Chapter 4 Noah
Noah
She was here to lick her wounds. To hide from the media that was no doubt ready to hound her for a statement regarding the allegations against her.
My teeth clenched as I pulled the T-shirt over my head.
I hadn’t bothered to turn on the light in my bedroom, just moved, pulling basketball shorts and a shirt from the drawers I knew they were in and stalked across the room to grab the running shoes I always left close to the door for exactly this purpose.
Cursing I stuffed my feet into them and bent to tie them up.
Adrian Bowman was a piece of shit. He was an arrogant bastard who was blessed with talent on the court, good looks and a big enough bank account to ensure a line of women would always follow him.
Too bad he was too dumb to live. Too dumb to not understand the value of the woman who wore his sixteen-thousand-dollar engagement ring.
The four-year veteran in the NBA had not only gotten caught gambling—again, too fuckin’ stupid to live—but he’d also gotten some reporter pregnant.
And when he denied her and the baby, because yeah, he was fuckin’ engaged to another woman, the reporter spilled every bit of his business.
Text messages, transfers from his bank account to hers and videos.
Since it seemed everybody in this day and age were recording all their sexual trysts.
Except me, that is. Not that some of the times I’d shared with women in my past wouldn’t garner big bucks on any of those porn sites…
because they definitely would. I just had more respect for myself and the woman I was with than to do something like that.
Clearly, Adrian didn’t and neither did that reporter since she’d had no problem exposing herself just to get back at him.
I left my room, stalking down the long hallway and into the living room. After grabbing my keys from the table by the door, I glanced at my arm to make sure I’d attached the armband. I pushed my keys into the side slot, opened the door and stepped out into the well-lit hallway.
I lived in the Lofts; that’s the name I gave the old building I’d inherited from my grandfather.
In all my life nobody had ever given me anything.
So, shock was an understatement when eight years ago, I received a letter from an attorney telling me this building and twenty-five thousand dollars in a bank account owned by someone named Mortimer Grimes now belonged to me.
Mortimer was apparently my mother’s father.
But, as far as I knew, Christine Jordan had no family.
At twenty years old, she simply showed up in Providence, started working at the library, then, six months later, gave birth to a son. Me.
The father I never knew was in her past, a string of trash ass boyfriends came in her future. Then, one night, I was the only one left.
I accepted the deed and documents that added to the real estate investments I’d already made in my adult life, and used the cash—at Ethan’s suggestion—to renovate the building into loft apartments.
In exchange for the idea and his help renovating, Ethan became the first leaseholder.
My unit was on the first floor near the management office.
There were six other tenants in the building, along with a laundry room and the courtyard which was Portia’s—Ethan’s wife—pet project.
It was still dark at a little before five in the morning, and the air hadn’t yet gotten as muggy as the meteorologist predicted.
I started running at a much faster pace than my usual.
It was a fifteen-minute jog from the Lofts to the park where I liked to get my morning run in.
Fueled by all the articles I’d read in the last two days and the videos I’d watched on YouTube, I made it to my destination in seven minutes.
As soon as my feet hit the running path, I forced myself to slow down, to get back to my slower pace before launching into my normal sprint.
I huffed out a breath, needing desperately to clear my mind.
My temples throbbed with all the information I’d gained about her life in the two days since I’d seen her in the elevator.
Since I’d tasted her sweet lips again.
Shaking my head did nothing to rid my mind of that memory.
Neither had drinking at the bar that night, something I tried not to do in excess when I was at work.
But I couldn’t help it. My mind was whirling from the moment I watched her walk away from me at the municipal building.
I couldn’t believe it was her. Couldn’t believe she was here.
Couldn’t believe she hadn’t pushed me away when I touched her, kissed her…
shit, I’d been on my way to fucking her right there in that elevator.
I owed Timmy a punch in the jaw for being so quick to get us out of there.
Another three minutes alone with her and my dick would’ve been buried deep inside of that place that it always longed to be.
