PJ slowed down her pace before her raging libido had her falling clumsily from the machine… or spontaneously combusting.
God! Why was she so hung up on this guy? Beau didn’t even like her. He’d said as much on the plane. He didn’t like talking to her. He didn’t even seem to like looking at her. This kinda sucked because PJ had spent a significant portion of the past three years wishing he’d do both. She’d known him long before that, of course.
Or at least, she’d known about him long before that. Most folks around town knew about the Brownings. They were local celebrities made famous by three things. First, every last one of them was blessed with the kind of genes that produced movie-star levels of hotness. Second, the vast majority of them had penises. Penises that seemed only capable of passing on the Y chromosome, and continuing to propagate said hotness. And third, they had money. Lots of it.
Most assumed PJ’s mother had hooked up with Grayson Browning IV for the last of these reasons. Beau — gorgeous, sweater-wearing asshole that he was — probably didn’t feel much different.
PJ couldn’t say she didn’t have her own opinions on the matter. Her mom did like to spend money. Lots of it. Much more than her paycheck could realistically cover. But PJ suspected Francine’s budgeting problems might have more to do with the woman’s undiagnosed ADD issues than any genuine inclination she may have had towards gold-digging.
PJ also knew that Francine and the Colonel had been friends for a long time before he’d actually proposed. Despite having a tricked-out gym back at his mansion, the Colonel had gone to Fit Bods for years, had attended Francine’s spin class faithfully, and had even taken the occasional Zumba when the two had first started dating.
PJ suspected this was because the Colonel, for all his vast wealth and power, was actually rather lonely and still pretty hung up on his first wife. PJ didn’t think it was a coincidence that Francine and Dani looked so much alike. The Colonel obviously had a type. And it was Lily Browning’s mother, Danielle Fayette, lead singer of some pop-country band out of Nashville. PJ didn’t really follow their jams because, with the exception of Blake Shelton, Kacey Musgraves, and Dolly, country music was pretty fucking terrible—
PJ stopped striding, swiped at her phone, and fired up “9 to 5.” There was seriously no way on earth any red-blooded American woman could hate on this song. It was a classic.
PJ hummed away as she increased her pace, but even before the first click of the typewriter hit her ears, she was already slamming on the brakes again. And this time, she did tumble, flailing for the safety bars as she damn near face-planted on the controls. Because, suddenly, there he was.
Beau Browning was walking her way, his head down as he fiddled with the iPod strapped to his bicep. His naked bicep. Naked as in no sweater, no shirt sleeve, just skin. PJ’s mouth went completely dry. Because Beau was completely wet. Like his tank top was glued to his chest wet, and his sweatpants looked really intriguing wet.
Hold the Dolly! PJ jabbed at her phone, pausing the peppy tune so she could stare in total silence at the perfection of male beauty that had just stopped near the treadmill in front of her. Not once in the entire ten years her mother had been employed at Fit Bods, had PJ ever seen him come in. This was probably because the man was more of a jogger than a gym rat. She’d stalked him often enough through the local parks to be certain of this.
Today, evidently, he’d been caught in the monsoon now pouring down on the roof. His short brown hair, which he usually kept neatly parted to the right, was windswept and curling slightly about the top. The square cut of his jaw was damp with rain and sweat. And though his eyes were still averted, PJ knew they were a much lighter brown than her own and surrounded by a thick fringe of sinfully dark lashes.
As Beau lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe the moisture from his face, PJ caught a flash of toned abs and the hint of a happy trail. Then he stepped onto the machine and jabbed at the controls, and she had to swallow back a sigh.
As the belt under his Nikes slowly fired up, Beau broke into a light jog. With every hypnotic stride, all PJ could do was stand there frozen as the guy she’d rubbed off to nearly every night since she’d gotten back from California was suddenly working out less than ten feet from her, practically naked without his glasses and nerd clothes, and looking like one of her wettest dreams come to life.
It was probably wrong to be ogling him this way. Maybe she was as bad as the grandpa behind her. Maybe she was the creepy pervert. But Beau had no idea she was behind him, so she was going to look her fill. And she wasn’t the least bit sorry about it.
