Chapter Twenty-Two
“Why don’t you get along with your family?” Boyd asked and immediately wanted to smack himself upside the head. He could have said, “That was the hottest sex of my life,” or “You’re unbelievable,” or even better, nothing at all. Nope, after they’d both enjoyed slow and dirty twice, Boyd decided to lead with her family. Because every woman glistening in the aftermath of amazing sex wanted to talk about her family, right? Jesus, he was an idiot.
She surprised him by rolling closer and answering. “I don’t exactly have a family.”
He couldn’t tell if she was joking, but there’d been no amusement in her voice.
“You don’t have family?”
Her head was resting on his chest. “Not by your definition of family.”
“What kind of family do you have?”
“Disjointed, dysfunctional, sometimes disturbing.” She laughed. There she went letting him in, and Boyd wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.
“My family was never a selling point. Does that sound strange? Ella Walters comes with a prestigious degree, a noble profession, assorted gym wear, a great little house in Petaluma, and a penchant for scary novels. Maybe that’s how I used to view things. I don’t know.”
“You’re impressive without the packaging. Don’t you think?”
She rolled on her stomach and met his eyes. He had been worried before she’d arrived that what they had only existed among their friends, or Mason. Looking at her now, lips raw and hair dancing, he knew once again he’d been worrying about nothing. The draw was between the two of them despite the joy and noise around them.
“I think so, I think I know that now. To answer your question, I have a ‘dis’ family. Is that a thing?”
He ran his hand along her jaw and wanted to believe everything his heart was spinning.
“We all have some ‘dis.’”
“Is that so? Where are you hiding yours because from my seat, your family seems genuine. Not perfect, but real and kind.”
“We’ve grown into the kind part.”
“Then what? I haven’t met your dad yet. Is he a drug dealer?”
He laughed and shook his head. “My mom, as you probably know, is a bookkeeper, and my dad is a contractor.”
“See, solid, honorable professions.”
He kissed her because she seemed to need his mouth on hers, or maybe it was the other way around.
“Are your parents drug dealers?” he asked when they eased apart.
Grinning, she toyed with his beard. “Why? Is that a problem?”
“I just want to hire enough security.”
“Ah.”
“You do that a lot. Move the conversation off you,” Boyd said.
“Do I?”
“You do.”
Ella took what looked like a deep breath of reluctance. “Well, you know my dad is a doctor. But not only a GP”—she paused at what must have been his look of confusion—“general practitioner. My father is not just a doctor, as he likes to say. He’s a neurosurgeon. The recently retired Chief of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai, if you want all the bells and whistles.”
“And your mom?”
“She’s a design editor.”
He held back, knowing there must be more, something to match or at least complement her father.
“For the LA Times.”
Boyd nodded. “So, your parents are losers. I can understand the shame.”
She laughed in a way that seemed more glorious, because she seemed to be holding her breath from the moment he’d brought up her parents. He wondered what had to happen in a family for that level of pain.
“Neurosurgeon, huh? In common terms, that means your father is a brain surgeon. So, when he’s at work and some other guy says, ‘Dude, this isn’t brain surgery,’ he gets to look at them and say, ‘It sure as hell is’?”
“I have never thought about it that way, but yes.”
“Does he like what he does?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you like what you do?”
“I love it.”
Boyd was once again struck stupid by her as she lay wrapped in his sheets. Had she slept with many men who did their own laundry, knew which fabric softeners worked? He was making a judgment, but Boyd guessed most of the men allowed to touch a woman like Dr. Ella Walters had a service for things like laundry and grocery shopping. The thought didn’t stop him from wanting to climb a little more under her surface.
“I’m going to give your own words back to you.” He cleared his throat for effect. “Dr. Walters, I’m worn out. I’d like to see if there is anything left of the chili I made and then lure you back to bed. A professional such as yourself can understand that, can’t you?”
Ella smiled.
