Tied - Part One (8 page)

They guys seemed to pick up a lot of random night gigs. I didn’t think I’d make a very good bouncer, but I could take tickets and hand out fliers. Hardly the most glamorous work but it would get me out of the apartment. I’d have to talk to Mallet about it sometime.

Or Lockett. Assuming he’d want to talk to me at all. But we had to learn how to be civil roommates if we didn’t want to make the whole living situation totally awkward. Job hunting was an innocent enough subject. A good icebreaker. He’d already helped me once - maybe he’d have another idea or two in mind.

○●○●○●○●○

I bumped into him much earlier than expected - he was waiting on Lisa’s stoop when I arrived with the two kids in tow. I’d met them at the bus stop and walked them to the house while their mother was still at her part-time job.

“Uncle Rob!” they both shouted. They ran to him and he scooped them up off their feet - one in each arm. They weren’t tiny kids anymore, they had to be fairly heavy, but he showed no sign of strain.

Amber and Finn laughed with delight. The two shared their mother’s much darker hair but their eyes were the same hazel as Lockett’s. And his brother’s, I assumed - I hadn’t met him yet.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, letting us all inside the townhouse. “I thought you had practice.”

“I did,” he said, “I cut out early. Felt like stopping in on these two. I saw their cousins over the weekend and didn’t want them to get jealous.”

Or because you knew I’d be here?
I didn’t say it but I thought it. And I wished that I’d dressed up a little nicer. I was in a pair of skinny jeans that Alexa had helped me pick out over the weekend, but I’d thrown on one of my boring bulky sweaters on my way out the door.

“Well I’m tutoring Amber today,” I said. “Do you have a lot of homework?” I asked.

“I always do,” she grumbled.

“We’ll try to get through it quickly.” I ruffled her hair and ushered her toward the kitchen table.

“What about you, buddy?” Lockett asked. He threw a few playful jabs at Finn, who dodged and ducked around him.

“No homework.”

“Lies,” I said.

“Okay, a little homework.” He aimed a kick at Lockett’s knee - he caught Finn’s foot and deposited him on the ground.

“He’s allowed to do it in his room if he wants,” I said.

“Great.” Lockett lifted him up and hung him over his shoulder. “Let’s get it done and then we’ll go out.”

“Can’t we go out and I’ll do it later?” Finn asked, drumming his fists on Lockett’s back as he swung back and forth.

“Nope.” With that, he hauled him off to his room.

I rolled my eyes at Amber when we heard heavy thuds and laughter rolling down the hall. “Boys.”

“So gross,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

I wished I could agree. Seeing Lockett roughhousing with his nephew had woken up every forbidden feeling that I’d been trying to bury.

The man was good with kids. All I needed to do was see him pet a puppy and my ovaries might explode.

We spent the next hour working on Amber’s homework and going over what she’d learned in class to a chorus of thuds from Finn’s room. I didn’t get nervous until they finally quieted down. But then Lockett emerged, alone.

“He’s finishing his math,” he said, lowering himself into a chair. “How’s it going out here?”

“Good,” Amber said with a smile, “Katherine helped me with my science. It makes sense, now.”

“Yeah? I’ve got some chemistry problems, think she can help me with that?”

“Ew, Uncle Rob,” Amber said, rolling her eyes. I felt my cheeks flush.

“What’s ‘ew’? How did you get that joke?”

“I watch TV, you know.”

“So what does it mean, if you’re so smart?”

Amber sighed a long-suffering sigh and put down her pencil. “It means you want to make out with her.”

Oh, God, if this gets back to her parents…
I pushed the pencil back into her hand. “Let’s not get distracted,” I said. “Your uncle can make all the bad jokes he wants after you finish.”

I caught his eye and shook my head. He couldn’t think it was a good idea to flirt with me in front of his niece. He couldn’t actually think it was a good idea to flirt with me at all after the other night - could he?

Amber was finally finishing up the last problem on her worksheet when Lisa arrived home with her husband in tow. “Daddy!” Amber exclaimed, nearly falling out of her seat as she launched herself at him.

Lockett got up from the table and spun Lisa around in a big bear-hug. “Happy birthday, sis-in-law,” he said.

She laughed and thumped on his shoulders until he set her down. “I didn’t know you were coming. Was he bothering you?” Lisa asked me.

“Not too much,” I said, closing up Amber’s books. “And happy birthday! I didn’t know!”

“Thanks! Oh, Josh, this is Katherine, the kids’ tutor.” I shook her husband’s hand - Lockett’s brother. He was older, mid-thirties, and had the same eyes and strong, masculine jaw. He didn’t match Lockett’s size, though - not by half.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. Then Finn burst out of his room and jumped at him, stealing his attention away.

“Josh called me up to demand my babysitting services,” Lockett explained. “Go get dressed. You’re going to dinner.”

“And a movie,” Josh said as the kids finally settled down.

“No fair,” Finn whined.

Amber joined in, “We want to go to the movies.”

“Well then I’ll take you,” Lockett said.

As sweet as the scene was, I was starting to feel a little out of place. I retrieved my purse from one of the kitchen chairs and said to Lisa, “Have fun tonight. I’ll see you Thursday.”

“Nuh uh,” Lockett said, “You’re not slipping out, yet. You’re coming with us.”

