EMERSON
Lucas was the first thing my dad noticed.
Lucas was quite possibly the only thing my dad noticed.
The fact that I’d brought a boy home. I hadn’t done that since my first year of high school.
“I’ll kill him if he touches her.” Like me, my dad didn’t have an indoor voice . . . or a filter. So he made his statement to everyone within earshot. Repeatedly. “Especially if he does it under my roof.”
He stopped short of saying as much to Lucas, though, probably only because I’d sworn up and down that Lucas and I were only friends. Something my dad, and everyone else I tried to convince, refused to believe.
Maybe because I had a hard time believing it. I had my suspicions about whether Lucas did either. But we were both stubborn, and we both had our reasons for clinging to the lie.
My mom was subtler than my dad, and even without saying as much I knew she was already compiling a mental guest list for the wedding invitations. After my aunt Leigh met Lucas, she and my mom exchanged a long, knowing look, and I knew by the end of the weekend she’d be helping my mom plan the baby shower, too.
Lucas was oblivious to the turmoil his arrival had stirred up though. Or maybe oblivious was the wrong word. Starstruck, that was the word. Lucas was too starstuck to notice any commotion around me.
I may have omitted one teeny, tiny little detail when I’d invited Lucas home for my dad’s birthday: my dad was what the kids these days called a football legend.
And by legend, I meant that my dad was the kind of man little boys dreamed of growing up to be. He’d won the Heisman Trophy in college, sported two Super Bowl rings, and had his face on more Sports Illustrated covers than I could count. He even had his very own Wheaties box.
He was the reason I’d stopped bringing boys over. When I realized they were using me for more than my body. They were just hoping for a chance to meet my dad.
Two years ago, the entire family had flown to Canton, Ohio, to watch him be inducted into the Football Hall of Fame. It was then that I’d truly realized how famous he really was.
When I was a kid, I never understood what a big deal he was. I didn’t get why people were always stopping us, wanting their pictures taken with him, or to have him sign their ball caps or gas receipts. One lady even asked him to sign her baby. To me, it was weird, and they were all annoying.
My dad though, he ate up all the attention. I’m not sure he ever got over his glory days. And he never, never used the word “retired” when he talked about football. As far as he was concerned, if his knees hadn’t “crapped out on him,” he might still be in the game.
All those car dealerships all over the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area, the ones with my dad’s name plastered all over them, the ones he did commercials for, and that sent him fat paychecks . . . he treated those more like he was endorsing them than the fact that he owned them. He let someone else get their hands dirty with all the day-to-day trivialities of managing the operations.
My dad wasn’t ready to hit the links. Instead of sitting back and enjoying his padded bank account, my dad had Elizabeth Brooks, a woman I’d known all my life and who we called Aunt Bitsy when we were kids. She managed his career. Even though he no longer played ball, she still booked him to appear for local politicians, and to give speeches all over the country at corporations and universities. She even arranged endorsement deals and gigs as a guest announcer on ESPN and FOX Sports.
Maybe I didn’t mention any of that to Lucas because my dad’s career (or rather, former career) didn’t matter to me. Or maybe I didn’t mention it because I was tired of talking about my dad. He was old news to me, even though he was all anyone ever wanted to talk about once they knew who he was.
In short, I’d been worried about this exact scenario.
“Why didn’t you . . . ?” Lucas had run his hands through his thick hair so many times it stood at attention like a straw-colored porcupine. “Your dad is Electric Earl McLean,” he blurted out when we were finally alone.
I’d already shown Lucas around and gotten him settled in his temporary quarters in the pool house. But he’d walked me back up to my room so we could get ready for dinner. It was the first time we weren’t surrounded by my family since we’d arrived. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Electric Earl.
I made a no shit face at him. “So I’ve been told.” I checked my fingernails, which were perfectly polished, and had been since the last time I checked them, when Lucas had told me who my dad was just sixty seconds ago.
“A little warning would’ve been nice.”
Seriously? I squared my shoulders. “Oh, you mean like the way you warned me when you dumped me on your mother’s doorstep? When I was led to believe we were going on a date?”
Lucas stopped pacing and accused, “I knew it. I knew you thought I was taking you out.”
“Of course that’s what I thought,” I shouted back at him. “Why else would I have strippered up and teetered into a ‘planning meeting’ in five-inch heels. I thought you made the whole gala thing up to spend time with me.”
