Jacked Up (21 page)

What the frickin-frack was the matter with her?

“Hey.” Nolan looked down at her, his hand stroking her hair off her forehead. “In case you didn’t know, you’re beautiful.”

She really did start crying then. Maybe she was just tired. Maybe it was her hangover. Maybe it was the stress of dealing with everyone’s reaction. Not only was there her family, but Nolan’s mother apparently hated her guts.

Or maybe it was love. Was it love if a man could make you cry with his thoughtfulness?

Was it love if you could allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of him?

She didn’t know.

But as he wiped the tears rolling down her cheeks with his callused thumb, Eve knew she wasn’t ready to file any annulment papers just yet.

* * *

NOLAN
knocked on the bathroom door and opened it a crack. Eve was still in the bathtub, bubbles up to her chin, several empty candy bar wrappers on the ledge next to her. “Do you need anything?”

“I wouldn’t mind another candy bar,” she said, hair piled high on her head with a rubber band. “Something with peanut butter in it.”

“Sure.” Nolan hid his grin. Eve wasn’t much of a drinker, but it seemed she sure loved her chocolate. Especially when she had a hangover. “Can I get in the tub with you?”

There was a slight pause as she licked a flake on chocolate off her finger. “Are you going to try to have sex with me? Because I’m not really in the mood.”

“Wow, we really are married,” he teased her. “Twenty-four hours in and you already won’t put out.”

The look she cut him was so scathing he had to laugh. “If you want to have sex with a rag doll, go for it, jackass.”

Tender Eve, who had made an appearance in the cab, was gone again. This Eve he knew and understood. A crying Eve had almost made him panic. He hadn’t known what to do. But this sarcasm, this he could deal with. “Maybe I dig rag doll sex. And maybe you know that I was kidding.”

She threw a balled-up wrapper at him. It missed by a mile. “You’re a lousy shot. Now scoot your ass over. I’m coming in.”

Nolan stripped his shirt off as he went back into the hotel room for the requested candy. He grabbed a jumbo peanut butter cup pack and two bottles of soda and headed back. Plunking the spoils down next to her right arm, he took off his jeans and stepped into the tub on the opposite end from Eve.

“You don’t wear underwear very often, do you?” she asked.

He closed his eyes briefly as he sank into the hot water. Damn, that felt good. “Nope. It’s overrated.”

“Don’t you risk injury?”

“Nope. I don’t work out commando, it’s just for my days off.”

“And when you have a fire retardant suit on.”

“Yep. Those things are snug. I’m in no danger of racking myself.” He tickled her foot, which was next to his hip. “Why are we talking about my nuts? Don’t turn me on if you’re not going to follow through.”

“Talking about your nuts turns you on?” She tore the candy wrapper open with her teeth.

“Everything about you turns me on. Like right now, using your teeth, turns me on.” He wasn’t lying. Just seeing the aggressive biting had him working on a boner.

She licked her lips.

“Even worse,” he told her. “Look.” His erection had broken free of the bubbles and was aiming for the sky.

“I have a way of making that go away. Hey, what happens when we get home on Monday?”

Trust Eve to cut to the chase. “What do you mean?” Even though he knew exactly what she meant.

“We’re married. What do we do with that back in Charlotte?”

This was a trick question, and he suspected no matter what he said, it would be wrong. So he just shrugged. “We be married.”

She flung a handful of bubbles at him.

“Quit throwing shit at me,” he told her. “You’re going to give me a complex.”

Eve snorted. “Right. I mean, I don’t even know where you live. We haven’t planned anything.”

“Planning is as overrated as underwear. My apartment is small and crappy and I can either break my lease or see if Rhett wants to take it over since you own your place. I can split your mortgage payment with you and the other bills.”

“My mortgage is twenty-five hundred a month.”

Nolan almost drowned in the tub water. Was she serious? “Um. Really? My rent’s six hundred.” He couldn’t double that. He wouldn’t be able to make his truck payments. Or buy food. But he didn’t want to admit that.

She looked as uncomfortable with the conversation as he felt. “You could give me six hundred and I could use it for all the other bills and I could just keep the condo in my name only.”

He hadn’t even thought about adding his name to her condo. That didn’t seem right, since it was her place, so he nodded. “Sure, sure, that would work. So what is your schedule like? When should I move in? If Rhett wants to sublet my apartment, I’ll just leave all my furniture there. It’s not exactly your style and your condo looks perfect the way it is.” He wasn’t going to mess up her space with his flea market finds and hand-me-down furniture.

