Playing with Temptation (11 page)

“Always.” June waved a hand in exasperation. “Half the girls in here swoon like Southern belles every time he comes through those doors or he says hello to them. I think he broke some hearts when they saw him walk in with you today.”

Smiling, Raina poured fresh cream into her coffee, added a packet of sugar, and stirred it all together. “Tell them not to worry, he’s still on the market.”

June sent a frown Logan’s way. “Then you’re not trying hard enough to impress her,” she said, chastising him. “You’re gonna need to step up your game with this one and not rely on just your good looks and charm if you want to keep her around.”

The woman was old enough to be his grandmother, and she liked to bust his chops. Logan didn’t mind—June’s personality reminded him of growing up and his own feisty grandmother, who’d raised him and his sister after their parents had died in a car accident.

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled, trying to keep his amusement under wraps. “No worries. I have every intention of stepping up my game with Raina.” In fact, he couldn’t wait until Raina saw what he had in store for her tonight—shameless, erotic
games
that would have her at his complete mercy.

Probably not the romance and flowers that June was insinuating, but it worked for him and Raina and the affair they’d agreed to.

June moved on to a nearby table to refill other customers’ coffee mugs, and Raina laughed lightly and shook her head. “Wow, she’s a real firecracker.”

“Yes, she is.” He added a splash of cream to his own coffee and took a drink. “She’s always threatening to find me a nice, sweet, good girl to date and settle down with.”

“And why not?” Raina’s tone was flippant yet laced with something he could only describe as caustic. “That’s exactly the kind of girl every guy wants to take home to meet the family.”

“Not me,” he said, suddenly feeling as though he were treading through an emotional mine field of some sort and uncertain as to what might set her off. “I’m not into sweet or good girls.” Not since he’d been burned by one. “I like them bad and wicked,” he teased.

“Most guys do, until the novelty wears off.” She gave him a tight, forced smile, then picked up her menu so he could no longer see her face, but not before he caught a glimpse of hurt in her eyes.

He resisted the urge to pull the menu down and ask her what she meant by the comment, because he’d bet everything he owned that it had come from a place of personal experience. He really wanted to know what had prompted such a sharp reply, but he didn’t feel like this was the time or place to push for an answer that clearly was an emotional hot button for her.

He already knew what he wanted for breakfast, so he set aside his menu and waited for Raina to do the same. June came by again, took their orders, refilled their coffee cups, and continued serving her other customers, as well. The phone Raina had left on the table pinged, and she picked it up, punched in a passcode, and read whatever message had come through.

After a moment, she lifted her gaze to him. “I’m sorry. I hate being one of those people who are constantly checking their phones at a restaurant, but I need to answer this email from a customer who has a question about wanting to order something off the website.”

“Go right ahead.” He leaned back in the booth and drank his coffee while she typed out a response.

Actually, he didn’t mind having a couple of minutes to just take in everything about her. Today she’d worn her blonde hair down in soft waves, just like she had at The Players Club, and he could easily remember how those silky strands had felt sliding through his fingers and wrapped around his fist. She wore minimal makeup, her smooth, rosy complexion giving her a girl-next-door kind of appearance that attracted him just as much as the temptress she’d been that first night he’d met her.

Her brow was furrowed in concentration as her fingers tapped across the phone’s keyboard and tended to a customer online. Having spent all of yesterday at Sugar and Spice, Logan had seen firsthand just how hard she worked, how dedicated she was to her job, and how serious she was about maintaining a respectable adult toy store that was classy, tastefully decorated, and one that customers found warm, friendly, and inviting.

She had a great connection with her customers, chatting with regular clients and helping new ones with their purchases in a way that made them feel comfortable and at ease. While he was impressed by her obvious success, he was curious to know what had prompted her to open up a business in an industry that provided adult products and erotic toys that ranged from the mild to triple X-rated.

As soon as she sent off her email and set her phone back on the table, he posed the question. “What made you open up an adult boutique?”

