Chapter 21
Grant
‘Folly’ turned out to be a beach nearly an hour from Lost River. They ended up at a seafood place that gave new meaning to the term ‘hole in the wall’, and Grant vowed to keep an open mind as they settled at a scarred wooden table with equally scarred wooden chairs.
The view, at least, was excellent. And he wasn’t just talking about the water.
Jesse and Edie opted to sit across from him, which meant he could watch them both as they talked. Despite the similarities in their slender builds, they couldn’t have been more different. His babygirl had opted for a long wig that matched her natural hair color and made her golden eyes pop even more than usual. Though that could also be whatever she’d done with her makeup. As always, it was flawless, and he couldn’t wait to try and ruin it later.
Then there was Edie. Dark to Jesse’s light, but no less breathtaking. It had been more of a shock seeing her made up, but only because he wasn’t expecting her to do anything different. She hadn’t struck him as the type of woman to go out of her way for a man, and he’d found that oddly appealing.
Knowing she had in fact elected to go out of her way for him was intoxicating.
Instead of the jeans and t-shirt he’d seen her in so far, she was wearing a dress that looked a bit like a man’s oversized button-down with a wide belt wrapped around the middle. The look suited her, drawing attention to her tiny waist, but she looked so uncomfortable he wondered if she’d borrowed something of Jesse’s. He’d never seen the outfit before, but seeing as how his babygirl’s closet was the size of some apartments, that wasn’t really saying much.
All in all, the pair of them were striking. Breathtaking, even.
And all his.
Jesus wept.
It was warmer than he’d expected, so they’d opted to sit outside. A breeze from the ocean brought a bit of a chill with it, but he barely noticed. Jesse was laughing at something Edie had said, that loud, cackling laugh she had when her guard was truly down. The first time he’d heard that laugh, he’d fallen head over heels in love with her right then and there, though he’d been far too pragmatic to believe in such a thing as love at first sight back then. But looking back now, he knew he’d been a goner the moment he’d heard her laugh.
By contrast, Edie was smiling but not laughing, her ruby-red lips curving upward as she sipped surprisingly delicately at her whiskey.
Given their respective lives, it amused him that Edie was, in many ways, the more elegant and reserved of the two. Jesse had never really let Hollywood change her, she just was who she was and didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of her. Which meant she was, mostly, the same loud, bratty, cheerful babygirl in public that she was at home.
Edie reminded him more of himself than Jesse. Content to sit by quietly and observe. But where his people-watching was a trait he’d honed into a weapon over the years, Edie seemed to use it more as a shield.
If she wasn’t talking, people couldn’t get to know her. And if they couldn’t get to know her, they couldn’t learn where to hurt her.
For the most part, they kept the dinner conversation light and breezy. The normal small talk pleasantries of getting to know someone new. Had she lived in Lost River her whole life? Yes, born and raised. Never been more than a hundred miles from home. What about him? A California boy, he’d confessed, offering up a sheepish sort of smile when she teased him about being a surfer dude.
Tales from childhood were shared, the easy kind that didn’t dig too deep into whatever painful past each might be hiding.
By the time they were polishing off the ridiculously large seafood platter they’d shared, Edie had relaxed enough to join her laughter with Jesse’s. Hers was deeper, richer, but he felt that same tug he’d felt the first time he’d heard his babygirl laugh.
Maybe when he looked back in another two years, he’d be able to pinpoint this moment as the one where he’d fallen in love with Edie McDowell.
Pushing that thought to the back of his mind for the moment, he picked up his own drink and sipped as he watched her. And as much as he hated to dim the light in her eyes for even a moment, there were things he wanted to know about her. “So, Edie. Tell us about Ken.”
As he’d expected, she froze in the act of reaching for another crab leg, her eyes wide in her suddenly too-pale face. “Why do you want to know about Ken?”
“He was important to you. So, he’s important to me. To us,” he added with a nod toward Jesse, who bobbed her head in agreement. “Tell us about him.”
Pulling her hand away from the platter in the middle of the table, she swallowed hard as she reached for her drink instead. “What do you want to know?”
“How did you meet?”
