Beau frowned. “I’m sorry. I know it must hurt like a bitch, but we’re not in the safest spot to patch you up. Will you be okay till we get to the gym?”
“I’ll manage.”
Beau nodded, closed her door, and hustled into the car. PJ sucked in another breath, willing herself to calm down. It didn’t really work. Beau’s car smelled like high-end leather and Beau, and there wasn’t a damn thing calming about that. PJ squirmed in her seat as Beau fired up the engine.
“Buckle up.” Beau glanced at PJ’s knee as though concerned she’d blown out her meniscus. “I’ll drive fast.”
PJ didn’t really want him to. “I’m fine,” she said again, yanking on her belt as Beau merged back onto Glenwood.
Then they were off, Beau looking tense and sexy, and PJ checking out his ride because that was a little less pathetic than checking him out and drooling like an idiot. The front seat was immaculate. Not a coffee stain or soda straw wrapper in sight, only clean beige leather and a tricked out dash. The backseat, however, looked like a toy box had exploded in it. PJ smiled at the booster chair strewn with Matchbox cars and Lego blocks. Next to it, a Mario Brothers backpack had been dumped on a wipe erase board and an assortment of markers and number magnets.
“Max isn’t the cleanest,” Beau said, eying the mess from his rear view mirror.
“Well, he’s five, so…”
A tired grin tugged at Beau’s mouth. “Five and a quarter. He will correct you.” Beau sighed, his grip on the wheel tightening. “He’s also autistic.”
“I’d heard something about that around town,” PJ said carefully.
Beau signaled before passing an old Buick. Then he shot her a wink. “Wow. News travels fast.”
PJ liked that wink. She liked it a lot. She also liked that Beau hadn’t forgotten their texts from a month ago because she hadn’t been able to get the exchange out of her head either.
“Anyhow,” Beau continued, “Max started behavioral therapy at this clinic back up the road. I’d actually just dropped him off for a session when I saw you go down.”
PJ gnawed at her lip. Now would probably be a good time to mention that she’d just been hired at that very clinic, only the words seemed to be lodged in her throat as an uneasy feeling settled in her gut. It was a feeling that had a whole lot to do with her less than pure motivations for pursuing the job in the first place. It also had to do with her less than full belly. PJ’s stomach rumbled loudly in the quiet of the car, and she flushed as Beau’s lips twitched.
Five minutes later he pulled into a parking spot at Fit Bods, stepped from the Audi, and jogged around to her side of the car. Then, once again, his scent was enveloping her as he opened her door and leaned in to pop the glove box. Retrieving a small first aid kit, he set it on the dash before rocking back on his haunches. “Okay, legs out. Let’s get a look at that knee.”
PJ turned in her seat, settling her Vans on the ground in front of him.
“You want me to…” Beau motioned to the cuff of her jeans.
“Sure,” PJ said absently, her focus solely on the descent of his hand as it moved to her pants. Then her stomach let out another rumble, and she snapped out of it. “I mean, no, I got it.”
PJ reached down, jerked up the denim, and immediately wanted to jerk it back down. Shit. When in God’s name had she shaved her legs last? Spiky little hairs were sticking out everywhere. She groaned in embarrassment.
“Yeah, you took some skin off, for sure.” Beau whistled as he checked her out, his focus solely on the bloody mess at her knee. “Definitely, a double Band-Aid boo-boo.”
“Double Band-Aid boo-boo?” PJ was instantly distracted from her Sasquatch problem as Beau was now turning a fascinating shade of pink.
He reached for his kit with a sheepish chuckle. “Max is rather accident prone.” PJ bit her lip as he ripped opened a wipe. “Stop smirking. I have the burning towelette of fire here.” He waved it in front of her threateningly.
“Bring it,” PJ shot back with a giggle. He plopped the little towel down, and she jumped. “Balls! What the hell do they put in those things? Battery acid?”
Beau’s hands gentled as he cleaned out the wound. Then he sat back with a smirk of his own. “Do you want me to blow on it, Prudence?”
“Do you want to get kicked in the face?”
