Never Been Kissed (29 page)

“What has gotten into you?” Sean asked his brother.

“It’s a good idea.” Brody shrugged and signaled the waitress for two cups of coffee.

“Why are
you
doing this?” Sean asked Ashley.

“It’s what she does,” Brody said. Ashley blinked at him and his whole face softened. “Community,” he elaborated. “You can’t help yourself.”

It was a different Brody sitting there, and she was wasted by this version of him. It was the version of him that had washed and combed all the tangles from her
hair. She had no protection from him when he was like this, when he managed to embody everything she wanted and hadn’t even realized was possible to find.

Strength, caring, knowledge, support.

Too much, she thought. Too much. She couldn’t build a shelter strong enough to protect herself against him.

So she turned away, because there was no telling how long this would last. How close he would let her get before disappearing from her life again. It was safe in a way to love the version of him who would never love her back, but this version, she might become convinced of his feelings.

“But you’re forgetting something,” he said.

“No, actually, I made a list and it’s pretty detailed—”

“You’re not going to be here,” Brody said.

Ashley sat back hard against the padded red bench. “I’m in no hurry to leave,” she said and Brody watched her as he took a sip of coffee.

Careful,
his eyes said,
careful you’re not substituting my dad for Africa. Careful you’re not creating a long list of things that are more important than yourself.

Or maybe his eyes said,
You have a booger.
She didn’t know. One night of sex hardly unlocked the code to his inscrutableness.

“Well, I need to get going,” Shelby said, gathering her things, and Ashley slipped out of the booth, carefully sidestepping Brody, who put out a hand to help her.

Shelby walked up to the cashier and Brody sent an intense look over to Sean, who shrugged. “First time I’ve seen her here since the live-taping this summer,” he whispered.

The bell over the front door rang and the man in the Red Sox hat, Gary, and his tall partner in crime, Darryl, stepped into the café.

“Get back in the booth,” Brody whispered and Ashley slipped in. She recognized both of them, and neither
made her feel safe. Gary made a detour to a booth across the café from them and immediately got out his phone, Darryl approached the counter where Shelby stood.

“Time to go,” Brody said, his fingers on her elbow like little points of heat. She was bummed that she didn’t even get coffee or to talk about the bulletin board with Cora, but she understood that those two men with whatever knowledge they had of her could end her time here in Bishop. And she wasn’t ready to be Ashley Montgomery again.

Ashley slipped out of the booth and let Brody shield her from the two cameramen.

“Hey, I figured out why you look so familiar,” Darryl said. Ashley stiffened, but he wasn’t talking to her. He was talking to Shelby.

“You’ve seen me around town,” Shelby answered and something in her tone made Ashley turn around.

“No. You were on that morning show,” Darryl said. “That
America Today
contest where they were going to move a factory to some small town that America voted on. Right?”

“Please, let me pass,” Shelby said.

“No. I’m sure of it. I Googled that shit, you should see how many YouTube hits you’ve got. So is it true? Did you really let that guy fuck—”

“Get out of my café!” Cora cried.

Ashley gasped but Brody made her start walking to the exit. “Stop, Brody.” She dug in her heels. “Shelby—”

“Sean can handle it,” Brody said.

She yanked her arm free and turned just in time to see Sean step between Darryl and Shelby, who was white as a ghost. As Shelby gathered her purse together, her hands shook so hard she dropped her keys.

“Christ, it was a question,” Darryl said. “Nothing to get everyone all upset.”

“You heard the woman,” Sean said, “leave.”

“Calm down.” Darryl peeked over Sean’s shoulder at Shelby. “I’m sorry. If I offended you—”

“You’re offending me!” Sean said and pushed the guy back. “You’ve been asked to leave.”

Darryl lifted his hands as if to surrender and said, “I’ll take my coffee to go, then, Cora.”

“Oh no,” Brody whispered, just as Sean wrapped his hands in the neck of the guy’s shirt.

“What part of
get the hell out of this café
don’t you get?” Sean yelled, driving the guy backward across the café, toward the door.

Brody reached over and opened the door for his brother, and the two scuffled past.

