But something was different… Her hair. It didn’t rest against the tops of her breasts anymore. She’d cut it clear to her chin in a sleek bob that Mia would have called “edgy.”
The most ludicrous vision played itself out in my mind—how easy it would be to slide up behind her, brush her hair away from her cheek, and run my lips along the delicate line of her neck. I shook my head to clear it. “Hey,” I muttered, hoping not to scare her.
She jumped anyway.
“Ooh! Grayson!” She turned, revealing a fitted apron that read Kiss the cook, which was longer than her sorry excuse for shorts. “You’re home!”
The words struck something in me, cracked open a piece of me that I thought I’d fortified a little thicker than that. But she looked like a better meal than the one on the stove, she was happy to see me, and she…she cooked for me. I was defenseless against that combo. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “You cooked?”
“Apparently.” She pointed the spatula up at the cabinet. “Grab the plates, we’re about ready to eat.”
“I always cook.” Wrong thing to say, you moron.
She arched an eyebrow. “Are you complaining?”
I shook my head. Why couldn’t she do something stupid? It was a hell of a lot easier to keep her at arm’s length when she was drunk on a bar. Well, until I’d pulled her into the very arms I was trying to shove her away with. But she’d been ready to topple over, guys ogling right up that tiny skirt, and it was either get her down or start swinging punches.
So naturally I’d climbed up onto the bar like any other rational roommate. Right, because Jagger was climbing up there, too. Roommate, my ass.
“Good. Then get the plates.”
“I should shower first.” I was still soaked in sweat from the gym. Where the hell was this self-consciousness coming from?
Her eyes raked down my frame with a healthy amount of appreciation. “Well, you have about five minutes before dinner starts getting cold.”
Maybe it had to do with me cranking the water temperature all the way to frigid, but I showered even faster than I did at home where I fought for shower time with four sisters. I made it back a minute after Sam’s deadline.
She pulled the shells from the oven as I took down two dishes, keeping my eyes on the cabinet and not the curves of her ass. Holy shit. Eight days with this woman and I was turning into a sex-starved perv. Sister. Treat her like a sister.
Yeah, only problem was I’d never wanted to jump one of my sisters. This attraction had to wear off, right? Sam tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Your hair looks nice,” I said carefully.
She fingered the ends of the strands. “Yeah? I found the only place in Enterprise with an opening. I just…”
“Needed a change?” I supplied.
She raised her eyebrows.
“My mother,” I explained. “She told me if a woman cuts her hair that much, she’s looking for a compliment or a change. I figured you didn’t really need a compliment.”
“I’m going job hunting again in the morning. They all want a college degree, so I haven’t found anything yet, but I haven’t given up. This guy I know told me to get my shit together, so I’ll find something. Anything.” She smiled, and my heart fucking stopped. Dead. Right there in the kitchen.
I remembered to breathe, sucking in air slowly, and gripped the plates. That pounding in my chest, I’d only felt it with one other woman in my life. Well, make that two, now.
“Only two?”
“What?” Was she reading my mind? Was I that obvious?
“You only took down two plates,” she said, motioning to my hands.
“Walker and Bateman are on late shift.” And we were alone.
“Doing what? You guys don’t even start your next classes for a couple weeks.”
“We still have to work. They’re rounding up SERE students running through the woods so they can get tortured.” Her eyebrows shot up, and I shrugged. “Practice. Just practice.” Survive Escape Resist Evade training had sucked. I didn’t envy the students getting rounded up.
I barely suppressed a groan as she bent over into the fridge, pulling out two hard ciders. Couldn’t she not bend over? “Then shall we?”
I shook my head, taking the cider she offered and slipping it back into the fridge.
“That’s right, you don’t drink,” she said, filling her tacos.
“I drink,” I countered, heat rushing up my arms where our skin touched at the stove. “I just have rules about it.”
She took the seat diagonal from me. “Rules. For drinking.”