Jesse shifted slightly, facing Edie and laying a hand over hers on the table as Edie sipped silently at her drink. He let the moment stretch out, not wanting to rush her. Things like this deserved time and respect, and he was determined to give her both.
“I’d known him forever, really. The way you know people in a town the size of ours without really knowing them.” She glanced at Jesse, who smiled and nodded. “But I never really talked to him until after Jesse left.”
Pain flickered across Jesse’s face, but she stayed silent as Edie turned her head to look out over the ocean, her throat working rapidly as though she were battling back tears. “He found me at the lake on his property. It was where Jesse and I…” A pretty pink blush colored her cheeks. “It was kind of our spot. I never realized it was on his property until he found me there, cussing up a storm. About Jesse, mostly, but in reality, about pretty much anything I could think of to be mad about. I don’t know how long he was watching me, but he waited for me to run out of steam and then he about gave me a heart attack when he said ‘Someone outta wash your mouth out with soap, little girl’.”
Grant laughed. “I bet that went over well.”
A ghost of a smile flickered across Edie’s face. “Back then, I had no idea there was even an ounce of submissiveness in me. When I was with anyone else, I was the one in charge, without question. So, yeah, I let him have it. Asked him who the hell he thought he was and told him he could fuck right off with his sanctimonious opinions of me.”
Jesse’s mouth had fallen open slightly at this point and she was listening with rapt attention. “What did he do?”
“Just stood there for a while, let me rant and rave until I finally stopped on my own. Then he asked me to dinner.” The smile was wider now, more real as Edie turned back to them. “A month later we were married. Which, for me, had as much to do with shutting down the rumor mill that was still running hot with gossip about Jesse as it did anything else. My family was… to say they didn’t approve of my relationship with Jesse was putting it lightly. So with her gone, it just seemed like the path of least resistance to marry him.”
“What happened with your family?” He’d caught the way Jesse’s face had scrunched up at the mention of them, like she’d just smelled something bad, and he couldn’t stop himself from asking.
The women shared a look he couldn’t quite decipher, and Edie sighed before continuing. “I was still living at home back then. I’d been wanting to leave, since I was more than halfway into my twenties, but my mom kept finding reasons for me to stay. Guilt trips, mostly, about how much she and my dad needed me.”
He watched as Jesse lifted their joined fingers to her lips, offering her silent support throughout Edie’s story. “I knew they wouldn’t approve of me and Jesse. Tried to tell myself it didn’t matter, that I didn’t need anyone’s approval but…” Edie shrugged. “We live in a small town in the south, you know? In a lot of ways, we’re still stuck in the past.”
“I understand.” Intellectually, he did. Emotionally, he couldn’t understand how a parent could put that haunted look in their own child’s eye. Not when he’d grown up with parents who had loved and supported him no matter what. He had no doubt they would have embraced whoever he came home with, regardless of their gender. Just like he had no doubt they would welcome Edie with the same open arms they’d offered Jesse.
“Anyway. Jesse snuck in one night, and we stayed up so late we slept through my alarm the next morning. My dad came storming in, yelling at me to turn the damn thing off, and he caught us just as we woke up, naked as a couple of jaybirds. There was a lot of screaming, plenty of threats. For people who needed me around so badly, they were pretty quick to try and get rid of me the second I did something they didn’t like.”
Her gaze went unfocused, her throat working as she lifted her whiskey glass back to her lips. “I got Jesse out of there, then lied through my fucking teeth. Told them it was a drunken mistake and it would never happen again.”
Jesse frowned, and he could practically see her mind working overtime. “You never told me that.”
“It didn’t matter.” Despite her words and nonchalant shrug, there was an undercurrent to Edie’s tone that told him it very much did matter. “You left right after that. The rumor mill picked up a lot more after you left, though, which pissed my father off and made my life a bit of a living hell. So when Ken asked me to marry him I didn’t even think twice. The rumors died off and I got away from my parents, so it was a win-win for me in the end.”
“Do you still talk to them?” Grant asked, doing his damnedest to keep his tone even despite the rage boiling inside him.
