Nice Buns (Cheap Thrills Series Book 7), page 16
Unfortunately, my job wasn’t conducive with playing hooky. We could absolutely call in sick if we weren’t well, but there was no way I’d be able to let the other guys down for no reason. And Evie had a business to run and clients to look after.
Taking advantage of how stunned she was, I gave her a soft peck on the lips, rubbing my nose gently over the tip of hers after it and making her smile.
“Have a good day, baby. Call me if you need anything at all, okay?”
“Likewise,” she breathed, and because our faces were still so close together, I felt it on my lips.
That was a sensation I was going to carry with me through the day, along with the memory of her hair and the kiss. Police work needed good memories to keep you sane, and these were mine for the day.
Winking at her, I glared over at Bernice, who was watching me with zero guilt over her ill-timed interruption.
Letting us both out, I jumped over the fence separating our front yards, one that was only roughly three feet high, and waited for her to pee on the grass.
“You could have held that in, you little cock blocker.”
I swear, if a dog could roll its eyes, mine did at that moment as she loped past me toward the front door of our house.
Unlocking it, I held it open for her. “You can look at me like that all you want, but your karma is not getting a bone before I leave.” I felt kind of like a dick for doing it, but she had it coming.
As I walked toward the stairs, I added, “And your buttons are still next door, so you can’t give me shit for it.”
I’d forgotten she still had the board with the cursing on it, though.
As I got to the top of the stairs, I heard, “Asshole—asshole—asshole.”
That night…
“Okay, so this was suggested to us by Tabitha and her awesome pink hair.” Jacinda pointed at my daughter-in-law, who was grinning from where she was watching the three women standing around what I could only describe as a hair mannequin. There was no body, just shoulders, a head, and long strawberry blonde hair.
“You’ve seen the challenge where people try to drink with these TENS machine patches on their arms, but we’re going to do hair instead.”
Moving closer to the dummy, Sayla tilted her head to look at it. “Who’s doing what job?”
“Well, you’re going to mix and apply the color,” Jacinda explained. “I’ll do the cut, and Evie’s going to do her makeup.”
“I can live with that,” Evie shrugged. “I use a tens machine for my back sometimes, so I’m fairly certain I can do this with zero issues.”
She was wrong.
Sayla’s arm jumped as she mixed the color, and on one particular muscle spasm as she was pouring something into the bowl, they all looked at each other with alarm.
“What’s the issue, ladies?” Tabitha called. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”
Evie bit down on her lower lip for a moment. “If we were doing a real person’s hair, then, yes, I’d definitely be having second thoughts.”
The only way to describe what happened as Sayla applied a light blonde and a darker color to the hair was that it zigzagged. By the time she’d finished applying the dye, it looked almost like zebra stripes mixed with leopard spots.
Logan and Bex had joined me, DB, Tabby, and Sheena on the loungers next to the pool in Evie’s backyard. It wasn’t a huge pool, just big enough to play around in, but it was a pretty cool setup she had going.
Whereas my house was built on two floors and had three bedrooms on the top floor, with a small one on the ground that I’d turned into a home office, Evie’s had only been built on one level. Because it was on the curve of the road, though, her yard extended farther back than mine, allowing her the space to have the pool, massive trampoline, and a decently sized chicken coop for the poultry terrorists who were all standing by the wire, watching what was going on.
Bernice, Razzle, and Rocket had played for about twenty minutes before Evie’s dogs had decided it was nap time, leaving Bernice sitting to attention beside Evie while she laughed with her friends.
I definitely found what was happening amusing, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from going back to Evie’s mouth. Just then, she caught me doing it and blushed.
“So, things seem to be changing between you guys,” Tabby whispered as she leaned closer. “What happened?”
Sheena chose to launch herself toward me, jerking her poor mom’s arms with the force of it. Catching her, I bought some time while I tried to figure out how much to divulge. I wasn’t a sharing guy when it came to shit like this, and Tabby was my daughter-in-law, for Christ’s sake.
Accurately reading me, she looked around at the others, then muttered, “For the love of Pete, Alex, just spit it out. I’m your daughter-in-law, yes, but I’m also a friend. The former doesn’t outweigh the latter on things like this because all we want is for you to be happy. If we can give you advice or help you, we will.”
Smiling as Sheena pointed at Evie and squealed, I laid it out. “We fell asleep on the couch together last night and kissed this morning. That’s it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tabby do a fist pump. “That’s awesome.”
“It is,” I agreed, keeping my voice low and my focus on my granddaughter.
Fuck, my granddaughter. I was a grandfather, and Evie was a mom with a teenager—how fucked up was that?
“What’s that frown for? Don’t you like her?”
Groaning, I angled my body toward her, almost like I was trying to prevent Evie from being able to see what I was saying. “Tabby, don’t you think it’s weird that a man my age—a man who’s holding his grandchild—likes a woman Evie’s age who has an eleven-year-old son?”
“Not at all,” Bex said behind me, making me jump. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying—”
“Yes, you could. You’re nosy and deliberately leaned in,” Tabby snickered.
