Ross 03 Leave Me Breathless (18 page)

“What?”

“What, she asks.”

“Well…
what
? I mean really. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know… I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” She blew out a breath, her gaze on the floor in the vicinity of his boots. She pulled that luscious bottom lip between her little white teeth. Jesus help him, he wanted to do the same thing with it.

He waited until her eyes flickered back up to him. “You seemed to know what the hell you were doing the other night. And I liked that.”

“That part’s easy. It’s this part I don’t like. You know we’re going to have to be around each other sometimes—our best friends live together. I don’t want it to be awkward for everyone. Including us.”

“Okay, so let’s deal with it. Here and now. Do you want to keep seeing me? Don’t worry about hurting my feelings or any shit like that. I’m a big boy; I can take it. But I’m not down for games at all. I let you have a few days’ cooling off time, and I’ve been thinking too.”

“Oh? What are you thinking?”

“Come on, Mace. You’re beautiful, and you’re accomplished, and any time a girl like you wants to hang out with a guy like me, you’d better believe I realize what a fucking idiot I’d be to pass that up.”

“Maybe I don’t want you to want me just because I’m…those things.”

“All right, I didn’t word that so well.” He was opening his mouth to go on, but she held up a hand.

“Listen, Seth…I think we’ve done this all backwards.”

“Backwards?”

She crossed her arms, her gaze startlingly direct under her cap. “Backwards for me. Typically, I get to know a guy before I land in the sack with him. That didn’t happen here. In the beginning, that was okay. I didn’t count on wanting anything more with you. I thought it would just be fun, like we said.”

“So you’re saying…you
do
want more?”

“All I’m saying at this moment is that I don’t really know you…but I would like to.”

Hell, if she got to know him, really know him, she might run screaming. This was a good thing, though. She hadn’t run yet. He thought about all the nights he could spend slowly exploring her beautiful body without rushing to memorize it all before she booted his ass out of her bed and her life. All the hours he could spend inhaling the vanilla sweetness of her skin, her hair. Oh yeah, he wanted to get to know her better.

“Maybe we should cool off?” she asked.

All his sensuous fantasies ground to a halt. Cool off? That did not compute. “What?”

Macy cleared her throat, for the first time glancing away and absently studying the drawings on the board. “You could, I don’t know, ask me on a date? A regular date?”

Do things the way she was used to having them done. Give her her comfort zone. He could handle that. But not without a little teasing. She might as well know that about him right away, if she didn’t already. “Fine. I didn’t want to have sex with you again anyway.”

God, he loved her smile. Even more when it was accompanied by her laugh. She graced him with both at that moment. “Gee, thank you. I feel much better about this whole thing.”

“You? I’m the one who was just informed about the whole cooling-off thing.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to sleep with you again. Honestly? I want to drag you home right now. It’s all I’ve thought about. But…” She sighed and shook her head. “I
have
thought about it, and I don’t want to get caught up in something like that. It’s not for me. I don’t want a revolving-door relationship. I don’t need someone blowing in and out of my life. Either you’re going to be around or you’re not. There’s no in-between with me. If you can’t deal with that…”

He stepped forward and took her hands in his. Warm and supple. But strong. Just like her. “Where should our first date be?”

She blinked up at him. In the bright overhead lights, her freckles were more prominent. And her lips too, pink and glistening with the gloss she wore. He wanted to taste it, touch her face, hell, plant her back against the wall right here, but he held off. Yeah, maybe his self-imposed restriction on getting involved had just been blown to hell and gone, but he didn’t care. Not when she looked at him like that. What could it hurt to see where things went?

“In case you haven’t realized,” she said with a wink, “I really am an old-fashioned girl. You can decide.”

“All right, but I think I should give you fair warning.” He leaned down and put his forehead to hers, their noses nestling next to each other as she tilted her head up to meet him. “I’ll give you all the dates you want. But that cooling-off thing? I can’t promise you that.”

