Pretty in Ink (Voretti Family Book 3) (13 page)

All three of her brothers started to talk at once.

“—never had a healthy relationship in your life—”

“What about Joslyn?”
 

“—kick his ass—”

“Hey.” Caleb didn’t raise his voice, but it carried over her brothers, throwing them into silence. “I’m only going to say this once, so listen up. Liv and I have been in each other’s lives for so long that I never thought of her romantically. She was almost like a sister. So, yes, I asked Joslyn out. I thought she was everything I was looking for. But she didn’t have that life—that spark—that Liv does. That date made me realize that the woman I really wanted had been right in front of me for years.” He turned to Liv, and even thought she knew he was only acting a part for her brothers, her skin pricked to awareness.

“But—” Rafe started to object.

“I explained the situation to Joslyn. We’re no longer seeing each other. Now…” Caleb’s dark, savage gaze swept over each of her brothers, but she was the one who felt it—a hot shiver that woke her body up and reminded it how long it had been since it had been truly satisfied. “I love Olivia. I would never disrespect her in any way, and the next person who implies I’m using her for sex is going to get my foot up his ass. Any takers?”
 

Silence.

Rafe was the first to find his voice. “Well. Congratulations, you two.”

Her brothers shook Caleb’s hand and hugged her, full of apologies for the misunderstanding. She tried to respond appropriately, but she wasn’t sure if her mouth was forming actual words. Every time she tried to focus on what her brothers were saying, she heard Caleb’s voice, low and forceful, like he was braced above her, about to bury himself deep.
I love Olivia
.

The muscles low in her belly clenched, her whole body beyond ready for him even though he hadn’t even touched her.
 

What was wrong with her?

But she already knew. That old crush? The one she’d kicked in tenth grade?
 

It was back.

A
PPARENTLY
THE
L word changed everything, because rather than trying to keep a safe zone between Liv and Caleb, her brothers were now actively trying to get them alone together. All three of them suddenly remembered urgent plans that prevented them from eating the steaks cooking on the grill. In a matter of seconds, they’d fled the premises.
 

Leaving Liv and Caleb alone.

Caleb turned his back to her, scrutinizing the steaks like he was trying to use his x-ray vision to tell if they were medium rare. He’d put on his shirt, but the thin cotton couldn’t disguise the tension vibrating in his shoulders. He was pissed.
 

Of course he was. Her stupid plan had gotten him into a fight, not to mention massively delaying his ten-year plan to marry Joslyn, have two point five children, and live happily ever after. And here she was, having immature high-school-girl fantasies about him throwing down those tongs, picking her up, and taking her against the rough stucco wall.

She swallowed. “Caleb?”

He did something to the steaks that made them sizzle. “What?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here tonight.”
 

She needed to let him off the hook. Yes, he’d promised to be her fake boyfriend, but that had been before he’d realized Joslyn was The One. “I…”

He turned to face her, and she forgot the rest of her sentence.
 

“You don’t get it.” He ran one hand over his jaw, where a bruise was forming. “You know why your family is always on your case?”

She
so
did not want to get into this right now. But after the fiasco with her brothers, she owed him answers to whatever questions he wanted to ask.

“Because I’m different.” She tried to let the words flow out of her mouth without really hearing them herself. “I wear black instead of peach. I date guys in bands instead of stockbrokers. They think I’m a crazy rebel because I don’t always make the same choices they would.”

“No. Well, yeah, they don’t like some of the things you do. But it’s not because they think you’re a delinquent. It’s because you’re so impulsive. You do these things—get a tattoo, bail on a job interview, come over here today—and you don’t spend a second thinking about how it’s going to affect anyone. Not even yourself. You see a cliff and you take a running jump off the edge, and that scares the shit out of them. Because one day there’s not gonna be a net to break your fall.”

