Chapter 3

Mason

For a second, all I could do was hope Nicole didn’t notice the effect she was having on my dick. When Zack had asked me to check on his little sister, I hadn’t expected to find that the awkward fifteen-year-old had turned into a sexy woman—her blond hair in a messy ponytail, her face free of makeup, and wearing pajama bottoms with cartoon pandas on them. I hadn’t expected to find her braless, if the way her nipples pressed against the fabric of her tank top were anything to go by.

I also hadn’t expected her to invite me in to eat ice cream and watch Die Hard with her—because what girl watches Die Hard?

But no way in hell was I saying no to that.

“What flavor?” I asked.

“Triple-fudge almond. The good stuff.”

One eyebrow jerked up. “What’s the special occasion?”

“Does there need to be one?”

I placed my hand on the chipped doorframe above her head. “Let me rephrase that. I have a sister, and the only time she used to eat the good stuff was when she had boy problems. And Die Hard isn’t exactly your standard chick flick.”

She shrugged, her shoulders pale and delicate. But the shrug had a touch of sass—the same sass I remembered from all those years ago. “What can I say? I happen to love the movie. It’s filled with action, love, and redemption. And Alan Rickman always played the best evil guys. And did I mention there’s lots of action?”

I laughed. “I’ll give you that. And I definitely won’t argue against the movie. It’s one of my favorites….So, you’re telling me you’re not dealing with boyfriend problems?”

She snorted a laugh. “Does a series of really bad dates count?”

I pulled my hand away from the doorframe. “I’d say that counts. And yes, I’d love to watch the movie with you and eat ice cream.”

I entered her house and she locked the door behind me, then I followed her down the dark hallway toward the warm light. We stepped into the small kitchen. Whoever had decorated the place had a thing for avocado green. Green cabinets. Green fridge. Green linoleum floor. Even the yellowing wallpaper had green in it—along with brown—and reminded me of pineapples. Large, hideous pineapples.

“Wow,” I said as Nicole picked up her phone from the counter. “The seventies called and they want their kitchen back.”

“I know,” she said with a grimace, “it’s pretty bad. Zack likes to refer to it as the frog-got-caught-in-the-blender room.”

“More like a gremlin. The large, ugly kind from the movie.”

Nicole laughed and typed something on her phone. “Hey, I love that movie. But yeah, you do have a point.”

At those words I pretty much fell in love with her, but who wouldn’t when she had such great taste in movies? Luckily, the guys in the band had no idea that I loved Gremlins. They would revoke my man card if they knew.

“I bought the house from an old couple who lived here most of their lives,” she said. “I’m slowly redecorating it.” Very slowly, from the look of things.

Her phone buzzed in her hand. She checked the screen and grinned. “Zack says hi, and told me to play nice with you because you’re a good guy.”

I laughed, mostly because I appreciated that he felt that way after everything that had happened in the past. If I was a good guy, he was the goddamn pope.

While I appreciated the view of her fine ass, which I didn’t remember her having before, she grabbed two bowls from the cupboard, put them on the counter, then took down a wineglass as well. She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Would you like some wine? I’m having some. It’s been one of those days.”

“Do you have any beer?”

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

“Wine’s fine.”

She got another glass and retrieved the ice cream from the freezer. She then loaded the bowls with a healthy amount, which let me know just how crappy her series of bad dates had been. After that, she filled our glasses and led me to the small living room. As with the kitchen, it was like stepping back in time, with hideous puke-green shag carpeting and dark wood paneling.

The furniture at least looked to be from this century, although there wasn’t much to it—just a love seat, armchair, coffee table, and large-screen TV.

She parked her bowl and glass on the table and loaded the Die Hard DVD into the machine.

I sank onto the love seat and waited for her to join me. For a second I thought she was going to take her bad-date sustenance over to the armchair, but she plopped herself down next to me. And for the first time since arriving at her house, I noticed her sweet yet subtle floral perfume. It was different from the type I was used to with groupies and the women who were interested in nothing more than a quick lay. Their fragrance was always sensual, aimed to seduce. Not so with Nicole’s scent…yet I was still hyperaware of her sitting next to me.

Lay off, Dell. She’s the little sister of your friend, the guy you owe your life to.

The movie began—and I had to say the ice cream girls ate to get over boy problems was definitely the best. This wasn’t the cheap crap. This ice cream meant business.

“Christ, this is good,” I said, lifting my bowl so Nicole knew what the heck I was talking about.

She gave me an I know, right? smile, then shrugged. “I had a feeling I would need it tonight.”

Shit, just how bad had her last dates been? Not that I would be much of a judge when it came to determining what made for a good date or not. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been on one. I wasn’t exactly the dating type—more like the screw-’em-and-leave-’em type. None of the women I’d been with lately had complained about that. I doubted any of them had left the arena in need of ice cream to get over a great fuck. If anything, they had always left looking satisfied.

“Have you ever tried that?” Nicole asked when we got to the part in the movie where Bruce Willis removed his shoes in the bathroom and curled his toes in the carpet. It was supposed to help with jet lag, but in reality it was to leave Bruce vulnerable in a later scene, when he was running around barefooted and one of the bad guys shot out the glass. Bruce’s feet were cut to shreds. It was one of the best scenes in the movie.

“No, have you?” I asked.

“I haven’t really traveled much. Nothing like Zack. Guess I haven’t had the chance.”

“Because you’re a workaholic?”

She laughed, the sweetest, sexiest sound I’d ever heard. My dick twitched with interest, having missed my earlier reminder that Nicole was off-limits. “Zack told you that, huh?”

“So you’re not?” I asked.

“According to my best friend, I am.”

“But you disagree?”

She shrugged again, her shoulders tempting me to run my tongue along the soft skin. “I like what I do. And besides, I don’t have a choice.”

