Chapter 20 Have Some Security
HAVE SOME SECURITY
“So your parents know,” Chance said two days later.
They were at her place again for dinner. In the end, she decided to not let him know what the Fierces were up to.
She didn’t know Chance well enough to judge his reaction. The last thing she wanted was him to get turned off by it and flee.
It’s not like she could control anything other people did.
She’d tried that before and it wasn’t always the best outcome.
“They do,” she said. “Gabe too. He heard me yelling at them.”
“Yelling?”
She wasn’t sure what to make of his frown. “Yes. I don’t like people interfering in my life.”
“Got it,” he said.
“They are fine with it. I mean my father knows you. He likes you. Gabe too. So don’t worry there.”
“I don’t really care all that much about people’s opinions of me.”
This time she frowned. “Oh really?”
He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to his chest, her body slamming into him, a laugh escaping. “I care about your opinion of me, but since you like me in your bed I know where that stands.”
She had to fight the urge to grind her teeth. Leave it to him to suck the fun out of the moment. That one comment said everything about how he really saw what they had. Again.
And that meant someone trying to make them a couple wouldn’t fly if he wasn’t even open to the possibility.
“I hope we are exclusive,” she said. She didn’t know why that thought just popped into her head, but if all he saw her as was a fuck buddy she wanted to make sure he wasn’t doing it with anyone else.
“Of course,” he said. “That goes without saying. I’d like to think I don’t even have to mention it to you.”
“Nope,” she said. “Considering I haven’t had sex before you in almost two years, you can tell it doesn’t take a priority in my life so I sure the heck wouldn’t hurt someone by cheating on them.”
His lips dropped to her neck. “It seems to be a priority now. I mean, you’re the one who came to me.”
She laughed. As much as she wished there was more to what they had, she enjoyed the banter and flirty play too.
As her mother said, she needed to just let this play out and stop looking ten steps in advance.
Could be deep down if the Fierces thought Chance was a good match for her, there was some hope.
In the future.
Way in the future with how this conversation was going.
“I don’t think we need to tell people about us either,” she said.
“You want what we have to stay a secret?” he asked. “When your parents and brother know? My grandmother too?”
He had a point. “I meant we don’t have to announce it to anyone.”
He laughed. “I’ve never announced anything in my life.”
“There you go,” she said, moving out of his arms. Just proved her point again. He was probably monkey branching for the past decade, moving from woman to woman. No need to let people know if that was the case.
How did she end up like this when it was the last thing she ever wanted?
She opened her oven door to check on dinner. Baked ziti with chunks of spicy sausage. Easy enough to do and she needed a distraction from the route this conversation was traveling down.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes, why?” she asked. She opened the fridge and pulled out a beer to hold up to him. He shook his head, so she grabbed two glasses and filled them with water. These were the only two things she’d seen him drink other than coffee in the morning.
“You seem off,” he said. “Like something is bothering you.”
“Nah. It’s all good. Just crazy at work. Lots going on.”
He hesitated for a moment. As if he was trying to decide whether or not to push her more. She was disappointed when he didn’t. “I’m sure it’s hard to keep it all straight.”
“Much easier than keeping your schedule straight,” she said. “Not sure how you do it.”
“I’ve got my fireman’s schedule uploaded into my phone. I share it with my grandmother and she does the scheduling at the bar.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I gave her a lot of things to do to get her off her feet, but she is still out there dealing with customers.”
“You know, I find it very sweet that you do that for your grandmother. Can I ask, is the business only in your name?”
“It is,” he said. “She didn’t have the best credit, then with her age, and no solid retirement set up, the loan would have been harder. I’ve got some investments I’ve done for her over the years. She doesn’t know about them.”
“Awww.” She moved over and put her arms around his neck. Maybe he didn’t treat women in a relationship all that seriously but he did his grandmother. That went a long way with her. “I would have never thought of this from you.”
He squinted one eye at her. “Cuz you thought I was a dick?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But when we were kids, no one really knew much about you. You were always getting in trouble for something. Fights too.”
“I was labeled a troublemaker long before I got in trouble.”
“I want to argue with that, but I can’t because I don’t know.”
