Six
Tango woke to the smell of coffee. Expensive, imported coffee, and the softer undercurrents of tea, because having the ability to choose between the two was more important than drinking either, Ian liked to say.
He opened his eyes and found them rusty, full of grit. He lay on his stomach, the covers pulled up over his head, face mashed into the lush Egyptian cotton sheets. He didn’t remember undressing or getting into bed, and he had the wine to thank for that. His head throbbed, and his stomach rolled. But the coffee was a great inducement, so he flipped the quilt back and forced himself upright.
Ian’s apartment was a study in gray, white, and delicate touches of black and burgundy. The finishes were perfect, the housekeeping impeccable. Exactly the sort of place you’d expect to find a wealthy drug lord.
Exactly the sort of place they’d talked about having, in their teenage dreams, between stage shows and private appointments.
Ian was at his chrome and glass kitchen table, robe open down the front of his bare chest, paper spread before him, teacup held daintily in one hand. His hair shone in the pale early light.
“You’re up earlier than expected,” he said, lifting a smile to Tango that was, with little lines crinkled at his eyes, filled with genuine warmth and affection. That was the thing about Ian – away from outside distractions, he truly was Ian, and not the Shaman persona he’d created for business’s sake.
“I smelled coffee.”
“Turkish. Also there’s crumpets, fresh butter, and berries with clotted cream.”
Tango dragged out the chair across from Ian and fell into it. “I really shouldn’t stay.”
“Nonsense. You said you were taking some time off. Where else would you go?”
“I…” Words failed him in the fall of Ian’s bright gaze.
With a few deft movements, the Englishman folded the newspaper away, and cleared the table between them, an open patch of glass available so he could reach across the distance and cover Tango’s hands with his own. “Listen to me, Kev,” he said quietly. “I want you to spend a little time away from your club, and think things over.”
He was too hungover to be sharp. “What things?” he asked, frowning, but didn’t pull away.
“Think about what you want. What you really want. I think…I think that might not be the club.”
Again…he didn’t pull away.
~*~
“Come by the house on your way in,” were Ghost’s only words before the line disconnected. Aidan stared at his phone a long moment afterward, inwardly cursing, knowing exactly what awaited him at Casa de Teague.
What a way to start the morning.
When he pulled up to the house, he spotted Ava’s truck and Mercy’s bike, and didn’t know if it would be better or worse having them present. Better, he decided, when he walked in the back door and was met by the chaos of breakfast with the babies. Everyone was at the table. Maggie held Cal and sipped coffee with her free hand. Ava helped Remy eat what looked like mashed carrots. Ghost and Mercy sat beside one another and were in conversation about the open bike magazine on the table between them.
Slowly, the noise slackened, then ceased altogether, four pairs of eyes glancing his way with a variety of sentiments.
“Hi, sweetie,” Maggie said, giving him a gentle, motherly smile.
Aidan looked to his father; his was the corner from which judgment and hatred would come. Ghost would be the one who hated him for this.
Right on cue, he said, “So did you forget to buy rubbers, or what?”
“Kenny!” Maggie hissed.
“Dad,” Ava said. “We talked about this.”
Ghost leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, poker face secured, gaze unreadable. “I guess we shoulda expected it earlier, if we’re honest. All you worry about is partying and fucking.”
“Kenneth,” Maggie said, “we are not here to beat him up.”
“What are we supposed to do, then? Congratulate him? Congrats, Aidan,” he said, coldly, “for not listening to a damn thing I’ve ever tried to tell you.”
Maggie started to reprimand her husband again–
And Aidan took an aggressive step toward the table, years’ worth of anger and frustration boiling in his gut, fueling the venom in the back of his throat. “You’re unbelievable. This is my mistake, my problem, and you’re worried about…what? That I didn’t listen to you? That this makes you look bad or something?”
“Aidan,” Mercy said.
But Ghost just stared.
“You don’t give a damn about what this means to me. You worry about your son looking like a fuckup loser, isn’t that right? You worry about you looking like you couldn’t teach me anything.”
