Chapter 2
Grey
I’m embarking on a mission of evil for the first time in my life—I prefer justice , but I’m well aware it’ll be called evil , so I’ll own it—and the world is testing me. Making me face the fact that karma is real.
How, you ask?
By presenting me with the woman that I would, in this moment, abandon all of my plans for to move wherever she lives and to do good deeds with her day in and day out.
I know this is temporary. It’s infatuation with a gorgeous distraction. It’s a consolation prize for my day going sideways after finally having something right within reach. It’s fun .
But I don’t care.
This is the first time I’ve felt content to just be with anyone who isn’t Zen or Mimi in ages. I want to be near her, to listen to her talk about people I don’t know, and to watch her do what she’s doing right now.
Which is bending over, her curvy ass in the air, her skirt riding up almost enough for me to see the very bottom of that ass, while she refills a dog’s water bowl outside a closed-up shop down the beach from where we met a few hours ago.
The moon reflects off the ocean while the surf rolls to shore. It crashes over lava rocks among the sand just beyond a half wall on the other side of the walkway where we’ve paused. Everything smells like coconut and flowers and salt.
And I’m not bunching my shoulders or grinding my teeth or curling my hands into fists.
I’m simply here . And happy .
“There you go, you sweet thing,” she croons to the mutt, who wags his tail and attacks the water bowl. “Who’s a good puppers? Who’s such a good puppers?”
I want to be her good puppers.
I want the rest of the world to not exist, and for me to be her good puppers .
This is a sign that I need to head back to my hotel room and appreciate this for what it’s been and quit thinking it could be anything more.
Instead, I stick my hands in my pockets and rock back on my feet while I try to get my cock under control. Touching my phone helps.
I should chuck the thing in the ocean, but I don’t litter. Especially with electronics in the ocean. “Are you the resident dog lady who feeds all of the strays back home?”
“No, but I can tell you that Mr. Trix’s dogs should not be at the dog park the same time as Mrs. Pebbles’s dogs. They each think it’s the other’s fault, but I can guarantee you that Mr. Trix’s dog is the problem.”
Every time she uses cereal as code names for people she knows, I wonder if she knows who I am.
But the next minute, she’s calling people Ms. or Mr. Sports Team or Little Coffee Style and talking about property boundary wars and power struggles between shop owners in a business owners association and who plays drums while the baby next door is trying to sleep, and I’m back to being utterly charmed.
“Do you have a dog?” I ask.
“We’re not talking about me.”
“You’re much more interesting than Mr. Trix.”
She straightens, looks around, and for the first time since we left the kombucha bar four hours ago, instead of charging off to the next task so fast on her chunky boots that I have to hustle to keep up with her, she makes it maybe ten steps continuing in the direction we were headed—which is very close to my hotel—before she stops.
I watch, entranced, while she turns in a slow circle. She looks up at the moon, then sighs and sinks to sit on the concrete half wall separating the row of shops from the beach beyond.
I angle around and sit next to her, my leg nearly touching hers. “Run out of ideas?”
She shakes her head, still gazing at the moon. “Ran out of people.”
Oh.
Oh .
I’ve been so focused on Duchess—I will get her real name before the night is over—that I didn’t realize no one else was around.
Huh.
Come to think of it, the last four good deeds she’s done have been for animals. Three stray cats, and now this dog.
I squeeze her thigh. “Stay here. I’ll go knock on doors and wake people up so we can do good deeds for them.”
“That is not how good deeds work.”
I love the moon tonight.
It’s bright enough that I can see her chiding smile.
“Maybe we need to redefine how good deeds are done.”
The sigh that comes out of her is so deep, she must’ve dragged it from beneath the ocean floor.
I want to pull her into my lap and kiss her until the only sounds she’s making are happy sounds. Ecstatic sounds.
Since we left the bar, she’s serenaded a couple who were fighting until they couldn’t remember why they were mad anymore, chased down a guy who dropped his wallet, and honest to god, not making this up, saved a toddler from walking into a street in front of a car.
Together, we’ve stealthily bought dinner and drinks for a lot of people.
Me more than her, though I made sure she was distracted before I pulled out my own credit card and added to what she’d asked the bartender or waitstaff to do.
And all the while, we’ve both been hiding our credit cards and receipts so neither of us can see the other’s real name.
But that look is back.
The I am a terrible person who will never do enough good to make up for the harm I’ve caused look.
“C’mon.” I make a hand it over gesture. “Out with it. Let this one go too.”
“Let what one go?”
“Whatever has you sighing like that. Spill it and forget it.”
“Spilling it to you won’t repair the relationship I murdered today.”
“You’ve been out here avoiding that relationship all night.”
“Stop being smart . You’re with me because you’re cute and funny, not because you’re smart.”
Did I just sprout feathers and preen like a damn peacock?
Why, yes. Yes, I did. She sees me as something more than a brain without feelings. She thinks I’m funny .
“Maybe I have layers,” I tell her. “Maybe I can also be smart.”
“Hate to break it to you, my friend, but if you were smart, you wouldn’t have left that bar with me.”
She doesn’t believe I’m smart.
This is even better than her buying my drinks.
“Most people wouldn’t be smiling quite so big at being told they’re not smart,” she says dryly.
“It’s just nice to have a woman want me for my body instead of my brains.”
She cracks up.
Actually cracks up with a full belly laugh that morphs into a bent-over, side-clutching, full-out hyena guffaw at my expense.
“You don’t think my body’s hot?” I wiggle my brows, even though I don’t think she can see me with the way she’s swiping at her eyes.
I haven’t felt this light in years .
