Tempting Little Tease (Blackwell-Lyon Book 4)

by J. Kenner

  “And then we went off to college and abandoned her,” Brody adds. “Pretty shitty of us really.”

  “Is this your way of guilting me into helping her now?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  I have to laugh. “Okay, give me her phone number. I’m not saying yes, but I’ll at least get her take on this scam.”

  “You should talk to her in person.”

  “When’s she flying in for this shindig?”

  “She’s not,” he says. “She’s already here.”

  Chapter Two

  According to Brody, Sam came to Austin to do contract work for some video game company. She’s staying in Crestview, an established neighborhood in the heart of Austin with charming bungalows and lots of shade trees. It’s one of my favorite areas, and I’d looked to buy there before finally renting south of the river. When my lease is up, I’ll look again. In the meantime, considering I still haven’t unpacked, I think I’m done with moving.

  I find the rather bedraggled one-story house easily enough, then pull up beside the curb since a baby blue Mini Cooper is already in the driveway, parked in front of the detached one-car garage. The door is up, and as I come closer, I see at least a dozen paint cans scattered about, as well as an interior door balanced on top of two sawhorses.

  I follow a buckling sidewalk through the front yard to the concrete stairs that lead to a wooden porch painted in brown, peeling paint.

  I pull open the screen door, knock a couple of times, and wonder if I’ll even recognize her.

  A moment later, the door flies open, and I’m staring at Samantha Watson’s wide, happy grin. Her dark brown hair is pulled back beneath a blue bandana, and there’s a white streak of paint on her cheek that makes me think of street urchins. She’s at least three inches taller than the last time I saw her, the top of her head now reaching my chin.

  In my mind, she’s still built like a pre-teen fence post, but to be fair, I can’t get any real sense of her figure since she’s wearing a paint-splattered men’s button-down that doubles as a smock and baggy, faded jeans.

  I can see her face just fine, though. The same, but different. Her wide brown eyes seem bigger and darker, with the kind of lashes that Cayden’s wife Gracie wears when she’s modeling, but on Sam are the real deal. The childish round face that’s burned into my memories has given way to a perfect oval accented by cheekbones that stand out when she smiles. Something she’s doing right now, actually, and I can’t help but notice that her plump lips and wide mouth were made for smiling. And for other things. Things that I have no business noticing about my best friend’s sister. Not even in passing. Not even casually.

  I’m still lecturing myself when she steps forward, obviously intending to give me a hug. And, damn me, I actually take a step back, her lush lips still filling my vision and Brody’s all-too-strict warning still ringing in my ears.

  To my relief, she laughs. “I know. Awkward, right? I mean, you were like my brother, but it’s been ages. Probably best to start out with a friendly handshake and work our way up to social hugging.”

  She thrusts out her hand, and I take it, noticing how well it fits into mine, and surprised at how smooth her skin is despite the fact that she apparently spends a lot of time working with her hands.

  “From what Brody tells me,” I say, “we won’t be stopping at the social hug.”

  It might be my imagination, but I think her grip tightens slightly. Not that I have time to analyze the nuances of our connection, because she gently tugs her hand free.

  She clears her throat, then steps aside and ushers me into the house. “Listen, thank you so much. I know this whole thing must sound crazy, and I can’t even tell you how much it means to me that you agreed to do it.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I know. Brody told me the whole story about how you didn’t want to, but then you remembered how you two pledged to look out for me. And even though I’m old enough to look out for myself now, I really, really appreciate this.”

  She pauses, looking me over once more before she shuts the front door and gestures me further into the house.

  I hesitate, because this is the moment when I should tell her that I need to leave so that I can go strangle her brother. The guy never could keep a secret.

  “It’s not that I didn’t want to help…” I trail off lamely as she flashes me a crooked smile.

  “I believe you. Why wouldn’t you want to go off to Fredericksburg to a weekend wedding hosted by people you’ve never met with a woman you haven’t seen since she was a kid, but now you’ll have to pretend to be her fiancé even though you don’t even know her favorite color?”

