“Come on,” he said, grasping her hand and pulling her up. “I’ve got an idea.”
PJ eyed him warily. “Does it involve dancing?”
“Possibly.”
“I really suck at dancing.”
“I’m sure you’re not that bad.”
“Do you value your toes?”
Beau glanced down at the flip-flops she wore with the jeans she’d changed into after her shower. “Well, at least you’re not wearing your boots anymore.”
PJ sighed, reluctantly following him across the deck in front of the house to the stairs leading down from the side of it. When they reached the bottom of the steps and Beau tugged her across the lawn toward the longer of the two piers, he could sense her starting to get nervous. Halfway down the wooden planks, she dug her heels in. “Oh, hell, no! This is way too public.”
“Nah,” Beau said with a shrug. “It’s like a hundred feet away. No one will even notice us out here.”
“Ooooowww! Get it, brother!”
Beau cringed as Jackson’s heckling cry bellowed down from the house with a smattering of good-natured groans.
PJ’s eyes slivered. “You’re seriously going to owe me for this, Double A.”
“Anything you want, Pru.”
“Anything?”
“Yep.” Beau laughed as PJ hauled him quickly to the wide rectangular deck at the end of the pier and proceeded to yank him into her arms.
“Alright,” she said, “let’s get this shit over with.”
Beau bit back a grin at the determined look in her eyes, the way she was psyching herself up as she lifted his hands to take the lead. “At least it’s only a slow dance. I’m probably better at that.”
There was a sudden tinkle of piano keys, and they both looked up to the house to find Mel had brought out her keyboard, and she and Eli were now striking up a rocking version of Toploader’s “Dancing in the Moonlight.”
“Aw, come on—”
Beau leaned in, stealing a kiss from her pouty lips as he repositioned their hands. He wasn’t the greatest dancer himself, but no self-respecting gentleman from the South grew up not learning a basic two-step. “We can still take it slow,” he whispered, pulling away from her just enough to offset their bodies. She sucked in a little gulp of air, exhaled sharply, and slowly they began to move. They didn’t make it past the first two steps before she was treading on his toes.
“I told you I was bad,” she said with a groan.
Beau didn’t give a shit about his feet, not with his hand caressing the satiny skin of her waist. PJ had on one of those stretchy half-tops like his cousin had been sporting on the water, only PJ’s was a colorful cotton tie-dye, and with her hair pulled back in that same loose side braid, and her temples newly adorned with a wild pattern of henna tattoos, she looked like some hippie chick straight out of the seventies.
Beau dropped a kiss on the bridge of her nose. “Just relax and let me take the reins here. This is kind of one of those ‘let me pull you up outta the water’ type of deals.”
PJ snorted, but after a few more awkward steps, he could feel her starting to loosen up, her body gradually settling into a rhythm with his own. And then they were dancing in the moonlight. Not well, by any shakes of the imagination, but well enough to bring a delighted little smile to PJ’s face that had Beau feeling on top of the world. He loved watching her conquer her fears. He loved seeing that confident gleam in her eyes. And he particularly loved when that gleam turned all sassy and wicked as it was doing now.
“I just figured out what you owe me,” she said as he backed her toward the middle of the deck.
“You just figured it out?” he drawled, launching her into a twirl. “I was pretty sure you’d sorted that out about thirty seconds ago.” She spun back to him awkwardly, landing her foot on his big toe in a way Beau wasn’t too certain was entirely accidental.
“Since I’m out here under the spotlight,” she said, her gaze darting up to the moon and then back to the house, “and since I’ve got your crew up there, and every gator and man-eating fish in that river down there watching me embarrass myself royally, you’re going to have to distract me with the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you.”
Beau cocked his head, grinning at her mischievous smirk. “Most embarrassing, huh?”
“I want utter humiliation.”
Beau didn’t have to think about it too hard. He was the youngest of four boys, one of whom was Jackson Browning. “My brother walked in on me jerking off to my Gwen Stefani poster once when I was fifteen. For weeks after, he would torture me by singing ‘Don’t Speak’ around the house and laughing his ass off.”
