Triple Shot (13 page)

Madison reached for the bowl of popcorn
on the coffee table, offering it to Susan, but she quickly declined. She’d
already had her max and her stomach began to ache, but not so much from the
intake of junk food. She’d been bombarded with too many emotions today and now
thoughts of her mother forced the ache in her stomach to travel to her chest. Susan
sat through the first twenty minutes of the movie then decided she’d had enough
for one day. She needed to go check on her father, anyway, and if she sat any
longer watching a show meant to be seen only in the presence of her mother,
she’d fall apart. Pushing herself up from the sofa, she grabbed her keys off
the table.

“I need to go. Tessa, I’ll call you
later.”

“What? You can’t just leave in the
middle of a movie,” Tessa declared.

“Yeah, if you don’t like this one, we can
switch to a different one,” Madison added.

“No, that’s okay. I have an errand I
forgot I need to run.”

Susan said her quick goodbyes then
rushed out of the house. The air had become stifling and she couldn’t get
outside fast enough. Taking a moment to catch her breath and clear her head,
she pressed her palms against the white railing and tried to swallow the tears
that threatened to escape. The lump in her throat grew painful as she fought
her emotions as best as possible. She couldn’t calculate how long she’d been
standing on Rowan’s porch, but suddenly she felt as if she were being watched. Without
lifting her head she opened her eyes. Standing directly below her, his arms
crossed over his muscular chest, Josiah stood waiting. For what, she wasn’t certain.

“Are you okay?” he asked in a hushed
tone.

“Yeah, I just ate too much popcorn and
needed some fresh air. Actually, I was just leaving.”

“Susan, wait.”

“I can’t, Josiah, I need to go. I have
an appointment I can’t miss.”

“Will you let me explain about last
night at least?”

Susan just shook her head, taking the
steps two at a time and made it to her car without a word to him. She avoided
him partially because visions of him with his hands all over Erin played over
in her mind causing that sickening feeling in her stomach to hit her full force
and partially because she didn’t want to hear an explanation. Or maybe she did.
She supposed that yes indeed she did want to know what the hell went through a
man’s mind that would cause him to risk losing his friends over a woman,
especially a woman like Erin. Josiah followed her, reaching for the handle on
her driver’s side door before she could grab hold of it. She closed her eyes
for a brief moment to gain her composure. The scent of him freshly out of the
ocean and the sight of him standing in only his navy blue board shorts clinging
to his skin sent heat coursing through her body. The nearness of his body
triggered a need in her she didn’t want.
Damn it!
She didn’t want him causing
heat to radiate from any part of her body and she definitely didn’t want it
pooling between her thighs as it was now. The sight of him standing there in
only his board shorts, while water droplets clung to his muscled chest and his
hair a tumbled mess made her thoughts skip a beat and for a brief moment she
forgot all about his episode last night.

“You don’t need to explain anything to
me. Maybe you should save that for Tess. She’s the one who is really pissed
off.”

“I will explain to her, but I wanted to
apologize to you first.”

“Apologize? For what? What you do with
your life is your business, not mine, Josiah. We don’t know each other well
enough for an apology to be warranted.” Susan shrugged her shoulders and shook
her head. “I’m not the one who’s been friends with you for too many years to
count. Maybe you should think about how those people are affected by what you
did. Not me.”

“I have thought about that and I will
make it right with them. But they aren’t the ones I really want to spend time
with right now. You are.”

Susan gave a little laugh, pulled open
the car door when he released the handle then slid into the driver’s seat. “So,
you hook up with a woman I clearly don’t like? You do remember I knocked that
bitch on her ass right?”

“If it would have been anyone else would
it have mattered who I hooked up with?” Josiah asked, leaning into the car, his
face inches from Susan’s.

“It wasn’t anyone else. It was Erin and
that tells me a lot about who you are, Josiah. Now, please, I really need to
go.”

As soon as he stepped away from the car
and without another word, she yanked the door closed a little harder than she
intended and pulled the car out of the driveway.