  “When you put it that way, I must be crazy.” I flash a faux salute, then start to turn toward the door. “See ya.”

  Her laughter fills the room, and when she grabs hold of my arm and pulls me back, I’m grinning, too. “Hold on there, cowboy. You already signed onto this rodeo. I’m not letting you get away so easily.”

  She’s still holding my arm. But right then, I’m not inclined to alter that particular status quo.

  “I’m just saying that I appreciate it.” Her words are soft and heartfelt.

  “Like I was trying to say earlier, I want to help. And as for that other thing…”

  “Other thing?”

  “Green,” I say. “Your favorite color is green.”

  I can see the surprise in the way her eyebrows scrunch. She always did have the most expressive face of any girl I’d ever known.

  “What?” I tease. “Did you think you were that forgettable?”

  She shoves her hands into the pockets of her paint-splattered jeans, her shoulders and brows rising and falling together. “Well, I hoped not,” she says, more to the carpet than to me. “But I’m still impressed.”

  When she lifts her head, her cheeks seem a bit pinker, and I’m struck by just how well the parts that make up Samantha Watson fit together. And by the fact that she’s no longer the little girl I used to know.

  On the contrary, Samantha Watson’s all grown up.

  “Yeah, well, that summer is burned into my mind for a lot of reasons.”

  She nods. “That was the summer you met Brody.”

  “And you followed us around for a month begging him to help you paint your room green.”

  “I had to. I was a damsel in distress. Mom and Dad thought it was a terrible idea, but I was certain that when they saw it, they’d be impressed. So I figured I needed it done all at once.”

  “Which meant you needed help.” I shake my head, remembering how she’d stood on the steps, hands on her hips, and made her case. “I can’t believe we agreed.”

  “We?” She cocks her head. “Brody said no. It was only after you said that we could each pull a trailer on our bikes and go to the hardware store for the paint that he got into the idea. That was very cool of you, by the way. I always thought so.”

  I grin as I follow her through the small living area and into a spacious kitchen that more or less resembles a war zone. “Yeah, well, I’ll tell you a secret. Brody may have thought the whole thing was a joke, but I felt like some sort of hero helping you out that way.”

  Two stools are tucked in under a bar-height counter, which, at the moment, is constructed only of plywood. She raps lightly on the wood. “This’ll be stunning once I get the countertop in,” she says as I take a seat, and she moves on to the refrigerator. “And just so you know, you were my hero that day.” She opens the fridge and holds out a bottle of white wine, one articulate brow rising in question. I nod, and she pours two glasses. “To my hero of yesteryear,” she says, raising her glass in a toast. “And to my hero this weekend. I guess that makes you two for two.”

  Her words are light, almost casual, but she’s looking right at me, and damned if my whole body doesn’t feel warm. Then I notice that she’s unbuttoning her shirt, and the warm rush shoots south, making me very glad I’m sitting down. “Uh, Sam. What are you—”

 
But before I get the rest of my words out, she says, “Sorry about the temperature. The stupid AC has been on the fritz since I bought this place, and the kitchen is the worst.” She casually tugs off the shirt, leaving her clad in a scoop neck tank top that reveals some very unexpected curves.

  Apparently, Sam really did grow up.

  I clear my throat and—in an effort to distract myself from Sam’s truly spectacular tits—start to survey the shambles of a kitchen. The open cabinetry is all half-sanded, and doors of every size litter countertops. Everywhere I look, Dixie cups overflow with hinges and screws. Not to the mention the sawdust, paint brushes, and open cans of primer all over the plastic-covered flooring.

  “You bought this place?” I ask, her earlier words coming back to me. “Are you moving here? Brody said you were only here for a contract job.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But this place was a steal, and it’s going to be fabulous once I finish. The housing market in Austin is still strong, so I should make a pretty solid profit, especially since I’m doing a ton of the work myself.”

