by K. Bromberg
“Mm-hmm.” My breath hitches as he reaches out and places his hands on the sides of my neck, his thumb brushing ever so slightly over my lips. “If I stay in the contest, do your dog and pony show, you don’t lose your job.”
“That’s right.” I nod while breathing a silent sigh of relief. That’s all Rissa explained to him and not the exploitation of his backstory. “What do you want in return?”
His grin is lightning quick as I realize what I just implied, and he laughs before stepping closer, so every time I inhale, my chest brushes ever so softly against his. The sensation is subtle but damaging as hell to the dryness of my panties.
“No more games, Sidney.” I nod in blind agreement when I have absolutely no clue what he means by that. “No more planted articles. No more manipulated photos. And you keep Luke out of everything.”
“Okay.”
He leans forward, and I close my eyes in anticipation of his kiss, but the heat of his breath on my ear is just as arousing when he speaks. “After you finish, I’d like for you to come on out to the party.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” This isn’t even a good idea because anyone could walk in here right now and see us. The thought is fleeting because when Grayson leans back, his lips are a whisper from mine, and his thumb is rubbing back and forth over the dent in my collarbone.
“Why not?” His breath hits my lips and taunts me to lean forward and taste his.
“Because I’ve already been warned about the impropriety of us being seen together.”
“So?”
“If you win, there could be a case that you did because of bias.”
Kiss me.
“I don’t care what people think. I haven’t for a long time.”
Kiss me.
“I know, but keeping my job is kind of important.”
His eyes are unrelenting as desire swims in them plain as day, and he nods in acknowledgment.
Kiss me.
“For the record, Princess. It is a bad idea . . . but it doesn’t make me want you any less.”
Then take me.
But all I do is gasp a quick intake of breath as his hands leave my skin.
He takes a step back.
“Figure out how you’re going to hide what’s between us in this nosy little town.”
And he turns on his heel and walks out, leaving me staring after him and wanting him so bad it hurts.
“Is there a reason you keep looking up to that window,” Grant asks as he lifts his beer toward the offices of Modern Family.
“No reason.” I shrug off the comment with a long tug on my beer.
The air is thick with the scents of hay and cotton candy and fried food. Main Street is so crowded you can barely move, and thank fuck Grady found the three of us a table to sit at while the women took the kids to the carnival end for a bit.
“Then where’d you disappear to?” Grady asks with a smirk that tells me he damn well knows. Considering he was the one standing next to me when Rissa told me Sidney was still up there working, I would have thought it was obvious anyway.
“To the john.”
“I have a feeling you were whipping your dick out, all right, but it wasn’t to take a piss,” Grady continues.
“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” I ask. His shit-eating grin is enough for me to want to punch him just to knock it off his lips.
“Not a chance in hell. Oh look,” he says and lifts his chin to two ladies standing on the outskirts of the seating area, “another set of ladies trolling by to see if you’re going to take their bait.” I roll my eyes at him. “When I was at the bar buying your beer, Uley said they’re getting, like, fifty calls a day at dispatch from women looking for you.”
“Pussy for days,” Grant says, trying not to laugh but unable to quite hold it back.
“You should thank us,” Grady says. “We did that for you.”
“Jesus.” I shake my head and take another sip of my beer.
“I don’t think he cares about the bait, Grady. Not here. Not there. Not anywhere,” he mocks, prompting me to hold up my middle finger. “I think he has his eye on someone else.”
Images of Sidney in that tight black shirt she had on with a silky little camisole fill my mind. High heels and long legs. Hitched breaths and hard nipples.
I shift in my seat. “I care, all right,” I murmur.
I should have kissed her. There’s no doubt about that. The problem is that there would have been no stopping me once I started. Luke was waiting, and she said no, and fuck if the timing wasn’t right, so I didn’t.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to.
“Seems to me like someone isn’t bitching about being in the contest anymore . . . Now, why would that be?” I eye Grant across the table and know where he’s going with this and refuse to give him the ammunition to prove his point.
“And?” I draw the word out.
“And nothing, just glad to see you not worrying about . . . everything.”
“I’m not thrilled with the attention,” I say with a shrug.
“C’mon . . . you don’t like the life-size poster of you over in the Chamber of Commerce booth or the flyers all over the tables saying #TeamMalone?” Grady chuckles as he holds one up before tossing it over his shoulder.
“No. I don’t.”
“Hey, Grant? How many of these women do you think are going to take these pictures home and have some fun while staring at it later tonight?”
“Dude . . . I seriously think Mom dropped you on your head when you were little. There’s something wrong with you.” I push Grady’s shoulder, and he swipes my beer and downs the rest of it.
“You want another?” Grady asks as he stands, and Grant and I both nod. I shove some money into his hand since it’s my round to buy and then lean back in my chair.
“Luke told Mom that Sidney came over to your house the other day,” Grant says, getting to the topic he really wants to talk about.
