Rock Solid (9 page)

He knew what she was thinking, though she didn’t say it, her expression suddenly tense.

A ring made it feel more real. For him, too. But for some reason, it didn’t cause him the anxiety it seemed to cause for her.

“A lot of people skip the traditional symbols these days,” she countered. “Women keep their own names—which I will—and they don’t wear rings or have big weddings,” she continued.

“True, but I don’t want the media, or my family, thinking I’m a cheapskate. Consider it a gift. A thank-you. For you to keep, to do whatever you want with later. Maybe it could finance a new adventure down the line,” he added. He realized the mistake of his words as soon as they passed his lips.

She withdrew her hand.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, obviously. It’s not a payoff,” he said in a rush, wishing he could erase what he’d said. “Not like that at all. It’s difficult to...I don’t know, make what we’re doing—”

“Real and not real at the same time?” she offered.

“Yeah.”

Their food arrived, and Brody was glad to not have to say anything while they ate and listened to music, which helped ease the tension between them.

After they finished eating, Brody broached the topic again, choosing his words more carefully this time.

“I want to do right by you, Hannah. Regardless of the details, I’ll be your husband, and while it lasts I want it to be as real as it can be. How I feel about you, how you turn me on and everything else... I like being with you. You’re a friend, and I hope you always will be, even...after we’re not together anymore. So let me buy you a ring, because of that. Okay?”

She sipped her milk shake, drawing his attention to her mouth, which always caused his heart to stutter. What other woman had ever affected him like Hannah did?

As she put her cup down, she nodded, seeming to agree. He wondered why she didn’t say anything, but then noticed her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

Oh, crap, he’d made her cry, he thought in a panic, unsure what he’d done this time, but then she smiled. Brody was mute with confusion.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be so emotional, but that was so sweet. You’re a good man, Brody. I care about you, too, and you definitely turn me on,” she said, her cheeks flushing with her admission.

Sweet and bold were an intriguing mix in this woman. Brody was fascinated as he watched her emerge from her shell.

“Okay, then, that’s settled. Ring shopping tomorrow. I really would like to see your pictures,” he added, changing the subject. “Do you have to get them developed? Or do you do it yourself?”

“Digital. I took a course in developing film back in college, and I remember how, I think. For now, I’m going with digital, which is easier on the road. This way, I can get them on my computer and on the blog immediately.”

“Smart thinking.”

The door to the diner opened and a group of people came in, so loud they drowned out the music and all conversation. Brody glared, but then recognized the man who had been running the bets at the race. With him he had the same two thugs he’d had back at the airstrip. Brody was surprised they hadn’t been arrested, but they must have had an escape route set up.

“We need to leave,” he said quietly to Hannah.

Just then, the server who had been waiting on them approached the table with the bill and a shy smile.

“Here’s your bill, but it’s on the house. The owner, all of us really, are huge racing fans. I wondered if you could sign this for me,” she said, pulling a diner hat out of her apron pocket. “I was sorry to hear you retired. My husband, son and I are huge fans, Mr. Palmer.”

Brody knew that he was caught and couldn’t leave now.

“That’s really nice of you, thank you,” he said with a smile, taking the hat and a marker from her, signing it and then leaving a tip that was bigger than the bill.

He put his own hat back on, hoping no one else had noticed, but no such luck. The place was relatively empty and someone asking for an autograph was very visible. As was his picture on the far wall, he noted suddenly. His back had been to it before. As he noticed it, the server piped up again.

“If you could sign that, too, it would be awesome.”

He smiled, trying to find a way out. “I live close by and could come back another time to do that, perhaps? It’s late, and my date is tired,” he explained with a wink.

“Of course. It would be great to have you come back,” the young woman said with a wide smile.

A few other patrons noticed and approached the table, too, and Hannah watched in fascination, unaware that this was the last thing they needed at the moment. But Brody couldn’t be rude to fans. It was another one of his few unbreakable rules. Hopefully, the guys across the diner wouldn’t think much about it.

