Cocky Delight: A Hero Club Novel

by Maria Macdonald

  “Sure, no problem,” Kato tells him as I grumble under my breath. “I actually have two places I need to look at this afternoon if you want to come?”

  I open my mouth to say no, that I’m far too busy, but Chance gets there first. “Of course she can,” he says to Kato then looks back at me. “Whatever you’re doing leave it, this is more important.”

  I grind my teeth but don’t reply. Kato’s grin spreads to a smile and I slam my desk drawer shut, before heading out to the kitchen. Coffee, I need coffee.

  “You can talk to me, you know. I don’t bite, unless you ask nicely,” Kato states as we get into his truck and head towards the first place he’s due to quote on.

  My eyes narrow and I glance over to him, making sure it is only a glance or I’d get sucked in by his ridiculous good looks. Pity his personality doesn’t match, or maybe that’s the problem, he knows how hot he is so he can afford to be cocky with it.

  “I won’t be asking, don’t worry,” I state.

  He chuckles at my reply. I glance surreptitiously at him and wonder how often he gets exactly what he wants from a woman. I would imagine it’s every single time, and now, of course, I’ve presented myself as a challenge. I slap my forehead with my palm.

  “Are you okay?” he questions, his lips twitching.

  “Yep, fine… you?” my perky reply is quite obviously forced and his lips twitch again, but thankfully he keeps his thoughts to himself.

  I keep quiet for the rest of the journey, and only manage to forget about my proximity to Kato when we arrive at the first place. I quickly jump out of his truck and stand taking in the view.

  “Wow, this place is amazing.” I whisper the words like I’m trying to keep them for myself. Kato stops walking and turns toward me.

  “You think so?” he asks and it’s a genuine question.

  I nod, gazing around at the space in front of me. The house itself is big, but not huge. It has a wraparound porch and a balcony up top which matches. The front is painted a soft blue and to get here Kato had to steer his truck up a graveled driveway. However, even though the house is clearly beautiful, it’s the garden which takes my breath away. Lush green grass stretches out in front of me. I can see down the side of the house and into the back garden where I spy a water fountain, sprinkling in the sunlight and producing rainbows.

  “Wow,” I murmur again.

  Kato continues to watch me, a small smile playing on his lips as I spin this way and that to take it all in.

  “Look,” I say, tugging his shirt sleeve, “there’s apple trees at the back and roses that are every color of the rainbow.” I sigh as pure pleasure envelopes me.

  “You like gardens then?” he questions.

  I smile up at him and it’s probably the first genuine smile I’ve offered him. His face softens and I ignore how it makes me feel, instead I opt to answer him.

  “I don’t know how much Chance has told you about me,” I reply, waiting for him to respond.

  “Not much, but it doesn’t matter,” he says shaking his head. “I’d rather hear about you… from you,” he tells me and it’s like a sucker punch to the gut. Lance never wanted to listen to me, or talk about my life. As far as he was concerned, he had known me for years, so that equated to knowing me. It’s a pity he had no clue who I really was, it’s even more of a pity I’m only just learning who I really am.

  “Okay,” I forge on, “I lived with my grandma since I was a child, I’m not going into the whys of that right now,” I say and he nods. His eyes don’t wander, or glaze over, he really does want to hear what I have to say. I frown, not sure quite how I feel about it, then shake my head and continue. “Grandma became unwell a few years ago, dementia among other ailments, so I looked after her. I quit my culinary degree to look after her, she died last year.”

  “I’m sorry, Nola.” He places his hand on my arm and my nipples stand to attention.

  Oh fuck no. Think of Barney the purple dinosaur. ‘I love you, you love me…’ I sing in my head. I look down to double check the girls are back under control. Yes. Thank fuck. When my head snaps back up, Kato is watching me, curiosity swims in his eyes as he bites down on his bottom lip, clearly suppressing a smile. But let’s just circle back to the fact that he bites his bottom lip and when he does, all hell breaks loose in my bra. Damn him.