“You need any help?” Brody asked.

“I got it,” Sean muttered and shoved the guy off the sidewalk, into the street.

Ashley caught something out of the corner of her eye and glanced over at Gary in the Red Sox hat, whom she’d totally forgotten about.

He was holding his phone toward her. Taking a picture.

“Oh no,” she murmured just as Brody stormed past her toward Gary.

“It’s sent. It’s sent. You’re too late.” Red Sox threw his phone on the ground between them and tried to get away, only to trip backward over a stool and sprawl across the counter.

Brody wrapped his hand in the guy’s shirt. “Who did you send it to?”

“News manager at TMZ.”

Brody swore and heaved the guy to his feet, his fist cocking back.

Enough,
she thought.
Look at the mess hiding from my family has created.

“It’s okay.” She put her hand on Brody’s shoulder; every muscle under her fingers leapt and coiled. Brody would kill this man if she said the word. “Brody,” she whispered. “Stop.”

“What do you mean it’s okay? This is what we were afraid of.”

“It’s what you were afraid of, Brody. I was afraid of my family. And I’m not anymore. Let the guy go.”

Brody shot her an incredulous look. “I don’t want to let him go. He’s invaded your privacy, his friend has hurt Shelby.”

“Well, then punch him. But don’t do it because he sent that picture. Really.” She smiled at Brody, wishing the dark seas that swirled in him could be calmed. “I’m okay.”

“She’s okay, man, I don’t know why you’ve got your panties in a wad!” Gary said and Ashley stepped aside as Brody, like his brother had, escorted the guy out of the restaurant by his neck. Ashley followed, grabbing the phone from the ground.

Outside, Sean was standing on the curb, watching Darryl scream at him from the green of the square across the street.

Brody threw Gary onto the asphalt of the street, his chest heaving, his hands in fists at the end of his coiled, muscled arms. Gary was slow to pick himself up off the ground and Ashley handed Brody the man’s phone. Brody heaved it toward the fountain across the street.

“Go,” Brody said. “You’re not welcome here and you’re not welcome at The Pour House.”

Gary ran across the street to get his phone.

“You okay?” Brody asked Sean, who was watching both Gary and Darryl walk across the square.

Sean nodded. “You?”

Brody nodded too and then reached out to grab Ashley’s hand, twining his fingers through hers. “I’m taking Ashley home.”

Sean’s heart was pounding. He watched Ashley and Brody walk toward The Pour House and shook out his hands trying to get rid of the pins and needles racing along his arms.

Whoa,
he thought. It had been a long time since he’d done something like that. He wasn’t a violent guy and he could run his mouth better than most, but that guy … that guy crossed a line.

Just thinking about the cornered, scared look on Shelby’s face made him want to kick his ass all over again.

When he stepped back into the café, a couple of the
folks still sitting at tables cheered and he did a little fake bow.

Cora wasn’t at the cash register and he waited there for her to appear.

I wonder if she’s going to be pissed,
he thought. It was quite a scene he’d created. Fistfights were not a part of the general vibe of Cora’s Café.

Cora came from the kitchen.

“Shelby?” he asked.

“She went out the back.”

“Is she okay?”

“Rattled. Embarrassed. Said she wanted to be alone.”

“I should have punched a couple of teeth out,” Sean said, looking out the window in the direction the asshole had gone. “I’m sorry, Cora. I didn’t mean to make a scene. Has anyone paid you for the breakfasts—”

“Actually,” she said, “I need your help with something in the office, if you can give me a second?”

“Sure,” he said, following her past the counter and the kitchen, toward the small office she had in the back. He couldn’t imagine what Cora needed his help with, but he was happy to be of use after all she was doing for him. Things had been a little awkward since the kiss, mostly because he couldn’t stop trying to figure out how to do it again, but it seemed he’d managed to screw that up before it even got started.

Nice, Sean. Nice.

She opened the door and he walked into the small, windowless closet with a computer and a bookshelf she called an office.