Chapter 18

Josiah had spent the last week since his
little hiccup with Erin, trying to find a way to get Susan to go out on a date
with him and Tessa off his case about the whole situation. The latter he
figured would take years to do, since Tessa had a way of holding a grudge. He’d
already decided to just sit back and listen to her berate him while he nodded
without conscious thought. Of course, everything she said about him had been
true. He
had
acted like a snake and
didn’t
deserve Rowan’s
friendship and he
would
be lucky if Susan ever gave him the time of
day…yada, yada, yada. And even though Tessa was stilled pissed at him,
something she told him every time she saw him, the woman still agreed to help
him convince Susan to go out with him. Why, he wasn’t sure, but he learned a
long time ago to never look a gift horse in the mouth. If she was willing to
help him even after the screw up, he’d accept it.

The week he’d come into town had been
the week Susan had been on vacation and now she was back in the office working
again which meant he’d missed his opportunity to spend time with her alone
while everyone else was busy. Tessa had so cleverly pointed out she did have to
eat at some point during the day, though. His best bet with her would be
dinner, but to play it safe, Tessa suggested lunch so as to take things slowly.
How much slower he could take things, he wasn’t sure. He’d only seen her once
since the morning Erin dropped him off and that had only been a couple hours at
Eddies Pool Hall with Cade and Tessa. They’d had a few drinks and shot a few
games of pool.

She looked amazing then, as well. She’d
worn a pair of denim shorts and a green cotton tee that matched the color of
the felt on the pool table. And her blond hair had been down, just as she’d had
it the last time he’d seen her. It reached just past her shoulders and held a
bit of a light brown tint to it. He hadn’t noticed it before and wondered if
the lighting had something to do with bringing out her lowlights. Either way,
she’d awed him again with her beauty. The time they spent at Eddie’s had been
nice and relaxing without the pressures of an actual date. Although he’d be
amiss to think it was anything more than friends getting together. He and Susan
had exchanged small talk, but she’d still not let him apologize correctly to
her for his actions with Erin. She’d mostly kept close to Tessa, which left him
little room for talk, as Tessa brought up as often as possible the mistake he
made. He’d really been trying to put the entire situation behind him and wasn’t
exactly sure how Tessa thought that bringing up the incident with Susan around
was helping him convince her to go with him.

With little luck at setting up a lunch
date with Susan, Josiah decided to pull out the big guns. Yep, he finally
groveled at Tessa’s feet to set something up for him. Tessa had asked Susan to
meet her at Joe’s Crab Shack, but Tessa wouldn’t be showing up, instead Josiah
would be there to greet Susan with the excuse that Tessa had something come up.
As long as Susan didn’t bail, it would work out perfectly.

****

Susan put the last period on the article
she’d just finished and hit send for approval from Dominick, her editor. The
article was titled, “Men – Why They Cheat and Why Their Women Forgive.” Yes,
she’d come up with the idea after the Josiah-Erin episode, even though he never
actually cheated on anyone, at least not that she knew of. He just lacked the common
sense to do the right thing. Luckily she’d never had to deal with having been
cheated on, but some of the women Susan interviewed needed to be taken by the
shoulders, shaken, and told to wake up and smell the sunshine. It had been
appalling to hear that some women had been cheated on by the same man multiple
times. There wasn’t enough love in the world for her to be so forgiving. And
the research she’d done only proved to her that the old cliché of “once a
cheater always a cheater” stood true. Glancing at her watch, she realized she
had just enough time to make it to Joe’s Crab Shack for her lunch appointment
with Tessa. She quickly shut down her laptop, poked her head into Dominick’s
office to inform him she’d be out for lunch then made the short walk to the
parking lot.

As she approached her car, she noticed a
single pink rose pinched at the stem between the windshield and the wiper on
the driver’s side, beneath it a small white envelope. Pulling the wiper away
from the window, she grabbed the envelope before it slipped past the hood and
placed the rose on top of her purse. Before reading what the card said, her
eyes skidded to the bottom in search of a name. Josiah! Quickly her eyes
skimmed the writing.