Josh and Lisa both looked between us - Lockett’s cocksure grin and my bewildered expression - and then looked at each other. “Don’t let this player boss you around,” Josh joked, shoving his brother.

I wracked my brain for a way to gracefully extract myself, but then Amber grabbed my hand. “Don’t leave me with them,” she said, “They’ll make me sit through some action movie and they’ll hog all the popcorn.”

I shrugged at Josh. “He can’t boss me around, but she can.”

“I know the feeling.”

I helped Amber put her things away while her parents got ready to go. We’d join them for the walk over to the movie theater and part ways once there.
Great. A night babysitting with Lockett.
It wasn’t as if I had anything more pressing to do.

But was it a good idea? Part of me felt like I should flee.

The other part of me was looking forward to sitting with him in the dark.

CHAPTER 7

My leg trembled as his hand rested on my knee. He sank lower in his seat and leaned closer. I could feel his breath tickling my temple.

Lockett wouldn’t kiss me, now. He couldn’t. For one thing, his nephew sat to his other side, and Amber was sitting next to me. The kids would notice, and announce “ew” to the whole theater, and report back to their parents.

But he was sure making me think about it.

The movie wasn’t bad considering it was a kids’ film, so I hissed at him, “I’m trying to watch this.”

“I can already tell you how it ends.”

“I’ll bet.” It wasn’t hard to figure out. It was a pretty standard formula so far - young boy destined to be a hero, something holds him back at first but then he goes on the adventure anyway. We’d only just met his mentor onscreen.

It was hard to concentrate, though, with Lockett’s fingers dancing on my knee.

His lips brushed my ear, sending a thrill of electricity through my body.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, pulling away.

“Bothering you.”

“Well don’t.”

“You really want me to stop?” Finn punched him and hissed, “Shhh!” Lockett thumped him right back.

“I want you to keep your hands to yourself and let me watch the movie,” I said.

“All right,” he shrugged, taking his hand back. But he didn’t move. He still leaned into me, the armrest hardly a barrier between us thanks to his size. He still breathed against my hair, close enough for me to feel his warmth, to breath him in. God, the man barely had to do anything at all to envelop my senses.

“We’re going to talk about this later,” I hissed.

He blinked, but he nodded.
Good
. I was glad I surprised him a little. Patrick had been right that morning - I was strong, I did have a backbone. It was time to stop letting my uncertainties overwhelm me.

And I had to start with confronting this thing with Lockett head-on. If that meant pushing him away completely, so be it. But I wasn’t going to let him just toy with me anymore.

It was hard to stay annoyed at him, though, when I saw him with his niece and nephew. We went out for pizza after the movie, the two of them skipping down the street ahead of us, arguing about who the best character was.

He played with them the whole way, stepping on the backs of Finn’s shoes and lifting Amber gracefully over puddles and garbage on the sidewalk. They obviously adored him.

“Do you visit them very often?” I asked. They didn’t live very far from us but I knew everyone was always busy.

“I try to,” he said.

“Not often enough!” Finn declared, circling around behind us so he could step on Lockett’s shoes. Lockett danced out of the way, always staying just an inch out of Finn’s range.

“I’m a busy man,” Lockett said, flexing an arm. “It takes a lot of time and effort to be this perfect.” It
was
a perfect arm - mouthwateringly perfect.

“Ugh, don’t make me gag,” Amber said, though she was grinning ear to ear.

We let Finn and Amber lead us to their favorite local pizza joint, an old-fashioned little spot called Moro’s Perfect Pizza. “False advertising,” Lockett said, gesturing up at the sign. That was another thing I’d learned since moving to the city - everyone seemed to have a very strong opinion on who made the best pizza.

The four of us slid into a big booth, the kids on one side and Lockett next to me. He ordered a whole pie and a pitcher of soda, and served the kids and I as everything arrived. He did it so naturally, too. Like he wasn’t even thinking about it.

In my experience, it was a rare guy who was so at ease with young kids - even their own family. When Amber dropped cheese on the table, he cleaned it right up without so much as a sigh. And he had a pocketful of quarters ready when Finn wanted to go play an ancient arcade game in the back after scarfing down two slices.

“Move in,” he said to Amber, switching to the opposite side of the booth so he could keep an eye on Finn without craning his neck around.

It warmed my heart, seeing him taking care of them like that. That lust that I’d been feeling for him, that “unexplained attraction,” as I’d called it, was morphing into something more. Something bigger. I smiled at him across the table despite my reservations. I was actually starting to
like
the man.

I was still annoyed at him about the way he’d reacted over my AA chip, but maybe I was being too hard on him. Maybe there was a lot more to him than the musclebound fighter that I drooled over. I really wanted to find out.

○●○●○●○●○

We got the kids home before Lisa and Josh were back from dinner, so Lockett got them ready for bed and planted them in front of the television.

“You’re really good with them,” I said. Once they were settled, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table.

“They’re fun,” he said. “They’re like, little almost-human creatures. It always shocks me, what they know and what they can figure out.”

“Yeah?” I said, “That’s my favorite part of teaching. Watching the gears turn in their heads, seeing that moment when something clicks and makes sense. They’re like sponges at that age, still.”

“No luck on the job front yet?” he asked.