Beau laughed, the disarmingly sexy sound of it making her itch to wiggle down onto his lap. “Of course, the really important question is which do you prefer?” He held up a colorful bag of Band-Aids. “Pokémon, Star Wars, or Emoji?”
PJ rolled her eyes. “Dude. Pokémon. Of course.”
“Of course,” Beau agreed, a playful grin tugging at his lips as he patched her up. When he was done, he deftly lowered her pant leg, and the warmth of his fingers brushing her skin had her stomach growling with a different sort of hunger.
Beau’s gaze locked on hers, and this time when he smiled, it was almost one of surprise, like maybe he’d just felt his heart trip up too. Seconds ticked by as they sat in the parking lot staring at each other. Then Beau gave a little shake of his head, and PJ’s belly gave one final pathetic gurgle.
“You know, maybe working out with a knee injury isn’t the best idea,” he said wryly. “It sounds to me like you need some food.”
PJ drummed her nails on the dash as her heart drummed even harder in her chest. Then she took a deep breath, leaned forward, and looked him right in the eye. “Do you like tacos?”
Chapter 9
Beau probably should have said no. That would have been the responsible thing to do. PJ had the hots for him, she was seventeen and three quarters, and he damn sure wasn’t going to round up, not that he had the remotest interest in doing so. But she’d leveled him with that strange gaze of hers and uttered the one word in the entire food universe guaranteed to sway him, and now here he was, sitting at a French bistro table in a darkened Mexican restaurant run by a Greek lady who made the best ground beef tacos he’d ever tasted in his life.
“Told you they were the bomb.” PJ shot him a smug look as he polished off his third. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard of this place. I thought all you Brownings were in the know.”
Beau chased down his food with a long pull from his beer. Then he set the bottle on the table and smiled at PJ as she devoured her second taco, rambling between bites.
“La Fonda has been here for ages,” she said, licking at a shred of cheese stuck to her lip. “It’s practically an institution.”
“Well then, on behalf of the Browning family, thank you for enlightening us.” Beau’s grin was teasing as he watched PJ chug down a Sprite stuffed with a half dozen Maraschino cherries and a little pink parasol.
“Yeah, don’t mention it. I’ll let you pay.”
Beau chuckled as he watched her eat, fascinated with the whole-hearted way she consumed every last morsel on her plate. PJ didn’t seem to do anything halfway. She didn’t have a tentative bone in her body. She’d probably be great at sex.
Hell and damnation! Beau ripped his gaze from the girl, feigning interest in the ball game blaring from the TV over the bar. What the fuck was wrong with him? He was having creepy thoughts about PJ Bruister. Again. He needed to get his head examined. Both of them. Especially the one in his pants. Soon. By a woman who was sexy, sober, and significantly older than seventeen.
He’d been too long without. That was his problem. Of course he was going to have some random prurient thoughts. It wasn’t like he legitimately had the hots for the chick currently sitting across from him, sucking on a lime wedge stolen from his Corona.
She tossed the shriveled fruit aside, batted her ridiculous purple lashes, and slipped into a silly drawl. “Why I do declare, Beau Browning, you look like you just about swallowed one of these.”
“Don’t, Prudence.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t flirt with me right now. You need to stop flirting with me in general.” He leaned forward so his words would be unmistak
able over the sudden noise erupting in the restaurant as the Tigers ran one in. “It’s not going to happen.”
If PJ was bothered by this news, she sure didn’t show it. She merely sniffed as she tucked a blond wisp behind her ear. She’d worn her hair up today, the thick length of it pulled into a bun held together by a pair of chopsticks. The spill on the side of the road had disheveled it, but the look was strangely pretty, all the errant flyaways softening the garish colors painted on her face as she continued to stare at him.
“It’s never going to happen,” Beau repeated, feeling only slightly unclear as to whom he was trying to convince more.
PJ plucked a cherry from her glass, ripped fruit from stem in one clean bite, and chewed. “So you’re friend-zoning me, huh?”
“Yes, definitely friend-zoned.”
