Bride by Mistake, page 3
part #3 of Montana Born Brides Series
Then Beckett winked and gave a tug on one of the wayward strands of hair. “Don’t worry, Kate, your secret is safe with me.” He turned and strode into Grey’s and he didn’t even look over his shoulder to see if she followed.
She could walk home. To her little apartment over the florist shop she’d viewed as temporary. So many things in her life were temporary placeholders for that goal life.
Marrying Carter. Building a McArthur life with Carter. Because the McArthurs had never had to duct tape their glasses together or wear McArthur castoffs from the clothing drive every Christmas. McArthurs were somebodies. No one looked through them. They had money, they had a reputation, they had respect.
But, honestly, her current life was keeping her out of the poverty she’d grown up in. She had watched her parents claw their way out of struggling to get by and emulated it. She didn’t need Carter. She had done that on her own just waiting for him.
She straightened and looked at the entrance to Grey’s. She didn’t need Beckett either. She didn’t need anyone.
But, she would like to do a few things she denied herself in the quest to be good and worthy and steady.
Getting drunk was on that list.
Beckett might be, too.
*
Beckett leaned against the bar. Just as he’d convinced himself Kaitlin wasn’t going to follow, she marched into the interior like a captain leading her army.
Grit. That was the thing Kaitlin had that amazed him. She seemed so prissy and easy to scandalize or rile, but underneath that facade was something so strong, so determined, he wasn’t sure he could stand up to it.
For the first time in his life, he felt a tiny trickle of fear as she advanced on him.
“Are you buying?” she asked, absolutely zero beating around the bush.
“Sure thing, Kate.”
“How are we going to get home safely?”
Even with that odd fearful feeling tickling the back of his reflexes, he smiled. Leave it to her to worry about safety. “You’re living above the florist, right? Just down the street?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll walk you home, and then I’ll walk to the Graff. Ah, the beauty of small towns.” He nodded to the bartender. “So, what are you having?”
She looked around, at all the gleaming bottles displayed on the shelves. Then those pretty brown eyes fell on his face. Her hair was still a mess despite him fiddling with it. Truth be told, he’d wanted to touch her mouth, not her hair. He wanted to touch a lot of things on Kaitlin Shuller.
But she was Luke’s little sister, and wasn’t Luke pissed enough regardless of how not his fault it was?
Who else would have done it?
It had been one sentence, uttered frustrated and distracted by his best friend, and it shattered the last tether he had to his adolescence. Grandma was gone, her little place swept clean of fairy pictures and old car magazines, and Luke had been the only thing left from that time who didn’t blame him for all the trouble he’d caused.
In that moment, no one was left.
Except Kaitlin was standing next to him and, in some strange twist of events the woman who never failed to point out his shortcomings, felt like a lifeline.
“Why don’t you go find us a table and I’ll choose.”
She nodded as though accepting orders, and then marched away again, the misty grey dress catching the low light of the bar, the edge of the dress dropping his gaze to her calves.
Oh, so much touching he’d like to do. Enough that this was a terrible, terrible idea. So, he ordered a double of whiskey for himself, and two fruity girly drinks for the woman who’d never been drunk.
If he got her drunk, he would not be tempted to touch her. At least not tempted enough to cave into the want, because drunk women were off limits, regardless of how purposefully they got drunk. And if you get yourself drunk, no one’s at fault, are they?
He attempted to picture Luke’s disapproving face, but the pain of the accusation was too much to sit there and dwell over, and Kaitlin worrying her tongue over her bottom lip was far more interesting.
When he slid into the booth across from her, she straightened, quickly drawing her tongue into her mouth.
What would that mouth taste like?
Fantasies were so much easier not to feel guilty over when the fantasized-over party didn’t deign to spend more than five minutes in his orbit.
“So, is this rebellion or am I just handy?” He wasn’t sure if he liked either answer, but those were the only two possibilities he could see. He’d been many a good girl’s rebellion back in the day, but one little pregnancy scare had cured him of that and quick.
As for being handy, well…
Stop thinking with your dick.
Right. That was one of those lessons he’d learned as a mature adult. A mature adult still getting accused of crimes you didn’t commit.
It would do good not to dwell on that with so much alcohol in such close reach. It would also do good not to dwell on Kaitlin’s face, the way her dark eyebrows bunched together as she so seriously considered his question.
“You’re not rebellion. I’m not sixteen,” she said carefully. “What would I be rebelling against?”
“Very few people in this town have done much with Bad Seed Beckett that wasn’t some effort to rebel against something or someone.”
“Bad Seed Beckett,” she repeated, cocking her head as if she could see all the years of hating that nickname, even as he’d always pretended it didn’t matter. “I never did like that nickname,” she said quietly, fiddling with the stem of her glass. “It’s like saying you didn’t have any choice in the matter.”
“Wouldn’t all bad choices make me something of a bad seed?”
“You didn’t make all bad choices.”
He tried to wrap his mind around Kaitlin defending him, but he couldn’t. And he couldn’t let himself think this was something other than her trying to get over Carter by spending some slum-it time with him.
