CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“THERE’S A CURSE on you, Lawson Granger.”
Lawson groaned when he heard those words. And again when he spotted the curse-bearer by his truck as he came out of his office in the Granger house.
He definitely didn’t have time for Vita or the fates who’d cursed him—again. He was running late and had to pick up Eve for their date. A date he didn’t want her canceling, and that’s why when she’d called, he’d let it go to voice mail. If she was going to bail on him, she was going to have to do it to his face.
“I don’t have time to talk,” Lawson told Vita. He mumbled some profanity under his breath when he heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. Maybe the rain would at least hold off until he’d picked up Eve.
“Yeah, I know. You got a date at the high school gym. But this is serious. You want stitches in your heinie again?” Vita asked.
“Not especially.” But he’d take the stitches over being late for Eve. And lateness wouldn’t have been an issue if he hadn’t realized he had forgotten the envelope with the boxes in his desk. So much for all his careful planning.
Lawson threw open his truck door and tossed the envelope on the dash before he turned to Vita. “Mix up a potion to nix the curse. Then do whatever it is you need to do with it.”
The old woman eyed him with plenty of suspicion. Even though it was already dark, the backyard was well lit, so Lawson had no trouble seeing her face. The suspicion was likely because he’d never shown any faith whatsoever in her craft, and he didn’t have faith in it now, either.
“A potion like that could be expensive,” Vita said. “Maybe twenty or thirty bucks.”
“Good. Then make five or six of them to be sure it rids me of the curse and then send me a bill.”
Vita beamed with a smile. Hell, if he’d known it was this easy to get rid of her, he would have ordered potions earlier. A thousand of them.
“Don’t ride your bike home in the dark,” Lawson added. “It’s about to rain. Have one of the hands drive you back.”
That caused her to smile even more, and she patted his arm. “You’ve got a good heart, Lawson Granger. But I’m going to see Mila and Roman for a while. They can give me a ride.” She tipped her head to the envelope. “Is that for Eve?”
Since he doubted she had actual ESP, it meant she was guessing. Not even a good guess, either, since she must have known his date was with Eve. But yes, the envelope with the two boxes was for her.
Lawson nodded. Now he had to hope she’d choose the right box.
He was about to drive off when his phone rang, and Kellan’s name popped up. The only reason the idiot was in his contacts was because Lawson had called him multiple times when Tessie had gone missing. They hadn’t exactly been on friendly terms then, and it was a whole lot worse now.
“You dickhead,” Lawson said the moment he answered. He didn’t start driving because he didn’t think it was a good idea to be on the road while he gave this turd a piece of his mind.
“You know, you and Eve should really work on your greeting skills,” Kellan said. “She called me ‘worm shit.’”
“Good for her. I’m going to call you a lot worse, but hear this—you don’t dick around with my daughter, with Eve or with me. Have I made myself clear?”
“As clear as a picture.” And that was a little sarcastic. “I called to apologize and to ask you a favor.”
“Dickheads don’t deserve favors, and your apology isn’t accepted. I’ll beat you over the head with a shit-covered shovel if you tell another lie about Tessie.”
“Again, a very clear picture, but the favor isn’t for me. It’s for Aiden.”
That got Lawson’s attention. “You don’t dick with him, either,” Lawson warned him. “In fact, Aiden goes to the top of the list of things you can’t dick with, or I’ll beat you with two shovels.”
“Agreed, and even though I wish I could think of another word other than dick, it works here.” Kellan paused. “I’ll mess things up if I’m his dad. You know that. So does Eve. Hell, Aiden probably knows it, too.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Lawson said when Kellan paused again.
“That’s why I’m passing the whole dad thing to you. I could say something cocky that’d make me sound like more of an ass than I am, but you seem like a solid guy. So, do Aiden a favor and make sure he doesn’t turn out like me.”
“Aiden could never turn out like you,” Lawson growled.
“And there we have the reason why you’d be a lot better at daddy-hood than I ever would be. Aiden is yours, you know. I mean, in every way that counts. You were with him right from the start, and you’d never let anyone, including me, dick around with him.”
“Damn straight,” Lawson snapped just as Kellan hung up.
