CHAPTER EIGHT
BEAUX
When Paige came back to the garage, Sam and I had been kicking it in the main office. Paige’s stamp was all over the place in a subtle but still feminine way. The small waiting room was picked up and tidy, cookies were laid out, coffeepot filled and hot.
The main desk had little splashes of color on it with neon Post-it notes and next to the area where I knew Paige sat was a small vase filled with three fresh flowers. Looked like fake colored daisies but the water in the vase was definitely real.
I’d had a decent time with her old man. He was quick to laugh, the straight shooter I pegged him to be. We talked about my last season with the Rough Riders, and he told me about his college days playing ball for Purdue. All surface level shit, but by the time Paige arrived dressed to kill in a short and frayed denim skirt that barely skimmed the bottom of her ass and a tank top that accentuated her assets up top, I had his approval.
He didn’t say it, but I knew men like him. Good men with good hearts and strong minds. It was a shame his body was failing him.
I’d actually planned on taking longer at the dealership, but once Paige was in my truck, telling me about her jobs at the garage and the restaurant, all I could see were her tanned legs and all I could smell was the scent of her flowery perfume. My dick was so hard I had to keep shifting in my seat and drape an arm in my lap so she didn’t see the bulge. Once we pulled into the Ford dealership, I just wanted the deal done so I could get her to dinner, keep her opening up and then take her home so I could finally kiss her.
Because I wasn’t ending the night without our lips pressed and tongues tangled together and my hands tangled in her hair.
Now we were at IronOar Steakhouse, a casual restaurant where you picked your own cuts of meat when you walked in, grilled your own steak, and took whatever sides you were offered for the night.
It was a kick back with family, good friends, and a beer kind of place. I loved it. The wait staff and owners had recognized me the first time I’d come in with Shannon. When I came back the second time, they’d hung a photo of me with the wait staff so I had them take it down so I could sign it. Since then, I became a regular, stopping by almost once a week. No one gave me any extra attention.
I figured Paige would like that, too, and besides the smirk she gave me when she saw my photo on the wall when we arrived and requested our steaks, everyone had left us alone.
It helped that while it was Friday, we were still there before the main dinner rush.
Now, I was guiding us into deeper conversation.
“Your dad’s a trip,” I said. “He totally kicks ass.”
We were snacking on peanuts, having a beer and eating our salads while we waited for them to deliver our steaks so we could go grill them. She took a drink from her Miller Lite, and her eyes slid to the left.
“Thanks. He’s the best man I know.”
“How’d he end up in a wheelchair?”
She sighed and the depth of her pain filled her face. “He’s had two strokes.” She set down her beer and wiped her hands together like she had to warm them. “The first one hit just over a year ago, the second one a few months later. That’s the one that left him paralyzed. He’s in therapy and slowly getting better, but some days are worse than others.”
“And you quit your job at a television station to come home and help take care of him?”
Her brows rose and she tilted her head. “Are you sure you’re not stalking me? Maybe checking my Facebook?”
“No.” I hadn’t even considered it. “Your dad and Mike are talkative guys.”
“Figures.” She pulled a face and took a moment before continuing. I had the suspicion she was debating how much of her life to give me. What she didn’t know was that I was beginning to want it all from her. Every time she opened up about something, I fell harder. “It wasn’t a choice. He’s all I ever had until Mike came into our lives.”
“How’d that happen?” I leaned forward and rested my forearms on the table. He was young and definitely wasn’t related to them based on what I’d picked up through conversation, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t become their family.
Her nose scrunched into an adorable pout. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“I told you I was going to.” I shrugged shamelessly.
“Yeah, but…” her voice trailed and she lifted her hair off her neck, letting it drop back down like a silk curtain to her shoulders and beyond. “Okay. Mike was a foster kid. A good kid, though, just had some crappy life stuff happen but who doesn’t, you know?”
“I do know.”
