Smiling at my choice, he gave me a gently nudge. “Ok, baby, go get it then.”
After his kiss last night and order that he was taking me out tonight, I hadn’t been sure if I could do it. I knew he wanted to talk to me and explain about what I’d heard, but seriously – that discussion could have gone in any direction, including the one where he was just ‘getting it out of his system’ before anything happened between us. That would have sucked balls.
Him helping me with this, though, chipped away at the wall I’d built around me two nights ago. This was the Jarrod I knew, the Jarrod who I’d semi fallen in love with months ago. This was the Jarrod that I understood.
So, having this Jarrod in front of me, helping me with my niece, the awkwardness and wariness that I’d still been feeling for him lessened.
Jarrod
After we’d given Elodie her Tylenol, and she was settled back down again with her ugly ass purple bear in her arms, we went back through to the room we’d been in before, and that’s when I took in what was in it and realized it was Katy’s bedroom. I’d known it would be given that our houses were identical, but I’d been so focused on the problem at hand that I hadn’t actually put two and two together.
Now I was, so I was going to try to get some more clues about Katy. I wanted to know everything I could about her, and this was a great place to start. It also had her bed. The bed that Katy slept in at night. I wonder if she wore something, or if she slept naked? Looking behind me, I saw a tall drawer unit… Which drawer had her panties and bras?
Katy came in and closed the door slightly behind her. “Ok, she’s out. I’ve set a timer on my phone for an hour so I can take her temperature again.”
Making my way over to her bed, I sat down on the edge and patted the space beside me. It was time. “That was a good idea. Come and sit for a second, baby.”
She didn’t play any games or try to delay it at all, not Katy Crew. Instead, she walked over and dropped down, her attention on the countdown display on her phone.
“Katy,” I called, trying to get her attention with her bangs now in her face.
Lifting her head up, she blew out a big puff of air that lifted them. Somehow, through some follicle miracle, they landed in the right spot, the one that they were always in when I saw her – swept to the side, covering her eyebrow, and framing her gorgeous eye.
“While we’re waiting, I want to have the talk with you I was going to have tonight. Is that ok?” When she nodded, but her expression turned wary, I shot her a smile and reached out for her hand. “What you heard most sure as shit wasn’t me with another woman. I mean, I was with another woman, but that’s not what you heard.” When she froze and stiffened up, I hissed, “Shit, I’m fucking this up.” Turning her hand around so that I could lace my fingers with hers, I started gently rubbing the area of her hand that was accessible to my thumb. “A while back, I was in a cell at the Police Department. While I was in there, I started singing to get my mind off the shit I’d been involved in – which, just to say, wasn’t my fault. A man was beating on his woman and I stopped it – and Tabby was in the cell next door.”
Nodding at me, she whispered, “I’d heard about that, and you did the right thing. So did Dave when he put you in there so that the asshole wouldn’t come after you.”
That he was, Dave was a great guy. “Agreed. But while I was singing, Tabby said I should narrate erotic books because of my voice. It was a joke for a while, and then it wasn’t a joke.”
I’d expected to see disgust, disappointment, confusion, anything other than what I saw on her face when she heard this. “Oh shit, that’s so freaking cool. You’re narrating audible books?”
“That I am. And for the last however many days, I was doing my first dual narration where I did it at the same time as the female narrator for the book.”
“How does that work?” she asked, no doubt wondering if the chick had been in my house.
“You go online together and record at the same time. We have a special program that does it for us, and we also have a copy of the book that’s highlighted in different colors to tell us who says what.”
“That’s pretty handy,” she mumbled.
“Not many people know I’m doing this, baby. In fact, until last night, I could count it on one hand and still have spare fingers.”
Twisting to face me, with her leg now up on the bed, she asked, “Why don’t people know? Does your family know?”
Leaning in, I shook my head. “No. Up until last night, only Tabby and Jose knew about it. I had to tell my brothers last night so that I could explain that I wasn’t doing what you thought I was doing while they were trying to beat the shit out of me.”
Her hand tightened on mine. “Shit, your brothers beat you up?”
Why were we getting off track?
“That doesn’t matter, baby. What matters is that I’m telling you that there wasn’t a woman or women physically in my home. What I was reading was from a book.”
She looked conflicted when she looked away this time and started chewing on her lip.
“You never promised me anything, Jarrod, so you shouldn’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m so sorry for putting you in this position.”
I was fucking done.
It took all of two seconds to scoop her up off the bed and place her in my lap with her legs either side of me so that she was straddling me.
Holding her face steady, I dug deep for the words for this. “Katy, I don’t mind explaining it to you because I want you to know this shit. Granted, I’d have liked to have waited a while to share my secret with you, but I can’t say I’m pissed about it or about what happened. The highlight of my days has been hanging out with you, and before that it was catching a glimpse of you when you came out of your office.”
Katy’s jaw dropped, and she sat staring at me like I had two heads, and then said, “Sha da faa cup.”
“What the fuck?” I choked, not sure whether to laugh or start testing the boundaries of my ability to explain shit.
