“You did a shitty thing,” she readily agreed, and he wished like hell that he wasn’t driving while they were having this conversation, since it would have been so much easier if he could just keep watching her expressive face, rather than relying solely on her tone and whatever glances he could steal of her. “But that doesn’t define you as a person,” she went on to say, surprising him. “You’re… Well, you’re clearly going through something.”
He didn’t know what to say to that uncomfortable observation, so he kept his mouth shut, just happy that she was finally talking to him.
“I’m curious though,” she murmured, and from the corner of his eye he could see her nervously fiddling with the hem of the black cardigan she’d thrown on when she went up to her condo to grab her purse, the soft material covering the sexy bronze top she’d worn for her date with the dickhead doctor.
“About what?” he husked, when she fell silent.
“Why you asked me for a date in the first place,” she finally admitted, before giving a wry laugh. “I mean, we’ve known each other for months, but after that first time we met, you never once mentioned us going out. And it’s not like I was chasing after you and so you maybe felt bad about it or something, like you needed to throw me a freaking bone to get me to stop glomming on to you. Because I wasn’t. So…why? Was it… Was it just some kind of sick game to see if I would say yes?”
“What? Fuck no!” he burst out, his voice rough. Shoving one hand back through his hair, he shook his head in disbelief. “Christ, Rin, I can’t believe you would even think that. Didn’t you just say you didn’t think I was a shitty person?”
“It’s not like I wanted to believe that was the reason.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” he growled, cutting her a sharp look. “And I never stopped wanting to ask you out.”
“So then why the long wait?” she asked, sounding truly baffled by his admission.
“Why did it take me so long to grow some balls and finally do it?” he asked with a gruff-edged laugh, rubbing his free hand over his jaw again. “Let’s just say that after getting to know you, it took me some time to work up the nerve again.”
“I don’t understand.”
He gave another low, husky laugh. “To put it simply, you scared the ever-loving hell out of me.” And she still did. But he wasn’t going to let it hold him back anymore. Not when the alternative was going through life without her. Fuck that.
“You actually expect me to believe that you were afraid of me? That’s ridiculous!”
“It’s not,” he argued with a tight smile, shaking his head. “The first time I looked into your big brown eyes, I swear I felt the fucking ground shake.”
He glanced her way just in time to catch the frown settling on her beautiful mouth—but, hey, at least she wasn’t calling him out for his cheesy metaphor. “I’ll let the F-bombs slide for the moment, since Jase is sleeping, but you need to watch your language around him.”
“Right,” he grunted, feeling like a shit for forgetting. “Sorry about that.”
“And I still think you’re being ridiculous,” she scoffed, looking back out her window.
Resting his wrist over the top of the wheel, there was a wealth of determination in his tone as he said, “You might not get it now, but you will.”
“I doubt that,” she said flatly, still not looking at him. “Just because I understand that the thing with Jenna must have been difficult to deal with, it doesn’t mean that I forgive you, Paul. There was nothing stopping you from just picking up your phone and actually telling me that you no longer wanted to go out with me.”
“Wanted,” he snorted, thinking the word didn’t come anywhere close to describing how Karin Riley made him feel. “That was the problem right there, babe. I still wanted you so fucking bad I couldn’t see straight. Which is exactly how I feel right now. From the moment we first met, I’ve wanted you. But…”
“But what?” she pressed when he paused, obviously more interested in getting him to explain himself than in lecturing him about his language again.
He pulled in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “But I saw you with Jase a few days after Natalie first introduced us at the restaurant, and knew you deserved more than something casual. And even though I wanted you so badly it was fucking killing me, I kept hearing every woman I’ve ever semi-seriously dated complaining about how I could never put them first. It…” He paused again, rubbing his jaw, knowing damn well that there was baggage from Dixon’s death tied up in all that shit he’d been feeling as well, then forced out the rest. “It made me worry that if we started something, and then I fucked it up… Christ, Rin, I—”
“But you did ask me out,” she cut in, staring at him across the dark interior of the truck.
He blew out a rough breath, sounding like he’d gargled with goddamn gravel as he said, “Because something happened that Friday that opened my eyes.”
She didn’t say anything, but he could feel her unspoken need for an explanation pulsing in the air between them, her curious gaze studying his profile as she waited for him to go on.
“There was this car accident down on Coronado,” he husked, changing lanes before he went on. “Not the kind of thing that Mike and I would normally get involved with, but we’d been interviewing a witness out on the island and stopped to help out when we drove by. There was an older couple there, and the wife was pretty banged up. The husband was worried as fuck, and I kept him company while the medics were working on her. He told me that he’d been on the force for over forty years, in homicide like me, decorated numerous times, loved his job beyond reason, but”—he cleared his throat again, thankful for the dark interior that was hopefully concealing the heat he could feel burning in his face as he recounted the story—“nothing mattered to him more than his wife. He told me right to my face that she was the most important thing in his world. And it made me… Hell, I don’t know how to explain it. I think I finally opened my eyes to the fact that if the woman was the right one—if she really meant something to me—then the balance would come naturally. Sean even said the same damn thing to me after I screwed things up between us, but I was too fucking stubborn to listen to him.”
