Blitzed (Rules of Possession Book 3), page 17
“I lo—do like cheese,” he agreed, looking flustered.
“Is my hearing going or is it yours? ’Cause that’s what I just said,” I said with a little grin. “Now kiss me again, Foxy.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth and his tongue darted out to lick his lips…and I sighed. Vintage Jesse. He should be licking me, not himself. Such a contrary man. He glanced at his watch. “We really should get back to the center. Molly is running a craft class and I should help supervise.”
“Lot of shoulds in that sentence, J.”
I slid my hands from the small of his back and down to his ass. He swiftly inhaled. I could see his pulse in his neck, ticking away at hummingbird speed. I gripped his sweet cheeks in those worn jeans, wondering if he’d ever let me do more than grope and fantasize.
“Jesse, I hate to be the one to tell you this.” I bit my lip and heaved a dramatic sigh. “I mean, this hurts me more to say than for you to hear.”
“You can tell me anything. You know that.” His brow furrowed. “What is it?”
I made sure my eyes were full of pity. “You have zero artistic talent.”
He looked amused even as he flicked the back of my head. I ducked with a yelp. “Cute. I said supervise, not lead the class. The kids can get kind of rowdy.”
“She’s got it under control and you know it.”
If nothing else, I could teach him how to delegate. There was plenty of time to get everything done and still have a little Jesse time to himself. The world wouldn’t end because he had a few harmless kisses. I guess since we weren’t relationship material, those kisses wouldn’t always be with me.
Huh.
I didn’t want to pursue that particular line of thought. Brain said I had no choice. I could picture him kissing some other guy in his office. The mystery guy was about Jesse’s height—so, short as fuck—with dark hair. And glasses. He was an intellectual, someone who liked to talk about the state of the world over coffee.
Dream Guy was nothing like me. I didn’t do coffee—the caffeine wreaked havoc on my system. And I could be honest and admit I was less informed about world affairs than I needed to be. A lot of people thought playing football was mostly physical, but that wasn’t the case. There were plays to study and memorize and strategies I needed to know backward and forward. The last thing I wanted to do when I got home was turn on something serious like the news. It didn’t help that the news was usually bad. Dream Guy would love the news. He’d probably insist on watching some before bed. The next day, they’d go right back out into the world to do their oh-so-important charity work.
He didn’t have a face or a name, but that’s the kind of guy Jesse would end up with. Not some boneheaded NFL player who always found himself in the news for all the wrong reasons.
Maybe Dream Guy would be Greg from the mission. At the bake sale, he’d been a bumbling fool around Jesse. When he’d asked Jesse out for “a coffee or something,” he blushed so hard I thought he might catch fire. I offered to splash him in the face with some hand-squeezed lemonade...you know, to be helpful. Then Jesse had neatly stepped on my foot.
Jesse’s fingers landed on my brow, just a light touch smoothing out the frown lines there. He looked at me speculatively as he asked me softly, “Everything okay?”
The normally prickly Jesse being gentle threatened to turn me to mush. You firm right the fuck back up, I instructed my insides. This was nothing more than a temporary infatuation. We’d look back on it as the time we both lost our minds and did something stupid but oh-so-necessary.
“I need you.” At my words, his eyes darkened to reflect the same want that was burning me up inside.
“You have me.”
And then he was kissing me again, which was a good thing. That way I couldn’t blurt out how much I wished that were true.
18
ANDREW
My brother’s wife really needed to get a hobby. Kim was obsessed with setting me up. I dropped in for lunch with my brother at the Grill and she made sure we were seated in Quinn’s section, who had a huge crush on me that was equal parts sweet and embarrassing. The second time she spilled juice on the table, I glared at Grant.
To his credit, he looked a little sheepish. He waited for Quinn to bustle off before he murmured, “She means well. You know how Kim can be.”
I sighed because yeah the fuck I did. I glanced over at the kitchen window across the busy bar and only caught a glimpse of a shadow and a fluff of brown ponytail as she disappeared from view.