Lawson sat there, replaying his own words and the words of the dickhead. Shit. He’d just agreed to help raise Aiden. Eve might have something to say about that, but he almost hoped she wouldn’t nix the idea. Because it felt...right.
With that confusing thought going through his head, he finally got his truck moving. But he’d barely made it to the end of the driveway when he saw the headlights of an approaching vehicle. A vehicle he instantly recognized.
Eve.
He doubted this was a good sign. Maybe since he hadn’t answered her call, she’d come over to cancel.
She pulled off the side of the driveway, turned off the engine and hurried to his truck. At least she was wearing the dress. Well, maybe she was. It was a dress, anyway, but she was clutching a wrap thingy around it, so it was hard to tell if it was the dress that Cassidy had described to him.
Cassidy certainly hadn’t described those heels though. They were a mile high, and Eve teetered on them as she made her way to his truck. She threw open the passenger door and got in. Not easily. Apparently, it wasn’t easy to maneuver in the dress, which made him feel guilty since he’d been the one to ask her to wear it. But Lawson had thought it was what she wanted since she’d kept it all this time.
“Did you really invite the whole town to our date?” she asked before he could bring up his conversation with Kellan.
“I did invite the whole town,” he confirmed. “Or rather my sister did. She’s the one who handled sending out the invites. According to the RSVPs, there’ll be about two hundred people. Not bad, considering it was short notice. I guess the lure of free food and a DJ had folks saying yes.”
Eve shook her head and stared at him. “Why?”
“You’ll see.” Lawson smiled and kissed her. Though the kiss was a mistake since it was a reminder that with Eve one kiss was never enough. Still, he forced himself to start driving.
“I don’t want to face a bunch of people,” she went on.
Good. They were on the same page. He wanted Eve alone. Preferably out of that dress. But that could wait because he really needed to do something he’d had on hold for the past eighteen years.
“You look really nice, by the way,” he told her.
She made a sound as if she didn’t agree with that. “Thanks, but I’m squeezed into this dress in a bad way. The seams might blow.”
He should be so lucky. But maybe those seams would hold a little longer.
“You look really nice, too,” she added.
“Thanks.” Lawson had tried. His best jeans, a white shirt, a jacket, and he’d cleaned his boots. It was formal wear compared to the working clothes he usually wore.
The concern returned to Eve’s face when he pulled into the high school parking lot. It was packed, and there were people scurrying from their vehicles into the building. He drove past all of them and headed to the side entrance. Since it was clear on the other side of the building from the gym, there was no one else parked there.
Lawson stuffed the envelope in his jacket pocket and got Eve moving as fast as he could. Fast wasn’t fast enough though, because the sky opened up. It didn’t help, either, that the rainfall was sheeting off the roof and falling right in front of the door. It felt as if they’d stood under a waterfall before they got inside. Worse, the A/C was on, and the cool air suddenly felt a whole lot cooler now that they were soaking wet.
Hell.
Eve was shivering, and that little silver wrap wasn’t going to do much to keep her warm. Neither was her being in his arms because he was as wet as she was.
Even over her teeth chattering, he could still hear the music coming from the gym. It would have been loud enough to go through with his plan of a private dance in the empty hall between the rows of metal lockers, but he doubted Eve wanted to risk pneumonia. If he didn’t find something or someplace warmer fast, he was going to have to nix this plan and get her back in the truck so he could turn on the heater.
It’d been years since Lawson had actually stepped foot inside the high school, so he headed toward the nurse’s office, where maybe there’d be a blanket or some other items of clothing. But it was locked.
“Let’s go to the girls’ dressing room,” he suggested. He also took off his wet jacket, making sure the envelope didn’t fall out, and then he peeled off his shirt. It was a lot drier than Eve’s dress, so he slipped it over her shoulders.
The dressing room was right behind the gym, so there wouldn’t be any trouble hearing the music. Eve and he might just be able to go through with that dance after all.
Or not.
This door was locked, too.
He huffed, ready to go back to the truck, but Eve stopped him. She opened the little purse she was carrying, pulled out a nail file and went after the lock. “It’s something I learned on the set. Ulyana had to pick a lot of locks.”