  I’m impressed, and I tell her as much.

  “The place has good bones,” she says. “The cabinets are from the forties and they’re rock solid. But the paint and pulls are ugly as sin. So I’m redoing them one at a time. And this,” she adds, smacking the heel of her hand on the plywood that is serving as a countertop, “will be gone just as soon as the new countertops come in. Composite glass,” she adds. “It’s going to look amazing.”

  “It will,” I agree, looking around the room with fresh eyes, trying to see it the way she obviously does. “Won’t it be hard to part with?”

  She shrugs. “I came here to tackle one specific project. Well, one I planned, and one bonus project that just sort of fell into my lap. And that’s all great, but my career’s back in Seattle.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.” She takes a long sip of wine, then leans back against the sink, her back arched so that her tank pulls tight against her breasts, and I come close to absolutely losing my shit.

  She looks me in the eye, then nods. The slightest, most minuscule nod ever. “Yes,” she says, her voice almost a whisper. “I think it will be hard to part with. But I didn’t come to Austin with any long term expectations.”

  “You came for the gaming project, and all this is just a perk.”

  “But a hell of a perk.”

  “I thought all you made were digital weapons and imaginary cities,” I tell her. “I had no idea you were so handy in the real world.”

  I sip my wine, realizing that I don’t really know Samantha Watson at all. Not any more. Now, she’s fascinating and talented and easy on the eyes. She’s everything she was and yet so much more. And for one sharp moment, I wonder if this weekend is a huge mistake.

  “You sound like Brody. He thinks that just because I work in the gaming world that I live there, too.” She tilts her head, and I get the feeling she’s studying me. “What do you mean, ‘you thought’? Mr. Palmero, have you been checking up on me over the years?”

  “Sure,” I admit. “Brody brags about how well you’re doing in the gaming world all the time. And I’ve asked him for a few updates, too.”

  “Yeah?” Her smile is so bright, I’m glad I confessed to keeping tabs. “Gone but not forgotten, huh?”

  “Never,” I assure her, then feel my breath catch in my throat when she holds my gaze, her face alight with pleasure. For a moment, we just stand like that, my head filled with the rush of my own blood pounding through my body.

  With any other woman, I’d take this up a notch. See if the electricity crackling between us is my imagination or if there’s some genuine chemistry brewing. And if so, I’d jump right back on the hook-up train and gleefully break my two-month celibacy streak.

  But Sam isn’t any other woman. She’s Brody’s sister, and he’d have my balls for breakfast.

  Since I’m rather fond of my current anatomical state, I clear my throat, and glance sharply away, focusing on the room around us instead of the woman in front of me. “You’re really doing all of this on your own? Have you done it before?”

  “I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity in Seattle, and then helped out a few friends with remodels. A couple of them have since moved here—it’s a good market for the gaming community—so they’ve popped in a couple of times to see my progress.”

  “They’re not reciprocating? Not helping you out with all of this?”

  She raises a shoulder. “I like doing things on my own. It’s …” She trails off, as if searching for the right word. “Relaxing. No, strike that. It’s familiar.”

  I almost ask what she means, but then realize that I don’t need to, because the memories are flooding back. Samantha floating in her family’s pool by herself. Samantha, fixing up her bike on her own, despite Brody and me both volunteering to help. Samantha, walking to school on her own, headphones in as she marched to her own beat, while Brody drove the battered Subaru wagon that had been his pride and joy junior and senior year.

  She’d always been a loner. I think that’s one of the reasons I’d been so moved by her misery at that dance. I never thought that the other kids’ opinions mattered that much to her.

  Or maybe I just hadn’t thought at all.

  “Well, if you change your mind, I’d be happy to help you work on the house.”

  For a moment, she simply looks at me, her face blank. Then a wide smile spreads across her face. “You know what? I think I’d really like that.” She indicates the rest of the house with a wave of her hand. “Want the grand tour?”

  “Sure.”