“Caught ya, huh?”
What!? PJ yanked out her earbuds at the heckling cry coming from the lady with the boob job.
So did Beau as he turned to the jogger beside him. “What’s that?”
The woman smiled. “The rain, honey. I’m guessing you missed the forecast this mornin’ and caught a bit of that storm action.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Beau slowed, his expression warming with recognition. “It’s been a while, Mrs. Latimoore. How have you been?”
PJ frowned at the name. Shit. This was Troy’s mama. No wonder she’d seemed familiar. PJ had seen her around the neighborhood a few times when she’d lived in the Hills. The Latimoore estate wasn’t far from the Colonel’s.
“Put it this way,” she was telling Beau now, “it’ll be Miss soon enough.”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a wince.
“I’m not,” she said with a wink.
Beau’s gaze slid back to the controls on his treadmill.
Hers slid down to his arm.
PJ’s eyes narrowed as the woman blatantly checked out the same ropey play of muscles she’d been covertly checking out only a minute ago.
If Beau was bothered by Mrs. Latimoore’s attention, he sure didn’t show it. He simply smiled as he glanced at her. “So how are Troy and Cleo doing these days?” he asked politely.
“Just fine, thank you.” She flashed him a pearly white grin, her long blond ponytail bouncing behind her as she power-walked. “Troy’s in his last year at Prep. He’s been working so hard between his studies and football that I just had to get him the latest Mustang.”
“Of course.”
PJ bit her lip at the subtle note of sarcasm in Beau’s smooth drawl.
Mrs. Latimoore carried on obliviously. “And my Cleo’s graduating from LSU in June. She has a class with your cousin this semester. Did Lily mention it?”
“Must have forgotten to,” Beau said smoothly.
Mrs. Latimoore giggled as she waved her hand about. “Those two have been spending so much time together lately, they’re practically best friends.”
PJ rolled her eyes. Unless her former stepsister’s habits had changed a lot in the last year, Lily spent most of her time either hitting the books for school or writing her next one. Despite being just as gorgeous as all the Brownings with penises, Lily didn’t have much of a social life. The girl could usually be found alone in her room hammering out the next great young adult novel, and if she did have a BFF it was probably Margo’s older sister, Penny, not Mrs. Latimoore’s vapid daughter.
This chick was laying it on pretty thick. Beau didn’t seem to be buying her brand of bullshit either because he reached down for his discarded ear bud. Cleo’s mama didn’t seem ready to be blown off.
“And how is little Matt doing these days?” she asked quickly.
It’s Max. PJ scowled as the woman side-eyed Beau’s pecs. Jesus Christ, this bitch was annoying. If she was gonna flirt with the dude, she should at least get his kid’s name right.
“It’s Max,” Beau corrected with another polite smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she groaned. “I’m just terrible with names.”
And flirting, apparently.
“That’s quite alright, Mrs. Latimoore.” Beau winked at her as he settled into a relaxed stride.
What the hell! Was he actually flirting back?
“Like I said, it�
�ll be Miss Latimoore soon enough. The divorce is final in a couple weeks, and trust me, honey, I’ve already got the celebration booked. And please call me Odelle.” She shot Beau a sly grin. “Or maybe just call me. I’d love to catch up with you when I get back from Tahiti.”
“Uhm… I probably wouldn’t make the best company.”
PJ’s irritation with the man morphed into amusement as Beau grew flustered.
“I’ve got a lot going on with Max right now,” he continued awkwardly.
“Oh, of course you do.” Odelle’s voice was suddenly dripping with concern. “I hope you don’t mind my sayin’, but I heard it from Juliana Beauxfort, who’s friends with your ex, that little Max has been having some problems at school. But don’t you worry, we’ve already got a prayer circle going for him at the church.”
