3. Noah
CHAPTER THREE
NOAH
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘I MET A GIRL’ BY WHEAT
I practically mow people down as I move toward my friends hollering my name. Calvin! Dumaine!
They use my middle name – Noah Calvin Dumaine – because it belongs to my dad. And I don’t— Caalvinnnn! I wince as I hear the chant again.
“I am not available.” I grab Fox and turn him around. “If anyone asks, you tell them I’m unavailable.”
Fox De Rossi, my best mate, my partner in crime and the best keeper-batter in Australian second-string cricket blinks at me, concerned. “You’re not running back to the cottage already, Noah. We just got here. This is a party.”
“I am not going back home, man,” I assure him. I can never bring myself to call the Cape Cod mansion we live in ‘cottage’, I am not wealthy like Fox ‘my family is richer than God’ De Rossi. “I just need some alone time.”
Fox is not convinced. He is right to be worried about me.
I have become a bit of a recluse since spring, when we started rigorously training to participate in Triskelion Cricket Training. Entry is free and by invite only, although the participants needed to let the organizers know if we also need accommodations. Since my mates were also invited, we decided against camp boarding.
I almost wept when I received my three-inch thick envelope with all the papers and details inside. Definitely had a Chosen One moment right there.
Because after the mess I could not salvage with the Australian National Cricket Board eight months ago, I am just happy to get to pick up the willow again.
“I thought you were done with the brooding, Noah,” Ares slurs next to me, sipping from his hip flask. He bumps my shoulder and almost manages to dislodge me.
Ares is my second roommate and a giant dude. Not an actual giant, though, but the man’s muscles walk before him. And it drives the women wild seeing his tatted sleeve. He pays them no attention. Ares is a sleeping giant most of the time.
“I am not brooding,” I retort calmly. “I…”
I met a really intriguing girl who kissed the fuck out of me. She talks cricket like she knows it. And she is a rabid Team India fan which makes this a sort of Romeo-Juliet situation without the bloodshed and the cousin dying.
I stop talking because I don’t want them to give me shit over it. And they will.
“Fuck it.” Fox throws his hands up. “He met a girl.”
I give him my death ray stare. The one I gave sassy bowlers who tried to shit-talk me on the runup, before I hit them for a six out of the stadium. “I did not say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Ares toasts Fox with his flask. “Sherlock, here, can smell this shit in the air.”
“Love is not shit, arsehole,” Fox barks. Something dangerous and pained flashes in his normally placid eyes.
“I wasn’t talking about love, arsehole,” Ares drawls. “Hormones. I am talking about Noah’s hormones. Which are beginning to clog the rest of our pores.”
I snarl at Ares. He jumps back agilely when I try to grab him.
Fox, the peacemaker, gets in the middle and pushes us apart. “We’re planning to go cliff-diving with the rest of the Triskelion gang, Noah. You sure you want to miss it?”
“Cliff-diving?” I chuckle. “Like in that vampire movie your mum loves so much?”
“It’s team bonding, you berk,” Ares grits out. Technically, Ares is Fox’s foster brother since the De Rossis made him one of their own when Ares was like four, about fifteen years ago, and Fox was nine or ten. I am the surly school mate who tagged along with Fox for vacations and holidays and after school when my own home situation became…uncomfortable, ten years ago. Now, Ares is my brother too as much as Fox.
“If you two idiots are done messing around, can we just figure out who’s the designated driver for tonight so some of us can get shitfaced?” Fox demands, hands on hips.
“Don’t drink and swim, Fox,” I order automatically.
Ares shakes his head. “Ever the responsible captain.”
A bomb goes off in my chest at the C-word.
Once upon a na?ve time, I’d dreamt of becoming Captain of the Australian National Team. Leading the boys in baggy green to greater and greater glory. I was such a cocky motherfucker, it was ridiculous.
“Do not drink and drive too. Fox, you’re the designated driver.” I hand him the Jeep keys. “Ares does not go last, over the cliffs. Send Markham after him.” Stuart Markham has a steady temperament on and off the field. He’ll make sure my mates don’t drown in the Atlantic.
“You won’t even come to watch?”
I hug Ares after his grumpy, hopeful question. “I’m sorry I can’t. Hydrate, okay?” Then I smile and let him off the hook. “I’m going to find the girl I met.”
“I told you; it’s a girl. Sir Gallant Knight cannot resist damsels in distress.” Ares shakes his head in semi-disgust.
“She has pepper spray, man. She’s not a distressed damsel.”
Although she did kiss me because she wanted out of a sticky situation. But I wasn’t going to share that tasty morsel with my bros. They really will make my life a living hell over it.
Besides…after weeks of feeling like a total outsider in this privileged beach town, I’ve finally found someone I vibe with. I don’t want to share her with anyone, just yet.
“Fine. Go have fun. We will get all the glory.”
I give Fox a quick one-armed hug and rush back to my not-distressed damsel.
Desi girl’s not beautiful, in an obvious movie star way. But she has presence. I couldn’t stop watching her when we were bantering about cricket and pepper sprays and the sign on her tee shirt, that she filled out super snugly with all her curves.
Besides, she wore black to a summer beach party, all black… it begs for at least one more conversation and further investigation.
I spot her easily, although her body language screams wariness. I want to know what’s made her so wary, and so desperate she had to kiss a random stranger to get out of a ‘situation’.