I looked over my shoulder in time to see Bex shrug and look unrepentant.
“How else am I meant to hear what y’all are talking about? Anyway,” she poked me in the arm. “Evie’s a total babe and one of the nicest women I’ve ever met. You know how she doesn’t get involved in drama? Well, remember how Dirk Kirkwood cornered me in the store and threatened my job and said he’d have Pops exhumed?”
We both nodded, remembering it well. Our former mayor—a corrupt son of a bitch—had been under investigation for the shit he and his family had been getting up to, and one of the people he’d tried to involve in it had been Bexley and her family.
She was an English teacher at Piersville High School, and he’d approached her in the store after she’d used a literary classic to make a point to some students and threatened her job because of it. After that, he’d told her he was going to get her recently deceased, and much loved grandfather exhumed from where he’d just been buried and prevent him from being buried elsewhere within the town’s limits.
It was so fucked up. Fortunately, he and his sons were now incarcerated and paying for their crimes, but I could only imagine what Bex had felt when he’d made the threats.
“Well, Evie defended me and then helped me afterward. I was shaken and felt sick, but she helped me more than she’ll ever know with what she said to me. She’s good peeps.”
Glancing at the women, I saw they were now washing the color off the mannequin’s hair. “She’s not that much younger than you, Alex, so who cares? It’s legal, not immoral, and you’re both free and single to get together, so what’s the problem?”
“Will people think our age difference is weird?”
“You and Lisa had him when you were sixteen, Alex,” Tabby said softly. “You’ve just turned fifty-one, and Evie’s thirty-eight. She’s not that much younger than you in the grand scheme of things. And with there not being that much of an age difference between you and Dave, it’d be hard to avoid being in this position unless you went for a certain age range or a woman who was older than you.”
When she put it that way…
“You had Dave when you were sixteen?” Bex asked, not looking at all surprised by it. “I knew you were young when you had him because you’re young to have a son his age now, but wow. I actually thought you were brothers when I first came back. Logan had told me the sheriff’s dad worked in the department, too, but I expected you to be close to retirement, so I didn’t put two and two together until Ava explained it to me.”
Ava was Bex’s best friend and the girlfriend of the guy who owned the tattoo shop in town, Mace. They were both outstanding people who contributed hugely to making Piersville as impressive as it was.
I’d also been the one to arrest Mace’s dad on an outstanding warrant, which led to him being sent to prison for eight years. After it, I’d apologized to Mace, but he’d been happy about it and thanked me for making the place safer.
“Do you think it’s weird Evie’s not that much older than Dave?” Tabby asked Bex.
Bexley was just shaking her head and opening her mouth to reply when my son stuck his head between his wife and me.
“Why don’t you ask me, seeing as how I’m the son in question?” When none of us did, he sighed. “There’s jack shit wrong with it. If she makes you happy and you make her happy, where’s the issue?”
I didn’t say anything and instead looked down as Sheena tried to insert her fist into her mouth. It used to be her foot, but we’d had to stop her from doing that quickly because she was walking and hated wearing shoes.
“I know what the problem is—you’re still letting the Luli situation weigh you down, Dad.” The comment was so close to home on what my biggest issue was that my head snapped up with surprise.
“Look, you took on a case that put you in a situation you hated. But like we’ve told you a hundred times at least, you saved lives, marriages, and families from going through hell. I can’t even guess what the actual figure would be for law enforcement personnel going into cases that involved having to have a ‘relationship’ like that with someone to get information, but I know it would be high.”
“To be fair, the men and women who left their wives as part of the scam might have cheated anyway,” Tabby mused, staring blindly at the fence. When no one said anything, she added quickly, “But a lot might not have, plus people were killing themselves after they figured out they’d been conned, and families were torn apart.”
I knew all of this. I’d repeated it to myself every day while I’d had to pretend and that I’d had to distance myself from my son for to keep him safe. And with Evie, I think my biggest worry that kept intruding, even after I set my mind to the fact I wanted something with her, was that if my past or something fucked it up, Cody and her would get hurt by it. I didn’t want to run the risk of letting more people down like I had done with DB.
“What I’m saying—and not fucking up, unlike my wife—is that you’re not the only one who’s done it and who’s been left feeling like you are now. Life can’t stop because you went above and beyond. You deserve happiness and to be in a loving relationship. Heck, Luli was the first woman I’d seen you with since Mom died, and it wasn’t even real. You’re good with both her and Cody, Dad, and that kid thinks you’re like a superhero. Let it happen and enjoy it.”
A tap on my shoulder had me looking back again to see Logan sitting with Bex on his lap now. “Let yourself have that happiness, man. You deserve a woman who loves you and makes you feel complete.”
Bex’s face softened as she looked down at him, knowing that the words applied to their relationship, too. As I turned back to my son and his wife, I realized it applied to their marriage as well.
We all had things holding us back from moving forward, whether we realized it or not. Instead of finding reasons to justify it, these two couples had chosen to go with love and happiness.