Maggie made a distressed sound.
Mercy stood. “Guys, let’s take a breath, and talk this out.”
“So he can insult me some more?” Aidan asked. “I know that’s his favorite pastime.”
A muscle in Ghost’s jaw ticked. “How did you think this was gonna go?”
“Exactly like this.”
“You’re thirty-two, damn it, when the hell are you gonna grow up?”
“Grow up and be like you?” Aidan bit back. His throat ached, and his chest constricted, and he hated what he was saying…almost as much as he hated having to say it. “All I need to do now is go on a bender, ignore my kid, and knock a teenager up, and I’ll be right on schedule.”
“Oh shit,” Ava murmured.
“My dad the role model,” Aidan sneered. “Popping high school girls’ cherries and dumping his kid on them. What a guy.”
Ghost started to lunge up from his chair, and Mercy caught him by the arm, pinning him down as if he were a child, seemingly without effort.
“That’s enough!” Maggie snapped, tucking Cal into her chest as he started to cry. “Stop it right now before either of you says something else you can’t take back.” When she turned to Aidan, her eyes were shiny, and it hit him then, like a punch: the cracks about teenagers were more hurtful to her than anyone.
He was an asshole.
“You are not,” Maggie continued, “two idiots at a bar somewhere. You’re family. You’re father and son. And family doesn’t let family face challenges alone.” She looked at her husband, cradling the baby close. “Understand? This isn’t about ego, or undoing what’s already done. We need to be supportive of Aidan. All of us.”
In a quiet voice, Mercy said, “We’ve all done things without thinking them through first. All of us, even if we’d like to think we’re smarter than that.”
Cal’s wail became a high banshee shriek, and Ava reached for him. “Way to go, Dad,” she said as she stood, hand cradling the back of Cal’s head.
Aidan had no idea what to say…
So he left.
~*~
The very first time Sam ever laid eyes on Aidan Teague, she was fourteen, and he knocked the breath right out of her. He’d been slouched up against a wall in the cafeteria, honing what would become his trademark aura of mischief and insolence, and she’d known fourteen-year-old boys shouldn’t have looked like that. Shouldn’t have stirred unspeakable longings in virgin freshman girls.
That impression of him had stayed with her, had held him captive in her fascination longer than any man she’d met as an adult – girlhood had a way of sharpening fascination to something dark and deadly.
Normally, nothing about that mental image intruded upon her daily life at work.
“So how would you characterize Prince Hal at this stage of the play?” she asked her eleven a.m. Shakespeare class.
She was in one of the smaller classrooms, old-fashioned desks all crammed in together. It was a windowless and uninspired space; she always left the door open so a little natural light could stream in from the hallway. Of her forty-two students, only a handful were looking at her; the others had their heads turned toward the door.
“Anyone?” she prompted, her smile fading. She died a little inside when no one participated. Shakespeare was her favorite, Henry IV, Part I a special favorite.
One of the girls in the front row, Jamie, pointed to the door.
Sam turned, and was struck dumb a moment as the past smacked into her. If he’d been breathtaking at fourteen, Aidan Teague at thirty-two was…she was without words.
It was the same picture, him leaning back against the wall, his hair wild, his jeans dirty, his cut too obvious. But in so many ways it was different – the lines on his face, the scars on his arms, the complete lack of mischief in his eyes.
She wet her lips. “Hi.”
He started to smile, and it caught a little. “I wanted to see if you wanted to get coffee or something.”
“Uh…” Her mind didn’t know how to process his request. He wanted to have coffee with her? He…wanted to have…coffee…with her. “Well…”
“Say yes,” one of the girls said in a stage whisper. “He’s gorgeous.”
Muffled laughter rippled through the students and Aidan glanced their way with an amused, proud little smirk.
Sam gathered herself with a firm internal reprimand. She was done with him, remember? She’d made that decision. And she was sticking to it.
“I’m teaching right now,” she said. “Class lets out in ten minutes, but my break isn’t very long.”
He shrugged. “That’s fine. Mind if I wait?”
