If drunken memory served, every time I laughed or touched his thigh, arm, or hand, he looked at me the same way.
I still passed out in his car, just like white trash.
And now he was gone.
“Ugh,” I mumbled, the dull headache and subtle queasy feeling making it easier for me (just a touch) not to scream at my stupidity, find a way to kick my own ass (even mentally), or burst into tears.
Instead, since I was Daisy and from the moment I came out bawling I had no choice, I shoved the covers aside and got on with it.
I pushed myself out of bed, pulled my dress off on the way to the bathroom, and did my morning bathroom routine, this time adding the complicated procedure of getting all my makeup off.
My hair still rocked it since I rocked doing my hair, so I left it as is.
I went back into my room, tugged on a pair of baby-pink, drawstring, fleece shorts (that had diamanté sprinkled along the curves of the seams of the pockets) and a skintight white tank top that had emblazoned all across the front in hot-pink and glittery diamond rhinestones Nothing a Little Sparkle Won’t Fix.
My mantra.
Though, that morning, post-fucking up my date with Marcus Sloan, I knew all the sparkle in the world wouldn’t fix the feeling I had sitting in the pit of my belly that had nothing to do with being hungover.
I moved to my door in order to get water (for the aspirin I needed) and coffee (because every true red-white-and-blue American drank coffee), and find alternate ways to avoid the pain of a heart I refused to acknowledge I’d broken my damned self by acting like the white trash everyone thought I was.
I opened my door and stopped dead.
It was October, dead-on fall, and the sun hadn’t yet hit the sky like only sun in Denver could, washing the base of a glorious mountain range in bright.
But the rising sun was doing its best lighting a room where every surface was covered with a spray of daisies. Some of them were pretty white ones with little yellow buttons in the middle. Others were white with green buttons. Some, a mixture of both. And others were pink. Or orange surrounding the black button blazing out to a startling yellow. Others were red. Then there were those that were coral. There were also those with color combinations.
On a routine basis, I carefully clipped their ends, added fresh water with food, all in an effort to keep them alive as long as I could.
Over the weeks, I’d had to throw some away.
But they were of a quality that most of them were still going strong.
And right then, in the midst of them, lying on his stomach on my couch, one long arm having fallen off the side, my throw having slid down to his waist, the delineation of the muscles of his tanned back on show, his head turned from me resting on a toss pillow, his thick dark hair disheveled, lay Marcus.
He hadn’t left the drunken, stripping floozy who’d passed out in his Mercedes in her bed and taken off.
Like a gentleman, when she wasn’t in the throes of a trauma, he’d slept on the couch.
I looked at him, his long body stretched out amongst the daisies, asleep, but having stayed close so he could make sure I was safe, safe from anything, even nightmares, and I made a noise in the back of my throat I couldn’t control.
When I did, I watched his body twitch then he came up on his forearms and his sleepy blue eyes turned my way.
He looked ready to move further but he caught himself when he saw me.
I stared into his eyes, knowing I probably made noise getting up, doing my thing in the bathroom, getting dressed.
But it was my quiet sob that had woken him.
Marcus Sloan.
God, he killed me.
I leaned my shoulder against the doorjamb, drawing in breath through my nose, controlling the tears with some effort, taking more time to swallow them back.
After another breath, watching him watching me unmoving, I spoke.
“You know what got me through?”
“Baby,” he whispered but still didn’t move. He just lay there on his stomach, up on his forearms, his head turned to me, his eyes glued to me, just like he knew that’s what I needed him to do.
Just that. Stay on my couch and let me say what I needed to say.
“Thought I was nothing,” I shared softly.
He pushed up, the muscles in his biceps bulging, threw off the blanket, and turned to sit on his ass.
He hadn’t taken off his trousers.
That couldn’t be a comfortable way to sleep.
But a gentleman in a lady’s home got as comfortable as he could get, but unless he was invited to do it, he didn’t take off his trousers.
Lord.
Marcus Sloan.
“Proved it to me, that guy,” I told him. “Raping me. The world had been givin’ me signs since I was born. But he proved it to me.”
“I need you to come here,” Marcus requested gently.
I ignored him and kept going.
“Told myself that. Was certain of it, at first. The thing was, if I was nothing, why was someone sending me daisies?”
That cut it for him.
He started to push up.
Quickly, I asked, “Please. Don’t. Please let me finish.”
He settled, gaze locked to me, and he showed me with his expression that he didn’t like it but he kept his place.
For me.
“So pretty,” I whispered. “So bright and happy. They were everywhere. I wanted to think dark thoughts. I wanted to cut myself down. I just couldn’t keep it up. And it wasn’t Miss Annamae this time who helped me see what it was important to see.”
“Darling—”
I’d beat them away but they came right back and I knew it when the bead of cold wet slid down my cheek.
“It was you,” I finished.
“Daisy, I need to come to you.”
No he didn’t.
I needed to go to him.
