by Riley Bancroft, Evelyn Berry, Cara Carnes, Jax Garren, Irene Preston, Rebecca Royce, Chandra Ryan
One night couldn’t define an entire future. I’d had seven years of healing getting over him the last time. Now I’d gone and ripped every last mended stitch out and let him back in. Although I wanted to believe he wanted something beyond the here and now, taking a chance meant risk. Getting over him a second time would be impossible.
“You take care, Frank.”
“You too, Shasta.” His voice lowered as he took the bag of muffins and his coffee. “The western gate is open. I’ve got a work truck parked there, keys in the ignition. Help yourself to the foreman’s cottage if you want some peace. Otherwise, you can use the paths to get to your mom’s place.”
The generosity shook the dregs of gloom hanging from me. How had I gotten so lucky to have such awesome friends? “Thanks. Your concern and help mean the world to me, Frank.”
“Anytime.” He wandered out of the store, leaving his heart-wrenching kindness in his wake.
“Damn, we need to find him a good woman. He deserves good.” Bets’ gaze wandered to the can. “For now, we’re gonna follow his lead.”
Huh?
I watched in horror as Bets charged to the exit and stood on the table outside the door. Shock riddled me mute as the line of customers stared at her. Sadly, most didn’t seem very shocked. Bets was known for being sort of…unique.
“Okay, people. Listen up. I’m saying this once, so you’d better make damn sure and pay attention. No back talk. No arguing. This is how we’re doing it. We’re going to do right by Pete’s grandkid since y’all have to get the 4-1-1 on my girl’s business. So, you get to the counter, you pay up. Big. One question each. You want good dirt, you reach deep into those pockets and put it in Marcy’s can. You feel me? I’m not talking about the little lint ones and fives here. I’m talking about real green, the kind you’ve gotta run to the State Bank across the street and get.”
“What on Earth?” Pete stared out at Bets.
Shrugging my indifference I looked at him. “We may as well do some good with the meddling, right?”
He shook his head and wandered away. Though he said nothing, I could see the moisture in his eyes. People didn’t get much better than Pete, except maybe for Frank. They grew them good in White Bluffs.
“Everyone understand the rules here?” Bets’ voice rose as she turned in a full circle on the table. A few people grumbled, some strangers sprinted across the road toward the bank as though the fires of hell lit their nosy asses, cameras in tow. “We decide what we’ll answer based on how generous you are with Marcy’s can.” She flung the last part toward the throng of media vultures swarming the bank.
Butterflies fluttered in me when a black Hummer with tinted windows pulled up at the curb. Sleek and smooth, like the man casually exiting and flashing a come-hither grin at the flock of paparazzi now sprinting their way back toward Pete’s. Horns blared, traffic halted as the group reconciled their need for dirt and the potential picture of the year strolling into the coffee shop with a commanding purpose in his molten gaze.
The intensity assailed me when he approached. My insides burned clear to my toes, my skin tingled beneath his sweeping gaze until it locked on mine with laser focus. My pulse thundering in my ears muted the hushed whispers around us as the crowd pressed forward, entombing Caleb against the counter.
He leaned in and brushed his fingers along my cheek, parking a stray curl behind my ears. I brushed my tongue across his thumb when it swept across my lips. Arousal surged within me as he feathered his lips across mine. Light exploded behind my eyelids. The kiss deepened until a groan of need rose up my throat. Flickers of blinding light assaulted my half-hooded eyes.
Cameras.
I growled my frustration for the lack of privacy. Caleb chuckled. “Be glad they’re here. Otherwise I’d put you over my knee for leaving me the way you did.”
Something in my expression must’ve given away the wicked web his threat cast in my thoughts. My inner hussy hadn’t gotten enough of Caleb last night and, quite frankly, loved the possibilities his promise offered. He could spank me anytime.
“Damn.” He cupped my face. “What time do you get off?”
“Okay, lover boy, step aside. We’ve got a can to fill and she’s not getting off for several hours.” Bets tugged him backward toward her. “Which means neither are you, rock star, if you catch my drift.”
