Ramsey: A Military Bad Boy Secret Baby Pregnancy Romance (The Bradford Brothers Book 3) (6 page)

I wake with a start, and jump up to check my watch.

I sigh with relief, glad that I’m not going to be late. But it’s still a pain to have to wake up so early, and I wish I could stay asleep longer.

Then I remember that the last two times I woke up, Monica was in my bed, and she certainly turned having to wake up under bad circumstances into a very good thing. I wonder where she is.

I know she wouldn’t have let me sleep in. But I didn’t expect her to get up before me. I hope that she isn’t bothered by my mom’s presence in the house.

I hurriedly throw on some boxers and head out to the main part of the house. To my surprise, Monica and my mom are chatting at the kitchen table. They have eggs, bacon and toast in front of them.

“Good morning, Ramsey,” Monica says, with a sweet smile spreading across her face. Her hair is wet, so she must have showered. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Um. Sure.”

I shrug.

I’m not used to eating breakfast at home. Mom doesn’t cook, and I rarely do either.

“You didn’t have many groceries, so I ran across the street to the mini mart,” Monica says.

Crazy
, I think.
What time did she get up?

Then I realize that my first question wasn’t “what is she still doing here?” and I have to make sure I don’t laugh out loud. I don’t usually like girls to stay over, so having groceries to accommodate their breakfast cooking isn’t high on my priority list.

But with Monica, I seem to be breaking all my rules. We had a real conversation; we cuddled; we even listened to Bowie together; and now she’s taken over my kitchen. But I love it. I don’t know who the hell I’ve become, and I don’t even care.

“Impressive,” I say, as she lifts food from the skillet and sets it down in front of me. “Thank you.”

She winks at me. The sexy twinkle in her eye reminds me of how she looked this morning, with my cock in her mouth. I wish I could stay there— or inside her— all day long.

A blowjob
and
breakfast?
I think.
I’m a lucky guy.

I almost wish I could tell Jensen and Harlow about this. But it’ll have to remain our little secret.

“I like your new girlfriend, Ramsey,” Mom says, as she sips on her coffee.

“She’s not my girlfriend, Mom.”

Great
. What if Mom says something to my brothers? I guess they would just think it was any random hook- up, and they probably won’t think anything of it, even though I don’t usually bring girls over here. My random hook- ups usually live in Albuquerque and we go to their place, unless I’m training out of town.

Monica
is
just any random hook- up, I remind myself. I don’t know why I keep forgetting. In fact, she’s the best kind of random hook- up: one who not only is okay with not seeing me again, but who
can’t
, since she lives so far away and I’m being deployed.

It’s almost too good to be true. I should be relishing in the fact instead of forgetting about it or even being disappointed about it.

“Monica told me you boys went to Billy’s last night,” Mom said. “And I was just telling her about my favorite bar, which isn’t around anymore. The Silver Fox. Remember, Ramsey? Your dad and I used to go there all the time.”

I shovel some food into my mouth, purposefully trying not to listen to or acknowledge what my mom is saying.  My mom likes to re- write history. My dad never went out drinking with her.

He was a family man, a very busy hard- working man. She was the one who liked to abandon her responsibilities and party all the time, with men who were definitely not my father.

I glance at Monica, who is wincing at me in an apologetic way, but I know it’s not her fault. My mom will say anything to make herself sound better. And at this point I’m starting to think she really believes some of her lies, because she’s starting to sound pretty senile.

“It sounds like it was a fun place,” says Monica, obviously to fill up the silence that ensued after my mom’s little rant.

“It is,” Mom says. “And it’s been so long since I was there. Maybe Ramsey will go there with me before he leaves.”

“Mom, you just said yourself, it’s closed. That bar hasn’t been there for a long time.”

A look of confusion crosses her face, but it’s soon replaced by her normal, stubborn features.

“I know
that
, Ramsey. I meant we’ll go to the new bar, that the Silver Fox turned into. That’s what I
meant
.”

“There’s no bar there, mom. It turned into a liquor store and then the whole building was knocked down and they put up a Starbucks. You know this.”

She shrugs.

“Well, just take me somewhere. That’s all your old ma wants.”

“Mom, you know I’m not taking you out drinking. You can’t be drinking, period.”

Her bottom lip juts out, as if she’s going to cry. I don’t have time for these antics. We’ll be late if we don’t leave in fifteen minutes.

“We’ll talk about it later, Mom,” I tell her. “Now’s not the time.”

I scarf down the rest of my eggs, telling Monica, “This is delicious!”

I remind myself to talk to Mom later about the no- drinking- while- she’s- living- with- me rules. And to call back some of the assisted living places I’ve looked into, so that I can get one lined up for her before I’m deployed. I know she doesn’t want to go, but such is life, when you’ve sufficiently pissed off all your kids except for the older one, and also when you’re probably a bit too much for even him to handle.

I head for the shower, telling Monica I’ll be out in five.

“Sure,” she says, and begins gathering up the dirty dishes.