“Let me break it down for you. My mother was a kid herself when she had me. If she knew who my father was, she never shared it with me or my grandmother. She liked to party. Drinking, drugs and whoring. We lived with my grandmother and many times she left for weeks on end.”
“I’m sorry, Chance. I didn’t know.”
“Few did. If they had, I might have been taken away. My grandmother took care of me the best she could. We didn’t have much. My mother worked a bunch of dead-end jobs she was always being fired from. My grandmother has been in the food service industry her whole life.”
“She worked at your pub and you bought it when she might have lost her job,” she said.
He’d explained that already. It sounded to her as if Rhea’s pride wouldn’t let her not work, but it’d be hard at her age to get another job, Jocelyn was positive.
Especially if this was all she knew.
“Yeah. She was upset I was doing it. Told me not to waste my money, that she’d be fine. But I told her it was for me too. I needed something else when I was done at the fire department. I plan on only putting in my twenty years and moving on.”
“Thinking of your future.”
“Your family isn’t the only one who wants to have some security. Not sure if owning a pub is the way to go, but I’m going to try.”
“I’m positive you can make it grow even more. Do you mind still talking about your mother?”
“Not much to say,” he said, shrugging. “She was detached. I was just another person in the house when she showed up. I don’t remember her being a mother to me. Not like you’d think.”
“Even when she wasn’t doing drugs?”
He laughed. Not a funny sound. “Jocelyn, she was always drunk or high. I don’t remember a time she wasn’t. It’s not the life you know or can even imagine.”
She moved over and pulled him into her arms. “And people knew that about her and judged you?”
“Yes. They all thought I’d end up just like her. My grandmother never did drugs.”
“Didn’t you get suspended for doing drugs once at school?” she asked. “I remember there being talk about a picture of you smoking weed.”
He laughed. “There was a picture of me smoking what looked like a joint, but it was lavender.”
“Lavender?” she asked. She wanted to laugh but didn’t. Wanted to even say he was pulling her leg.
“Yes. My grandmother doesn’t smoke or do drugs, but she’s always had headaches and needed to chill after her shifts. Someone told her about smoking lavender. It worked. She let me try it. You’re just kind of puffing it like a cigar and having it around you to inhale the scent.”
“Like incense.”
“Pretty much. Did I smoke cigarettes when I was younger? Yep. I did. I cut out that habit after school.”
“Good thing, because it’s not very sexy, nor do I want to kiss an ashtray. Do you still smoke lavender?”
He snorted. “No. I have it in the house. Oils in machines or spritzing it on pillows. It helps with sleeping. Or maybe it’s in my mind, but I still do it.”
“I’ve never had a problem sleeping. I’ll have to try it to relax me though. Or I can try it at your place some night if you ever bring me there.”
It hadn’t come up yet and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he was so used to leaving when he was done with a woman.
Just more proof where she stood.
“We can,” he said. “My place isn’t that big. Not like here.”
“It’s still your place. How many rooms do you have?”
“Two,” he said. “One is small, more like an office now. I’m not home much, as you know.”
“I got it.” She turned and pulled their dinner out of the oven. “You were thirteen when your mother passed.”
“She overdosed,” he said. “Nothing pretty about it. She’d been gone a few weeks.
Nothing new there. The cops came to the door one day.
My grandmother knew. I remember being in the kitchen eating and her asking where they had found my mother.
That’s it. She opened the door, saw them, and asked that question. ”
Jocelyn couldn’t imagine just waiting for that call or knock to show up on your doorstep one day.
“It had to be so hard.”
“No,” he said. “Don’t confuse that either. Jocelyn, she wasn’t a mother to me. She was an incubator. She was just someone who caused havoc in the house when she showed up. But once she died, my grandmother had to scramble to get custody of me.”
“Did you have to go into foster care first?”
“For two nights,” he said. “My grandmother apologized to me for years for that, but she couldn’t stop it. It took her a few days to get an attorney and get me back.”
Which meant the bond between Chance and his grandmother was the strongest force on earth.
And if she had any shot of something with the man in this room, she had to go through Rhea Drummond first.