“Why’s that?”

She pulled her feet onto the couch and tucked them next to her. The movement shifted her body, so only a couple of inches now separated us. For some reason, I wanted to shorten the distance between us even further. I craved to touch her, taste her, explore her. Everything I wasn’t supposed to do to my friend’s little sister.

I reached for my glass and took a long sip of wine.

“My best friend and I own a floral boutique,” she explained. “But it doesn’t run itself. Heidi is brilliant at arranging the flowers, but she’s at a loss when it comes to the business side. That means I have to put in the long hours to make sure everything’s done.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Yeah, I do. Plus I’m always working on ways to attract new customers, and that allows me to exercise my creative side.” She smiled, and damn if my cock didn’t respond once more. The smile was nothing like the deliberately seductive smile of groupies. Like everything else about her, it was sweet and innocent, yet sexy as hell, especially when teamed with her panda pajamas.

Unconsciously, my body leaned toward her, enough so her shoulder brushed against my chest. It was barely a touch, but that didn’t stop an electrifying hum from vibrating through my body. I drained my glass.

Nicole did the same with hers, and for a fleeting moment I wondered if her body had reacted to the touch the same way mine had. “Let me get some more wine,” she said.

Before I could say anything, she pushed herself off the couch and left the room. She returned with the bottle of white wine and filled our glasses. Then she sat next to me again, her body practically cuddling against me, and for a goddamn second I hungered for her to do just that.

I pushed the urge away and continued watching the movie.

Bruce Willis killed a bad guy and sat him on a chair in the elevator with a message scrawled on the guy’s T-shirt. This angered the dead man’s brother, who now thirsted for revenge…and nothing would stand in the way of his getting it.

I tried not to think about what Zack would do if he knew how much I craved to sink inside his sister. He wouldn’t try to kill me, right? Not after he’d gone through all that trouble to save my sorry ass last time.

“Do you have any siblings other than your sister?” Nicole asked, her words tearing me away from thoughts of what else I’d like to do with her that Zack would frown on. I guess during all those times I’d seen her in the past, the topic of my family had never come up.

“A brother. We aren’t close like you and Zack.” Epic understatement of the century.

I hadn’t seen either of them in three years, after they made it clear I was no longer welcome in the family and I finally moved on.

They hadn’t left me much choice.

Nicole slid me a quick glance, and I had to look away before the sadness in her eyes gutted me. “That’s too bad. I don’t know what I would’ve done without my brother.”

I expected her to explain, but she returned her attention to the movie and sipped her wine.

“Oh, I love this part,” she said a short time later as Bruce Willis crawled under a conference room table to get away from a bad guy who was walking on top of it, machine gun in hand.

The man arrived at the end of the table and aimed the gun at where he assumed Bruce was located. “Next time you have a chance to kill someone, don’t hesitate.”

Before the bad guy could fire a round of bullets into the table, Bruce shot up through the wood, killing the man, and then thanked him for the advice.

Nicole laughed. “That’s what I love about this movie. Everyone is trying to kill Bruce Willis and he can still be funny.”

I had to admit that was one of the reasons I loved it too. The explosions and the feds looking like a bunch of dumbasses didn’t hurt either.

We finally got to the part where Bruce was in the bathroom, talking on the walkie-talkie to Al the cop, who was outside the building with the FBI and police. Bruce’s feet had been cut beyond belief and he had a bad feeling things weren’t going to end well. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to a punk like me,” he said in obvious pain—pain from the wound and pain from suspecting he would never see his wife again. It reminded me how my family had seen me as nothing more than a dumbass punk who had done nothing but screw up. But unlike with Bruce’s wife, I couldn’t see them ever forgiving me. The worst Bruce had done was put his career before hers.

Nicole hung on his every word, and I could see clearly in her eyes what she was thinking as Bruce told Al what he wanted him to tell Bruce’s wife when everything was over. Nicole thought it was super romantic how he admitted that he should’ve been more supportive of her career. I could almost hear her sigh. But it wasn’t until the end of the movie that she teared up. It was the scene where Bruce was meeting Al for the first time.

She brushed the tears from her face and gave a small chuckle. “You probably think I’m lame for crying.”

“No, not lame at all,” I said, voice low. Tears glistened on her eyelashes and in her eyes, but humor was also there, challenging me to say something.

And that wasn’t the only thing there. Lust and need flirted at the edges. My gaze dropped to her lips, and a sudden urge to kiss her took over.

I shook it off and practically leapt off the couch. “Well, I should be getting back to L.A.”

“I have a spare room. You’re welcome to stay there tonight. It’s nothing much, but it will save you from having to drive all that way in the dark.” She looked so earnest—and completely uninterested in me in the way that my body was interested in her.

“Are you sure?”

She pushed herself off the couch. “Of course. And you know if Zack was here, he would insist on it too.”

That was probably true, but for different reasons.

Nicole led me upstairs to a small room that didn’t look much different from the rest of the house when it came to the era it had originated in—except this room had obviously belonged to a teenage girl. The carpet was Pepto-Bismol pink, with matching floral wallpaper on one wall. Strips of paper had been torn away—the work of Zack, no doubt. Like me, there was no way he would’ve fit on the couch downstairs. Which meant he had stayed in this room.

Going insane.

“It’s very…um…,” I started to say.

“Pink?” Nicole laughed. “Yep, that’s the exact same face Zack makes every time he stays here. I’m almost considering leaving it as is, just because he loves it so much.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate that.” Like he would appreciate a lobotomy…without anesthesia.

Nicole laughed harder. “Anyway, the bathroom is across the hallway. If you need anything, just let me know.”

Before I could thank her, she was out the door—leaving me to wonder how I’d gone from a wedding with no possibility of getting laid to spending the night in Pepto-Bismol land.