I shoot her an apologetic look, and gesture at my mom as if to say, “sorry for leaving you with her.”

But she just smiles at me, and winks, like,
I got this
.

She sure does. She’s got a lot of things. And for once I’m a bit sorry that I only get to see her in action for such a short amount of time.

“That was a really great Just One Night,” Ramsey says, as we’re in his Jeep again, heading back towards Billy’s so that I can get my car.

“I was thinking of that earlier,” I tell him. “Our new song title, I mean.” I wouldn’t want to sound like I was thinking of
him
, of
us
. “We have to change it to Just One Night, and Just One Morning.”

“Did we break our pact?” He grimaces.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “We just found a loophole.”

He grins. I look out at the beautiful, scenic mountains, lit up by the morning sunrise.

I will remember this trip for a long time. This time with Ramsey. Sure, some of it was crazy— his night terror, his… eccentric… mother. But I’ve been able to relax and have fun more than I have in a long time. And I certainly can’t complain about the sex, either.

“Think we have enough time for me to stop by my hotel and change this uniform?” I ask Ramsey.

My sense of distance is usually pretty good, but since I’ve only been in Albuquerque for less than 24 hours, I’m still not sure how long it takes to get where.

“You should,” Ramsey says. “And that’ll be good, too, because then we won’t arrive at training at the same time.”

“Ha!” I laugh. “That’d really give them all something to talk about, other than my pink, sparkly plane.”

“How do you deal with all those comments?” Ramsey asks. “It must get difficult.”

I shrug.

“It’s to be expected,” I finally say. “And it just makes me tougher. No one should be in the Air Force if they can’t be tough. No matter their gender.”

Ramsey nods, as if seriously considering what I’ve said. I’m glad for that. One reason I don’t usually date military guys is that they don’t really understand either the similarities between us or the differences. But it seems that Ramsey understands both, or at least that he’s trying to.

He reaches over and touches my knee. A spark of electricity runs down my body to meet his hand, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find out how well my body still responds to his touch, even though my mind knows that our time together has come to an end.

“We never got around to talking about what kind of music
you
like,” he says, which seems to be a complete change of subject, but really isn’t. “We have a few minutes for you to play Jeep DJ.”

I sense it’s his way of saying,
we still have a few more minutes left in our Just For One Night and One Morning. Let’s make the best of it
. But maybe that’s just what I hope he’s thinking.

“Jeep DJ, huh?” I say, laughing, in an attempt to keep the mood light.

“It’s a very coveted position,” he says. “Rarely bestowed on anyone but me.”

“Oh, you know,” I tell him, “I’m a child of the 80’s. A teenager of the 90’s. I love me some Guns N’ Roses, some Third Eye Blind.”

He nods, and smiles, in apparent approval. He turns on Guns N’ Roses’ “Patience,” which I notice he already had in his Spotify starred playlist.

“Good choice,” I tell him.

“I thought it’d be fitting.”

I smile, but I don’t say anything. I can’t take his comment as anything else but an admission that he will miss me. It’s amazing how music can be used to say what we can’t, or are afraid to.

“You know they say that the music you grow up with, as an adolescent, will always be the music you think of as the best,” he says.

“So
that’s
why my dad was always playing his hippie music. The 5
th
Dimension, and Bob Dylan. And whining about how ‘kids these days don’t know what good music is.’”

“Exactly,” Ramsey says. “And why we don’t get Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber.”

“Oh my god,” I say, covering my face in fake mortification. “Can you believe that
that’s
what this younger generation thinks good music is?”

“Now you sound just like your old man,” he says.

We laugh, but then Third Eye Blind’s “Motorcycle Drive- By” starts playing.

“Good choice,” I tell him.

“Hey now— you’re the DJ. You gave me the suggestions.”

“But this song, I mean. It’s not one of their well- known ones. So I’m surprised you…”

“Know it?” he guesses.

“Ha. Yeah.”

And suddenly I’m second- guessing everything. The song is sad, but in a different way than “Patience” is. Since I thought he had played “Patience” to tell me that he’ll miss me, then, applying the same logic, I would have to think that he’s playing “Motorcycle Drive- By” to tell me that we’re over. That we are never really going to be anything but what we just were.

Ramsey pulls up to my car— one of only a few in the parking lot, at this early hour— and says, “Well, it’s been fun.”

He leans over and kisses me, passionately, but pulls away more quickly than he usually does, which could be explained by the fact that we’re in kind of a rush.

“I sure would love to get another breakfast and blowjob, if you’re ever out this way again and I’m not, you know, in Afghanistan or something,” he says.

I laugh, but a part of me wants to cry. I won’t let him see it, though.

I’m just confused about how he can go from so romantic to so blasé. Like flipping a switch.

“You’re lucky we had such a short time together, because I really pulled out all the stops,” I say.

“Ha.”

I can’t decipher the look on his face.

I get out of his Jeep and say, “See you on base, stranger.”

“It was nice knowing you, stranger.”

My heart feels a little crushed as I trudge towards my car.

Well, that was that, I think.

Whatever
that
was.