Hard Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 2) (7 page)

Chapter Six
Three weeks later

King kissed Callie goodbye on the cheek and watched her head off through the Heart Center. He turned to Noah.

“OK, man. Have a good day. Remember that Sarah and Jax can’t pick you guys up today, so Garrett will be here at three o’clock, yeah?”

“Yeah. King?”

“What’s up?”

“You understand women?”

King paused. “Well, Noah, I’ve been on this planet for almost thirty-five years, and just about the
last
thing I’d say that I understand is women.”

“Oh.” Noah turned to go.

“Wait, hold up. I was trying to be funny.”

“Yes?”

“Yeah.”

“You weren’t.”

“Sorry.”

“So you understand women?”

“A bit. What do you want to know?”

Noah looked at Callie’s retreating back. “How can I be a boyfriend?”

King cocked his head, intrigued at the turn this conversation had just taken. “You like a woman, Noah?”

“Yes. But I won’t tell you who.”

“OK. Keep that to yourself for now.”

“OK.”

“And you want her for a girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

King stared at Noah for a few seconds, trying to think how to handle this situation. “Sit down, man.”

They sat, Noah gazing at King steadily.

“OK.” King cleared his throat. “You sure you like her?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you…ummm…” King hesitated. “What would you like to do with her?”

Noah blinked. “Be her boyfriend.”

“Oh, right. Uh. So you want to – to kiss her?” It was surreal talking about his niece like this, but dammit, King was going to take one for the team. “Touch her?”

“No.”

“…No?”

“
No
.” Noah was very adamant on this point, King saw.

“So what do you want to do with her, then?”

“Be her boyfriend.”

“I think you need to tell me what that means to you, Noah.”

“Stand next to her. Talk to her.” Noah thought for a few seconds. “Tell her she’s pretty.”

King had the sudden and overwhelming urge to hug Noah. “Is that what having a girlfriend is all about?”

“Yes. Sarah and Jax do all that.”

“Yeah, they do, don’t they?”

“They’re happy. They laugh.”

“You want a woman to make you happy?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I want to make
her
happy.”

King felt a lump in his throat as he stared at Noah’s earnest face. God, his words were echoing King’s most secret thoughts about Naomi, and he was stunned at the simplicity and the beauty of what Noah wanted to give Callie. He wanted to stand close to her, and talk to her, and say nice things, and give her happiness.
Just happiness.
Such small things; such huge fucking things.

I think Noah’s got this all figured out. Hell, I may even learn a thing or two here.

“OK, well.” King thought for a few seconds. “Do you talk to her?”

“No.”

Yeah, that’s true. They sneak little glimpses at each other in the back seat and never say a damn word. Not one word in almost a month.

“How come?”

Noah shrugged.

“You’re scared to talk to her?”

“A bit.”

“Completely normal.”

“Normal?”

“I promise you it is. When you really like a woman, it makes you nervous to be around her.”

“Not helpful. Makes it harder to be a boyfriend.”

“I totally agree,” King said. “That’s why you have to be brave, and you have to be honest with her about how you feel.”

“Tell her?”

“Yes. You tell her that you like her.”

“Then?”

“Then I don’t know.” This was the part that also had King stumped about Naomi. “Sometimes she likes you back and you can be happy together. But sometimes, she likes someone else. Or she doesn’t want a boyfriend. Then, it can be hard.”

“Because you can’t be happy with her?”

Damn, Noah really gets this, huh?

“Exactly. Because you can’t be happy with her.”

The two men gazed at each other.

“If I don’t tell her, I can’t know,” Noah said slowly. “But if I tell her, maybe I’m sad.”

“Yep. That’s the eternal conundrum.”

Noah looked puzzled.

“I mean, that’s the risk you have to decide if you want to take,” King said. “You need to decide if you like her enough to maybe be sad when she says no.”

“And maybe happy when she says yes.”

“Right.” King smiled. “She might say yes.”

“If I’m honest, maybe she’ll say yes.”

"Yep. Maybe."

Come on, man. She might say yes if you’re honest. The answer may be yes.