  I cough. “Thanks. Anyway… Grandma had a pretty big garden… I guess it’s my garden now,” I waver for a moment then look back at Kato. “She never did anything with it, she wasn’t a gardening grandma,” I explain.

  “You want to do something with the garden?” he questions as his caramel colored eyes move across my face, drinking in everything, and I feel scorched in a magnificent way.

  I nod, “Yeah. I mean, I don’t have the skills, the most I can do is kill plants.” I sigh, “But seriously, wouldn’t it be wonderful to sit in your own garden and smell the flowers, let the sun keep you warm and have a water feature to give you rainbows?”

  He smiles down at me and I suddenly realize who I’m talking to. I shake my head at myself, “Come on, let’s get this done, you have somewhere else to visit still, right?”

  Kato nods, sucking in his cheeks and once again holding back his smile. “Yep, come on then.”

  “Mrs. Williams, you have a beautiful house,” I tell the very classy looking older woman.

  She smiles serenely, “I have Bateman Landscaping to thank for my garden. Then, after my husband died, I couldn’t maintain it myself. It was something Henry and I liked to do together,” she tells me, averting her gaze from mine and looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows to the stunning back garden, which I’ve found also has plum trees. “Now they maintain it for me, too,” she adds, smiling at Kato and patting the back of his hand. She sips daintily from her china cup and I copy her with my own tea, wrinkling my nose at the taste when I realize it’s a flavored version. Immediately, I spit it back into the cup.

  Kato notices and sucks his lips in between his teeth, quickly staring at the floor as his shoulders move silently.

  The room is quiet for a few moments as both me and Mrs. Williams watch the garden, and I know if I sat here for the next four hours, I wouldn’t see everything there was to see in that beautiful space.

  “Mrs. Williams, I’ll get the new quote to you sometime this week, we have to be going as we have another visit scheduled,” Kato speaks softly to the older lady, having now composed himself.

  “Of course, thank you both for your time and I look forward to hearing back from you.” She smiles and stands, walking toward the door to see us off.

  “She was lovely,” I say to Kato as we drive away. I’m still waving at her.

  “She is. Her husband died and they never had any kids. Now she’s got all the money she could want, but no one to share her life with, it’s quite sad really.”

  I sit silently thinking about what he said. That could be me in thirty years. Not yet old enough to be considered elderly, but too old to start my life over again. I shiver, and not with pleasure, as I think about a lonely existence stretching ahead of me. Maybe I was too hasty ending my relationship with Lance.

  “You’re thinking too hard,” Kato tells me as we go around a corner and enter a private housing estate. I turn to look at him. He pulls over to the side of the road, outside a very large house this time, much larger than the previous one. “I can practically taste the worry rolling off you,” he continues, frowning at me.

  I unclip my seatbelt and pull my legs up, so my heels are resting on the edge of the seat. I wrap my arms around my knees and rest my head on them, facing his way. “Do you think when we get to a certain age, we should be happy with what we have, even if it doesn’t feel particularly special?”

  “Are we talking about relationships or something else?” he asks carefully.

  I release a long, heavy breath and close my eyes. What the hell, I might as well be honest. “I recently split with my long-term boyfriend. We were….” I blow out another br
eath, keeping my eyes closed as I don’t want to see his pity. “We were together for long enough that maybe I should have just stuck with him, you know? I mean, I’m not getting any younger, I’m twenty-six already.”

  The silence in the cab is too much, so I open my eyes and look at him. There’s a mixture of emotions on his face, but I still have no idea what he’s going to say as he opens his mouth. “You love him?”

  “I…” I stare at Kato, really letting his eyes and all they portray sink into me and without a word I shake my head.

  “Don’t fall in love with potential,” he says and I feel like a dam bursts inside of me. Validation from someone else, someone whose opinion shouldn’t matter to me, but for some reason it does. Without intending to, I lean forward and so does he. Before my brain can switch on and I can think of all the reasons this is so wrong, our lips meet and suddenly I’m living a different life, experiencing kissing in a way I never knew possible as we devour each other and he kisses me like he might die without me.

