by Lucy Score
“Yeah,” Beckett agreed, pulling on his sweatshirt instead. He picked up the block that he had ended up relying on like a lifeline and put it back on the shelf.
“Is this your last class tonight?”
She glanced up from his newly laundered mat, eyes trailing a little slower over his bare chest. “It is. You are free to go shower and drink several beers.”
“Is that what you do after class?” he teased.
“Shower, yes. One beer and usually a giant dish of mac and cheese or something equally unhealthy.”
Beckett’s stomach growled in response. A shower beer and dinner were in his future, he decided.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Beckett offered. Now that he was recovering some of his energy, he was reluctant to leave her. Especially since he’d be leaving her with the image of him barely conscious drowning in a pool of his own sweat. He could do better and perhaps recover a bit of his pride.
“Thanks, but I walked,” Gianna told him, grabbing her bag from one of the cubbies along the back wall.
He felt a pang when she tugged a hoodie over her tank top. She had a beautiful body. One that demanded attention, even from the near dead. “I’ll walk with you.”
She eyed him for a moment. “Okay. That would be nice.”
Beckett waited by the front door while she turned off the studio lights and together they exited into the cool October evening.
“Which way are you?” he asked.
She slid her key into the lock and pointed to the left.
“Me, too. We must be neighbors,” Beckett commented, as they started down the sidewalk.
“Imagine that,” Gianna said, with an amused look.
Beckett threw his sweaty t-shirt over his shoulder. “How do you like Blue Moon so far?”
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “Everyone’s so warm. I love that my kids will grow up knowing their neighbors and walking to school.”
“You have kids?” Beckett immediately looked down at her left hand. No ring.
She shot him an amused look. “Two kids and an ex-husband. You?”
“Zero kids and no ex-husbands.”
Gianna laughed. “Any wives? Current or past?”
They walked past Karma Kustard and Beckett waved to Pete the owner who was manning the counter.
“None. The Pierce brothers take our bachelorhood seriously. Well, we did until recently.” He thought of Carter with his Summer.
“How many of you are there?” Gia asked.
“Three. I’m the good-looking one.” He winked.
She rolled her eyes and tugged the hair band out of her thick, auburn curls letting them tumble down her back. “You must be the middle child.”
“How did you guess?”
“Like recognizes like.”
“You’re the middle, too?”
She nodded, tossing her hair over her shoulder and he caught a whiff of lavender. “I’ve got two sisters.”
“Are you close?” he asked. He wondered if they looked like her. Gianna was a head turner. He couldn’t imagine two more of her.
“Not geographically, I’ve got one bouncing around South Carolina and one in L.A., but we talk and email constantly. How about you and your brothers?”
He thought of Carter and Jax. Close was a good word for his relationship with them, especially now that they were all back home and starting a business together. “We’re pretty close. So two kids, huh?”
Gianna nodded and stuffed her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie. “Yeah, they’re pretty great. I’m hoping to be half the parent my dad was while I was growing up. If I can accomplish that, I can do anything,” she sighed.
“How about your mother?” Beckett asked.
Gianna shrugged. “She left us years ago. My sisters and I were in our early teens, so you can imagine what gems we were then. But Dad hung in there and figured out how to fill both roles. He never once let us feel like it was our fault or that what we wanted wasn’t important.”
“He sounds like a good man.”
“As close to sainthood as you can get,” she nodded. “Your parents?”
Beckett caught a glimpse of his disheveled, sweat-soaked hair in the next storefront window and scrubbed a hand through it. Next time he saw Gianna it was going to be in a suit after a shower, he promised himself.
“My dad was great. He put his heart into everything he did. He was never too busy for anyone who needed help.” Beckett could still call up a hundred memories of his dad setting aside everything to have a conversation, to lend a hand, or just answer his incessant questions as a five-year-old.
“He sounds wonderful,” Gianna said, guiding them off of Main Street.
“He was. He died five years ago.”
“Still miss him.” It wasn’t a question, but an acknowledgement.
“Every day,” Beckett nodded. It was true. There wasn’t a day that went by without his thoughts turning to John Pierce.
“And your mother?” Gianna asked.
Beckett felt the familiar warring emotions of love and frustration that bubbled to the surface every time he thought of his mother the past few months.
“She’s great,” he said, keeping it at that.
They turned down another tree-lined street where the streetlights were spaced further apart. “Do you live on this street?” he asked her, frowning.
Gianna nodded and smiled. “I do. It’s such a great neighborhood.”
“I know. It’s my neighborhood.”
“Well, this is me.” Gianna stopped on the sidewalk, her eyes sparkling.
“This isn’t you. This is me. I live here,” Beckett argued. The realization hit him as the words came out of his mouth.
“Hi, neighbor,” Gianna said, cocking her head to the side.
“You’re my new tenant.” He was a dumbass. A complete and total dumbass and Gianna had the pleasure of witnessing his idiocy over and over again.
She nodded. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually.”
He had literally walked her to his own doorstep before realizing it. He was slipping. Yoga must have destroyed his brain.
“Ellery took care of the paperwork and your check while I was out of the country,” he said, slowly piecing it all together.