Am I talking to Noah or to myself?

**

Naomi hesitated when she saw her mother’s number come up on her cell phone. Her first instinct – as always – was to avoid the call. But one thing she’d learned over the past eight months was to face things head-on… most especially the things that she most wanted to duck away from. Her Mom topped that list, no doubt about it.

She grabbed her new eight-month sobriety coin from her purse and squeezed it, drawing strength. This one was red and she thought that in some ways, it was the most hard-earned one yet. Seeing Matt three or four times a week when he dropped Callie and Noah off was wreaking havoc on her head and her heart.

He never stopped surprising her – in good ways. Despite what Reena and Mitch had told her about his man-whoring ways, she still longed to drop her guard with him, to flirt back just a little bit. Because
dear
God
, the man flirted. He flirted like it was an Olympic event and he was going for the damn gold.

Amazingly, it was nothing sleazy or offensive. Instead he was engaged in a pretty unrelenting campaign of the good, old-fashioned approach of being sexy and charming as hell. He talked to her, he complimented her. He asked about the plans for expansion on the center, he offered some ideas. He made her laugh, he made her feel beautiful. And he confused her the whole fucking time that he did so, since she knew it all meant less than nothing to Matt Kingston. She was just one more woman to pass the time with.

Pushing aside thoughts of Matt, Naomi picked up her phone. “Hi, Mom.”

“Naomi.” Yep, her Mom was slurring at nine o’clock in the morning and Naomi gripped the chip tighter. “He cheated on me.”

She closed her eyes. “Bruce?”

“Yeah. The bastard fucking
cheated
on me… I found out last night.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mom. You doing OK?”

A loud bark of laughter made her move the phone away from her ear. “Are you fucking serious?
Of
course
I’m not OK! Didn’t you hear what I said? He cheated on me!”

“I know.”

“Yeah, the fuckers are all the same, baby girl… you remember that, OK? All men are the same – all cheaters. Your father, and every single guy I’ve known since then. Liars, cheaters, assholes.”

Naomi stayed silent in the face of this all-too-familiar diatribe. She could recite it by heart and word-for-word, God knows. She’d been listening to it since she was six years old.

“Your father.” Her mother’s voice was a hiss now, and Naomi braced herself for what was coming. “That fucking piece of shit. Stuck his pathetic little dick in anything that moved, then up and abandoned me.”

Abandoned
us
, Mom.

“Cleaned out the bank account, took my mama’s jewelry, took my rings. Left me high-and-dry with nothing but a mouth to feed.”

You mean
me
, Mom.

“Not a word since… and God knows, no money. Why do I keep trusting these bastards, baby girl? Why?”

“Are you at home?” Naomi asked, trying to refocus her.

“Nope.”

“You’re still at the bar?”

“Yep. Can you come and get me?”

Naomi dug deep for the courage to have the next phase of this conversation. Sure, there had been a time when she’d have rushed out of there like a bat out of hell, rescued her mother from whatever mess she’d landed herself in, paid her bar tab and offered apologies all around.

She’d have driven Mom home, fed her, plied her with aspirin and water, coaxed her in to a shower and then in to bed. She’d have spent hours listening to her mother rail against whatever the issue of the moment was – and whatever it was, it
always
ended with a rant about Naomi’s father – and she’d have emerged from it all shattered and stressed. Then she’d have gone to the bar herself, all ready to explode like a pressure cooker, and convinced herself that she deserved
just
one
drink
. It was never just one drink.

Boundaries… you need to set them, you need to make sure you enforce them. It’s Mom’s choice to be drunk at nine a.m. – just like it’s your choice
not
to be. Not anymore. You can’t save her, and you can’t force her to see. All you can do is protect yourself and your sobriety.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m at work and I can’t come get you.”

“What – you’re gonna just leave me here?”

“You got yourself there, you’ll get yourself home.”

“You goddamned ungrateful little whore. After everything I put up with from you, you’re really gonna do this to me?”