And she’d obviously honed that particular skill because Eve had it open in just a couple of seconds. But when she threw open the door, Lawson immediately saw another problem.
It wasn’t the girls’ dressing room.
There were lights outside the windows that made it easy enough for Lawson to see the Demon High posters that were all over the walls.
“It’s the new drama department,” Eve muttered. “Mrs. Hattersfield told me about it.”
Mrs. Hattersfield had been the drama teacher for as long as he could remember, but Lawson definitely hadn’t heard anyone mention that she’d set up what appeared to be a shrine for her star pupil—Eve.
She hugged his shirt tighter around her shoulders as she made her way past one poster right after another. Of course, Kellan was in some of the pictures, too, causing Lawson to automatically scowl.
“My name,” Eve said, sounding a little in awe as she pointed at something.
Yep, there was a banner stretched across the stage, and it did indeed have her name on it. The Eve Cooper Center for Dramatic Studies.
It was a mouthful all right, and a pretty grandiose title for what’d once been a locker room.
It didn’t take long though for the surprise of seeing all of this to wear off, and Eve started shivering again. Lawson wasn’t exactly warm, especially now that he was shirtless and carrying a wet jacket, so that was his cue to get the dance started. Since the song the DJ was playing was already halfway done, Eve wouldn’t have to risk him stepping on her feet for more than a minute or so. Then he could get her back to the truck to finish out this evening.
Lawson reached out to pull her into his arms, but Eve was already heading to the front of the room. At first he thought it was so she could have a closer look at the banner, but she went to the room on the side of the stage. She opened the door, flicked on a light switch.
And gasped.
That sent Lawson running to her because he thought maybe she’d seen a snake or a serial killer. It was neither, but it was a long narrow room filled with costumes. The ones right up front and facing them were all familiar, too. Because they were costumes from Demon High.
“Holy crap. Did you give these to Mrs. Hattersfield?” he asked.
Eve shook her head and examined one of the sleeves of a red leather bodysuit costume. It looked exactly like the one that Ulyana had worn while fighting demons. “Mrs. Hattersfield must have made them. Or had someone do it for her.” Eve glanced through the rest of the rack. “All of these are handmade.”
She plucked a red cape from one of the costumes and put it on over his shirt and her dress. Obviously, the total outfit wasn’t the same as what she’d worn on set, but seeing it on her brought back some memories.
“What?” she asked when she caught him looking at her.
“There were tons of pictures of you in that cape,” he said. “I used to see them everywhere.”
She nodded. “Must have brought back some bad memories for you.” Eve sounded very sorry about that.
“Sometimes. Other times it gave me a hard-on.” He shrugged when her mouth dropped open. “Hey, I had a very clear picture of what was beneath all that leather, and it had an effect on me.”
Eve smiled and went to him, putting her hands on his chest and leaning in to kiss him. She’d already pursed her lips and closed her eyes, but she stopped. “God, you’re freezing.”
Yeah, he was, but he didn’t care as long as he got that kiss. But Eve obviously cared because she riffled through the clothes rack and came up with another cape. One that didn’t produce a hard-on. It was long and black, the garb worn by those Swaron idiots.
She lifted an eyebrow when she saw his scowl. “At least it’s not Stavros’s coat.”
There was that.
“And I did have a make-out scene with a Swaron once,” she went on. “A redeemed one.” She put the cape on him, catching onto the high collar and using the grip to pull him to her.
Now he finally got that kiss.
And it was everything he’d thought it would be. Minus the fact they were dressed like a superhero and a villain. Still, he was warm, and the kiss was making that heat go up a couple of notches.
It would have been so easy just to fall right into the kissing, touching...and other things, but he had promised Eve a dance. So, Lawson dropped his wet coat on the floor, took hold of her and snapped her to him.
“Do you like this song?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t hear it. That kiss caused my pulse to throb in my ears.”
Pulse throbbing was a good sign, but it didn’t deter him from the dance. Such that it was. Lily Rose had given up teaching him after only an hour because she said her feet couldn’t take any more bruises, but Lawson thought maybe he’d learned enough to make this less painful while fulfilling Eve’s high school wish.
