“In two days we’re headin’ home. My home. Carnal. You got a job to quit and a life to shut down. You need to start on that.”
Her shades stayed locked with his.
Then she muttered, “Oh God, I didn’t think about that.”
“Tomorrow can be your vacation day. Today, you sort shit out.”
She went back to spooning sugar in but she did it nodding. He counted as her hand moved. She took four sugars. No wonder she had that ass.
“You got people who can help you or do we need to carve out time, drive down and sort that?” he asked.
She stopped stirring, put her spoon aside, took a sip then put her cup down while looking at him.
“Ronnie’s Mom and sisters will kick in for me. I tell them I’m moving out from under Shift’s thumb, they’ll rent Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader outfits and do cartwheels around Cowboy Stadium.”
“They probably should save that energy and use it to pack your shit and send it to Carnal.”
She laughed softly then muttered, “Yeah, Ty, you’re probably right.”
“You need movers, they get quotes, you tell me, I’ll get them the money. I’ll also give you the address.”
Her head tipped to the side. “The address?”
“To my house.”
“Your house?”
“My house.”
“What house?”
“My house in Carnal.”
“You have a house in Carnal?”
“I went to prison but doin’ it don’t mean I was stripped of all my possessions. I went, Maggie saw to my shit.”
He watched with interest as her shoulders went straight and then she asked, “Maggie?”
“Maggie,” he confirmed.
“Who’s Maggie?” she asked and her tone was one he hadn’t heard from her yet. Not sass. Not attitude. Not annoyed. But the edge was sharp. Leaning toward pissed not in the sense that women get pissed. In the sense that women get pissed.
“My former boss’s ex-wife. Though, he got his head outta his ass, saw what he fucked up and now they’re attempting a reconcile. So, I guess I should say, the last year, Maggie and Wood been seein’ to my shit.”
“Wood?”
“Maggie’s ex. The man who owns the garage I used to work at.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
“We get home, you’ll need to take a look. Your shit’s better than my shit, move your shit in and we’ll move my shit out. It’s not, have your people get rid of it, bank the cash.”
Her shades held his.
“Um… again, how long’s this business gonna last?”
“Again, I don’t know. But what people gotta see is you and me startin’ a life together.”
She hesitated. Then, “Right.”
He stared at her. Then his eyes went to her left hand sitting in her lap. The band embedded with small diamonds sitting tight under the engagement ring served as a reminder that yesterday cut deep into his reserve. He had a marker of fifty K to pay. He had a life to restart. He had business to see to. He had to find a table.
Then he noticed her lips were pressed together, he guessed as to why and reminded her, “Time to bolt is over. You’re wearin’ my rings.”
Her head jerked and she declared firmly, “I’m not going to bolt.”
The tightness in his chest he hadn’t noticed until he heard her words released.
“How did, um… Maggie and Wood take care of your shit?” she asked.
“Rented my place. Paid my bills. Banked the extra. Vacated the tenants a month ago when I asked ‘em to. Stored my shit when I went down, took it outta storage and dumped it at home. Sorted through it to pack the shit I needed, sent it to Shift for him to add what he owed and give it to you.”
“That was nice of them to do.”
“They’re nice.”
Her lips tipped up.
Their food was served.
Unlike with her tuna melt, but absolutely the same as when their room service was delivered last night, she dug in, no bullshit nibbling, pretending she didn’t need food to survive. She’d ordered a Belgian waffle. And she liked what she ordered and didn’t give a fuck if he knew it.
Alexa Walker was a beautiful, classy, sexy, part-goof who liked her food.
And Ty Walker liked all of that.
Too much.
Christ, pussy had fucked his life and here he was, two days out of the joint and sitting under a fucking umbrella in the Vegas heat next to pussy who’d had dick fuck up her life and he wanted in there so fucking badly he could almost convince himself he already tasted her on his tongue.
Jesus, he needed another shower and not because he was eating eggs, bacon, sausage and toast in the Vegas heat but because he needed to take his fist to his cock or he’d likely do something he seriously regretted and that something would mean she’d bolt and he’d never see her smile again.
Her voice cut into his thoughts. “What’s your place like?”
“Condo,” he answered.
Her laugh made him turn his shades to her. “You’re not much on specifics,” she remarked.
“What’s there to say about a condo?”
She kept her shades on him for several seconds.
Then she murmured, “Point taken,” while smiling at her waffle.
Yep, he had to get the fuck out of there. Soon.
“You start sortin’ your shit, you need me, I’ll leave my new cell number in the room.”
“Okay.”
“That second dress you bought, you’re wearin’ tonight.”
He felt her eyes on him but he shoveled in more food.
“Okay,” she said.
He swallowed and stated, “Soon’s I eat, gotta go. You charge this shit and the tip to our room.”
“Okay,” she repeated.
He focused on eating. She fell silent maybe reading his mood.
The instant he finished, he sucked back the dregs of his coffee, turned to her and in case Bones was watching from somewhere, he nabbed her behind the neck, pulled her to him, pressed his lips to hers hard, let her go, got up and walked away licking his lips.
They tasted like whipped cream, strawberries, waffles and Lexie.