Leave it to Luke to spill the beans. All Luke has done is talk nonstop about Sidney since she came over, which isn’t a good thing, so I knew it was only a matter of time before Mom started nosing around. I can see in Luke’s eyes how much he hopes she and I are dating. That this woman who paid particular attention to him is more than just a random friend.
That maybe I’ll like her vagina and we’ll get married.
I snort a laugh, and Grant looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. The fact that any of this runs through my head is proof of it.
“So, was she?”
“Christ. Just what I need is Mom on my back about marriage when she knows that will never happen again.”
“Famous last words,” he says, and I crumple up a flyer with my face on it and throw it at him.
“Fine. She came over to apologize to Luke about the picture in the paper, which was the reason he got into his fight, which . . . who the fuck knows.” I scrub a hand through my hair and then close my eyes and lean back against the chair I’m sitting in.
“Which led to her coming over, playing nice with Luke, and then landing in your bed and you not sealing the deal?” Grant makes the comment with humor in his voice, but it’s his eyes that tell me he wants to know the truth. That he’s worried about me.
That it’s none of his damn business.
“She played with Luke’s Creepers.” I’m not sure why I say that, but it really was the last thing I expected her to do, so it’s stuck in my mind.
Well, that and her kiss.
“Wait a minute,” he says. “You mean Uptown Sidney came over and played Minecraft stuff with Luke?” The confusion on his face mirrors exactly how I felt when I saw her at the table with Luke.
“Yep.” I nod.
“Shit, that isn’t the Uptown Sidney I remember,” he says. “Doesn’t watching her do that with Luke make you want Uptown Sidney to go downtown on Grayson?”
“Very funny.”
Grady better come back soon because I need another
beer STAT.
“You like her.” His simple statement is the first thing in this whole conversation that I don’t have a quick comeback to. Because I do. I don’t want to, because liking her scares the shit out of me, but fuck . . . I do. I just meet his eyes and don’t utter a single word. “So I take it you’re over the whole Sidney is like Claire thing?” he presses.
“No.” It’s the truth. But it’s a truth on shaky legs, considering that she’s up there instead of down here having a good time. Claire never would have given up her party time for the sake of everyone else. She never would have given up any part of herself, because her needs and wants came first. Always.
And Sidney is up there right now, proving that hers don’t.
“But I’m working on it.”
“Good.” He gives a measured nod as he finishes the last of his beer, and I glance again at the light on in the second story window. “She scares you because she’s different from your usual, but that also excites you. She showed up at your house, slid into a seat at your table, and entertained Luke. She reminded you of a reality you want but don’t want to admit to.”
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. He’s too damn right when all I want him to be is wrong.
“You gotta admire the woman for beating you at your own game.”
“How’s that?” I ask but already know.
“The hero bullshit in the newspaper. Getting the townspeople to back the contest so you can’t say no. Charming Luke when you thought she’d be petrified of him. From where I’m sitting, it looks like the ball’s in your court. You want her? You don’t want her? I don’t fucking care. You need to quit being a pussy and decide one way or another.” I look at Grant across from me, one arm resting across the back of the chair next to him, the other holding his beer while his eyes issue the challenge his words just gave. “If she owns your mind—and your moods—like she has, don’t you think she just might be worth the risk?”
“Mercy-Life pilot Grayson Malone is a hero.” I turn instantly at the sound of Grady’s voice, my conversation with Grant on instant hold but still owning my mind. Grady has three bottles held against his chest with one arm while holding up the flyer with his other to read. “Whether it’s risking his life to save others trapped in the High Sierras’ snow, or on a daily basis transporting trauma patients to save their lives, he knows how to put others first.”
“Stop,” I say, hating that he’s reading it loudly enough to draw looks from those around us.
That fucking bio.
The one I refused to give her because I swore I was going to bail from the contest. The bio I forgot to finish because every time I started it, I got sidetracked thinking about her.
Fuck.
“Grayson’s biggest role as a hero, though, is to his eight-year-old son, who thinks he hung not only the moon but also all the stars in the sky around it. Sexy and single, Grayson has a charming smile, a quick wit, and biceps any woman would want to be hugged by.” He gives a long, low whistle. “You write that bio yourself, Gray?”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” I growl under my breath as he takes a seat, and my cheeks burn bright from the attention.
“’Cause if you didn’t write that, then that means Sidney did, and hell, it sounds like she just might more than like you.” Grant’s shit-eating grin is in full effect to taunt me. “You need to get a better picture, because, dude, chicks love abs. They love uniforms. They eat that shit up.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Grady says and sets my beer in front of me with a chuckle.
“Hey, I’m the nice one,” I argue. “The one who keeps everything fair. There is no ganging up on me.”
The two of them look at each other and burst out laughing. “Like hell there isn’t. You’re fair game, little brother,” Grant says as he tilts the top of his beer toward the window above and shrugs. “Just think about what I said. It’s your call, Gray.”
Is she worth the risk? His words loop through my head on repeat.
“If the answer’s yes, then you know what to do.”
