No, I bet we had more like eight, if not five. It was like she had a sixth sense when it came to knowing if I was awake or not.
Tallulah had been sleeping through the night since she was three weeks old, and I’d counted myself lucky because that meant when I went back to work, she’d sleep in while I got up early to study. Or so I’d thought, it never worked out that way.
For instance, if I were to wake up early to work out in the living room—she woke up. Without fail.
Didn’t matter what I was doing, or how quiet I was. If I was awake, she was awake.
Period.
Today, though, she’d have to wait.
I had to get cleaned off quickly so I could go strip the sheets and start a load of laundry while he was cleaning off in the shower.
Then I had to pick Tallulah up and get out of here before he got out. I’d never, ever be able to face him again, and here he was standing at my back acting like I’d not just committed a dating faux pas.
“Hand me the soap,” he ordered, pointing at the corner of the tub where I’d placed it the night before.
See, here’s where Karma kicks in.
Had I put it back in the soap dish holder on the wall, I wouldn’t have had to bend over at all.
Because had I not had to bend over, I wouldn’t have farted.
It was the cutest sounding fart I’d ever let out in my life, but still, it was a fart.
My asshole clenched and I froze under the water, wondering what in the hell I’d done to deserve this lot in life.
Surely I hadn’t done anything too bad.
I’d kicked my brother in the nuts on purpose when I was in high school, and I’d stolen my mom’s car two months later out of spitefulness. Though, she hadn’t noticed. I’d felt bad and come home all within fifteen minutes, and then had the gall to admit what I’d done to her.
She’d looked at me like I was crazy and had told me to go clean the kitchen.
And, to this day, I still felt bad for that fork I’d thrown in the trash because I couldn’t get it clean.
So yeah, I was going on the fact that I’d thrown one of my mom’s expensive forks into the trash for the reasoning behind why exactly my life sucked.
Maybe I could just drown myself in here.
A strong, muscled chest moved up close to my back, and I stiffened even more.
Here I was, bleeding and goddamned gassy, and the man wanted to hug me?
Why?
“How are you so calm?” I demanded as I looked at him with water pouring down my face. “Aren’t most men period-phobic?”
Fart-phobic? Not that I’d bring that one up. I could totally act like it didn’t happen.
He looked at me with laughter in his eyes.
“Yeah, some are,” he shrugged. “I’m a fuckin’ doctor, and a grown ass man. I understand the logistics behind periods and gas.”
Oh, god.
He’d just said gas.
I was going to die quietly right here in his arms.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Get off me.”
He refused.
“I already put the clothes in the washer, and your daughter’s about to wake up any minute,” he informed me. “I’m about to drop you off at your mom’s, and I won’t be able to speak to you for two and a half goddamn months the way that I really want to. So how about you forget about being embarrassed over bodily functions that you have no control over and that the majority of the population experiences on a daily basis, and hug me the fuck back?”
I looked at him, staring into those blue eyes that had the power to melt my heart, and nodded.
Then I wrapped my arms around him, burying my face into his neck, and breathed easy again, no longer in quite the panic that I’d been in when I’d woken up a few minutes before.
Though, you could bet your ass that I wouldn’t be bending down in front of him again for the foreseeable future.
Chapter 14
Your boobs really bring out my eyes.
-Tommy’s secret thoughts
Tommy
“I’ll take y’all home.”
I looked at him incredulously. “You can’t,” I denied him. “If the water happened to be low enough for you to get through it on your bike, there’s still the little dilemma of Tallulah not having her car seat. And even though I did it the other day, I won’t be doing it again. Not when we have to drive another ten minutes down the road with dumbasses trying to get out and about today for the first time in four days.”
He grinned at me.
“I have a car. A car that has a car seat in it because I pick my niece up from daycare at least once a week.”
She blinked.
“You have a car?”
She said car like it was a dirty word, and I had to squelch the urge to laugh so she wouldn’t think I was laughing at her instead of with her.
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
She twitched.
I could tell she was embarrassed.
Hell, I was embarrassed for her, but what had happened this morning wasn’t the end of the world.
Fifty percent of the goddamn population had periods and a hundred percent of the world’s population farted.
It was a bodily function, and one that you couldn’t control.
So no, I wasn’t upset, grossed out or mad. I was, however, pissed off that I was having to give her up, even if it was just temporarily.
I fucking hated responsibilities.
I hated that she wasn’t going to be here after two days of having her in my bed, giving me things that I wanted more than anything, when I got home from work.
I wouldn’t even have the smell of her on my sheets since I’d had to wash them.
I’d almost say that was on purpose—since she was still trying to pull away—if I hadn’t seen her face and the way that her mortification had swept over it.
Taking her by the hand, I urged her out of the house.
