re holding back, whatever the bug is that you’ve had up your butt all night. Go ahead and say it.”

“I haven’t had a bug up my butt all night,” he snapped back at her. Seriously, if she wanted to know what he was pissed about, couldn’t she just ask? Did she have to go straight for the insults? Why not try to make the situation better instead of worse? But that seemed to be her M.O. “Just since you decided to use me to piss off your family.”

Sharon scoffed. “I wasn’t using you-“

“Yes, you were,” he said, not caring that he was interrupting her. “I’m proud of being a soldier, I’m not ashamed that I’m not using my college degree and that I’m working for Luke, but you took both of those things and downplayed them in order to rile up your aunt.”

“I was just trying to help Melinda! You heard her ask me to distract her mom.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t hear you ask me if I was okay with being the sacrifice for it. You didn’t extend me the courtesy of letting me know what you were going to do. You just went straight into making a scene and using me and making it clear that I’m not good enough for your family.”

“I don’t think you’re not, that’s what they think! I don’t care what your job is!”