Sidelined (14 page)

“Aunt Ada,” Leah says warily. “Where are you going with this?”

“Nowhere, Lele. I’m simply making an observation.” She winks at me. “Now, doodle on a donkey’s backside, Grace. Did you hide the cookies again?”

Cal looks at me. “Want me to arrest him?”

“For what?” I snort, putting a bigger-size bra to the back of the rack. “Breaking my heart? I’m not sure that’s legal, bro.”

“I could find something,” he admits.

“He’s also studying law, so he could get out of it.”

“Damn,” he mutters. “Forgot that. He really isn’t the dad?”

“He really isn’t the dad. Or so he says. I mean, I dunno, Cal.” I pause. “What if he’s just saying it, you know? I’m not stupid. He came to my door for one reason, and that’s to get me back.”

“You sure, sis?”

“Cal, you don’t go to your ex’s door and tell her you’re still in love with her if you aren’t trying to get her back.”

“But aren’t you seeing Jack Carr?”

“I was never seeing him. I was sleeping with him.”

“Was.”

“Yes. Was. Because in light of Mitch’s visit, I’ve decided that I’m going to avoid men for a while. Therefore, I am not longer seeing or sleeping with Jack.”

“You’re doin’ a great job of avoiding men,” a voice drawls from behind me.

My brother raises his eyebrows.

I turn to face Jack. “My brother doesn’t count. He’s not going to piss me off. Unless it’s Thanksgiving. Then it’s a given.”

Jack ignores me and steps around me. “Jack Carr.”

Cal holds his hand out. “Calvin Kelly. LAPD and protector of this crazy kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” I mutter, restocking another bra rack.

“Right,” my brother says slowly. “I’m gonna head off. I’ve gotta get back to work.” He turns to me and points a finger at me. “He pisses you off, you call me. Got it? I’ll pin his ass with something.”

“Yes, Cal, I got it.”

“Awesome.” He kisses my forehead, shakes Jack’s hand again, and disappears out of the door.

I lick my lips and ignore Jack. I can feel his eyes on me though. They’re angry but soft, his gaze burning into the back of my head so fiercely that I’m surprised he hasn’t singed my hair yet.

“You didn’t come over.”

I nod slowly, bending down to grab a selection of bright-pink bras from my box. “I was somewhat…distressed, last night.”

“I heard. Corey told me everything.”

“Of course he did,” I breathe, looking down at the underwear in my hands. “What do you want, Jack? I’m working.”

“I wanna talk to you, baby.”

I shake my head. “I was going to call you after work. Whatever it was that happened before he came back, it’s done. I need—I want to be alone. I’m not ready for a relationship of any kind, even if it only involves dinner, sex, and bacon three times a week.”

“You ditchin’ me for him, gorgeous?”

My heart thumps. “No. I’m not ditching anyone for anyone other than myself.”

“When do you get off?”

“Thirty minutes.” Why did I say that?

“I’ll be waiting outside.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he whispers, stepping forward and catching my chin between his finger and thumb. “You and me, M, are on very different pages about the status of our ‘dinner, sex, and bacon three times a week’ relationship. You say over. I say not. So we gotta talk, and we’re gonna talk.”

“There’s no good arguing with you, is there?” I sigh weakly, enthralled by the amusement playing within his bright, green eyes.

“No.” He smiles, leans forward, and just barely touches his lips to mine.

Then, like he didn’t just come in and throw my resolve to avoid him under his shoe and stomp on it, he turns and walks out of the store.

M
acey walks toward me and puts her hand on her hip. “Let’s go.”

Before I can reply, she sweeps past me and toward the exit of the mall. I grin and follow her, catching up to her quickly. I rest my arm over her shoulders, and she coughs.

Her eyes flit to mine. “How’d you know where I work?”

“Asked Leah,” I reply.

“Of course you did.” She punctuates her words with a drawn-out sigh.

“You get a staff discount?”

“Forty percent.” Macey looks at me. “And yes, I use it.”

My lips tug up. That explains that black set that drove me fucking crazy last week. “Good to know.”

Macey sighs and shrugs my arm off of her. Digging through her purse, she stops behind a bright-blue Beatle and nods toward it. “Get in.”

“You want me to get into a Beatle?” I stare at her.

“Yes.” Defiantly, she looks at me and unlocks the car.

I snatch her keys from her hand, pull her purse from her arm, chuck it in the trunk, and lock the car. “No chance.” I pocket her keys and grab her hand to drag her behind me.

“Jack! What are you doing?”

