Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Magnolia was having an extremely nice dream.
It was senior prom night, and she was in the black stretch limo her date had rented for the night.
She was wearing the pink sequined dress with the cute strappy back that had taken months of online shopping to find.
Taylor Swift’s hit “Look What You Made Me Do” played from the surround-sound speakers and an empty bottle of champagne lay on its side in the seat next to her.
But it wasn’t the champagne that was making her feel like a flute of effervescent bubbles. It was her date’s talented mouth that, at that very moment, was giving her the best oral sex of her life.
Which was how she knew this was only a dream.
Zach Whitaker had never been good at oral sex. In fact, he’d been so bad she’d faked more than one orgasm just to get him to stop. And his skill-level wasn’t the only reason she knew she was dreaming.
Zach no longer had brown hair styled to perfection with plenty of hair products that were hard to get your fingers through.
As his lips and tongue worked their magic, her fingers entwined in soft, silky strands the color of rich Irish butter.
She loved that damn butter. If she wasn’t worried about her weight and cholesterol, she’d eat the sticks like cobs of sweet corn.
As she admired that head of thick, finger-tousled hair, Zach’s gaze lifted and his eyes stared back at her from between her bare thighs.
Strangely, they weren’t Zach’s ordinary blue, vacant eyes.
They were a sunburst bronze filled with .
. . hunger. The kind of hunger that made a woman feel like the most delectable feast.
And speaking of hunger.
She had never felt so turned on in her life. Suddenly, she was hurdling over the edge of the best orgasm she’d had in a long while. As if to celebrate, there was a cacophony of gongs and chimes and cuckoo chirps that drowned out Taylor’s singing.
Magnolia woke with a start and stared at the water-spotted ceiling panels above her for a confused moment before she realized she wasn’t in the back of a limo on prom night with a teen boy between her thighs.
She was sprawled on the window seat of Time To Read . . . with her hand between her thighs.
“Holy crap!”
She sat up, dropping the book she’d been reading to the floor as she jerked down her dress and glanced around.
Thank goodness no one had witnessed what she’d been doing on the window seat. She cringed at the thought of the gossip that would circulate through town if someone had.
“You know Otis Hastings’ niece that runs the bookstore? Well, I caught her doin’ nasty things to herself in a book nook. That’s what California will do to you. Turns you into a perverted exhibitionist.”
If that gossip got back to Uncle Otis, he would freak out and cut his rehabilitation short.
She figured if he didn’t allow eating, drinking, and cussing in his bookstore, he certainly wouldn’t allow masturbating.
Not to mention, he would tell her daddy, who he was staying with in California while he recuperated.
And Daddy already thought she needed to stop worrying about him finding a mate and start thinking about finding a mate of her own.
He might be right.
Maybe she should look up Zach on Instagram.
Maybe the dream was fate nudging her to pick back up where they had left off—which was her breaking up with him at Starbucks over a Pumpkin Spice Latte.
The memory brought with it the trash talking he’d done after their split.
She sucks in bed and with relationships.
Yeah, maybe it would be best to keep Zach in her dreams.
Besides, she wasn’t interested in starting a relationship with anyone until she made sure her daddy was happy.
And she was close to achieving that goal.
After years of setting him up on singles’ dating apps and fixing him up with every divorcee and widow she met, he’d finally found another soul mate.
If the ring she’d helped him pick out—or pretty much picked out for him—and the proposal speech she’d helped him write worked, he and Glenda would soon be married and living happily ever after.
Then and only then could she move on with her life . . . and find a man who’d give her an orgasm as good as Dream Zach.
With that thought, she slipped on her sandals, picked up the book, and headed for the stairs that led to her uncle’s apartment where she planned to splash her face with water and change her panties.
But those plans were put on hold when she rounded the bookshelves and ran smack dab into a brick wall.
Or a hard male chest that felt like a brick wall.
She bounced off it like a playground rubber ball and would have landed on the floor along with the book she dropped if the man hadn’t reached out and taken her arm to steady her.
