by Violet Duke
Caine did a double take. “What?”
“Max and Gabe were in here eating the other night, with your foster sister Lia and your foster brother Drew. It was your night off, and they had plans to go over to your place to hang out or something.”
That’s right, they’d wanted to have dinner—aka an intervention—but, darn, he’d already committed to a private security gig for a nearby high school that had needed two uniformed off-duty cops for a reunion. “I didn’t know they came here to eat first.”
“Yep. And they talked about you a lot all through dinner.” She gave him a sheepish grin. “I couldn’t help but overhear some things.”
He shrugged. “No big deal. I don’t think there’s anything they could say about me that I don’t already feel comfortable talking to you about in the first place.”
This time, the sound from Addison’s throat was a soft, surprised, pleased little ‘oh.’
And holy crap, did it pack a punch. Especially because it was accompanied by a quietly happy smile she valiantly tried to hold at bay by nibbling on her lower lip.
So focused was he on watching her alternate between teeth nibbles and swift little tongue swipes across that now plump lower lip, that he only managed to catch the tail end of what she said next.
“…Seriously, Gabe has got some serious game.”
What the hell? That jerked him back to the conversation. “Did the little prick hit on you?”
She laughed out loud then. “Gabe is nearly as tall as you are. There’s nothing ‘little’ about him.”
Caine felt his back molars grinding a little bit. He’d never once begrudged either of his brothers if a woman found them attractive. But because the woman in this case was Addison, he wasn’t just feeling resentful, he was feeling downright territorial.
It didn’t help at all that she and Gabe were close in age.
Suddenly, at twenty-nine, Caine felt like an old geezer in comparison. “Gabe has always been popular with the girls,” he warned, feeling a little bit like a shitty big brother for throwing him under the bus like that.
In all fairness, he’d never once felt compelled to do that before. Something about the woman made him…possessive.
Unapologetically so.
Addison nodded. “That sort of goes without saying. He left the diner with like three numbers that night.”
Caine rolled his eyes. Yeah, that was a regular occurrence with Gabe. Not because he was some sort of player. No, it was more like women just gravitated to his energy, and found themselves wanting to be his best friend within seconds, and half in love within minutes.
Mental note: Don’t ever agree to meet Gabe at the diner when Addison is working.
“Don’t get me wrong, your brother’s cute and all, but I’ve never been a big fan of the whole dating scene.”
“No?”
She shrugged. “Too busy working. Plus, I’m not into painting the town red, or even eating out, really. I’d much rather just curl up in bed with a library book and a bowl of cereal.” She laughed self-deprecatingly. “Boring, I know.”
An insta-fantasy of Addison in his bed immediately assailed his thoughts. And it was anything but boring. But strangely, not in a sexual way. More in a warm woman curled against his side on a Sunday morning way.
He admittedly liked that even better than a sex fantasy.
“Yeah, I’m a homebody too.” He glanced down at her lips again. “Does your boyfriend at least spoil you with some fancy wine and candlelit dinners when you eat in?”
Yes, he was fishing for information. Over the past month, he’d yet to learn anything beyond surface level details about her. She wasn’t closed off per se. In fact, she was like a happy-go-lucky, tell-it-like-it-is free spirit most of the time, but she was a locked book for sure when it came to her personal life.
Addison’s laugh in response to his question was borderline incredulous. “No boyfriend. And I’d much prefer a hotdog roasted on a fire stick over a fancy dinner with candle light and china.”
Music to his ears.
“Plus, I’m not quite old enough to drink, remember?”
Ouch. He could’ve done without the reminder that she was only twenty.
Humming as she finished taping up her final basket of Easter eggs on the wall nearest the cash register, she peered over at his mug. “Need a refill?”
Of the watery brown liquid Joe called coffee? Pass. But just like he’d been doing for the past four weeks, he swallowed back a few big bland gulps and smiled. “Maybe just one more.”
Addison brought the coffee pot over to top him off, before going over to do the same for the three other customers still remaining in the diner.
He watched in amazement as they happily guzzled down the stuff.
Seriously, he had no idea how folks kept drinking the ‘coffee.’ In his book, weak coffee ran somewhere in between warm beer and day-old milk. Especially since he drank it black.
“Sure you don’t want pie or anything for dessert?”
The piping hot crime against caffeine now temporarily forgotten, he frowned. “I probably shouldn’t.” A crying shame, really, because unlike the coffee, the food at Joe’s was killer, and the desserts were probably the best he’d had in years.
“If you tell me you’re trying to watch your girlish figure, I’m going to clock you on the head with this coffee pot.”
He chuckled. “For every pie you twist my arm into eating, that’s another few miles I have to run every day to work it off.”
“To get your body fat back down to zero percent?” she retorted dryly as she shot him a wholly unsympathetic headshake. “I don’t even eat the pies and I’d have to run an entire marathon to work off all the calories my hips somehow absorb by osmosis from working here.”