“So that means we’re actually friends then?”
“Yes, definitely friends.”
PJ smiled. Every last speck of her hot pink lipstick had been chewed off with the tacos, and the skin beneath was a natural dusky peach. Beau didn’t understand why the girl would want to cover it up. “Alright,” she said, swiping her hand over a cocktail napkin before extending it to him. “Let’s be friends.”
Beau grasped the warmth of her palm and shook it. “Friends.”
“Cool.” PJ pulled away, then bumped his fist with her own. “Okay, well, since we’re friends, I should probably apologize to you.”
“Apologize?”
PJ nodded as she popped another cherry. “Yeah, saying your voice makes me horny when we were in Sacramento… and that comment about your ass when we were texting… that stuff is inappropriate. It’s, like, sexual harassment. I’m guessing, because you haven’t texted me since, that I probably offended you. I’ve been paying a lot of attention to all this ‘Me Too’ stuff lately, and I want to be part of the solution, not the problem, so I’m sorry.”
If PJ hadn’t looked so sincere throughout this spiel, Beau might have actually laughed. He’d never once felt like he was being sexually harassed. Annoyed as fuck, maybe. But sexually harassed by a girl several years his junior? Not so much. Beau frowned as he considered why this was—
“So, uhm, we good?” PJ’s hesitant question broke through his tangled thoughts. “You’re kind of getting that look again.”
“We’re good.” Beau killed the rest of his beer, and a nearby waitress was quick to collect the bottle.
“Need another, sugar?”
“No, thanks,” he said without looking up. He never had more than one. Not anymore anyways.
“Since we’re friends,” he said, studying PJ carefully as another thought occurred to him, “and since we’re on the subject of harassment, care to tell me what that crap on the road was about?”
“Nope.”
“That was Troy Latimoore’s car, wasn’t it?”
PJ scowled as she crushed a tortilla chip on the table, smashing it into dust with the tip of her finger. “Maybe.”
“I thought I recognized that douchey new Mustang.”
That got a grin out of her. “I know, right? The new ones are so lame. The Shelbys back in the day were badass.”
“Agreed.” They shared another fist bump.
“I mean, what the hell happened?”
PJ was clearly lamenting the collapse of the American muscle car, but Beau was far more interested in information of a different sort. “Exactly. What the hell happened?” he asked pointedly.
“Ugh, you’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Fiiiine,” she drawled, extending the word into multiple syllables the way only an irritated teenage girl could do masterfully. “I might have had some funk with those idiots back at the academy.”
“Those idiots? You mean Troy and Wade Hollis?” PJ’s eyes flashed at the name, and when she murdered another chip, Beau suspected he’d deduced things correctly. “What’s going on, PJ?”
A glittery black nail tapped at the table as she seemed to be debating with herself on elaborating. “Okay, so yeah, we did have some funk. I ran into them when they were visiting from Prep, and I overheard Wade saying some stuff that was definitely inappropriate about a friend of mine.” PJ frowned, her gaze darting up. “Actually, friend is a very loose interpretation of our relationship.” The nail tapping stopped as she slammed her palm on the table. “Anyhow! That business was wrong, so I had to handle that fool.”
“Handle” was an interesting choice of words Beau suspected had little to do with a certain hand gesture he was still trying to wipe from his memory. “So, just for clarification, by handle you mean in a hurt locker kind of way, right?”
“Of course, in a hurt locker kind of way!” she seethed, her shimmery eyelids slivering dangerously. “Why? What have you heard?”
“It’s not important.”
“That fucking Troy—”
“What is important,” Beau cut in firmly, “is that you told somebody at the school because that definitely sounds like sexual harassment to me.” PJ’s lips tightened as she looked away. “You did tell someone, right?” She stared stonily at an embroidered tapestry hanging on the wall near their table. “PJ…”
“No one would have believed me! They didn’t be—” She stopped talking, noticeably shutting down as she drew in a shuddering breath. “Can we change the subject, please?”
