When You're Ready (17 page)

Almost instinctively I drifted toward the glass, mesmerized by the auburn-colored sky. I unlocked one of the sliding doors and wandered out onto the patio and into the grass, watching the sun as it dipped lower over the horizon. I hugged myself as the cool air prickled my skin and I noticed I was only wearing an oversized t-shirt that skimmed the tops of my thighs. Still, I didn’t go back inside. It had been months, maybe even years since I’d stopped to watch a sunset; it held too many memories of the times my dad and I would wake up and marvel at the sun.

I missed my father dearly. I missed giggling with him over cartoons; I missed watching him dance with my mother; I missed eating his freshly cooked fried plantains. A day rarely went by that I didn’t think about something he said or did or  how he made me feel when I was a little girl. It was always the smallest things that triggered his memory. A few notes of a Bob Marley tune, a man dribbling a soccer ball, the smell of freshly lit weed. I’d spent the last few years trying to avoid anything that reminded me of my father, but somehow, no matter how hard I tried, he was always right there.

Maybe that’s why my mother was so restless. She’d spent a dozen years tagging along with my father around the world, watching him perform in tiny towns and rickety bars all over the globe. There were few placed they hadn’t gone, so getting away from his memory no doubt proved impossible. But she kept trying, dragging me along for the chaotic journey that did little to heal my broken heart and everything to shatter it even more.

“Nola?” Scout appeared at my back, surprising me. “What are you doing out here, baby?”

“Just...thinking.”

“Come inside, you’re gonna get sick.”

“I will, but I want to watch the sunset first.”

“But you’re shivering,” he said, running his hand along my arm. “We should go inside.”

“In a minute, okay? It looks so…beautiful.”

Scout wrapped his arms around me and I leaned into his warmth, feeling a familiar sensation radiating through my body. It seemed impossible, but even though I’d only known Scout for a short while I felt completely at ease with him, like I’d known him forever, like he was home. The whole scene made me feel nostalgic.

“My dad and I used to do this, you know. When we were down at our house in Saint. Ann’s, he’d wake me up super early in the morning to watch the sunrise.” I thought about the last time I’d seen my father alive. He was tucking me in for the night and promising to see me in the morning. “Those were the best times of my life.”

Scout kissed the top of my head and I nestled further into him. “This is the first time I’ve actually watched a sunset.”

“Seriously? Ever?”

“Yeah. I guess I never really slowed down long enough to pay attention.” Scout tightened his arms around me and rested his chin on my shoulder. “But you’re right, this is beautiful.”

We stood there until darkness fell around us and the sky filled up with stars. Scout rubbed my arms to keep my warm, but he didn’t try to get me to go inside. As I watched the city twinkle below, I suddenly realized I’d been there before.

“The party,” I turned to face him, “this is the same house from the cocktail party. You live here?”

Scout nodded, but didn’t say a word.

“So, you’re…rich?” The word tumbled off my tongue like an accusation.

He studied my face. “You could say that.”

“Wow,” I said, wondering why a guy like Scout—a
rich,
gorgeous
,
hunk of a man who could have any woman in the world—was standing there with me.

It couldn’t be my looks; I was cute but unremarkable, and probably a far cry from the women he was used to. And I wasn’t glamorous, or wealthy, or well heeled like most of the sought-after women in L.A.

I could never understand why Scout lavished so much attention on me until that moment.

“Wow…” I said again, breaking away from his embrace. “I can’t believe this.”

I rushed into the house and began making my way up the stairs, gobsmacked by the realization.

How could I not see why Scout was being so nice to me? How could I not figure out why he’d always offer to pay for things, or why he’d given me a huge tip the first time he came into the restaurant, or why he was always being so kind? How did I miss the signs? Scout was a standup guy who’d grown up dirt poor and somehow made it rich, now he was paying it forward.

When I got to the bedroom I checked the dresser and the closet and the bathroom for my things. I had to get out of there. I had to stop myself from falling even harder for Scout before my feelings were out of control. It was clear we’d been living out some sort of
Pretty Woman
fairytale, only this time the main character wasn’t a hooker with a heart of gold, but rather an overworked waitress who was terrified of falling in love.

“Nola, what are you doing?” Scout asked when he walked in the room. “You shouldn’t be moving this quickly, the doctor said—“

“I’m going home, Scout,” I said, fishing my phone out of my purse to call Tara.

“What? The doctor said I have to look out for you. The doctor said—“

“Stop it, Scout. Just stop. I have to go,” I said, tears stinging the corners of my eyes.

“But baby I promised I’d look out for you. Remember what I said? We’re in this—“

“I’m not your responsibility, Scout! I can take care of myself!” I yelled, water streaming down my face. “I know I messed up, and I’m struggling, and everything is sort of coming down on me at once, but I’m not a charity case, Scout. You don’t have to worry about me.” I pushed past him. “I don’t need your pity.”

“Nola…” Scout grabbed me by the waist and stared down into my eyes. “Baby, I know you’re not a charity case. Why would you even think that?”

“Why else would you be so nice to me? I’m not stupid, Scout. I know you probably have some gorgeous debutant or a freaking Kim Kardashian lookalike on speed dial. I mean, I get it. I remind you of where you came from, so you’re trying to help me out.” I pulled away from him and scrolled through my phone, looking for my friend’s number. “But you don’t have to worry about me. It’s cool. Tara will come get me and I won’t be your problem anymore.”

“Baby, it’s not even like that. If I wanted to be with some other girl I would be, but—“

“Then why aren’t you? I mean look at you. You’re handsome and sweet and
rich.”
I said the word as if it were an expletive I was embarrassed to repeat. “I can’t offer you anything you don’t already have, Scout.” I pressed send and put the phone to my ear. “I’m just gonna leave before I—“

“Dammit, Nola.” Scout snatched the phone out of my hand and threw it across the room, then plunged his tongue into my mouth, kissing me with a sense of passion and urgency I’d never felt in my life.