For a brief moment, sadness filled her eyes. She knew about my mom and wasn’t hiding it, but she didn’t dwell, thank Christ. “Anyway, he came into my dad’s office one day when he was only fifteen years old, said he needed a job and didn’t know anything about cars, but he’d work hard. Dad spent the first month giving him the shit jobs. He cleaned the bathrooms, emptied oil buckets and swept the floors. Dad said it was to test his mettle. Mike showed up every day after school, stayed until we closed and didn’t complain once. After that, he just sort of stuck.”
“Your dad’s a good man.”
“The best.” She grinned wide and easy. Now I knew how to get her talking…mention her old man. Simple as that.
“What about your mom?”
The smile fell. “She left when I was four. We’re better off without her.”
The chill in her voice set me on edge. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She took another drink. “I mean, she wanted the guy she met in college, the football star. Dad never wanted to go pro, said he didn’t have the talent to start and didn’t want to bounce around pro teams playing back-up for his career, always moving. He wanted to have a family and settle.”
“And your mom didn’t?”
“Nope. Dad said she tried, but after they’d been in Raleigh for a few years, she turned resentful. Then she had me and really couldn’t deal. He came home from work and her stuff was gone. She’d left me with the sitter without telling anyone where she was going.”
“No shit?” The blasé way she spoke about her mom stunned me almost as much as a woman who would do that to her kids. You heard an awful lot of men taking off, my unknown dad being the perfect example. It always startled me more when it was a woman.
“Do you ever talk to her?”
She gave me a disgusted look. “I haven’t had anything to do with her since I was seven. After she left, she got remarried to some rich guy in Michigan. Then she started sending a bunch of money, all the expensive toys a girl could ever want, but it sucked. All I wanted was a mom, and she didn’t give a shit enough about me to even stay in the same state. I made my dad send it all back and told him to tell her I didn’t want to see or hear from her again.”
Jesus. If there was a worst mom in the world award, I knew who I’d choose as the winner. “I’m sorry,” I said when Paige was still gritting her teeth. “I didn’t mean to bring up a bad memory. That must have been hard.”
“She was selfish enough to think she could buy me with money. And too selfish to see that before she left, even if we didn’t have much, we had everything we needed in a family. I always figured I was better without her.”
Damn. This woman. She blew my mind. Not only with her wisdom and her sexy pouty lips but her heart. She liked her simple life, and I loved that about her.
Paige would take what she got and make the most out of it. She’d squeeze the hell out of a pile of lemons and make the most delicious lemonade anyone had ever tasted.
Plus, there were similarities that only people like us who had lived it would understand. “We have more in common than I thought we would,” I said, taking a heavy swig of my beer.
I was feeling too damn much. Too hot. Too tight. My dick was throbbing in my jeans making me bite back a groan.
“Because of your mom? What about your dad?”
Few people were brave enough to ask about my family.
Damn. I liked her. She didn’t play games, didn’t try to grab a leash and yank a man around. She just threw it out there, straight up. A girl who didn’t play mind-fucking games was refreshing.
“I don’t know who he is. Mom told me before she passed she was working at a hotel, had a weak moment of feeling alone, and there was some guy there doing some celebrity charity golf tournament. One night, he wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am’d her and nine months later,” I sat back and lifted my arms and grinned, “perfection was born.”
“You’re so full of it.” She laughed. It was low and husky like her voice. More porn-sex phone operator than peppy cheerleader.
My dick went hard again as I wondered what she’d sound like when I made her come.
“So, how about I go see what’s taking our steaks so long and we get cooking?”
***
Rain splattered the windshield so harshly it was difficult to see the roads.
My new truck was getting quite the break-in as I drove through water-covered roads. Rain pinged against the metal truck it was difficult to speak over the noise.
Regardless, we were still talking. We’d stayed at IronOar Steakhouse long after I’d planned on getting Paige home, but once we’d gotten past the hard crap of her life, we’d briefly spoken about mine. I told her all about Shannon and how she took care of me growing up. I told her how I wanted to punch Powell in the face for being a dick to her when they started dating, and I begrudgingly admitted I actually did like the guy and he was good for Shannon.
She deserved to be happy and after a disastrous marriage of Powell’s, so did he.