  I pull away after only a moment, but we’re both panting heavily. Kato’s eyes are hooded and I can see the desire there. I wipe my thumb across his lips, removing my lipstick. He bites the end of my thumb and then lashes his tongue across it. My eyes widen as I consider what we just did. Kato quickly grabs my hand in his.

  “Don’t… don’t even start thinking what you’re thinking. This is happening,” he tells me. I open and close my mouth, but he leans forward and presses his lips against mine again. The moment he does, I’m all in. I can’t help it, my body and mind can be at odds, but in his presence it’s my body that wins. This time he pulls back, and when he does, he places a finger against my lips and stares into my eyes. “We’re doing this, we can explore a relationship-”

  I shake my head, effectively cutting him off and he removes his finger.

  “I can be friends, try and be friends,” I offer. “It’s all I can do.”

  “Friends who kiss?” he says with a smirk.

  Heat rushes up my body. “Friends who kiss,” I agree huskily.

  It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but in my gut it feels right. Maybe this is what I need, some time to enjoy life and what it has to offer, without thinking or worrying too much. Maybe I just need to reward myself, and Kato seems like a mighty fine reward.

  A twenty-six years in the making kind of reward.

  Chapter Seven

  KATO

  This woman is everything I expected, yet as I get to know her more, another layer peels away and she shows me something I didn’t realize I fucking needed in my life.

  After Zara and her shit, I was done with women, but the moment I saw Nola in the rain, flipping me off, I was gone for her. I didn’t expect to see her again, so when I went to Chance and Aubrey’s place and she was there, and was introduced as the new office manager no less, it was like fate shoving his foot up my ass.

  I smile to myself.

  She’s been so anti me, and I’ve done nothing to her - except smile when her heel was caught. Was that a dick move? Probably. In my defense I wanted to help, I even made a move to get up, but when our gazes met I was so blown away by her beauty that I couldn’t move, she pinned me to my seat. When she showed me the bird I wanted to kneel at her feet. This woman… damn this woman.

  “So, have you worked at this place before?” she questions as we walk up to the front of the huge house, ready for our second visit of the day.

  “Nope, first time here,” I reply.

  She opens her mouth to say something else, but the front door swings open and a woman stands at the top of the steps smiling. I grit my teeth as I feel her eyes sliding all over me. Great. This is not what I need, especially when I just had my mouth on Nola. I’ve encountered this type of woman before, I’m fairly sure she doesn’t need my services, well, not landscaping at least.

  “Hey, you must be from Bateman Landscaping,” the woman calls, walking down the steps to greet us. “I’m Lucie,” she states, stepping forward in between me and Nola, and slipping her hand around my elbow as though I’m escorting her into her own damn house.

  “I’m Kato Black, and this is Nola Lewis,” I say, stepping away and holding out my hand. She takes it with glee, then with only a single look it’s clear she dismisses Nola. I bite down hard as my jaw works. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, it’s not like women haven’t behaved this way before, but for some reason her dismissing Nola irritates me. Of course, Nola snorts out her derision, but Lucie ignores her and once again slips her hand into the crook of my arm pulling me toward the garden. She runs her hand up and down my upper arm and my eyes move to Nola who’s noticed. The second she sees me looking at her she turns away and I know she thinks I’m a player. It’s clear she feels like she’s falling down a hole with me, that’s why she won’t try more than friendship. But it’s okay, I’ll be her friend, I’ll be her best fucking friend, emphasis on the fucking.

  Lucie arches her back as we stand in her garden, pushing her tits out toward me. In my peripheral vision I see Nola roll her eyes and my lips twitch.

  “So, this is my garden and as you can see it needs to be looked after, probably weekly. My husband works away a lot.” I stop myself from copying Nola and rolling my own eyes. Lucie is wearing workout clothes, showing off her cut stomach and her fake tits. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with them being fake, it’s just she’s almost pushing them in my face and no man wants to be steamrolled into bed.

