There was no hesitation on her part as I guided her to my truck, and when I practically picked her up and placed her in the passenger seat, the only thing she said was, “Make sure you lock the door on your way out.”
I tipped my chin and then retrieved her items from inside, locking the door as instructed before carefully placing the boards and other materials she’d laid out carefully in the back seat.
When I started the truck and put it in gear, she asked, “How old is this truck?”
I looked at her from the corner of my eye. “I thought it was rude to ask a woman her age.”
She rolled her eyes and lifted a shoulder. “I told you that I had a bad habit of putting my foot in my mouth.”
“Your poor feet.” I lamented, “You can’t walk on them or keep them from embarrassing you.”
She gently slapped my bicep. “Hey!”
I chuckled. “I picked Lynda up right after I got drafted. That’s how she got her name. The song is about wanting the love of a good woman.”
“I have so many questions right now.”
“Shoot.” I glanced at her as I pulled out of her long driveway. Her bottom lip was pulled between two rows of perfect, white teeth and her green eyes were sparkling.
The fiery-red hair that I’d imagined running my fingers through all night long was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and despite her sprained ankle, she was dressed in a tailored suit that screamed sophistication.
The first night I’d met her, at Aiden’s Christmas party, she’d been dressed up in an ugly Christmas sweater and leggings, silly and fun loving. Then, at the bar, she’d been wearing a sundress that showed off her curves while still leaving plenty to the imagination, exuding sexiness that she knew she possessed without coming off as arrogant. Today, it seemed like I was meeting a different person altogether. This Georgia was self-assured, confident, and ready to take on the world.
And the longer I studied her, the more I realized that I fucking liked all three versions of the woman beside me. She was by far the most interesting person I’d met in a long time.
“Well, let’s see.” She tipped her head to the side while tapping a finger against her lips. Her nails were clipped short but polished in a soft pink, giving her all-business look a bit of softness. “So, you’ve got Lynda here. How many other cars do you own?”
I smiled. “I’m a one-woman man. Lynda here, she’s my one and only.”
Her brows furrowed. “You don’t have any other cars?”
“Nope.”
“Why?” she asked bluntly, the confusion lining the smooth skin of her forehead.
I shrugged. “I was raised to be frugal.”
It was only a half lie. I was raised to be tight with money. Mainly because we’d had none, and the little bit of money we did have, my dad spent on himself.
“Hm.” She nodded, still eyeing me skeptically.
“Is it bad that I don’t have a garage full of luxury vehicles?” I hoped the answer was no. I didn’t know much about her, but she didn’t give me the impression that she was materialistic. At least not at the Christmas party or the bar the other night. Although, now that I’d seen the house she lived in, I wasn’t so sure.
“It’s refreshing,” she beamed, those emerald eyes that I couldn’t help but fall into wide and full of honesty.
“Refreshing?”
She nodded. “Well, I’m sure you know Daddy is a Hall of Famer and a coach. I’ve grown up around professional athletes, and I haven’t met a single one who wasn’t…flashy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You guys work hard; you deserve to show off your talent. But, I dunno.” She shrugged again. “It’s just nice meeting someone who doesn’t have to rub their success in your face.”
Yep.
I definitely liked this girl.
I cleared my throat and turned my attention back to the road. “Okay, my turn. What’s the story behind your house?”
She sighed and let her head fall back on the headrest. “It’s not really very exciting. Well, to me it is. But it’ll probably bore you.”
I shook my head. “I’m beginning to think that nothing you could say would bore me.”
She turned her head in my direction, the smallest of smiles on her lips. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’ve been warned. Now, tell me about the place.”
Her gaze traveled to the windshield. “Well, I graduated from Clemson eight years ago and immediately moved back home. The school was beautiful and the area even better, but my family is close. And we’d had our share of tragedy.”
I raised my brow when she looked back at me. “Jack, Piper’s twin brother, died while I was away at college.” Her eyes began to fill, but she shook her head and fought the tears back. “Anyway, I just needed to be home.”
“I’m so sorry. What happened?” I knew all about how hard it was to lose someone close to you, how the pain of that loss never leaves you.
Georgia’s eyes were sad as she said, “It was a car accident.” Her shoulder lifted and she smiled sadly. “He died instantly. Piper and Hampton barely had any bruises.”
I reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers as I repeated, “I’m sorry.” The words weren’t enough, but it was all I had to offer for a tragedy that I didn’t know anything about.
“Me too.” She swallowed hard and then turned back to look at the house. “So, my pappy, that’s Daddy’s dad, died when we were really young and had left us all pretty sizable inheritances. The only stipulation to cashing in on them was that we had to graduate college. So, I graduated and came home, and when Daddy asked what I was going to do with the money that Pappy had left, the only option I even considered was buying a house.”
It was my turn to raise a brow skeptically. “You were twenty-two years old and had enough money to buy a house with at your disposal, and you didn’t consider blowing it?”
