Dazzled and Dazed

by Harley McRide

  Ms. Maddie laughed. “Where do you think Caine and I got the idea for the shower sex. Not to mention learning all the uses for the massaging showerhead besides for aches and pains.”

  “Ma, please,” Brook begged and shook her head, “I don’t need that visual.”

  “Maybe Magenta should have drawn a picture. Better yet, a picture book, the ones with popups,” Petal said earnestly.

  There was silence, and then Sonia and Olivia burst out laughing. “Oh my goodness, good idea! I never thought of that,” Olivia said.

  “Well, who is reading this book?” Sonia asked.

  “We have already read it. Angelique sent a friend request to Magenta and she accepted it. So, we all sent one, but so far, she hasn’t answered. But we looked on Angelique’s Facebook and it says Magenta resides in New York,” Mia said and explained what they were talking about.

  “Oh my, I’m going to send her a friend request, too,” Olivia said and pulled out her phone. “I never thought of looking for my favorite authors on Facebook. How exciting, and she lives right here. Sonia, we need to get into this thing with the girls. We have time.”

  “Of course,” Sonia said and pulled out her phone. “Count me in.”

  Ms. Maddie leaned in, “I don’t think I have read this one, do you mind if I borrow it?”

  Petal grinned, “Go ahead.”

  “Oh yeah,” Ms. Maddie said and winked at her daughter Brook. “Make sure you don’t call me tonight.”

  “MA!” Brook yelled, and the look on her face had us all giggling.

  When Falon walked around the corner, and his eyes narrowed, I knew he had heard, and then the rest of the guys followed, all with weird looks on their faces. Yeah, I kinda wanted the ground to open and swallow me. Especially when Sean and Jet brought up the rear, and their eyes came directly to me.

  “What is going on?” Falon asked and looked over Mel’s shoulder.

  “Just talking about tattoos,” Mel said while she nonchalantly flipped through the drawing pad.

  “Sure, so what the fuck is really going on?” Falon asked and raised his eyebrows.

  We all laughed, and then Petal said, “Girl talk.”

  “Is this about that damn author again. I swear to God, you guys are obsessed,” Falon said. “I keep finding her books lying around here. If one of the customers picks them up, it’s fucking on you guys.”

  “Stop cussing!” Olivia snapped, and then put her hand on his face. “Why isn’t Mel pregnant yet? I need more grandbabies!”

  “Maybe we should read one of those books, it may help,” Mel snorted, and Falon glared at her.

  “Seriously? I’m pretty sure I know how to make a baby, I don’t need a book to show me! And stop making it seem like it is all me, you are the one who doesn’t want kids yet.”

  Mel laughed louder, and then said, “Honey, you will see the benefit when this new book comes out. After reading them, I get all kinds of ideas about having fun. Plus, I never said anything about putting off having kids, you said we had too much going on, and since I was fighting, it wouldn’t be a good time.”

  While the two bickered back and forth, which hadn’t taken me long to figure out they used fighting as foreplay, and the moms began to talk to Brook and Zoey, I looked at Sean and Jet through my eyelashes, and they were staring intently at me.

  “What the fuck, I don’t need ideas on how to pleasure a woman!” Falon snapped, and I saw the rest of the men shuffled from foot to foot, but they nodded.

  “Yeah,” Tony said with a frown and walked to Brook and put his arms around her. “I don’t hear you complaining in bed.”

  “Oh...well...I wouldn’t ‘cause I make sure I move you where I want you when we’re in bed. That’s how I get to see if the book is real or not.”

  Fin frowned, “You do what?”

  “Oh please,” Maria snapped and shook her head. “This is girl talk, if you don’t like what you hear, then you shouldn’t have interrupted.”

  Ranger growled and said, “You tell them what we do?”

  Maria rolled her eyes. “Of course not, I tell them what I enjoyed.”

  “Yeah, but you ENJOY everything,” Ranger snapped.

  “Oh dear, it seems like this has created some conflict,” Olivia said softly.