The words hit her hard, weighed down by the truth. She felt small—a silly little girl who had been dancing at the edge of the world, oblivious to the fact that everyone around her had formed a human barrier to keep her from tumbling into the abyss.

The words wouldn’t stop echoing through her head.
That scares the shit out of them
.
 

But when she risked a glance at Caleb, she heard them slightly differently.
That scares the shit out of
me.

She swallowed, but her heart was still there, beating hard at the base of her throat. “You’re right.”

“Don’t think those words have ever come out of your mouth before.”

“Yeah, well…” She couldn’t look at Caleb anymore. It was too confusing.
 

She turned away. Caleb’s dog Max had wandered onto the patio, and
 
she bent to pet him.
 

His fur was soft and he licked her face. He didn’t think she was a screw-up. “Maybe there’s some hope for me after all.”

“We’re all works in progress.”
 

“Only, some of us have made more progress than others.”

“I think you’re amazing. You have this energy that lights up a room—hell, an entire planet. But you scare me. I don’t want all that energy to burn out.”

She’d never heard his voice like this—gruff but gentle, like silk over steel. It did funny things to her, burrowing under her skin, heating her up and making her edgy. Restless. Like she was right back at the edge of that cliff, but this time, she was totally conscious of the hundred-foot drop down to a raging river lined with jagged boulders. And she was going to jump anyway.

“Thank you.” Her voice sounded strange. She gave herself permission to glance up at Caleb because if she waited another second, her muscles were going to stage a mutiny and do it anyway.
 

His eyes were hot. His lips parted.

“Liv.” It was only one word. But the sound of his voice—the knowledge that his mouth, lips, and tongue had shaped two consonants and a vowel into something for her alone—set her on fire.

“Caleb.” Words flew through her head so fast she couldn’t sort them into coherent sentences. Words like
want
and
you
and
now
.

Max barked. The sudden burst of sound pulled her out of her fantasy world, and she realized she’d stopped petting him.

“Sorry, boy.” She scratched the fur behind his ears, where he liked it best, and he settled down, resting his head against her knee.

Caleb stared at the place where her dress had ridden up, like he wanted to shove Max out of the way so he could get a better view.

Do you look at Joslyn like this?
The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them. That’s what the old Liv would have said.

“Your dog is huge. What have you been feeding him?” It was a stupid question, but it did the trick; Caleb stopped checking out her legs.

“He’s not my dog. And the vet says he’s right in the middle of his ideal weight range.”

“What do you mean he’s not your dog?”

“He’s my friend’s. Remember John? He was deployed right after he found Max at the shelter.”

“So you’ve been dog sitting?”

“Exactly.”
 

“For three years?”

He shrugged, like he hadn’t been keeping track of the time. “It’s no big deal. I have the space.”

“That you do.” She looked around the yard, from the pomegranate trees, with their perfect red fruit hanging down like ornaments, to the wide lawn where she could picture Caleb throwing a baseball to some miniature version of himself.
 

Her brain zoomed in on Mini-Caleb. He had dark hair, but his eyes were blue, like hers.

She forced the errant fantasy out of her head. Back in tenth grade it had been okay to write Olivia Ward on her notebook and imagine the dark-haired, blue-eyed babies she and Caleb would make, but now she was an adult. And she was going to act like one.
 

“Your place is really coming along,” she said, which would have been okay if she hadn’t ruined it by following up with, “It’s going to be great for kids.”

“Who said anything about kids?” His voice was a little too loud—the kind of thing she wouldn’t have noticed, except that Caleb was always so controlled.
 

Hmm. Maybe he wasn’t quite as ready to settle down with Joslyn and have those two point five children as her brothers seemed to think.

“Relax. That wasn’t my way of telling you your sperm are about to expire. It was only an observation.”

“Anyway, it won’t be my place for much longer.” He turned his back on the house. “I’m only fixing it up so I can sell it for a decent price.”

She looked from the tiled border he’d set into the patio to the craftsman-style gate that was so intricate it had to be custom made. “But you love this place.”