That ended up being another empty hope—they approached the table, too.

Brody met the gaze of the bookie, not backing down.

“Who the heck are you, old man? Some movie star or something? You know, from silent film?” he said, getting a laugh from his buddies.

Brody flicked a glance in Hannah’s direction. She tried not to appear too worried and probably failed.

“That’s Brody Palmer, you nitwit,” one of the other customers who had asked for his signature said with a sneer. “See the poster? If your generation ever got their faces out of their video games you might know a local celebrity when you saw one. Don’t you follow racing?”

And that was that, Brody realized, pinching the bridge of his nose.

The punk leaned on the table. “A professional, huh? So you’re a ringer? You took money from me, old man. And your boy did, too. That’s cheating, and that’s not a good thing.”

Brody noticed one of the thugs eyeing Hannah in the wrong way, and he drew himself up to his full height, pulling their gazes back to him.

“Listen, fellas, I was helping out my nephew, like I said. I can give you your money back, with interest, no problem. But this is a nice place, with nice people. They don’t need any trouble. Why don’t we take this conversation outside?”

The bookie and the two guys with him were solid, but not too big. Brody figured he could take them if he needed to.

“Sure, we can go outside,” the bookie said with a chuckle, stepping back. “Do this old school.”

Brody turned to Hannah. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Her eyes widened and she shook her head, but he was already walking to the door. This wasn’t going to help his reputation any, but he didn’t see that he had much choice. At least outside, no one else would get hurt.

Except that Hannah was following.

He turned to tell her not to follow when he saw one of the thugs on the side of the bookie draw back and level his fist at Brody’s face. Hannah lurched to warn him and was yanked away by the other guy.

Brody saw red at anyone touching her, especially so roughly. Ducking the punch and sending his attacker into a table, he turned to deal with the guy who was still holding on to Hannah.

Brody stepped forward, and the bookie interfered with his progress.

“You’d better back off,” he said to Brody, and pulled a knife from his pocket.

A very nasty-looking knife.

Brody put his hands up. “Just let my girl go and we’re good.”

“No, we’re not good. But maybe now we’re in a better bargaining position,” the guy said with a slimy smile. “I think you need to pay up more than you did, all things considered. You cheated, and you hurt one of my guys.”

Brody saw the fans who had talked with him earlier take a few steps forward to help, but he gave them a look that he hoped stopped any well-intentioned rescues. If this guy had a knife, the other one might have one, too. Brody couldn’t risk anything happening to Hannah.

“Fine, I’ll write you a check. Name it, but let her go.”

Suddenly Brody looked up to see Hannah break free. She let out some kind of growl, a feral, infuriated noise as she swung the camera by its strap and hit the bookie hard enough to send him flying forward into the nearest table, his knife flying in the opposite direction.

Brody jumped in and lunged to get the knife as he saw the thug who had held Hannah reach for her again.

That was two times too many that the jerk had put his hands on her, and it was Brody’s turn to get angry. He closed the space between them quickly and dropped the jerk with one punch, out cold.

Applause rose on the other side of the diner, and Brody looked up to see his fans had the bookie cornered at a table, and they were smiling approvingly.

Brody looked for Hannah to make sure she was okay and saw her sitting on the floor, staring at the pieces of her camera. There were many pieces, and it didn’t look as though it could be put back together again.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Brody said, squatting down and helping her pick up the busted camera.

“It’s okay. I still have the SD card with the pictures,” she said, raising her face to his. He expected her to be upset, perhaps in tears, at losing one of her prized possessions, but instead, that feral gleam still shone in her eyes as she switched her gaze to the bookie. “It was
so
worth it.”

Brody wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to kiss her more. So he did.

8

H
ANNAH
FOUND
B
RODY
frowning as he sat with a newspaper and coffee the next morning.

“Morning,” she said, taking one of his hands in hers and inspecting the bruises from the punch he’d landed the night before. “Hurt?”