“Mom used to get pissed at us when we were little and swore, so me and my brothers came up with something that we could say and she wouldn’t be able to get angry about us for cussing,” she explained blushing.
I did my best to laugh as quietly as I could, but it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.
“That’s fucking adorable,” I told her, watching her eyes light up. Then I added, “But it’s nutty and goofy as hell.”
Shrugging her shoulders, she was unapologetic when she admitted, “That’s me!”
It took a good while, but I finally managed to stop laughing. Sha da faa cup, how hilarious was that? This time when I looked at her, she had a soft look on her face as she watched me get some control over it.
“I like it when you laugh,” she said quietly. “It’s not just the way you look when you’re doing it and the way your eyes light up, but the sound you make when you’re doing it is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.”
Fuck me!
Lifting my hands so that I was holding her face on either side with my fingers in her hair, I pulled her closer to me. “I like seeing you all the time, but when you get that hazy look in your eyes when Elodie does something or I say something you like, or when you’re laughing at something and tip your head back, those are my favorite. Those are the ones I want to take a photo of so that I can see them over and over.”
For once, the communication gods were with me. Happy day!
Glancing quickly down at my mouth and then back up to my eyes, she rasped, “Jarrod, what’s happening here?”
Closing the inch that was still between us, I stopped with my lips about a millimeter away from hers. “I’m hoping it’s the beginning of something between us. Something special that’s just ours. Something where I get to know you better, learn what you like, memorize what you don’t like, spend time with you…”
It was just as well that she cut me off by kissing me when s
he did because I was running out of things to list.
Letting go of the hand I was still holding, I lifted it up to cup the side of her neck, loving how silky soft her hair felt and how thick it was as I moved my fingers through it to the back of her head. With our differences in height, I had to bend over a good amount to reach her, but with her head tilted back it wasn’t a painful amount. I’d always had a type – tall. Body shape didn’t matter to me, but height did. The fact that she was so much shorter than me went totally against that, but I found I actually liked it. I liked that she wasn’t like anyone from my past, it made everything between us new and special.
The only answer I had as to why that was, was that she was Katy. The chick who at a first glance I’d thought was cute, but I’d been too focused on life and what was going on with my friends. First there was Tabby’s thing, then there was Jose’s thing, then there was Rose’s thing, and after that I was helping Raoul’s brother Garrett get settled in Piersville. Add in my family and brothers, hanging out with the guys, narrating, and it didn’t seem like a lot but it was.
Moving in next door had been a move I definitely wasn’t regretting now as my tongue brushed along the side of hers and she mewled into my mouth.
Yeah, I was fucking happy, and I really wanted to see where this was going.
I was careful not to push her too fast, so we stuck to making out, but we didn’t separate once, not even when I picked her up and put her in my lap to do it.
When her phone started making a noise, that’s when we pulled away from each other, and I watched as she slowly opened her eyes and looked up at me hazily.
“Your phone’s going, baby,” I whispered, seeing it taking time for the fog to clear and for her to get her bearings back, and loving every second.
She jerked and looked down at it, only now noticing that the alarm was going off on it. “Holy cramoly, how long did we make out for? The last time I looked I had forty-nine minutes left.”
Not wanting to be a smart ass but figuring it was prudent, I pointed out the truth. “Forty-nine minutes then.”
She looked back up at me, rolled her eyes, and then just tipped herself off my legs and saunter-limped back through to Elodie’s room.
Turns out the Tylenol helped, and her fever was dropping which was a relief. That said, it was an unspoken agreement between us that we would continue checking her temperature every hour, which is what we did until it was time for Katy to get ready to go to my parents' house.
I loved getting to play with Elodie and watch her inquisitive mind guide her through her toys after she woke up. And I have to say, I seriously fucking loved getting to make out with Katy before she woke up from her nap. Both Crew girls had something about them that sucker punched me in different ways, and they didn’t even have to do anything big for it to happen.
Maybe peace was overrated? Maybe Crew mayhem was where it was at, because I was starting to look forward to getting it whenever I could.
Ten
Katy
Waking up the next morning, I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, remembering everything that had happened yesterday. The chat, Elodie not feeling well, the kissing, more of the kissing, the drive to Jarrod’s with his hand holding mine resting on his thigh, the feeling of the muscles in his thigh shifting as he worked the pedal, the meal at his parents…
Jesus, the meal at his parents.
We’d arrived after my parents did, so they were already introduced, happy and relaxed when we got there. That lasted all of five minutes until Major and Ammon arrived with Maude, who was surprisingly well behaved until after beer number two when she told Gloria she would kill to do her hair.
So, while Jarrod’s dad Dolf manned the BBQ and turned the jerk chicken, Maude worked on her hair even though Mom and I had tried to talk her out of it. Just as Dolf was plating the chicken on a platter, they walked back into the room and everyone just stopped and stared. I wasn’t kidding when I said Maude liked big hair, and holy shit did Gloria have big hair after she was done with it. It looked like she’d teased, ratted, lifted, sprayed and fluffed it out until she had an actual beehive on her head.
