Hard Sell: A Bad-Boy, Rock Star Romance

by Savannah Skye

  At the time, he didn’t overthink it. Just a drunk kid showing a little sloppy appreciation. And she did end up puking on it a few minutes later. He never did see the jacket again, but every once in a while—okay, way more often than it should have--the memory floated to the forefront of his mind, and he couldn’t shake it.

  Like now.

  He watched her now as she moved around the yard, checking soil and tugging weeds with the comfort of someone who’d been doing it for a while. She straightened and then blew a lock of hair from her eyes.

  Lord, she was pretty.

  Part of him wanted to go out there now and set the record straight. Put his cards on the table and tell her, mistake or no, right or wrong, he wanted her. The other part wanted to forget it ever happened, because the way she’d made him feel with just a few kisses scared the shit out of him. It would be easy enough – he’d rib her a bit about her mix up the night before and then sweet talk her a bit. That, he was good at.

  What the fuck was he doing?

  He drew the blinds shut with a snap and picked his way back into the kitchen. He could have almost any woman he wanted. He sure as shit didn’t need to be the second place, consolation prize for Kitty Pepper, and he sure as shit wasn’t going to apologize for her trying to seduce him.

  From his toolbox, he dug out a putty knife and a bottle of solvent. It was time to turn his attention to Honey’s old, rooster-dotted wallpaper. It was yellowed with time and starting to peel at the corners. He used to despise this old wallpaper, but now he almost couldn’t bring himself to tear it down.

  Inhaling deeply, he swore he could still smell Yankee pot roast on it.

  He poured the chemical remover into a spray bottle and aimed it at the wall. It took half the bottle to coat the entire wall, and soon the smell of Honey’s cooking was masked by the awful stench of chemicals. As the awful yellowing paper began to roll up and disintegrate, an ache formed in his chest.

  He wasn’t just scrubbing the wall – he was destroying a thousand memories that were made there. Yeah, so maybe they weren’t all great. Like the day his mother had dropped them off without a goodbye and never came back. Or the day half the neighborhood had come to Honey’s house for sandwiches and casserole the day they’d buried her the year before. But dammit, she had given them their first real home here. One filled with hot meals, and hugs good night and stern warnings about being late. No matter how much trouble he got into, no matter how much he fought it, she’d loved him until he couldn’t help but love her back.

  And now they were selling her house.

  The grief that had been dulled over the passing of seasons came back sharp as ever, cutting cleanly to his core.

  Maybe this was a bad idea. Sure, Honey had told them not to hang on to it out of sentiment. She was practical to the core, and knew that with Rick’s job, he’d land in a big city eventually and Mike needed to be closer to the shop. And the realtor said it would be an easy sale in this neighborhood if they did a quick remodel. Rick even offered to give Mike a majority of the money they’d make off it for putting in the labor.

  But was the cash really worth throwing away the only reminder of the happy years of his childhood?

  “AHHHHHHHH!”

  Mike dropped his putty knife and nearly jumped out of his shoes. Kitty’s scream sent a chill up his spine. He sprinted to the front door and threw the door open to find her in the middle of the yard, high-stepping around like she was walking on hot coals, as five powerful sprinklers soaked her from head to toe with each pass.

  Shit. She’d told him a few days before to turn off the timer and he’d totally flaked on it.

  His lips twitched, and the ice that had formed in his gut began to melt.

  “Hey,” he called out from the deck, “no playing around on the job.”

  Kitty looked up, her makeup a runny mess and her red hair sticking in clumps to her face.

  “Fuck you, Mike,” she yelled over the jets of water slapping across her body as she scurried to get clear of the sprinkler. “You did that on purpose.”

  He tried not to laugh. He really did, but Jesus, it was funny. With all the tension between them after last night, what were the odds that something like this would happen when she was already so pissed at him? It was like Murphy’s Law and laughing was all he could do.

  “I swear, Kitty, I didn’t.”

  Her brows rose almost comically. She was clearly not buying it.