PJ nearly groaned at the woman’s ramblings. She’d met Max a number of times when she’d lived at the Colonel’s. Beau’s parents, Finn and Nadine, lived one mansion down. The Browning clan basically owned an entire block of real estate in Maison Hills. Max had been a frequent visitor of both homes, and while PJ certainly remembered him to have had some odd tendencies for a toddler, she hardly thought his behavior warranted a prayer circle.
“Thank you.” Beau sighed wearily as he raked at his hair. “Last week was pretty challenging. We had some testing done. The doctors diagnosed him with autism.”
“Oh no!” Odelle’s hand shot to her fake bosom, and her eyes welled up as though Beau had just told her his son had leukemia. “I’m so sorry.”
Beau nodded, and from his tense posture, PJ could tell he was pretty much done with the conversation.
She was too. Jesus Christ. Being on the spectrum wasn’t the end of the world. PJ’s best friend was on the spectrum, and Andy was cool as fuck. She had about fifteen pairs of combat boots and her reviewer ranking on Amazon was in the five thousands—
“Oooh!” Odelle suddenly hit the brakes and grabbed for the handbag hanging from her treadmill. “I’ve got something for you.”
Beau looked mildly alarmed.
PJ eyed the chick suspiciously.
Odelle pulled a business card from her purse. “There’s this ASD clinic a couple blocks from here on Glenwood. Juliana tells me it’s just fabulous. Her daughter, Thelma, has been going there for years.”
“Really?” Beau turned back to her with interest. “It’s a center-based program?”
Odelle beamed as she waved the card about. “The very best, according to Jules. My Cleo thought about getting a job there, but with her schoolwork and all her responsibilities at the sorority, she didn’t want to spread herself too thin—”
Beau’s pants started buzzing. PJ’s gaze shot straight to them. So did Odelle’s. Beau reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and frowned at whatever he read on the screen. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Latimoore, I’ll have to be going.”
PJ didn’t miss Odelle’s little pout as Beau, once again, used her married name, but as the man stepped from the machine in a hurry, she quickly recovered and reached into her purse for a pen. “Here, honey,” she said, scribbling something on the back of the business card before handing it to him. “If you’re… interested.”
Beau took it with a distracted thanks, before tearing from the gym. PJ followed his departure with concern, watching as he shoved the card hastily towards the pocket of his sweats.
What the hell was going on? The man looked stressed. Kind of like he had that day they’d been smashed up against the side of that truck in California. Only then, PJ had wanted to nibble on his lips. Right now, she felt a sudden strange desire to hold his hand—
“You’re Francine’s girl, aren’t you?”
“Huh?” PJ tore her attention from the front of the gym and found Odelle watching her as she stepped from her treadmill.
“Eavesdropping isn’t very ladylike.”
PJ rolled her eyes. “Do I look like a lady to you?”
Odelle’s nose wrinkled as she scanned her. “No, you look like a little girl who rolled her face in a gallon of her mama’s Wet n Wild.”
“Fuck off.”
Odelle laughed, her thick lashes fluttering toward the exit where Beau had disappeared into the rain. Then she sighed wistfully. “You’re never gonna get a piece of that, honey.”
PJ stepped from the elliptical, walked straight over to the woman, and smiled sweetly down at her, using every one of her seventy-two inches to remind the chick that she was by no means little and Odelle was by no means divorced yet. “Fuck off, Mrs. Latimoore.”
Odelle fired up her middle finger, turned, and stalked towards the Zumba ladies heading for the lockers.
PJ gathered up her belongings and made her way back towards the reception desk to hang out with Jo. On her way, she noticed a scrap of paper lying on the floor. PJ slowed, recognizing the business card that had failed to make it into Beau’s pants. Scooping it up, she smirked at the name and number scribbled on the back. If she had anything to say about it, the woman who wrote them would never get anywhere near the inside of Beau’s pants either.
PJ was just about to crumple up the card and toss it in the trash, when the shiny gold logo on the front caught her eye. It was shaped like a star, and in the center was the cut-out design of a puzzle piece. Underneath were the words “Journeys Autism Center: Piecing together success one day at a time.” As she read them, a funny feeling shot up PJ’s spine, a tingling sensation she quickly shrugged off because already an idea was forming in her head.
