Finding the Right Girl (A Nice GUY to Love spin-off) (7 page)

And you shouldn’t be risking jail time to defend someone like me.

He reached down to pry her clenched fists open and ordered gently, “You make sure to stay in the kitchen the entire night.” Turning to look at Officer Trey, the two exchanged one of those top secret ‘guy’ head nods before he added, “And don’t go out to your car alone. Have either James or Officer Trey stay with you while you load everything back up.”

James and Marcy were off to the side nodding vigorously as well.

“Promise me.” It was that alpha-protective rasp, laden with worry.

She stared at him for a moment and shook her head lightly. At his fierce scowl in response, she quickly explained, “No, I wasn’t saying no. I was just…amazed, I guess. I’m not used to people worrying about me, being protective over me.”

He smoothed his thumb over the nail marks she’d dug into her own palms. “Get used to it.”

Her breathing stopped in her lungs altogether.

“Last thing. Connor said you live in Mesa, not far from me. After you’re done packing up, I want you to come over for a bit; I’ll text you the address. I want to make certain that no one follows you home without you knowing. I need to see for myself that you’re safe.”

“Brian, you’re being paranoid—”

“I saw the way that guy looked at you, Tessa. And after a night of drunken glory day reminiscing with the rest of his dumb ass friends, who knows what he’ll do. Swear to me you’ll come straight over to my house after finishing up here.”

His quiet gaze, almost raw in its intensity fell down to her lips in the sweetest promise of a kiss she’d ever received. “Promise me, Tessa.”

Touched beyond words, she simply nodded silently.

“I promise. I’ll be there by ten at the latest.”

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

S
HE GOT THERE
at
9:30.

Which brought an official end to his checking the clock every ten minutes.

Brian had the door open and the interrogation started before she even hit the doorbell. “Are you okay? Did that guy harass you any more tonight?”

Jesus, the thought of her there without him had clawed at his insides all night. He knew Tessa had been right about his taking Skylar home but every male cell in his body had fought him on it, demanded he stay there and protect her.

His woman.

The thought blindsided him.
Where the hell did that come from?

“Gavin didn’t come near me for the rest of the night,” she answered, breaking into his thoughts. “I actually had a great night. James and his wife are probably one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. And they made certain I never had to leave the kitchen the entire time. They hovered over me all night. And Officer Trey wouldn’t even let me go to the restroom unescorted.” The look of baffled wonder in her expression when she talked about the couple and the officer tugged at his heart. She really
wasn’t
used to anyone taking care of her, that much was clear.

And that just made all his alpha protective instincts kick up even more. He scanned the street to make sure she hadn’t been followed and pulled the door wider to let her in.

“No, that’s okay. It’s late,” she declined, half-turning to go. “I just came by to say thanks again. Maybe we can go out sometime to—”

He caught her elbow to keep her from walking back to her car. “Hang out for a bit. One beer to take the edge off.” Though he was working damn hard at it, he couldn’t smooth out the rough gravel in his voice. The idea of her going back to her apartment alone tonight after how broken she’d looked earlier…

“I also have pizza. And ice cream,” he attempted again,
willing
her to stay.

Her lips curved up at the corners. “Can we make beer floats?”

He almost laughed then. She was always saying and doing the completely unexpected. “Sure.” He stepped back so she could walk in, and he had to forcibly order himself to stop holding onto her arm as if she were going to cut and run. “I have chocolate syrup and whipped cream too if you want.”

Damn.

Her eyes widened and her step faltered just a bit.

One look at the color rising in her cheeks and he knew she’d been thinking the same thing he’d been. Well, maybe not the
same
thing. He was pretty sure that his thoughts starring her naked
after
he’d licked chocolate syrup and whipped cream from her body wasn’t exactly what was running through her mind.

When those witchy bedroom eyes of hers dipped down to the front of his jeans—for just a fraction of a second—he nearly groaned out loud.

Yeah, okay, so maybe what she was thinking was better.

Her flushed cheeks went higher up the color scale and she spun around quickly to head for the kitchen. “I’m going to raid your fridge to get started.”

It took him a while, but eventually he remembered his brain needed oxygen to survive. So he started working on that while heading over to the cupboard for the thick glass mugs Skylar had insisted he buy for her movie night cream soda floats.

“There’s some Guinness way in the back. Not sure how the other beer will taste in a float,” he offered helpfully.

Her voice drifted out from depths of the fridge, sounding pleasantly surprised, “For a guy who looks like he could bench press a brontosaurus, you’re awfully familiar with beer float basics.” She dragged out two bottles of Guinness with a look of triumph. “It’s actually kind of a turn-on,” she teased.

He had a feeling she was simply talking without a filter again rather than flirting, so he kept it tame.

“While I do like the idea of you getting turned on, I can’t take the credit. My friend Danni owns a brewpub in Cactus Creek and she puts beer in absolutely everything.”

“Get out, are you talking about
Ocotillos
? I love that place.”

Not surprising. It was unique and outside-the-box, very much like Tessa. “Well then we have to go hang out there sometime. I’m sure Danni would love to pick your brain on how she can make even more desserts out of beer.”

“That sounds like fun.”

The return of her smile was a welcome sight. He liked being responsible for that smile. He wanted to keep being responsible for that smile if at all possible.

Grabbing the mugs, she glanced down the hall. “Should we make a cream soda float for Skylar? Or is she asleep already?”