She eyed him guardedly, as if debating whether or not to have this discussion with him. It was the same hesitant response she’d had when he’d asked her yesterday where she worked and she’d at first been defensive about her shop. He supposed it was a knee-jerk reaction, because she probably dealt with narrow-minded people who didn’t hesitate to criticize or condemn her.

“I’m not judging you, Raina. Remember, I’m the guy with a membership to The Players Club that features more kink and fetish items than your store,” he teased good-naturedly and watched as her stiffened shoulders relaxed. “Everyone has a motivating factor in life that leads them down a certain path, whether it’s planned or not, and I’m genuinely curious to know what the catalyst was for how you ended up in the business.”

“Opening an adult toy store wasn’t something I’d planned on doing with my life,” she said with a too-casual shrug. “It just happened out of necessity.”

He tipped his head, refusing to let it go at such a vague answer. “What was the necessity?” He was no longer just curious…he had this burning need to know everything about her. She fascinated him on so many levels and drew him in ways no woman ever had with her combination of feminine strength, independence, and determination.

Which shocked the hell out of him. At one time in his life, he would have sworn he preferred a more passive, docile type of woman, the kind who would be happy to stay at home and be a wife and mother to their kids. The kind of soft, gentle woman he could take care of and she’d want for nothing because he would provide everything. Just as his father had treated his mother.

Except his
everything
hadn’t been enough for the woman he’d thought he’d marry.

He pushed those thoughts from his head and watched as Raina reached out and toyed with her fork, mulling over the question he’d just asked her. Then she gave him a half-hearted smile. “It’s actually a pretty depressing story.”

The shadows he glimpsed in her gaze made his chest squeeze tight. “Doesn’t matter. I want to hear the story. All of it.”

Raina stared at Logan for a long moment, completely swayed by the genuine sincerity in his voice and eyes. She couldn’t recall the last man who’d been interested in knowing about her past, about her personally, or beyond the woman who owned an adult novelty store. Not even her fiancé had known the gritty, painful details of her family’s dysfunctional dynamics—he’d never asked, and she’d always been too ashamed to bring it up herself.

Looking back, she should have seen that as a huge red flag, but she’d truly wanted to believe that Derek was different. Instead, he’d proved that he was no better than the other man in her life, her father, who’d judged her, condemned her, and ostracized her.

She exhaled a deep breath, and before she changed her mind, she spoke. “The summer after I graduated high school, about two weeks after I turned eighteen, my father kicked me out of the mobile home we lived in at a trailer park with nothing more than the clothes on my back.”

“Why?” he asked, looking as appalled as he sounded.

“Because he caught me making out with my boyfriend on the living room couch.”

She saw Logan’s confusion and went on to explain, because her father’s illness had led up to that dark, horrible night when her entire life had changed. “My dad was bipolar, but he never stayed on his meds for long, so he was constantly going through severe mood swings from extreme depression to these horrible manic episodes that sometimes lasted weeks. The depression was difficult enough to deal with, because when he was going through one of those phases, he was suicidal and would just sleep for days. During those times, it was easier for my mother and me to get him back on his medication, but as soon as he started feeling better, he’d insist he was fine and didn’t need any treatment, and the manic-depressive cycle would start all over again.”

“Jesus,” Logan said and scrubbed a hand along his clenched jaw. “That sounds intense.”

“It was.” She wrapped her hands around her coffee mug, figuring she’d come this far, why not share the rest of her family’s nasty secret? “Those manic phases were awful,” she went on, feeling her stomach churn when she thought about the terrifying things her mother, and her, had gone through. “He’d become paranoid and delusional, and it didn’t take much to set him off into a rage, which was always focused on me and my mother. He’d yell and throw things, and sometimes it even got physical. We just never knew when he was going to explode, and it was a constant cycle of crazy and madness.”

She gave a bitter laugh and shook her head. “Most of the time, he was mean and controlling. He was always accusing my mother of cheating on him and screamed at her that she was a slut and a whore, when I knew for a fact
he
was screwing another woman who lived in the trailer park where we lived. Whatever he was paranoid about, he’d turn it around on my mother and blame
her
for his shitty behavior.”