  “You expect me to believe that? This is just like you to do something to yank my chain after--” She broke off and bit her bottom lip, refusing to meet his gaze.

  The laughter died in his throat as he realized her feelings were actually hurt. “I swear I’m telling the truth. I forgot to turn the timer off.”

  She just crossed her arms around her chest, jaw clenched.

  “Come get on the porch, I’ll get you a towel.”

  After a few moments of searching through the nearly torn-apart house, he found a clean towel and hustled back to the front porch. But she was gone.

  Part of him wanted to go after her. Tell her that he would never do something like that to her, especially after last night, and wipe the hurt look off her face. But maybe that was the problem. They’d both already stepped one foot into a rabbit hole that led to nothing but trouble. Maybe if they pretended like last night never happened it would be better for both of them. Then they could go back to their regularly scheduled program of ball-breaking and she could go after Rick if she wanted him so bad.

  The thought left a sour taste in his mouth.

  “Oh, c’mon Kitty,” he yelled out. “I told you it wasn’t on purpose. You’re being overdramatic.”

  Nothing.

  “You’re not getting paid to mope around, you know,” he yelled in the direction of her house, figuring she’d gone back. That would get her pissed off and talking back, since she was hardly getting paid at all.

  “Hey, jackass,” she called from below.

  Mike ran to the side of the deck and looked over the railing. Before he could even comprehend what was happening, it was too late. Kitty stood there, feet spread apart like she was at the shooting range, aiming the nozzle of a water hose right at his head.

  “Suck on this, Mikey,” she crowed.

  With a pull of the trigger, water blasted out of the hose in a solid jet, hitting Mike square in the face. He choked and garbled down a mouthful of water.

  “God damn it!”

  He dropped the towel and leapt over the railing, sprinting full speed at Kitty. She laughed maniacally, spraying him from head to toe the whole way. Once he reached her, he grabbed hold of the hose and wrestled her to the ground, drenching both of them even more in the process.

  By the time the water stopped flowing, he was straddling her in the grass, the cold water running off his nose in rivulets onto her makeup-smeared face. Her lips parted in a wide grin.

  “You think this is funny?” he demanded. He tried to sound pissed off, but wound up choking with laughter.

  “Maybe,” she offered, “just a bit.”

  She wriggled beneath him and suddenly, the laughter stopped. Their eyes locked for what felt like an eternity. There was nothing but the two of them, wrapped in each other, both sopping wet and breathing hard.

  He let out a growl and bent low, sliding his hands into her hair. But just before their lips touched, her eyes went wide with panic. She shoved him hard on the chest and into a muddy flowerbed next to her.

  “What the hell?”

  “Sorry, Mikey,” she stammered, rolling to her feet. “Gotta go. I left…something on the stove.”

  Then, just as she had the night before, she practically sprinted to get away from him. Mike watched her go, trying not to focus on the sexy twitch of those hips beneath the soaked, second-skin shorts.

  She could run if she wanted to, but he knew one thing for sure, that he hadn’t known before.

  She wanted him.

  She knew he wasn’t Rick this time,
and she’d still wanted him for real. He could see it in her eyes. The way her pupils dilated when she looked at him. The hitch in her breath when their bodies had touched.

  And there was no question that he wanted her right back.

  He’d give her a little space. Let her think about him the way he’d been thinking about her, and then he’d make his move.

  Because little Kitty Pepper had put a stamp on him. And the only way he knew for sure to rid himself of it was to finish what they’d started.

  Chapter 5

  Three days later, Kaitlin lay on the couch watching the blades of her ceiling fan go round. She hadn’t been back to Mike’s since their near-kiss on his front lawn. If this wasn’t an awkward situation before that, it definitely was now. The idea of kissing him again scared her more than anything.

  What if she liked it even more than last time? She’d be a goner over a guy whose sole purpose in life to this point seemed to be messing with her for laughs.

  Meanwhile, her supposed actual crush was clueless, overseas, donating his time and care to the less fortunate.