Fuck.
* * * * *
Lexie
I walked out of the bathroom gussied up in what I thought of as my slut dress. Ty’s instructions had been, “Two dresses. One to get married in. One that’ll get attention.”
I’d never dressed to get attention. I liked clothes, buying them and wearing them but I’d never owned a dress like this and I hoped the one I picked would be the ticket.
I walked into the bedroom to see Ty doing the cufflink thing again, this time he was wearing the deep lavender shirt with a pair of dark blue suit trousers. My eyes took in his male beauty then they slid to my nightstand.
I’d woken up to my bouquet in a vase precisely where it now stood. Upon waking, after seeing Ty’s side of the bed was mussed but empty, processing the fact that I slept on top of the covers in my wedding dress, those flowers in that vase were the second thing I saw after I rolled.
And the minute I saw them, I’d frozen, blinking the sleep out of my eyes, convinced I was seeing things.
Unless Vegas had bouquet fairies as well as one hour tailors, there was no one but Ty who could have located a vase and put my bouquet in it while I slept the sleep of the dead. And, when I realized I wasn’t seeing things, I didn’t know what to think about Ty locating a vase and putting my bouquet in it. I didn’t know him all that well but from what I did know, this seemed a very un-Ty-like thing to do. Therefore, I lay in bed and stared at those roses for what had to be five minutes trying to figure out what I thought.
I got out of bed not knowing.
But I also got out of bed with a warm feeling deep in my gut that felt really, really good as well as thinking that this fake marriage business wasn’t going to be that bad.
Sure, he didn’t talk much.
Sure, when he did, mo
st of it was crude but it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to that from Ronnie, Shift and their crew, in fact, Ronnie, Shift and their crew were worse.
Sure, there were important ways he was closed off. Then again, we barely knew each other. Sharing our deepest, darkest secrets within forty-eight hours of meeting was not something to be expected. I had no idea why I poured my heart out to him last night. What I knew was, when I did, although he didn’t exactly handle me with care, he was honest, he shared his opinion and I just happened to like his opinion no matter that the realization it made me come to didn’t feel all that great. Not to mention, he’d shown himself to be wise.
Sure, he seemed to have no sense of humor but he also didn’t get ticked when I laughed when he didn’t find anything funny. And he didn’t have no sense of humor. His lips curled up last night, I saw them.
He also didn’t like smarmy men with gold chains staring at my breasts and since I didn’t like that either, I thought it was very cool that he barked at the gross guy who was checking me out making that gross guy stop checking me out.
And he had a way with a compliment.
And last, he was a really, fucking good kisser.
The last part was the part where I wouldn’t go. Not yet. I knew I wanted to sleep with him. I knew that the minute I laid eyes on him. Hell, every woman who laid eyes on him knew that. I also knew I was a thirty-four year old woman who’d had one boyfriend and thus one lover in her life and he wasn’t very good at being the former and (not to speak ill of the dead), although I had no experience of another, he was hit and miss at the latter. I had since had a four year dry spell and my life decisions had led me into a fake marriage with an ex-con who contended he was wrongly imprisoned but wouldn’t elaborate. Furthermore, just the day before I’d decided to give up on men and it probably wasn’t the brightest move to go back on that decision after knowing the man for just over two days. I was thinking maybe I should play this smart and not jump into the sack and give him my “pussy”.
“You sort your shit today?” he asked and my eyes moved from the bouquet to him.
He was looking at me, my face, not the dress. This was disappointing because I really wanted to know if I’d done what he needed me to do but I wondered if it was like yesterday where he wasn’t going to give it away until he was ready.
About half an hour ago, I’d heard him come back while I was in the bathroom. He’d been gone all day but called twice. Once to say have lunch without him. The other to say have dinner without him. He did not tell me where he was or what he was doing. I also did not ask.
“Ella’s all over it,” I answered.
Ella, Ronnie’s mother was also kind of like my mother since she was really the only one I ever knew. She took me under her wing when I was thirteen and her daughter Bessie and I became best friends. Then she kept me there even after I hooked up with Ronnie and treasured me being there because Ronnie had slipped over the edge but she knew I was the only thing that kept him from freefall. That was, until he went into freefall.
When I explained things to her earlier that day, I skipped the ex-con slash picking him up from a correctional institute slash fake marriage bit and just told her I’d lied about going on vacation and was instead hooking up with a friend who was helping me move to Colorado. I’d explained the lie by saying I didn’t want anything to get back to Shift and, since Honey, Ella’s other daughter, was sweet as her name but not the brightest bulb in the box and had a connection with Shift that had more to do with history and missing her brother than brains, I didn’t want to take any chances.
Ella, birthing Honey and still living with her even though thirty years had passed since the blessed event, understood. She’d also been beside herself with glee. She had a key to my place and she was what I told Ty. All over it.