A beautiful rose for a beautiful woman.

 Josiah

That had been all that he’d written. The
sentiment was sweet, but she didn’t know how she felt about the small gift. Picking
up the rose and bringing it to her nose, she inhaled the sweet scent. As she
shoved the card into her purse, she noticed that the rose stem had been shed of
its thorns. Florist didn’t normally trim the thorns off because it shortened
the lifespan of the rose, not unless requested and most men didn’t have the
sense to make the request. Josiah had…he’d been thoughtful enough to make sure
that the pain of the thorns wouldn’t take away from the beauty of the rose. She
stood smiling as she brought the rose to her nose once more.
Great
, she
thought,
a rose without thorns and suddenly his actions with Erin were stricken
from her mind
.
Not quite
,
but pretty damn close
. At least it
was a start. As she drove to Joe’s she contemplated whether she should tell
Tessa about the rose. Sure Tessa was still pissed at Josiah, but for the past
week she’d been trying to get her to go have dinner with him and she’d become
more persistent after their night at Eddie’s. This little treasure she wouldn’t
be sharing with Tessa, at least not right away, because then she’d never hear
the end of it from the woman.

Susan pulled into the parking lot near
the boardwalk where Joe’s Crab Shack took up residence, five minutes late. Normally
it would be an issue, her being late, but she found that often times with
Tessa, five minutes late actually had been right on time for her. Grabbing her
purse but leaving the rose on the seat, she strolled onto the boardwalk. Although
it was the middle of the week, tourist and fisherman filled the railings, or
couples walked hand in hand up and down the boardwalk. Some people were obviously
on their lunch break either having just left Joe’s or waiting for a table to
open up. Her quick steps slowed to a crawl when she saw Josiah leaning against
the side of the building, one booted foot up against the wall while he spun his
cell phone between his thumb and forefinger.
Delicious
, she thought, as
she took in the sight of him. He wore his trademark Wranglers, a black t-shirt that
stretched across his chest and tucked into his jeans showing off the muscles in
his abdomen, as well, and the black Stetson she’d seen him in the first night
she laid eyes on him. Today was the first time he wore it since their first
meeting. For some reason, a flash of happiness hit her at the knowledge that
he’d not worn it the night he spent with Erin, she wasn’t sure why that passed
through her mind, but it did all the same. Suddenly, she wondered why he was
outside of Joe’s. Had he been waiting for someone? Panic hit her in the chest
where her heart lay and the thought of him waiting for Erin slammed her in the
temples. Just as unfamiliar emotions began to swirl around her head, Josiah
lifted his eyes to her, the cell phone’s motion coming to a halt and his mouth lifting
at the corners in a sexy smile as he caught her eye. Watching as he pushed
himself away from the wall, she breathed a sigh of relief. If she would have
brought the rose with her to show Tessa, he would have seen her with it. She
didn’t want him to know that she was pleased with his offering. Not yet at
least.

“You made it. I was beginning to worry
you wouldn’t.”

“Made it?” she questioned him.
She
was here to meet Tessa for lunch, not him, so why would he make such a
statement?
she silently pondered.

“Oh I’m sorry,” Josiah said, shaking his
head as if remembering something. “Tessa called me and said she was supposed to
meet you here for lunch, but that she was tied up and asked if I would come in
her place. Although I’m thinking tied up is code for, she’s spending the
afternoon with Cade. You never know with her. Anyway, she said if she cancelled,
you wouldn’t get out of the office.”

“Uh-huh,” Susan responded, keeping her
eyes on Josiah, and crossing her arms under her breasts. The way he fidgeted
with his cell told her all she needed to know. His rambling, although it made
him a little more sexy, gave her the added proof she needed that him and Tessa
were in cohorts together. “Tessa never planned on meeting me, did she? You two
set this up,” she accused with a finger pointed in his direction.