Quinn was a nice girl. Pretty. Sweet. But she wasn’t the person occupying the majority of my thoughts. No, that dubious honor belonged to a certain person who shall remain nameless—cough, Jesse—that decided to answer my amazing hey text with a simple hey of his own. I huffed. We were about two degrees away from s’up, bro, and that was unacceptable.
As if she hadn’t been watching her handiwork through the pass-through, Kim swept out of the kitchen with two brunch specials. “Waffles, anyone?”
“Always,” I said, leaning my head toward her as she bussed me on the cheek. She went to Grant’s side of the table and dropped a kiss on his lips. When she tried to move away, he tugged on her apron and pulled her back. She giggled and slapped his hand.
I watched them fondly for a few seconds before my attention was diverted to the mountain of food she’d placed on the table. Buttery waffles, crisp bacon, sausage, and scrambled eggs. I gave my stomach the heads up for the crime that was about to happen.
“Everything okay out here?” She gave a red-faced Quinn, who was waiting on a table nearby, an anxious look.
“It’s not going to happen, honey,” Grant answered for us both, mostly because I was doing my level best to cram half a waffle in my mouth. “I have a feeling AJ here is stuck on someone else.”
I wasn’t about to stop chewing to respond to such nonsense. Besides, the only rejoinder I had on deck was, “how the fuck can you tell?” Was I emanating I’m stuck on Jesse rays from my body?
“Is that what you two were talking about?” She wanted to know.
“No, I was just telling AJ here that he has the table manners of a water buffalo.”
Now that was worth swallowing quickly for—a good comeback waits for no man. “And I was just telling Grant that even though the sight of his face ruins my appetite, I’m going to persevere.”
She rolled her eyes skyward and muttered, “Why do I even bother?”
“Because you love us,” we singsonged as she marched back to the kitchen.
We talked as we ate, getting caught up on each other’s lives. Weather, work, and sports also made the cut. Eventually, we made our way back around to our mother and her secret relationship. Or at least I did. Grant seemed oddly quiet about the whole affair. Maybe he was just processing—I know I certainly was.
“I swear to God she must secretly be former Special Forces,” I said polishing off the last of my meal. I reached for Grant’s last strip of bacon and he smacked my hand. “I can’t seem to catch her with this guy.”
“Mmhmm.”
“I thought I had him for a minute when I stopped by to pick up some muffins for the church bake sale. I saw something out the back window and I swear that fucker must’ve dived in the pool.” I frowned as I thought. “By the time I got out there, there was nothing but wet footprints.”
He laughed weakly. “You’re kidding.”
“No joke. I mean, really. What does she think I’m gonna do? Kill ’im?”
“Exactly.”
“Of course, I would if necessary. But I want her to be happy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If he makes her happy, then whatever.”
“Right.”
“So.” I took a long sip of my juice, eyeing him over my glass. “Who is he?”
“Huh?” He froze, his cheeks still full, and hurried to swallow. “What?”
“Grant, you’ve never been this agreeable in your whole life. Obviously you know something.”
“Hey, I’m agreeable.”
“Oh yeah?” I arched an eyebrow. “T-bone steak is better than a ribeye.”
“What?” He nearly shouted. “You can’t beat the fucking marbling on a ribeye. Fat equals flavor.”
I took another sip of my juice while he got himself under control. I didn’t bother to speak because we both knew I’d proved my point.
“Okay, okay. You got me.” He groaned as he tossed his fork on his empty, syrup-laden plate and slouched in the booth. “I know.”
“I know you know, you fuck. Now I wanna know.”
“Don’t freak out,” he warned.
“I’ll freak out if I want to.”
“How reassuring.” He blew out a breath. “It’s Glenn.”
“Glenn? The only Glenn I know is Dad’s best friend,” I said slowly. “And you can’t possibly be telling me some shit like that.”
He rubbed his temples with a sigh. “Yeah.”
“Uncle Glenn?”