  I sighed and took out my phone. “Well, I, for one, am not ashamed to say I love her books, and I want her to accept my friend request, too. Not only that, if I had a boyfriend, I would read with him, and then we could act out the scenes.”

  I pushed my buttons and sent my request to the writer. The others nodded and the moms took their phones out and did the same thing. The men were silent and must have been contemplating what I had said because when I looked back up, I saw a flare in a few of their eyes. Well, hopefully, that stopped the argument. I glanced over at Jet and Sean, and both were frowning as Sean moved from side to side like he was uncomfortable. He should be, they all should be, it was a book, a fantasy, something women read in order to escape their lives for like five minutes and see into someone else’s without having to stalk and get arrested.

  “Okay, well no more in the shop,” Michael said. “Our customers don’t need to hear about Magenta whatever her name is.”

  “Hey,” suddenly a deep male voice came from one of the rooms, and Falon frowned.

  “What?” Falon asked.

  “I like listening to this, and I picked up the book that was on the counter while I was waiting. I gotta say, it was interesting,” the man said, and the girls and I giggled while the guys frowned.

  “Who is he here for?” Cal whispered, and Angelique looked down, and then back up.

  “Michael,” she said, and everyone turned and smiled at the owner of the tattoo parlor.

  “Have fun with that, Michael, you will have lots to talk about,” Falon said, and then Mel hit him on the back of the head.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m heading out to grab groceries before I go back to the house. Do you need anything?” I asked Angelique who smiled, and then shook her head.

  “I’m visiting my brother, and then I will be home. We’re hoping the hospital lets us soon when Josh can be released,” Angelique said and smiled, the love for her brother was there every time she mentioned him. I smiled back and nodded.

  Ignoring the two men who were staring at me, I grabbed my purse and keys and waved goodbye to my friends and quickly left the building. Having them so close every day was putting a kink in my plan to ignore them.

  Every time I saw them I remembered…wait no, I don’t remember because if I did, that means I would have to admit how much I… NO! Refuse to go anywhere near those memories. End of story!

  Chapter Five

  Sean

  Jet and I had arrived home just in time to see Brit and Angelique carrying in the grocery bags; of course, we offered to help, but Brit glared at us and declined. Now, we were sitting with the college football game playing on the large screen television we had moved into the brownstone just last week. Chilling and drinking a beer before we decided what takeout to order since neither of us cooked, like at all. So, we were stuck ordering in unless I called Ma and asked her to make meals for us.

  Maybe we could make this work all the way around, a thought started to take form in my head, and I grinned and looked at Jet who was yelling at the game. My thoughts paused as I joined him and stood yelling before I plopped back down on the comfortable couch.

  The place was already furnished since it belonged to Ms. Honeychil. The woman had moved and now lived in the small mother-in-law cottage behind Ranger and Maria’s home, and she got new furniture along with it. So, she left her old stuff in the brownstone, and damned if the older couches were so much more comfortable than the newer supposedly stylish ones. Hell, I may need to confiscate this couch when this was all done.

  Fin and Tony bought Mrs. Honeychil’s place, and Ranger’s house next door, so they could use them as safehouses for Tony’s well-known clients who wanted or needed to escape the publi
c eye at intervals. They were a good investment. However, now they were being used to keep Angelique and her brother safe. Brant was moving in with Jet and me as well, just as soon as Josh got out of the hospital. The house I bought when I moved back home was now Jet’s home also. We decided to use the time away from it as advantage and were have some updating done on the inside.

  I lifted my beer to my lips and said, “What did you think about what Brit said today?” When I finished, I tilted my beer and took a long drink.

  Jet laughed, “Well, I pretty much think that puts her right where we want her.”

  I frowned. “How do you figure?”

  Jet stared at me with his mouth open. “Seriously? All you have to do is accept her friend request, then we have an in.”

  I shook my head. “Dude, that is wrong. I mean, I don’t think…”

  “Sean, seriously, don’t think,” Jet snapped, and I sighed.