“Oh, okay, sounds good.” She looked super relieved. “If you’re just bringing clothes and personal stuff, whenever you want. I have a full workload this week, but then I always do.”

“Next weekend is the derby.” Nolan was still a little stunned by the steep cost of her mortgage. She hadn’t blinked when she’d said it, and maybe he was living out of touch with reality, but it just seemed to him like that was a hell of a lot of money for a single woman to be shelling out every month. “Think you can make it?”

“Sure.” Though she looked less than thrilled with the prospect.

Nolan remembered her feelings on being a cheerleader. He almost told her she didn’t have to come, but then he decided that he wanted her there, so why should he pretend he didn’t? If they were going to be married, which they were, then they had to spend time together. Support each other. Live together.

His foot brushed between her thighs.

Have sex.

That’s what married people did. Despite the jokes, studies showed married couples were getting it on more frequently than singles did. It made sense given the convenience factor. He wanted to conveniently have a lot of sex with Eve.

“Watch it, Ford,” she told him.

“What? This tub isn’t that big. I needed to stretch.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

He winked at her. “But a wonderful lover.”

“Oh, Lord,” was her thought on that.

But damned if her slippery little fingers didn’t reach out and stroke his cock.

By the time she was done with him, they were both wrinkled like a couple of raisins and were as limp as the rag doll she had claimed to be.

So far, he had no complaints about marriage whatsoever.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

EVE
glanced at her watch as they stood at the desk, waiting to check out. They were going to store their things in Elec’s coach since they were both flying back to Charlotte that night. They’d grab their bags after the race and head to the airport. It was nine in the morning. They had plenty of time, but she was still impatient. Worried. She sincerely hoped there wouldn’t be anyone in the media asking her any questions about her marriage. It probably wasn’t newsworthy. Her coworkers would be ribbing her, she was sure. But at least the crew had said their piece the day before.

As they reached the counter and Eve gave her room number, the clerk asked if she wanted to use the card she had given at check-in.

“Sure, that’s fine.”

“Here, let me get it,” Nolan said, pulling out his wallet.

Eve was startled. “No, the company is paying for it. This is a business expense.”

“Our room service was a couple hundred bucks. At least let me pay that.”

It seemed important to him for whatever testosterone-driven reason, so Eve agreed. “Okay, thanks.”

She was back to fiddling with her phone, checking e-mail, when she realized there was a problem. “What’s wrong?”

The clerk was punching numbers repeatedly. “His card has been declined, Ms. Monroe.”

Oh, shit. Eve knew that it was possible it was a weird electronic glitch, but given the look on Nolan’s face, that wasn’t the case. She tried to brush it off. “Just put it all on my business card then.” She turned to Nolan. “You should call your credit card company. Sometimes when you travel they put a freeze on it if it seems like an unusual charge.”

She meant it to soothe his ego, because she suspected his card was maxed out. But somehow he managed to take her words as an insult as well.

“Yeah, I guess this isn’t my usual scene. The Motel 6 is more my speed.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant how often do you come to Vegas? Credit card companies watch your patterns, and if you’re traveling and they don’t know it, they’ll put a freeze on your card.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Nolan slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. “Thanks for buying our wedding dinner.”

Oh, God, was she going to have to deal with this all the time? She was sympathetic to ego, but at the same time she wasn’t going to feel bad because she could afford a dinner here and there. “Hey, guess what?” she told him as they’d left the desk, the clerk looking noticeably uncomfortable. “I’m successful in my career and I’m not going to apologize for it. You are too, I might add. Hundreds of guys would kill to be a pro jackman. I doubt I make that much more than you do at the end of the day. So drop the macho bullshit and get over it if I pay for my share.”

“Remember that conversation we had way back when about telling people something honest but with a little sugar thrown on top?” He slapped the hotel door open, waving off the bellman. “That wasn’t it.”

“So sue me.” She stomped out after him, wearing a stupid skirt with tights and booties to go to the track. Her feet hurt and she was exhausted from all the freaking congratulations she had heard the previous day. Did everyone and their mother have to seek her out to comment on her nuptials? Apparently yes, and she wasn’t good at doing the pretty. Never had been. She was better at opening up an engine and taking a curve on two wheels. Not wearing stupid tights and smiling at people who thought she was stupid for marrying Nolan. “Or divorce me.”

Okay, that was childish. She knew it. But it slid out before she could stop it.

He whirled around on her. “Oh, is that how it’s going to be? Every time we disagree about something you’re going to throw that in my face? Don’t be passive-aggressive. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Why don’t you sleep at your place tonight? Does that suit me?”