“You’re very hot,” she assures me between giggles.
“Clearly that’s where all of my good genes went. I won’t remember a word you say about whatever’s bothering you. Too much of an airhead.”
“I take it back. You’re smart, Mr. Mathematician. You were kind to leave the bar with me.”
“Psh. I’m an asshole.”
She’s sparkling again. Eyes lit up, lips spread in a wide smile. “Well, I deserve to only have assholes in my life, so I’m glad to hear it.”
I nudge her, mostly looking for any excuse to touch her the way she touched me in the bar. “Spill. What’d you do that’s so awful?”
Bye-bye sparkle.
My fault.
But it’s for the greater good. She’ll sparkle again once she has it off her chest, I’m positive.
But first, I get another heavy sigh. “I’m here with friends.”
“Lovely people, I’m sure, if they’re your friends.”
I am currently living for the way her lips tip up when she fights smiles after I say something devastatingly charming or amusing.
I am also currently living for the way she gives my arm a playful shove.
“You’re trouble,” she says.
“Rarely, but I’d like to be more.”
She winces.
I wait.
“I let one of my very best friends in the entire universe sleep with a guy even though I knew he murdered kittens,” she says quietly.
“And she fell for him, and when one of my other friends told her about the kittens, she was more devastated than I thought she’d be, for very good reason, and it’s my fault she’s not living the life of her dreams right now. ”
“Because she would’ve been happy if she didn’t know he murdered kittens?”
“Yes.”
Not the answer I expected.
“People have layers,” she adds quietly. “I thought…the rest of his personality…would compensate for the kitten-killing.”
“Just so we’re clear, he didn’t actually murder kittens, right?”
“Same magnitude.” She winces again. “Kind of.”
“If someone else told her the information she needed to have, then why was it your responsibility and not theirs in the first place?”
“Because this is what I do . I listen. I study. I read between the lines. I know things before other people know them. And I knew this one a long time before the person who told her. I grew up in a—a hair salon, learning from the best of the best how to be the good kind of gossip. And then I choose to share or not share based on the theory that I know how to parse out if sharing or not sharing will cause the greater harm. I chose wrong. She thought we were coming here for…the next step… in their relationship, and instead, our entire friend group is splintered. And they’re not just friends .
They’re family . At least, they are to me. ”
I stifle an instinctive response of family sucks . I have Zen and I have Mimi and I know family can be great.
But when I think of my siblings and my parents and the rest of my nieces and nephews, family sucks .
When I think about my business partner and newly former best friend, family sucks .
But this woman—Duchess—has family that she loves enough to feel bad for hurting, no matter how good her intentions.
Her hair lifts in the breeze, and it’s instinctive to tuck it back behind her ear for her.
Soft. So soft. And deliciously curly.
I want to sink my hands in it and twirl it around my fingers and grip it while I kiss her.
She sucks in a breath but doesn’t pull away. If anything, she leans closer. “You shouldn’t be nice to me. I hurt people who are nice to me.”
“We all do.”
“Not like this.”
“You’re being very hard on yourself for someone who went out of her way to do nice things for dozens of people and animals tonight.”
“That’s not enough to make up for what I did.”
There’s so much more to her story, and I want to hear it. I want to hear all of it. “If it helps, I’m a disaster myself. Helping me is a bigger burden than you could ever imagine.”
Her lips tip up again. “You are not .”
“Oh, I am. I think I’m your biggest good deed tonight.”
“You want to be my biggest good deed tonight.”
“Guilty. But I had a shitty day. Wouldn’t I be a good good deed?”
“My high school English teacher would have a field day with that sentence.”
“See? I’m trouble. I need good deeds done to me.”
She laughs again.
And then she shrieks and leaps to her feet, swatting at her hair and spinning in a circle. “Get it off get it off! ”
Behind us, a cat yowls and takes off into the night.
“What—” I start, vaulting to my feet as well.
“ Get it off! ”
“Get what off?”
She’s dancing in a circle, shaking her fingers through her hair. “Bug! Lizard! Lizard bug in my hair !”
“Hold still. Let me see.”
“I can’t hold still! Creepy crawlies. Creepy crawlies! ”
I grab her by the shoulders on her next circle around. “Duchess. Let me see.”
“It was—wait. Wait . Was that a cat? Was that a freaking cat playing with my hair?” She quits fighting and looks up at me, her hands dropping away. “Tell me that was a cat playing with my hair.”
I comb my fingers through her hair, enjoying this more than I should. “Can’t find any big bugs. Small ones either. Or lizards.”
“Oh god.” She clenches my shirt while I keep combing through her hair. “I thought a cockroach was crawling in my hair. Or one of those geckos.”
“Nope. You haven’t been that bad.”
“I have.”
“You haven’t.”
She grips my shirt tighter.
And then she seems to realize what she’s doing.
How close we’re standing.
Shit.
If I can feel her belly against my half-mast cock, she can tell I’m turned on too.
Her breath quickens.
So does mine.
“I do not deserve your kindness,” she whispers.
“Call it my selfishness. You fascinate me. And you’re hot as fuck.”
She doesn’t smile.
Instead, she simply gazes up at me in the moonlight while the waves roll to shore just beyond us.
And then she arches her belly into my hard-on.
Fuck , that feels good.
And when she slides her hands up my chest, to my neck, holding eye contact the whole time, rocking her belly against my cock again?
I swallow hard, but it’s not enough to keep the primitive desire from making my voice husky. “My hotel’s right around the corner.”
“Can you make me forget today happened?”
“Duchess, it would be my absolute pleasure.”