  I can’t help but compare them to Nola’s breasts – which are almost as large, but clearly real. There’s no comparison between any part of the two women. Nola has wavy blond hair with natural highlights, she wears minimal make up and looks like she’s just come from the beach. Her bright green eyes and the few freckles she has dotted across her nose just make her even sexier, and that full, pouty mouth… Damn, her smile is out of this world. Lucie is primped to perfection, bleach blond hair, full make-up and a body which clearly sees the inside of a gym every day. Again, it’s great for the right man, for her husband, but I like women soft and single.

  I might joke around with Nola, trying to push her buttons because I like her reactions, but I’m quite capable of telling a woman to back off. It’s a little harder when they’re a potential client though.

  “What exactly is it you need doing?” Nola jumps in. I gave her some pointers at Mrs. Williams’ house, so I’m pleased to see she’s putting them into practice.

  Lucie frowns at her. “I need a man to come over and cut the grass and all that stuff,” she replies, waving her hand at the garden.

  “Well, it doesn’t sound like you really need the services of Bateman Landscaping. I mean, you’d be wasting money on something you could get a college kid to come over and do for you once a week,” Nola states and she’s one hundred percent right. Pride swells in my chest.

  “Isn’t it up to me how I spend my money?” Lucie retorts, crossing her arms, narrowing her eyes and pushing her breasts up a little more.

  “Yes, obviously, but Bateman Landscaping doesn’t have to accept the contract.” Nola also crosses her arms and I watch - my tongue practically hanging out - as her tits get pushed up too, giving Lucie a run for her money.

  “What do you think, Kato?” Lucie bites out, her hungry eyes now running over me before she meets my eyes.

  “I think Nola is right. I’m sorry, Bateman Landscaping can’t help you with this, but what I will do is get Nola to email you some alternative companies who specialize in weekly garden maintenance. Have a nice day, Mrs. Simpson,” I say, making a point of using her married name.

  I grab Nola’s hand and Lucie gasps at the connection. I can almost hear her brain turning as she tries to fill in the blanks, but I don’t give her time to work it out before Nola and I are back in my truck and heading away from the house.

  “I’m sorry,” Nola whispers after a few minutes.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I lost you that job,” she replies, bit
ing down on her lip and I want to slam my mouth against hers.

  Instead, I control my thoughts and reply, hoping to ease her worry. “You have nothing to be sorry about, there was never a job there.”

  “What?” Her head snaps toward me.

  “I mean, there was supposed to be a job, but it’s clear that’s not what she wanted.”

  “You caught onto that too, huh?” she says grinning.

  “Not my first rodeo, gorgeous. I knew what she wanted and Bateman Landscaping services was not it.” I wink and her eyes widen for a second before she bursts out laughing. The sound warms me as does her beauty.

  “You know, I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong about you,” she murmurs.

  I grin lazily at her, “Wrong enough to reconsider the friend thing?”

  She snorts out a laugh, “Let me stop you right there, I’ll never be so wrong that I concede to anything. I will always win and you’d do well to remember that.”

  “So only friends then?” I push, still grinning.

  “Yep, as long as you don’t piss me off.”

  “Friends with extra special benefits?” I wiggle my eyebrows and she bursts out a peel of laughter. I love the sound, it makes my chest swell. The idea that I could make her laugh like this makes me feel like I’m slaying her demons.

  “I thought we agreed on friends who kiss,” she answers, pursing her lips at me.

  “You didn’t specify where the kissing has to happen though,” I reply as we pull into the Bateman Landscaping reserved parking bay.

  “You mean like in the cab of your truck, or under the stars?” she teases.

  I lean across and grab her chin, pulling her toward me, “No,” I breathe out the word, my lips are so close to hers. “I mean, your lips, your neck, across the top of your back or down your spine,” her breathing speeds up as her eyes widen, “or maybe the inside of your thighs or better yet your pu-”

  My words are cut off as she kisses me and the heat and passion in that kiss gives me an indication of all the amazing things I have yet to experience with her.