I’d forgotten about Danny.
I looked up at the clock on the microwave; it was quarter ‘til eight. Even if I was going to meet her for breakfast, there was no way I was making it on time. Unfortunately, late or on time didn’t matter because I wasn’t going.
“Not anymore,” I said firmly, reaching for one of her hands and pulling it between mine, beginning to rub the muscles in the webs between her fingers.
Her eyes widened and her lips parted into that tiny ‘oh’ that made my dick hard in an instant. Rock solid. For the pregnant woman who still may or may not still have a trace of green on her face from being sick.
“Ash, please,” she pleaded, guilt sickening her features. “I’m really fine. This has happened before, it’s just a little morning sickness. I’ll be back to normal in just another minute… Please, don’t cancel your date. Not after yesterday…”
As much as I mostly believed her, I wasn’t going to take the chance in case she really was sick and needed me.
She exhaled a soft moan as I rubbed the muscles harder, the movement slowly taking more green from her face.
My body tightened at her lie… and her moan… and the way her eyes squeezed shut as she beat herself up for intruding in my life. This needed to end right here. She’d come to me and asked for my help.
No one had ever asked for my help like this before.
No one came to me for shit like this because I was just Ash. Ash, the asshole. Ash, the partier. Ash, Blake’s brother. Ash, Zach’s manager. I’d always been a means to an end. Then Taylor showed up and for the first time, I was the answer, not the fucking question.
My decision was made. It was final and it was done. Whatever effect it was going to have on my life, I’d accepted it when I told her to stay. I wouldn’t have her continue to guilt herself over something I’d freely decided.
And in this case, there was no way she would be back to normal that quickly which meant there was no fucking way I was letting her out of my sight.
“Taylor, look at me,” I demanded, reaching up to cup her face, and waited until her gaze finally found mine. “I’m not leaving you—not after what I just saw. I don’t care how normal you tell me it is. I don’t care how much you insist you’ll be better in a hot fucking second. I. Don’t. Care. I’m not leaving.”
All the while I spoke, my thumb brushed over her cheek, creeping lower and lower as protectiveness pumped through my veins until it touched the plump pink flesh of her lower lip.
“But—” Her lip quivered under my thumb.
“No buts. My house. My life. My decision,” I said tightly, adding, “Danny will understand.”
At least I hoped she would. Although, it probably would be best to leave out how Taylor had needed to remind me about her and our date.
“I disagree, but I feel too gross to argue,” she replied begrudgingly, pulling a laugh from my chest as I rubbed my hands on top of my thighs.
“Good. Now, what do you need? I don’t know about morning sickness—or any of this, obviously… but it does sure look a helluva lot like a hangover and I do happen to know a bit about those, and eat, even though it feels like it could make it worse, actually helps,” I assured here and offered, “I also happen to have a magic breakfast meal for just these situations.”
“Mmm, it does help, actually,” she murmured. “Food… and then maybe more of that hand massage.”
I winced. The feel of her small fingers in mine, soft and strong. Capable. I rubbed them while I thought about them wrapped around my dick that was as hard as a goddamn pole.
“Let’s start with food,” I grunted. I needed to recover before I touched her—however platonically—again.
As I stood, she tacked on with that adorable embarrassed-to-be-asking tone of hers, “Also… if it’s something spicy, for some reason I’ve found that help—”
My attention, which had been focused on ticking off in my head the ingredients for my hangover waffles, dropped down when her voice strangled to a halt.
Fucking great.
With the emergency of the moment passed, I—and she—both realized my lack of clothing.
Forget an outline of my dick, I’d been staring at those lips of hers too long for me to not have a full-fucking erection right now that was right at eye-level for her.
I expected a million things. Turning away. Full-blown fainting. Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she burst out some Hail-fucking-Marys to cleanse her soul. I wouldn’t have been surprised because that was how it had always been with her. Never affected. Never interested. No matter what I did. No matter how it made me burn up inside.
I didn’t expect hooded eyes and heavy breaths.
I didn’t expect her to lick her lips like it was all she could do not to lick my cock.
I didn’t expect to want someone, so entirely untouchable, so unbelievably badly.
“Ash…” she said, a little too breathless and a little too dangerously.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Here I was, standing in front of her with my dick waving a goddamn white flag, eager to surrender my sanity. Meanwhile, she was physically ill. And pregnant.
Both things one might think would make me want her less. They didn’t. They made me want to make her feel good. Better than good. They made me want to make her feel safe and protected and beautiful. They made me want to mark her as mine. To offer her more than my help.
It wasn’t the familiar spark of desire. I knew because desire was what I felt for Danny.
This… this was so much more. It was consuming. Demanding.
I knew exactly what it was; it was everything I’d come to escape.
It was the beginnings of an addiction.
“Let’s get you some food,” I rasped, sounding like my voice had just been dragged over a cheese grater as I turned and walked away, pretending that last moment had never happened between us.
The only thing worse than an addiction was an addiction to something you couldn’t have.
“Hey, Isla,” I said with a half-smile as the tall, pale blonde’s head appeared above a vase of flowers.
“Hey, Ash.” She peeled her gloves off and came over to the end of the counter where I was standing. “What can I do for you?”