She lifted her gaze to gold-splashed eyes that, except for the purple bruise surrounding one, looked identical to the eyes in her dream.
As heat flooded her panties, she sternly reminded her libido that she hadn’t been dreaming about Dawson Hennessy.
She’d been dreaming about an old high school boyfriend.
Her subconscious might have gotten the eyes and hair color wrong, but dreams switched things up all the time.
She’d once had a dream where she opened her closet and it was filled with gray clothes.
Gray!
That’s what happened in dreams. Your subconscious did whatever it wanted.
But in reality, it had been Zach who took her to prom. Zach who ordered the limo and champagne and seduced her in the backseat. Certainly not a man who had made it perfectly clear he didn’t like the way she’d turned out.
Although there wasn’t dislike in Dawson’s eyes now. They looked intense and feral . . . like a tiger’s right before he pounced on his prey. Why did the thought make her panties grow even damper?
But then those eyes blinked and he quickly released her and picked up the book she’d dropped, reading off the title.
“Getting Over the Cold Grip of Death?” He stared at her with confusion. “That’s what you get off on? Death?”
She jerked the book from his hand. “What are you talking about? I don’t get off—” Her eyes widened as his words sank in. “You . . . saw me?”
Magnolia had embarrassed herself plenty of times in her life.
When she was eleven and fell off point in her ballet recital, knocking down the entire line of ballerinas.
When she was thirteen and didn’t listen to her orthodontist and ate Rolos and her braces got caramel-stuck together right before she had to give a speech in front of an entire class.
And when she drank too many Orgasms at the Vegas bachelorette party and threw up on the hot cowboy stripper who’d been giving her a lap dance to “Happy Trails To You.”
But none of those embarrassing moments compared with Dawson seeing her masturbate. He already thought she was a loser. This only confirmed it. Especially when she was so embarrassed all she could do was stand there staring at him as all the air left her lungs.
His eyes grew concerned. “Breathe, Maggie May.”
But she was too humiliated to breathe. She was so wrapped up in her panic attack she wasn’t even aware of being propelled back to the scene of the crime until she was sitting in the window seat with Dawson crouched in front of her just like he had been the night she passed out.
“There’s nothing to freak out about. Everyone does it.
So just calm down and take a nice, easy breath.
” His hand settled on her bare leg, his thumb brushing the inside of her thigh and causing her to suck in air like she was getting ready to blow up a balloon.
“That’s it. Just a little slower this time. ”
She followed his directions, but it wasn’t easy with the heated caress of that thumb brushing her tingling skin.
Thankfully, once she’d taken a few breaths, he released her and got to his feet.
He glanced down at the book she’d clutched against her breasts.
“So why are you reading a book about death?”
She shouldn’t answer him. It really was none of his business. Especially when he never shared any of his business. But it was impossible for an over-sharer not to share.
“I read new releases on the subject in case there’s something in them that might help my daddy.”
“He’s still grieving your mama?”
“Not as badly as he once was, but he still refuses to talk about her . . . or come back here. So, I know he’s not completely over her.”
He sighed and stared out the window. “My mama didn’t want to talk about my daddy either after he died.” He glanced back at her. “Which is hard on kids who just want to remember their parents.”
It was the first time anyone had ever understood how hard it had been on her to have her life with her mama completely erased as if it hadn’t even happened.
She swallowed hard to remove the lump that had formed in her throat.
“My daddy packed us up and moved away from everything that reminded him of my mama. I get it. Any reminder of her broke his heart all over again. And he thought I felt the same.” She paused.
“But I didn’t want to forget her. And now I can’t even remember what she looked like without the help of the one picture I keep hidden in my nightstand drawer. ”
His gaze wandered over her face. “All you have to do to remember what she looked like is look in the mirror. The hair color is different, but everything else is all your mama. She was a beautiful woman.”
She didn’t know why she struggled to breathe again. The compliment. The intensity of his eyes. Or his belief that she looked like her mama. Their gazes remained locked for what felt like forever before he cleared his throat and looked away.
She stood. “Well, if you don’t need any help, I should get back to the front desk.”