She moved against him, swaying to the couple of steps he managed to make. “Thank you for this,” she whispered against his mouth. She moved into another kiss, too, but when her body bumped against his, she pulled back and looked up at him. “Did this cape really have that effect on you?”
His eyes crossed when Eve slid her hand over the front of his jeans.
“Not the cape,” he assured her. “You.”
But yeah, the cape had helped a little. It was more like an involuntary reflex that hurled him back to his teenage years when it wasn’t so easy to control getting a hard-on.
Lawson tried not to let his physical condition affect his plan. He still wanted to give Eve what was in the envelope, but the next kiss she gave him killed not only the plan but probably some brain cells, as well. Along with shooting the heck out of most of his common sense.
“I brought a condom,” Eve said, and she reached behind her and shut the door.
There went the rest of common sense, and it started a kissing battle that he figured they would both win. Though they might have a bruise or two. That’s because Eve dragged him to the floor in the same motion that she was attempting to get him unzipped. It wasn’t pretty. Plus, she was tackling the lesser of the two problems since she had on a heck of a lot more clothes than he did.
Lawson slid his hand beneath the cape, under his shirt and then to the back of the dress. There were laces, all tied up tight, and even with some fumbling, he couldn’t find a way to start loosening them.
“Hold on,” Eve said. “It took two people to get me into this, and you’ll need some help.”
She twisted the dress around, and the fabric and the pink thing beneath it both shifted so that he got a peek of her right breast. He couldn’t resist that, so he gave her a nipple kiss. Then used his tongue.
“Leave the dress on.” Her voice was breathy now, and she’d fisted her hand in his hair.
Good idea. It was much easier just to lift the layers though not nearly as much fun as stripping her naked. Once they’d burned through this first condom and sated some of the heat, maybe then he could get her out of the dress for a much slower second round.
Round one got much better when he finally got her dress shoved up and discovered she had gone commando.
“The panty line would have shown under the tight dress,” she muttered.
Then hooray for avoiding panty lines. It gave him easy access to touch her. Kiss her and fool around with his tongue until she grabbed him by the hair again. She fumbled through her purse, came up with not one condom but three.
Lawson really liked her way of thinking. He’d done some thinking, too, since he’d brought four with him.
For now though, he put a dent in their combined stash by putting on one of them so he could experience firsthand what it was like to have sex with a superhero. It didn’t hold a candle to having sex with Eve, but since she was one and the same, it was like getting two desserts.
He pushed into her and watched that dreamy look of pleasure glide right over Eve’s face. But she was also watching him, and she turned, flipping him onto his back so she could ride him hard.
That was like getting six desserts.
She planted her hands on his chest and shoved herself over his erection. She got the speed right. The rhythm. Everything.
With each thrust, the cape moved, sort of like it was billowing back, and it made her look like a fierce warrior who’d just stepped away from the battle. Her rain-smudged makeup and askew clothes only added to that, and Lawson took a moment to admire the whole package.
But only a moment.
Because that hard ride was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing. It was slinging him right toward a climax. Which he had no trouble having. Thanks to Eve. She had her own climax, too. She pushed against him one last time, groaned a delicious sound of pleasure and collapsed against him.
* * *
EVE STAYED ON the floor of the dressing room while Lawson went in search of a bathroom. She stretched out on the floor—as much as the dress would allow her to stretch, that is. The corset laces were still hanging on for dear life.
Her body felt great despite the fact that her hair was wet and part of her boob was poking out of the dress from where she’d twisted it around. She did fix that and cocooned herself in the cape, waiting for Lawson to return.
And then he’d want to talk.
She knew it was coming, and while it probably wasn’t the main reason for this past-fulfilling dance date, it had to be part of it. After all, she’d put the “I love you” out there. Now she had to decide if she wanted to take it back. Or if she wanted to put her heart on the line and hope that it didn’t get crushed.
Eve turned on her side, searching for a more comfortable spot, when her head landed on something wet. His jacket. She picked it up, intending to put it aside, but something fell out.
A folded manila envelope. It was open, and she had no trouble seeing the two small gift boxes inside. At least she didn’t have trouble seeing them when they spilled out in her hand.
And that’s how Lawson found her when he came back in the dressing room.