PJ giggled. “Okay, I’m assuming this was Jackson because I’ve heard the man sing, but come on, who didn’t jerk off to their Gwen Stefani poster at fifteen?” She patted him on the back and tsked. “Try again, Beau Bear.”
Beau laughed, spinning her again with joyful abandon. She came back to him, eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed. It didn’t take him long to come up with another one. “There was this one time,” he said slowly, “I was driving this girl home, and I really had the hots for her…”
PJ grinned. “Now this sounds promising. Does it involve road head?”
Beau smirked. “Nah. This chick was a total back seat driver. And she was only seventeen, or at least, that’s what I thought at the time. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about her that way.”
“Let me guess. Your kid puked in her lap.”
Beau chuckled at PJ’s wry expression. “Bingo.”
PJ feigned a yawn. “Not quite humiliating enough. But points for that part about you secretly lusting after the jail bait. That’s pretty naughty of you.”
Beau sighed. “You’re really out for blood on this one, huh?”
PJ settled her head on his shoulder. “Tell me your darkest secret,” she said quietly. “I told you mine.”
She had too. PJ had been vulnerable with him in a way that he hadn’t yet been with her. She’d trusted him with the dark stuff. And that type of honesty had to go both ways. Beau breathed in the pure oceany-clean scent of her hair as their bodies swayed together under the stars.
“You know how you were kicked out of a few schools?”
“Yeah,” she said dryly, “I kinda do—”
“I was kicked out of a church.”
“Shit.” Her head popped up, her eyes wide on his. “That sounds bad.”
“It was.” They slowed to a stop near the edge of the deck. All the pilings surrounding their makeshift dance floor were topped with solar lanterns, and the glow of the lights was calling to him. Or maybe it was the river. PJ seemed to sense his distraction because she walked to the edge and plopped down.
“Come on,” she said, patting the spot beside her. “I think your toes could use a break.”
Beau sat down, dangling his feet over the edge just as she was. They were quiet for a moment, both taking in the wavering reflection of lights on the dark rippling surface below. PJ was the first to speak, her voice not much louder than the soft lap of water against the pier.
“So did this excommunication thing have anything to do with you impregnating the minister’s daughter?”
“Heard about that, did ya?”
PJ shrugged. “Well, I was like twelve at the time, and sort of more into playing Minecraft and plotting out my eventual marriage to Chris Hemsworth, but yeah, I may have picked up on some of the noise. Ladies gossip a lot at my mother’s gym.”
“They gossip a lot at my mother’s church too,” Beau said as he stared out at the water. “What you may not have heard is that Janelle’s father was my youth pastor, and when I was twelve, we were actually pretty tight.”
“Oh.”
“Yep,” Beau chirped with a bitter smile. “There’s just nothing quite like telling the man who taught you how to pray that you got shit-faced drunk at a party one night and fucked his daughter without a condom.”
“Damn.”
Beau stared at his lap, suddenly unable to look anywhere else.
PJ settled a hand over his thigh. “Maybe you should start at the beginning. I’m a little confused on how you went from choir boy to party animal.”
Beau snorted. “I was never a choir boy. I can’t sing any better than Jackson. But I was pretty active in some of the other programs at the church. Stayed that way till high school.”
“What changed?”
Beau glanced up sharply. “Puberty. Teenage rebellion. Family tragedy. Take your pick.”
PJ nodded in understanding. “You’re talking about that accident with the Colonel’s parents?”
“Yeah. My Uncle Gray and Aunt Lucy were good people. So was my cousin George’s wife. It was crazy losing all three of them like that. Everyone in the family really struggled with it for a while. George developed PTSD, so we didn’t see much of him or his boys after that. The Colonel threw himself into taking over Browning’s Holdings, and his marriage to Dani suffered. My dad started having bouts of depression—”
“And you?” PJ cut in, her gaze suddenly very direct. “How did it affect you?”