I’d already loaded Tallulah’s diaper bag and her medicines while Tally had been feeding Tallulah, so all I had left to do was drop down and sweep Tallulah into my arms—which I did moments later while still holding onto Tally’s hand.
“Ready?” I looked at Tally.
She took one last look around, like it was the last time she’d ever be in this place—which was likely true since I would be moving into my own place within a week—and nodded her head with very little enthusiasm.
“Yep,” she confirmed. “Show me to this mysterious car.”
I grinned and pulled her with me, taking her down the steps and around to the garage door, which was already open and waiting for us.
She froze the moment we rounded the side of the house.
“This is not a car,” she informed me. “This is a freakin’ beast.”
I looked at my black 1967 Chevy Impala, the one that left the garage only on rare occasions, and grinned.
“I got this girl when I was sixteen,” I told her as I pulled her forward. “When I turned twenty-one, I got my first bike, and I haven’t driven her much since.”
“That’s blasphemy,” she informed me. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment to put a car like this on the back burner.”
I led her to the passenger side and opened the door for her to take a seat.
She took a look at the white leather interior, and I could tell she wanted to snort.
“I guess you don’t have your niece much?”
I shook my head.
“No, why?”
She reached for Tallulah, and I handed her over, watching her as she twisted in her seat and lifted Tallulah up and over the bench before placing her in the car seat.
“I’m glad she still rear faces,” Tally said as she clipped Tallulah into place.
I didn’t hear much of what she said because my eyes were on the way her ass looked in those jeans.
She was shimmying and shaking, so it took me a
while to realize that during this time I should’ve been walking to my own door and getting in.
Instead, I was still standing there like a dolt and staring at where her cute ass used to be.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, then horror crossed over her face.
“Oh, God. Is there more?”
I blinked then shook my head.
“More of what?” I questioned in confusion.
“Blood.”
She said the word like it was some dirty secret, and I had to bite my tongue to keep the laugh from exploding from my body.
“No,” I told her the truth. “I was staring at your ass, and wondering if you’d have a problem with me stopping by to fuck you during the middle of night when nobody could see us a few times over the next couple months.”
Her face colored.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” she murmured. “We could get caught. We could get into a lot of trouble, and then I’d not graduate. You’d have to quit your job due to your inappropriate behavior…”
I placed my hand over her mouth.
“Chill,” I ordered. “If you didn’t want to, all you had to say was ‘no.’”
She pursed her lips.
“Whatever.”
I grinned and shut her door, rounding the hood of the Impala and pulling open the door before I dropped down into my seat.
“Why aren’t you wearing your club vest/cut thingy?” she asked as soon as my ass hit the seat.
“It’s in my saddlebags,” I murmured. “When I come back and swap my car out for my bike, I’ll put it on.”
“Why not now?” she continued to push.
“Because when we’re in cages—that’s cars in biker speak—we don’t wear them. Don’t know why…just don’t,” I informed her.
“Do your women wear the ‘Property of’ vests like I’ve seen in some TV shows?”
I shook my head.
“A few do, most don’t,” he said. “Just depends on what the club does. Ours doesn’t. We’ve done it in the past, asking our old ladies to wear the Property patches, but it fell to the wayside when Stone became president. His old lady wore one for a short time, but then people started to get bent out of shape with the cops in this county, and she stopped wearing it one day.”
“Hmm,” she murmured. “I wonder why that was.”
I shrugged. “Don’t know.”
And I probably never would know.
Mei, Stone’s old lady, had gone downhill since Stone had died, and I didn’t think she’d ever be the same. She was a shell of the woman that I used to know. My heart hurt every single time I saw her.
I didn’t bother sharing any of this with Tally, either.
Mei was a proud woman, and she wouldn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her or Stone.
Stone died doing what he loved, protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves. He died happy, in love and content with his life.
What more could you ask for?
Starting the car up on that thought, I groaned when I saw Tally squirm in her seat.
Really? She had to do this now? With her kid in my car and me taking her home to her father?
Knowing I was about to see ‘the judge’ in this city was daunting enough. I didn’t need to add a boner for his daughter to the list of things that he would hate about me.
He already had plenty to hate me for, and Tally didn’t even know it yet.
The moment that the judge realized just who she’d been staying with the last two days, he’d freak the fuck out.
And I was counting on the fact that Tally was really into me, and already emotionally attached, to keep him from clouding her judgement.
We drove in silence all the way to her home…well partial silence. Tallulah had no problem letting us know how very much she was enjoying the hell out of the ride the entire way. We pulled into the driveway to Tally’s parents’ house, and she was still laughing, chatting and carrying on about something only she knew.
“Why are you so quiet all of a sudden?” Tally asked once we turned onto her road. “And how do you know where my father lives?”