Isla was the owner of Fleurtations, the local flower shop in Carmel Cove. And there was only one reason why a guy like me was walking into a shop like this: I needed to apologize.
“I need a bouquet. Don’t care what or how much it costs. Nothing too flashy, just nice.”
Her nod said that she knew exactly what (and probably who) it was for.
Pushing a small card at me, she instructed, “Just write down the name and address where I should deliver it. I can probably get it there tonight if you want. I have two weddings tomorrow over at Rock Beach, so my day will be shot.”
The Rock Beach Resort and Spa was one of the major golf resorts in the area, owned by Larry’s daughter, Jackie, and her husband, Rich Vandelsen; actually, it was the major golf resort in the area—world-renowned and all the hoity-toity bullshit that came along with it. I’d never met Jackie, but my impression was that she’d cut all ties from her commoner family when she’d married into old money.
“That works perfect. Thanks so much.” While she charged my credit card, I quickly scribbled down Danny’s name and address on the card, writing a brief note on the back that I was sorry. Again.
Danny said it was fine on the phone. That ‘she understood.’
And that’s how I fucking knew it was not fine and that there was no excuse. I was a recovering alcoholic, not an idiot. I still had a few working brain cells left.
Thanking her, I barely heard the door ding on my way out.
As soon as I was on the sidewalk, all thoughts of Danny vanished as I trekked eagerly back to the Carmel Market, a few blocks down from the flower shop, where I’d left Taylor.
After breakfast, I’d instructed her to make a list of everything that she needed. Crackers. Vo
mit bags. Whatever the hell it was, she needed to write it down and we were going to go out and get it. Relying on her love of absolute preparedness, I hadn’t had to ask twice.
I was almost to the grocery store, passing right in front of Ocean Roasters, when I heard shouting coming from out back. And part of that shouting was definitely coming from old lungs that, just because they could project the volume, didn’t mean they should.
“Now, you listen here. I told you I wasn’t sellin’. I don’t care how much you offer me. This is a family business and it’s gonna stay that way. Now get the hell off my property before I call the cops.”
My feet picked up the pace as I heard a new voice respond to Larry.
“You can refuse all you want, old man. But, from the looks of it, you won’t be around much longer, and I don’t see any of the rest of your family lining up to take over. Fact, looks like they’ve all moved on from this… from you,” the other voice snarled.
I rounded the back, seeing the two men standing behind the building next to a giant blacked-out truck with the emblem ‘Blackman Brews’ in written in gray flames on the side.
“You’re done, Ocean. No one gives a shit about your stupid coffee shop and your family doesn’t give a shit about you. Do them a favor… leave them with something worth something. They’re not here for you now, you think they’re gonna want your piece of shit business?”
“Hey!” I yelled, my chest vibrating with rage. “Who the fuck are you?”
The tall, built man in a dark, expensive suit and tie whipped around, his bald head like a goddamn reflector screen as it caught the sun.
“Could be asking you the same thing.” He eyed me up and down, the only purpose to assure himself he could take me down if necessary.
“Leave him alone, Ashton,” Larry said, his voice shaking with an emotion I’d never heard before. “And you,” he addressed the asshole. “Get the hell off my property. Now.”
The cocksucker had the nerve to just smirk, like he knew he’d won something.
“You’ll be calling me, old man,” he said with the slippery confidence of the snake who convinced Eve to taste the apple. “You’ll be calling me when you realize that this town and your family are over you. When you got nothing left, you’ll come crawling back.”
His truck roared to life like he’d trapped the hounds of hell inside the engine, and he drove off.
My gaze whipped to Larry whose shoulders collapsed the second the truck was out of sight.
“What the hell is going on, Larry?”
Wild eyes met mine. “None of your business, Mr. Tyler.”
I drew back.
I was always ‘boy’ or ‘Ash’ or ‘Ashton.’ Never ‘Mr. Tyler.’
“What the fuck do you mean none of my business? I just happen to walk by and hear some nut-job yelling at you, threatening you…” I trailed off, my arms waving, as Larry just walked by me, his face having gone from red to white.
Too white.
“Goddammit.” I grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop. “Do I need to ask Eli? Do I need to call the Covingtons?”
The Covington brothers—Dex and Ace—were former military who’d come home to Carmel after their service and opened up a private security firm just outside of town. Their family had been close friends with Larry for a long time.
With surprising strength, he yanked it from my grasp, the unquiet in his eyes really beginning to worry me.
“Just trying to bully me into selling the shop, happy now? Been dealing with scumbags like that for longer than you been alive, boy, and I expect to continue to have to for the foreseeable future. Happy now?”
“No,” I ground out.
“Too bad. Now leave me alone.” And then he was gone.
I’d never seen him like this before. And I’d never heard of Blackman Brews.
But this was the goddamn problem with people who lived their lives answering everyone else’s call for help: after so long, you only know how to respond… you forget how to ask.
What happened to Taylor pushed her to ask. What happened to me pushed me—forced me—to ask.
I had a feeling that there was no force strong enough on this earth—aside from maybe his granddaughters or Eli—that could push Larry Ocean to reach out to the many whose lives he changed for some help of his own.