“Let him wait,” Jamie said, smiling shyly.
Kyla Davies shoved her backpack off the empty desk beside her and patted it. “You can come sit here,” she said to Aidan, batting her eyelashes dramatically, drawing laughter from her classmates.
Aidan’s high cheekbones colored; Sam couldn’t remember him ever blushing, but he was for sure doing it now. “Thanks, but…” He dropped into the spare plastic chair beside her podium. “I’ll just park it here.”
Kyla groaned. “Aw, man…”
Hiding her smile poorly, Sam cleared her throat. “Just a few more minutes, guys. Let’s focus. Specifically, I want to talk about Hal’s swiftly changing attitude toward Falstaff, after that epic dialogue with his father…”
Habit and her ingrained understanding of the play were all that pushed her through the last ten minutes of lecture. The awareness of Aidan sitting beside her was like a fever, flaring beneath her skin, prickling up and down the back of neck, tightening the skin of her scalp until her hair felt too heavy. All the logic in the world couldn’t fight the physical pull of him.
It was senseless, she told herself. He probably wasn’t even that good in bed, and all her goosebumps and shivers were wasted on him.
Yeah right.
Either way, her head and her body were at odds with one another. Aidan was a mistake she’d stopped wanting to make. But her hands wanted to smooth up the rough texture of his scarred arms, and her mouth wanted to know the feel of his.
At a minute ‘til, the students started packing up, the rustle of their bags and papers drowning out her final thoughts.
“We’ll pick up Thursday talking about the battle, and move on to Part II,” she said, raising her voice. “Bye, guys, have a good afternoon.”
A few smiles and “bye, Miss Walton”s were thrown her way as the students filed out, but Aidan was the one earning all the attention, the curious glances, the winks, the stares, the slightly envious glares of a few of the boys. In Knoxville, it didn’t get much cooler than a Lean Dog. No matter how respectable, composed, and preppy a college boy, there was always that streak of envy when it came to the MC, that curiosity and fascination. What must it be like to be all James Dean and Steve McQueen in your leather and denim? Not giving a damn about anything?
Judging by the shadows under Aidan’s eyes, not as cool as outsiders might think.
“I don’t have time for coffee,” she said, turning to him when they were alone. “But we could walk down to the vending machines.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
As they stepped into the hall, he said, “So what were you talking to them about? What’s up with that Hal and Staffy guy?”
She suppressed a laugh. “Prince Hal and Falstaff? One was the Prince of Wales, and the other his drunken, degenerate, but clever friend. Not your cup of tea, I’m guessing.” She shot him a sideways glance and saw him frowning, his profile limned in midmorning light.
“’Cause I’m stupid.”
“No,” she rushed to say. “Because you’re disinterested in that sort of thing.”
“Smart things?”
“Things that require you to apply yourself.”
“So I’m dumb and lazy.”
“Aidan,” she said with a sigh, turning to him as they reached the vending machine alcove at the end of the hall. “You know you don’t reach for things. It has nothing to do with lack of ability or intelligence. You just…” She trailed off with a shrug as his eyes flicked up to hers, more wounded than she’d expected. “I’ve known you for a while now. And I’ve never known you to take life all that seriously.”
“Hmph.”
“The first time you ever spoke to me, you were on your way to detention. You’re a bad boy, Aidan, you know you are.” She grinned. “And you always seemed to enjoy the hell out of it.”
He glanced away from her, but not before she saw the fast glimmer of hurt in his dark eyes.
“Aidan.” She laid a hand on his forearm, where it was crossed over his chest. The scars were shiny and smooth, not at all what she’d expected. “Why did you come see me today?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. A student shoved between them, breaking their contact; his backpack strap swung around and slapped at the side of Sam’s head.
“Hey.” Aidan gave the kid a rough shove, snarling. “Say ‘excuse me’ to a lady, fucktard.”
Her Prince Charming. She rolled her eyes.
The kid turned, started to argue, got a good look at Aidan and thought better of it. “’Scuse me,” he mumbled, ducking back out of the alcove.