He shushed me. “She’s working in the kitchen today. Could you keep it down?”
I glanced at the pass-through window cautiously before I hissed, “How’d you find out?”
“I stopped by her house to see if she was free for dinner, and she was getting ready for a date. She was all over the place emotion-wise. Nervous and excited and a little worried about what I’d think.” He shook his head at the memory, a mixture of sadness and surprise on his face as he relived it all over again. “I thought it was pretty cute. When Uncle Glenn pulled up in the driveway, I went out to meet him and I still didn’t get it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I ushered him in the house and joked that we should stick around and scare the shit out of her date. Then I took in the suit and tie and flowers and his pale sweaty face and got the picture.”
Dad had been gone for some time now, and she was still young. I didn’t expect her to be alone forever. But why Glenn? He’d been in our family since I was a kid. I trusted him…Dad trusted him. My brain struggled to comprehend very simple facts. We’d leaned on him after Dad had passed and now he was making his move?
“We owe it to her to be supportive,” Grant reminded me.
“I know that. But shit.”
From the expression on his face, he didn’t disagree. He rubbed his hands down his face, looking tired. “Enough of that. You busy tonight?”
If you counted getting my rocks off with Jesse “busy” then, yes. Quite. We had plans to have dinner and then whatever. His cheeks had been quite pink when he said whatever, and I’d been hard pressed to hide a grin. Unless someone was on fire, I wasn’t missing my whatever tonight.
“Um, why do you ask?” I hedged.
“Liam has a recital. I’m sure he’d love it if his uncle could pop by.”
I wanted to groan. I had to go because I loved that kid. And it was going to be misery because he wasn’t exactly…musically inclined. To be fair, neither were most of the kids at Susan’s Music House.
“Can I bring a guest?” I asked. I mean, why should I hog all the suffering to myself?
“Of course,” Grant said with a shrug. “The more the merrier.”
“Great. I’ll ask Jesse later.”
“Jesse. He’s the one that gave you the rabbit, isn’t he?”
“That would be him, yeah.” I tried hard to keep the stupid little smile off my face. Judging from the way Grant’s brow arched sharply, I didn’t entirely succeed. “It was supposed to be a temporary thing, but when I asked if he’d found her a good home yet, he just smiled and offered more hay for her hutch.”
Grant chuckled. “Yeah, I wouldn’t count on getting rid of that thing any time soon.”
“Her name is Moon Pie, thanks very much,” I said, much to his amusement. “Jesse has her sister, Shortcake. But I feel like he gave me the biggest one.”
Grant laughed. “It’s a tiny little rabbit. How much can she eat?”
“You’d be surprised. And her favorite treats are strawberries and raspberries.” I resisted the urge to show him the picture of her eating two sliced strawberries on my coffee table. “I was afraid to give her something too sweet at first, but Jesse said—”
“You know, you talk about him a lot.” A small smile played on Grant’s mouth. “Interesting.”
“Not interesting,” I said firmly. “He’s a nice guy and we have a good time.”
“How good of a time?”
“Have you ever been choked with a waffle?” I threatened.
“I guess I’ll put Jesse on the list of things we’re not talking about,” he said mildly.
Fine by me. I didn’t know what we were doing, but it felt too special to go under Grant’s microscope. Jesse made me feel good and I liked to think I did the same for him. After a long period of suck, it was nice to have something to feel good about. I wanted to leave it at that.
Some of what I was feeling must’ve shown on my face because Grant chuckled. “I’m just messing with you. It’s nice to see that you’ve found someone.”
“I haven’t found someone.”
“Then good, it’s nice to see that you’ve found no one.”
I threw up my hands. “I’m gonna go talk to mom.”
I wasn’t surprised to see my mother working in the kitchen. Grant and Kim were supposed to be handling daily operations, but she’d been working at the Grill so long that it was hard to do anything else. She gave me a distracted little smile as I donned an apron without asking and cinched it around my waist.
“Put me to work,” I said, a phrase I lived to regret.
