She tilted her wineglass at him, raising her brow. “I see I’m not alone in the Montgomery ways.”
“They just want us to be happy.”
“But I hope they realize that it’s not going to be with each other. Right?” She said the words very, very carefully, and he nodded just as cautiously. They did their best not to talk about this, but it had come up at least twice during the past week. Ever since he’d sat and watched her work in the studio, they had been very, very careful with each other. But then again, they were always super careful.
“They’ll figure it out.”
“I hope they do. And soon. Because if they don’t, they’re going to start forcing me to go on blind dates. That is something I do not want to do. I met my ex on a blind date.”
He tilted his head, doing his best not to let his fingers clench on his chopsticks. He did not like thinking about her ex. He knew Kaylee didn’t either, but the subject made Landon rage. He had never met the man, didn’t even know what he was really like. But he didn’t like the way her eyes changed when she talked about him. Didn’t like how she sounded angry and hurt all at the same time.
So, no, he did not like her ex.
“I didn’t know you met him on a blind date.”
“My mother set it up.”
That was all she needed to say. Landon knew all about her mother, knew about her upbringing. They had gotten drunk one night with some really expensive wine that one should not get drunk on, and they had raged about their pasts and families.
He didn’t talk to his parents much, nor with his brother and his two sisters. His parents just didn’t understand him.
They were good, hard-working, blue-collar people that worked two jobs just to put food on the table. They also spent way more money than they made because they thought it was their right. He didn’t understand them, but that was just how they lived. They didn’t get that debt was crippling, and they always thought that Landon could help them out. He had at first, but not anymore.
His brother and sisters were the same way. They didn’t go to college, not because they didn’t have the grades, but because they figured they didn’t need it. They worked, but sometimes not as hard as their parents, and most of the time, not as hard as they should.
Their spouses and their kids just kept spending money, just as Landon’s parents did.
Maybe that’s why he worked with money. Because he liked to make sure that he knew what he was spending, knew what he had. And how to make more. Because he didn’t want to go hungry, didn’t want the debt collectors coming again. Didn’t want any of that.
He blinked as Kaylee reached out and put her hand on his.
“I didn’t mean to make you think about your family. We can talk about something else. Like, maybe a sports game? I’m sorry the Broncos aren’t going to be in the Super Bowl.”
He snorted, shaking his head. “The Super Bowl was last month. And the Broncos haven’t been in the Super Bowl in a long time. And it scares me sometimes that you can read my mind like you do when it comes to my family.”
She just shrugged, moving her hand back. Landon didn’t know why he missed the touch. Kaylee wasn’t his. And he had to remember that. They were just friends.
“I can read you because I feel the same way about mine. Now, is there another sporting event we can talk about?”
“If you call it a sporting event with that upper-crust, British accent that you totally don’t have, we’re not going to talk about it at all. We can talk about art. Maybe the newest Monet?”
“There isn’t a newest Monet. There’s just a Monet.”
“Oh, well, it seems I’m not as cultured as I want to be.”
“Oh, shush. You know your arts. You’re just as fancy as I am, you just try to hide it. Except with that car of yours. There’s no hiding that.”
“So, you like my car, do you?”
“You know I do. You just won’t let me drive it.”
“Nobody drives my baby girl.”
“Men and their cars.”
“And that’s a fact.”
Then they were both laughing, talking about nothing and everything at the same time. They split the check because neither of them liked being indebted to the other. Then he drove her home, walking in to make sure that she was safe before he left. He didn’t know why he did that, but he had started it as soon as their friend, Adrienne, was attacked at the tattoo shop. Yes, maybe he was overprotective, but he didn’t like the fact that Kaylee was alone. Didn’t like that as soon as he left, she’d lock the door behind him, and no one would be there to help her. She might be self-sufficient, but he was still a caveman in some respects.
“Thanks for taking me to dinner,” she said as she removed her coat. Landon swallowed hard as he looked at her shoulders, at her curves. Kaylee was a damn gorgeous woman. Sometimes, it was hard to remember that she wasn’t his.
“You paid for half, so I guess thank you for dinner, as well.”
“Well, what are you doing tomorrow night? I mean, I have to work in the studio all day, but it’s a Saturday for you. Do you have any plans with the men?”
He shook his head. “Everyone has dates with their own women. So, I guess it’s just you and me tomorrow night. We can try that new Fusion place. Although, I think there was something about lentils and black seaweed and sriracha with a dash of cayenne? I really don’t know about that menu.”
She snorted and then sidled up to him, putting her arm around his waist. “Yeah, maybe not that place. But I can think of something. Thank you for coming out with me tonight. I didn’t really want to eat at home alone. You know?”
“I know. Though you know, you could have had a date with anybody you wanted. You’re fucking gorgeous, Kaylee.”
She turned in his hold, and he wrapped his arms around her. She looked back at him. “You sometimes surprise me with your flattery.”