  Jet and I had become best friends over the last few years. We’d met in Cali when he and Tony had stopped by the tat shop while in town for a job. Where I was more on the quiet side, Jet said whatever popped into his mind. I tended to be serious, he was intense.

  I smiled remembering the first time Jet had come over to my house to watch a game after we’d moved back.

  “Hey, remember the first game we watched at my house?” I asked, and Jet laughed.

  “Like yesterday,” Jet said, then shook his head and continued. “You let me in, pointed to the living room, then went to the kitchen. I stepped into the living room, and the pregame had just started on the screen. I had my eyes on the television reading the stats they were showing as I moved toward the couch. Still not sure I would have noticed the stapled together papers if I hadn’t knocked the thing on the floor.”

  “I walked in the room, and you said, ‘Brother, you have something to tell me?’ I cussed myself for being so careless when I saw what you had in your hand. Knew then it was time to come clean.”

  “Yeah, you hesitated, then just blurted that shit out, ‘I am an author.’ Took a minute to sink in too on what you said. I remember looking back down at the stapled pages thinking this is a fucking manuscript, but it didn’t have your name on it. Didn’t put it together right away, so I said, ‘Okay yeah, I get that, but it says Magenta O’Reilly, that is a chick’s name.’”

  “Yeah, and I said it was my pen name.”

  “Uh, you using a chick’s name as a pen name, still cracks me up,” Jet snorted, and I flipped him off.

  “Yes, because the genre I write in is typically bought by females. My agent had told me it would be wise to use a pen name, then after I looked at some of the other authors’ names, I decided to use Magenta,” I said with a shrug.

  “I knew dick about genres then. Hell, the closest thing to a novel or book I read was Playboy or the occasional catalog with the new security gadgets. Then you started explaining it all, which helped, but I still didn’t understand it.”

  “Yes, erotic romance ménage, mostly in the contemporary genre, since my series is based in a tattoo parlor. I even played around with fantasy for a bit, but I just didn’t like the feel of it. And I figured if I wanted to delve into that genre, I would use another pen name because Magenta has her own fans and I don’t want to confuse them.”

  “Like I heard any that day after erotic and ménage. I focused in on what type and started firing questions. Ménage? You write romance? I don’t even know why either. Fuck, you and I had already shared a woman by then, but I just couldn’t get my head around you writing books about it.”

  “‘Cause guys don’t sit around and talk about shit like women. I told you then it was profitable, and not to tell anyone because no one knew, and I was waiting until I hit bestseller. Plus, I wasn’t ready to tell them I’m an author, still not. I don’t want them giving me a bunch of shit over it,” I said.

  Jet nodded and said, “Hey, I get it. Damn, I said that it was cool and that I wouldn’t say anything. And I haven’t. But you’re a bestseller now.”

  “So.”

  “And you still haven’t told anyone,” Jet said.

  “Too much going on. It’s not the time.” Jet lifted a brow at my response.

  “Fine. I’m not ready for the shit I’m going to catch from my brothers. How’s that?”

  Jet chuckled. “Totally understandable. But there is something else I’ve wanted to ask.”

  “What?”

  “How in the fuck did you start writing romance?”

  “Well, when I was getting my computer software engineering degree, I took a creative writing course for one of my electives. Enjoyed it. They say authors write what they know, and I guess it’s true to a point. I mean, I know the tattoo business, know about ménages, so I put it together, and the stories just started coming. As far as the romance part, it came naturally because I grew up around it.” I waited for Jet to laugh when I told him something I’d never mentioned to anyone else, not even to my agent, who had asked the same question.

  “I can understand that with your family. Even when your parents and the Roarks are giving you and the others a hard time about grandbabies and settling down. It’s because they love you and want the best for you,” Jet said, and I wasn’t shocked that he saw passed the parents’ relentlessness. It was his ability to detail that made him one of the best in handling security.

  “They’ve pulled you into the family, so don’t let them fool you. That’s how they operate. They suck you in, and when you least expect it, they pounce. Don’t get me wrong, the love they show is real and unbreakable, but their need for grandbabies is just as strong. You’ve seen it with your own eyes.” Jet chuckled, and so did I.

