by Taryn Quinn
I blinked and clutched my phone to my chest. Okay, no reason to panic. Sage had to be registered somewhere. At least I could add that bit of info to my checklist so I could include it on the invitations.
For a guest list I had approximately six names on, and I was new in town. I had no clue who all of Sage’s friends were, but I knew they were legion. She’d lived in Crescent Cove her whole life and pretty much bonded with anyone she met for more than five minutes.
I was screwed.
So screwed.
Without the sex.
I texted Sage, determined to get a win today. I didn’t like having such an empty checklist. It was unnatural.
Hey there, where are you registered? Want to get the bambina a few things but don’t want to overlap with your list.
Sage replied when I was digging through the box of books I’d upended on the couch to search for my first edition Keats. I knew I’d packed it. I had to have packed it. My bookshelves at my old place were empty. If it wasn’t there and it wasn’t here...
I could not contemplate it. Simply could not.
Oh, yeah, about that. We aren’t registered anywhere. It drove Oliver bonkers, which was another reason I didn’t register anywhere. Dude needs to learn the meaning of spontaneity. She totally doesn’t need anything, btw. But if you wanna get something cute, anything works. Thank you! *smiley face* *unicorn head* *heart* *smiley sunglasses face* *baby head*
Sighing, I shoved my way onto the couch, pretending not to feel the bruises on my heart as some of my precious books tumbled to the floor. I had bigger problems.
No registry.
No guest list.
No pizza.
I could not work under these conditions.
Oh, and best of all? I had forgotten my floor lamp, and apparently, this apartment didn’t have an overhead light fixture in the living room. Like what the fuck. And the sunset was gorgeous outside right now, but the orange and gold light would fade soon, plunging me into the blackness that matched my bitter soul.
Bah.
But all was not lost. I snapped my fingers. I had a desk lamp somewhere. Just had to find it in my twelve-thousand boxes.
I let out a long sigh and tugged on the knot in my T-shirt that I’d tied beneath my breasts. I’d changed into an old baggy shirt with my shortest pair of shorts to unpack, figuring I wouldn’t be leaving tonight. The pizza dude didn’t count as company. He’d probably seen much worse when dropping off pies. And he didn’t seem inclined to show in any case.
His tip was dwindling by the minute. Just like my momentary cheer.
I readjusted the top knot that barely contained my long hair and rose, rubbing my nose as it twitched. I sneezed and sneezed again, then once more for good measure. Dust. Always my enemy, even if it was fresh dust from a newly renovated place.
What was next? Locusts? The plague? Fire and damnation?
A loud buzzing sound filled the apartment and I jumped, setting off another round of sneezing. When I could breathe without my eyes watering, I frowned. It sounded like a giant oven timer, but that couldn’t be right. I could see the oven over my left shoulder and it definitely was not on. One perk to living in a place I could see the whole of with just one slow pivot was there weren’t any hidden corners. No surprises.
The buzzer was still ringing. Must be my doorbell. That was rather heinous.
What didja expect, Ford? A tinkle of the ivories? Be glad the pizza’s here.
Or else probably the first robber in Crescent Cove’s recorded history was polite enough to ring first.
I went to the door and fumbled around with the call box until it crackled to life. “Hello, pizza man.” I bit my lip. That wasn’t gender correct. I didn’t know it was a male, though he was late, so reason stood. “I mean, pizza person. Would you like to come up or should I come down?”
“I’ll come up.”
Okay, very deep voice. Definitely not female. A little rumbly and irritated too.
I frowned. “How do I know you’re the pizza man?”
“You have a peephole?”
Was this some kind of test? “Um, maybe?”
“See my badge? It says pizza man.” He made a sound of derision. “Release the door. I don’t have all night.”
I didn’t appreciate his attitude. “Excuse me, you don’t have all night? You are approximately,” I consulted my watch, since my phone was in the other room, “forty-five minutes late. I never eat past six-thirty.”
“Oh, so very sorry, lady, but it’s Saturday and the shop gets busy. Now you want this double cheese and pep and sausage or what?”