Still, most of the conversation was left light-hearted but deep. Paige told me about her jobs, that she worked at Ride’Em Rough at least four nights every week and sometimes picked up doubles on the weekends as long as she could find someone to help with her dad.
She worked hard, too hard for someone barely twenty-four should have to, but I admired the hell out of her for doing whatever she could to take care of her family.
It wasn’t just because she reminded me of my mom or my sister, or that I liked her tight ass and her husky laughs when she gave them, but because the more she spoke, the deeper I fell.
I hadn’t yet met a girl who made me think of settling down, and we were way too young in wherever this was going to think of something permanent, but I was a master at going with my gut.
With Paige sitting next to me, jumping every time thunder boomed, clutching my hand a little bit tighter, my gut was telling me this girl could be the one.
I’d played the field for the last decade not because I was afraid of settling down, but because I didn’t have time to think about a serious relationship. Hell, I hadn’t even really dated since high school. Hook-ups were easier, but I always made sure the woman I was with knew that going in.
I had been too focused on my game, my career, being the best, and fighting to stay there to even consider a relationship.
But now that I was settled and firmly entrenched in Raleigh, things were changing.
Unfortunately, finding a woman who wanted me more than they wanted the zeros on my paycheck were hard to find once I signed a multi-million dollar contract.
Money brought out crazy shit in people. It turned them into monsters with dollar signs in their eyes. I learned early to stay far away from anyone who exhibited signs.
None of them came close to comparing to the ease of sitting next to a pretty girl in my brand new truck not even bothering to hide the fact she was afraid of a little thunderstorm.
“You don’t like storms I take it?” She squeezed my hand again and thank God I was strong. My knuckles had cracked more than once since she’d tightened her grip.
“I don’t like instability. It’s never been my thing and I always think if the atmosphere can become so unstable, what hope does that give for the rest of us?” She laughed softly, tucking a chunk of her hair behind her ear and turning to me. The grin she shot me burned straight to my chest. The heat from our connected fingers following straight behind. “That sounds stupid doesn’t it?”
“Not coming from a girl who didn’t start off life having a lot of stability. Losing a parent, whether or not you become okay with it, changes you in ways that aren’t ever fixed, Paige.”
“Gosh, it’s uncanny the way you understand me.” Her smile turned soft and she brought up her other hand to cover her yawn as she rested her head on the seat of my car. “I’m sorry, it’s late for me.”
The GPS beeped, telling me to turn down her street. I focused on the road and pulled into her driveway, a short one that ended at a small carport so common in this area in smaller, older homes.
I must have been grinning because over another yawn, Paige asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Carports.” I shook my head. “So many things are different here and it still gets to me sometimes.”
“Like car ports?”
“Yeah. And these storms y’all have all the time. Plus the fact I just used y’all in a sentence. You southerners are rubbing off on me.”
“Do you like living here?”
“Can’t lie, living further north is all I’ve ever known. I miss the snow and the winters.”
“What’s it like?”
“Snow?”
“That. Minnesota. Iowa. How are they different?” She yawned again and I pulled my hand from hers and pressed it to her cheek.
“Twenty inches of snow and we live like it’s a half-inch here. Nothing stops except a few hours to get the plows out. People either bunker down in the winter or spend it ice fishing, playing pond hockey, and in the summer, they live on their boats and their lakes. They’re the nicest people I’ve ever met, just without the y’all’s. I can also tell you’re exhausted and the last thing I want is to keep you out later than you should be, so how about I get you inside and we finish this another time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Which means you also have to give me your number.”
She fished out her phone, a faint pink coloring her cheeks. Damn, I liked it. Gone was all the hesitation she’d had with me before dinner. Somehow during dinner, I’d picked through whatever had held her back from being out with me, probably because I hadn’t been an ass.
“I gotta tell ya,” she said around another yawn. Goddamn this girl needed more sleep. “It’s only nine, but I feel like it’s midnight. I swear, when I’m old, I’m totally going to rock the senior citizen life. Dinner at four-thirty, bath at six-thirty, in bed by seven-thirty. I’m ready for it.”