Lifting my eyes to look at Evie, I smiled when I saw her standing with her head tipped back, laughing her ass off as Jacinda squealed when the pads on her arms made the muscles contract, and she hacked a big chunk of hair off the mannequin.
“Think about it.” Tabby patted my hand and then followed where I was watching. “I don’t know how they come up with this stuff, but these three are hilarious.”
“Right?” Bex agreed, snuggling into Logan as she giggled at the horrified expression on Jacinda’s face as she held up the hair. “It’s incredible to see them making it work for them, you know?
“A lot of people have dreams of becoming something, but they go about it by posting frantically, and it’s blatantly obvious they’re desperate for the attention. I don’t mean in a superficial way, but in a way that it completes something inside them. When they don’t get it, their mental health takes a hit. Those are the ones who only achieve what they desperately want for short periods.
“These three, they truly enjoy what they’re doing and don’t do it for those reasons, so they’ll likely have this going for as long as they choose to do it. I also don’t see them getting involved in drama or even acknowledging it, and I think people respect and appreciate that about them.”
We were all silent for long enough after Bex stopped talking that she turned around and frowned at us.
“That was… um, deep,” Tabby hedged.
“You haven’t seen that happening? I don’t even go on social media that often, and even I can tell the ones who’ll make it from the ones who’ll crash and burn.”
Frowning, I thought about it. What she was saying was true, but it also made me worry about if that would happen to Delicious Divas. They didn’t post daily, more like once every four to seven days, and there was a massive demand for their videos on every platform. But what would they do if it tanked?
“I see your point. The ones who are frantic only have a following from the drama llamas, though,” Tabby pointed out. “The ones who are waiting for the next dramatic video to go up don’t equate to a solid following. I’ve seen a lot of the comments under the ladies’ posts, and people genuinely like them. Hell, they even have celebrities following them now.”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked, totally confused by where they were heading with this.
“Absolutely. Celebrities won’t follow you if you’re going to embarrass yourself or do something that ends up with the internet turning against you. If you’ve got them in your subscribers' lists, they know you’re solid and find you entertaining,” she explained.
“In my day, we didn’t have different apps where we posted our thoughts and videos on things.” I winced when I realized I’d just made myself sound like Hurst. Then again, the guy had his own accounts that he posted videos on, so maybe I sounded like his dad would have.
“Yeah, but to give you credit, Dad, they were also writing the first draft of the Bible and discovering fire in the building next to your school at the time, so it’s not all that bad,” DB snickered, then something the women did made him burst out laughing.
That something was Jacinda cutting bangs on the mannequin. From the looks of it, she hadn’t meant to, seeing as how they were part of what looked like a mohawk, so I could understand why she was refusing to cut any more hair off.
“No, no, I don’t care what you say. I’ve just cut a mohawk-mullet, you guys. Like it isn’t bad enough that she looks like the weirdest feline love child ever, thanks to the stripes and dots. Now she’s got a mullet with this thing on top.” She curled her upper lip and plucked at the tufts sticking up. “Oh, shit, she’s got a bit of the Joe Exotic thing going on.”
Everyone started laughing apart from me. “Who’s Joe Exotic?”
“The dude from the Tiger King series on Netflix.”
Ah!
I’d watched two episodes of it and had then forgotten to finish it, but now I could place the name. Admittedly, Jacinda wasn’t wrong about the hair.
“She did it,” Logan said as we watched Evie pull up a chair to start her part of the task.
“She totally did it,” DB agreed.
This time it didn’t matter that I didn’t understand what they were talking about. Nope, not even slightly, because Evie was front and center, beginning to apply the makeup.
The concentration made her purse her lips, puffing them out and making them look like they had this morning after we’d kissed. She was also leaning forward, meaning I could see the top of her bra peeking over the edge of her tank top.
Lace. White lace with black scattered through it, to be precise.
And then Sayla reached over and pressed a button on the machine that delivered the pulses that’d make Evie’s muscles spasm and tense. Each time her hand jumped, I got to see more of the bra and upper swells of her tits.
If this was my penance for what I’d done in my life, I’d take it.
Chapter Fifteen
Evie
Sitting back, I cringed at how the mannequin looked after we’d finished.
“We could sell that to a movie set for a horror movie,” Sayla mused as she walked around it to see every angle. “I swear it’d give people nightmares for years.”
I’d been so sure I’d be better at doing my job than they’d been at theirs, but that shit was no joke.
As I’d been squeezing the foundation, the machine had made my hand squeeze the tube hard, so the mannequin was wearing it in her hair. It’d even hit Sayla. There was also orange eyeshadow leading across her eye and nose and brown eyeshadow trailing up into her mohawk/bangs. The red lipstick I’d applied had ended up looking like she’d been hit in the mouth.
“Poor Cinnamon Tits, she just never saw it coming,” Jacinda sighed.
Thanks to Sayla’s arm shaking and jerking while she’d been applying the color, we’d named her that because she had splashes of the darker dye all over her chest.
“Makes you feel relieved we didn’t go with our first choice,” I sighed.
“What was the first choice?” Alex asked from where he was standing behind us with the others.