“She’s out like a light. Lately she’s been doing that a lot. Unless she’s hanging out with her best friend, I can barely keep her awake long enough to rot her brain like a normal kid. Can’t remember the last time she’s stayed awake through a movie.”

“Have her doctors ruled that out as a symptom?” asked Tessa quietly.

Seeing her worried expression, he went with the whole truth, not the watered down version he usually gave Connor. “For now. Though we are adding it to the equation. But because she isn’t exhibiting any other social or psychological symptoms, we’re calling it basic adolescent fatigue. But monitoring it.”

“Good, I’m glad. She’s a good kid. You’ve done a great job raising her.”

“Thanks. It’s been a team effort.” Grabbing a handful of napkins along with some straws and spoons, he joined her and the two huge beer floats waiting for him at the dining table. He noticed she’d opted not to use the chocolate syrup or the whipped cream.

Probably for the best.

“Skylar really likes you,” he added. “Which says a lot.” He lifted his spoon to clink hers in a toast before giving the foamy concoction a try. “She was pretty pissed off on your behalf tonight. I didn’t realize it until Connor told me but while he was busy holding me back, Abby had to all but step on Skylar’s feet to hold her back as well.”

A small smile peeked through the cloud that had settled over her face at the mention of the night’s events. After taking a big sip of creamy beer, she said softly, “Brian, what that guy said earlier about my being a slutty high school dropout—”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t hide the shame in her voice, and that just made him want to hunt that asshole down all over again. “The guy’s a jerk. He—”

“—wasn’t lying.” Her voice shrunk smaller still. “Well, the slutty part is a gross exaggeration but the dropout part is true. I dropped out after my sophomore year. But I got my GED right away at a job that was practically full-time…” She paused the rush of words when his hand touched her forearm.

“Hey, slow down. I figured that was the case. From what Connor tells me, all you do is work. With all of your sister’s hospital bills, it can’t have been easy. I think it’s noble that you dropped out to help with the bills—”

“That wasn’t why I dropped out.”

“
I
WAS THE BAD SEED
.
”

The irony of that statement growing up had always been a bitter pill to swallow.

“Willow was the perfect daughter. She was kind and sweet, beautiful and talented, and just…perfect. In every way. She was my mom’s pride and joy. Willow started playing the piano when she four and she was a natural. Her piano teacher was a former child prodigy and after he took Willow under his wing, she became exceptional. By the time she was seven, she was composing her own music. I know there are more cases of that now, but back then, it was a really big deal. By the time she was ten, she was winning awards for her compositions.”

Remembering just how exceptional Willow had been filled Tessa with as much pride and happiness as it did pain. “But when Willow turned eleven, that’s when she started developing symptoms. I’d been six or seven at the time and while I don’t remember exactly when or how I learned about Willow having JHD, I do remember my mom crumbling to pieces. She just disintegrated. She went from being the envied stage mom to the pitied mother fighting to keep her daughter alive in—her perfect, talented daughter who was now unable to play the piano, unable to go to school, unable to do day-to-day functions.”

Tessa dragged in a breath, swallowing the lump in her throat she always got when she was hit with the fleeting memories of her sister playing the piano. The small, disjointed snippets recorded in her mind were the only things left of her sister’s music, since her mother had taken a drunken hammer to every homemade video of Willow’s concerts. Tessa never told Willow that, never told her father either. Sometimes she wondered if her mother even remembered because it had been Tessa who’d cleaned up the carnage, bagged it up and threw it out—all of her sister’s prize-winning memories.

“My mom wasn’t a bad mom. She was actually very good at taking care of Willow, though she’d hated every second of it. She’d hated being terrified and having had to provide CPR to her daughter until the paramedics arrived more times than she could count. She’d hated giving up her job, her friends, her whole life to take care of Willow every day. She’d hated the fact that the purpose of her days was solely about survival and not living.”

“And most of all, she’d really, really hated being a mother, specifically our mother.”

Brian took her hand, “Honey, I’m sure that wasn’t true.”

She shrugged sadly. “No, probably not. But she sure said it a lot to me. When she would remember me, that is. But I couldn’t blame her. Look at all she had to do. She didn’t have time to play with me, let alone remember my birthday or buy me Christmas presents. And with my dad working two jobs just to keep food on the table and medical bill collectors off of us month to month, I couldn’t go whine to him about it either. Not when Willow was there being just the best big sister a girl could ask for, even as she was suffering through the most horrible disease.”

Tessa remembered often how guilty she’d felt the few times she’d resented her sister. Moments of weakness, followed by several lifetimes of shame. There had been no one to take it all out on…so she’d taken it out on herself.

“From there, the start of my teen years was like a bad made-for-TV movie—hanging out with the wrong crowd, trying pot, skipping school, doing every stupid, self-destructive thing a kid could do…including having sex before I was ready.”

When she felt Brian tense in remembered rage beside her, she just focused on keeping down the bile that rose up to her throat whenever she thought about that night.

“What Gavin said about pulling a train—that simply wasn’t true. There was no way I would’ve done anything like what he described. That night at the lakes was my first time. I’d been drunk, and I’d been hurt, drunk mainly
because
I’d been hurting. But instead of getting the guy who waited for me outside of the church so he could give me a birthday cake with sixteen candles, I got the guy who took my virginity on top of an old blanket on the ground. The part that he did get right was when he said those two other girls at the party threw up all over the place…namely, on me.”

Head hanging down in shame, she finished, “And for the memorable finale, I went home later to find that my sister had been taken to the ER that night and had almost died.”