She sighed. “No. It’s not you. It’s me.”
He gave a noncommittal grunt at that.
Maddie popped the top of one of the cans of ginger ale and leaned over to pour about half of it over the edge of the porch and into the bushes. Then she unscrewed the top of the whiskey bottle and poured whiskey into the can until it was full. She swirled it, mixing the two, then took a drink.
Not bad.
“It’s why I pulled you into the office the other day, too,” she said after she’d swallowed. “I was hiding you from those same girls.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I mean, that was kind of an overreaction, too. It’s not my job to decide who you flirt with or date or hook up with.”
“Nope, not your job.”
For some reason that made her feel worse.
“But I still like that you did it.”
She glanced at him. “Yeah?”
“Mad, you’re not going to find me helping you not be crazy about me. I like it too much.”
And that made her stomach flip.
“I also insulted your grandmother tonight. Because of you.”
He looked interested in that. “Oh?”
“I was pissed that no one was coming over to check on you. And I told her that it would be okay for her to show some love and affection once in a while.”
He winced. “Ouch. And on top of her breaking up with Trevor.”
“Yeah.” Maddie sighed. “I feel like shit. I never talk to people like that.”
Owen didn’t actually shift position, but for some reason she felt like he was leaning closer. “I wouldn’t worry too much about Ellie, if I was you,” he said. “She can take it. We all do stupid shit here. Emotional shit. She does, too. Like telling Trevor she prefers wet heat in Louisiana to dry heat in Arizona.”
Maddie groaned. “And she said it with all that innuendo?”
“Of course.”
“Why? Why is she doing that?”
“I think she wants to break up with him, but doesn’t realize it. Think it hit her when Leo took Caroline Trahan to dinner the other night.”
“Who’s Caroline Trahan?”
“Mother of a couple of friends of ours in New Orleans. It was nothing really. Caroline needed a date for some charity thing. But it ruffled Ellie up.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “Is someone going to say something to her about it? Point that out?”
Owen tipped his beer up. “Actually, we were all just talkin’ earlier that maybe you could do it. Kind of like firing Cash. Easier for you to do it than us.” He gave her a little smirk.
“Well, I want her back with Leo—just so you know before you send me in there.”
Owen nodded. “I want her back with Leo, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course. They belong together. So you can talk to her tomorrow.”
For some reason Maddie smiled. “I can probably do that.” She’d be gentle, but yeah, she could be the one who said and did things that were hard for the rest of them to say and do. She could help out that way. She’d be helping Leo, too. And Ellie, too, really.
“Anyway, Ellie isn’t going to be mad at you for snapping at her about me. She gets it. We don’t filter and we don’t suppress things. You know that.”
Maddie did. It was what had worried her about coming back here. But now it felt…freeing. Like she could just feel things and not worry. Not analyze those feelings, not redirect them, not think about what they were really about. They were just what they were. If she was frustrated, or worried, or jealous, or happy, that was just what it was.
Maddie took another drink and pushed against the floor with the toe of her shoe, making the swing move.
“I can’t paint here,” she said quietly after they’d rocked back and forth twice.
“What?” Owen asked.
“I can’t paint here.” She glanced over at him, but then focused on the dark yard in front of them. “That’s what I do. In California. I’m a painter. I run the art gallery, too, but I got into that because the gallery has been displaying my work for a couple of years.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that. You any good?”
She smiled, then took another drink. She nodded after she’d swallowed. “Yeah, I’m good. I’ve sold several pieces.”
“Wow,” he said again, almost as if he wasn’t sure what else to say. “How did I not know this?”
She shrugged. “I sketched as a kid and teen but I didn’t start painting until I went out there.”
“I didn’t even know you could draw.”
She looked over at him and held his gaze this time. “When I was here, it was just a hobby. A little thing I did sometimes. Doodling almost.”
“Still seems like something I should have known.” He was frowning now, as if not knowing this really bothered him.
“We dated for a month,” she reminded him. “Before that I was really just your friend’s little sister. You wouldn’t have known then. Not many people did. And when we were together, it was so short. So…crazy. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about our hobbies and stuff.”
He took a deep breath. “I guess.”
She frowned, thinking back now. “And you know, I probably didn’t draw much when we were together.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
Well, she’d been busy with other things. Like losing her virginity and burning down sheds. But she didn’t say that. Because that wasn’t really it—and she was just realizing it.
“Like I said, I didn’t draw a lot of important things back then,” she said. “But when I do—did—draw, it was always because I was emotional about something, really feeling something. I drew whenever I was pissed at one of my friends or after I failed a math test or when you started dating Sarah.”
That clearly surprised him.
“You were emotional about that?”
“I had a huge crush on you and I was super jealous,” Maddie said with a nod.
“Huh.” He looked almost smug.
“Anyway, my art is always inspired by emotion and that’s why it really came out when I was in California. I was feeling a lot—grief, anger, loss, heartbreak, guilt, fear—and it all came pouring out.”