“Not much. I’ve had worse.”

Without elaborating, he turned the paper toward her, and she gaped at the headline. Has Bad Boy Brody Palmer Finally Found His Perfect Bad Girl?

“Oh, no...”

The picture was pretty good, actually, catching the instant Hannah hit the bookie with her camera, and Brody pulling his fist back to hit the guy who was reaching to grab her.

“Look at our faces... We look as though we’re going to kill people,” she said, holding her hand to her face, smothering a laugh.

Brody’s eyebrows rose. “You think that’s funny?”

She tried to repress her smile, but it was hard. “Well, yeah.”

Her eyes scanned the brief article below, citing the pictures were taken from a fan’s phone; there was also a phone video available online. It featured the bookie saying that Brody had cheated in an illegal street race earlier in the evening, which had started the entire incident.

“Oh...no,” Hannah said again.

“Yeah, that cat’s out of the bag, and then some. I already heard from Jud this morning—he’s the lead publicist with my sponsor—and he didn’t know whether to be angry that I was in a fight, or happy that I was getting engaged,” Brody said, shaking his head. “He suggested that I might want to find someone less likely to get into public brawls,” he added.

“What did you say to that?”

“I told him I’d rather have a woman who can hold her own in a fight.”

Hannah’s grin twitched again, and Brody couldn’t help but laugh, too.

“I thought this was about making me look better, not making you look worse, my love,” he joked.

Hannah choked on her laughter at his endearment. Of course he meant it jokingly, as he hadn’t seemed to think twice about it, but the words had struck her straight in the heart. She turned to the coffeepot to pour a cup and get hold of herself, surprised to find her hands shaking.

She was still tired, and adrenaline had hit her as soon as she saw the paper; that was all, she reassured herself.

“So we probably should go out for a ring after breakfast.”

Hannah was riding an emotional roller coaster of enormous proportions, and it was making her dizzy.

The police had shown up to arrest the bookie and his friends—everything witnessed and attested to by Brody’s fans, so they weren’t detained at all, thank goodness. After returning home, they’d both been charged up and worked off that energy in the most delightful ways, until they’d fallen asleep.

Hannah had woken up wondering how this could be her life. Street races, amazing sex, even midnight brawls with bad guys...and she was getting married.

The newspaper on the table made it official.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Brody took the pot she was still holding—lost in thought—from her hands, putting it on the counter. He pulled her against him, his arms coming around her.

“Yeah, I am, I’m just... It’s a lot to process. I guess I’ll get used to it.”

“I know you will.”

He wrapped her up tight against him, snug and safe, anxiety and confusion melting away like it always did. Being close to Brody was the only time things seemed right. Normal.

It was when her thoughts and emotions weren’t muddled by sex or how perfect he felt next to her that things got a little dicey.

“I was thinking...” she said, facing him. “Maybe instead of a ring, we could go camera shopping? Mine is toast.”

Brody nodded. “We have time to do both. We don’t have to be at my parents’ house until seven.”

“No, I mean, um, instead of a ring.”

“What? Why?”

Hannah shrugged. “I’ll certainly get more use out of it,” she offered with a hopeful smile. “And I never was much for jewelry.”

Hannah couldn’t go through with letting Brody buy her a ring. It wasn’t...right. A camera was much less fraught with complications.

“I don’t know about that,” he said, not conceding as easily as she’d like.

Hannah bit her lip, trying to keep her tone light. “How about I buy my own camera—it’s a business expense after all—and then we find wedding rings we like and split the cost? But no diamond. Just the bands.”

It occurred to her that this had to be the most unromantic discussion of engagement and wedding rings that ever occurred in the history of the world, but Hannah held her line.

“Can I ask why you changed your mind about a ring? You agreed last night.”