“Great. I can’t do any of that unless you’re a little more forthcoming. Can you help me out?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m answering your questions. I might not like the answers, but I’m responding. You were practically grunting the first time I met you. I’m sharing.”
“Yeah? You think so. Maybe we should move off your parents.”
“That is the best idea you’ve had all night.” She ran her finger along his chest. “Well, second-best idea.”
“You have a sister.”
She nodded.
“Do you two get along?”
“No.”
“No? That’s it?”
“Let me see if I can answer a lot of questions at once and be more forthcoming, Mr. McNaughton.”
Christ, he loved it when she called him that. Ridiculous, but still true.
“My father is a doctor, as we’ve covered. My sister is an interior designer married to a doctor. My mother is second in command in the design department at the LA Times. They all wear shoes that cost thousands of dollars. I stepped in gum yesterday walking from the ER to my car. I soaked it off the bottom of my clogs because they’re my favorite pair.”
“Thousands as in three zeros? Are they made by actual elves?”
“Italian elves no doubt.”
“So, what does all of this mean? You’re not like your family?”
Ella exhaled.
“Hey, there are steps. We don’t have to like them, but we—”
“Oh, shush. My life was never my own growing up, and my parents are cruel. There’s no other way to put it. When I graduated college, the summer before med school, there was this great place called Lucy’s right off campus. I bought my first pair of cutoff jean shorts, had ice cream for dinner, and cried.”
“Wow, you’re screwed up.”
“Told you.”
“Who cries while they’re eating ice cream? Don’t tell Mase that story or he may reconsider the friendship.” It was the first time he’d mentioned his son since she rang the doorbell, since he’d taken her to his bed. The earth didn’t shake. Somehow his happiness and his son coexisted, at least for now.
She threw a pillow at his face as he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her back into him. They were spooning now. Boyd kissed the top of her head. “My turn,” he said, searching for something from his past that would help the world she came from sound less alarming, which was going to be hard because her childhood sounded downright miserable. He wondered if her dad drank beer. Probably not.
“Thank God.”
“Okay, let’s see. Before I had Mason, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.”
Ella laughed.
“What? I’m trying to share here.”
“Nothing. I’m sorry, but I think I’ve won this round.”
“Eh, maybe. But I didn’t go to Harvard and I don’t have the talent to save people’s lives every day when I go to work.” He gently pushed the hair off her face and already wanted to climb back inside her eyes. “There has to be a decent amount of bad to go with all the good that you are, Ella.”
She twisted to face him again, kissed him, and pulled his bottom lip into her mouth as if she didn’t want to waste one moment of them. Christ, the woman made him feel like there was nothing he couldn’t give her.
“What does that mean? Why does there have to be bad?”
“There’s bad and good in everything. It’s like beer.”
“Of course, it is.”
“You have malt, which can be wheat or barley. I’ll always choose barley, but that’s not the point. The malt is the sweet. It’s usually a pretty color and it smells good when it’s milled. But no one makes a beer with only malt. If they do, they’re idiots because it’s so syrupy it has no right to be called beer. Any brew master will tell you the key to a good beer is balance, so you add hops. Hops are funky looking, sticky to touch when it’s wet, and bitter. It takes down the sweetness of anything. There’s all kinds of other crap that needs to be adjusted too, but you get the point.”
“Balance?”
“Yeah, I think life is like that. Good and bad. You have a lot of good. Seems only fitting that you’d have parents who spend too much money on shoes and aren’t fun.”
Ella exhaled and her breath drifted across his chest. He could feel the weight of her thoughts.
“Are you hungry?” he asked because he had not intended to put that weight on her.
“Starving.” She stood, taking the sheet with her and wrapping it around her body as she walked out to his living room. She looked good in his home, their home, his mind corrected as if it was somehow wrong not to include Mason in the picture. He hadn’t meant to exclude him, but he was able to admit he was enjoying being with Ella, only the two of them, for what seemed like a night suspended above both of their realities.