Beau didn’t want to. He wanted to keep digging, but he suspected by the slump of her shoulders that PJ’d had enough. “Alright,” he said quietly. Then he found himself reaching out to cover her shaking hand on the table with a steady one of his own. “Look, since we’re friends, can you please just promise me that if these guys harass you or your friend again, that you’ll let me know?”
Her eyes locked on his, and she gave a funny little half-smile. “Why? You gonna go all hurt locker on Wade too?”
“And then some,” Beau said with relish. “Us Brownings got no love for the Hollises. You know that.”
She didn’t answer, just continued to stare in that odd way of hers. Then her phone chirped, her hand jerked, and she was pulling away from him, reaching around to the pocket of the blazer she’d slung over her chair. She glanced down at her incoming text and smiled, the genuine delight in it piquing his curiosity.
“Another friend of yours?”
“What?” She looked back up as though she’d forgotten he was there. “Oh, yeah. It’s Andy. I texted her earlier. I should probably get going soon, so I can chat with her. It’s been a while. We need to catch up.”
“Sure,” Beau said, feeling oddly disappointed that their strange afternoon together was coming to an end. “Do you need a lift home? Your knee could probably use a break from the skateboard, and I’ve got time before I have to pick up Max—”
“Nah, I’m good. Francine should be done at the gym in twenty. I’ll just hitch a ride with her.”
“Okay.” Beau glanced towards the windows at the front of the restaurant where he could see the giant Fit Bods sign lighting up the building across the street. It was growing dark out. It hadn’t been when they’d walked in. They’d probably spent two hours together, and Beau hadn’t even noticed. He’d been too busy eating, laughing, and, strangest of all, simply enjoying conversation with PJ Bruister. She was watching him now with an impish grin.
“Ya know, in the spirit of friendship and all, and since you’re buying, the sopapillas here are out of this world.” She scooted a little dessert placard in front of him and batted her crazy lashes.
Beau signaled for the waitress and smiled. “In the spirit of friendship and all, I’d better put in two orders.”
Chapter 10
The following week, Beau was knee-deep in paperwork at the office. His accounting firm was located in a bustling business district in downtown Baton Rouge. He’d picked the spot shortly after earning his CPA three years ago for a couple of reasons. First, because it was only a short walk from his cousin’s office, and the Colonel was his number one client, and
second, because Beau’s best friend, Eli, had a music studio right across the street.
Currently, the doors to Beau’s office were thrown open, and a decent cover of a Phil Phillips jam was drifting in with the breeze. Beau hummed along to the soulful pop tune, grooving between documents as he polished off his first cup of coffee.
He was just debating a refill when the Colonel strolled in with his hulk of a bodyguard in tow. Watson took up his usual post near the entryway, his scary features a sharp contrast to his employer’s far sunnier ones.
Indeed, the Colonel had a smile going that could rival George Peppard’s from The A-Team. Grayson’s uncanny resemblance to the ’80s TV star was how he’d earned his nickname in the first place. Setting a fragrant paper bag near Beau’s laptop, he winked. “Brought ya breakfast.”
Beau’s sights didn’t shift from his spreadsheets. “Those better be beignets.”
Grayson sauntered over to the Keurig machine set up on an old steamer trunk in the corner of the room. “Is there anything better?” he drawled.
Sopapillas. The word teased at Beau’s brain as he helped himself to the bag of pastries while his cousin helped himself to some coffee.
“Where’s Gladys this morning?” The Colonel glanced at the only other desk in the small office.
Gladys Mitchell was Beau’s administrative assistant. The woman rarely missed a day of work, so when she’d called him that morning to say one of her dogs had passed, Beau had given her the day off. Hence the reason he was knee-deep in paperwork.
“Eminem died,” Beau said.
“The rapper?”
Beau shook his head. “No, her golden retriever.”
Grayson nodded as he grabbed a Styrofoam cup. Beau flashed him the deuces, and his cousin reached for a second.
“So what brings you by?” Beau asked as he scrolled through a client’s 1099.
“I’m stepping down as CEO of Browning’s Holdings.”
Beau almost choked. “Come again?” he mumbled around a mouthful of food.
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