“Damn kids,” Aidan muttered.
“Aidan.”
“Yeah?”
“Why’d you come see me?” she repeated, tone gentle, coaxing.
Their roles were switched, suddenly: her staring, him avoiding eye contact, his gaze skipping across the glowing fronts of the machines. “I…I, ah, had a shitty morning.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And the last time I felt like shit,” he continued, “I saw you, and I felt better.” His eyes came to her finally, his smile sideways and rueful. “I guess I just hoped you’d make me feel better again.”
And here she’d been lecturing him…
The surge of warm sympathy in her chest was dangerous. Aidan was old enough to act his age. She would do him no favors by coddling him.
But she said, “Oh, Aidan…”
He took a deep breath and pasted one of his patented ladykiller smiles to his face. “Not that I don’t deserve a good ass-chewing.”
“You do, but I’d hardly call what I said ‘chewing.’”
His smile turned deadly. “You wanna try harder?”
“No,” she said, face heating.
“Aw, come on. You might be really good at it.” He waggled his eyebrows and her cheeks caught fire.
“Is there anything you can’t turn into some kind of innuendo?” she asked with an embarrassed laugh.
“Nope. Try me.” He fished in his pocket. “What do you want out of the machine?”
“Oh, you don’t have to pay for it…” she started, following him as he stepped up to feed a dollar into the Coke machine.
“You’re damn right I don’t have to,” he said, with more of the grin. “If anything, the girls want to pay me after…Shit, this is a dollar-fifty?”
“Special student price jack. Like I said – I can pay.” Shooting him a sideways glance: “Don’t want you to blow your load on junk food.”
“Ooh,” he said with a sharp laugh. “She does know how to talk dirty.” He added another dollar. “Whatcha want?”
“I know lots of words, not just the proper kinds. Coke, please.”
“Diet?”
“Regular. That artificial stuff’ll give you cancer.”
“So will smokes.”
“You could always quit, you know.”
“I’d have the shakes.”
It was easy between them, suddenly. The knowledge settled over her, wrapped around her like a warm hug. They could laugh and joke and talk, and all of it felt natural…save the rapid beating of her schoolgirl heart. She didn’t suppose she could change any of that.
He bought her requested Coke and M&Ms, handing them over with several ribs about her diet choices. Then he said not to worry, she looked “hot as hell,” and she blushed furiously on their walk back to the classroom.
“How’s Tonya?” she asked as they neared the door, and she felt the mood crack down the middle, like brittle glass hitting pavement. She immediately wanted to take the words back, seeing his face darken…but Tonya was there. She couldn’t ignore her. That would be romantically unhealthy of her.
“Tonya’s out of the picture,” he said firmly, and her heart lurched.
“She is?”
“Definitely.”
His expression was set at harsh, resolute angles as he turned to her. “Don’t worry about Tonya, ‘cause I’m sure as hell not going to.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she protested.
A smile flickered across his lips. “Yeah you were.”
“Oh really?” She had her back to the wall, and too late she realized their positions, him leaning over her, pinning her back with a look, with his presence.
He braced a hand on the wall beside her head and her pulse jacked up another notch. He leaned in, and she felt a little faint.
“You were worried.” His breath smelled like cigarettes, like spearmint gum. “I think you were maybe a little bit jealous.”
She kicked up her chin, hoping she sounded sincere. “Not even a little.”
He chuckled.
And then his face softened, smile becoming wistful. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“You did make me feel better.” And then he stopped her heart when he said, “I’m sorry, Sam, for not noticing you in high school. I was a fucking idiot.”
Before she could react, he leaned in and pressed a fast kiss to the corner of her mouth, a soft touch of velvet lips. And then he was pulling back, stepping away, turning to leave with one last smile.
Sam watched him go, shaking, hand lifting to the hot brand he’d left behind on her skin. She imagined he’d left a stamp, a sizzling imprint of his lips.
She was thirty-two, and it hadn’t even been a real kiss…but Aidan had kissed her, and that was going down in her small mental file drawer of Best Memories Ever.