Chapter Seven #2
“What are you staring at?” he asked.
“You’re a really great dad.”
“Skye makes it easy.” He tapped two fingers against his forehead. “I get her.”
“I can see that.”
He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders back. Had I made him uncomfortable? Usually, Brooks wasn’t bad at taking compliments. Today, he switched the topic though. “You’re on the lunch shift again tomorrow, right? I’ll come see you afterward and we can talk next steps.”
“Do you have access to my employee schedule? That’s a violation of my privacy, you know?” I feigned shock.
“No.” He grinned. “You told me a few days ago. I’m not stalking you, don’t worry. I just remember the things you tell me.”
“Oh. Oops.” I wasn’t used to someone paying me this much attention anymore. Brooks always had though. “Yeah, lunch shift.”
Word about Brooks’s new position spread like wildfire in Wild Fields.
Two of the most fascinating developments that resulted were: (a) People had become strangely protective of him.
They claimed him as one of us like they were already planning to put up a plaque in his honor in the town square gazebo; and (b) They left him alone but stared from afar.
It was like watching a bunch of teen girls trying to play it cool around their crush.
So when Brooks showed up at the Rattlesnake thirty minutes before my shift ended and leaned on the counter to talk to me, their gazes could have burned holes through us—but not a single person came up to order a drink from me. Except Esra, who mouthed, “Hot!” behind Brooks’s back when she left.
“You know a lot of people will see us, right?” I asked when he followed me through the back and down the saloon staff stairwell.
“That’s kind of the point.”
“They will see us with Skye.”
“I’m aware,” he chuckled.
“Just checking.”
His daughter had come out of her room with a whole list of questions a few hours after I’d left, just like he’d predicted.
How old I was, where we met, if I had pets (apparently very important), if I had kids myself (less important), what my favorite color was (pale yellowish green like the inside of a lime—but Brooks got points for remembering light green), and so on.
Once those were answered, Skye asked to go to the park with me. All of us. Together.
I hadn’t actually visited Bravetown since I was around Skye’s age. Being a single teen mom’s daughter, part of me had never been comfortable in a place designed for families.
“All right, that means there’s only one more thing to take care of,” I said and stopped near the bottom of the stairs. Brooks took one step farther down, bringing us eye-to-eye. “We should kiss.”
“Sorry?” He almost stumbled off the last step, catching himself on the railing.
“I saw you get flustered when Skye asked. We’ll have to be affectionate in public. We kiss now, you get any awkward fumbling out of your system.”
“I wouldn’t awkwardly fumble you.”
“Smooch me. Chop-chop, big boy.” I poked my finger in his sternum.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Big daddy?”
“Adriana.” He laughed my name, and it was the best it had ever sounded.
“Kiss me, mustache daddy.”
He groaned, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I don’t know if you’re trying to crack me up or get me hard with those names.”
“Whatever works for you, hot stuff. I’m just trying to get you to kiss me, so you don’t flail around like a clueless teenager kissing me in front of all of your friends during spin the bottle, but you’re being a little chicken shit.”
“Quiet now.” Brooks climbed up on my step, taller than me again, forcing me to tilt my head to see his face instead of his broad chest. He closed in. His boot landed between my feet, directing me backward until my shoulders collided with the cold wall.
His eyes were trained on my lips as he lifted his hands to my face.
Fingertips soft as they brushed over my skin, but strength in his touch when his thumbs cut their path along my jaw, he tilted my face to the exact position he wanted it in.
The metal of his rings kissed my cheeks.
Brooks leaned down. His nose brushed against mine.
Our breaths mingled in the space between our lips.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. He waited.
Oh. My chest seized as I realized what he was doing.
Such a minuscule pause, so much care behind it.
I nodded.
He didn’t need further invitation.
Brooks crashed into me. His mouth claimed mine.
Chests colliding, air rushed from my lungs alongside a throaty sound I had no control over.
He coaxed my lips apart, his mustache rough on my skin and his tongue bittersweet like the bourbon I’d served him.
There was no hesitation in his touch. He kept one hand locked on my face, keeping me exactly where he wanted me, while the other burned a searing path down my side, to my hip and the slope of my backside.
My arms curled around his neck, my body desperate to keep him close.
His mouth was hungry on mine as if he was trying to leave a permanent mark on my lips.
I’d never been kissed with this much purpose and I never wanted it to end.
It wasn’t until I was desperate for a single breath that I whimpered and tried to tip my chin.
Brooks pulled back a fraction, his words rumbling against my stinging lips. “That’s how I would kiss you if no one was watching.”
He didn’t give me enough time to reply before his lips came down on mine again.
This time, his mouth gently nudged mine, slow and soft, with just enough strength behind it to remind me of the previous kiss.
I curled my fingers into his hair, trying to pull him to me, trying to get back the frenzy from before.
Instead, he pulled away several inches. “That’s how I would kiss you if I wished no one was watching. ”
The third kiss was quick. His lips barely closed over mine, there and gone, just the impression of his warmth lingering. “And that’s how I will kiss you in public.”
“Okay,” I gasped, struggling to get much-needed air back into my lungs. “No awkward fumbling. Got it.”