June came up to their table, startling Raina since she was so wrapped up in their conversation and the past. She placed a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and fresh fruit in front of Raina and served Logan his chicken-fried steak, eggs, and biscuits and gravy. The man hadn’t lied when he said he was ravenous in the mornings after his workouts.

Their waitress topped off their coffees, made sure they had everything they needed, then was gone again.

Logan cut into his crispy fillet and didn’t hesitate to ask a personal question. “Why didn’t your mother leave your father and take you with her?”

Despite the oppressive memories, Raina was hungry and needed something in her stomach for the long day ahead at the shop. She ate a bite of eggs and answered Logan’s question.

“My mother was meek and mild and scared of my father and the threats he made when he was manic.” Now that she was years removed from the situation, her mother’s weakness just made her feel sad. “She constantly made excuses for my father’s mood swings, and even when I told her about my father screwing the trailer park whore, she didn’t react. I think she was honestly relieved that he was getting it elsewhere so he would leave her alone.”

“What happened that night with your boyfriend?” he asked as he dug into his biscuits and gravy.

“Well, that night my parents were at church,” she said and nearly chuckled at the incredulous look on Logan’s face, because that image totally contradicted the man she’d just described. “Yeah, he was a hypocrite and wanted everyone else to believe he was a good Christian. And I suppose, in his deluded, bipolar mind,
he
believed it, too.”

“That is
so
fucked up,” Logan said and shook his head in disgust.

She laughed at his succinct reply, and the release actually felt good. What also felt good was how relaxed and comfortable he made her feel, even when she was dredging up the most painful events of her life. Talking about it lightened something in her chest, made her breathe easier and feel as if she was gradually setting something horrible free from deep inside of her.

“I’d been dating this guy for a few weeks, and that night he came over and we started making out like teenagers do,” she said and took a bite of melon, the sweet taste counteracting the bitterness to come. “My parents came home early, my father saw the two of us on the couch with Tyler on top of me and his hand under my shirt, and my father went into a rage. Tyler couldn’t get out of the house fast enough, and as soon as I stood up, my father slapped me hard across the face and called me a filthy whore. Before I could recover from that assault, he grabbed me by the hair and literally dragged me across the living room and threw me out of the house, yelling loud enough for the whole trailer park to hear that he was disowning his slut of a daughter and I was no longer welcome in his home.”

Logan’s brows furrowed into a deep frown, his eyes dark with banked anger on her behalf. “And your mother? Where the hell was she when all this happened?”

“She was right there, watching the whole thing play out. She was too afraid to interfere.” Yeah, that part still hurt, but Raina also knew if her mother had tried to intervene, she would have paid dearly for it once she was alone with her manic husband. “So, I stayed with a friend that night, and the next day when I knew my father was gone, I went back to talk to my mother. I begged her to leave with me, but she refused. She told me that she’d married him for better or worse, and I was so angry at her for being so timid and submissive, but I refused to stay anywhere near him. She gave me about four hundred dollars she’d squirreled away over the years and told me to go.”

Her mother’s last words to her were still engraved in her mind and heart.
Go and make a good life for yourself. Better than the one I was able to give you. And find a man who’ll treat you well and with respect. Don’t settle for anything less.

She’d desperately tried to find a man who’d met those qualifications, had thought she
had
, but she’d misjudged just how much a man was willing to accept of a woman he wanted to make his wife. And accepting the fact that she made a living selling sex toys was distasteful and offensive and not something he was willing to tolerate on any level.

Swallowing back the tightness in her throat, she finished off her eggs, taking a few extra moments to get her emotions back under control before she continued. “I decided I wanted to start over somewhere bright and sunny and as far away from Nebraska as I could get. I bought a bus ticket to San Diego and got a job at T & A’s Bar and Grill as a waitress within a few days of arriving.”