But mostly I just want to get to know her better. This Indian cricket fan who worships Virat.
I tower over half the party goers, so I keep her in sight. Most people are arm-in-arm with each other or making out, hard. When I was personally invited by the mayor’s daughter to attend this party, I thought it was a mandatory town festivity thing, not every teenage party ever.
Desi girl looks like an alien in a sea of pinks, reds and yellows. And smells of sugar, vanilla and flour. She’s not super tall, I got a tiny crick in my neck from bending down to talk to her. But she is intriguing as fuck. And not because she kissed me like she was drowning and only my lips could save her.
As kisses go, it was a mess but…then when I kissed her back, and she stopped …something changed. Shifted inside me. Made my breath slow down and my mind turn to syrup. I wanted to… never stop kissing her till I learned all the ways she could be kissed.
I’m a red-blooded man. But kissing is not the first thought to enter my mind when I meet a woman. I have more restraint than that.
“Were you about to kidnap my jacket, desi girl?” I tease her lazily.
“Hardly, Aussie boy.” She turns to face me. Her hair’s a mass of curls that felt so soft when I touched her back. Her eyes are a beautiful brown like all the South Asians I know, but they tilt at the corners in a distinct almond shape. And then there’s her rounded cheeks and the pugnacious chin she juts out every time she feels threatened.
My eyes wander to her kissable lips immediately. I do have more restraint than that.
“I thought you wouldn’t come back.” She hands me the jacket. “I was so sure you’d be bragging to your friends about me. The unhinged goth girl who plastered you one without your consent.”
“For the record, I give you post-kiss consent to kiss me, anytime. So, you can stop feeling guilty.” I drape the jacket over my arm. “You don’t have experience with decent men, do you?”
She gives me a stinky side eye. “My dad’s a decent man.”
“My bad. I take that back.” I blink, struck by the strangest déjà vu. “I kind of get the feeling we are already in the middle of a conversation…” I wave my hand at her and then back at me. “…when we just met.”
Then, she shrugs. “Stranger things have happened, right?”
Something about her tone makes me want to protect her. Maybe it’s the desolation or the determination.
If I was back home in Sydney, I’d be one hundred percent certain this is all an act. That she knows I am millionaire attorney Calvin Dumaine’s son, a target for women who troll for men with a blank check.
But I am in small-town America. No one knows me here. I’m nobody. So it can’t be that. She has no reason to want to kiss me, talk to me…except she wants to?
“Do you want to get out of here?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
Her pretty, lined eyes widen, giving her a cat goddess look.
“Just to talk,” I rush to assure her. “Nothing else.” Although I wouldn’t mind repeating the activity that brought us together in the first place. Maybe, even use tongue and do it properly. Like the French intended.
The thought stops me cold. Okay, seriously, what is happening here ? I like women, and it’s been heaps long since I had a lady friend, but I am not obsessed with women’s bodies and tonguing them just because I met them.
That fucking kiss. It blurred boundaries that usually exist in these boy-girl situations. And now I’m stuck on this Virat-obsessed fan.
“Aren’t your friends waiting for you?” Her tone is wary. “Didn’t you come to the party with them.”
“I told them I’m unavailable for the night.”
“And they were okay with it? They didn’t force you to go with them anyway?”
“They listen to me, not the other way round.”
“And they weren’t curious to know why you’re unavailable?”
“They were.” I let slip some of the heat I feel. “But what makes you think I want to share you with my friends tonight?”
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Shit. I came on too strong. She’s going to leave--
She hands me the flask she holds. “Want some whiskey?”
I look at the amber liquid. I can imagine the whiskey going down nice and easy. Filling me with a small buzz since I’d only had my post-workout protein shake before driving down to the lake. It’d be a small buzz…nothing even. I could?—
“No, thank you.” I politely hand the bottle back to her. “I’m good.”
She takes a swig and wipes her glistening, dark-colored mouth without answering me.
I decide to do the decent thing. Let her go. “It’s ok?—”
Desi girl interrupts me with, “If I’m going to a secondary location with you, I need your name.”
“Going to a secondary location?”
“It’s what the FBI tells us not to do when faced with a potential kidnapping,” she informs me loftily.
“In this scenario, are you the kidnapper, or am I?” I tease her.
She tosses me her car keys. “You’re not drinking, so you’re driving. That makes you the kidnapper.”
I grab them before they hit my chest. “I’m Noah.” I hold out my hand. “Calvin Dumaine.”
She looks up at me, blearily. It occurs to me this woman is drunk. And the right thing to do is to take her home. Have her sleep it off.
“I’m De—Queenie Madhavan.” She slides her palm into mine and stares up at me. A tiny, curvaceous thing even in strappy heels.
My fucking cock jerks up, just from one touch. It’s been too long since I’ve been with someone. I do have better restraint than this. Usually.
“Miss Madhavan.” I drop a light kiss on the tips of her fingers and step back.
“I’m starving.” She takes her hand back slowly, without breaking eye contact. “I need carbs.”
“If that’s what you want, then carbs it is.” I pocket the keys.
“Lots of carbs,” she repeats. “Noah.” The way she says my name, like she’s testing it, goes straight to my erection. Fucking hormones mess with my head.
I clench the keys tighter. Ares was right. I do need a distraction from the constant brooding and worrying about my future.
And Queenie Madhavan is it.