I bit into a taco instead of answering her, groaning at the taste. “Wow.”
“Yeah, my mom likes Mexican food. It’s the only thing I do well, so don’t get used to it. Now about these rules?” She looked at me expectantly. Were it Walker or Bateman, I would have simply ignored the question, but there were circles under her green-rimmed hazel eyes, and something lurked in them that looked like loneliness. I was all too acquainted with what a bitch loneliness could be.
“I don’t drink outside the house. Ever. Not if there’s the slightest chance I’ll need to drive anywhere. I don’t drink if there’s no one else sober. And I don’t drink if I know I’m in a situation that requires me to be in complete control of myself.” I downed two more tacos and avoided her eyes.
“Do you have to control everything?”
“Yes.”
She leaned back in her chair, sipping on her cider. “Care to elaborate?”
“No.” I’d already told her more about myself than I’d ever told Walker or Bateman. I waited for the crushing guilt that usually pulverized what was left of my heart whenever I let someone close. After all, I was having dinner alone with a woman I was attracted to, shouldn’t that trigger the betrayal clause of my conscience? But none came. Odd.
She raised a single eyebrow and chased a drop of cider off her lip with her tongue. I shoved another taco in my mouth to keep it busy. “I’m trying to understand you…”
“Good luck.” Not today.
“I’ve got some of the pieces already figured out.”
“Oh?” This should be interesting.
“Right now I’m leaning toward narcissistic control freak, but the jury’s still out.”
I choked on my food and started sputtering. She calmly handed me my drink, and I swallowed the lodged pieces of my temper. “Narcissistic?”
“No one spends three hours a day at the gym for their health. Do you get off watching yourself in the mirror?”
“Do you get off dancing on bars for strangers?”
Her bottle slammed onto the table, and I bit my tongue so hard it almost bled. Shit, that came out all wrong. Why the hell couldn’t I control my mouth around this girl? I lifted for the same reason she drank—to silence the demons.
“Let’s adjust that first thought. Narcissistic control-freakish asshole”—she pushed back from table—“who is now doing the dishes.”
I fought every urge I had to apologize, to go after her. I had no business screwing up that girl’s life more than it already was, and there was no room for her in mine.
It was better this way.
I repeated that in my head over and over while I cleaned up dinner.
“When are you going to let me ink you, Masters?” Matt asked as he worked on one of Jagger’s hundred or so tattoos a week later. Two weeks of living with Samantha. Two weeks of being home as little as possible, and hence another trip to the tattoo parlor.
It didn’t stop my mind from wandering to her, and how sad she seemed. It was worse every day, and she wasn’t talking about it. As much as I wanted to keep the hell away from her, someone was going to have to get her to talk before she broke herself.
A girl not talking about her issues is a definite clue that it’s worse than she’s letting on. Constance’s sisterly advice ran through my head.
“Not happening,” I answered, flipping through my 5&9’s and stretching my legs
out from the plastic chair. “I’m just here to babysit.”
“Chicks dig it,” Jagger answered with a cocky grin.
“Not too concerned.” I flipped another card and looked at oil pressure limitations.
“Guys dig it, too,” Matt offered.
“Definitely not concerned,” I answered.
“You owe me $50,” Jagger whispered loudly to Matt.
I looked up at them over the cards, told Jagger with my look exactly what I thought about that idea, and went back to studying. I had to blink a few times at the jumble of words, so I closed my eyes. Time to break.
“Finished for today,” Matt told Jagger as he sprayed one of Jagger’s pieces down and wrapped him in saran wrap like leftovers.
He settled his bill, and we headed back home. “So how is sharing a bathroom with Sam?” he asked with a sideways look at me.
“Fine.” I was not going there with him.
“Her insane amount of hair stuff isn’t driving your OCD nuts?”
“I don’t have OCD.” I liked things neat. Orderly. In their place. Go figure, I was panting after the one woman who wouldn’t let me keep things that way. She left stuff everywhere.