Beau sighed. “I was fourteen. I was pissed off at the situation, I was pissed off at God, and I just wanted to escape everything and go party with my friends. The last thing I wanted was Pastor Noel coming at me with more youth group stuff. He tried. He really did. He knew what path I was heading down, and he did his best to steer me back to God. There was this support group at the church for kids dealing with loss. He was always sending me emails about it. Janelle had started going after her mom’s death a couple years before.”
“Did you ever go?”
“Nah. Didn’t want anything to do with it,” Beau said with a shrug. “I’m glad it was a comfort to Janelle. She had to watch a parent lose a long battle with cancer. I lost my aunt and uncle in a freak car accident. It’s not the same kind of loss.”
“Doesn’t make your hurt any less valid,” PJ said pointedly. They watched each other for a long moment. Then her hand tightened over his, and Beau had to swallow back a sudden rush of emotion.
He knew she was right. Loss was loss. The hows and whos of it didn’t matter. Whether it was a mother, an uncle, or a sibling, it didn’t matter. It all sucked. And his whole family had been wrapped up in it for a long time.
Even Lily, who’d been only eight at the time, had felt the terrible sadness of her grandparents’ deaths. Beau could remember her sneaking over to the Gate House, climbing up in her favorite tree with her journal, and writing for hours. Either he or Eli would eventually find her and pull her down before she fell asleep and took a header out of the branches.
Beau smiled sadly at the memories. He probably should have talked to the Colonel about signing Lily up for that counseling group. He probably should have joined it himself. That would have been a helluva lot more constructive than what he did do, which was to smoke a lot of pot, hack into computers for kicks, and mess around with girls.
“So when did you and Janelle start dating?”
Beau almost laughed at the question. Of all the girls he’d messed around with back then, Janelle had definitely not been one of them. “We didn’t,” he said, an embarrassed chuckle escaping. “Honestly, we didn’t hang around much in high school. She went to Treymont. I went to Prep. We saw each other at the occasional church function, but never had any inclination to date. We were just friends.”
PJ’s brow arched.
“Seriously, Pru, there was never a time when I felt like I shouldn’t be thinking about her a certain way.”
PJ eyed him skeptically, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at her mouth. “So how did you two end up hooking up?”
“We reconnected in college. Had this science class together the fall semester of our junior year. It was brutal. I wouldn’t have passed the damn thing if it wasn’t for Janelle helping me through it.” Beau sighed as he raked at his bangs. “A couple months after finals, we ran into each other again at my friend Arnie’s house party. He was having this Mardi Gras bash, and there was a ton of booze. By the time I spotted Janelle dancing with her girls, we were both already hammered. All I really remember was following her up the stairs, feeling hotter than hell because the place was crowded and Arnie was being a cheap bastard and running his AC at like eighty fucking degrees, and then the next thing I know I’m waking up in bed with my lab partner.”
PJ frowned. “That’s all you remember?”
It wasn’t entirely. Beau vaguely remembered Janelle spilling her drink on him at the top of the stairs, and he had flashes of kissing her in a hallway, but everything else was pretty fuzzy until he’d woken up to find Janelle looking every bit as panicked as he’d felt as she’d scrubbed at her legs with a wad of facial tissues.
That had been one of the worst moments of Beau’s life, and the only thing that had kept him from feeling like total garbage was the fact that at least Janelle hadn’t been wiping up any blood with the semen trickling down her thighs. At least he hadn’t taken her virginity in his drunken fog of stupidity. But he had planted his seed in her, and he hadn’t had the slightest recollection of doing so. Beau yanked at his hair, the same agitated feelings hitting him that always surfaced when he thought about that night. “Like I said. I was shit-faced.”
“Sounds like you both were.”
“Yeah, but any way you slice it, I’m still the guy who repaid all my friend’s help over the semester with an unplanned pregnancy. Janelle’s father was right. I did take advantage of her. I did betray her trust. Everything he yelled at me the day we told him about the baby, I deserved it.”
