by Eden Bradley
Except Catie, well, she wasn’t a stranger anymore. He knew things about her no one else did, the places to touch that made her shiver, those that made her cry out unexpectedly. He knew that she sketched with her left hand, that she smiled as she worked and didn’t realize it, and he knew with a certainty that nearly took him down to the knees that she could shatter his heart if he let this continue.
CHAPTER
Eight
When Catie next woke, she was alone. She stretched discontentedly on the cool sheets and wondered how long Bat had remained in bed after she’d fallen asleep. And then she went to find him—padded downstairs toward where the music was blasting.
The bar was empty, save for Bat. He wore a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out, the familiar bandanna around his head, and he was working on the bar itself, restoring it.
He used long, hard strokes with the sandpaper along the top of the bar to take off the old varnish, revealing a lighter, smooth wood with a rich grain running through it like a swirling river. Despite the loud music, he was in his own place, that space inside your head where your body went on autopilot, that thing that happened when you were doing something you loved.
She’d been there many times, especially over the past few days.
“Hey,” she called out to him over the song when he stopped to check his work. “That looks great.”
He ran his hand over the finished area. “I’ll be able to put a varnish on it today. It’ll dry in time for when we open again tomorrow night.”
The bar was always closed on Monday nights. “You didn’t have to do this—you’re already doing so much around here,” she said, moving closer to run her own hand over the wood.
“Careful—I don’t want you to get a splinter.”
“Have you always done this?”
He shrugged. “My daddy was a builder and a woodworker. He used to say that there was something about working with your hands and really feeling like you’ve created something.” He paused, then laughed a little. “Look who I’m talking to about this.”
“Can you show me how to do that?”
“It’s rough work,” he said with a shake of his head. “I don’t want anything to happen to those hands.”
Her hands were typically coated with charcoal and graphic pencil lead by now—but this morning, they were clean.
“No work for you this morning?” he asked.
“My subject snuck away.”
“You’re going to have to find a new subject soon enough, Catie. I’d think you’d be sick of drawing me by now,” he told her, turning back to the sandpaper and the bar top.
She crossed her arms and tried not to let the hurt come across in her voice. “I was actually going to ask you for a ride into town.”
“What do you need?”
“I think I’m ready to work in color.” She’d been prepared to start using the hard pastels that afternoon, actually had been planning to ask him to pose for her in a very specific manner, but she didn’t think he’d appreciate hearing that now.
“Did you fill out the application for the school yet?” he asked as he smoothed the sandpaper down a new section of the damaged wood.
He’d found the packet she’d received last week and she’d heard herself telling him that she needed to pick the sketches for her application to be completed.
But she’d been lying. Ever since Bat got here, both he and her art were in the forefront of her mind, and everything else, including New York, had faded away. Even with the suspicion hanging over Bat’s head, she was more comfortable in this town now, more comfortable in her skin.
Three days. She didn’t think it was possible for her life to change so dramatically in such a short time span, but it had. Things were different…she was different.
No matter what happens, Bat’s planning on leaving once the Bon Temps is cleaned up and sold.
And then what? “I filled it out,” she said.
“Good. That’s good.”
“I still have to sell this place first.” She scanned the bar—even with Bat making repairs, because he told her that he enjoyed doing it, it was still going to take longer than expected. The crowds were bigger than ever, mainly because the word was spreading about Bat. Add to that his alleged role in Darren’s murder and the fact that the owner of the Bon Temps was his alibi—well, the bar had become a sideshow.
Money was coming in, but the crowds were still rowdy and hard to control.
“It’ll work out, Catie. Don’t worry about the rowdiness. You knew it would take at least a month to see results. Concentrate on drawing, on getting into school.”
“Is this something you could see yourself doing?” she asked, pointing to the refinishing project.
“I never really thought about it. It was always just a hobby; I’d end up helping out in whatever bar I was working or whatever apartment I was living.”
“What’s the longest you ever spent in one place, once you left home?”
“Six months, probably. When I was in the military. But most of the time, it’s a three-months-or-less thing. Own only what you can carry and all that.”
“We moved around a lot too. I didn’t stay in one place until after Mom died—it was the first time my brother was in the same school for over a year,” she admitted.
“Why did she move you guys around so much?”
“I’ve thought a lot about that, especially over the past few days,” she said. “I think…I think she really wanted to come home—to Bayou Rouge. And all that time spent moving was because nothing satisfied her the way this place did. There’s something about this town.”
“You hated it here three days ago,” he pointed out. “What changed?”
You came along. “A lot of things changed.” She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. Not that he’d notice—he’d gone back to his work. “I’ve got some more stuff to do in the storeroom.”
He nodded, still not looking at her, and she wondered if she’d dreamed last night…if she’d dreamed the entire thing.
She walked into the storeroom—it was nearly cleared out. There were only four more boxes to go through, what looked like her uncle’s personal possessions. She’d almost put them out by the Dumpster instead of looking through them, but she hadn’t.