His eyes locked onto mine. At first I thought I’d struck a nerve, and maybe I had, but he didn’t look pissed as he stalked toward me, predator-style. He looked dangerous, all right. But if he was trying to intimidate me, it was having the wrong effect. “If I wanted to spend time with you, why wouldn’t I have just said so?”
I took a several steps back. Adrenaline was flooding my system, making me overly aware of every little detail of him . . . as if it were even possible to be more aware of him. His presence should have been daunting, but instead all I could concentrate on was the heat rolling off him. The scent of soap and aftershave. The way my heart hammered . . . beat-beat . . . beat-beat . . . beat-beat . . . an explosion in the making. “I don’t know, maybe because you have a fiancée?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s over between Aster and me.” The edge of his voice was rough, causing me to halt. We were just inches—heartbeats—apart. I put my hand to his chest to steady myself.
Beneath my fingers, he was charged, sending shock waves straight to my belly. I knew what I wanted, same thing I always wanted. My reaction to him was always the same. I wanted to wrap my legs around him, right here. To lower myself onto him.
To feel him inside me.
Maybe I was bolder now on my own turf, but I stopped fighting it. I flattened my palm, giving in to the urge to touch him . . . really touch him. I moved my hand lower . . . lower . . . lower, skimming, scanning, exploring each sinew and muscular strand of him beneath the cotton of this T-shirt, until my fingertips brushed his waistband.
He inhaled sharply, his muscles bunching like a spring.
There was still this roadblock between us I couldn’t just ignore. She was there, a barrier between us. “Aster doesn’t think it is,” I challenged. “She’s pretty convincing about it. And so is that ring on her finger.”
He stilled, his emotions flashing across his face. “That ring was a gift. I told her she could keep it.”
A gift? Wasn’t that the definition of an engagement, giving a girl an engagement ring? Did Lucas even hear what he was saying? How lame his explanation sounded?
Maybe Aster was right to stand her ground. Maybe she did still have some claim on him.
“So is she your fiancée or isn’t she?”
“Was.” He leaned closer and, in spite of myself, my heart skipped.
I licked my lips. “What is she now?”
I wanted him to say nothing. Nothing.
Nothing, and be convincing about it.
Maybe it would be the truth and maybe it wouldn’t be. I wasn’t even sure it mattered right now, not at this moment. Not when his breath was fused with mine and I could practically taste what I’d been missing since I found out about Aster. I couldn’t think straight. I wanted to tangle my fingers through the soft spikes of his hair. My legs tingled. Everything tingled as I ached to close the gap between us.
He opened and closed his mouth, deciding how to answer. And then he said, “Friends.”
My stomach plunged.
Friends? Wasn’t that what he wanted us to be, he and I? I’d seen the way Lucas looked at Aster . . . the awkward hug he’d given her after Lady MacBitch had threatened to pull the plug on the gala, and as much as Aster might want to think she had her hooks in him, I had a hard time imagining him grinding her against the wall.
But what if I was wrong? What if this whole friends thing was just a charade, and that was just a line he used, a way to string both Aster and me along?
The door crashed open then, slamming against the wall and cutting off any chance to get my questions answered.
“Everything all right in here? Dad told me to check on you,” Seth’s voice boomed through my bedroom, which suddenly felt childish with my swirling wrought iron bedframe and lacy curtains. Had I really considered straddling Lucas in the same place where I’d played with my Barbie Dreamhouse?
Of course I had—hadn’t Barbie and Ken done a little “straddling” in their day?
People always thought my oldest brother was intimidating, even though I’d never seen it. He was my brother. The bully in our house sometimes, but to me he was stupid, just like all my brothers.
But not intimidating. Never to me. Now, watching him standing in the doorway with his eyes narrowed, I caught a hint of the way other people viewed him. He was enormous with his arms crossed over his broad chest, and the look he aimed on Lucas and then me was fierce. He took in the scene in my bedroom, me against the wall with Lucas looming over me.
Lucas didn’t so much as twitch, and I didn’t want him to.
I scowled at my brother. “Haven’t you heard of knocking? Jesus, Seth. Get out!”
But Seth didn’t move either, and my heart was pounding even harder now than it had been before. “If Dad catches you two . . .” He uncrossed his arms, his hands curling into enormous fists at his sides. “It’ll be your funeral.”
Lucas took a step away, flashing me a sardonic grin. “I’ll be in my room.” He sounded so calm. As if we hadn’t just been about to kiss. As if Aster wasn’t as issue. As if everything was cool between us.
But everything wasn’t cool. Everything was the opposite of cool.
Fiancée or not . . . friends or not, my entire body was still on fire.