I can spot him from a mile away.
The dark jeans. The perfectly fitted shirt. The appeal that would be impossible to miss.
My nerves jitter and my mind continues to spin as it has since he left the office earlier. Since he left me with unspoken promises and a libido in overdrive thinking and wondering and wanting.
But there was also worrying.
Was he playing my own game back on me? Or rather, the game he thought I had played on him?
His turnabout seemed too easy.
Then came my second-guessing. That I’m crazy. That I’m thinking too much. That I just need to see him to know for sure what the answer is.
So, I head toward him. The click of my heels on the sidewalk is drowned out by the music still floating from the speakers and the white noise of a whole town celebrating together.
And then when I’m close enough that the sound of his laugh carries over the crowd, and the anticipation of what I’ve already acknowledged is going to happen between us sparks to life, the crowd of women around him shifts. His arms are hooked over one woman’s shoulder. Her hair is a strawberry blonde, and everything about her is stunning. Like, you want to stare and be jealous kind of stunning. There is a familiarity between them—in the way he leans in to whisper in her ear and the ease with which he responds to her despite everyone around him vying for attention.
I’ve seen her before, but I can’t quite place where.
And then it hits me.
She was at Hooligan’s the night of his party. I remember he was laughing with her at the bar. Then she was standing near him when I walked up and kissed him.
Is she one of his regulars? One of the women he sleeps with on the side?
The sharp pang of unfounded jealousy hits harder than I expect as I take a few steps back and try to process this all.
I created this scene. The women around him all vying for his attention. The women engaged and wanting more. The women so charmed by him they’ll vote.
The flyers with his image on them that are scattered all over the street are a testament to it.
I just never imagined it would be me standing on the outside wanting the attention from him.
With one last look, I tear my eyes from the sight and head to my car.
“Pain in the ass,” I mutter as I spray the mud off the front of my Range Rover . . . again. The street is nothing but mud due to my neighbor’s landscape project. Broken sprinkler heads and truckloads of dirt don’t make for a pretty road to drive on.
“Hey.”
I yelp at the sound and whirl around to find Grayson standing there, sweaty, out of breath, and looking far more sexy than I want to admit.
“What are you doing here?”
“Running. I was out for a jog.”
“Great.” I try to sound unfazed. Like I haven’t rerun the other night in my head a million times to try to figure out if I read too much into what he said. To try to figure out if I overreacted to the situation on the street.
I don’t get like this about a guy, never have, said I never would, and so it’s driving me absolutely crazy. “Have a good rest of your jog.”
“Sid?” He sounds surprised when he shouldn’t be. “Is something wrong?”
“Nope. I’m fine. Just fine.” I turn my back to him and start spraying my tires again. It’s so much easier focusing on them than the incredibly sexy sight of him that I don’t want to acknowledge. The visual that immediately clouds the way I felt the other night.
“You’re fine? That’s universal woman code for I’m pissed at you.” His chuckle scrapes over my nerves as he reaches out to take the hose from me, and I yank it away.
“Don’t!” I spin around to face him and, of course, he’s way too close. The nozzle I aim at him is the only thing between us, and my car is at my back.
“You care to share what I did wrong?”
&nbs
p; “No.”
“Okay.” He draws the word out. “I waited around for you at the festival the other night.”
The side that wants to believe the words he said in the office melts while the skeptical one who saw him with the strawberry-blonde snorts.
“What? You don’t believe me?”
Did I really just snort out loud?
“No, I don’t. I saw you.” I jab the hose nozzle in his direction, and a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, which only serves to infuriate me further. “I saw you and that woman—”
“What woman?” he laughs.
“The pretty one with the strawberry-blonde hair.” He snorts, and I jab the hose in his direction, suddenly on the defensive and more than aware that I think I’m going to look like an ass here. That all my overthinking was for nothing. “Don’t mock me.”
“I’m not mocking shit.” He puts his hands up, but his smile remains. “That was my sister-in-law, Grant’s wife. Her name is Emerson.”
Oh. Shit.
“I was playing the part you want me to play. Chatting up the ladies asking about the contest, urging them to go online.” Embarrassment flushes every ounce of my body. “I was whispering to Emerson how ridiculous it was, and she was there to laugh at it all with me.”
“Oh.” As in, Oh shit, I look like the craziest hormonal bitch ever.
All I want to do is crawl under this car and hide when his grin widens to epic proportions. “Am I forgiven?”
“No.”
His laughter rings out, and I hate that I love the sound of it. “Okay. What else do you need from me?”
His words throw me. Words no man has ever spoken to me during a fight. It’s usually, “Can we get this over with?” or “Are we done yet?” or “Can we have make-up sex?”
Make-up sex.
The idea sticks but only because he’s sweaty and sexy and so damn close that my every nerve is already attuned to him.
Like they needed any help.
“Sidney?” he prompts when I don’t respond. His gaze moves. A slow, languorous slide from my head to my toes that makes me feel as if he’s undressing each and every inch of me.