Tame This (The McCallans, Book Two) (3 page)

BOOK: Tame This (The McCallans, Book Two)
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Chapter Two

 

 

“Holy fucking hell,” Jay groaned, turning over onto his back.

But gravity seemed to screw him over and he dropped a couple of feet with a thud
, face-planting into the carpet. He jolted upward onto his elbows to assess his surroundings, and released a breath of air.

“Thank God,” he mumbled, realizing he was in Teague’s living room.

He pulled his knees under him to work his way to a standing position, but a blanket was tangled around him. Once he freed himself, he chucked it onto the recliner and stood, but the room started to spin. He dropped to the couch and put his head in his hands, just as the front door opened behind him.


Rawk
! Bye-bye!” the parrot screeched.

“It’s
hello
,” Melanie’s voice corrected him patiently as she entered the house. “Say hello, Geraldo. Hello?”


Rawk
! Bye-bye!”

She
sighed as she walked past the living room, but stopped to stare at Jay when he craned his head her direction.

“Wow, I thought I scored big time when I chose not to resuscitate you
last night,” Melanie stated dryly.

He rolled his eyes
even though pain shot from every corner of his eye sockets. But he couldn’t help the little smile at the corner of his mouth, either. “Good one, baby doll. You’re getting better at this bitchy mom thing. You’ll be ready to put a dozen kids in their place in no time.”

“Pssh, I’m done after one,” she replied as she headed for the kitchen.
He watched her little five-month baby bump disappear around the corner.

Jay listened to the thumping in his head f
or a few beats before he heard Melanie open the fridge. Then came the obvious sounds of pans being pulled out from under the stove, and hell if he didn’t think she was being loud on purpose. He rubbed his temples and tried to be tolerant of the noise, but it was too much.

Finally the kitchen was
quieter, but he was up and heading for the hallway in search of a shower. He was already shirtless, so he stripped the rest of himself as he shut the bathroom door. While he stood under the hot water, he tried to rub the cloudy thoughts out of his head. He remembered everything up until the moment he walked through the front door and then…nothing.

He heard the bathroom door open and Melanie said, “I’m just bringing in towels
from the dryer so don’t get in a tizzy.”

“I already know you’re memorizing my cock-silhouette through the curtain.”

“Right. Like I’ve never seen a dick before.”

“You’ve never seen
my
dick,” he smirked.

“And I never will, so keep your tallywacker behind the curtain.”

“Oh my God,” he laughed, thoroughly amused. “You would actually call this monstrous thing a
tallywacker
?” he asked, yanking the curtain wide open.


Jay
!” she shrieked, but he couldn’t believe that she actually had her
eyes squeezed shut
as she faced the towel shelf. “Shut the curtain, you man child!”

He could only laugh as she felt for the shelf and placed a stack of four towels onto it. Even when she turned she faced away from him
, and then she was out the door before he could respond.

Still laughing, he
shook his head. Melanie Jacobs was not exactly a prude. He knew that from the first night he met her. She had about four guys eating out of the palm of her hand and she loved every second of it. Sometimes he wondered how the night might’ve ended if his first words to her hadn’t been, “I’m off limits, sweetheart, so get over it quick.”

“Total dick move,” he murmured
to himself. But he didn’t exactly regret it. Teague had warned him to steer clear, and because he respected his cousin’s wishes, he didn’t think twice about it. And it was a good thing, too. It wasn’t even three weeks later that she showed up pregnant with some fucker’s baby.

He didn’t need that drama in his life.

He finished up his shower and shut the water off. These last few months had been a damn rollercoaster. He still couldn’t believe Teague was married, and even worse, now Jay had to share his bathroom with a peppy cheerleader.

He glared at the makeup and shit that was scattered all over the counter as he stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. He actually kept his toothbrush in his bedroom. He was not only afraid of what she might do to it
if she were feeling facetious enough, but he really didn’t want any of her girly crap somehow transferring onto his stuff. The last thing he wanted was to brush his teeth with a mouthful of hairspray or something.

“Jay?” Melanie’s voice asked from the hall, just as he wrapped himself in a nice warm towel.

“Oh God, that feels good,” he murmured to himself, but obviously not quietly enough.

“Ew! What the hell?”

“I’m talking about the towel!” he retorted through the door.

“You’d better be! Do that shit when I’m gone. Jeez. Do you know what happened to the strawberries that were by the sink?”

He cringed to himself. “Um, I ate them?”

Pause. “Are you
asking
yourself if you did?”

“No,” he smiled. “I ate them. Sorry.”

“The whole container?”

“Yes?”

He heard her sigh. “Okay.” And then she was gone when he opened the bathroom door.

While he trekked the four steps to his bedroom, he made a mental note to pick up more strawberries.

“Holy shit,” he grimaced, squeezing his head between his hands. He moved his guitar from the edge of the bed and sat down. What was supposed to be a fun night out for Kyle’s birthday had turned into another game of bury-the-guilt. But then the waitress reminded him exactly why he couldn’t trust the opposite sex with more than just an impersonal fling.

Growing up with the McCallan name wasn’t a blessing in his case, but
even though his father pretty much got dropkicked from the scene, Jay still got thrown into the Hollywood playboy heap now and then. He was still Neil McCallan’s grandson, and although his notoriety wasn’t near the level of his Uncle Craig or his cousin Max—or Teague’s, even—Jay still chose to keep a low profile. He’d witnessed enough shit in his life to know better, and he learned from a young age that the vultures liked to stalk their prey
alive.