“What do you paint?” he asked.
Stupidly, Maddie felt her cheeks heat. The subject of her art was very telltale. But she blew out a breath and said, “The bayou and Autre.”
Both of his eyebrows rose. “Really? All the time?”
She nodded. “The paintings are all different. It’s different parts of the bayou. Sometimes the cypress trees. Sometimes the old cabin. Sometimes alligators and turtles. Sometimes it’s stormy—okay, a lot of the time it’s stormy—sometimes it’s at night or at sunset. And I paint different perspectives on Autre. Sometimes just a building, sometimes a street, sometimes a bird’s-eye view over the whole thing. Anyway, it’s always about something down here. And I think that’s why people in California like them—they’re so different. It’s actually how I met Bennett Baxter. He was in San Francisco for business and walked by the gallery, and the painting of the bayou stopped him. He came in and we started talking about the bayou and where we were both from and the tour company and everything.”
Owen was just staring at her.
“You paint the bayou stormy and at night a lot,” he finally said.
She nodded.
“How about the town? The same thing?”
She nodded again. “I paint the cemetery. Our old house. And yeah, it’s dark a lot.” This didn’t take a PhD in psychology to understand, and Maddie watched Owen work through it.
“That makes sense,” he finally said.
“Does it?”
“If it’s all about your emotions, then yeah,” he said. “It was pretty dark and stormy down here when you left.”
He meant figuratively, of course, but he got it.
“I saw a therapist when I first moved out there. She encouraged me to draw and paint to get it al
l out. It really worked.”
“I’m glad.” He voice was husky. “But fuck—” He sighed. “I hate that those are your feelings about everything here.” He looked genuinely unhappy about that.
She wet her lips. “I don’t know if that will keep being the case.”
“What do you mean?”
“The dark and stormy stuff was obviously my last impressions. Not just the bad stuff that happened with my mom and dad, but how I felt about it all. The fear, the wanting to get away and yet missing everything like crazy once I was gone, the anger that I had to make that decision in the first place.”
He watched her, gently keeping the swing going with his foot.
“But now…my impressions and feelings about everything here are a lot nicer. Brighter. Happier.”
Maddie realized he’d been holding his breath when he breathed out in relief.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said with sincerity.
She was, too. Kind of. Would happy paintings of the bayou and daylight images of the little fishing village sell like the dark and stormy paintings? She didn’t know.
“Is that going to ruin your rep?” he asked, as if reading her mind.
She shot him a smile. “Not sure.” She focused on the floor of the porch. “I don’t even know if all of this will change my painting. I haven’t been able to paint anything at all since I’ve been here.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I think it’s because this place, and all of the people—all of you—suck all the emotions out of me. I’m expressing them out loud and by doing things.” She paused, frustrated even with trying to explain it. “The drawing and painting are my way of getting my feelings out,” she said, starting over. “I channel it all onto the canvas. I don’t talk it out. I don’t…fire people, or make up stories about communicable diseases to keep girls away from my crush, or snap at a woman I care a lot about. I keep all of that kind of stuff inside and then I put it onto a canvas that will fit inside a frame.” She lifted her eyes to his. “I contain it. I literally put it into a box where it just sits and doesn’t change or grow. Or get out of control.”
Owen’s expression was hard to read. He looked concerned, which made her feel warm. He also looked pissed and she knew, somehow, it was on her behalf. Whether it was because she was feeling all of these things that he didn’t like her having to feel, or because she clearly hadn’t had people she could talk to or who would comfort her, she didn’t know.
“Dammit, Mad,” he finally said, his voice rough. “You’re killing me.”
“Sorry.” She looked down at the can in her hands. “I shouldn’t have dumped that all on you.”
He reached out, wrapped his hand around the back of her neck. “Mad.” He waited until she looked up at him. “Not what I meant.”
There was an intensity in his eyes that she knew not many people saw from him. He was the laid-back, fun-loving playboy. He didn’t do intense. At least, he didn’t let people see it.
“I want to know all of this. But, babe, I can’t help also wanting to fix it all. So, I’m just…struggling. I’m not a very good listener.”
“Not true,” she said softly.
“I’m not very good at just listening,” he amended. “I want to do things.”
“You can’t fix this.”
“I can’t fix the past, no. I can’t change what happened here. And seems that making new, better memories is…maybe not all good.” He frowned as if confused by that.
“I didn’t say that,” she protested.
“But you love to paint,” he said.
“I do.”
“And you can’t do that here. You need to control your emotions, channel them, put them someplace safe—like on a canvas.”
Her throat felt tight. “That’s what I’ve always thought, yes.”
“And you still want to paint. You still want to make a living from your art.”
“That’s always been my plan,” she admitted, rather than saying yes. Because lately she wasn’t sure what she wanted exactly.
He just sat quietly, the swing rocking, for nearly a minute.
“So, I can let you…help you…go,” he finally said.
She frowned. “Help me go?”