Ivy Espinoza had said she needed to get right with herself. Maybe, for the sake of argument, if there was something wrong with her, then getting a job was a step in the right direction.
Employment could be great. Great for the economy. Great for her minuscule bank account. Great for all the cute little ASD kids that needed her to help them piece together success one day at a time. PJ could do this. She was awesome at puzzles. This could be a really great thing. And if Beau just happened to hook up with the center as well, and she just happened to see him a little more often, then… well… great! There was absolutely nothing wrong with this plan. PJ nodded decisively as she popped her ear buds back in, ignoring, once again, the funny tingles spreading up her neck.
Then she jabbed at her phone, unpausing her jam.
It was time to get a j-o-b. PJ smiled as the old country classic streamed into her ears. Even Dolly was giving her a high-five on this business.
Chapter 4
Fifteen minutes after leaving the gym, Beau found himself kneeling beside a small conference table at Leighton Mills Preschool. The face staring back at him from under it looked a lot like his own, except that it was smaller, skinnier, and screwed up like a pissed-off cat. And the sounds erupting from it were also somewhat feline in nature.
“Go away!” his son screamed, before hissing at him and chucking a handful of paper on the floor. There were ribbons of it everywhere, strips torn from some handout Max clutched as he rolled about on the burgundy carpet.
“Son—”
“Go away!” Max lifted his feet and slammed his little Nikes into the underside of the table.
“Son, you need to listen to me now—”
Max’s eyes squeezed shut, furious tears shimmering about his thick lashes as he sucked in a deep breath. “Go a-waaAAAA—”
“Alright, Max.” Beau held up a hand and rose slowly, embarrassment flushing his cheeks. There were three more people in the room with them. Three more sets of eyes taking in the madness. Some filled with concern. Others sympathy. Some with a look that pretty much said, “Damn, I’m glad that’s not my kid.”
“How long has he been this way?” Beau asked the group at large.
“About thirty minutes.” The program director at Leighton Mills sat in a conference chair littered with the same kind of confetti Beau’s son seemed to be furiously mass producing. She gestured to a folder lying on the table. “We tried to contact his mother. We know it’s her week with Max, but she hasn’t retu
rned our messages—”
“Fine.” Beau waved impatiently. “Next time, call me sooner.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Singh motioned towards a chair near Max’s Pre-K teacher. “Why don’t you sit down, and perhaps Mrs. Blessing can explain what triggered these behaviors.” Mrs. Singh glanced down as another handful of scraps hit her pumps.
Beau sank into a chair next to a tiny woman wearing a weird plastic hat and a matching bow tie. The bag of ice she cradled over her hand dripped onto the leg of her bright green overalls. “Please do,” he said, staring pointedly at her injury. “I’d also like to know what caused that—”
Bang!
The table shook under the force of another blow just as a water cooler in the corner of the room gave a sudden belch. The guy leaning against the wall behind it crossed his arms over a neon-orange vest and raised a brow as if to say, “Isn’t it obvious?”
Mrs. Blessing sighed. “Oh, it was my fault. I tried to get Max out from under his desk, but the poor little guy was so worked up, he took a nip at me—”
“He bit you!?”
“Oh, it’s nothin’ but a flesh wound. I’ve had worse, trust me. Shoulda just waited for Heath to help me carry him out.”
The dude hanging by the cooler nodded importantly, as though his security gig at a preschool made him some kind of serious badass. Beau didn’t like him at all. He particularly didn’t like that the guy had put his hands on his boy. Even if his boy was behaving like a rabid, paper-shredding, lunatic.
“Heath, I think you’ve assisted enough,” said Mrs. Singh, clearly picking up on Beau’s growing animosity as she dismissed the man. “We could use you on crosswalk duty. School’s out in twenty.”
“Copy that.” The guy disappeared from the room as Beau shot him a dark look. Then, relaxing slightly, Beau turned to the lady still nursing her flesh wound. “Tell me what happened.”
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