The door closed on the last client of the night, and Starla rushed over to lock it. Ghost turned off the Lamb of God video blaring on the flat screens and glanced over as Brian emerged yawning from the back, truck keys in his hand. “I’m out,” he said. “See y’all tomorrow.” He turned to go back toward the rear exit.

“Bri. Hit the gym with me, dude.”

He halted in his tracks. “You can’t be serious.”

“Come on. You need it.”

“Not at midnight.” Brian slapped a cap on his head with one hand and twirled his keys around his finger with the other. Candace had taken off, since she had an exam in the morning and the constant activity in the parlor wasn’t conducive to studying. “I’m hitting the sack.”

“Are you twenty-nine or sixty-nine?”

The devilish dimples appeared. “Twenty-nine with a sixty-nine waiting at home.” The others whooped and laughed.

“Lucky fuck. I’m definitely hiding in your bushes tonight. Hey, but see, you can come with me and get all pumped up for her. She’ll work it off for you.”

“You’re insane.”

“What did we join the all-hours fucking gym for? Because we work crazy hours. Stop being a pussy, and let’s go.”

And so they found themselves on the way to the gym after Brian grumbled an explanation to Candace over the phone.

“Is it like having a probation officer or what?” he asked after Brian tossed his phone on the seat beside him.

“Huh? No. Not at all.”

“So tell me where you see this thing going.”

“What?”

“Don’t play ignorant. It’s been almost a year for you two, and she seems like a permanent fixture at the parlor.”

Brian shot him a glance. “Have you got a problem with that?”

“Would it matter if I did?”

“As far as us being together? No. As far as her being a permanent fixture at the parlor, I value your input.”

“Really.”

“This ain’t a dictatorship, man. I never intended it to be.”

“So if I said the word, she’d be gone?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as
gone
.” Brian reached over to turn down Soulfly’s “Prophecy”. Then he sighed. “Look, I just don’t want her identity all tangled up with mine. I don’t want that for
her
. I keep telling her she should, you know, explore other options. She’s a big help, but what the hell has she worked so hard for? I was too much of a fuck-up to go to college. But she did it, and she did it magna cum laude. I’m so damn proud of her and I don’t want to hold her back.”

Ghost grabbed Brian’s half-a-foot-thick CD case and began idly flipping through it. “So that’s what it was about. When Evan said what he did about her being an on-site counselor.”

“Yeah, I know he was joking but there’s…been some tension.”

“You’re being an insecure little bitch. You’re still thinking you’re not good enough for her.”

“Hey, fuck you.”

“That’s all it is, dude. What you’re saying is your life—
our
life, really, since I do what you do—isn’t good enough for her.”
Or someone like Macy
. “Admit it.”

“That’s not it. I barely keep her parents off my ass as it is. They’re just now getting to where they’ll look me in the eye. I wouldn’t give a shit, but it matters to her, I don’t care what she says.”

“Then maybe you not caring what she says is the problem.”

Brian drew a long breath in through his nose. Blew it out. Ah. He’d hit a nerve. “Her fuckin’ mother, man. After Candace and I got together, Sylvia pulled me aside and was all ‘Just promise me, Brian, that you’ll see to it she finishes school’.” He shook his finger in the air, taking on a high-pitched, scolding tone. “‘And don’t make me a grandmother yet!’ Like I’m hell-bent on making her drop out and knocking her up. Shit. I need a cigarette.”

“Still? It’s been months.”

“It really hasn’t.”

“Damn. You fell off the wagon.”

“Just a couple times.”

“Well, I’m back now, and I’m telling you straight. Cut it. The fuck. Out.”

“I know. The gym was probably a really good idea tonight.”

“I’m tuned in to you, dude. But despite how perfect you and I seem together, I could never be with anyone who has no Acid Bath in his collection.” He closed the CD case and put it aside. “All joking aside. You gonna marry her? This is the one out of seven billion?”