We stop behind my bike, and I pass her a helmet. “Put this on.”

“What? Where’s your car?”

“At home in the garage,” I inform her, putting my own helmet on. “You getting on or what, babe?”

“Er, I’m going to go with ‘or what.’”

“You’re real fucking cute sometimes.” I take the helmet from her and put it on.

She argues with me when I lift her and set her on the back of the bike. Not giving her a second to move, I swing my leg over and start the engine.

“Hold on tight.”

Macey hesitantly wraps her arms around my waist. Her grip quickly tightens when I turn the bike around and join the flow of traffic. I’m also pretty sure she screams when the light switches to green and I pull away.

I laugh. She grabs me even tighter, this time winding her fingers in my shirt. She even scoots forward so her pussy is pressing right against my ass, and sweet fuck. I should not be thinking about her pussy right now when I’m driving.

Or the fact that her gorgeous tits are squashed against my back. Fuck.

I swallow hard and take the road that’ll lead us right to my house. The journey is long and painful, to say the least. My mind seems incapable of stopping the thoughts about her tits against my back and wanting them against my front. Of wanting her ass in my hands and my fingers to brush her pussy.

Jesus. I’ve never wanted a girl this way. Never craved their touch or body as badly as I crave hers.

The second we’re done talking, I’m taking exactly what I need from her and giving her what she needs in the damn process. Nothing but sweet oblivion.

I stop the bike outside my house and kill the engine. I pull my helmet off then turn to take Macey’s from her.

“You live in Long Beach?”

“I live on the beach,” I laugh, opening the garage.

Macey stares at me, her eyes wide. “You do?”

“Grew up on the beach in Rhode Island,” I explain, taking her hand to help her off the bike. “I was never livin’ anywhere else.”

“Whoa. I didn’t know that,” she breathes quietly. “How far away is the beach? From here.”

I wheel the bike into the garage, lock the door, and half grin. She’s staring at me with her eyes slightly narrowed, and the suspicion in her eyes draws a laugh from me. I approach her slowly, and my fingers thread through hers. I pull her after me around the side of the house.

“This far away. It’s a private stretch.”

“No way,” she whispers. “This is
your
beach?”

“Well, it came with the house and I own the house, so yeah.” I laugh.

“Wow.” She turns, her eyes now wide. “Your house is massive.”

“It’s not big. Not really.”

“How many bedrooms do you have?”

“Four.”

“Yeah, I have a one-bedroom apartment that’s basically the size of your garage.” Her eyes flick back. “This is much bigger.”

No arguing with that.

“Come on.” I lead her into my house and leave the back doors open.

We walk straight into the kitchen, and I wait as she looks around. The glossy, black cupboards are the ones my mom hates so much, but I love them. They’re so easy to keep clean, and the marble countertops are wipe-clean easy, which is great for my lazy ass.

“Wow.”

I smile at Macey. “You want a drink?”

She nods, and I let her go.

“I don’t have tequila,” I warn her.

A smirk tugs her lips, and she pushes some hair from her face. “Coffee will do.”

“You sure? Should I see if anyone can bring me an emergency supply for our conversation?”

“Do you have wine?”

“Vodka, maybe.”

“Then I should be good.” She tucks her wayward hair behind her ear and perches on a stool by the breakfast bar. “Why do we have to talk?”

I pause what I’m doing and turn my face toward her. Her hands are below the bar, on her lap, and her eyes are looking at a spot somewhere next to me. She looks nothing like the girl I met weeks ago.

She’s not the confident, sassy, grab-you-by-the-balls chick who sat down next to me at Reid’s birthday party. She’s quiet, hesitant, and she seems completely lost.

I don’t blame her. But I don’t like it—at all.

“Because, babe,” I say softly, “we appear to want different things, and I’m not cool with what you seem to think you want.”

“I don’t think I want it, Jack. I
do
want it.” Her dark eyes collide with mine. “Your magic cock seduced me for a while, but unfortunately, my asshole ex broke its little spell and common sense has resumed control of my brain.”

My eyebrows go up. “Magic cock, huh? You wanna tell me some more about that?”

She opens her mouth, a blush coloring her cheeks. “I…didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

“No, but now, you have.” I drop the coffee pod and stalk toward her. “So why don’t you tell me more about it?”

Her eyes snap to mine, her fire back in her gaze. “Multiple orgasms are the work of a magical cock. End of story.”

I clear my throat and rest my hands flat on the counter. “You want me to recast that spell, baby?”

“Well, I believe the point of this conversation is that I
don’t
want you to.”