Chapter 36
BECKETT
One look at Laurel in that dress and I understand exactly how men end up ruining their lives over a woman—and why some of us would do it smiling.
Every useful thought in my head packs its shit and deserts me as she steps out the front door.
Dark green silk, sleeveless and cut on the bias, skimming her waist and hips before falling loose around her calves; the neckline shows a dangerous stretch of skin over her chest, and the back drops low enough that my first thought is putting my mouth on every bare inch of it.
Her hair is down, gold-brown under the porch light, her mouth painted some deep berry shade I’m going to spend the whole night pretending I don’t want smeared all over mine.
Low black heels. Small gold hoops. Nothing around her neck.
Jesus fucking Christ. My dick goes hard so fast I have to shift my stance before she notices, and for one humiliating second I wonder how the hell I’m supposed to sit behind a steering wheel like this.
Laurel shuts the door, takes one look at me and stops. “Whatever you’re about to say, keep it to yourself.”
I drag my eyes back to hers. “I haven’t said shit.”
“You don’t need to. Your face is doing plenty.”
A laugh almost gets out of me, right up until she starts down the steps and the silk shifts around her legs and I’m fucked all over again. Heat works its way up my neck, and Laurel catches it at once.
Her smile turns wicked. “Beckett Vale. Are you blushing?”
I open the passenger door. “Get in the car, Laurel.”
“Oh my God.” She laughs as she slides into the seat. “You are.”
I shut the door before she can get any more mileage out of this, walk around the hood and remind my dick, my face and every other disloyal part of me that this woman gave me rules. I’m keeping them.
Would be a hell of a lot easier if she didn’t look like that.
∞∞∞
Nashville falls away behind us in pieces, Green Hills traffic giving way to the brighter commercial stretches before I-65 opens south beneath a sky swollen dark with late-September rain.
Laurel lasts maybe seven minutes before curiosity gets her. “Are you ever going to tell me where we’re going?”
I glance at her. “Columbia.”
Her head turns. “You drove all the way to my house to take me forty-five minutes south for pasta?”
“You told me to pick somewhere Grant would hate.”
“I was expecting Germantown, not a road trip.”
“Have some faith in me.”
She smiles and settles deeper into the seat, and for a few miles the evening feels easy, right up until one of Grant’s fall-tour billboards rises beyond the interstate, twenty feet of Mercer with a guitar over his shoulder and Nashville spread at his back like the bastard came with the deed.
Laurel sees it. The smile leaves her mouth, and I keep mine shut until the billboard slips out of view.
A mile passes before she turns from the window.
“Can we give him the night off?” I glance over, and whatever joke I might’ve made dies when I see her face.
“Grant. Sloane. Evelyn. The hearing. Jenna counting how many minutes I talk. All of it.” She runs a hand over the silk pooled across her knees.
“I know my life is a mess right now, Beckett. I’m fucking living in it.
But tonight I just want to be a woman in a pretty dress going to dinner with a man I like.
I don’t want every good thing that happens to me dragged back through the worst one. ”
Fuck me. How’d I get so lucky?
“You’ve got it.”
Her eyes stay on me for a second. “No lawyers?”
“Dead to me.”
“No Grant?”
“Who?”
A smile tips one corner of her mouth. “And you are not checking on my throat over appetizers.”
I grip the wheel, already offended. “Now you’re abusing the privilege.”
“I mean it.”
“I can restrain myself.”
“You lasted twenty minutes yesterday.”
“Twenty-two. Don’t diminish my accomplishments.”
She laughs, and there she’s again. “No hovering, Vale.”
“One condition. If your throat starts bothering you, you tell me. I won’t ask; you tell me.”
Laurel considers that, then reaches across the console and hooks her pinky around mine. “Deal.”
I look down at our hands. “Did you just pinky-promise me?”
“You hooked yours back.”
“Evie has fucked up my instincts.”
Her laugh fills the car, my pinky still caught around hers for a few seconds past the point either of us needs to prove the deal, and somewhere south of Nashville, with rain waiting ahead and her hand touching mine, the whole fucking night starts feeling like ours.
∞∞∞
Columbia on a Sunday evening is quieter than Nashville knows how to be.
The old courthouse holds the middle of the square under warm streetlamps, brick storefronts wrapping around it with their painted windows and awnings, traffic thinning as dinner hour settles over downtown.