Hallelujah for science. The woman could wear the hell out of a tucked in t-shirt and a plain pair of jeans.
“Sweetheart, if I weren’t way too old for you, I’d do the ungentlemanly thing and tell you exactly how much I like the fit of your pants,” he teased gently, simultaneously giving her a backhanded compliment and himself a backhanded insult at the same time. That was a good combo; it’s been working well for them now that they’d gotten comfortable enough for him to kid about things like this.
A flash of heat fired in her eyes over his words.
Huh, had he gone too far this time?
She answered his unasked question by smacking him with a reply chock-full of sass, “Well, gramps, if you weren’t way too old for me, I’d do the hussy thing and tell you how much I like the fit of your pants right now.”
Well, this was new.
Putting a pin in the implications of what she was saying about her noticing the fit of his pants for a brief moment, he focused on the playful insult she’d just tossed his way. He sure as shit didn’t like it when the newbies at the station called him Gramps; hearing it from Addison’s mouth made him want to do something stupid like bench press a car.
Or kiss the hell out of her.
The alarm on his phone chose that exact second to go off.
Hells bells. Up until now, he’d liked working the midnight shift. It meant he could hang out with Addison until about eleven-thirty before heading in to work.
Tonight, he wanted more time.
“You better go before you’re late,” she said then, her voice back to business as usual.
Dammit.
It was possible he said that last bit out loud.
Because she walked up to him slowly then. If you could call what she was doing walking. She had a definite subtle sway to her hips that she didn’t normally have usually.
Jesus, that was some walk.
When she reached him seemingly an eternity later, she leaned over the counter.
And snatched his mug away.
“I wasn’t through with that.” Why the hell was he protesting? Oh yeah, because his throat was so parched just from watching her walk that he’d drink just about anything. He settled on his ice water
.
Meanwhile, she was busy pouring coffee from the pot with the green handle, not black for regular or orange for decaf. Interesting. He didn’t actually know what that third pot was for.
Before he could ask, she slid what looked like a big gulp sized to-go cup in front of him. Nearly the size of a carton of milk. Oh joy. “Thanks,” he said smiling appreciatively, even as he was mentally thinking of who he could give the cup of bland coffee to so it wouldn’t go to waste.
Addison’s lips twitched to the side. “This one isn’t Joe’s blend. It’s my personal one that I brew up just for me with the extra pot.”
He looked down at the piping hot cup and leaned in to take a whiff.
Lordy, that smelled good.
He took a wary swallow.
And groaned in bliss.
“Why have you never poured this for me before?” he demanded, gulping back seconds and thirds. The brew was strong, deep, and flavorful. Better than simply perfect, it was damn near dirty, it was so good. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“Yes,” she answered, looking more than a little guilty about that fact.
He studied her simpering features. “On purpose?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Criminy, this was better than foreplay. “So why now?”
She chewed on her lip and said softly, “Maybe I like you not being ‘gentlemanly’ for a change.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ADDISON COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d just said that to him.
And from his expression as he’d cursed when his second alarm had gone off, he was in even more gobsmacked disbelief than she was.
The interruption of a fellow officer stopping in for some coffee to take with him over to the station effectively extinguished any chance of them talking or doing anything really about her moment of female boldness.
It was a good thing too, because her cheeks felt like they were going up in flames, and her knees felt like they’d turned to jello.
It didn’t help one bit when Caine yanked the cup of coffee she’d just poured him away from his buddy like he wanted to keep the other man from even smelling it.
Lordy, why had she given him her personal blend? She’d caught on over the past few weeks that he didn’t like Joe’s coffee, and truth be told, she’d been tempted to pour him her personal blend before. But she hadn’t for the same reason why she suddenly decided today she should.
A lot could be read into that gesture.
Until now, the absolute last thing she needed, or wanted, was the complication of a guy in her life. In that regard, having Caine as her friend for the past month had been great. They’d talk, exchange quips that were juuust this side of flirting, and most important of all, leave everything in the diner.
Unlike his buddies at the station, he’d never once expressed an interest in asking her out. So she’d always felt…safe. To just be herself.
Herself around a man who was very likely cast from the same mold that served as the base model for all Disney movie heroes.
Tall. Eyes that were as dark as they were deep. A strong chin that could look menacing when paired with a frown, and just plain devastating when paired with a smile. A jaw that could undoubtedly crack crab claws with ease.
And a mouth specially designed for kissing.
The last observation was pure speculation of course. From what she could gather, she wasn’t the only one speculating about that fact. According to the gossip she heard on a regular basis in the diner—sometimes it was kind of nice that folks forgot waitresses had perfectly functioning ears—Caine was single, and seemingly uninterested in the women of Creek Hills.
He seemed plenty interested in you tonight.
Addison ignored the dangerous observation that kept popping into her head long after he went off to start his shift. Similarly, she ignored how insanely tickled that new development was making her.