Now she opened the boxes and began to rummage through the contents. There were some old newspaper clippings with her uncle’s name in them—all sports related. It appeared he had been a star athlete in high school. A few articles focused on the Bon Temps itself—a piece on the bar’s opening and then another on the celebration of twenty-five years open and going strong.
When she dug a little deeper, she found pictures, many in black-and-white and still framed, all of which showed the history of the bar. Carefully, not wanting to damage the old paper, she began to free the photographs from their prisons, turning them over to read the careful, fading inscriptions.
A history of the bar, chronicled painstakingly in what must be her uncle’s handwriting.
Her family’s history. One her mother had never gotten to see, one that Catie hadn’t even known existed.
You did just fine on your own.
But didn’t she want more than just fine?
“Find something worth keeping?” Bat was at the doorway, watching her. She couldn’t tell if he’d been there long, but with his words her eyes filled and the pressure that had been building for weeks by being surrounded by memories that should’ve been hers, memories that could be if she decided to stay put, welled and couldn’t be stopped. She bit her lip and shut her eyes tight to try to stop the tears, but a sob choked her throat. “I wish I had known my uncle. I wish so many things.”
Bat had her gathered in his arms within seconds, and she put her face against his chest. “It’s okay, Catie. I know you’ve had a tough time of it.”
She rested against him for a few minutes, then pulled away fiercely, angry with herself for letting go. He seemed to understand, took a step back and gave her space.
She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, and when she spoke again she was calm. “I was able to keep my brother with me. That’s the most important thing. And he’ll be able to realize his dreams, do anything he wants to do. He won’t have to work nearly as hard as I did, and that’s what I wanted.”
“And now, thanks to your uncle, you both get to do what you want with your lives. Some people never have that.”
“No, some people never do,” she said quietly.
She walked out of the storeroom and into the bar. Her gaze caught on the way the light hit the bar, revealing the rich grained wood that Bat had refinished, and she couldn’t help but run her palm across it. “This place must’ve been beautiful back in the day, when it was all brand-new.”
“Might not have measured up to any of those fancy big city places you’re used to, but it looked just fine.”
“I’m picturing dark, mahogany wood–paneled walls, brass rails, pictures of the old-timers on that back wall…” She pointed to each object as she named it, lost in a dream of the way things were and the way things could be.
A dangerous line to straddle, and he was on the rope right next to her.
He nodded, and shit, she was beautiful even with dirt smeared on her cheek and red eyes and her hair tumbling all over the place as if she’d been running her hands through it. She was strong. If he hadn’t intervened, she would’ve found another way to get the Bon Temps in order.
She didn’t need him.
But his sister did. When she’d called him, the desperation plain in her voice, he understood, stepped up to the plate. He could’ve told Catie that he understood, for the first time in his life, about the importance of family—the importance of loving someone else. But she was already pulled in too many different directions. “I can take you into town now, if you still want to go,” he told her instead.
“I still want to go,” she said. “Just give me a minute to get cleaned up.”
He nodded, washed his own hands and scrubbed some water over his face in the bathroom off the office, then waited for her. She joined him a few minutes later.
“It’s a beautiful bike.” She ran her hands over the red lines painted along the black frame. It was vintage Harley and it was fucking beautiful…just like Catie.
“Yeah, she’s hot and she’s fast,” he said. “We better go, before the store closes.”
He handed her his helmet, and she didn’t argue about putting it on. She climbed on behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist and pushed against him so he fit snugly between her spread legs.
He guided them down the windy side roads, past the swamps, and let it loose down the stretch of straight highway.
Wind in his hair, speed between his legs and a beautiful woman holding him. Suddenly, he couldn’t think of any reason this wasn’t right.
He’d already told her that his life was about survival, about not looking past the next job or even, sometimes, the next hour, because it was easier. Safer. Which was a joke, coming from him, from someone who prided himself on the fact that safe was not a word in his vocabulary. Danger bred him young, whether he was escaping his father’s wrath or joining the military or getting out and picking another job that threatened to end his life.
And the love of a good woman was supposed to take care of all of that, help him settle down? Save his soul, give him a clean slate and all that shit?
Big Red had thought so, had told him so, even though Bat always responded that he didn’t want to hear it.
Bat wanted Catie to stay…so badly he could taste it. And he knew that with a few words of encouragement, she probably would. But then he’d never know if she stayed because she was too scared to try to live her dream. And if things didn’t work out, would she blame him for holding her back, for making her stay in a town where she was haunted by memories? Would she eventually drift away?
It was the ultimate paradox: He’d finally found a woman he could see himself settling down with, and he had to let her go, let her fulfill her own dreams.
He heard her laugh, the sound floating over him in a rush of air, and then he pushed the bike faster. A light rain started, slicking down the roads and causing steam to rise around them in the late-afternoon heat.
Find a good woman to love you, boy. And then take it a step further and fall in love yourself.