He threw some clothes on and headed down the hall. The smell of food caught his attention and he wondered what made Melanie decide to cook. She rarely ever made anything that required time or the use of appliances, unless she was baking desserts with Camryn.

“Hey, you wanna eat?” she hollered when he passed the kitchen.

Jay slowed and angled
her direction. He spanned his arms to brace himself in the wide entry and smiled suspiciously. “I’m not in the mood to be poisoned today, babe. I got shit to do.”

“I’ll poison you when you’re least expecting it
, but for now, will you try this? I can’t tell if it’s good or totally awful. I mean I think it’s good, but lately I’ve been craving some crazy stuff. Maybe my taste buds are way out of whack with these pregnancy hormones.”

He looked over the plate she held in front of him and lifted an eyebrow. It was a perfectly constructed omelette, and it at least
looked
edible. And he was starving. With a raging headache and a growling stomach, he was already irritable as fuck.

She made him take the plate and then handed him a fork. “If you don’t like it, just say so, but can you at least try a bite?”

He set the plate at the breakfast bar and sat down. Even if it tasted like shit he would eat it because of how hungry he was, but really, how could you go wrong with a simple egg dish?

She was waiting eagerly for him to take a bite, so he did. For a brief moment, as the
taste began to coat his tongue, he thought she was going to burst out laughing at the joke. It was disgusting, but he could actually tell she was hopeful that he’d like it.

“Well?” she asked, her hands clasped together. “Is it okay? It’s a spinach tofu omelette.”

Tofu?
Jesus Christ
, he groaned to himself. He looked at the creation again as he forced the food down his throat. “Um, it’s…okay,” he shrugged.

“Just okay?” she frowned. “So I really can’t taste things
correctly?”

That made him smile, but he really didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “I’m just not used to tofu.
And of course it doesn’t taste like anything because, well, it’s
tofu
. And I usually put Tabasco sauce on an omelette—”

“Oh, right!” she exclaimed, and she produced a bottle of it from near the stove. “I was about to put some on it but then you came out. So…it’s really awful, huh? What would make it better?”

He took another bite of it because hell, he was starving. And Mel was sweet when she wanted to be. He wasn’t up for making fun of her this time.

Besides, he ate her damn strawberries.

“Maybe some other stuff in it,” he answered. “Mushrooms, peppers, cheese… I don’t know, real
meat
?”

She flashed him
a beautiful smile but rolled her eyes. “The point was to be meat and dairy free.”

He shoved another bite into his mouth after shaking Tabasco sauce all over it. “Don’t tell me you’re getting into all that hype.”

“What hype?”

“Vegetarian, v
egan, whatever the hell it is.”

She
poured a glass of juice and set it in front of him. “No, I was just trying to make it plain.”

“Um, yep, you succeeded.”

“Glad I actually achieved what I set out to do for once,” she replied lightly.

Jay didn’
t know how to respond to that. When she wasn’t at his throat, most of Melanie’s personality these days tended to be laced with self-doubt. Lately she’d been making subtle comments about her life, her lack of direction, and oftentimes her immaturity and/or contribution to the world around her.

At least one of them was able to admit it.

But seriously, it was true that she’d changed a bit within the four months he’d known her. She was still happy-go-lucky, sweet and flirtatious, and sometimes just feisty like her older sister. But little by little Melanie seemed to have taken on a different opinion of herself and it was making her pensive more often.

Jay downed the glass of juice and stood. He took his dishes to the sink and rinsed them, and to avoid any kind of serious conversation with her, he offered a big smile, kissed the top of her head on his way by and said, “You can achieve anything you want to, honey.”

 

 

***

“That is fucking
gorgeous
,” Beck almost whispered, taking another walk around the hood of the car. Jay watched his buddy drink in the bare ’68 Chevelle SS and knew Beck so well he already knew what he was going to add. “Or at least…it
will
be,” he grinned.

“So you want in?”

“Fuck yeah,” Beck chuckled. “But are you sure, man? You could flip this easy for yourself.”

Jay took a step toward the sorry sight of a car and placed his hand on the roof as he peered inside of it again. He’d been stalking this car for three weeks now and came up with a half-dozen mental scenarios that he didn’t know what to do with. He had four thousand in cash to buy it—at least if the owner was willing to settle on his offer—but he needed another thousand just in case he didn’t. That’s what he needed Beck for, and he’d pay him for it—with interest—after he re-sold the car.

“Yeah, I know,” he finally sighed. “But with me moving out of Teague’s house tomorrow, the money down on the new place will do me in.”

“Teague and his lady want more privacy, huh?” Beck winked.

Jay barely smiled. “Nah, they’re not kicking me out.

“What about Mel? She a pain in the ass?”


Melanie’s staying. She doesn’t really have a choice. And no, she’s all right, I just…think I need to go with the changing tides, you know? Teague’s married now, he’s happy as fuck, and me? … Well, I’m just trying to live a day at a time.”

“It’s all any of us can do.”

Jay only nodded like he agreed, just as the homeowner stepped out of his house and joined them in the driveway.

“You Jay?” the guy asked Beck.

“I’m Beckett, that’s Jay,” he jutted a thumb to the side.

“Chris,” the
guy said, extending his hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Jay nodded as he shook it. “So you need to get rid of this thing, huh? You’re asking seven grand. That’s a little steep, man.”

“It’s gonna be a badass car once it’s in the right hands. I don’t have the time for it right now. Got a new baby and my other kid is a tyrant. I just want to get what it’s worth before I fucking kill myself from my wife giving me shit about it all the time.”

BOOK: Tame This (The McCallans, Book Two)
5.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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