She laughed. “Oh, I considered it. Lawson, that’s my oldest brother, was living in Vegas at the time. It would have been easy to hop on a plane and crash at his place while gambling away Pappy’s years on the field. I actually did go to visit Law, but I made sure that I didn’t have access to that money. Anyway, no. I didn’t want to blow it. Mama and Daddy raised me to be pretty responsible, I guess. Plus, I was ready to put my degree to work.”
“Landscape Architecture, right?”
“Yep.” She grinned. “I told the real estate agent that my only requirements were an acre of land and it had to be in town near my family. The first house she showed me was Rest Meadow Chateau. It was built in the early eighteen hundreds and had at one point been home to the town’s founder. It was a true piece of Stone Mountain history.”
“Love at first sight, huh?” I asked.
Her head fell back as she laughed. “Not even a little bit. There was nothing restful about the place, and unless you considered briar patches and weeds a lovely meadow, that part of its name was a lie too. It was a foreclosure, the previous owners having stripped nearly everything from inside the house, except for the moldy carpet. They were kind enough to leave that. Mama and Daddy didn’t even want to go inside when we pulled up, but I took one look at the property and knew that it had potential.” She smirked. “Not the inside, mind you. I didn’t go inside right away either. But the outside was exactly what I wanted. A raw, untouched landscape that I could do whatever I wanted with. And so, I made an offer that was way below the already ridiculously low asking price right then and there. The bank took it, probably because Rest Meadow had been a literal thorn in their side for well over a year, and I moved in less than a month later.”
“Wow,” I said. “So, you bought an entire house just so you could plant some bushes in the yard?”
“Pretty much. That’s exactly what I did too. I moved my meager amount of furniture into the only room that wouldn’t give me the black lung, ripped up the moldy carpet, and then got to work on designing the landscape.” Her gaze had drifted back out the windshield and was
unfocused as she smiled. “I lived on plywood for a year. Used my dorm room fridge and single burner for six months. But eighteen months after I got that house for a steal, the yard looked like it belonged on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. Not to toot my own horn, but it was on the cover a year ago for their Southern Manor Edition.”
She grinned at me, and I grinned right back. It was a good thing that traffic was light and the road we were traveling was quiet, because I’d barely been able to drag my gaze away from her face while she told me about the strange-looking house that she lived in. The way she talked about it, it was as though she was lovingly telling me the story of her first child. In a way, I suppose that’s probably exactly the way she felt about it. It had taken years of obvious blood, sweat, and tears to get what had been a dump, in her words, to what it was today.
A show piece, worthy of a front-page display on one of the country’s most popular magazines.
And damn, if I couldn’t relate to that.
“Sounds like you were meant to be the Lady of the Rest Meadow Chateau.”
She bit her lower lip lightly and looked at me through dark lashes. “Yeah, maybe so.”
The GPS announced that our destination was on the right, and I stifled a groan. I could have driven for hours, listening to Georgia gush about her house, her job, her life, her.
“Looks like we’re here. You ready?” I asked as I pulled into a handicap space in front of the short brick building.
Georgia’s eyes closed briefly, and I saw her lips move as though she were praying, and then she put on a brilliant smile and angled her entire body toward mine. “So ready. You sure you don’t have anything else to do? I could totally catch a ride with someone else.”
“Tryin’ to get rid of me?”
“Nope. Just don’t want to hold you up.”
“You’re the only thing I have to do today.”
A brow arched and she smirked, but I stopped her before she had the chance to say something smart. “You’re gonna be late. Want me to carry your stuff inside?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’ve got to walk in with confidence if I’m going to nail the presentation. Won’t look very sure of myself if I have help.”
I grinned. “Or maybe you’ll look super successful by having an errand boy do the grunt work for you. Your own version of The Devil Wears Prada.”
“Did you just reference a Meryl Streep movie?”
“Don’t give me too much shit. I have a sister.”
Her laugh was loud and full of humor. “My brothers have a sister too. I can guarantee that neither of them has ever seen that movie. And Hampton is gay!”
I groaned. “We take turns picking movies. I think she enjoys picking the ones that she knows I’ll hate. Then again, I always pick an action flick, so I guess we’re probably even.” I ran a fingertip along her shoulder. “Get inside before I embarrass myself anymore. I’ll be out here when you’re done.”
She jerked her chin in a resolute nod and pushed the door of the truck open before swinging her feet out.
“I’d tell you to break a leg, but since you’ve already done that…How about I just tell you to knock ‘em dead?”
She glanced back over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Ha. Aren’t you the funny one? But yes, I am going to knock them dead, and then I’m taking you to lunch. Hope you like steak.”
She winked and before I had a chance to argue, climbed from the truck, grabbed her belongings, and marched to the glass doors. I had to give it to her; the way she walked, you’d never have known that one of her ankles was the size of a softball.
As she reached for the handle, she turned back to me and blew me a kiss before stepping through the entryway.
“Lynda, I think we just broke up,” I murmured, a grin that nothing could have dimmed stretched wide on my face.
5
Georgia
I couldn’t have dreamed a better presentation than what I just gave to the conference room with ten people seated around the large rectangular table.