“No.” A ghost of a smile played on her lips. “A year or so after Ken and I married, my parents were over for Sunday dinner and my dad got drunk and started making snide little comments about Jesse. And Ken, bless him, I hadn’t actually told him about her at that point, picked up on what my dad was hinting at, kicked both my parents out of the house and told them they weren’t welcome back until they apologized to me. Which they never did, and my life has been better for it, honestly.”
A haze of tears clouded her eyes. “I miss him. Every fucking day. A little less some days, a whole lot more others.”
“I’m sorry.” The words felt incredibly inadequate, but what the hell else was he supposed to say? If she’d loved her Ken half as much as he loved Jesse, he could only imagine the pain losing him had caused her.
“Thanks. It is what it is, I suppose. But that’s enough talk about sad things tonight.” Lifting her half-empty tumbler, she grinned at Jesse. “I wanna hear all about Mitch James. What’s it like dating an action hero?”
The conversation shifted again, back to more lighthearted things. But through it all, he watched her. And his heart broke for the feisty little pixie with the sad eyes.
Edie
“Thanks again for dinner.” Standing on her front porch, Edie turned toward her dates for the evening, both of whom were watching her closely as though they expected her to bolt at any second. “I forgot how much I enjoy Folly.”
“California has plenty of beaches,” Jesse said with a quick, mischievous grin. “I’m just saying.”
“Little girl, didn’t I tell you to drop it?”
There was a note of warning in Grant’s voice that had a shiver racing up Edie’s spine. “Maybe our girl needs something to occupy her mouth since she can’t seem to keep it closed,” she said, the words tumbling out before she really even had a chance to think about what she was saying.
Betrayal filled Jesse’s eyes, but there was an undeniable excitement there as well. “You traitor!”
“Hmmm. I think Edie’s right, little outlaw. Why don’t you go on up to our room and wait for us in the corner. You know the drill.”
With a small huff and a glare for Edie, Jesse turned and stomped inside the house. Her footsteps were loud enough to make it clear she was doing it all for sheer dramatics and not because she was actually upset.
From the corner of her eye, Edie saw Grant shift, and suddenly all her attention was on him as he closed the distance between them. Lifting his hands, he cupped her face, the pads of his thumbs brushing across her cheeks. “Are you sure about this, little pixie?”
Nerves licked up her spine, but she did her best to cover them with a smirk. “I suppose that depends on what ‘this’ is going to be.”
“Well… I’ve had the pleasure of watching you eat our babygirl’s pussy. I’d very much like a chance to watch the reverse. Perhaps while Daddy turns her naughty little bottom nice and pink?”
Her knees actually went weak with pleasure at the image his words conjured. “I think I’d like that very much.”
“Then it’s settled. But first… I’d like to kiss you, if that’s alright with you.”
She hadn’t had a man’s lips on hers since Ken. Despite her occasional trips to the club she belonged to in Charleston to scratch her kinky itches, she never let any of the men she played with kiss her. Perhaps it made her weird, but kissing was a level of intimacy she didn’t share with just anyone. Kisses were meant to be shared between people with a deep, emotional connection, not just a physical one.
But if there was anyone she wanted to have that connection with… it was Grant Carter.
“Okay.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but he seemed to hear her just fine. Slowly, so slowly it made her ache, he lowered his head until his lips brushed over hers. Just the faintest touch, so light it could almost be called chaste.
Except for the way it made her feel. There was nothing at all chaste about the way her skin seemed to light on fire at that gentle touch. Wrapping her hands around his wrists, she tilted her face up, a silent plea for more.
And more, he gave.
Though the kiss stayed light, there was no doubt about who was in charge. And when he ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, she opened for him without hesitation.
Surrendered, totally and completely, without a second thought.
By the time he pulled away, she was left breathless, her mind scrambled by the simple pleasure of being so thoroughly and expertly kissed by a man who obviously knew what he was doing.
“Whoa.”
She felt as much as heard his responding chuckle. “Agreed. I could easily become addicted to kissing you, Edie McDowell.”
“Back atcha.”
Again, he laughed before dropping another kiss on her swollen lips. “Come on. Let’s go see to our naughty Little girl.”