“I saw you plant roses for your grandmother once.”
He jerked his gaze to her, but she was staring hard at her drink. “What?” he demanded, the mention of his grandmother doing nothing to abate his restless, self-pitying mood.
She shrugged. “High school. Luke made me take you your homework because you’d missed class and he had practice or whatever.” Again she shrugged, the dark light of the saloon making her shoulders gleam like a statue. “I got there and you were helping your grandmother plant roses. You’d stayed home to take care of her because she wasn’t feeling well.”
He didn’t have any specific memory of that day. The last few years when Grandma’s health had deteriorated he’d done whatever she’d asked of him. Desperate to be good enough to stop time.
It hadn’t worked, and it had done nothing to change anyone’s opinion of him.
Fuck, he hated Marietta, Montana and all that it brought up.
“So, it’s foolish to think of yourself as some kind of bad seed. I mean, really.” She primly rolled her eyes and lifted her glass to take a sip of her drink. Her head reared back, her nose wrinkled. “This is awful.”
He pushed his whiskey toward her. “Try this.” Which was mean, but he thought miss prim and I saw you plant roses for your grandmother could stand a little mean.
When she took a sip, the look on her face was priceless. “I cannot for the life of me understand why people drink this stuff.”
“I’d venture to say more often than not it’s not the taste, it’s the effect.” He pulled the tumbler of whiskey back from her, stared and the faint line of lipstick on the rim. He’d let Kaitlin get whatever this was out of her system, deposit her back home, then he’d get drunk.
Or you could disappear.
The silence that settled over their table wasn’t exactly uncomfortable. She seemed as lost in her own thoughts as he was in his. Looking around, taking idle sips of her drink, staring at her hands and looking altogether miserable.
“What did you ever see in that guy?”
Slowly, her head nodded up. “Who?”
“Oh, are we going to pretend you aren’t messed up over McArthur marrying your sister?”
She puffed out a sigh. “I don’t particularly care to discuss Carter, thank you.” She gave him a considering stare. “Why are you and Luke arguing?”
“I don’t particularly care to discuss Luke. Thank you,” he mimicked.
“Neither did Luke.”
“Good.” At least Luke could be counted on not to tell the entire world he thought Beckett was a thief.
A thief. Like he needed to steal anymore. Like he would steal from a business that had been his life for years, that actually played to all his strengths and didn’t make him feel like a fool.
How. How did Luke think it of him?
“He’s solid. Steady,” she said, her voice low and barely audible over the faint drum of conversation around them. “Carter, that is.”
“So, you loved him for his bank account?”
Her shoulders jerked. “And his reputation. I won’t feel bad for it. Maybe it was childish, but I won’t feel bad for being attracted to stability and a full bank account when we spent so much time without those things. Your grandmother received charity, too. You should know how that feels.”
He couldn’t say anything, because…yes, he did know that particular shame. His whole life he’d been surrounded by people so much better off, and maybe he’d chosen to thumb his nose at it and them, but… Well, he could see how someone like Kaitlin might take the opposite approach.
“So, you finally decided to grow up.” Because when he felt uncomfortably raw and soft why not chase it up with being a dick?
She raised one of her slim, dark eyebrows. “I did. Have you?”
His mouth curved entirely of its own accord. Leave it to Kaitlin to never back away from something. It was the grit that lived inside of her, the thing he admired about her even when she sneered at him.
For all her pretend, for all her polish, she never backed down or away. The exact opposite of him. An escapee, a runner, held only by the loosest of threads to this town. One that appeared to be fraying.
“Doubtful,” he said at last. Because growing up implied having any idea of what made himself tick. It implied knowing where he was going and healing all the fissures of his past.
Very, very doubtful.
Chapter Four
‡
Spending an hour in a bar with Beckett was a strange thing. Perhaps if she’d had more to drink she wouldn’t feel strange, but she’d barely touched the drinks he’d bought her. Sweet and bitter at the same time, they made her stomach turn every time she tried to take a gulp.
She didn’t feel too bad about it, considering Beckett had only taken a few sips of his.
So far she was failing at doing some of the bad she’d avoided for so long. She glanced at Beckett surreptitiously. Could she really go through with the other thing she wanted to do if she didn’t have a metric ton of liquor moving through her veins?
She tried another sip of her drink and shuddered.
“You don’t have to drink that. Why don’t we call it quits, huh?”
Call it quits? This was the saddest revelation moment ever. She couldn’t even drink the drinks to get drunk, and Beckett didn’t want to spend any more time with her than Carter ever had.
If this was not pretending and not worrying about safety and what other people thought, she sucked at it. She sucked at growing up and being her own person.
The self-pity washed through her, heavy around her heart, and then welling up in her eyes.
She clenched her hands into fists. She would not cry. Not in front of Beckett and not over something so stupid. Twice in one day she’d welled up with tears and she was not going to be defeated like this.
She was taking a stand. A stand against her former self, and she would not be reduced to tears over how little she liked hard liquor or how uninterested Beckett seemed.
The fight wasn’t over yet.