· Brooks ·
Well, shit. I shouldn’t have kissed her like that. She’d been all business. Just because Adriana didn’t sugarcoat her words, didn’t even try to sound conventionally corporate, that didn’t mean she hadn’t been serious. She’d wanted to make any affection between us less awkward. And I…
I hadn’t kissed anyone in over three years.
I’d been so preoccupied that I hadn’t realized just how much I missed it.
Intimacy. The way she’d let me part her lips.
The way her breath stuttered between kisses.
The warmth of her body pressed against mine.
I was so thoroughly underfucked, those three kisses went straight to my dick and I had to get out of there before Adriana spotted my hard-on and got the wrong idea.
Adriana was breathtaking. She had the face and golden ringlets of an angel, and the kind of waist-to-hip ratio other women paid plastic surgeons for—perfect curves to dig your hands into.
More importantly, however, she was my friend.
My seventeen-years-younger-than-me friend who was currently doing me the biggest favor of my lifetime.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. My physiological reaction to her soft little moan as I pushed her up against the wall was just that.
A reaction. Like that hammer-knee-jerk thing doctors did in movies.
Clearly my body needed some release.
Thankfully I had the hotel suite to myself since Skye was off getting a personal tour of the costume department. So I locked the bathroom door, turned on the shower, and tried to queue up some porn on my phone to take the edge off.
The video thumbnails alone had the opposite effect.
I scrolled down the site for a moment but found nothing remotely appealing.
I could have stepped under a freezing shower and my boner still would have taken longer to disappear.
It was like catching twenty seconds of an orchestra playing Mozart’s symphony, your entire body coming alive with the harmonies, and later trying to re-create the feeling with a badly lit video of someone playing the melody on a cheap harmonica.
I shut the site and tossed my phone on my heap of clothes before stepping under the stream of hot water.
Shit. I’d just likened kissing Adriana to Mozart’s masterpieces.
No. This was not about her. This was about me and how I’d always liked kissing.
Liked making out. Liked physical touch beyond a quick fuck.
That was the very reason I was in this mess, because I hadn’t gone so much as four weeks without getting laid since losing my virginity—and now I was inching toward four years.
It was why I had to pretend to be in a stable relationship with Adriana in the first place—and it was the root cause for the pathetic hard-on tonight.
Before even toweling off, my eyes caught on the notifications lighting up my screen. I unlocked the phone, always dreading the possibility that I might have missed an emergency call from Skye. Instead, I found seven new messages from Adriana.
Addie: How about Loverboy?
Addie: Sweetums
Addie: Honeybee
Addie: Mr. Big
Addie: Scratch that. That might be copyrighted.
Addie: Stud Muffin
Addie: Big Papa
I was naked, drenched, and grinning like a fool when I typed out my reply.
Brooks: You can just call me by my name
Her response came almost immediately.
Addie: Okay Tom Selleck
Brooks: Funny
Addie: See you tomorrow Magnum
Brooks: See you tomorrow sweet Addie
Addie: Sweet Addie and Mustache Daddy
Brooks: Good night!
Addie: Stop texting me. I’m trying to sleep.
Addie: That’s a lie. It’s 7pm.
Addie: I’m bored.
Addie: What are you wearing Brooksy Babe?
This woman texted faster than I could string together a coherent thought.
It didn’t help that her last message sent a hot jolt through me, the blood draining from my brain and rushing downward again.
I wasn’t wearing anything, and for just a split second, the taste of her tongue still vivid in my mind, I contemplated texting her the truth.
My fingers still hovered over the screen when the next speech bubble popped up.
Addie: I’m good at this fiancée texting, aren’t I?
Brooks: This is probably a good time to tell you that you’re engaged to a voice note kind of man.
Addie: Perfect. You have one of the nicest voices I’ve ever heard.
Brooks: Likewise.
Addie: I expected that to be a voice note.
I chuckled and shook my head at the screen.
I should be getting dressed. Hell, I should have dried off—but standing in the open air, most of the water had already pearled off my body. Instead of bothering with a towel, I pressed the little microphone button and recorded a voice note for Adriana.
“You have the nicest voice I’ve ever heard, sweet Addie. I can’t wait to hear you sing for me.”
Within moments, three little dots danced across my screen, indicating that she was typing.
The dots disappeared. I watched them pop up again and again for a few minutes, only snapping out of it when the door to the suite beeped.
A moment later, a text from Skye showed up, alerting me that she was home. Adriana still didn’t text back.
I quickly jumped into my clothes and shoved the phone in my pocket.
When I walked out of the bathroom, Skye lay sprawled out on the sofa with her headphones on and her iPad propped up in her lap.
I grabbed a bottle of water and a chocolate bar from the kitchenette and left them for her on the sofa table.
Skye recharged on her own terms—and those terms could range from talking through her feelings to sitting in silence and pretending the world didn’t exist. Today it seemed to be the latter, but I could still offer silent reassurance that I was here, and a reminder to drink something.
In response, I got a thumbs-up without her eyes leaving her iPad.
I would have been more concerned about her screen time if she was roaming on social media or playing video games she was too young for—but she was usually reading or watching the same history documentaries on repeat.
I figured that it was the same for her as me listening to a song on repeat for hours after long days.
There was something reassuring about flooding your senses with a beloved comfort.