“She did. She’s a pretty amazing asset, by the way,” Gianna said.
“She is.” And his amazing asset had probably assumed he introduced himself to his new tenant when he came home. In fact, if he hadn’t been daydreaming about the redhead before him he probably would have heard Ellery telling him Gianna was his tenant. Her “good fit” comment suddenly made a lot more sense.
“How long have you known?” he winced.
Gianna looked like she was enjoying herself. “Since you introduced yourself at the ribbon-cutting. What kind of tenant would I be if I didn’t know my own landlord’s name?”
Shit.
“You’re my tenant.” He said it again as the implication settled. It didn’t matter how attractive he found Gianna Decker. They had a professional relationship that must be maintained.
“This is —”
“Complicated,” she finished for him. “You’re lucky, Mr. Pierce, that I’ve sworn off complications and mistakes. Because, otherwise, I would have found you irresistible.”
“Irresistible how?” Beckett asked before he thought better of it.
Gianna stood on her tiptoes and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. “Thanks for walking me home, Beckett.”
She turned away from him and followed the walkway around the side of his house to the backyard.
Beckett touched his cheek and frowned after her. It was the second time she had kissed him and he wasn’t going to lie. It wasn’t enough.
“What’s with the dopey grin?” Evan demanded when Gia let herself in the front door.
“I don’t have a dopey grin. I have a self-satisfied grin. That’s totally different,” she corrected him.
“Whatever,” he sighed, and went back to his
homework at the dining table.
“How’s it going?” Gia asked, settling in next to him.
He shrugged his shoulders and frowned at the book in front of him.
“What do you think about school here so far?” Gia opened her water bottle and drank deeply.
Evan shrugged again. “It’s okay, I guess.”
“Is it a lot different?”
“There’s a girl in my class named Oceana,” Evan said, refreshing the screen of his tablet. He scrolled through some pictures and opened one. “This is her.”
Gia peered at Oceana’s school photo on the screen. In any other town in America, the perky little blonde would have been a cheerleader. In Blue Moon, she wore a hand-crocheted vest and lived on a sheep farm.
“This town is weird,” Evan announced.
“I agree. Weird good or weird bad?”
“Mostly weird good. I guess. Like the teachers don’t make us sit too long and stuff. They make us take stretching breaks, kind of like your classes. But the lunches are weird bad. At my old school we had pizza and nachos and stuff. Here they have this quinoa casserole crap.”
Gia swallowed a laugh. “Maybe we should look at packing your lunch a couple days a week?”
Evan nodded. “I think that would be for the best.”
“Your dad call tonight?” Gia asked, taking another drink of water.
“Nope.”
She automatically squashed the annoyance and the desire to make an excuse for Evan’s father. She and Paul had worked out a call schedule that promised the kids reliable, consistent communication with their father so he could stay up on what was happening with them.
And as was typical with her ex-husband, he continued to flake out on them, blissfully unaware of the damage that his inconsistency and lack-of-presence did to their little family.
Gia changed the subject. “How was Rora for you tonight?”
“She was good. She only made me watch two episodes of that dumb whiny cartoon.”
Gia rolled her eyes heavenward. “She has to grow out of that show eventually, right? Every time it’s on I want to put a frying pan through the TV.”
“Yeah.” Evan rewarded her with a small smile.
“So, listen. This was my last Friday night class. I have another teacher who is going to take over the time slot. So that means just Tuesday and Thursday night classes for me. How do you feel about being Aurora’s official, compensated guardian on those nights?”
Evan leaned back and crossed his arms. His hazel eyes narrowed. “What kind of compensation are we talking?”
“For watching your sister from 5:30 to 7:30 I’m prepared to offer you five dollars.” She purposely low-balled him.
“Fifteen,” he countered.
“Ten.”
“Deal,” he said extending his hand.
She shook it solemnly. “And if you need a night off to do school work or hang out with friends or build creepy robots — whatever it is kids your age do — let me know and I’ll have Grampa watch Rora.”
“Robots? Seriously, Gia?”
Gia held up her hands. “Hey, whatever floats your boat. No judgment.”
“You fit right in with the rest of these weirdos,” he told her.
She jumped out her chair and put him in a headlock and covered the top of his head with noisy kisses. “I’m totally changing your name to Compost Heap Decker,” she told him. He put up a struggle, but his laughter prevented him from wiggling free.
His sandy hair needed a trim, Gia noted. But they had worked out a deal back when he turned ten that he was in charge of haircut decisions.
“Hey, I was going to make an appointment to get my hair trimmed. I saw this crazy place called The Grateful Head. Let me know if you want an appointment. That’s a play on a band, by the way.”
Evan leveled the haughty gaze of a twelve-year-old at her. “I know who the Grateful Dead are.”
Of course Paul Decker’s son would know the Grateful Dead. Paul’s finest gift to his children was a deep and abiding appreciation of music.
“Good, then I don’t have to tell your dad that your brains are being consumed by pop artists and you want a life-sized One Direction poster for Christmas.”
Evan had the good sense to shudder. “Dad would disown me.”