Seeing it, Dolf almost dropped the platter. Bond – who had been chomping on a stolen piece of something called ‘festival’ – choked and Dad had to pat him on the back. Canon dropped his bottle of beer on the patio. Reid let out a yelped “holy shit”. And Jarrod muttered, “Fucking hell.”
Gloria, though, she loved it and asked Maude to come back to do it again. Major and Ammon were both standing facing the fence in the Klines backyard, their shoulders shaking as they laughed quietly, and Mom was glaring at Dad like it was his fault because it was his mother.
Me? I buried my face in Elodie’s neck and started praying for some sort of time portal like the chick in The Witcher could conjure up. Now would be a great time for me to start tossing coins for a Witcher. In fact, I had a bunch of ones, five fives, and three tens in my wallet, too, I would throw those at him along with the coins, pass him my credit cards, and beg him to save me.
My sister had shown up after we’d finished dinner – jerk chicken, rice and peas, and something called callaloo with pieces of festival. I swear I could eat that every day and never grow sick of it, so much so that I’d asked Gloria for the recipes. It looked complicated, but damn if it wasn’t worth the effort – and were sitting eating Johnnycake. It was Bond who’d let her in and who was the one to catch her when she tripped over her own feet when she saw Gloria’s hair and had then shot a glare at Maude.
We’d all sat down talking and Gloria had filled my family in on where her family was from in Jamaica, the history of Port Royal and how half of it sank into Kingston Harbor in 1692, its links to Captain Morgan (the Captain Morgan and his pirates), and then how Dolf’s family had fled from Germany to America during the first world war, and how his grandfather was named Adolf but changed it to Dolf after Hitler started his reign of terror and fucked upness, so he and his father were named Dolf without the A because of that.
Hearing this, my brothers had started bitching about my parent’s choice of names for us and how they’d have preferred Dolf and Gloria to name us. And thus began the old Crew name conversation.
-
“This isn’t fair,” Major had snapped, glaring at Mom and Dad. “They all have kick ass names and we’re stuck with our messed up crap.”
Not realizing that she was opening a door that needed badly to remain locked tight, Gloria had innocently asked, “Where did you get their names from, Katherine?”
Maude had started laughing, and hadn’t stopped when both my parents had glared at her.
“Major got Major because he’s a major pain in the ass,” Ammon had snickered, swallowing a mouthful of beer at the same time Major punched him in the arm.
Ignoring the impending war between her sons, Mom replied, “Well, when I was pregnant, we decided we wanted to merge my grandfather’s name with Paul’s grandfather’s. Mine was named Martin and his was Jordan, so we decided on Major.”
“She just doesn’t want you to know the truth,” Ammon had snickered.
“Oh yeah, and what about your name? Did she have a craving for gammon? Or maybe she really preferred salmon and didn’t want people to call you fishy,” Major growled. “Here fishy, fishy!”
Ammon’s whole body had tensed up through this, and I’d chanced a glance at the Klines to see them all watching it with amusement.
Like her sons weren’t about to get into a smack down versus raw fight, Mom continued, “With Ammon it was a bit more problematic. I’d wanted to name him Ryan, but I had a hard labor with him and after he was born, Paul had gone out and gotten rip-roaring drunk. We’re talking beyond snockered,” she added, glaring at Dad. “Anyway, because I was still recovering, he filled in the forms and couldn’t remember the name we’d chosen, so he looked up at the television and saw the reporter’s name was Ammon.”
Tipping his head back to look at the dark sky, Ammon had mutt
ered, “Fuck my life.”
Throughout all of this, Maude was sitting laughing herself silly as she continued drinking her beer. When she looked up and saw me watching her, she shrugged a shoulder and took another big mouthful from the bottle.
Gloria had been fully invested in this story at this stage, so she ignored my brothers who were trying to silently goad each other into a fight and asked, “What about Katarianne?”
“Dad was probably too drunk to spell catamaran,” Major said sarcastically, and had then given me a small smile of apology.
“That one was on me, too,” Dad sighed. “Katherine wanted Arabella because she said Katy was born looking like a fairy princess – which she was,” he added, winking at me, “and that Arabella was a beautiful name for something so precious and beautiful.”
Focus off of each other, Ammon crossed his arms over his chest and sent my parents a scathing glare. “I notice me and Major didn’t get any comments like that.”
Not even looking contrite, Dad returned, “That’s because you both looked like miniature versions of that Winston Churchill guy.”
Looking at each other in confusion, they had both lifted up a butt cheek to pull their cell phones out and looked the guy up on the internet. When they found a photo, the glares they’d given them that time were almost scary.
“Your retirement home is going to be in a basement,” Major hissed, shutting his phone down.
“And you’ll change your underwear once every two weeks,” Ammon added. “Which’ll be shitty because you’ll only get cabbage water, so your asses will be active.”
If it had just been us I’d have laughed, but because it was in front of Jarrod and his family – who I really liked and wanted to think good things about me – I buried my face in my hands and prayed again for a portal.
While I’d been doing that, the Klines had all burst out laughing, as in bent over and holding their guts types of laughing.
Talk Flirty To Me: Cheap Thrills Series Book 4 Page 11