Something about the way he said lady had my hackles rising. And maybe my nipples a little too, because I must have heretofore unexplored masochistic tendencies. “Your tip is in serious peril right now. Also, that was only double pep and cheese. No double sausage. Single sausage,” I enunciated carefully, not fully realizing what a juvenile male would get out of my statement until he snorted.
“Got it. Too bad Fritz didn’t get it on the phone though, because this pie is covered with extra sausage. Want me to take it back and get you another one? Dinner’s gonna be real late tonight then.” His tone was openly mocking. “Or maybe you want me to pick it off for you?”
Barely smothering a snarl, I pressed the door release. “Come on up.” I gritted my teeth, my innate manners kicking in. “Please.”
I’d just shove the money at him and make do with my extra sausage. It wasn’t as if that was a problem I had to contend with in any other area of my life.
A knock sounded a moment later. Jeez, had he run up the stairs? Must be younger than he sounded.
I yanked open the door and frowned at the big, muscular figure looming in the shadowy hallway. This was what I got for not using the peephole. Small town or not, I knew better. At least then I would’ve had some warning.
Some time to prepare, since now there was no doubt my nipples were doing a double-barrel salute.
I knew this man.
Just as he knew me.
Dare cocked his head, shifting his pizza box more under his arm as he let his gaze drift over me in a slow perusal. He took long enough for me to recall every bit of my outfit, from the dangling strings hanging down my thighs from my almost obscenely short cut-offs to my bare feet to the knot under my breasts that barely hid my bra.
He was checking out all of that, and he did not seem to be finding any part of me lacking. I flushed all over, gripping the knob to keep highly inappropriate things from leapfrogging from my mouth.
Sexual innuendoes were not out of the question.
Jesus, if only I’d known I was discussing sausage with Dare, I would’ve turned down the bitchy and turned up the flirty.
His had to be stupendous. His sausage, I mean. His flirt quotient probably wasn’t bad either, once he dialed down the growling.
As for me, I had to have some serviceable flirtation skills somewhere. Especially when he was eating me up with his eyes and not being shy about it.
“Fancy seeing you again, Nuts Lady,” he said finally, moving forward and lightly pushing the pizza box into my stomach. “Got enough pie in this box for two?”
I swallowed over the lump in my dust dry throat. The man was a sex wizard. A master. He made pizza talk into the highest form of foreplay, and I was so there for it.
“I’ve got enough pie in this box for everyone.” As he chuckled and my face flamed, I dropped my gaze to the design on the carton. It was an old Italian dude with a huge mustache. “It’s an extra large.”
“My favorite size,” he said lightly.
When I didn’t say anything, he lifted a brow. “Can I come in?”
I wasn’t sure if he was just asking about entering my apartment or entering me, but either way, the answer was hell yes. I stepped back and waved an arm. “Don’t mind the mess.”
“Moving day?” He stepped over the assorted crap on the floor and glanced back, his gaze roaming over me once again. As slowly as if
he had all night. “New to the neighborhood, huh?”
All at once, the reality that he worked at the auto shop next door slammed into me. And by into me, I meant in between my legs.
So much proximity with that delicious male specimen.
And I’d thought this apartment was going to suck? Not hardly.
I shut the door and gripped my pizza box for dear life. “Yes. How much do I owe you?” Not that I knew why a mechanic was delivering pizzas, but right then, I did not care.
Nor did I care that he’d never reacted quite like this to me before. I could not say the same. I’d pretty much been in heat in his presence since the first minute we’d met.
Maybe it was his big oil-stained hands or the scent of gasoline and leather that clung to him. The muscles layered upon muscles didn’t hurt. Or his killer blue eyes, even now shrewdly analyzing me and possibly mentally stripping me naked.
A girl could dream.
He swept his tongue inside his lower lip. “Think we can negotiate.”
Two
Things were definitely looking up.
Or maybe that was only one part of my anatomy, but close enough.