  Still, there was work to be done. Promises to be upheld. And she was starting to get cabin fever.

  Sick of feeling sorry for herself, she dragged herself up to stand.

  Hard work would probably do her some good. She’d call Mike and tell him that she had been sick but that she’d be there to work tomorrow morning.

  No way he’d believe that.

  Okay, so maybe she would just call and air it all out. Tell him that she wasn’t thinking straight since her little mishap. He’d understand that. They had to talk about it, they couldn’t just ignore that there was this sexual tension that caused the air around them to buzz with a sort of static charge just three days prior.

  She’d finally convinced herself to pick up the phone when a knock sounded at the door.

  “Kitty? You home?”

  Shit.

  It was Mike. And she was wearing her Daffy Duck t-shirt and a pair of plaid boxers.

  “Uh, just a minute,” she yelled at the door.

  Her body went into autopilot as she stormed through her bedroom like a tornado, yanking off her clothes as she went. She slipped on the sexiest bra she owned that was clean – a teal, lacey number. On top of that, she threw on a midnight blue, deep-v shirt that accented both her eyes and her cleavage. A matching thong and a pair of black leggings were next.

  No big. She would’ve done the same for any guest.

  “Take your time,” he called from her porch. “I’ve got plenty of beer and pizza out here to last me through the night.”

  The next ten seconds were spent deciding whether to wear her hair up or down. She finally gave up, threw it in a ponytail and slicked on some peach lip-gloss.

  She looked in the mirror. Not bad. From pajamas to perky in three minutes. Satisfied, she half-jogged to the door and swung it open.

  Mike stood there with a smile, a six-pack of beer in his left hand and a large pizza in his right. And boy did he look good. His thick, black hair gleamed in the fading sunlight. He wore a black t-shirt that barely contained his ink-covered, sun-kissed muscles and a smile that made her tummy ache.

  “Truce? I haven’t seen you leave the house in three days. So I thought I’d come feed my landscape designer before she starved to death,” he said.

  Kaitlin returned the smile. “I know, I’m so sorry. It’s just…I--”

  “No, I’m sorry,” he cut in, “I shouldn’t have put you in that position again after what happened the night before. And I swear I didn’t turn the sprinklers on you. Even if it was god damn funny.”

  She waited for the humiliation to come with his teasing words, but it never did. “Yeah, I guess it was pretty funny,” she said with a grudging smile. “Well, come on in.” She gestured to the living room.

  “Man, it feels like forever since I’ve been in this house,” he said as he stepped into the foyer.

  “It has. Not since I graduated and you and Rick took me out to the bars,” Kaitlin reminded him.

  She led him into the living room and motioned for him to set the pizza on the table.

  “I’ll get some plates.”

  When she returned, Mike had cracked open a couple of beers. He handed one to her and they each took a slice. For the first time since she’d gone over in her trench coat, she felt like she could breathe. She couldn’t say why she felt so relieved that she hadn’t driven a permanent wedge between them with her actions the other night, but damn it, she did.

  “I love Roberto’s pizza,” she murmured, before closing her teeth around a bite. The tangy tomato sauce and gooey cheese hit her tongue and she moaned with pleasure. “Sooo good. I haven’t had it since high school,” Kaitlin murmured between bites.

  “Yeah, I used to cut class so I could get lunch there every Friday,” he admitted with a grin.

  “I wish I’d cut class more. High school sucked,” she admitted, taking a sip of the icy beer he’d brought.

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “For you, maybe!” she said with a laugh. “I mean, you graduated my Junior year, but I still never stopped hearing rumors about your sexual conquests until the day that I graduated. Every guy I met in my grade or below me asked if I knew you when they found out I lived next door to the Blade brothers.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “It’s true,” Kaitlin said, matter-of-factly. “Every guy in your class wanted to be you, and every girl in school wanted you. I mean, you slept with half the girls in school. They couldn’t stop fawning at your feet.”