I soon found myself mired in vegetable-prep hell. Luckily, I’d worked in a kitchen long enough to know how to get us out of the weeds. Around us, the kitchen staff bustled on in organized chaos, dishes clanking, orders being called out. Henrietta, one of the waitresses who’d been with the Grill the longest, sailed by with a tray of wings, grousing about the “newfangled ticket system” that Grant had implemented.
By the time I finished with the lettuce and tomatoes, I’d built up the courage to broach the unbroachable. I glanced over to find my mother manning the grill, her pretty face flushed and the hair at her temples damp. “Can I talk to you about something?”
She sighed. “I’d like to say of course but then you’d ask me about Glenn and I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”
“How did this even start? And be vague,” I said with a grimace.
“You know how I was when your father passed. I’d lost the person I depended on for most of my life and I didn’t know which way was up. I lashed out at you boys. Said things I shouldn’t have said.” She frowned down at the burgers as she flipped them. “I don’t know if I ever apologized for that.”
I rolled my shoulders uncomfortably. “It’s alright.”
“It’s actually not.” She blew out a breath. “Glenn dropped in to check on me a few times and we got to talking. It was like…I could finally breathe, you know? It was such a relief to be able to talk about Lucas.”
It was a struggle not to be defensive, but I wasn’t about to let that little comment pass. “You could’ve talked to us.”
“I think I did enough of that. You boys were trying to pull your lives together and I just wanted to wallow in the past. Do you ever notice how everyone’s grief is so different? You and Grant grieved for him differently than I did.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was your hero, this larger-than-life figure who never did anything wrong. To me, he was my friend. My very best friend. I knew his strengths, but I knew his flaws as well. So did Glenn. His grief just aligned with mine.” She shrugged as she popped a slice of cheese on each patty and slid the silver dome over them to melt them into an ooey gooey mess. “It was nice to talk about Lucas with someone who knew him the way I did.”
“So what, you guys just got together to trash talk dad?”
“No! Of course not.”
“Then what?”
“Any couple married as long as we’d been married has been through some stuff, AJ. With Glenn, I didn’t have to pretend Lucas was something he wasn’t. I could talk about the guy who never managed to remember to take the trash out. Or who always left wet towels on the floor and snuck cigarettes when he was out with the guys.” She blew out a breath. “He was the same guy who made my heart go pitter-pat just from a simple smile and never forgot a birthday or an anniversary. Talking about every part of him helped me grieve him as he really was, honey. That’s all.”
“I knew Dad had flaws,” I finally grumbled.
She arched a brow. “Name one.”
I tried. I really did. But all I could see is how tall he was and hear his booming laugh. He was actually shorter than me by a couple inches, but he might as well have been Paul frickin’ Bunyan.
“I want Grant punished,” I announced instead of conceding. “He knew about this and didn’t tell me.”
She huffed out a laugh as she slid the burgers onto waiting buttered buns. “Eventually those late-night talks about Lucas just turned into talking period. Then going out to the occasional dinner or movie.”
“And then?” I prompted when she didn’t continue.
“You said be vague.”
“Oh Lord.” My waffles threatened to reappear. “That’s enough, thanks.”
She chuckled softly. “I want you guys to come over to dinner on Sunday. So you can meet him properly.”
The only meeting I was interested in was that of my fist and Glenn’s face. “I’ve known Glenn since I was six years old,” I grumbled.
“You’ve already dropped the uncle part of the equation?”
He’s going to have to earn that shit back. “Did I?” I asked innocently.
“I want you to get to know him in a whole new light. For me,” she added when I didn’t respond. “Maybe you could bring Quinn, honey.”
“Nothing is going on between me and Quinn. I’m kind of into someone else,” I said without thinking. “There’s this guy at the center—”
She dropped the tray of my perfectly sliced tomatoes.
“Mom,” I said plaintively. I gave the tomatoes a woeful look. “Those took me a long time to do. And they were perfect.”