“Right. Well, I’m glad you’re getting along.”
“I grew up sharing a bathroom with four sisters. I think I can handle some hair crap on the counter.” What I couldn’t handle? The way the bathroom smelled like her after a shower, all vanilla and caramel. I got a raging hard-on just walking in.
“She rattles you.”
I ignored him and stared out of the window, watching the outskirts of Dothan fly by as we reached the edge of the small city. If I couldn’t come to grips with the effect Sam had on me, I sure as hell wasn’t using it as bonding time with Jagger.
“I don’t mean to pry—”
“Then don’t.”
“She’s been through a lot lately.” His hands tightened on the wheel.
“Yeah, and she needs someone to get her back on her feet, not coddle her. She’s stronger than you give her credit for.”
“And you’re her person?”
“I’m not anyone’s person. But I do know what it is to mess up your life.” I couldn’t go back and fix mine. I was too far gone, my path concrete. But Sam’s? Maybe I could help with that, even earn a few karma points.
“Want to talk about—”
“No.” I looked back out the window as we stopped at the red light and—“You have to be fucking kidding me.” My hands morphed into fists, and I sucked my breath in through my teeth.
“Wow. I think I’ve heard you swear like…twice?” Jagger jerked his gaze to me, then back to the road as the light turned green.
“Pull the car over. Now.”
“At the strip club? Dude, I’m not sure now is the time—”
“Now!”
He swerved across the open lane and into the dirt parking lot in front of the small, ridiculously pink building. “Okay, well, you’re on your own, because Paisley will fucking kill… Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
He pulled into an empty spot. Right next to a bright yellow cabriolet with Colorado plates.
“What the hell do you think Sam is doing here?”
I’m going job hunting… “Nothing good. Go home. I got this.”
My feet hit the ground before Jagger killed the ignition. The Alabama heat matched my temper, both overrunning my senses. I swallowed back the immediate urge to rip the building to shreds and remembered that I didn’t have all the facts…yet.
I opened the door, and the bouncer stood, eyeing me up before stepping back. We both knew I could have destroyed him if I wanted to. “ID?” he asked.
I handed mine over, and he scrutinized it, reading over my name several times while I did the same to his club. A skinny blonde was up on stage, wearing a cowboy hat and not much else, gyrating to a Kid Rock song while a few leering scumbags drooled.
“Here you go,” the bouncer handed my ID back and tried to size me up.
My eyes adjusted to the dim lighting as I swept the club, spotting her sitting at the bar. Her skirt rode high on her thigh, and the guy she was talking to had definitely noticed.
“What experience do you have?” he asked, not noticing my approach.
“I took a year of pole classes back in Colorado, but only for exercise,” she answered, fingering a white piece of paper…an application. Fuck that. “I’d be a quick study at the bar, too.”
“Very nice,” the manager drawled, his eyes lingering on Sam’s cleavage, where her shirt was unbuttoned. “Let me give this a once-over and see what I can do.” He reached across to take her application, and she leaned back before he could brush up against her. He shot her a sick smile, then headed back behind the stage.
Something dark twisted in my stomach and threatened to erupt. Sam turned in her seat, offering me her profile as she watched the girl on stage. Her strong, sure facade slipped, and her swollen eyes turned dim. She looked like I’d felt the morning after…yeah, not going there.
I slid onto the barstool next to her, and her shoulders dropped. “What do you want, Grayson?”
“To get you out of here.”
“I’m on an interview.” Her spine straightened.
“This is your dream job?” What the hell was she thinking?
She threw me a look that clearly said I was an idiot. What? Like I was the one about to audition as a stripper?
“You know what I realized the last couple weeks? I have no money. My savings account can cover one last month of my cell phone bill. I have no job to make money. No college degree to get the job. Even the jobs that don’t need a degree? All full. I’ve spent three weeks searching out every job in Enterprise, Daleville, and Dothan. No one is hiring. I’m not going to freeload off of you guys while I figure out what the hell to do.”