  Mike took a swig of his beer and shook his head. “Those rumors are greatly exaggerated. I really didn’t sleep with that many girls in high school.”

  “I bet.”

  “I may have gotten around some, but it wasn’t because I had some twisted desire to fuck my way through school. I just never found anyone I liked enough to stick with them.”

  Kaitlin wolfed down another slice of pizza. Until then, she hadn’t realized just how hungry she was. “I see,” she said, “commitment issues, huh?”

  Then it dawned on her. How could she be so stupid? Of course he had commitment issues. His drug addict mother dumped him and his brother off on his grandma’s doorstep when they were just ten years old. Loneliness and loss had to be an all-too-familiar feeling to him. Could she really blame him for not wanting to risk experiencing that feeling again? If that had happened to her, she’d probably feel the same way. She was trying to figure out how to backpedal, but he seemed unfazed.

  He polished off the rest of his beer and set the empty bottle on the table. “Yeah, I guess. You were pretty much the only girl I was even friends with all four years.”

  The fluttering in her stomach, the same dizzy feeling she had when they nearly kissed three days ago, started up again.

  “Why me?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know. You just weren’t like them. You were real. And I liked you as a person. I would never have tried to sleep with you – I didn’t want to ruin the weird but fun relationship we had.”

  He caught her gaze with his dark, mesmerizing eyes.

  “Plus, I guess I always figured you had a thing for my brother,” he said, cracking open another beer and handing it to her.

  She thought long and hard about that notion. Maybe she had started out with a plan to go there and seduce Rick, but that seemed like a million years ago now. Had part of her known all along? Because all she thought about since then was Mike. He haunted her dreams and her days were filled with thoughts of what might have been if he hadn’t stopped her.

  Kaitlin pulled another swig of the beer, wondering if she was already tipsy or if being around Mike was making her feel this way.

  “That might have been so,” she said. “But where was Rick when that guy was picking on me on the bus that time and you punched him in the stomach? And where was Rick and his coat when I was freezing that night we did the pub-crawl? The night you kissed me?”


  “I mean, really, you were the one kissing me that night. And you were drunk. We both were.”

  “Doesn’t mean I didn’t like it,” she shot back.

  Jesus, who was she right now? She must be buzzed if she’d said that out loud.

  “Is that so?” he asked, raising a single eyebrow.

  “Maybe.” Her tongue felt thick and fuzzy as her pulse stuttered.

  “If you liked it so much, then why did you run off the other night?” Mike asked, his voice all grit.

  “I’m not sure,” she said honestly. “I guess I was scared. And embarrassed.”

  But tonight, there wasn’t a shred of that embarrassment left. In fact, she felt bold. Wild. A little crazy.

  For Michael Blade.

  Heat radiated from her center outward until every nerve-ending stood on end.

  Sure, it would just be tonight. He was too much man to tame, and the last thing she wanted was to live the kind of life her mother had lived, always watching over her shoulder for the next woman out to steal her all-too-easy-to-steal man.

  But tonight?

  Tonight she knew exactly what she wanted, and he was sitting right next to her with the sexiest smirk she’d ever seen. And when he put his muscular, ink-covered arm around her to draw her in closer, she didn’t pull away.

  “I’m not embarrassed anymore, though,” she murmured.

  He lifted her up effortlessly and set her onto his lap, so that she was straddling him. He grabbed her by the ass and pulled her in tight to his rock hard body.

  “Then prove it.”

  Chapter 6

  The smell nearly did him in, same as before. Sweet and light and sexy, just like Kitty. He breathed her in before he traced her mouth with the tip of his tongue.

  She shivered in his arms and his cock pulsed. She was so free, so open with her responses, it humbled him.

  Her arms snaked around his neck and she plastered her chest against him as she sealed her lips to his. The blood pounded in his ears as their tongues tangled in a dance as old as time.

  He clutched her hips, pinning her closer, letting her feel the weight of his want, and she groaned. Her soft hand slipping between their bodies and she closed it gently over his straining seam.