“I know it’s probably silly, but I need to hold on to some of the dream, you know? If I ever get married—for real—I want to have the whole enchilada. The romantic proposal, the ring, and have it be perfect. I want that ring to be on my hand forever. This one won’t be.”

Hannah had a deep need to protect that dream; it still meant something.

“Okay, we can do that,” he said. He didn’t look entirely happy about it, but he agreed. “Except that we’re not splitting the cost on rings. And I get to buy you the camera.”

“Brody—”

“Don’t argue. You did lose yours to keep me from getting knifed, after all, and this marriage was my crazy idea.”

Hannah looked away, frowning at the sharp stab of...something...that his phrasing caused. She knew what he meant, so why was it bothering her so much? It
was
crazy—that was precisely why she was going along with it.

“Okay, you win, but any other wedding expenses we split, so let’s keep them small,” she said brightly, putting her game face on.

She expected him to be happy to have won the debate, but he didn’t look it.

“Hannah, what’s going on?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I can see how tense you are. Something’s bothering you.”

She took a deep breath. Brody wasn’t like the typical men she often heard women talking about, the ones who weren’t attentive or perceptive. He saw too much. Or she didn’t hide her feelings well enough. Or both.

But she couldn’t exactly tell him that...what? She was afraid she might be feeling more for him than she should? That it hurt whenever she was reminded that their marriage wasn’t going to be the real thing? At least not in the forever sense?

She pulled herself up and met his concerned look, giving him the most honest answer she could. “I need to remember that this is an adventure. For it to be fun. I don’t want to dwell on the complications, but I’m not used to being so impulsive, like you are. I’m still figuring out how to handle it all.”

It was the truth, but vague enough that she didn’t humiliate herself by saying that she had to keep her heart protected, or that she had to remind herself not to believe what they had was genuine. Not with him. Brody could turn her inside out if she let that happen. He’d been completely honest with her, and she
was
the one who had told the reporter that she was his fiancée. So she’d gotten herself into this, really.

Still, it would be all too easy to want this to be real. Really, 100 percent real.

“Hannah, if you don’t want to go through with this, I understand. If you have doubts or worries, that’s okay.”

“No. I want to do it. We’re in it now and, hey, like the paper says, we’re meant for each other—both of us are bad apples,” she joked.

If she was going to try to change—to really change and live more adventurously, she had to stop second-guessing everything, and throw herself in. “So let’s be bad together.”

He smiled. “I think that sounds good.”

“I need to frame that headline, I think.”

“That’s a great idea,” he said with a grin, dipping in for a kiss, and then another. “Let’s be bad right now.”

The kiss got hotter, and all of her worries were erased by the scorching blur of arousal. Would it always be like this? she wondered as Brody stroked her concerns away. Or would their attraction cool, making it easier to leave later?

Stop thinking
, her body demanded.

“We have to get ready to go shopping,” she murmured as his lips did delicious things to the nerve endings along her shoulder.

Brody chuckled. “Really? Shopping? Now?”

As much as she wanted to continue what they’d started, Hannah also needed to know she could maintain some sense of self-control.

“I really need that camera,” she said.

He drew back, looking at her in astonishment until bubbles of laughter broke through her facade and infected him, as well. She loved his laugh, and she loved laughing with him.

He stepped back and then scooped her up, making her shriek in surprise.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going shopping, but we need a shower first, don’t you think?”

Hannah sighed. She couldn’t argue with that.

* * *

B
RODY
HELPED
HIS
mother pull heavy dishes out of the oven—she’d invited them over instead of everyone meeting at a restaurant. He was thankful, given that the media had been dogging him all day while they’d been out shopping. Somehow they’d gotten Hannah’s phone number, too, and they’d both had to shut their phones off. Brody’s sponsor was thrilled—Brody was less so.

“Hannah seems like a nice young woman,” his mother said casually as she took the foil off a large pan of fried chicken. She’d made enough food for an army, as usual. “Though I couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t wearing a ring.”