Naomi flinched. After twenty-five years of it, she should be used to this part by now, but she wasn’t. The worst of it was that Mom would have no memory of the insults she had hurled; they would be Naomi’s alone to have to work through on the nights that sleep was elusive.

“I’m going now, Mom. Be safe. I love you.”

“You fucking
–
”

Naomi disconnected, shaking and teary. It just never got better, never got easier.

This
is one of the reasons that you drank, remember. To make these feelings go away, to hide from feeling so alone and unloved. But feeling those things isn’t going to kill you. It hurts like hell, but you
can
hurt badly and still draw breath. You’re strong enough to hurt and not medicate it away. Just let yourself hurt.

Naomi heard a knock at her office door and she looked up in horror. She quickly wiped her cheeks, slid her coin under a stack of papers, and sat up straight in her chair.

“Come in!” she called, trying to sound normal.

The door opened and there stood Matt. She almost crumpled at the sight of him, so large and solid and gorgeous in the morning sun. She wanted to have him hold her,
right now
, to make her feel something other than unwanted and small. She was sure he’d take her in those arms if she asked him to.

OK. Time to put on the game face, girl. Hide it all from him.

King took one look at her and quickly shut the door behind him. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, of course.” She tried to smile. “What’s up?”

Not buying it for even a nanosecond, he came closer. “What happened, Naomi? Tell me.”

No sense in lying, she saw. She sighed. “I – I just got an upsetting phone call.”

“Upsetting how?”

“My mother. She’s not well.”

He stood right next to her now, his massive frame making her feel even smaller in her chair. She stood up, then wished that she hadn’t. That broad chest was smack in front of her, and all she saw was his strength and warmth – the two things that she craved the most right now.

“Not well?” That rough voice was concerned, caring. “She’s in the hospital?”

“No.” Naomi bit her lip. “She’s not well mentally and emotionally. She’s – she’s a troubled person. She has – problems.”

“Ah.” King studied her. “Is she OK? Do you want me to take you to her?”

“Oh, no. No, thank you. That would actually be the worst thing for me to do right now. She needs to take some responsibility for her own care, and having me rush over there and save her from her most recent tailspin would only result in her not doing exactly that.” She paused, wondering how honest to be with him, then decided what the hell. “I spent years riding to the rescue and it accomplished exactly nothing, believe me. In fact, it probably made her worse. I have to let her ask for help when she’s ready. I have to wait.”

King thought about Janine, and how hard it was for him to just stand there and watch her self-destruct. Every single time he saw her, he felt helpless and angry at her for not taking care of herself the way she knew she should. He knew she was ill and his frustration was tempered with compassion, but still, he was upset by her. And if he felt this way about a woman he’d casually dated for all of six weeks, how must Naomi feel about her mother?

“I’m sorry, honey. That’s tough.”

Tears sprang to her eyes again at the endearment, and she wondered why she didn’t mind it this time. She quite
liked
it, if truth be told.

“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “It is.”

King stared down at her, saw her trembling and her tears. Every inch of his body longed to soothe and comfort Naomi, but he still had no clue where the boundaries and borders were with her.

For the past few weeks, he’d been bringing Callie and Noah to the Heart Center three or four times a week, and he had made a point of talking to Naomi every chance he got. If she wasn’t out in the open area, he’d come to her office on some pretext. He’d been relaxed and warm, desperate to get her to see him as non-threatening. King knew that he was a scary son-of-a-bitch, and he knew that because he’d worked damn hard to be one.

In his business – both of them – his size and demeanor were basic job requirements. But when dealing with a woman like Naomi, these things were very unhelpful in getting her to trust him, to see him as safe. And what King had come to want, more than just about anything, was for Naomi to see him as a man she could be with. A man who wanted to make her happy, because she made him happy.

She made him laugh like nobody ever had, not in the whole of his life. He was a surly, scowling bastard most of the time, but around her, he just lightened up. He liked her gentle teasing, her smart humor. And God knows, he loved her generous heart: the way she worked for her artists was nothing short of astonishing. Naomi gave and gave and then gave some more, and the thought of anyone hurting her or taking advantage of her made him insane. She deserved better.