“Whatever.”

“Don’t whatever me.” That was the one thing guaranteed to piss her off. Okay, a lot of things were guaranteed to piss her off. But that one always did it.

Nolan opened the door of a cab and gestured for her to get in.

She hesitated, well aware she was being irrational.

“Get your ass in the cab or I’ll throw it in there.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” The idea kind of stole some of her anger and turned her on a little. She had to admit, she liked that he didn’t cower under her venom.

“Are you daring me?”

“Yes.”

Nolan threw his bag in the backseat, then he picked her up by her upper thighs and flung her over his shoulder.

Holy crap. Eve grabbed on to his waist, terrified she was going to fall onto the concrete. But that was superseded by the sheer hotness factor of what he had just done. He’d picked her up like she weighed no more than a kitten. He wasn’t stomping off washing his hands of her, nor was he tolerating what she knew was completely bitchy behavior.

Her husband was a hottie, no doubt about it. She was face-first into the ass of his jeans. She went with impulse and bit his butt cheek.

“Jesus!” He jerked forward a little. “Do you want me to drop you?”

“No,” she murmured, squeezing the backs of his thighs a little. His muscular body was truly a work of art.

Her view changed as he lifted her into the cab. She landed on the seat on her back. “Mmm, strongman,” she told him, licking her lips. Regardless of the driver in the front seat, she was seriously hoping he was going to cover her body with his and kiss her spitless.

He climbed in beside her and slammed the door shut. “I have to be to handle you.”

Mood ruined. Eve sat up and crossed her arms over her chest. She could say what she wanted to, but that would just make her sound petty, so she kept very quiet and very still.

“Nothing to say?”

“Nope. Not a thing.”

“There’s a first.”

Eve decided the problem was when you got married impulsively, you then treated every day as a possible breaking point for your relationship. It wasn’t healthy.

Because in the last thirty-six hours she had decided to annul her marriage about six times then waffled and changed her mind.

She was back to wanting to make the whole thing go away.

* * *

NOLAN
didn’t go away. He moved into her condo with two duffel bags of clothes, mostly jeans and T-shirts since he didn’t appear to own a whole lot of underwear. There were four pairs of sneakers suddenly in her closet, which was insane, because who needed four pairs of sneakers, but Eve was handling it. As long as they didn’t talk about the future, she was okay with it all, for the most part.

The sex was great. Getting laid every night was working for her.

And a secret part of her couldn’t help being pleased that he was still hanging in there, that he had married her and seemed to actually like her.

It was weird, but there it was.

Now they were on their way to her parents’ house on Wednesday for a dinner with Nolan’s family. Her mother had insisted on doing it, even though Eve had explained that Nolan’s family wasn’t exactly small. But her mother had thought it would be beyond rude not to know the parents of her son-in-law.

Eve didn’t bother to point out that she didn’t even know her son-in-law.

“I hope your mom is okay with this,” Nolan said as he pulled his truck into her parents’ driveway. “There’s almost thirty of us showing up here tonight.”

“There’s only nine of us, so the Fords definitely outnumber the Monroes, but I warned my mom. She’s all jazzed about it. After the initial shock, she’s all on board with the fact that I won’t be an old maid after all. I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts hinting that we should have children.”

He grinned at her. “My mother told me not to knock you up.”

“Fabulous. Everyone is involved in our sex life.”

“That’s reproduction. Our sex life has nothing to do with that.” His eyebrows went up and down. “Our smoking hot sex life.”

“That it is.” She couldn’t deny that they were burning up her sheets every night.

“It’s the best thing about living together.” He immediately seemed to realize how that sounded. “I mean, after waking up next to you every morning.”

“Epic fail,” she told him. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

He leaned over and gave her a loud smacking kiss, nearly giving her whiplash. “I love you,” he told her.

“I actually love you, too,” she said, still marveling over that fact. But there was no other man she had ever met who she would let hug her the way Nolan did.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not.” She was.

“I think we’re late.” The driveway looked like a used car lot. Nolan wasn’t going to be nervous about seeing his in-laws again. He refused. They were either going to like him or not, and there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about that. They had seemed friendly enough at Eve’s birthday party, but that was before he’d up and married their daughter. So he wasn’t really expecting them to be overjoyed, but obviously Mrs. Monroe wanted to make an effort, since this dinner party was her idea. Though she might already be regretting it, since his nieces and nephews were probably destroying the Monroes’ house as they spoke.

“It’s not my fault you wanted to have sex.”

“Yeah, I can take the fall for that one.” He’d managed to get Eve to put her ankles on his shoulders. That was worth being late for.