His mom’s blue eyes met his over the wide surface of the granite island, and Brody shrugged, wanting to tell the truth as much as he could.

“We both agreed to only wearing wedding bands.”

“This was all so fast, Brody, so tell me, before I read it in the paper, am I going to be a grandmother? Not that I mind, but—”

“No! Absolutely not. Come on, Mom,” Brody said, cursing as he picked up a hot casserole without grabbing a pot holder first, then apologizing to his mom for his language.

“Well, what is someone to think? You never said a word, never mentioned Hannah and we’ve never met her. Now suddenly you’re getting married—and in a matter of days. It seemed logical to think there was a reason, and your father and I are fine with it. We’re quite progressive, as you know, and—”

Brody crossed to his mother and put a hand on either of her small shoulders, looking her in the eye.

“Mom, Hannah isn’t pregnant. I promise. We just...reconnected after having been together before, last year. This time, it was...right.”

Brody turned to the task he was helping with, afraid his mother might see too much.

Because being with Hannah did feel right. Very right.

When she’d refused a ring because she wanted her first engagement ring to be her only one, to have a real proposal and a future with the man who offered it to her, the thought had gutted him.

Another man putting his ring on Hannah’s finger, another man promising her forever. Another man in her bed, and her having his children.

“Honey, are you okay?”

“What? Yeah, sorry, Mom. I can’t believe you made so much food. Who else did you invite, the fifth battalion?”

His mother laughed at his diversion, which was good, because Brody didn’t really want to follow his previous train of thought. What he had with Hannah was good, and he enjoyed it—as far as it went. But their future paths were different. He’d go back to racing, and she’d go off on her own adventures.

He refused to overthink it.

“No, it’s just the six of us, but you know Aiden eats like a typical teenage boy, which means he’ll consume enough for three.”

“Brandi and Aiden will be here?”

“Of course. They want to celebrate your news, too.”

Brody nodded, holding the pan of chicken and the door for his mom as she passed in front of him out to the dining room.

The beachside condo was where his parents had moved after selling their larger home, but his mother had a talent for making any space cozy. The dining room table could hold only the six of them, but the room provided a view of the gulf through French doors. A gorgeous sunset simmered low over the water, casting purple-and-orange light everywhere.

“You can’t beat that view,” he commented, hearing his father chatting with Hannah in the other room, and her laughter floating back. What were they talking about?

“We enjoy it every single day. The ones from the bedrooms are equally nice, and to be able to walk out onto the beach? It’s heaven. Of course, it’s all because of you, my dear,” his mom said with a smile, squeezing his arm and kissing his cheek before she returned to the kitchen.

He knew she meant because he’d made the down payment his anniversary gift to them, and he knew the previous owner of the condo, who’d given him a deal.

That his parents were happy meant everything to Brody. They’d always been there for him, and he never forgot that.

Because of that, lying to them about anything made him feel sick. He was lucky she’d gone back to the kitchen and that Brandi and Aiden’s voices filled the front entry as they arrived, or he might have spilled everything to his mom right then and there.

Everyone came in then, Aiden looking as if nothing had happened the night before as he leaned over the table rubbing his hands together at the sight of the fried chicken. Brandi followed, but she didn’t look as happy as her son, completely ignoring the food. In fact, she looked ticked, and made a beeline directly for Brody.

Great.

“
What
is going on?” she asked Brody as she pulled him over to the French doors.

“Listen, I would have told you, but we only just decided that we wanted to—”

“I don’t mean about your engagement. I want to know why you think you had the right to promise Aiden that you’ll help him get his license and take him to the track? Teach him to drive? Are you out of your mind?”

Brody took a breath, but he was somewhat relieved she wasn’t asking about him and Hannah.

“Brandi, it’s the safest option. Let me teach him, work on the car with him over at the farm, and that will keep him out of street racing. That’s the deal I made with him. He will get himself killed if you insist on controlling him. What he was doing out there last night was a lot riskier than anything he’ll do with me.”