A few blocks over sits Polk’s old house, close enough that Laurel spots the sign through the windshield and turns to me.
“You brought me to presidential Tennessee.”
“I brought you to dinner.”
“With James K. Polk.”
“He wasn’t invited.”
Another smile out of her, and I take the win.
I park just off the square in front of a narrow brick storefront with a hand-painted sign hanging over the door, the kind of place you hear about through someone local and immediately understand why they were reluctant to share it.
The entrance is quiet, tucked away from the usual Nashville circus, and Laurel gets out without a camera appearing or a stranger pretending not to recognize her.
Inside, exposed brick runs behind old family photographs and faded prints of Italy, little lamps warming the white tablecloths; rosemary grows in chipped ceramic pots along the windows, and the wine list fits on a single page.
Laurel stops a few feet inside, lets her eyes wander over the room, and a little smile pulls at her mouth. “You did good.”
Three words, and my ego takes them like a goddamn medal.
I spent more time picking this place than I did on the paperwork for an acquisition last month—menus, reviews, local forums, twelve tabs open at one point because one restaurant had tables too close together and another had tourists mentioned three separate times in the comments.
Completely fucking reasonable behavior, as far as I’m concerned.
The woman who comes to greet us has silver hair twisted at her neck and the easy authority of someone who has probably been running this room longer than half her customers have been alive.
She confirms our table is ready, takes in Laurel, and her whole face warms. “Honey, that dress is beautiful.”
Laurel lights up. “Thank you. I almost changed twice.”
“Never doubt green.”
Laurel cuts me a glance over her shoulder as we follow her farther inside. “See?”
“I never doubted green.”
“You forgot how to speak on my porch.”
The woman laughs before I can defend myself, and Laurel looks far too pleased with the fact that complete strangers are now participating in my humiliation.
Fuck it. She’s smiling. I can take the hit.
Our table sits by an old window overlooking the square, the courthouse lights caught in the glass beside Laurel’s reflection as night settles outside.
She orders wine; I stick to water since I’m driving. Bread arrives hot enough to steam when I tear it open, followed by a plate of burrata she claims we’re sharing before taking the better half without a flicker of shame.
Somewhere between that and our entrées, she gets to me in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
She reads our server’s name from her tag and uses it when she thanks her.
A kid clearing plates clips the back of Laurel’s chair and starts apologizing; she shifts aside, tells him he’s fine and has him smiling before he leaves.
She compliments the woman at the next table on her earrings, and five minutes later they’re talking about a little shop in Florence like Laurel hasn’t spent half her adult life having strangers recognize her over dinner.
I’ve watched her walk into boardrooms and make powerful men sit straighter.
Watching her make people comfortable does more to me.
She catches me staring after the woman turns back to her husband. “What?”
“I like you.”
Her hand stills around her wineglass, and there it is again, that little flush I’m beginning to enjoy far too much. I’ve told Laurel I want her in my bed, my house, my life; but three plain words across a table get to her in a different place.
“You picked a dangerous time to become charming.”
“I’ve always been charming.”
She gives me a slow once-over. “You’ve always been expensive.”
I take a sip of water, smiling into the glass. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“No, but a good suit has been covering a lot of sins for you.”
She takes a drink with a smile hiding against the rim, and I decide I could sit here getting insulted by her for another three hours without complaint.
An old family photograph on the wall beside us turns the conversation toward home.
Laurel says Mama would love this place; Vivian has never trusted a restaurant where the furniture looks too precious to survive an actual meal.
Dean would bitch about the drive all the way down, demolish his plate and ask if taking the leftover bread was allowed.
“Monica would already have it wrapped before he finished asking,” she adds, chuckling.
“She knows who she married.” From there comes Daddy, easy at first. Three guitar chords before he ever showed Laurel how to change a string.
I ask why that order, and she traces a thumb along the stem of her glass. “He said I needed to fall in love with playing before anybody made me learn the boring shit.”
“That worked?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I was insufferable by the end of the week. Played the same three chords until Dean threatened to throw the guitar in the yard.” Her smile softens. “Daddy told him he’d have to get through me first.”
I can see the memory on her face, warm before the ache reaches it, and I don’t rush to fill the space. “He sounds like he knew you.”