My jaw tensing, I pulled out my phone and called the only person I knew who knew Larry better than me.
“Hello, you’ve reached Eli Downing. Sorry I missed your call…”
I stalked toward the grocery store, seeing Taylor waiting outside for me, amusing herself by looking in the window of the art gallery next door.
“Hey man,” I spoke into his voicemail. “Know you’re on a job so I’ll keep this brief. Not sure if you’ve talked to Larry lately or know anything about Blackman Brews, but some guy was just harassing and threatening Larry about Roasters. Something’s not right—and something’s not right with Larry.” I paused. “Also, did you know he was seeing Dr. Shelly? As a patient? I wouldn’t call if I wasn’t fucking worried. Call me back.”
Taylor
“Mick, Miles, this is Taylor,” Ash introduced me to his two, hunky construction-worker buddies as they stepped down from the giant white truck that had Madison Construction emblazoned on the side.
Aside from the old man at the coffee shop and Danny, these were the first two people I’d met from Carmel.
I hadn’t realized how much of a toll that travel and stress combined with growing a human would have on me. Morning sickness had wiped me out for most of the morning the last two days, leaving Ash to go about some semblance of his prior life until about lunchtime.
Eager to feel like I was doing something besides eating his food and stealing his bed, he gave me all of the information and papers and internet access I needed to organize the business end of the restaurant. Though I think he really caved because my other offer was to help him with the manual labor inside the restaurant—sanding, spackling; I also knew how to cut and install molding.
Needless to say, he gave me as much information about what still needed to be done as he could find.
“Mick Madison, ma’am.” The much larger one on the right stepped forward first with a teddy-bear smile and deep Southern accent as he pulled off his hat to reveal buzzed, sandy-blond hair.
“Nice to meet you.” It felt like I was shaking the hand of a bear as he gently clasped my fingers in greeting.
“Miles,” the other twin grunted, his smile much shorter and briefer than his brother’s before his attention picked up the small bump in my loose tee and swung up to Ash with an arched brow, clearly believing there was more to the story.
“Taylor’s a family friend,” Ash answered the unasked question with a steady stare. “She needed a place to stay, so she’s going to be my guest for a little while.”
I caught Miles’ chuckle and dancing eyes, suggesting he obviously thought there was more to our situation, but my attention reverted back to Mick when he spoke.
“Are you enjoying it here?” he asked pleasantly as we began to walk out to the restaurant. “My brother and I moved up from Texas a few months ago. Best decision we made.” He paused. “Well, except for the paper straws and the strict carry laws. But, you can’t win ‘em all.”
I chuckled.
“I am enjoying it. It’s so beautiful. And this…” I trailed off as we walked through the clearing, the view off the cliffs stealing my breath once more. “This is incredible.”
Mick nodded. “Ash has definitely got a success story in the making right here with this property, with his ideas. No doubt about it.”
“I got lucky,” Ash grunted behind us, listening to our conversation.
“You know luck had nothin’ to do with it, my friend,” Mick smirked.
The four of us paused at the front door. “You puttin’ her to work, Ash?” Miles demanded jokingly. “That doesn’t seem very gentlemanly of you.”
His hands rose up in innocence.
<
br /> “Actually, I asked to help,” I interjected and proudly presented the stack of papers I’d held underneath my arm. “So, I spent the last two days organizing what’s left of the construction schedule, made a timeline for when inspections need to be complete if Ash wants to open on time, and have spreadsheets of what needs to be ordered—broken down by equipment, technology, supplies, and disposables.”
When I finished, I had to look down and make sure I still had all my clothes on because I wasn’t sure I’d ever had three sets of male eyes trained on me so intently before.
Miles nodded to Ash, pleasantly surprised by my answer.
“Damn,” Mick muttered and then asked, “Can we hire her?”
“Well, unfortunately, Miss Taylor,” Mick informed with an apologetic smile. “We’re workin’ on the kitchen drywall for the next few days, so I don’t think you’ll be able to stick around with the dust and chemicals and all… in your condition…”
My stomach dropped. “Oh, okay.” I nodded. “That’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine.
I’d organized everything. Everything that I could. And cleaned. I needed something to do.
“Have you been into town yet?” Miles asked, earning a sharp glare from Ash.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Let her take your truck, man,” he continued.
Ash’s expression tightened as he put a hand on my shoulder and when my eyes met his, I realized he wasn’t upset that I was going into town; he was concerned that he wouldn’t be with me.
“Keys are on the counter,” he said, staring at me as though we were the only two people on the planet. “Just be careful.”
“It’s Carmel, Ash,” Miles snickered. “She’ll be fine.”
I gave him a reassuring smile. “Thanks.”
“Make sure you grab a blueberry muffin at the bakery and coffee at Roasters,” Mick suggested. “Cove classics right there.”
“Decaf coffee,” Ash said, crowding toward me. My brow furrowed. Maybe it was common knowledge that pregnant women needed to avoid caffeine… “Call me if you need me.”
His fingers tightened for a split-second on my shoulder, pulsing warm, protective heat to every corner of my body before he released me.
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