It might’ve seemed odd to still want this woman with the same fervor I had all those years ago, but shit, it was what it was.
And I hated that for me. Hated it with a passion.
Because if anybody ever asked if I had a weak spot, the answer would be yes.
Serra Deneen Ward was my weak spot. She had been from the first day I set eyes on her and the fucked up way she broke up with me hadn’t changed that fact.
I still vividly recalled the first time we met.
She wore jeans that I swear looked like they’d been painted onto her legs, and her ass was sittin’ so damn pretty my fingers itched to grip it.
Surely that would’ve caught me a charge, so I was glad I had at least a little bit of sense to keep one hand thrust into the front pocket of the hoodie I wore.
In my other hand I’d been carrying my first cup of coffee.
The one I immediately dropped into the trash before hopping back into that line right behind her.
She’d walked past me, the scent of her perfume floating through the air, up my nostrils then down to my dick that by that point had already started to wake up.
It was winter and outside there was three inches of snow leftover from a few days before.
Her puffy ice blue coat and the white, thick-sole boots made her look like she was on her way to a ski resort.
But besides all of that, it was the cute mouth, medium-thick glossed lips, pert nose, and root beer brown eyes that left me speechless.
I had to know her name, had to hear her voice, had to stand in the same space she occupied, or I was certain I would die right then and there.
The need for her had been instant, potent and in the end, had nearly broken me.
The scream jolted me from my thoughts, and the body slamming into my chest before jerking back had my eyes widening.
Her arms flailed as she screamed again on her descent toward the ground.
My arms were around her waist before another thought floated through my mind.
She exhaled as I pulled her tight against my chest.
“I gotchu,” I said staring down into familiar brown eyes. “I gotchu, sweetness.”
Her fingers gripped my biceps as she blinked up at me. “I…I…” She huffed out another breath and shook her head. “You can’t keep catching me,” she finished.
I grinned. Couldn’t help it. Serra was a natural beauty, but when she was flustered or even when she got angry, she was sexy as hell.
This morning I’d put her at flustered by seeing me again and having my hands on her once more.
Even with that realization, I didn’t let her go.
Honestly, pulling my arms from around her was the last thing I wanted to do.
“I’m fine now.” She attempted to pull out of my grasp.
I didn’t release her. I loved holding her, loved protecting her and just reminding her that I was there with my touch. Once upon a time her well-being was all that mattered to me. That was a long ass time ago.
“Noah,” she snapped. “I said I’m fine.”
She removed her hands from my arms, planting her palms on my chest this time, as she pushed me away with more effort. Shaking my head to rid myself of the fog of memories, I forced my arms to fall from her waist. She immediately stepped back.
We were both out of breath, both dressed in workout gear and both unsure of what to say or do next.
“You still like running in the morning, I see,” I said because I wasn’t ready for her to leave.
She gave me a curt nod. “Perhaps I should’ve stuck to running by the lake like I’d been doing.”
“Nonsense,” I told her and forced myself not to take in her entire outfit.
Instead, I gave her a quick glance as she pushed away from me and in the bright glare of the streetlight that was a few feet away from where we’d stopped on the trail.
“This is the best running trail in town. And its way better lit than the lake.” The thought of her being out at the lake in the dark where anyone or anything could jump out at her had my teeth clenching.
“Not so well lit that you could’ve avoided bumping into me,” she shot back.
“Whoa, wait, you bumped into me.”
She’d come from the left where I was just about to turn. I know I wasn’t as alert as I should’ve been because I’d been too busy thinking about her, but what was her excuse?
“Whatever.” She huffed again. “You can go your way, and I’ll go mine.”
“Or we can go together.” I should’ve let her go.
Why the fuck did I want this torture to continue?
Serra and I were over, had been for a very long time.
And in all fairness, I should still be pissed at her for the coward ass way she’d walked away from me.
But really, all I wanted was to be near her.
“Hell no,” she said, this time her voice growing louder.
With raised brows, my head jerked back at the fierceness of her tone. “Excuse me?”