Heat rose in my cheeks. For once my BFF was wrong. A couple minutes with Caleb was all I needed to get off.
Ugh.
I tried slamming the vault on my hussy to tuck her away, but she had escape strategies in place and somehow always escaped when he was around me.
Caleb took a couple steps forward, returning to front and center of my focus. He smirked as he reached into his jeans and pulled out a roll of cash.
Bets gasped and yanked it from his fingers. She unfolded the bills and began thumbing through them, her lips moving and her eyes widening the longer she went.
“Bets. Hand it back.”
“Shh. We’re negotiating here.” She pulled the wad of cash away from him, holding it over her shoulder. “What do you want?”
His eyebrows rose. “What can I get?”
Her gaze darted to the fistful of money and swept over to me. Lips pursed and eyes narrowed, she swept her eyes back to him. “One minute, two questions.”
Caleb chuckled and shook his head. “Ten minutes. Whatever I want.”
I gasped. Seriously? I was being bartered. “Hey, guys, I…” Bets held up her hand to silence me. Mortified, I hid my face in my hands and willed the floor to open and take me on the world’s longest elevator ride to China.
“Five minutes and ewwww I work here.” Chuckles burst around us.
“Done.”
My pulse banged in my ears, a lump formed in my throat. They’d gone completely insane. I shook my head in disbelief. Bets smirked as she stashed the wad of ill-gotten loot in the can. “Nice doing business with you, Mr. Douglas. Next time it’s gonna cost you.”
“I’ll make sure to bring my banker next time.”
Bets relocated to stand beside me and reached beneath the register. She set a white timer on the counter. “She’s all yours, Twisted Nickel.”
“Twisted Nickel?” Caleb asked.
She shrugged. “It made sense in my head.”
He chuckled and made his way to me as though nothing weird had gone down, like he hadn’t bartered for my time in a room filled with paparazzi determined to spread my business across the world because I’d somehow become the yummiest thing going since Nutella.
“Okay people. You’ve got five minutes to show me the money. For all you cheap asses, line ‘em up over to the right and I’ll handle y’all now. There ain’t much I can’t answer about the two of them and their history.”
“Oh really?” Caleb whispered against my cheek as he ran his hand along my side. “Your girl seems pretty confident she knows everything. Does she?”
I waited until he’d dragged me through the double doors, down the hall and pressed me against the wall of the barely-there break room to settle my hand on his chest. Anticipation threaded through me. “She’s my BFF.”
“I guess I’d better get to work on giving you some more to share.” He lifted me up and suddenly we were moving. Cold metal pressed against my thighs as he placed me on the lone table. Pleasure danced across my flesh wherever his fingers stroked, pinched and teased their way along my body.
Our tongues, tangled, dueling for control I knew would never exist between us. Even though he hadn’t said so, he was as twisted up in whatever existed between him and me as I was. Cool metal pressed against my ass when he lifted my skirt.
I grabbed at his belt, and fumbled with the button on his jeans. I growled my frustration. “No more buttons.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I shivered when he breathed along my neck and drew my panties down. “No more underwear.”
“Yes, sir.” Deft fingers slid across my pussy.
“So wet for me.” I worked
at his buttons again, but he stilled my progress. “Don’t. Next time.”
I gasped when he plunged two digits into me. Thrusting myself against his hand shamelessly, I grabbed for him and claimed his mouth. Each powerful thrust fueled my need, commanded my body. Desire spiraled through me, threatening to consume me whole. I clutched Caleb. Lost within the whirlwind of need he’d swept me into, I ceded full control to him.
“Caleb.”
My muscles tensed beneath the onslaught of pleasure rippling through me. Memories of last night tumbled through my mind as I fucked his fingers, wishing he’d given me more, craving more than five hastily-turned minutes ticking away on an egg timer run by a well-meaning BFF with a goddess complex reigning over a village of paparazzi with me as the sacrificial focal point.
Even though I knew vultures loomed a mere couple hundred steps from where we were, I clung to the brief euphoria Caleb dragged out of me with each sensuous glide of his fingers into me. Unable to hold out any longer, I soared into the haze whitening out the intruding reality awaiting me.