“That’s… I don’t even know what to say, Paul.” From the corner of his eye, he watched as she swept her tongue over her lower lip. “Was the wife okay?”
“Yeah,” he told her, exhaling another rough breath as he steered the truck down the offramp. “They had to take her in for surgery, but even though I was messed up over what had happened with Jenna, I checked in with him the next day and she was doing good. Expected to make a full recovery.”
“Thank God,” she whispered, shifting her gaze forward. She fiddled with the cardigan again for a few moments, then took a deep breath and said, “So, um, their story gave you a boost of courage, you asked me out later that night at the bonfire…and then everything fell apart.”
The unmistakable note of hurt in her quiet words made him feel like the biggest jackass alive. “I should have fucking called you,” he said in a tone that was low and rough, his hands tightening around the steering wheel on a fresh wave of frustration, every muscle in his body coiled with tension. “I should have talked to you. I know that, Rin. I just… I was in a bad place. I felt fucking toxic, and I didn’t want that shit touching you. But I… Christ, I know it makes me sound like a shit, but I didn’t trust myself to keep my hands off you if we stayed on good terms.”
“So you deliberately made it so that I’d want nothing to do with you,” she said, the finality of those awful words making him want to smash his damn fist through the dashboard.
“I…tried.” And fuck if it didn’t sound like he’d succeeded.
She gave a soft, bitter laugh. “Just for future reference, the next time you need to lose a woman, ghosting me would have done the trick. Bringing the blonde to that next bonfire was just overkill.”
His hands tightened around the steering wheel again, nearly snapping
the damn thing in half, but he forced his tone to remain even as he said, “There won’t be another woman to lose. I’m going to win you back, end of fucking story.”
She looked out the passenger-side window again, but didn’t reply, so he kept talking.
“And it was a stupid plan to begin with, because even though I’d screwed things up between us, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I finally realized I was getting nowhere, fighting an impossible battle that I didn’t even want to win, that day I came up to talk to you on your balcony. It’d been hell trying to stay away from you in the weeks after my fuck-up—well, both of them—and that day I finally cleared my head enough to see that I was just going to keep going through life as a miserable prick unless I sucked it up, grew some balls and finally went after what I want.”
“I was there, Paul. I saw you with Lacey, and trust me when I say that no one had any doubt that it was her you wanted that night, and not me.”
“They saw what I wanted them to,” he scraped out, keeping one hand firmly on the wheel as he shoved the other one back through his hair. His frustration was so thick he was surprised he wasn’t choking on it, every single ounce of it directed at himself.
“You mean me. What you wanted me to see.”
“I know it sounds…bad, but she was just my drunk ass way of trying to stay away from you. That entire night was a mistake, but I told you the complete truth earlier. I did not sleep wi—”
“I don’t want to hear this,” she cut in, shaking her head.
“It’s not a conversation I’m enjoying either,” he said tightly, “but you deserve the truth, so that’s what I’m giving you. I did not fuck Lacey. Not on that night, or any other one. In fact, I haven’t actually been with anyone since the beginning of the year.”
She snorted softly under her breath as she finally looked back over at him. “I’m not buying that for a second.”
“Whether you buy it or not, it’s still the truth,” he told her, slowing down so that he could take the next right. “I’ve been too hung up on you to be interested in anyone else.”
He knew she didn’t believe that either, but it was a fact. One he’d tried to ignore after he’d accepted that she wasn’t the type for something casual, and had forced himself to hook-up with a woman from his gym, and then a reporter he met while doing an interview for one of the local stations just before Christmas. But the sex both times had left him cold and unsatisfied, his dick pissed that he was trying to make it settle for anyone other than the woman he really wanted. After the reporter, he’d taken a step back from the hook-up scene, knowing damn well that his feelings for Karin were only growing stronger.
Not to mention the attraction. He’d always enjoyed a healthy sex drive, but the lust that poured through him every time he set eyes on Karin Riley was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. The woman fucking did it for him, and there was no way to soften the need roughening his voice as he said, “I want another chance. But if you’re not ready for that yet, then I at least want the chance for us to keep getting to know each other better.”
She gave a soft, surprised laugh, and even though Paul hadn’t been trying to be funny, he was just thankful that she was finally responding to him again. “You seriously want to divulge your secrets? Because that’s part of getting to know people, Paul. Opening up and talking about the things that matter—not just the bits and pieces you feel comfortable sharing.”
“I’m an open book,” he told her, determined to ignore the panic that slid through him at her words. If talking was what it took to get her to forgive him, then he’d talk her beautiful ears off. “Ask me anything you want.”
“All right,” she murmured, turning toward him in her seat. He was expecting her to go right for the jugular, but she surprised him by saying, “Tell me about your tattoo.”
“This one?” he asked, touching the left side of his throat.
He turned his head just in time to catch the glimmer of curiosity that swept through her gaze. “You have others?”
He slid her a cocky smirk. “You’ll have to find out the answer to that for yourself, babe.”
“Hah,” she muttered. “Dream on, babe.”
“Oh, I do.” His voice was a deep, husky rumble. “Every single fucking night.”