I bit my lip, knowing where this was going.
“A long, long time ago, my family used to own the land that you live on,” I murmured. “Your father bought it from the bank after my parents lost it.”
A heavy silence filled the air after that.
She cleared her throat.
“I didn’t know that,” she murmured. “What happened?”
I made the final turn into her driveway—my old driveway—and stopped in front of the house—my old house.
“When I was fourteen, my mom overstretched my father’s and her resources, and she couldn’t get herself turned back around,” I started to explain. “They started to spiral downhill, until there was nothing else they could do but let the house and the land go back to the bank.”
“I think I can see where this is going,” she murmured.
I grinned, but there was nothing nice in it.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “We were evicted the summer that I graduated from high school.”
She breathed deeply. “Did you know me?”
I shook my head.
“No,” I admitted.
But if I had, she would’ve been mine the moment she turned eighteen.
I’d been full of piss and vinegar for years, and it’d taken me turning twenty-one to finally see the error of my ways. But by that time, I’d already done everything that I could to piss off the one and only person I now had to impress.
Judge Slater.
“That’s good…oh.” She reached for the handle of the car, and got out, heading for her father who’d just rounded the corner.
I twisted in my seat and unstrapped Tallulah from her restraints, and then lifted her into my arms before facing the music.
And the music wasn’t good music, either.
The moment that the judge’s eyes met mine, his scowl went thunderous.
“What the hell are you doing on my land?” he growled. “Give her to me.”
I handed him Tallulah, expecting the move the moment that he started stalking toward me.
“Sir,” I murmured.
The judge glared hard at me, and I realized that it was going to take a very long time to win this man over, if I even could at all.
Glancing at Tally, I nodded at her and headed for my car, knowing when I wasn’t welcome.
“Have a good one, Tally.”
Tally looked confused as she stared at me leaving, and the moment I turned my car around and I could see her in my rearview, I realized that it would take quite a bit of convincing to get her back on my side.
Shit.
***
Tally
“You will not have anything to do with that man ever again,” my father ordered me.
I blinked.
“What?” I asked. “Dad, I’m nearly twenty-one years old. Surely you don’t think you can still tell me what to do.”
Dad’s eyes were so shrewd and calculating that I knew what was going to come out of his mouth before he even said it.
“You live on my land, and since your house is gone, you’ll be living underneath my roof. I sure as fuck can tell you who you can and can’t see,” he informed me.
I gritted my teeth.
“Tommy is a…” I started to say, but he interrupted me with a raise of his hand.
“Stop,” he demanded. “I don’t care what that man is. I know what I know, and what I know is that he’s no good. And now that I know he’s your teacher at the college, I’d be delighted to inform them of the criminal they have on their hands.”
I growled. “Give me her and leave me alone.”
Dad handed Tallulah to me, not one to hold my daughter against me.
At least he had that going for him right now.
That was one of his better virtues…allowing me to raise my chil
d without his interference, even though I could tell many times throughout my so far short stint in motherhood that he wanted to intervene.
He let me make my own mistakes…but apparently he wouldn’t let me make the Tommy mistake.
Too bad I’d already made it, and it was glorious.
Now I just needed to find out what exactly he did to piss off my father, one of the most easy-going men I knew.
Chapter 15
I would eat healthy, but tacos.
-Every woman’s secret thoughts
Tommy
I let her have her space. I also was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to be able to continue to allow her that space, but I’d give it the good old college try.
Today had been a lesson in restraint.
Literally and figuratively.
It’d all started out fairly simple.
I was in the simulation lab with our students when I asked for a volunteer.
“Who wants to volunteer to try out these restraints?” I asked the class.
I looked at everyone, even Tally, and waited for someone to raise their hand.
Nobody did.
So I grinned and said, “Now, I don’t want everyone to step all over each other to get to the bed,” I teased them. “Come on, now. Someone has to do it. Don’t make me choose for you.”
Still nobody rose their hands, and I sighed.
“All right,” I said. “When’s your birthday?” I asked the girl who was at the front of the class. The little stuck up bitch who tried to kiss my and every other teacher’s ass in the entire building in hopes of getting a better grade.
“June twelfth,” she answered instantly.
“And you?” I asked the next girl. “August first.”
“Who here has a birthday after August first?”
The only person to raise her hand was Tally, causing me to grin.
“All righty, then,” I grinned. “You’re up.”
Tally’s eyes flashed, and I had to resist the urge to grin at her like a lunatic.
It was apparent as she walked to the front of the room that she didn’t want to be doing this, especially not with me.
It’d been a full two weeks since we’d held a conversation—one that didn’t have something to do with school during class— with each other, and I was beginning to wonder if it was intentional.
Fear the Beard (The Dixie Warden Rejects MC Book 2) Page 12