“I’m going to grab a shower and warm up some mac and cheese,” Gia said, rising. “You want any?”
“I guess I could go for some.”
“Awesome.” She started for the stairs. “Heavy carb date in ten minutes and you can show me how to use the calendar app on my phone.”
“Again?”
“It’s not ‘again’ if it’s a brand new app. I didn’t like the other one. This one has cool colors and alarms that sound like the ocean.”
“I’m changing your name to Too Many Calendar Apps Decker,” Evan called after her.
Once in the bathroom, Gia turned on the shower and reached for her phone. She dialed, took a deep, cleansing breath, and brought her phone to her ear.
“Hey, Cinnamon Girl.” The sound of her ex-husband’s voice simultaneously brought a smile to her lips and irked the hell out of her. It was the story of their relationship, being repeatedly charmed and disappointed by a man who refused to grow up.
“Hey, Paul. Did you forget something today?”
“Oh, man! Is it Friday again, already? I was so amped about this new gig I totally forgot.”
“A new gig?” she asked, immediately regretting it.
“I’m filling in with this band at the casino for the next few weeks. Their drummer’s having some legal troubles.”
“Legal troubles?”
“House arrest for possession,” Paul amended. “His loss, my gain. Can you put the kids on? I’ll say hi now.”
“Aurora’s been in bed for half an hour,” she reminded him.
“Right, right. How about Ev?”
“Listen Paul, I don’t want to just hand him the phone and tell him it’s you. He needs to know that you care enough to remember to keep your word when it comes to him.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
She was losing him. She could feel it. He was getting sucked into whatever video game or YouTube video he would obsess over until something shinier caught his attention.
“I need you to hang up with me and call Evan on his phone. And don’t tell him I called you first.” She said it slowly and carefully, as if instructing a toddler.
“Gotcha.”
“And make it a video chat this time. It’s been a while since he’s seen you.”
“Sure. No problemo.”
She could envision him nodding into the phone.
“Okay. I’m hanging up now and you’re going to call Evan on his phone.”
“I got it, G. Consider it done. Oh, listen. The support payment is going to be a little light this month, okay? Things are going down at work.”
Gia closed her eyes and took another deep breath. If his child support payments dried up again she was going to have to look for a second job. Again.
“I can hear you doing your ‘don’t freak out breathing’ thing,’” he teased her.
“We’ll talk about the support some other time, okay? Call your son.”
“I’m on it. Good talking to you.”
“Bye, Paul.”
Gia waited until she heard Evan’s phone ring downstairs before pulling off her clothes and stepping under the steaming water.
5
A long run early Saturday morning made Beckett reluctantly aware of how loose and energetic his body felt. He refused to attribute it to the yoga he’d endured the night before or the beautiful sadist who guided him through it. It was most likely the aftereffect of a nice, sunny vacation, he decided.
After a strong cup of coffee and his usual protein shake, Beckett decided to spend the rest of the morning catching up on work. But try as he did to focus on asset allocations for the Petrovic family and Pete McDougall’s permit request for a custard truck, he found his t
houghts returning to Gianna.
He was attracted to her. There was no doubt about that. He wasn’t blind. Physically she was stunning. She was little, petite. But what she lacked in height, she made up for in sinful curves. And that face. A sprinkling of freckles on flawless ivory and green-gray eyes that always seemed to be laughing at some unspoken joke. Her wide smile warmed rooms while accentuating the sweet dimple in her chin.
He found her intriguing.
She was nothing like his usual type. The women he dated were refined, restrained even. Focused on their careers, they had an appreciation of life’s little luxuries. They wore tailored suits and spoke fondly of Italian vacations and the literary works of Marcel Proust and Joan Didion.
Gianna did not fit neatly into that category.
Not with her body-hugging spandex, wild curls, and the energy that sparked out of her. He bet she curled up at night with trashy novels and didn’t even own a suit.
Yet the attraction for him had been instantaneous. There was power in that compact, curvy body. And that was as captivating as her physical beauty. She was strong and vibrant, making the memories of the women he’d always dated take on muted pastel shades.
She had kids. Kids meant complications, kids meant serious, neither of which Beckett was interested in. His best course of action was to avoid his new tenant as much as possible.
Beckett scrubbed his hands over his face. He needed to get out. Get a little distance from the wicked temptation in his backyard. While putting together his lunch he’d actually stood at his kitchen window for ten minutes, hoping for a glimpse of her red hair.
He scrawled his signature across a document, hit send on an email, and dropped a stack of papers on Ellery’s desk.
He’d pay his brothers a visit and check on the construction at the brewery. That would keep his thoughts from Gianna.
Beckett found his brother’s girlfriend, Summer, putting groceries away in the sunny kitchen of the farmhouse. “Hey there, gorgeous,” he said, greeting the stylish blonde with a kiss on the top of the head.
“Beckett!” Her wide blue eyes lit up and she pulled him down for a hug. “How was the Dominican?”
“Beautiful, sunny. Paradise.”
“Ugh,” Summer groaned, shaking her ponytail. “I’m so jealous. Between the move, the magazine launch in January, and the brewery construction, we won’t be able to leave the county let alone the country for years.”