“Hey,” he said. “What—”

She shut and locked the door behind them and pressed him up against the wall. Her hot mouth devoured him. The lingering adrenaline from the fight went up in a brushfire. He wrapped his hands around her and cupped her ass, pulling her harder against him.

He had no clue what this was about, but he’d take it. He needed it.

God, her ass was so perfect. He bit at her lips, sucking her tongue into his mouth. It was crude, and slightly out of control, but he dragged her against him, his erection pressed hard between them. He knew she could feel it, how badly he wanted her, and he loved it when she arched to him.

He groaned, spinning them around so she was pressed against the wall. She wore chef whites, with so many god-damned buttons. In the end he just shoved it up, revealing her brown tummy, her breasts in a white lace bra.

He moaned and fell to worship them.

Her hand reached between them and found the hard length of his erection in his jeans. She got her hand around it as much as she could with the denim and squeezed. He jerked against her. Biting her nipple through the cotton.

“
Yesss,
” she hissed and this was quickly escalating to something way out of control.

He pushed away from her, breathing hard, unable to stop staring at those stunning breasts. He stepped forward again, his hands cupping them, dragging the lace away from her hard brown nipples. Oh … oh God, she was so beautiful.

“What are we doing?” he whispered.

“I’m rewarding you for heroic behavior,” she panted, her hands back at his pants. Her fingers made short work of his belt, the button, and the zipper and then she had her hand around him. He gasped and put his hands on the wall beside her head.

“I don’t have a condom.”

“You don’t need one now,” she said, kissing his chin. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, raking it with her teeth, and he couldn’t stop the hard thrust into her hands. “But you better get some for tonight,” she whispered.
“And I’m telling you right now, you’re not screwing this up. At all.”

And then she dropped to her knees between him and the wall.

“Oh … God, Cora,” he murmured. He glanced down, quickly, destroyed by the sight of his dick in her mouth, those pink full lips taking him so slowly, so perfectly. “You don’t … you don’t have to …”

“Calm down, Sean,” she whispered and licked around the broad head. “I want to.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” he breathed. “Tonight.”

The gust of air from her laughter feathered over his cock and he bit his lip.

“Oh,” she said. “I know you will.”

It’s over,
Brody thought as he walked across the square with Ashley. He gripped her hand a little tighter, as if that would somehow matter, somehow keep her close.

This was of course the way it worked in his life and so he wasn’t totally surprised. Gutted, yes. Surprised, no. He told her he wanted her and now she had to leave.

“I’m going to have to call Harrison,” she said.

He nodded.

“There will probably be some photographers here in the next few days.”

“I imagine.”

“Brody, I can’t … I can’t keep up with you. You’re practically running.”

“Sorry.” He stopped and realized they were on the sidewalk in front of the Peabody, the antebellum mansion turned boutique hotel.

He stared up at the peach façade instead of at her because he was afraid of what he’d say if he looked at her.

“We can have you ready to leave in a few minutes,” Brody said.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Your family—” he said, arguing for the opposition because his heart leapt at her words.

“Can wait. They don’t really need me. Or want me. They just want to control me. Use me as a political asset. That’s all they’ve ever wanted.”

“What do you want?”

Her silence was loaded and because he was a fool, he glanced at her.

“I want to stay,” she whispered, holding his hand as hard as she could. “At least for a while—these ideas for the seniors, I think they could work and I’d like to try.”

He turned to face her fully, because he couldn’t stand to mislead her. He couldn’t stand for her to believe in something that would never come. “Don’t stay for me,” he said. “Don’t stay for last night.”

“Why not?”

Oh God, that bravery, that uplifted chin. “You are a Montgomery from Georgia. And you care so god-damned much. You haven’t been in Bishop three weeks and you are changing this town. That’s you. I have an empty apartment and a family whose calls I don’t return. I watch over people, some of them terrible people, I don’t care about because they pay me a lot of money. That’s me.”

“Your life doesn’t have to be that way.”

“When Dad is taken care of, I’m going back to my job,” he told her.

“You don’t like your job.”

“They offered me partner.”

She blinked at him, her mouth falling open. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He brushed hair from the side of her face, away from the pink scar over her eye. “Because we were busy doing something else.”