My renderings were perfect, my delivery was on point, and my confidence was through the roof as I shook hands with the golf course’s owners and trustees. That good feeling only amplified when one of the older gentlemen leaned in and whispered in my ear that he couldn’t say so officially, but I could consider my vision as good as done.
I was practically floating as I walked through the lobby, my laptop bag slung over one shoulder, drawings tucked under the opposite arm. My ankle was on fire, but it could have fallen off during the presentation and I wouldn’t have cared. When I pushed through the glass doors, I saw Quinn straighten behind the wheel of his truck.
I still couldn’t believe that the man who’d just signed a multimillion-dollar deal with the local team was driving a vehicle he’d bought eight years ago. But the cheesy story he’d told had not only made me laugh but squeezed my heart a little too. There was a lot about him that I didn’t know, but the sincere qualities that I did know he possessed only made me eager to get to know him better. I’d never, not once, met a man who didn’t think he needed to impress me. Not that Quinn didn’t want to make a good impression, but he seemed comfortable with who he was, and it was a quality that was not only refreshing, but nearly intoxicating the more I thought about it.
I wiped the grin from my face and watched as his brows dipped low as I approached. I must have been limping, not that I’d noticed, because Quinn was out of the driver’s door and at my side before I’d taken half a dozen steps.
“Here, let me carry this for you.”
I handed over the drawings and the laptop bag and followed him the rest of the way to his waiting truck. He pulled the back door open and carefully placed my belongings inside before grabbing the handle of the passenger door and boosting me into the truck. When he settled in behind the wheel, he angled his broad shoulders toward me. “Is it bad form to ask how it went?”
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and shook my head before casting my gaze to the floorboard. “Well, no. But,”—I looked back at him and poked my lower lip out—“it probably could have gone better.”
His forehead creased, and the corners of his perfect mouth tipped downward. “Shit,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”
I lifted a shoulder and shrugged. “I gave it my all.”
“That’s all you can do,” he said quickly, his calloused palm engulfing my hand. I looked from his disappointed eyes to where his large hand held mine, and my stomach fluttered.
His fingers squeezed mine, and then he tilted his head to one side and looked me over. “I can fix this.”
“You can?” I asked hesitantly.
His chin jerked, and I noticed not for the first time how perfect the little bit of stubble was on his chiseled jaw. There wasn’t much about his body that wasn’t perfect, although there was still plenty of him left for me to explore.
He cleared his throat and released my hand. I wished he hadn’t and had to stop myself from groaning aloud. “Cinnamon sugar toast, orange juice, champagne, bathrobes, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”
I lifted my brows. “Toast, mimosas, and a creepy movie is going to get the bid for me?”
His eyes sparkled. “No. I can’t do anything about that. But when we were younger and had a bad day, you know, sick or kids at school were assholes or it had rained for the hundredth day in a row, that’s what Mom always insisted would fix things.”
“Not sure if I should be concerned that your mother was giving you alcohol to combat the bullies or if she’s my new hero.”
His hand came back over mine, and his thumb stroked lazily along my knuckles. I hoped he didn’t notice the goose bumps that popped up along my arms at the contact. When he chuckled, the deep rumble reverberated somewhere deep inside me and I swallowed hard to push the butterflies that were going crazy in my belly back down. “Well, I added the champagne part. But I’m sure if Mom were still here, she’d insist that we have champagne too.”
&
nbsp; I frowned. “Still here?”
His gaze cut away for a split second, but then the deep blue of his irises moved back to mine and he said, “She died a while ago.”
I pulled my hand from under his and squeezed his thigh. “I’m sorry.”
His mouth twitched and he nodded. “Thanks. I am too.”
God, I felt like a heel. I stifled a groan and sighed. “I’m a jerk.”
“Why?”
“I totally got that bid. I was just messin’ with you. And now I’ve once again put my foot in my mouth.”
“Wait, you got the job?”
I nodded, still unable to look him in the eye. “Well, not officially. But one of the owners told me that it was as good as mine.”
Quinn’s thumb and forefinger grasped my chin and tilted my head until I was forced to look at his face. He was grinning broadly. “Hell yes!”
“Hell yes?”
“Hell. Yes,” he repeated, his mouth still stretched wide. “Of course, you got the job. You’re brilliant.”
I allowed myself to smile along with him. “I mean, I wasn’t going to say it, but you’re right. I am brilliant. At least when it comes to landscape designs. Not so much when it comes to not being a total asshole.”
His fingers fluttered along the side of my cheek, and then his hand wrapped around the back of my neck. I sucked in a deep breath as his nose nearly grazed mine. “Brilliant, yes. Asshole, no.”
“You don’t actually know that,” I whispered, my entire body on fire with the way it felt to have his rough palm caressing the back of my neck.
“Sure, I do.” The smirk on his face was so damn sexy that my head moved on its own accord.
One minute, I was grinning at this man who was so good at making me smile, and the next, my lips were on his and I was kissing him with an intensity that I didn’t know I possessed.
He didn’t seem taken aback by my sudden assault on his mouth but immediately took charge, his lips moving over mine with an expertise that caused a moan to come from somewhere deep inside me.
The Hardest Play Page 4