Once more uneasy, Sloane reconsidered that quick getaway. She could race to Eli’s, pack up their things, put Boo in her car, collect Paige at daycare, and then—
It was the “and then” that stumped her.
“The child stole all these things,” Lara was saying, and Sloane imagined she indicated the Paydays and Milky Ways and the packets of gum. “It’s not right.”
Eli sighed. “Okay, but—”
“The first time I let it go,” Lara said over him. “I saw her taking one bar from the display by the register and told her to put it back unless she had a dollar to pay for it.”
“I appreciate you taking your responsibility so seriously—”
“She walked out and then she snuck back in, filled the pocket of her sweatshirt and then tried walking out again, as cool as you please.”
No, Sloane wanted to correct her. Annie wouldn’t have been cool at all. She would have been quaking on the inside and not even sure what exactly prompted her to steal. Real hunger, a desire to have something others could so easily obtain, a need to hoard a treasure of her very own, some combination of all three.
Eli sighed. “Lara, I think we can—”
“I think we can’t,” the woman said. “I think we should call the police and scare this little miscreant straight.”
Call the police.
Scare this little miscreant.
Call the police.
Call the police call the police call the police.
The echo became so loud that Sloane couldn’t hear herself think. Her hands started to shake and then her legs began moving, slowly at first and then faster, taking her down the hall and toward the exit. Out of the building that was keeping the ugly memories much too close.
Call the police.
Eli may have summoned her back, but she didn’t stop, she kept moving blindly, pushing past the double doors and then sucking in cool air as she kept going, nearly running now. Trying to outpace her past until she had her distress shut down, boxed up, and finally shoved back into the far corner of her head where it was supposed to stay. Likely only minutes passed, but when calm returned at last, she discovered herself far from the nursery building, half hidden in a makeshift grove of mature palm trees whose roots were boxed and ready for transplant.
With no one else in sight, she took in a few more steadying breaths, trying to recall exactly why she’d come to the nursery in the first place.
Oh, yeah. Hoping to hear she could move back to her house. Instead, she now found herself homeless, and not for the first time—but in this case she had a toddler and a dog to look after besides herself. Before that had a chance to sink in, she saw Eli winding through the rough trunks and around the spread of the palm fronds until he came to stand before her, his hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans.
“You found me,” she said, under his steady gaze now mortified by her unplanned flight. Where was a convenient hole to sink into?
He glanced over his shoulder. “One of my guys spotted you.” His hand slid from his front pocket and reached behind him, into another. He produced a Butterfinger bar and held it out.
The only choice seemed to accept it. “As a way of sweetening the bad news?” she asked lightly, unwrapping the bar and then taking a bite.
He watched her chew and swallow. “Is it working?”
She ignored his question for one of her own. “Did you pay a dollar for this?”
“I bought them all, and gave them to Annie and the rest of her group. Except this one, that is. I saved it for you.”
She forced herself to take a second bite, chewed, and swallowed again. “I loved candy as a kid. I’m lucky I had teeth by time I was eighteen and saw my first dentist.”
He nodded, as if absorbing the information. Then both hands swiped through his hair, tucking the long strands behind his ears. “Sorry you had to see all that. Back in my office.”
“Did you call the police?” She pretended a great interest in the plastic wrapper.
“God, no. I did have a chat with her group leader and put in a call to the administrator of the after-school program—not to complain,” he added quickly. “I asked them to make sure Annie’s home situation is…stable.”
Sloane could practically guarantee it was not, but she declined to share.
“And Lara…” Eli grimaced. “I talked with her, too, about her reaction. Those candies…she has them by the registers and the money collected goes to the Special Olympics. It’s a cause very dear to her heart. But she won’t do that again.”
“Situation managed, then,” Sloane murmured, and folded the wrapper over the uneaten section of the Butterfinger and tucked it into her purse. Chocolate didn’t go well with an agitated stomach. “I should be on my way.”
“Why’d you run?”
She started, not expecting the bald-faced question. Her head came up, her eyes meeting his. “I…”
“What bothered you most?”
“I was Annie, once,” she heard herself confessing, and felt almost relief. “I…an older boy from our apartment complex convinced me to shoplift candy for the both of us from the corner store on occasion. Until the time I was caught.”
“And he left you holding the bag?”
“I was the one with the contraband. The clerk called her boss and he insisted she phone the police.”
Sloane remembered the humiliation of waiting for their arrival by the door, the clerk standing over her to prevent an escape. Patrons came and went in the few minutes it took for the cruiser to pull into the parking lot and if anyone had pitied scrawny, six-year-old Sloane, she hadn’t seen it on their faces.
“They took you to the station?”
She shook her head. “No. Looking back, they were pretty decent about it. They walked me to the apartment where I lived with my grandmother and explained to her what I’d done.”
Eli had gone still. “Were you punished?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking.” Realizing she still wore his jacket, she made to remove it, shrugging to slip the denim free in preparation for taking her leave.
But the man stepped close and caught the fabric, resettling it on her shoulders. Then he left his hands there, their warmth seeping through the fabric to her bones. “Which way was it then?”