Since she still had his shirt, he was wearing the black cape, and his bare chest distracted her for a moment, but Eve sat up and quickly shoved the boxes back in the envelope. “You brought me gifts? I didn’t bring you anything.”
Lawson smiled in that lazy but hot way that only he and a Greek god could have managed, and he sat down on the floor beside her. “You brought me a condom.”
“Three of them,” she reminded him, and with the way he was looking, they might need them all.
He kissed her and flashed that dreamy smile again. “I got those gifts for you eighteen years ago. I was going to give them to you at the Sadie Hawkins dance.”
So, she hadn’t been the only one who’d made big plans for that night. Plans for this night, too, since he’d brought them with him.
“I thought you would run for the hills when I told you I loved you,” Eve said.
“I’m a super villain,” he joked. “The l-word doesn’t scare me.” He paused, kissed her until she was breathless and then asked, “Is it true? Do you love me?”
Of course, he’d asked her that after rendering her incapable of human speech, so Eve had to take a couple of moments. “Yes. You were my first love, and you still are.”
Maybe the realization would finally hit him, and she would see the panic she was expecting, but instead he looked at her. “Kellan called me,” he said.
Her jaw automatically tightened. “Me, too. He’s worm shit, and I’m not even going to spell it.”
Lawson smiled. Then it faded. “He wanted to pass this whole dad thing over to me.”
Eve felt the flare of temper, but Lawson quickly cooled it with a kiss. “I agree with him. On this,” he added. “He shouldn’t be Aiden’s father, and if you’re okay with it, maybe I should take the daddy thing...when Aiden or you need a daddy thing, that is.”
This certainly wasn’t the conversation she’d expected, but it was a good one. “I’d like that,” she said around the lump in her throat. “Aiden would like it, too.”
From the way Lawson swallowed hard, he might have also had a lump. “That would work out better if you were here in Wrangler’s Creek so I could see both Tessie and him.”
That lump just kept on growing, and with the afterglow of great sex, she would have agreed to anything.
Except...
This wasn’t about afterglows. Heck, this wasn’t even about sex. This was about Lawson. And coming home.
Being home.
“I’m staying,” she assured him, and it earned her a breath of relief and a kiss from Lawson. In that order.
After the breath and kiss, he put the boxes on her lap. “I was going to give you both. It’s sort of a choice,” he added.
A choice about what? But rather than ask that, Eve opened the first box and had a look for herself. It was a rodeo buckle. A shiny silver one. And while it was nice, it did have her raising an eyebrow.
“I’d given you a rodeo buckle before,” he explained. “Remember?”
Oh, yes. She remembered. “It was the first time I told you I loved you.”
He nodded. “Well, I thought the buckle could be a way of you choosing love. Just love.”
She wanted to point out that there was no such thing as just love when it came to kids and Lawson, but then he opened the second box, and she saw the ring. It was gold and had a little bitty diamond in the center.
“It’s a promise ring,” he explained. “It was a promise to love you and to be with you forever.”
As each word sank in, Eve felt the tears, but she blinked them back. This was the choice. She could have the “just love” rodeo buckle or she could have the whole shebang.
Eve wanted shebang. But she also wanted to make sure Lawson knew what he was getting into.
“I’m a package deal these days,” she reminded him. “Aiden and Tessie. You’d definitely have to do the daddy thing and do it full-time.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Lawson slipped the ring on her finger. “You need a microscope to see the diamond,” he added. “But the promise part of this ring was that I’d buy you something much better when we were adults.”
It was hard to blink back those tears now, but again a kiss helped. “There’s nothing better than this ring,” she assured him. It was the shebang plus. She looked at the ring again. “But isn’t this like a...commitment?”
Lawson smiled, gave her that look that would almost certainly lead to sex, and he hauled her onto his lap. “It damn well better be.”
* * * * *
Texas rancher Dylan Granger has always had
a way with women, but when life-altering news
brings the one who got away back home to Texas,
Dylan isn’t sure if his heart will ever recover...
Don’t miss
LONE STAR BLUES,
the next book in the
A WRANGLER’S CREEK NOVEL series,
by USA TODAY
bestselling author Delores Fossen!