Then I’d called Margot at work. I’d given her the same story with the same omissions. She knew about Shift. She knew my dilemma. We’d often had conversations about how I could get out, move on, start a new life. She’d been worried about me for more than the four years I didn’t have Ronnie as a buffer, stretching that out to the eight I’d known her, in other words, when she started at Lowenstein’s. She wasn’t a big fan of Ronnie though she was a good enough friend not to mention it (too much) or give me her disapproving look (that often) or, when I’d bitch about him, she did not say “I told you so” with anything but her eyes and, last, she did not lose her mind and point out how stupid I was when I gave him another shot. Like me, she’d worked her way up from clerk and she wasn’t the head honcho of HR at Lowenstein’s but she was the assistant head honcho. She promised she was going to smooth the way.
And, incidentally, she was beside herself with glee too.
The truth was, all of this seemed pretty easy. So much so, I was feeling like a major idiot that I hadn’t tried it before.
Then again, I didn’t have a condo to move into, a huge, scary man to have my back and a nest egg of fifty K to fall back on before.
“Ella Ronnie’s Mom?” Ty asked and my attention focused on him again.
I nodded. “She’s already been to my place, started sorting and has called three moving companies to get quotes.”
He nodded once. Then he went to his suit jacket that was lying on the bed.
I walked across the room to my shoes while talking. “Work seems kosher too. My friend Margot, who works there, is going to explain things to the HR Director.” I sat down and slid my foot into a strappy, stiletto-heeled, silver sandal. Then, again, right out of my mouth popped more honest sharing. “Actually, this is all so easy, I’m kinda feeling like a moron that I didn’t do it before.”
“Shift hadn’t fucked you this bad, you didn’t have anyone that scared his black ass shitless and you didn’t have fifty large to fall back on before.”
I tilted my head back and grinned at him. “Those are all the reasons I talked myself out of feeling like a total moron and into only feeling kinda like one.”
He stared at me for long moments. Then, without comment, he went to two money rolls he’d obviously at some point pulled out of the safe. One was a fifty roll. The other was a twenty.
My attention went back to my shoes. I was done around the time I heard the door open on the closet. I watched him drop the now less fat rolls back in the safe; he closed the door to it and the closet and turned to me.
“Ready?”
I stood and put my hands to my hips.
“I don’t know, am I?”
I meant I didn’t know what we were doing, where we were going and why I needed an outfit that would get attention and, not knowing any of that, I couldn’t know if I was ready.
But at my question his eyes travelled down the length of me to my toes and back again. They did this slow, taking their time, missing nothing and I felt their path like a touch on my skin. As they moved, I saw my dress in my head. Navy, clingy, silk jersey, pleated down the side seem creating diagonal gathers across the dress, one shoulder was bare, the other arm sleeveless. It hit me four inches above my knee, showed no cleavage but still tons of skin and it was so form-fitting it left very little to the imagination.
When his eyes locked on mine, he spoke and his voice was a very deep, low rumble, “Yeah. You are definitely ready.”
And as he spoke, I noticed his eyes were different. Not void, not shuttered. The first emotion he’d shown me in two and half days.
And that emotion was carnal.
I felt my body go electric.
I fought against the surge and whispered, “Thank you, Ty. But I meant I don’t know what I’m all gussied up to do tonight so I can’t know if I’m ready.”
He answered immediately. “High stakes poker.”
I stared at him not getting a good feeling about this. I’d never gambled before, not in my life. I didn’t do this because I didn’t work hard for my money to throw it away. Ronnie gambled. He bet on basketball games all the time. Convinced, since he had played them, he had the inside track. He didn’t lose
all the time but he also didn’t win all the time. It seemed ridiculous to me and scary because Lady Luck didn’t swing Ronnie a break very often and I was always waiting for her to pull the rug out from under him and stop with the balancing act as pertained to his gambling. Luckily (heartbreaking pun intended), he died before she could do that.
“High stakes poker,” I repeated.
“One hundred K buy in.”
I blinked. Then I asked hesitantly, “Um… are you good at poker?”
“Very.”
“Really?”
“Woman, you’re wearin’ over thirty thousand dollars proves that true.”
I blinked again. Then I breathed, “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I mean, really, I’m wearing over thirty thousand dollars?”
“And the answer is still yeah. Your engagement ring alone is nearly half that.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, suddenly feeling my engagement ring burning a circle around my finger. I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t know all he gave me was expensive, including the wad of cash he dropped on the bed to buy my outfits which were not couture but I didn’t buy them at Target either. I just didn’t know it was that expensive.
“What?” he asked when I didn’t move.
“What?” I asked back.
“Yeah, Lexie, what?”
“What as in… what, you give all your women this kind of bling?”
This gave new definition to “very” good at poker.
“No. None of my other women signed a marriage certificate, took my name and gave up their whole life for me and by the time they earned bling, I’d known ‘em more than a day and they still hadn’t done anything that important to me.”
I stopped breathing and apparently I did this visibly because I got my second reaction from Ty Walker (if you didn’t count the lip curve last night). His eyes narrowed.
“Jesus, woman, you gonna pass out?”
That’s when my breath came back at the same time my eyes narrowed. “Excuse me, Ty, I’ve never worn thirty thousand dollars.”
“Yeah you have. Yesterday. But, sayin’ that, I’m guessin’ at the cost of your shoes.”
“They were on sale.”
“Well thank Christ for that.”