Sloane glanced down at her feet, keenly aware of how he saw her. As a single mom, who may have had some rough patches during childhood and who was now temporarily down on her luck. But at this moment, he probably didn’t consider her beneath him. A few words, and she could change all that. The neutral expression in his gaze would transform to…what?
Nothing cruel or cold or indifferent, that wasn’t Eli King. But pity would suck too. Perhaps, even worse, she would see in his eyes embarrassment on her behalf.
But maybe that, finally, would kill the crush.
Not a terrible trade-off, she decided. With it dead and gone she could more easily move out of his house and move on with her life.
Steeling herself, she looked up. God, he was handsome. The errant thought flit through her brain as she took in his etched cheekbones and the dark, feathery lashes. Maybe she’d have to report him to his sister Molly, because there was a distinct stubble on his jaw. Yet it only served to make him look more masculine to her. More attractive.
As appealing as the warm light in his eyes.
That she was about to extinguish. She hauled in a breath.
“Sloane?”
“After the police officer left, my grandmother told me if I stole again, I would be sent to prison with my mother and father.”
He didn’t blink. “Your parents were in prison?”
She nodded. “I’d seen them only a handful of times and they terrified me, made me more scared than my grandmother who didn’t hide the fact she considered me an inconvenience and an expense, a burden she’d be happy to toss out the door the instant I became of age. I think she only felt obligated to keep me around because Sloane was her maiden name.”
His
expression didn’t change. “Shit,” he said.
“Yeah.” She nodded, her chest filling with concrete and her throat constricting. “It’s weird for kids when Mommy and Daddy are the nightmare monsters.”
His fingers tightened on her shoulders. “Sloane, I—”
“That’s why I had to get away from your office. When I saw Annie, it brought things back. And it reminded me of how much I…I want for Paige.” At her daughter’s name, her control broke. She closed her eyes, moisture leaking out the sides, aware she was missing whatever change her words and her tears—tears that she never, ever allowed herself—wrought in Eli. Before she could dash the moisture away, he drew her in, holding her close to his chest so that his heart thumped against her cheek. She twitched, a first attempt to break his hold, but his arms only tightened on her.
“What the hell am I going to do with you, Sloane?” he murmured.
“You’re going to let me go,” she said, speaking into his T-shirt. Forever she’d remember the scent of him, the security of his solid grasp. “You’re going to let me get out of your life.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option,” he said, his mouth moving against her hair. “Your home is at my house for as long as you need to be there.”
She squeezed her eyes tighter shut and refused to yield. “No. I don’t need you feeling sorry for me.”
“It’s nothing to do with you, Sloane. I’m compelled because Boo needs a safe space. And Paige. Maybe I’m even insisting because of Baby Sally. I’m a little afraid of dolls, you see, so she’ll play a big part in my exposure therapy. Does Paige have others, by the way? How about Barbies? You gotta know they’re always silently throwing shade and I’d like to up my game and learn to ignore all that.”
Though it sounded a little watery, Sloane started to laugh.
He meant her to, she realized.
“What am I going to do with you?” she said.
“Meet me at home tonight, and we’ll hash all that out.”
From within the circle of his arms, it was so easy to agree. And to realize that her silly crush’s heart beat on, alive and well.
Chapter 6
Eli pushed through the side door taking him from the garage and into the kitchen. The dog rushed him and he took a moment to greet Boo with head and ear rubs before slipping out of his jacket and hanging it on the nearby hook. Delicious smells wafted from the direction of the range—stir-fry, maybe?
Glancing over, something tightened his chest. Nostalgia, he decided, triggered by the sight of a woman stirring food in a pan while a young child applied crayons to the page of a coloring book at the kitchen table. A sight unseen since his mother ruled this space.
In the years since, Eli had been the chief family cook, though his sisters pitched in as they grew older.
“Ladies,” he said, as Sloane turned around and Paige looked up. “Nice to see you both.”
In a moment of sudden insight, he walked to the child, the small posy he’d brought home from the nursery in hand. They sold fresh flowers from a standing cooler in the sales office, and he’d impulsively grabbed one as he headed out for the day. “For you, Princess Paige.”
A quick look at her mother’s amused expression allowed him a moment of personal triumph. Hah. No idiot, him. If he’d gifted the flowers to Sloane, she’d prickle and go wary on him. Instead, he’d blocked that by offering them to her daughter who looked quite pleased with her present.
Making the single mother comfortable here, comfortable around him, was going to be the secret to making her stay.
“Mommy?” Paige said, her gaze riveted on the small bunch of posies, a small smile curving her lips.
Sloane already was coming forward with a juice glass filled with water. “Say thank you to Mr. King and then put the stems in here.”
Paige did as bid, then looked to her mother. “I want to show Baby Sally.”
Eli took a quick, surreptitious appraisal of the vicinity. He hadn’t felt her creepy stare.
“Can you get the glass and flowers upstairs without spilling?” Sloane asked, explaining why Eli had deemed the area doll-free.
“Yes,” Paige promised, sliding out of her seat. Then she headed toward the stairs, the improvised vase cradled in both hands.