I basked in the delirium as he swallowed my cries of pleasure with a hungered need flowing smoother than a shot of top-grade tequila, slow and hot. Battling to return to a steady diet of breath in, breath out, I severed the kiss and allowed myself to tumble into his heated gaze.
The intensity in the gray depths held me over the edge. I clung to him as he kissed me softly, licking along my lips. His raspy voice slid through me. “I can’t wait to get you alone, taste you again. I woke needing to feel your release on my tongue, and you weren’t there.”
I gasped when he nipped my ear.
“Why did you run, Shas?”
“I-I didn’t.” The denial seemed weak, even to me.
“You tip toed out on bare feet, clear to the lobby.”
How did he know?
“Babe. You tip toed past concierge and the doorman. Manual was quite helpful describing you all the way down to your sexy pink toenails.” He tugged my hair. “You gonna answer me?”
“Thinking I’ll answer once you answer me.” I ran my hand down his chest and bunched the material covering his chest in my fist. “Why are they bloody?”
His gaze locked with mine as he kissed me gently again. Damn. The man ignited my blood and imploded my brain. I whimpered my need as he drew away.
“Tonight. After our date.”
Erm. What? “We have a date?”
Remnants of my arousal coated the fingers of his other hand when he drew away. Heat rose in my face as he drew them to his mouth and sucked. His moan shivered me to the core. My body pulsated with a need to possess him.
“Let me know what you want for dinner, because I know what I’m having for dessert.” With the parting douse of fiery anticipation, Caleb tugged his shirt out and pulled it over the prominent bulge in his pants. “Til later, Shas. Try and behave. You’re mine the moment your sexy toes hit the sidewalk.”
It was the second time he’d mentioned my toes. I curled them, contemplating if he had a foot fetish. I didn’t get feet. Truth told, I hated them enough to wish mankind didn’t need them. The fact he might be my polar opposite and have some innate fascination with them left me rendered mute for a moment. Could I handle his potential desire to worship my little piggies?
He blinded me with a knowing grin and I had my answer.
I could handle anything Caleb Douglas wanted me to.
“Later.” He licked his fingers one last time, a parting reminder of the pleasure he’d given me—a tantalizing promise of what might be in store for me later. I’d never been a dessert.
I collapsed on the table the moment he left. What the hell happened? Confusion rattled alongside long-denied passion. Despite knowing I had no business getting twisted around Caleb Douglas again, I had zero desire to halt whatever the hell this steam truck running over me was. I hadn’t realized how numb I’d become until last night.
Now I was on fire, burning with a need to inhale every sweet, wanton moment I could with him. Shit as intense as what I felt for him couldn’t last long. I was a rocket burning in the Earth’s atmosphere. Sooner or later, I’d go down in a blaze. I chuckled at all the pathetically coined phrases streaming through me.
Whatever.
Though I’d rather remain tucked away in my pocket of euphoria, I had a café full of paparazzi who’d witness my spiral into the haze of Caleb Douglas. I had a walk of shame to do in his wake, and a shed load of questions waiting. Oh yeah, and I was pretty sure Pete would have something to say about what went down because what I’d done in the break room coupled with the fact Caleb had even been here in the first place was about as far from letting the dust settle as I could get. The so-called dust storm was a full blown haboob, and I couldn’t wait to find out where it was taking me.
6
My pink-tipped toes hit the sidewalk twenty minutes after I got off work. Thanks to Bets I managed to commandeer an SBD—aka sexy black dress—with peep toe stilettos I was certain I lacked the coordination to pull off. I glanced left, then right down the normally desolate stretch of Main Street to find half the town meandering.
The fact they leered in my direction awoke my paranoid side. I didn’t realize I still had said emotional beast within me, but I did. My skin crawled and I shivered as a heavy, thick blanket of dread and doubt smothered me.
The self-loathing stew I’d swallowed regularly years ago boiled to the surface. I’d held reality at bay long enough. I roved the staring crowd with my unsteady gaze once more and noted the inaudible conversations. I felt every word.
I didn’t deserve him. I never had.