I hadn’t wanted to run out pizza to the new tenant in the Forrester building. Actually, the words “I don’t want to” summed up this day in its entirety. But Pop was shorthanded at the pizza shop and Wes was having a grand time helping in the kitchen, which mostly consisted of banging pots and pans along with the occasional sneaking of pepperoni under the careful supervision of my mom.
Me, I’d been taking calls and delivering pies for the last three hours since Ellie and Connor had both gone home sick. It was a damn epidemic in town.
Kinda fit this shitty-ass day. Much as I didn’t want to notice the date, every year I did. It had only been two years, so I supposed it wasn’t that shocking.
Two years since Wes’s mom had bailed on us. At least physically. She’d been gone mentally before that.
Most of the time, I didn’t think about her. My life was too full to spend on recriminations. Katherine was a big one, if only because she’d deprived my son of his mother. The rest I didn’t regret. Life was rough. Sometimes shit didn’t work out. But for a kid, you tried harder.
You were supposed to fucking try.
So, yeah, after finishing at the shop, the last thing I’d wanted was to be called into service to help Pop. Nor make chitchat with everyone who opened their door to me. Curse of a small town. By the fourth time I’d explained I was helping out my dad, I was ready to light up.
And I didn’t even smoke.
The one good thing was that I’d been too busy to watch the clock. Now that my shift was over, I could acknowledge it hadn’t been that bad. I was just tired after putting in a long day at J&T’s, and I knew my day wasn’t over yet—not with a six-year-old to get washed up and into bed.
Right now, I could take this unplanned break. Dad had a closer coming in who could handle any other deliveries for the night.
I was officially free.
But I probably shouldn’t stay long. Kelsey and I barely knew each other. Friends of friends and all that, and recently, we’d found ourselves at some of the same events. She always said crazy stuff and tried too hard. As pretty as she was, she didn’t seem comfortable in her own skin.
If anything, I was too comfortable in mine.
I didn’t date much for obvious reasons. Impressionable little kid who already didn’t have a mom. Semi-bitter father who couldn’t be bothered with games. I was barely thirty, but when it came to relationships, I’d felt as if I’d seen it all and didn’t need a repeat.
Occasional hookups were about all I had bandwidth for. Even those were damn rare. I didn’t even know how long it had been since the last one.
Another reason I had no business taking a bite out of Kelsey’s pie.
But she was different tonight. Not only had she stood up for herself in our little argument, she had a wild look in her eyes. She wasn’t making idle chitchat, seemingly content to stand beside me at the narrow counter in her just as narrow kitchen and shift slices onto paper plates. The entire place was in a state of disarray, and there wasn’t anywhere to sit. Books were scattered on the floor. She’d barely made a dent in her unpacking.
Not that I was worried overmuch about her decorating right now.
She kept licking her lips as she checked me out, as openly as I was doing the same. Not the first time for me either. I’d been behind her at Oliver and Sage’s Vegas wedding and let’s just say it was a good thing she hadn’t been able to see me ogling her legs in her snug blue dress.
Those mile-long legs were on full display right now. A lot of her was on display, to be honest. Her tied off shirt revealed a healthy amount of skin and her tits were one deep breath from spilling free. I didn’t know if she was wearing a bra. If she was, it was flimsy at best. Her curves were slight, but it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. She was put together just right, from the tips of her red-gold hair right down to her candy pink toenails.
Fuck, even her feet were hot.
“You okay with pillows?” she asked, finally breaking the comfortable silence. Comfortable minus the definite straining in my jeans.
“You mean in general or…”
Her smile was a revelation, lighting up her golden-brown eyes in the dwindling sunlight. There was just enough remaining that the apartment—what there was of it—had a soft pink glow. Even Kelsey. Especially Kelsey. Her cheeks were flushed, and I didn’t know if it was from the exertion of getting her apartment in order, or if it was due to…this.
Whatever this was. A mistake, probably. I was good at making them. Except it didn’t feel wrong right now to be winding gooey warm cheese around my finger and dropping it into my mouth, knowing she was watching my every move.