“It is. And I am. I’ve got to. It’s like…sometimes…”

“Speak.”

“Sometimes I think I’m not going to make it another day without getting a ring on that girl’s finger and changing her fucking last name from theirs to mine. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with her, and I want it to start
yesterday
.”

“Then do it already. I knew something was eating you up. You’re like a friggin’ caged beast—it’s all over you, and you’re smoking again, for fuck’s sake.”

“I already sent her running once. It’s not right for her yet. It has to be right.”

“Yeah, but you’re solid now. Look, stop stressing out. Candace is cool with me. She’s a big help and I can’t see her stirring up any drama. The girls like her. If she wants to hang around us that much then God bless her. And please, go ahead and ask her to marry you before your head explodes.”

Just a few nights ago, he’d been singing the complete opposite tune to Macy. What sunshine and rainbows had she injected into him since then?

“All she’s thinking about right now is getting through graduation. I don’t want to sabotage her with my alpha bullshit.”

“I do have one beef with her. She spooked all your groupies. I kinda do miss them.” Brian laughed as he turned into the gym’s parking lot. Ghost grinned to himself. That was more like it. He sounded like his old self. Brian was a volcano sometimes; he had to blow his top to someone before he could settle back down. “And I’d love to stand up for you, but don’t expect to get me in no tux. Unless I can rip off the sleeves, add some chains or something.”

“Don’t worry about that. I think elopement would be our only option. Between my family and hers, can you imagine the circus any wedding of ours would be? My mom’s ready to put a hit out on Candace’s mom as it is.”

“No way, man. This wedding
has
to happen if only to see your moms scrap with each other. I’d pay good money for that. Hell, I’d wear a tux for that.”

“Any more problems out of Raina?”

Well, there was a good-mood killer. Raina had texted him five times today. He’d bet money that Mark, that son of a bitch, had given her his number. Why those two didn’t just fuck each other and forget about him, he didn’t know.

She’d wanted him to know how immature he was being for resisting her return to the band. How it must mean there were still feelings he wouldn’t admit to. Ha.

“Aside from driving me nuts? No.”

“You don’t think she’s going to scare Macy away?”

Ghost scoffed. “Macy would wrestle that girl down, tie her in a half hitch and throw her hands in the air. Raina’s all talk.”

Brian killed the engine. “I’m thinking you might be right, if what Candace says is true. The exterior is deceptive.”

“Right? I think that could be said for us all, though. What do you think about her? Honestly.”

“That she’s kind of stuck up on her own pedestal. I probably need to get to know her better, though.”

“Yeah. Coax her down, and she’s cool.”

They grabbed their bags, exited the truck and headed toward the building. From what he could see through the glass wall, looked like they would have it mostly to themselves, which was a good thing. A few people were walking on treadmills or working the ellipticals.

“What’s going on with her?” Brian swiped his card key and pulled open the door. “You put me under the gun; now it’s your turn.”

Damn. He couldn’t help the Cheshire cat grin that spread across his face when he thought about seeing her again. Touching her, tasting her. She was the last damn thing he needed right now. There was all the crap over Raina, the band, his nana. But she was the only thing he had to look forward to. The only thing that made him think he would get through it all okay.

That was…scary.

“I’m just gonna let the chips fall where they may, brother.”

Macy’s parents’ ranch lay on the outskirts of town, nestled away from the rest of the world within a solid barrier of pine trees. She maneuvered the winding tree-lined driveway in her Acadia with Jason Aldean serenading her from the stereo, shaking off the stresses of the workday. There had been many.

Ever since getting her business degree, she’d managed her parents’ local outdoor-sports store while they mostly enjoyed retirement. It was a good gig; she couldn’t complain. But there was a certain employee who was getting a
lot
of complaints lately, and she wouldn’t abide that. It wasn’t her favorite thing to fire someone, but it looked like it was coming to that. She’d need to talk to her dad about it.