He frowned. “I shouldn’t. You know that I think you’re beautiful, brilliant. Fucking creative. You know all of that.”
“So you tell me. But you sometimes just tell me out of the blue, and it just surprises me.”
“Well, then I guess I like that kind of surprise.” Then he did something stupid. So stupid. He lowered his head and brushed his lips along hers. She gasped for a second, and he didn’t think again. He just leaned in more, sliding his tongue along hers. A simple caress, an ache between them. He kissed her, softly, sweetly…and then a little harder.
Then he remembered who was in his arms. Recalled that Kaylee wasn’t his. That they had already gone down this path and knew that they weren’t meant for each other.
He stopped the kiss and rested his forehead on hers.
“Goodnight, Kaylee.”
“Goodnight.” A pause. A deep breath. “Drive safe, Landon.”
He kissed her forehead in a way a friend would, how a brother would with his sister, not in a way a man would when he knew he was falling in love with the woman in his arms.
His breath caught as he walked away, that thought echoing in his head.
He couldn’t love this woman. He could not be falling in love with Kaylee.
Because that’s not what they were to each other.
The word scared him more than it should.
So, it wasn’t true. It was just a stray thought. A lie.
He got into his car, his baby, and knew that there was a lie involved, but it wasn’t that.
Chapter 3
The Stones blared out of the speakers in her studio. Kaylee threw up her hands, ignoring the paint that sprayed across the covered floor and flew into her hair as she shook her hips to the sound of Mick Jagger’s voice. She swayed, shimmied, and went to her tiptoes as she sang along, letting the music and the feeling spread through her before she stood in front of the canvas and began to paint.
Yes, sometimes, she was a really messy painter. Other times, she was precise, fluid, and didn’t spill a single drop.
Tonight, was not one of those times.
> Tonight, she was frustrated. Not just with the day, and not just with her thoughts, but sexually.
And she was tired of being sexually frustrated.
She knew exactly whose fault it was. Oh, it wasn’t hers. It couldn’t possibly be hers and her horrible, no-good, very bad thoughts about the man that she shouldn’t be thinking of.
No, it all rested on his shoulders. Those very broad, very strong shoulders.
No, she was not going to think about that.
Or the fact that she was slowly drawing a very angry and yet sensually abstract art piece that just made her wonder what the hell she was doing.
She didn’t even think as she put brush to paint and paint to canvas. She painted, she felt, and she knew that this would be an angry yet sexual piece.
And it was all Landon’s fault. Landon and his very broad shoulders and his very chiseled chest, and those hips that were slender but enough to dig her fingers into. Oh, Landon and his nice ass and his thick thighs and that very nice cock.
No, she was not going to think about Landon’s dick.
That was the reason she was in this situation.
She paused, laughing.
She had reached a whole new level of what the fuck was wrong with her.
Because there was something definitely wrong with her if she was singing an ode and painting a piece all about Landon’s…well, piece.
She was losing her mind, and it was all his fault.
And, yes, maybe it was her fault, too. But she couldn’t help it.
She was sexually frustrated, and really just needed an orgasm.
Or maybe she just needed to paint, get angry, and dance around to the Rolling Stones and whatever else came up on her playlist. She had an eclectic mix of The Stones, Guns ‘n’ Roses, and even some Backstreet Boys.
Because, sometimes, she didn’t want it that way, and the boy bands of her youth had kept her going, even with some of the grunge and heavy metal and rock and oldies she mixed in. She loved all music, and she didn’t care that boy bands were a thing for teenage girls. Because those teenage girls grew up, and they bought more tickets to the shows as the boy bands came up.
Yes, she was going to see the Backstreet Boys at their upcoming concert. She was a little too young to like the New Kids on the Block as much as some of her friends were, but she was taking the Montgomerys and Abby to see the Backstreet Boys. Each of them liked a different member, and that was very helpful. Because no one was going to touch her Brian. Her perfect, artistic soul.
She stared at her canvas, then set down the paintbrush and started laughing hysterically.
Somehow, her sexual rage had turned into a frothy piece of Brian from the Backstreet Boys.
Her art back when she was thinking about him was much different. And it was still different because he had grown up, and so had she.
But Brian was no Landon.
And if Landon knew her at all, he would know that was a compliment. Not that she would actually say that to him, because there were some things you did not talk about with your friends, specifically ones you had seen naked. Especially a friend that you still wanted to see naked. No, you did not talk about your boy band crushes.
Again.
At least not without a lot of wine.
Oh, God, she’d forgotten that she already told Landon about her crush on Brian.
He had said that he liked Lance more, and then she had to explain the difference between the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync—it had been a whole thing.
“Okay, that’s enough of that.” She shook her head, wiped off her hands on the towel she set next to the easel, and went to change from one station to another. Maybe a playlist wasn’t what she needed. Maybe she just needed random music to fill her mind.
Or, maybe she needed something to keep her from thinking about Landon.
Because she missed him. It had only been a few days since she saw him last, and yet she missed him.