“That’s bullshit, Beau. You made a mistake. You both did. And you were honest with the man about it. You didn’t deserve to be kicked out of the church. You deserved some damn compassion. Aren’t ministers supposed to be good at forgiving people?”
“Not when it comes to their daughters. They’re still only human.”
They both fell silent as they stared into the darkness. Then PJ glanced back up at the house. “So that’s why you always have just the one beer, huh?”
Beau followed her gaze up to the deck. The music had finally quieted, and his family had all gone inside, leaving behind a scattering of empty bottles on the tables. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I don’t ever want to get that out of control again.”
“I get it.” PJ nodded as Beau glanced back at her. “My dad was an alcoholic. That’s why he and my mom split when I was a kid. And my Aunt Mona still smokes like a chimney. I guess addiction runs in the family. That’s why I stick to my gum and my Shirleys. I don’t want to be tempted.”
Beau smiled. “And yet, you stole the rest of my beer.”
“That was on account of you making me thirsty,” she said with a wink, “and ‘cause I just like fucking with ya.”
Beau leaned in and brushed his mouth over hers. “I like making you thirsty.”
“I know,” she said with a pout.
“And I like you fucking with me.”
“I know that too.” The pout settled into a smirk.
“And I really like talking to you."
“I kinda had a feeling you did.” She was killing him with another one of those slow sexy smiles.
Beau curved his hand about her cheek. She practically purred. He fucking loved that too. “Thanks for listening to me.”
“Thanks for trusting me.” PJ turned her mouth into his palm and kissed it before pulling it down to her lap. “Look, I know you feel like you took advantage of a friend, but I really don’t think you did. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of.” She lifted her shoulders as she smiled. “At least you got a really cool kid out of that situation.”
Beau grinned back at her, his earlier anxiety all but gone as he felt her fingers slip through his own. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Seriously, Beau. You made out alright. The only thing cool I ever got after sex was a free naval piercing from Skate Park Mike’s cousin Jo Jo.”
Skate Par
k Mike? Jesus. Beau wasn’t sure he even wanted to hear this story. He knew what kind of guys hung out at the skate park. He used to be one of them.
He must have been making a face because PJ threw up her hands. “Aw come on!” she said with a groan. “What happened to the no judging thing? Mike had a nipple ring, arm tats, and he was funny as hell.”
Beau cocked his head. “So did this bad boy comedian have a last name?”
“Dunno,” she mumbled, her gaze fluttering down to the charm dangling from her belly. “That’s probably something a girl should remember about the guy she lost her virginity to, huh?”
“Yeah. Just like a man should probably remember getting a woman pregnant.”
PJ shot him a wry grin.
Beau sighed. “Just tell me this guy was under eighteen.”
“Eh… close enough.”
“Pru…”
She turned her gaze back to the river, swinging her legs where they dangled from the pier. “I think he was a senior at Treymont when I was a freshman at Finkerton. I used to run into him at the park on my way home from school.” PJ shrugged indifferently, but Beau could see her expression growing pensive. “Mike was nice to me,” she said quietly. “And he didn’t seem to mind all my crazy makeup. Hell, some of his friends wore more of it than I did.” PJ snorted as she fidgeted with her piercing. “So one day after I showed up at the park, Mike asked me if I wanted to go hang with him at Jo Jo’s house, and I said yes.” She shrugged again, this time with far less indifference as she glanced at him. “That’s when we… you know—”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I don’t regret what I did, Beau.”
“Okay,” he said, quietly taking in the sudden sheen in her eyes, the slight tremble of her lips belying her words.
PJ swallowed hard, and when she spoke again her voice was thick with emotion. “But I do regret why I did it. After what happened at Baylor, my self-esteem was in the dumps. Mike was the first guy to make me feel even remotely attractive again. That’s a pretty pathetic reason to give up something so special, don’t you think?”
Pretty Jane (The Browning Series Book 3) Page 26