“Are you going to walk me home?” She winced a little at the demand in her voice. If she was going to seduce Beckett—her stomach flipped and rolled—she would need to work on being a little…softer. Alluring.
She’d tried to woo Carter’s attention with goodness and charitable works and earnestness. She knew Beckett would not be won over by the same—not that Carter had been won over, but what would a man like Beckett want?
“Walk you…home?”
She could catalogue almost all of the women who’d hung by his side in high school. Why could she remember them? She’d chalk it up to small town life, but they didn’t appear to have much in common. Blondes, brunettes, red heads. Bad girls, good girls. He’d had his pick and instead of picking any one, he’d sampled them all.
Yet, they’d all had something she didn’t possess. A certain kind of softness, a certain kind of confidence. Kaitlin was confident with numbers and flowers, but when it came to people…
She’d never had much luck figuring out the inner workings of other people, and she supposed if she was going to—her mind stumbled over the word she needed to use, but in the end she forced herself to think it—if she was going to seduce, she would need some kind of understanding.
Of people. Of men. Of Beckett.
She nearly laughed out loud. She’d have a better chance picking up a stranger for the night in a bar in Bozeman.
He drained his drink in rather impulsive gulps that moved his neck in a mesmerizing wave of throat muscles.
That was a really strange thing to be mesmerized by. So she changed her focus to his arm, where the sleeve of his dress shirt didn’t quite cover up the slash of black ink that was the end of his tattoo.
She could bring to memory—far too vividly—what his entire arm looked like. Why did she remember? It had been years since she’d seen Beckett shirtless, and yet she knew in the mix of bars of black ink, there were random pops of color. A star, a fairy, a rose.
It suddenly dawned on her the rose was probably for his grandmother. She had watched him plant roses for her. So, yes, that must be it.
Her chest ached, because what she’d always known and pretended not to was so evident to her now. There was more to Beckett than he ever let anyone see.
She finally moved her eyes to his when she realized an odd silence had settled between them. Apparently he’d been watching her…staring at his arm.
Well.
She stared back, innocently. If innocent meant heat flushing her cheeks what was likely bright enough red to match her lipstick. Lipstick Sierra had picked out, of course.
He drew his hand across his mouth, a slow, also mesmerizing gesture. He had a nice mouth, if she let herself think about it, let her gaze stay there. He had full lips, framed by the appealing cluster of dark black whiskers. A contrast of rough and soft and, for the first time in her life, she consciously let herself think about what his lips might feel like on hers.
“If I walk you home, what are you expecting?”
“Expecting?” she squeaked. Oh, God, could he read her mind? That would be so hideously embarrassing. Of course, less embarrassing than having to spell it out to him.
Please take my virginity. I no longer have any use for it.
“I’m not sure you’ve ever done a thing in your life without a plan, without expecting something. So, if you want me to walk you home, why? What’s the plan?”
Okay, so she tended to plan out…everything. But she hadn’t exactly planned on being a floral designer. That had been some happenstance of her first job as an accountant being at a florist in Bozeman and her boss asking for her advice, and then teaching her the way of bouquets and brides.
Coming back to Marietta last year had been the plan, but it was sheer luck that Risa at Sweetpea had wanted to hire some help, and had moved out of the apartment above the florist and needed a tenant.
So, she could do things without a plan. She could. She would. “I think I’ve given up planning.” After all, when she tried to plan it blew up in her face. Maybe she’d just let him walk her home and let the chips fall where they may.
Ideally, in bed together. She swallowed at the panic climbing up her throat. Okay, so the whole idea of sex with Beckett seemed a little out of her realm. A lot out of her realm. She’d barely French kissed a guy before.
Then she remembered Carter saying “You’ve been such a great friend to us.” And it didn’t matter. Lack of experience did not matter. She was going to have sex with Beckett Larson one way or another.
And that was…that.
*
She was not an easy woman to read. He could tell she was thinking—way harder than any woman should ever think in a bar after her dream man had married someone else—but Beckett had no idea what she was thinking.
He had a feeling that was probably a good thing.
“It seems silly to take your motorcycle just down the street, but if you’d prefer to give me a ride, I suppose…”
“Are you afraid of the mean streets of Marietta?”
She paused, those impossible-to-read wheels turning so hard he was surprised her brain didn’t squeak from the effort. “I thought you might want to do the polite thing and walk me home.”
“You thought I would want to do the polite thing? Since when?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re not nearly as Mr. Bad Boy as you seem to think you are. It was very kind of you to take me here.”
“Kind? Kind?” He was almost spluttering. It wasn’t his best moment, but he couldn’t remember anyone ever accusing him of being kind. Kind? “Who says I wasn’t trying to get you drunk and seduce you?” he demanded, even though that was the very opposite of what he was doing.
Maybe it had crossed his mind but it was still close to the opposite. Adjacent to the opposite. He was opposite adjacent. Really.
She paused only for a moment. “Who says I wasn’t trying to do the same?”
He froze, because even though he’d suspected she was beating around that particular bush, he hadn’t ever thought she’d be serious enough to admit it or go through with it.