“So this is what you want to do in the meantime? Work here?”
Her gaze hit the floor. “It’s the last thing I want. But these girls make a lot of money, and it beats the alternative of moving back in with my mother.”
“Well, as much as I’d love to see what that pole class taught you, this is not where you belong, Sam.” Shit. That is not what I meant to say. Not the first part, at least. The girl on stage hooked her leg around the pole and spun.
She raised her eyebrow and smirked, sending a jolt of electricity through me that settled in my dick. I shifted my weight. “Well, there’s no one here harping on me to put on more clothes.” She toyed with the buttons on her blouse.
It would have been hot as hell, if she was doing it out of genuine interest in me. But she was proving a point, and I knew it. “Samantha.”
She flicked a button open, enough to glimpse the lacy white material of her bra contrasting beautifully against the light mocha of her skin, but I kept my eyes locked on hers. “What’s wrong? Don’t think I have what it takes? Just because you’re immovable doesn’t mean I can’t turn on at least one of those guys.” She nodded her head toward the guys hovering at the stage.
Immovable? Good thing she didn’t have a clue.
“You could turn on a statue, Samantha, and I’m not immovable, no matter how much I wish otherwise.” Shut the hell up before you say something else that’s going to get you in trouble.
Her lips parted and her eyes widened slightly, enough to see her defenses slide down a little. “Why do you do that? Call me Samantha?”
The music shifted to Porn Star Dancing, and the manager whistled at Sam like she was a Labrador retriever. My fist clenched. Sam looked from me to him and back again, clearly torn.
“I call you Samantha to remind myself that you’re not just a roommate but a woman, and to make sure I don’t jump to the wrong conclusions about you like the first time we met.” When I assumed you were sleeping with my roommates. “Don’t do this.”
Her eyes flickered, showing the uncertainty, the doubt. “You don’t control me,” she whispered.
“I’m not stupid enough to think that
any force in this world could control you, Samantha. But I will remind you that in the last three weeks I have caught you off the kitchen counter and pulled you off a bar. That stage doesn’t scare me.” If she got anywhere close to it, I’d burn the damn thing to the ground without a second thought.
She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. “God, why is this so important to you?”
Because the thought of you taking your clothes off for money makes me want to rip every man in here to shreds for making it possible. “Because you’re in freefall, Sam. You can’t see it because you’re the one in mid-air. But you’re spiraling in the wrong direction.”
The manager waved his hands at Sam.
“I have to go.”
She hopped off the barstool, raised her chin, and headed for the stage. She didn’t make it two steps before I swung her over my shoulder. My fingers spread on the warm, bare skin of the back of her thighs to keep her still, and I tugged her skirt down to cover more of it. Then I grabbed her purse and headed for the door. “Grayson!”
“Hey, you can’t—” The bouncer stood in front of the door.
I glared at him, letting all of my fury show that a place like this even existed, and he stepped back. I pushed open the door and squinted as the dying sun hit me in the face.
“Fucking put me down, Grayson!” Sam shouted. Damn, she was loud. She braced her hands on my back, trying to get upright.
Her waist was tiny in my hands as I lowered her to my eye level. She was furious, her lips pursed and her eyes on fire. I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d take the fire over the defeat I’d seen in there any day.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she shouted in my face, uncaring that we were inches apart.
The girl didn’t back down, I’d give her that much. Now if she’d realize that I didn’t, either.
“Well?”
“Catching you.”
Chapter Six
Sam
“What the hell are we doing here?” I asked as we pulled up in front of Anytime Fitness. He hadn’t even trusted me to drive, and I’d gotten perverse satisfaction at his grunt when he tried to fold himself behind the wheel again. “And what’s the point of a twenty-four-hour gym? Who honestly works out at three o’clock in the morning?”
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