And that was what I did, scared—no, terrified.
But slowly, one foot in front of the other, I did it, and he watched me every step of the way.
And when I got just a little bit close, he bent way forward. His long arms coming right out, his fingers grasped me at my hips and pulled me into his lap.
Then he kissed me.
It was soft and it was sweet.
But it was more.
The tip of his tongue touched my lips and I instantly let him inside. He swept in, his arms around me closing tighter. He twisted at his waist, leaned into me, and I felt my back hit the couch, the warmth of his broad chest pressing to mine, his hand diving in my curls and closing around my scalp.
I had my arms around his shoulders, one hand curved tight around the back of his neck, and I kissed him back trying to come even a little bit close to giving him back all he’d given me.
Daisies.
Lobster.
Laughter.
Patience.
Understanding.
Everything.
I pressed my breasts into his chest.
He groaned, then growled into my mouth, but I felt it in my coochie, and he took the kiss deeper. One of his arms curving down, his hand gliding down my side, his trajectory I knew to my ass.
But before he got there, that arm locked tight around my waist, his lips slid from mine to my neck and he kissed me there.
Then he held me that way, his warm breath coming fast against my neck, all the other warmth of his hard body pressed to me.
I didn’t get it.
So I called, “Marcus?”
“Taking this slow,” he answered a question I didn’t exactly ask and he sounded like it was the last thing he wanted to do, not just saying it, doing what he said.
That was sweet. I was sure I needed it.
Still.
“You coulda maybe taken second base,” I shared.
His head came up, his twinkling eyes caught mine, and he was smiling.
“Maybe next time.”
“Look forward to that,” I mumb
led.
“Now I’m going to make you breakfast.”
I frowned and asked, “Whose apartment is this?”
“Yours,” he answered, still smiling.
“So rules are, I have a drama, the morning after, you can make me breakfast. I don’t have a drama, which, honey bunches of oats, I’m hopin’ to be drama-free for a good long while, I make breakfast. Comprende?”
I knew what I was saying.
But more, he knew it.
And he liked it.
A whole lot.
“Deal,” he replied, eyes still twinkling.
“Do you like pancakes?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
I squinted at him. “Got a load of your six-pack, sugar.”
And I had. His chest and stomach were better than his back. Well, not really, it was just that I didn’t mind losing the sight of his back if I had his chest and abs to look at. Or his shoulders. Or his face.
“Daisy.”
On my name, he sounded like he was laughing.
I stopped thinking about his chest (and other things) and focused on him.
Yep.
Laughing.
Pull yourself together, girl!
“Sorry,” I muttered then rallied. “So, if I make you pancakes, will your body rebel and I’ll have to take you to the hospital? Or will you have to eat nothing but celery for two weeks to make up for it?”
“I cooked in your kitchen, honey,” he reminded me. “I didn’t notice many healthy options.”
“I’m Southern. If it isn’t fried, griddled, or grilled, it’s grilled, griddled, or fried. We might get up to some boilin’, but only if it’s crawfish, lobster, or shrimp, and I don’t have none of that.” I hesitated, making a mental grocery list before I concluded, “Right now.”
“I’m thinking I’ll have to add another hour to my workout every day if you’re doing the cooking.”
My eyes got big.
“You work out every day?”
His body shook against mine with his laughter and his word shook with it too, “Yes.”
“That explains it,” I muttered.
“Daisy?”
I focused again on him and not the delicious vision of him working out.
“Yeah?”
“You have a beautiful body, too.”
I smiled. “Thanks, sugar, that’s sweet.”
“You’re welcome, darling,” he said warmly. “But what I’m saying is, you have that body. You also have three packets of bacon, and only because I cooked up the last of the opened one yesterday, so before, you had three and a half.”
“This is true,” I confirmed, like having four packets of bacon (and I made another mental note for my grocery list that I was one down) was the most natural thing in the world.
Because it was.
“And you don’t work out?” he asked then added with his arms giving me a squeeze, “Every day?”
“I strip. Then I practice strippin’. Then I help the other girls practice strippin’, doin’ it by showin’ them some good moves.” I paused before I finished, “And I power walk.”
“Ah,” he murmured.
“I also have to cart around these bazungas,” I shared, deciding not to take my arm from around him (because I liked my arms around him) in order to gesture to said bazungas he couldn’t exactly miss since he was lying on them. “And that burns some calories, believe you me.”
He was still murmuring, and his eyes were still twinkling, when he said, “I bet.”
It was then I decided to remove an arm from around him but only so I could put a hand to his jaw and rub my thumb over the dark stubble on his cheek.
It rasped against the pad of my thumb and felt nice.
Real nice.
And I watched the twinkle in his eye disappear but only so he could replace it with something I liked just as much.
I kept doing this with my thumb as I said softly, “I need some aspirin, baby. I got me a little hangover from last night and it’s all good with you lookin’ hot on my couch and bein’ hot while kissin’ me then bein’ sweet while talkin’ about pancakes. But that’s settin’ in again so I gotta get on doin’ something about it and then feedin’ my hot guy.”