“It’s a piece of real estate, not a person. I don’t need a house this big.”

“Not now. But you will someday.”

“That’s someday. Right now, if I was living in one of those condos downtown, I’d have a two-minute commute to work.”

The reasonable, Annabelle-like voice inside Liv’s head told her to mind her own business, but some much more fundamental part of her insisted that she open Caleb’s eyes. Only someone with a serious connection to this place would have put in the amount of work he had. This was the house he was meant to live in. To raise a family in. “What about Joslyn? Do you think she wants to live in one of those tiny condos?”

He gave her a look he must’ve learned from her brothers. The one that said he was so much older and wiser, he couldn’t believe she was even daring to speak to him. “We’ve only been on one date and you’re trying to move us in together?”

“Well, you are getting older. You’ll be settling down soon.” She sounded exactly like her mother, but it was too late to cut herself off. “Wouldn’t you rather raise your children here instead of some cookie-cutter tract home?”

“You want to know what I’d
rather
do?”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “I mean, no. I mean—”

“I’d
rather
you mind your own business.”

“Sorry,” she muttered. “My mouth sometimes gets away from me.”

“I like Joslyn. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to run off to Vegas, get married, and start popping out kids.”

“I know.”

“I’d like to have a family someday, but only when it’s right. When I find the right woman and we decide it’s the right time to settle down. That’s the way
normal
people do things.” He leaned in hard on the word
normal
, giving her a pointed stare.

All the heat in her body concentrated in her face, where she felt his gaze. She wished she were standing so he wouldn’t tower over her. “So I’m abnormal?”

“Not everything is about you, Liv.”

“
This
is.” She pushed to her feet. “Maybe I’m more impulsive than I should be, but you’re not impulsive enough. Seriously, Caleb. You need to live a little. Eat a hot dog from one of those street vendors without a permit. Go out without an umbrella even though it might rain. Kiss a pretty girl just because you want to.”

In the ensuing silence, her words echoed through her head like a song stuck on repeat. Caleb was staring at her like he heard them too.

He took a single step toward her.

Her heart hammered in her chest, powered by equal measures terror and excitement. He looked ferocious. Pushed to his limits. Like he might to anything at all.

Her heart pounded faster.
Do it
.
All of it.

One of his big hands caught her hair. He pulled it into a fist at the nape of her neck, his grip firm but gentle as he positioned her where he wanted her.
 

He kissed her like she was wearing his ring on her finger—like there was no question that she was his—and in that moment, she was. She sank into him, pulled by a force stronger than gravity.

He kissed her again and again, tearing desperate sounds from her throat. She needed more. More pressure. More friction. The weight of him on top of her, bearing her down.

She wound her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, but it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough until he was inside her. Until—

Caleb jerked away from her.

The world flipped upside down. She flailed wildly, finally managing to catch herself with one hand on the stucco wall.

The world came back into focus. Max, barking like a maniac at the poodle next door. Caleb, breathing hard, hands laced together like he didn’t trust them on their own. He stared into the canyon, determinedly avoiding her gaze.

The sun hadn’t yet dipped below the horizon, but she was cold. The kind of cold that wouldn’t go away even if she put on her thickest jacket and sat in front of a fire, because it came from the inside.

Whatever. It was only a kiss. If Caleb wanted to freak out, that was his problem. She’d go on with her life, the same way she had after every kiss that had come before this one.

Except she couldn’t remember those other kisses.
 

She closed her eyes, focusing all her attention on pulling up another sexy memory, but came up blank. All she could remember was Caleb’s lips owning hers.
 

One kiss and he’d erased every other man from her memory.
 

C
ALEB
HAD
NEVER
messed up this badly. He had no excuse. No justification. He’d known exactly what he was doing, exactly how wrong it was, and he’d done it anyway. He’d kissed Liv because he’d wanted to. And it had been amazing.