She wasn’t supposed to miss someone who wasn’t her significant other. Yes, they were friends, but it couldn’t be anything more than that. Like she’d told herself numerous times before, they had already tried that. It hadn’t worked. So, why did she feel like she was losing a piece of herself when she didn’t see him. He hadn’t stopped by the studio, hadn’t watched her work while he worked himself. It wasn’t like he did that every day. Far from it. They each had their own lives, and it wasn’t like they were constantly in each other’s pockets. But he hadn’t contacted her since sushi. Since that kiss.
But she hadn’t contacted him either. She hadn’t texted him, hadn’t called him. Hadn’t just stopped by, wondering what they were missing by not actually touching each other.
Maybe if she wasn’t so in her head, if she weren’t so worried about getting hurt again, she’d actually pay attention and make this into something she wanted.
But something had come over his eyes after he kissed her, something that scared her. And then he’d walked out.
And they hadn’t talked since.
The rage came back again, the angry sexual tension that she knew would return to her art. So, she pulled out her paint and went back to it. She could get rid of some of the fluff that had come from Brian and the Backstreet Boys on the mind. She could focus on what she was truly feeling.
That anger, that rage, that…what-the-hell-am-I-doing when it came to her friend.
Everyone else was falling around her, they were all finding their happily ever afters. Some had taken longer to get there, and some had even fallen and had to find a way back up again. People had been hurt, some had split up, but everybody had found their happiness in the end.
She had thought she’d found her happiness before.
But it hadn’t worked.
Nothing worked when it came to her it seemed.
No. Her job was good, her art was good. Everything was good.
Just because she couldn’t find that thing, didn’t mean she wasn’t good.
So she let out a breath and sank into her art.
The colors flowed, and she did, too. She threw it all out onto the canvas, into her project. She let everything that she’d been thinking just fly from her fingertips and through the paintbrush. If she could throw herself into her art, just smack herself into the paper and canvas, mix with the paints, maybe it would help her. She felt like she was ripping her soul apart piece by piece, digging into the art in front of her, trying to mold it into something that made sense.
But nothing about her made sense in her mind. And maybe that was right. Maybe that’s what made her art, hers.
As she tried to catch her breath, her chest moving up and down in pants, and as paint dripped from her fingers and from the brush, she knew she had done something pivotal.
This was for her. This was her.
Even with the blemishes of her earlier errant thoughts, even with the things that didn’t make any sense, the art in front of her was Kaylee.
And for some reason, she didn’t like it.
She didn’t like the bold colors, and the angles and swirls made no sense. She didn’t like the way the contrasting shades butted up against one another, sometimes in such a vivid expression that it startled her.
This was Kaylee.
This was fear.
This was her not being able to take that next step, not being able to communicate because she was so afraid of what was within.
This was her remembering that she had lost before—lost part of herself when she tried to fall in love with the right man. The one her mother had chosen for her. The guy she’d thought would bring her closer to her family and to who and what she should be.
Because she married that man, and no one could look down on her for not doing something she was supposed to do. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to be in that society, but she could at least be with that man, could make that decision.
And then she walked away from it, making mistake after mistake and turning into the woman she was now.
Maybe it di
dn’t make any sense, or…maybe it did.
Maybe she was putting too much meaning behind a piece of art that was just a painting.
She was an artist, and she knew that, sometimes, a painting was just a painting. It wasn’t a representation of what she was or what she could be. Before she could catch her breath, before she could figure out exactly what she was going to do with the project in front of her, her phone buzzed on the table where Landon worked sometimes. She quickly wiped her hands and walked over to the phone, trailing her fingers along the desk where he usually sat. She loved when he worked there, loved when he was just there. His presence soothed her, even as it revved her up.
But they were friends. Maybe that’s what friends did.
She didn’t bother looking at the readout, knowing she had let the phone ring for far too long already.
But when she answered it, she knew she had made a mistake.
“Kaylee Chambers. You know better than to make me wait. What were you doing? What took you so long to answer your phone.”
Kaylee closed her eyes, trying not to grind her teeth at the sound of her mother’s voice. She already had dental bills to deal with from grinding her molars because of her mother. She did not want to wear a night guard like they’d suggested.
But Angelica Chambers did not know when to back down. In fact, there was no backing down when it came to her dearest daughter.
Ever.
“Hello, Mother. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to the phone. But I’m here now. What can I do for you?” She made her voice sound as pleasant as possible. She had long since given up trying to be herself or even sarcastic with her mother. It never led to anything good and always made the conversation last longer. The more she made herself accommodating, at least for certain periods of time, the quicker the conversation would be over, and the less time she had to deal with her mother or her mother’s problems.
“Don’t get that tone with me.”
“What can I do for you, Mother?” Kaylee asked again, keeping her voice pleasant. There was no tone, but her mother always heard it no matter what Kaylee said. Because that was her mother. Dearest Angelica, the one who didn’t make mistakes but who had a daughter who was a mistake.
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