“You have an extra toothbrush?”
My eyes rolled back to study my bangs for a second as I mentally inventoried my bathroom drawers then I looked at him again and said, “Yeah.”
“You get me that. I’ll get you the water and aspirin. Then you can start cooking.”
I grinned at him.
“Deal.”
* * * *
We were sitting at my dinette and I was shoveling in pancakes while envisioning the dining room table I was going to buy when I got my new place (this in an effort not to envision what Marcus’s shoulders looked like under the shirt he’d put back on—he was fine in that shirt—he was finer out of it).
Marcus was shoveling in pancakes too. Though, he was classier about it.
“How’d you get all classy?” I asked.
“Sorry?” he asked back.
I circled my fork with its hunk of pancakes dripping syrup at him.
“You said you didn’t have much growin’ up. Your daddy played the ponies. Your sister was a stripper. But you look and act like a Kennedy, except hotter, and without forgettin’ how to pronounce your R’s.”
“Got a job at a country club to help my sister out when I was fourteen,” he shared.
I nodded.
“Some of the adults were all right. The rest acted like I didn’t exist. The kids were jackasses.”
“I’ve got no doubt,” I murmured, watching him like a hawk.
“I belong to that country club now.”
His words socked me right in the chest in a very happy way.
Real slow, I felt a smile spread on my face.
“You knew what you wanted, you made it happen.”
He gave one nod. “Exactly.”
I’d made a decision. I was scared to death of it. But I’d made it and I’d shared it with Marcus.
It was time to get to the important stuff.
“You want babies, sugar?” I asked quietly.
“Yes.”
I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding after I asked my question and before I asked another one.
“How many?”
“As many as my wife will let me make.”
Excellent answer.
“Do you want them, Daisy?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“As many as my man will let me make.”
We sat there, not eating, just staring at each other.
I broke the silence by giving him the honesty.
“Just sayin’, darlin’, this takin’ it slow is not real easy.”
His eyes heated but his face went soft.
“Let me take care of you,” he whispered.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t keep up. He gave me a lot of it.
But in that moment, those words felt like the sweetest Marcus had ever given to me.
I pressed my lips together, rolled them, and nodded.
“I like it that you don’t want slow but you need it, baby,” he went on.
He was probably right about that, even if after that kiss on my couch that morning, I wanted him to be wrong.
I didn’t offer him these thoughts.
I just kept nodding.
“Dinner tonight, my house,” he decreed. His lips curled up slightly. “Since it’s my house, I’m cooking for you, honey.” The lip curl went away as his tone grew firm. “And I want you to bring a bag but I’m sleeping in the guest room and you’re not.”
What could I do?
I’d made a decision. And Marcus knew that decision.
And on the other point, it was his house. Maybe one day (I hoped, please God, did I hope) I could horn in and do what a good woman should do for her man, that being the cooking (and I didn’t think on what Marcus and his six-p
ack had in his fridge—I was Southern, I could eat a strawberry if it was on the bottom of a champagne glass and some Brussels sprouts if they were coated in bacon grease, but that’s about as far as it went).
But right then, I had one choice.
And for once in my life, it was a good choice.
So I again nodded.
“Eat,” he ordered. “I need to get to work.”
I just kept nodding.
He gave me a sweet smile.
And then we both ate.
Chapter Eight
Just a Dream
Daisy
That evening, I sat next to Marcus in the back of his big limousine, Ronald driving (again wearing sunglasses, seriously, and night had fallen and everything!), Brady sitting next to him in the front, Marcus sitting next to me with his fingers fiddling with mine against his thigh.
He was on his phone.
It had been a surprise when Brady, not Marcus, had collected me at my door, taking my bag and also putting his hand to the small of my back as he escorted me to the car.
When Brady opened the door to let me in, Marcus was on the phone but his gaze was on me.
However, the instant I sat my ass next to him, he muttered into his cell, “I need a moment.”
He didn’t wait for whoever he was talking to to give him that moment.
He put his hand over the bottom half of his phone, leaned into me, brushed my lips with his, then slanted his head and kissed my neck.
He pulled away and said, “I’m sorry, honey. This is important. I’ll try not to let it take too long.”
I’d just had my man’s man collect me from my door, carry my bag, guide me chivalrously to a limousine in the back of which was my man.
He could be on the phone for an hour, two. With all that and the way he greeted me and apologized, I didn’t give a shit.
To communicate this, I smiled at him, nodded, settled my ass into the leather and it was then he took my hand, pulled it to his thigh, and started fiddling with my fingers.
We drove from my building that was on the east side of Cherry Creek past Colorado Boulevard, into downtown.
It took Marcus all that time to wind down his phone call and he only flipped his cell shut when Ronald hit the indicator and made a turn into underground parking.
Rock Chick Reawakening Page 11