  “Yeah, I got that yesterday from your dad,” Jet said and continued to chuckle even though I’d stopped.

  “What did my dad say?” I asked.

  “Tony and I were getting in some sparring time, and your dad was watching us. When we finished, Tony asked Reilly if we looked good. Reilly said not too bad, but then went on to tell us a few things he saw that we could improve on. The man knows his shit. Anyway, I’d missed an opening that if I’d noticed it quick enough, I could have taken Tony to the mat. Your dad caught it, too. He told me when it came to Brit, he hoped you and I didn’t miss any openings that big. And if we did, maybe we weren’t the right men for his girl. Then, he went back to helping Franco and Jamison get the new training room set up. I just stood there and watched the man’s back as he walked away while Tony laughed his ass off.”

  “Awesome, not only are we trying to get Brit to acknowledge us, the old man is going to stick his nose in it,” I said, and Jet nodded.

  “That is why you need to friend her,” Jet said again.

  I thought for a minute because now we had to work around my dad, which meant being a step ahead of his meddling. “No.”

  “Oh, come on, it would be perfect.” Jet laughed.

  “Listen, I already accepted Angelique’s, you saw the rest of them, hell, my ass was vibrating as all of them sent friend requests. MY MOM sent me a request, and that is fucking creepy,” I snapped.

  Jet hit his thigh with his hand and looked at me. “Okay, don’t accept the request from your mother, you’re right, it is kind of creepy. Plus, it could be a bit uncomfortable, especially if she were to ask you questions about the book. Accept the others ‘cause we need an upper hand, but don’t accept Brit’s yet, it would be obvious, plus it will piss her off.”

  I closed my eyes still working it out in my head, and then I said, “Let’s cook dinner.”

  “Are you fucking nuts? We don’t know how to cook,” Jet replied, and I grinned and opened my eyes.

  “Maybe, but I saw the girls bringing in groceries. I figure if we destroy

  dinner, they will take mercy on us and invite us over.”

  Jet’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “How are they gonna know we burned dinner?”

  I grinned, “Oh they will smell it once we open up the window. You know, the window that faces
theirs that they have opened every evening.”

  Jet smiled and shook his head. “Well, what are we burning?”

  I stood and rubbed my hands together, and then said, “First, we need to borrow a few ingredients.”

  Jet nodded, and we walked to the door and Jet waited at our door while I walked down our steps, and then walked the few feet between the brownstones. When I reached their door, I knocked. It only took a sec, and the door swung open. Brit was standing there, and I smiled.

  “Do you have a stick of butter? I was cooking dinner when I realized we were out,” I asked and continued to smile.

  Brit growled at me and shut the door. I frowned and shrugged at Jet and was about ready to turn away when the door opened, and a stick of butter flew out and hit me in the chest, and then the door shut. I was stunned, what the hell was that?

  I bent and picked up the butter and said, “What the fuck was that for?”

  Brit flung the door open, leaned out and yelled, “‘Cause you,” she pointed at me, “and him,” she pointed at Jet, “are pissing me right the fuck off!”

  “Woman, I asked to borrow butter,” I snapped.

  Brit rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but you were trying to do it all sexy like, I am just telling you, being sexy doesn’t work for me.”

  “How the fuck can you be sexy asking for butter?” I grinned.

  “I don’t know! Just stop,” Brit snapped and slammed the door shut.

  I walked back to our place and Jet was chuckling. “Not sure that worked out the way you wanted it to.”

  I shrugged, and then pulled out my phone, “Not really, but let’s see if this does.”

  I scrolled down the list until I came to Brook and clicked accept on the friend request. Whistling, I walked to the kitchen intending to do exactly what I planned, but with a twist. I opened the window that faced the other house and listened. Yep, I could hear Brit and Angelique muttering next door.

  “Can you believe…” Brit was saying, and then I heard the chiming of a cellphone. “Hang on,” she said, and I grinned and looked at Jet who was smiling as well.