“You tell Baby Sally I got those for her too,” Eli called after the child. No sense in not currying favor when the situation presented itself.
Next he crossed to Sloane, who’d turned her back on him to tend to the food.
He peered over her shoulder. Yep, stir-fry. “Smells good.”
“I hope you like it.”
“I’m not picky,” he assured her. “And I also don’t expect you to prepare food for me.”
She hesitated, her stirring hand stopping. “I’ve got to do my share or this isn’t going to work for me. I’ll buy the groceries—I have a list on the counter, please feel free to add to it—and because my hours are fewer than yours, I’ll be making the dinners.”
“Sloane—”
“I have to feed Paige, anyway.”
“But Sloane—”
“Are you going to let me pay rent? Because I may have to be here until Alice and Joe get back.”
“I realize that, and no, you may not pay rent.”
“Then I’m in charge of groceries and dinner.” She turned off the heat under the food and turned to face him. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” he said, grimacing. And then, because he couldn’t help himself, he raised his hand to toy with one curl that hung over her ear. “You doing okay…after earlier?”
Somebody should be questioning him about that. Because that confidence she’d shared, about her childhood brush with the law, about her parents being monsters, had pierced his gut like a white-hot pike.
“I’m doing fine. Did the rest of your day go well?” She smiled at him, starting a brand-new kind of fire.
The rest of his day might as well have been spent in line at the DMV or collecting million-dollar lottery winnings for all he could recall of it at this moment. When he was so close to her smiling self, nothing else registered. The dress from earlier had been replaced with jeans and another T-shirt, and it would be lying to say he hadn’t noticed the press of her round breasts against the soft-looking fabric.
But he kept his gaze trained on her face and those blue eyes were captivating enough. As for her mouth… Her tongue came out to touch her bottom lip and his muscles tensed, belly going rock-hard, dick doing the same. He breathed in, determined not to give away the lust shooting through his body.
Sloane swallowed, and his gaze followed the movement, lingering on the thin skin of her throat, finding himself fascinated by the pulse he could see thrumming there. He wanted to lick it, he wanted to suck on the place right below her ear, he wanted to shove his hands under that shirt and hold those magnificent breasts in his palms.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
He found his hands gripping the countertop on either side of her, their bodies not touching, but sexual energy sparking in the air between them all the same. “Nothing’s going on,” he said. But he was torturing himself with this “nothing,” and it was like foreplay, ratcheting up his arousal with every breath she took, with every move he didn’t make.
“This is going to keep happening, isn’t it?” Sloane asked, a flush rising on her dismayed face.
“I can ignore it,” he promised, though he was fighting the urge to thrust his cock into the cradle of her body, to notch himself against that place where her legs met and rock against her there, to torture her little clit through their clothes. “You turned on?” he asked, making a liar of himself.
Her lashes swept down to hide the expression in her eyes. “Eli,” she said in soft protest.
“Okay. You’re right.” He made to move away, but her hand instantly reached for him, her fingers sliding between the waistband of his jeans and the heated skin at his hip.
“Give me a minute,” she whispered.
He gritted hi
s teeth. “Whatever you need.” His heart beat so hard he thought his ribs might crack. “I told you I can ignore this—if you can.”
One side of her mouth quirked up, proving him a liar once again. Another rush of need coursed through his system and he closed his eyes, trying to ignore it and the back of her small fingers pressed into his skin as she held him in place.
She made a noise, soft and almost bewildered. As needy as he felt. Helpless.
And the protector in Eli lost it, driven to take care and take charge by the vulnerable sound. Leaning in, his mouth found hers. Her soft lips responded immediately, opening to the thrust of his tongue, giving him access to all that sweet, wet heat beyond. His heart slammed over and over, stealing his breath and his will, but he hung onto the counter, fingernails digging in, feet rooted to the floor, so that they only connected at the kiss, and at her touch on his belly, his muscles hollowing there now, instinctively begging for her to slide her hand lower.
To find his raging cock.
To provide some relief.
Comfort.
Comfortable.
The word slid between his ribs like an ice pick, sharp enough for him to gasp, rock back, breaking their connection.
He wanted her to be comfortable here, and this, damn it, wasn’t the way.
“Fuck,” he muttered, letting his head drop back. “Sloane—”
But an explanation or apology was interrupted by the clatter of little girl feet coming down the stairs. He turned away, giving mother and child his back as he struggled for control.
Their conversation didn’t penetrate as he stalked to his bedroom and rushed across the rug to the bathroom and the sink, where he filled his cupped palms with cold water and splashed his face. He ran his damp fingers through his hair, then gingerly adjusted his dick in the denim, wary of any further stimulation.
It didn’t respond, though, at the moment apparently only interested in what his house guest had to offer.
Shit.
Back in the kitchen, the stir-fry was being served over rice and set upon the table. He held a chair for Paige, then left to find her a couple of books and a cushion to use as a booster. By the time the little girl was sitting at table-height, Sloane was in place and he settled into his seat.
NO LIMIT (7-Stud Club Book 2) Page 8