Therein lay the path to the land of impossibilities.
A half hour later, she was still thinking about all the impossibilities of the situation as she finished up the last of her nightly post-closing duties. Per usual, she waited for the janitors to start on the floors before waving them goodbye and heading out. The twenty-minute window she had once the janitors started working on the floors was just enough time for her to slip out to the van unnoticed. She’d discovered that trick within the first few days working there, and it’d been working like a charm ever since.
With one more furtive glance around the tiny back lot that Joe only used for vendor deliveries and to park his own vehicle when he was here during the daytime, Addison climbed into the quintessential 80s camping movie van to turn in for the night.
It hadn’t taken long for Addison and the kids to come up with their daily routine. It all started with her waking up at four-thirty in the morning to drive out of the lot before the morning crew arrived at five. She’d drive over to the supermarket from there to pick up a few things. They couldn’t keep much in the cooler so the daily trips to the market was both a necessity, and a way for the kids to get another half hour of sleep in every morning. Next, she’d drive them to the community rec center one town over that opened at five-thirty every morning for the early bird senior citizens. Since her annual membership permitted her two family guests, that’s when she and the kids would shower, use the facilities, and brush their teeth, under the cover of their early morning exercise laps in the pool.
After eating breakfast together in the car while they deflated their air mattress and covered up all traces of their living in the van, Addison would drop the kids off at school at around seven, when a lot of their friends were already on campus playing and hanging out. Then, she’d head over to her day job at Bernadette’s until noon. She picked up Kylie at the grade school first, and then Tanner a block over at the middle school, then tried to do something fun with them for about two hours. Whether that was going to the park or the library, or just watching some internet TV on the tablet computer they all shared, she made a point to spend that time with them before heading over to the diner about an hour before her shift—never any earlier, to avoid any questions.
Since the diner was always pretty slow at that time, there was always a booth for the kids to sit in and do their homework while she fixed them a quick snack. Since Joe was hardly there anymore, Addison and Shirley pretty much ran the place in the latter half of the day so Addison would do some light managerial things in between helping the kids with their homework until her shift. The bit of paperwork here and there was a nice trade-off for the free snacks and dinners she got to feed the kids every day.
Then, when her shift would start, the kids kept themselves entertained until dinner, which she timed to be about a half hour before her dinner break started. That way, she could spend her break ‘taking them home’ every night, which basically just consisted of her driving around while the kids closed up the curtains in the back of the van, flipped all the rear seats down flat, inflated the air mattress, and got ready for bed. She’d park for a bit then and read Kylie a bedtime story without fail every night before heading back to the diner to finish her shift.
In the beginning, the kids used to need to watch TV on the tablet to fall asleep—thank goodness for Joe’s strong wi-fi signal and the dark as night blackout curtains they drew closed over the van windows every night. But now, they were out like a light before she even parked back in Joe’s lot.
Then they’d rinse and repeat. They spent the majority of their quality family time together on the weekends when she wasn’t working for Bernadette, and the kids were off of school, so really, the van was just a place where the kids slept. And it worked for them.
In actuality, she’d managed to save up quite a bit of money already, and she probably could’ve moved them to an apartment at the start of this year. But, there was always the fear that a neighbor or a landlord would call social services when they realized how young she was. Her plan was to save up more money by staying in the van until the summer, and th
en moving them all to an apartment. Tanner would be starting high school in the fall so it was a good time to make that transition.
He enjoyed running, weirdly enough, so she wanted him to go out for cross-country or track. Maybe that would lead to a scholarship for college, but even if it didn’t, she would work double shifts if she had to, to make sure he got to go. And her sister was still young, but if she wanted to dance ballet or do gymnastics in a few years, Addison wanted to have enough money saved up to make that possible.
The extra money also couldn’t hurt when it came time for her to file for full custody of the kids on her twenty-first birthday next January.
At that thought she turned to look at the two reasons why her age was a number that had no bearing on how old she was in life. She’d damn near raised both Tanner and Kylie.
Back when she’d been the only eight year old among her friends that was allowed to babysit a newborn, she’d just thought it cool. As the years went on, and she started figuring out that her mom wasn’t so much ‘letting’ her babysit as she was ‘needing’ her to babysit because she was high as a kite and drunk as a skunk.
Addison had never really had a chance to do the things that other kids her age had done. But she never regretted her life. Those kids were her entire world. And if she could give them the love and care that she never had growing up, she would move heaven and hell to make it so.
Sure, their life wasn’t typical, but she took good care of them. The only thing they lacked was a home that didn’t have four wheels under it, and a guardian over the age of twenty-one.
They’d been doing better than fine without either.
For that matter, when they’d had both of those ‘lacking’ factors of a home without wheels and a guardian over the age of twenty-one, their quality of life had been worse. Way worse.
Now, she never had to worry about drug needles on the ground or other traumatizing things for the kids to get exposed to.