“I mean, to sit on while we eat. As you can see, I’m still decorating.” She tugged the sofa’s back cushions out from under a pile of books and papers, then tossed them on the floor next to her coffee table.
“That what you’re calling this?”
She jerked a shoulder and her baggy shirt tried to slip down her shoulder. No strap. Jesus. No bra was now a certainty. She was petite and perfect enough not to need one.
Fuck me running.
“My decorator wasn’t available today. Just like my movers.” She hefted two boxes off the coffee table.
“Let me—”
She shook her head. “I got it.” She dumped them on the couch, then rushed back into her tiny kitchen. She popped a pepperoni into her mouth and chewed, her lashes fluttering as her eyes closed. “God, that’s good.”
Much as I wanted to watch her eat, I was stuck on what she’d said. “What do you mean, no movers? Where did you live again?”
“Turnbull. Barely a hop, skip, and two jumps away.” She transferred an extra piece of pizza to each plate and brought them around the counter into the living room and placed them on the coffee table.
Snagging the beer she’d left for me, I followed her in and sat on one of the cushions. “This can’t be all your stuff. How did you get the couch up here by yourself? Family? Friends?” I swallowed the cheese now stuck in my throat. “Boyfriend?”
She snorted as she rummaged in one of the boxes. “The place was partially furnished. I’m not even sure who left that beer behind. Hope it’s not poisoned.”
I glanced down at the can sweating in my hand. Or maybe I was sweating. The temperature seemed to be rising by the minute. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“It’s probably fine. Sorry, I don’t have my floor lamp. Desk lamp is somewhere.” She made a delighted a-ha noise and waved three tiny candles and one of those long lighter things chicks always seemed to have, then set the candles on the coffee table. After lighting them, she picked her way around the boxes to sit beside me. “Oh, and no way Jose on the boyfriend. I’ll probably end up being a lesbian.”
I choked on the experimental sip of beer I’d taken, coughing as she thumped on my back.
She was kidding. I was almost positive. Even my timing couldn’t suck that much.
“That hard to imagine?”
I plucked up a piece of pepperoni and held it up to her sweet mouth. For fuck’s sake, she even had a freckle on the bow of her top lip. “A loss for my team.”
Her cheeks pinked up and the splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose added an innocence to her that I really didn’t want to think about. The candles didn’t do much to light the room, but added a warm glow behind her. “I was kidding.” Her voice was husky and my hunger for pizza went right out the goddamn window.
“Good.” I nodded to her. This was the worst of ideas and yet, here I was. “Want this or not?”
She licked her lips and opened them. After I dropped the pepperoni inside her mouth, she closed her eyes, chewed, and swallowed. Then she winced. “Probably wrong that I had unnatural flashbacks to church.”
I huffed out a laugh. I never really knew what was going to come out of this girl’s mouth. It could be from hanging with Sage and Ally, but I had a feeling she’d been this way before those two tried to corrupt her.
“Are you a good Catholic girl, Kelsey?”
She opened her eyes, then took my beer and set it down beside our plates. “What would you say if I said definitely not?”
I hooked my arm around her waist and lifted her onto my lap. “I’d say hell yeah.”
Her golden eyes were huge as she straddled me. She opened her mouth to say something, then her eyes popped wider and she buried her face in the crook of her elbow to sneeze. “Damn dust,” she croaked, eyes watering. “Sorry. Excuse me. Fuck.”
It felt good to laugh. Her weight on my groin was definitely adding a buzz to my blood.
After a minute, her hands landed on my shoulders and her perfect tits were right there for the taking. I should kiss her. It was what a gentleman would do. Then again, I wasn’t one of those.
Instead, I ducked my head and nudged up the knot under her breasts with my nose and found a stretchy little piece of lace beneath her T-shirt. I groaned. No bra was correct. This flimsy thing was some kind of strapless shaper. It was damp from all her work that day, but she smelled fresh. Like grapefruits and oranges had sex. Whatever the scent was, it filled my brain and set my dick to pounding.