Scout’s fingers slid up my side and down my back, causing my nipples to harden under the t-shirt. He placed his hands on my hips, igniting a throbbing ache between my legs. I pressed my chest into his, resting my arms on his shoulders and pulling him deeper into the kiss.

“Wow…” I said, breathless when he finally broke away, my head still swimming from the heat of Scout’s mouth.

“Yeah…wow,” he echoed, his breath ragged. Scout leaned his forehead against mine and placed a peck on my nose. “You okay?”

I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t even think straight. But in that moment I knew one thing for sure: I was head-over-heels in something that felt a lot like love with Scout Clayborne, and I was most certainly not okay.

18
Scout

I sat hunched over my computer banging out endless lines of code while Nola slept in the guestroom down the hall.  I checked on her every thirty minutes, afraid she would either stop breathing or slip out of the house and run away. I was being totally irrational. Other than a terrible headache and a nasty-looking cut on her forehead, Nola seemed fine. But still, I couldn’t stop myself from peeking in on her and making sure she was still alive and under my roof.

Having Nola so close made me breathe a little easier, even if it brought with it its own set of challenges, namely making me behave like an overly protective wacko. Case in point: I wanted to sit and watch her sleep. And every time I looked at her I wanted to rip her clothes off and make love to her until she came in waves. I also wanted to tell Nola she was safe and protected and loved, but that would make me sound nuts, so I forced myself to do something other than obsess over the first woman I’d ever let stay in my home.

My office was dark and the music in my headphones was loud, just the way I liked it when I worked, still I couldn’t concentrate. No matter how hard I tried to focus on my fingers or the monotonous lines of Python syntax I worked on, I couldn’t get that kiss out of my head.

I couldn’t believe Nola had everything so wrong. She thought I was only being nice because I felt sorry for her, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. While she was worried I saw her as a charity case, I was afraid
I
wasn’t good enough for her. I guess we both had our signals crossed. But that kiss, my God, the only thing disappointing about it was that it had to come to an end.

It was hard as hell to break away from her soft lips, my tongue wanted to do more than taste her mouth. But I knew if I held onto Nola for a second longer we’d both be naked and I’d be pounding into her. I could feel her nipples harden the moment I kissed her and I wanted to take them in my mouth, licking each one. But I couldn’t. Nola’s concussion was less than 24 hours old, and if I made love to her the way that I longed to do, she could actually get hurt.

My dick swelled, straining against my sweats, at the thought of being inside Nola. She probably felt
amazing
, like swimming in the ocean on a hot day or jumping out of an airplane ten thousand feet above the ground. I couldn’t wait to see her naked, using my hands and tongue to trace the curves of her body, and tangling my fist in her hair while I thrust into her. I fantasized about making love to Nola since the night we met, and having her in my house only made things worse.

I’d never brought a woman back to my place, didn’t want them to think what we were doing was anything deeper than fucking, but Nola was different. I intended to christen every room in my mansion—the shower, the pool, my bedroom, the closet, my office, the hot tub, on the veranda under the stars—with our lovemaking, but more than that I never wanted her to leave.

Thanks to the doctor’s orders Nola would be in my care for the rest of the week, which meant I had four days to make her fall so hard for me she couldn’t imagine us apart. But how the hell was I going to pull that off?

I reached for my phone to call the only person I trusted to give me advice about love.

“What’s good, man?” Fernando’s voice boomed in my ear and I could hear a woman giggling in the background.

“Nothing much. Say hello to Zoe for me.”

Fernando passed along my greeting then turned his attention back to me. “Jay filled me in about your girl. Everything okay?”

I had to chuckle, Jason and Fernando gossiped more than a pair of teenaged girls. If I told one of them something in the strictest confidence, it was like I had told the other one myself. None of us could ever keep any secrets from the others; we were brothers after all.

“Yeah man, she’s fine. She has a concussion, though, so the doctor said I have to keep an eye on her for a while.”

“Damn, that’s rough. All that from working too much?”

“Yeah, she works crazy hours, goes to school full time,” my jaw tightened, remembering how I’d let Nola down, “and I fucked up, man.”

“How’s that?”

“I should have been there for her. I knew she was working a double shift and hadn’t really slept, but I was out hanging with
your
ass.”

“Hey…you were the one with the stripper in your lap.”

My face broke into a smile. “Fuck you, man.”

Fernando chuckled for a second then cleared his throat.  “Seriously, it’s not your fault. It’s just one of those crazy things.”

“I should have been there, man. If I would’ve been there—“

“Listen,” he said cutting me off, “you’re there now, right? That’s all that matters.”

“Yeah, but what if something even worse would’ve happened to her? What if she would’ve—“

“But it didn’t. You can drive yourself crazy with what ifs and shoulda, woulda, couldas, that won’t do either one of you any good, will it?”

I shook my head. “I guess not. I just feel so bad.”

“I’m sure she knows that. But yo, man, I never thought I’d see the day…” Fernando’s voice trailed off and he started laughing again. “Scout’s finally in love.”

“Who said anything about being in love?” I asked, feeling defensive even though I knew he was right. I knew Nola was the one the moment I saw her.

“Don’t try to bullshit me, Scout. Jay and I know you better than anyone else, man, and this is the first girl we’ve
ever
heard anything about since we were kids.”

“Whatever,” I said, deploying the only comeback I had as Fernando’s laugh boomed in my ear. “I need to know how to convince her to give me a chance, man.”