The soft snort she gave in response made him smile, and after telling her the story about how he got the tattoo when he was eighteen, in honor of his Irish grandmother, who he’d been close to, after she died unexpectedly from a heart attack, he realized he had his own mountain of questions that he wanted to ask her. “Okay, now it’s my turn,” he murmured.
“I didn’t agree to that, but fine. Ask away.”
He’d planned to go with something light, like why she didn’t surf like her cousin, but then something that had been bothering him back at the hospital shot into his brain, and he heard himself saying, “Jase’s dad. Does he know that his son was at the hospital tonight?”
“Yeah,” she replied with a sigh. “I sent him a text to let him know when I was down in X-ray with Jase and my dad. He wrote back to say he hoped Jase was okay.”
“And…?”
She shrugged. “And what?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? That’s all he said? His little boy was in the hospital with a possible broken bone, and the idiot sent one text?”
“Yes. But if you knew Ben”—her tone was more wry than bitter—“then you wouldn’t be so surprised.”
This time Paul was the one who snorted. “He sounds like an asshole.”
“Oh, he is. And a textbook narcissist. He truly does believe that the world revolves around him, and can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t feel the same way.”
“Make that an asshole and a prick.”
She snuffled a soft laugh under her breath. “I’m just glad he’s not my asshole and prick.”
“Me too.” He rubbed his jaw, debating whether he should say what he was thinking or change the subject, in case he pissed her off. But she seemed more than willing to be open with him on the topic, so he went ahead and said, “Chris mentioned that the marriage wasn’t a good one.”
Instead of telling him to fuck off, she kept her gaze focused on his profile as she rested the side of her face against the back of the seat and said, “It was a marriage that never should have been in the first place. I mean, it was fine when it was just the two of us, but Ben didn’t want kids, and when I got pregnant… Well, that didn’t change.” She paused for a moment, and he had to clench his teeth together to keep from interrupting her with a guttural description of what a pathetic son of a bitch her ex sounded like. He somehow choked it back, relieved that she didn’t sound sad or bitter—simply resigned—as she went on. “So, looking back, I know the smart thing would have been to cut my losses and end things then and there, instead of sticking it out, thinking it would be best for Jase. Because it wasn’t. All he ended up getting was an absent, disinterested dad, while I got the kind of husband who decides it’s more fun sticking his dick inside his twenty-year-old receptionist than coming home at night.”
“What a fucker,” he muttered, knowing it was going to be damn hard not to punch the asshole in the face when the day finally came when they met. “He must be a goddamn idiot, Rin.”
“Oh, I’m sure he was cheating in his head long before he ever acted on it in real life. The more successful my business became, the more it bothered him. Like he needed to measure the size of his dick based on how much more money he made than me. And when things started going badly at his advertising agency, it was a done deal.” She lifted one graceful hand and tucked a strand of her soft, dark hair behind her ear as she took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “I could tell by the look on his face one night, after he came home late, that it’d finally happened, and had a good idea of who with. So I decided the best thing was to just face them both and get it over with. Unfortunately, I walked in on them going at it in his office the next day, while he had her bent over his desk.”
“Motherfucker,” Paul quietly seethed, thinking an ass-kicking wasn’t nearly good enough for the bastard. Guy needed to have his fucking balls smashed into pulp.
“He’s definitely one of those,” she drawled, “but I was thankfully able to get a speedy divorce and be rid of him. The only sad part is that he has zero interest in having anything to do with his son. He lives with his barely legal girlfriend down in Mission Beach, but only manages to come up and see Jase once every three or four months, and that’s usually just for a lunch. He didn’t even mind when I changed Jase’s last name to my maiden one.”
“I don’t understand how you can sound so calm talking about him. All I want to do right now is put my fist through a wall.” Or the dickhead’s face.
“Yeah, well, I was a mess for a while. Not going to deny it. But I had a great therapist to help me see that Ben was going to take his destructive path, no matter what the people around him did to try and help him.”
Pulling into the parking lot of the complex where she lived, he found a space not far from her condo and parked the truck. Turning the engine off, he unhooked his seatbelt as he looked over at her, one of the nearby streetlights casting her in a soft, golden glow, and her natural, effortless sensuality damn near took his breath away. Her thick, lustrous hair fell in soft waves around her feminine features, her skin lightly tanned and luminous, lips full and pink and so fucking tempting, he couldn’t help but imagine how they would look wrapped around his cock.
And you need to get your head out of the gutter before you blow it, asshole, he silently lectured himself.
Swallowing against the knot of lust that was lodged in his throat, he looked into her thick-lashed eyes and thought back to the last thing she’d said, a heavy wave of uneasiness tightening across his shoulders as he imagined it. “That couldn’t have been easy,” he murmured. “Talking things out like that with a total stranger.”
“Not if you find the right one.” She frowned as she studied his expression. “Haven’t you ever been?”
Paul shook his head, thinking it would be a cold day in hell before he subjected himself to that kind of nightmare. He’d rather have his damn teeth pulled out than open his veins for some shrink.
Pushing His Luck (Surf, Sun & Sex Book 3) Page 6