When he stepped into the house behind Eve, he was greeted by a fair amount of chaos and the smell of chili in the air.

His niece Asher raced up to him. “Hi!” She jumped into the arms he wasn’t holding out yet. Good thing he had quick reflexes. As he held her squirming form, he marveled that kids were so trusting, so sure no harm would befall them.

Had Eve been like that as a girl? Somehow he thought she had been. So when had she become such a worrier? He saw it, how she internalized all of her stress, her fears, her concerns. They took up residence in her eyes and her forehead, and he wanted to just hold on to her shoulders and absorb some of that away from her. She was doing it now—worrying. Her hands were crammed in the pockets of her black dress pants as she scanned the room.

“Asher, this is Eve, my new wife. Eve, this is Asher, who’s thirteen.”

Asher giggled. “I am not. I’m seven, Uncle Nolan.”

“Oh, that’s right! It’s Georgia who’s thirteen.”

“She’s only three!” Asher punched him in the stomach.

“Geez, you’re not Asher, you’re Rocky.” He swatted her on the butt and said, “Go play.”

She ran off. “I hope your parents aren’t fond of their carpet,” he told Eve.

“They did raise two boys and me, who was half boy. I’m sure they’re fine. And now we have Pete and Hunter here from time to time and my mom loves it. I’m sure she’s thrilled.”

Eve’s mother did look like she was enjoying herself. She was on the couch talking to his mother, who seemed content if not exactly overjoyed. There were no men in the room at all, just Nolan’s sisters and Tamara. Children ran all over the place, ranging from toddlers to tweens. His nephew Owen was crying at the top of his lungs.

Eve greeted her mother with a wave. Nolan kissed his mother on the cheek. Then because it seemed appropriate, he did the same to Eve’s mother. Mrs. Monroe looked up at him in surprise. “Well, nice to see you again, Nolan. You sure had us fooled the other night. We thought you were just planning a birthday party for Eve, not a sketchy Vegas wedding.”

“Mom.” Eve gave her mother a warning look before turning to his mother. “Hi, Mrs. Ford, it’s good to see you again.”

“Kind of unusual circumstances, isn’t it?” his mother said, and if Nolan wasn’t mistaken, she was eyeing Eve’s middle like she could ascertain if there was a baby growing in there.

Yeah, this was going to be a fun night. Nolan said, “Well, it looks like everyone made it. I really appreciate them being here.”

“It was short notice,” his mother said. “But then the marriage was short notice.”

“Yep,” he said cheerfully, determined to bluster his way through this. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Monroe, for hosting this.”

“Remember, call me Cindy, especially now that you’re married to my daughter.”

“Excellent, Cindy.”

Eve looked distracted. She kept glancing over at Owen, who was squalling so loud they all had to raise their voices. Owen was on his mother’s lap and she was jiggling him and shushing him, but it wasn’t having any effect.

“Can I hold him?” Eve asked.

“Absolutely,” she said, holding her son out with relief. “I’m Dawn, by the way. One of the middle sisters. And this is Owen, who is usually much cuter.”

“How old is he?”

“Ten months.”

“He’s adorable.” Eve took him and shushed him and swayed back and forth, making funny faces until Owen stopped crying and just stared at her, probably wondering who the hell was holding him.

It did something weird to his gut to see Eve looking maternal. He’d never seen this side of her, and it was eye-opening. She looked . . . peaceful.

He sank down onto the couch next to his mother, the rug metaphorically pulled out from under him. God, he really did love Eve. How was that possible? He kept knowing it was true, yet he kept questioning how he could feel this much after such a short period of time. But the more he learned about her, the more deeply he fell in love with her, even when she was trying to annoy him.

His face must have revealed something, because when Eve glanced over at him, she blushed. “I do like babies.” She might as well have added, “What of it?” to the end of her sentence.

“You’re good with him,” Nolan murmured. “My eardrums thank you.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” his mother said. “Let us all recover from the shock of your elopement before you throw a baby into the mix.”

Nice. “Mom, please.”

Eve’s mother laughed. “I don’t think babies are the first thing on Eve’s to-do list.”

The words seemed to have the opposite effect her mother intended. Eve made a face and it made Nolan wonder how much her family knew about what made Eve happy. Hell, what did he know about it?

Unnerved by his thoughts in general, he asked his mother, “Where is Dad and Mr. Monroe? I want to say hi.”

“They’re in the backyard starting a bonfire for after dinner. We’ll be eating in a few minutes,” Cindy said. “Tell them to come back in, please.”