I got stuck on the vision of her in a bath. Naked. Suds covering her breasts. Hair pulled up off her neck and some of it wet as it stuck to her skin. It would no doubt smell like peaches or strawberries, something sweet just like her.
I texted my own phone from hers and gave it back to her. “I’ve got a busy week. What’s yours look like?”
She squinted for a moment. “Work all weekend at the restaurant. Next week during the day I’ll be at the garage and then I’ve got Thursday and Sunday off from the grill.”
“First game of the year is in Atlanta that Sunday.” Damn. I wanted to see her, but now that the season was starting and since she worked so much, it’d be that much harder. We’d be swamped up until the plane took off Saturday, spending this week of practice preparing and finalizing the starting line-up. “We’ll find our time to see each other soon. In the meantime, you want me, even if to say hi, call me.”
She clutched her phone in her hand.
“Really?”
“Yeah really. Hold on.” I hopped out of my truck and ran around the front. Damn this monster was big. I dodged slamming my hip against the bumper and threw open her door, ushering her out and under the carport before we were soaked. “Told you I wanted to see you. And I like everything I see, Paige. You want to see me again?”
“Yeah.” She grinned softly, eyes lighting up even in the poor lighting by her house. “I guess I’d like that. Thanks for dinner.”
“Thanks for coming with me, even if I had to strong-arm and trick you into it.”
Our hands were clasped together and she tugged on mine, pulling herself closer. Head tilted back, lips parted, she licked her bottom lip. I bit back a groan. Goddamn. She wore seduction like she wore her confidence—understated, but sexy as fuck in its simplicity. “It would probably boost your ego if I told you I was thinking of saying yes anyway, but all that stuff you did for my dad really did seal the deal.”
“Yeah.” I slid my hand up her arm. I wanted to kiss her. Wanted to pull her into my arms and make out with her like a teenager. Hell, this felt like I was a teenager, dropping a girl off knowing her dad was inside — most likely with a loaded shotgun. This was the South. Everyone carried. I had no doubt Sam had a safe full of weapons he could destroy me with.
Good thing he liked me.
If I screwed his daughter against the side of his house on our first date that’d probably change.
“Thanks for not being a jerk, tonight, Beaux.” She grinned again.
Screw it. One kiss wouldn’t hurt. “I’ll always be nice to you,” I muttered, cupping her cheek and tilting my head. I moved slowly, let my intentions be known and was rewarded with a hazy look in her eyes giving me the all clear.
Ah yeah, she wanted me.
I gave it to her. Soft and slow, I brushed my lips over Paige’s. She trembled in my arms as I savored the taste of her. Little flicks of my tongue against hers and she parted her lips, inviting me inside, but I took my time kissing her lips, memorizing the silkiness of her hair against my fingers, the weight of her body in my arms.
Her breath hitched, that little moan of hopeful pleasure I was waiting for hit my mouth. I slid my tongue inside. Our bodies melted together, her hands to my back, up and down, she held me, pressed her chest against mine. I forced my hips to stay still, not to rock my dick into her stomach, but the self-control hurt.
She met my tongue, tangled hers in mine and I took over, pushing it back into her mouth. We were moving before I knew it and stopped when I had her against the siding of her house. She let out at a gasp, surprised, and I pulled back.
Jesus Fuck. I really had almost screwed her against the side of her house.
“Holy hell,” I mumbled. My grip on her head was firm, but not painful. “You’re really damn good at that.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
“I need to let you go before I do something that’ll lose your dad’s respect.” Fuck if I wanted to though. I’d already spent a whole bunch of hours jacking off to the thought and the promise of Paige. Now that I’d had a small hint of that perfection, my dick craved the real thing.
“Thanks again for dinner.”
“Thanks for coming with me. I’ll see you soon, okay?”
I kissed her again and pulled back, both of us gasping for breath. I couldn’t get enough of her. One small taste and I was drowning.
“Okay, Beaux.”
I let go of her and stepped back. “Get some sleep. I mean it.”
I turned, feeling like a victor at a gladiator match. Her matching smile was the last thing I saw as I pulled back down her drive and then her fingers went to her mouth, covering the taste of me on her lips, sealing me in.