  It’s a small house—about twelve hundred square feet, but the back patio off the kitchen is large and screened in. There’s a ping-pong table there, which she tells me was left over by the former owners, along with an old-fashioned tire swing that hangs from a giant oak in the back yard.

  “It’s a mess,” she says, nodding at the overgrown yard. “But I’ll get it under control eventually.”

  There are two entrances to the patio, the second one being through the master bedroom. It’s a simple square room with nothing more than a mattress and box spring on a metal frame and a chest of drawers. The attached bathroom is in desperate need of updating, and Sam tells me that’s the part she’s most looking forward to. “Of course, I’ll have to hire a plumber, but it will be worth it to have a walk-in shower and a clawfoot tub. Bathrooms add the most value, you know.”

  The second bedroom is across the hall from the master, and it’s set up as her office. “Eventually, I’ll redo this room as a bedroom,” she tells me. “But until then, this is where the magic happens. Unless I’m having one of those days. In which case, this is where the frustration happens.”

  “Days when you can’t figure out whether the ogre needs a sword or a mace?”

  “You know, it’s been a long time since any of my games have included an ogre,” she says. “But I’ll remember that for the next time I get stuck. Even if it’s a racing game. I’ll just stick an angry ogre in the middle of the track and give him a sword.”

  “I think you’re on to something,” I say, and we both laugh.

  “Not a problem you have working security, I guess,” she continues. “Getting stuck, I mean. Not ogres.”

  “Well, there are definitely a few ogres in my line of work. As for getting stuck, I end up spinning my wheels more than I like to admit, trying to figure out where to look next for information or how to best tackle a problem.”

  She pauses at the end of the hall in front of the large open area that serves as both the home’s entrance and the living room. “Sometimes the best way is to go undercover, right?”

  “Sure.”

  She nods, as if considering something. “So what problems do you have on your plate right now?”

  “Nothing at the moment,” I admit.

  “Good.” She tilts her head to the side as she studies me. “That mu
st mean you know exactly how to play the role of my fiancé.”

  That slow burn eases into my gut again, and I gamely ignore it. “I think I can wing it.”

  The corner of her mouth tugs up, revealing a small dimple in the cheek with the paint. “I bet you can.”

  I clear my throat, certain I’m imagining the heat in her voice. “So your ex—he’s not the groom?”

  “Oh, no. Reg is another guest. A cousin of the bride, who happens to be one of my best friends. Who knew?”

  I frown as I mentally follow that web in my mind. “Best friend? Does that mean you’re actually in the wedding?”

  She shakes her head. “No. She has two sisters, so the bride’s side is entirely a family affair. But Becca and I were tight in college, so I’m definitely going to help out when I can. Which means you should get lots of downtime to chill by the pool or go into town or whatever. That’s a perk, right?”

  “Right,” I say automatically, surprised by how much the thought of not spending the entire weekend with her bothers me. I tell myself that it’s only because I won’t know another soul at this shindig, and force my mind onto another topic. “So tell me about him. If we’re engaged, I should know about your ex, right?”

  “Right. Well, we both worked for MT-Tech in Seattle. It’s a German-based company with a huge online gaming division. He was an assistant project manager and I was doing contract work on one specific game while I tried to get my own company off the ground. At first we just worked together, then we realized we both grew up in Texas and started hanging out more. Friends at first, then…”

  She trails off with a shrug.

  “And then it was good,” I continue for her. “And then it went bad.”

  “That pretty much sums it up. Now he’s dating Lisa Bronwyn. You know the name?”

  I shake my head.

  “Her dad’s Arwin Bronwyn. He’s the owner of MT’s biggest competitor, Sunspot Entertainment.“

  “That one I’ve heard of. It’s based in Austin, right?”

  “Yup. Reg works there now and word on the street is that he’s the golden boy because of some terrifically innovative product he’s going to bring in-house, and that Bronwyn is so impressed that he’s going to make Reg the vice-president in charge of the entire online gaming division by next year.”