“You can’t paint here. And you want to paint. So I can help you get back to California where things work the way you want them to.”
His voice was tight and he sounded pained, but Maddie knew that he meant what he said. “How would you do that?”
“I’ll talk to Sawyer and Josh,” he said. “I’ll tell them that I think Bennett is an okay option and we should let him buy you out.”
Maddie’s heart thudded at that. Owen was torn between wanting to keep the business as is, not risk bringing a stranger in, and making her happy by sending her back to California.
And he was choosing her. Her happiness. Helping her be happy in the only way he could.
She didn’t know what to say. The idea of the guys getting together and deciding to let her go and bring Bennett in made her chest feel tight. She certainly didn’t feel relieved. And shouldn’t she? This was what she wanted. And the sooner she got back to California, the sooner she’d stop falling deeper and deeper in love here. With the town, the business, the people…Owen.
But the idea that she’d be leaving it all behind, have no further say in where they got their Snickers bars, couldn’t look out for Josh and Sawyer, couldn’t watch Owen’s face light up every damned time he stepped onto one of the boats as if it was his first time…
Her stomach twisted a little thinking about not walking into Ellie’s every day and being greeted like she was one of them, about not counting how many empty creamer tubs were in the trash each morning to judge how many cups of coffee Kennedy had had—it was safest not to talk to her before she was into her third cup—not watching kids run excitedly to the railing to look over into the water and ooh and ahh at the airboats, not listening to Tori’s stories about how she’d saved a hawk with a broken wing or how her new litter of piglets was doing. Not having the chance to lean over and kiss Owen.
She was done thinking and worrying. She’d realized how good it felt to just feel. To just accept her emotions for what they were and to express them.
With that as her last thought, she leaned over, set her can down, and then turned to Owen. She opened her mouth, but she didn’t really have anything to say. He’d figure out what was on her mind quickly, she was sure.
She shifted to one knee and then moved onto his lap, straddling him. The foot that had been propped on his knee thunked to the floor and the hand not holding his beer went to her hip. She took his face between her hands, leaned in, and kissed him.
She felt so fucking good.
Owen tossed his nearly empty beer bottle over the edge of the porch so it would land on the grass and not break. He’d pick it up later. Right now, he needed both his hands free.
He gripped Maddie’s hips as she wiggled on his lap, pressing the center seam of her shorts against his. Her very loose, thin, cotton shorts. They didn’t mold to her ass like her denim ones did. They didn’t cinch in at the waist like her sundresses did. These were just lay-around-the-house-relaxing shorts. But he’d been turned on from the second he’d watched her come to a stop at the end of his front walk. Because it wasn’t about what she wore. It was just Maddie. She turned him on just by being. She’d come to his house to check on him. She’d snapped at his grandmother for not taking care of him. She’d just told him about her painting. All of that made it completely impossible for him to set her off his lap and out of reach the way he should. He needed to hold her, touch her, give her more good things to think about Autre. She wasn’t able to paint here. She wanted to paint. So he had to let her go. That seemed obvious to him. If there was something he could do to make Maddie happy, he’d do it. Period.
But he didn’t have to let her go yet. It wasn’t like she could get on a plane yet, tonight. He hadn’t talked to Sawyer and Josh yet.
His cock was already rising to the occasion and he was both grateful and annoyed by the thin material of his athletic shorts. Lightweight was great when he was running or doing yardwork in the middle of a Louisiana summer. It was not so great when he was trying to take his time and soak up every minute of being with Maddie. He could feel every bit of her heat against him, and it made him want to rip both of their clothes off and fuck her until the swing pulled loose from the ceiling.
He tried to pull his mouth away, to talk, to say something that would slow this all down. But she wouldn’t let him go. She pressed closer, squeezing him with her thighs, tightening her hold on his face. He loved that. He loved that she wanted this and was losing herself in the moment. But he wasn’t going to let her rush through this. They were going to take their fucking time.
Owen slid his hand to the back of her head and grasped her bun, pulling gently. She simply moaned and kept kissing him so he tugged a little harder.
“Maddie,” he said firmly as her head tipped back. “Slow down, babe.”
She tried to shake her head, but with his hand in her hair she couldn’t. “No. I want this. Please don’t stop again.”
Fuck. There was nothing he wouldn’t give this woman. Walking out of the office the other day had been a freaking miracle, and it was a display of willpower that he knew he would not be able to repeat. Especially if Maddie was going to beg him for something he could give her. Something he wanted to give her. There were so many things that he couldn’t fix for her. If she needed something in his power, he’d do whatever he could. And if what she wanted was to be kissed from head to toe and a hard, cry-his-name orgasm, he was absolutely the right guy for the job.
“I’m not stopping,” he told her. “Just want to savor you.”
She gripped his other wrist. “I really need you,” she told him, looking him directly in the eyes. “Please touch me.”
“Happily.”
“And I want you inside me, Owen,” she said, her voice soft and husky. “I really want…”
Sweet Home Louisiana Page 16