Boyd pulled on his jeans and willed himself to think only about salvaging the chili. Chili and more sex, he heard Cade’s voice in his head. Turned out Cade may be the smartest brother of them all.
“Okay, I need to stop laughing or I’m going to choke on this surprisingly delicious reheated chili,” Ella said.
“Why is that surprising? Chili is a go-to dinner option here in the McNaughton house. That and chicken kebabs. We like those too.” Boyd wiped his mouth and his eyes were filled with fun and flirtation. Ella couldn’t take her eyes off him. She didn’t want to look away or miss one minute.
Still wrapped in his sheets, she no longer felt completely exposed—chili and excellent beer had all but extinguished talk of her family. She hadn’t been prepared for another round of twenty questions and at the same time, there was something liberating about getting all her mess out in the open. Most of it anyway. There were some things she might never be able to explain, but that was a worry for another day. Right now, all she needed to do was make sure Boyd knew what he was getting into because she wanted to be with him, wanted to be a part of his life. There it was, plain as day, pulsing through her heart as he shared a couple of stories from his childhood, including the time his mother made them all dress as chicks for Butter and Egg Days.
In addition to loving every bit of who Boyd was when his clothes were on, getting naked with him had been the best sex she’d ever had. Ella knew that sounded stupid romantic, but it was the God’s truth. The best. Not because he was a ripped stallion who liked to talk dirty and had magic fingers. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but Boyd was not that guy. He was better because while Ella was no stranger to the ecstasy of an orgasm, she was sadly unfamiliar with being cherished.
He touched every inch of her body as if she were the only woman he’d ever touched, ever wanted to touch again. She had no idea if they could make a relationship work, but in and outside of the bed, he made her feel things she never knew were possible. It could be that he had this effect on every woman. Maybe it was his style, his technique. Boyd was a skin worshiper, that’s all there was to it.
Once they’d finished off the last of the cornbread that went with the McNaughton chili dinner, they got dressed and lay outside on a hammock under the stars. She rested under his arm and wondered if anyone had ever been on the hammock except for him and Mason. How many things in their house had been untouched by a woman who loved them? Ella caught herself and remembered assuming was dangerous.
“You know there are a lot of health benefits to drinking beer,” Boyd said, turning the now-empty bottle in his hand.
“Is that so. I guess I’m used to the other side of what alcohol does to the body.”
“I didn’t say alcohol, I said beer.”
She laughed and he pulled her closer as the hammock swayed. “Now I’m curious. Do tell.”
“Okay, well, drinking a moderate amount of beer can reduce your chance of heart attacks by something like thirty percent.”
She rolled to face him, her hands perched under her chin and resting on his chest. She felt small next to him, but in a way that didn’t make her feel less than.
“And there’s the key word—moderation,” she said.
“True. Lots of B vitamins and zinc.”
“Things also found in vegetables and a healthy diet.”
“Yeah, but nothing tastes like a good beer. Oh, and there are two things I’m not even going to try to pronounce, but they are important for a good night’s sleep.”
“Well, you’d better put that bottle down then.” She braced one arm on each side of his chest and slid up his body, which was no easy feat on a hammock. The bottle teetered in his hand.
“Why? I can still hold it.”
She leaned into his ear. “I’m not finished with you, beer man. The night is still young and I’m going to need your full attention.”
Boyd dropped the bottle onto the grass. “Done.” He held her hips.
Ella rested her hands on his chest and sat up. “That’s all it takes?”
He nodded.
She pulled on the ropes of the hammock. “Do you think this thing will hold us once we start, you know, moving?”
Before she could say another word, Boyd stood with her in his arms. She laughed again—that had to be some kind of record, she thought.
“Aw, I was hoping to experiment. Where are you taking me?”
“To bed. I have nosy neighbors.”
Sometime later, his hand trailed down the dip of her spine and rested flat on her lower back. He was warm and his chest moved silently in and out at her side as she fell off to sleep.