Every time she looked at him, every time she let him inside her, another layer stripped off, until he was closer to that unburdened guy he’d always wanted to be, the one Big Red had always joked was hiding deep inside Bat’s gruff exterior.
When you fall, you’re gonna fall hard, boy.
Who you callin’ boy, old man?
I’ll call you man when you earn the title.
That conversation had happened the same night Bat’s face was slashed open, because he’d stepped in front of an angry patron who was threatening to cut Big Red. Big Red had taken him to the ER to get him stitched up, all the while calling him a damned fool for stepping into someplace he didn’t belong. And then he’d given Bat the bike, refused to take any money from him and headed up to Chattanooga to what was supposed to have been his final job.
Yeah, Bat was still working on becoming the man Big Red knew he could be.
“I need you,” Catie had said when they’d gotten back from the store with her supplies. And now Bat was lying in the center of the bed, pillows arranged around him so he was leaning back comfortably. The light rain had turned steady and hard and it slammed the new roof of the Bon Temps, where they were dry and cool under the fans in the bedroom.
He’d shucked all his clothes at her request, save for the bandanna, which she’d told him to keep wrapped around his hair.
He’d protested that he had work to do, but she’d insisted. “The bar’s closed tonight. It’s the perfect time.”
And he’d given in, because he’d hated seeing her sad earlier, hated that he’d had a part in it. Now the light in her eyes was back, and he wasn’t going to be the one to put it out.
She told him that the work would be a little slower, that she wanted to get the skin textures, that she needed him to be in the room with her for that.
She told him that it was for her final piece in the collection.
He didn’t know why the word final made his gut twist, but he quickly pushed it out of his mind. He’d been aroused the entire ride to and from the store—the vibration from the bike tended to do that, and now that’s what he focused on.
It was what Catie focused on as well. It was as if she didn’t know where to look—his face or between his legs, and she spent time gazing at both, the way she had in the mirror that night. It made his cock harden even more.
There was something completely decadent about lying in bed in the early evening, with a woman staring at you, posing you…wanting you.
Damn, he liked it.
“I thought we were both going to work, Catie chere?” He heard the huskiness in his own voice, his skin prickling from the cool air of the overhead fan
“We are. You’re already so hard. Touch yourself for me, Bat.”
He slid a hand down his stomach, didn’t take his eyes off her as he made contact with his cock. He stroked his palm slowly up and down his shaft. As much as he wanted her mouth on him, the look on her face was reason enough to keep going at it alone. At least for now.
Her eyes moved between him and the sketch pad, the pastels barely making any sound on the page, her bottom lip held lightly between her teeth. Her nipples were hard underneath the shirt she wore, her cheeks flushed and her body practically vibrated while she stood in place.
Barely keeping it together himself, he let his own rough fingers brush the head of his cock, rubbed his thumb over the leaking slit and spread it around as Catie sucked in a sharp breath.
Yeah, she liked that, liked watching as he fisted himself, hard and fast for a few seconds, until his body was covered with a thin sheen of sweat and the pre-cum oozed. He spread it on his palm, used it as
a lubricant and let the friction of his hand move the thin, soft layer of skin that covered what felt like a fucking steel rod between his legs.
“I want to put this inside you, Catie. In your mouth, your pussy…You’re wet, aren’t you?”
She inhaled a sharp breath, nodded as he bucked against his own palm, his hips rocking off the mattress.
“Christ, I’m not going to be able to hold out for you if you keep looking at me like that.”
“Please…you look so amazing. I want you to make it last.” Her words washed over him like a hot breeze, and his hips pumped with a mind of their own.
He squeezed the base of his cock, tried to hold the impending orgasm at bay even as his balls tightened and pulled close to his body. “What do I get in return, chere?”
Catie was definitely going to give him something in return, but for right now, watching Bat grind against his palm was the most sensual thing she’d ever seen.
He was so big—when he was fully aroused, he seemed massive, his cock swelling well beyond his large fist, the head red, engorged, and she squeezed her thighs together as her sex throbbed in time with his long strokes.
She knew what he’d feel like if she dropped everything, went to the bed and took him inside of her. It would be a long, slow stretch of the ring of muscle, a pinch and a burn as she settled in on his shaft.
One hand continued to draw, furiously now, while the other drifted up to her breast. She drew the shirt away from one breast and touched her nipple, taking it between her fingers, heard Bat moan, Oh fuck, and knew—just knew that it was because of her.
She stroked a thumb over her nipple, flicked it lightly with a nail, the way Bat did when he wanted to start things up again, usually after an intense session that left them breathless. And she tried to concentrate on the paper in front of her, watching the way the dark blond hair dusted a pattern over his strong forearms and spread across his chest lightly between his nipples.
He continued to slow his strokes down, had thrown his head back and bared his teeth. His breathing was quick—short, ragged breaths—and he didn’t bother to try to hold back his moans.