They all knew. He left before. They were waiting, watching. Wanting it to happen again, because we all knew it would.
Panic attacks had been a nemesis of mine back in the seventh grade, when the little brothers of my bigger brothers’ so-called friends took it upon themselves to welcome me to junior high with routine pranks and general asshattery. Fortunately, the panic attacks had gone away when Caleb and a few of his friends fertilized the practice field with their blood one day after school.
“Hey.”
I inhaled his musky cologne as he squeezed my arm and leaned into my personal space. I tumbled into the confidence lingering in his grey eyes and took a panicky breath or two before my brain rebooted and activated the what-the-hell-are-you-freaking-for program it stored for such occasions.
The same look of possessive rage from back in junior high crawled through his gaze as he studied me a moment before looking up and down the road. His jaw twitched as he stood his full height and wrapped an arm around me. When I shivered he paused and slid his leather jacket off, wrapping me up in it before herding me to the waiting Hummer.
The interior was warm and welcoming—a heady shot of all male in sleek, dark lines and rugged interior countered by soft seating. I sank into the vehicle, the privacy it offered with the limousine-blackened windows. My pulse quickened when he shut his door and settled into the driver’s seat beside me.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” I closed my eyes, partially in shame for allowing the side of me I’d thought exorcised out to play. The other part hadn’t accepted the firm grasp Caleb still had on me. Deep, deep down nothing had changed. I’d always been his. I’d maintained the belief he’d be mine again. And here he was—batting back the demons, in this case paparazzi and nosy town folk, the way he always had.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, but I’ve got my people working on containment. Things should die down in a couple of days.”
He had people. Huh. The fact shouldn’t surprise me, but it proved the foolishness in my belief he was the same as he’d once been. A man with people couldn’t be the small-town football hero who’d fled White Bluffs to chase his rock star dream. Could he?
My heart and soul burned in a resolute yes while my weary mind grumbled it didn’t much care anymore. Whatever. I’d let my inner hussy continue to steer the treacherous waters of in
decision because she had a way of letting shit bounce off her—she was Teflon coated with armor protectant.
God, I’m not even making sense.
I sighed my weariness and looked out the window. We’d been moving for a few minutes in a comfortable silence. There wasn’t much on this side of White Bluffs—past the broken bridge, over the hill due west.
When we made the turn I forced the question out even though I already knew the answer when we halted at a massive stoned entrance. A couple shadowy figures worked to open the huge double gates. “Where are we going?”
“Where the media can’t follow.”
Flashbulbs flickered small glimmers of light fracturing the otherwise settling darkness. The last time I’d been out here hadn’t gone well. Adrenaline activated and my fight or flight response screamed Run, for the love of all things Caleb, Run!
The tormented shards of doubt shoved into me years ago by the woman within the house slid through my veins like a presence I’d never fully expelled. They’d never accept me. Hell, they’d been so determined to get him away from me they’d probably packed his bags.
He reached over and squeezed my hand when he settled the vehicle into park. “Relax, this was their idea.”
Sure. Yeah. Right.
The proverbial moth wandering into a volcano, I unlatched my seatbelt and chose to exit my safety vessel of my own accord. If I was going to be torn from limb to limb, I wanted to face my opponent head on. Or, in this case head to chest because, Jesus, Caleb’s crew was tall.
I swallowed a lump of doubt in my throat and stared at the smiling older couple heading our direction with arms outstretched. The fear swallowing me whole, drowned in the sea of ecstatic joy as Caleb hugged his mother and kissed her cheek softly. His dad slapped him on the back and drew him into a rough embrace which moved them both a couple of feet back. Although no words were spoken between the two men, moisture pooled in my eyes when I noted Mr. Douglas’s unshed tears.
I’d never been on their approved list, but Caleb’s parents were the cream of the crop. Everyone said so. I never held their thoughts of me against them, though, because I would’ve been judgmental had I been them. The daughter of an absentee father and drunken mother didn’t scream perfect for their youngest son, especially since my three older brothers had spent every waking second of their existence pushing the grey space between legal and jail-time to a new shade of dark.