Beguiling (Tempting #2) (18 page)

I
laughed
a little as I tucked my phone in my pocket before leaving my car. The last week with Leo had been exciting, full of fun—and not only the kind sans clothing. Nearly every day after getting home from the city, Leo came inside and hung out with me. Sometimes it was innocent—Leo eating everything in my fridge as an example. Other times … well, other times it wasn’t innocent, but it was definitely fun.

Part of me regretted waiting so long to find this with someone, this easy kind of friends-with-benefits arrangement Leo and I had. Not that we’d defined ourselves as “friends-with-benefits,” but it was how I saw us. We certainly weren’t dating and we hadn’t made any kind of verbal commitments.

But the part of me that regretted waiting so long realized that I hadn’t found this with anyone because Leo was the reason it worked. Our history, coupled with all the time we were forced to spend time together made for time to get to know him, to see in surprising clarity everything we’d missed out on in all the years we’d spent hating each other. It’d been easy to brush him off as another dumb jock, but it was obviously unfair to label him so simply.

One of my favorite professors told us that thinking shallowly was for ignorant pussies. And he was right. I’d been unkind to Leo at the beginning of our arrangement, belittling him for being a football player, as if that one part was the sum of him. I was ashamed when I thought of how I’d essentially called him stupid when he wasn’t. He was thoughtful, giving, and so funny that he made my stomach hurt.

And I’d be lying if I said that spending all that time with him wasn’t quickly becoming a very significant part of my everyday life. And, more than that, I was developing some very real feelings for him, feelings that were confusing as well as thrilling.

I waved to the receptionist, Heidi, at the counter of the animal shelter and signed in on the clipboard. “Who am I working with today?” I asked her.

“Jax,” she said with a slight smile.

“Perfect.” Jax was my favorite dog in the shelter, a fact that I didn’t try to hide. On my first day volunteering, Belinda, the organizer of volunteer activities, had cautioned me against developing any lasting attachment for the animals, but in the same breath had said, “Good luck with that, by the way.”

I hadn’t grown up with pets because my mother had been bitten by a dog when she was younger and had sworn off ever owning one. In high school, when Leo and I had drifted apart, it’d been easy for me to find myself at the local shelter, taking dogs on walks and cleaning out their kennels.

As I made my way back to where the dogs were kept, twenty-seven of them began barking in greeting. I stuck my hand in a few of the enclosures and scratched the heads of the ones who knew me before I found my favorite all the way at the end.

Jax was a Great Dane with the most beautiful brindle coat. He’d come to the shelter months before after a family that adopted him hadn’t been satisfied with his protection skills. He was happy, if a little small for his breed, which made me think he might have been the runt of the litter and therefore not as likely to be confident enough to be protective.

I hooked a leash to his collar and led him out the back door to the yard where two other volunteers were already playing with other dogs.

“There you are,” Belinda said, making her way over to me with the most recent addition to the shelter, a two-year old lab-pit mix. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Sorry. It’s been a busy summer. Trying to hold down the house and get ready for school in the fall—it’s taken up a lot of time.” Jax and the other dog sniffed one another before Jax slid down, his hind legs up and front legs bent down—a clear “play” position. When the other dog didn’t reciprocate, Jax made a sighing noise and laid down completely flat.

“How’s your mom doing?” Belinda asked, reaching down to unhook the dog from its collar. “Go, burn off some energy,” she said as the smaller dog took off.

“She’s good,” I said, but I wasn’t totally sure. It struck me that I hadn’t spoken to her a whole lot in the last few weeks. I knew she wanted me to come down to D.C. to spend the last week of dad’s sabbatical with them, but I was now leaning toward staying here instead. A decision that was—possibly foolishly—made because I wanted to spend more time with Leo.

“Good, good.” Belinda nodded beside me. “Let Jax run for a minute—he hasn’t gotten the chance to stretch those long legs of his since breakfast and I know he’s restless.”

I unhooked Jax and watched him bound up and run—FREEDOM written all over his face. He was a good dog, if maybe a little wild. As much as I enjoyed seeing him every week, I was sad that he hadn’t been adopted yet.

“Looks like you’ve got something on your mind, girl.”

I blinked rapidly, everything coming back into focus. “I might.”

“Well, shoot.”

We lowered to the grass, watched the dogs play—mostly Jax bounding from one side of the fencing to the other before stopping abruptly and standing still; back straight and tail stick-straight toward the ground. “I feel bad that Jax hasn’t found a family yet.” I picked a blade of grass from under my maxi skirt and held it up, looking at the vein running up it, before I tossed it aside.

“Oh, he will. Rest your worries there. He’s a good dog, likes kids and other dogs. The right family will come around for him.”

“I just know I’ll be sad when this summer is over and I’m leaving.” It wasn’t until that moment that I spoke the words that I realized this arrangement I had with Leo would be ending too. Friends with benefits was only convenient when both parties were in close proximity to fulfill the ‘benefits’ part of the label. After I moved away, we’d be just friends … unless we lapsed into being enemies again.

“Well that’s what Facebook is good for—you can keep an eye out for when Jax is adopted, because he will be adopted eventually.”

I dug my hands into the grass at my sides. “But what if he forgets me?” I wasn’t sure if I was talking about Jax or Leo.

Belinda was silent for a minute and I wasn’t sure if she knew that my thoughts had moved from Jax to someone else, but she still answered. “He couldn’t forget you, honey. No way, no how.”

“I’m surprised how…” I swallowed, adjusted the wording in my head, “…important he’s become to me.” There was no doubt when I said that, that I was thinking of Leo.

“Maybe you should show him,” Belinda said. “If you’re worried about him forgetting about you, maybe you need to make sure he can’t.”

I was conflicted. Did I want Leo to remember me after this summer? It did sting a bit thinking that he might be able to forget me so easily, but was it ridiculous for me to hope that maybe he was thinking about me like I was thinking about him?

Finally, I spoke. “I’m not sure how to do that.”

“Sure you do. You just need to allow yourself to get hurt.”

I ducked my head so that my hair shielded my face from her view, because there was no doubt now that she knew I was talking about a guy and not about Jax, who was currently sniffing the ass of every dog in the yard.

“I’m too afraid. I’ve never been hurt before. Not like that.”

“Ah,” Belinda said, patting my knee. “There’s not a lot more luxurious than having your heart broken.”

“I never said I was in love with him,” I quickly said, before feeling the blush creep up my face.

“I didn’t say you did,” Belinda said calmly, as if this was just a regular fake conversation about a dog and not the biggest fear of my whole life: the chance that someone could break my heart. “But if he’s important, it would be a disservice to treat him like he wasn’t.”

I
thought
of Belinda’s words long after I’d climbed in the car. I hadn’t started the engine, but merely sat there in my too-warm car, thinking about Leo and how quickly he was affecting me. It was so unsettling to know, with absolute certainty, that I was having a hard time keeping him in the “friends with benefits” column. He kept bleeding over into territory that was foreign to me.

My phone rang, startling me.

“Hey, mom,” I said as I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder so I could drive toward campus to pick up Leo.

“Hey, honey.” Her voice was warm and soothing, something I hadn’t known I needed until that moment. “Whatcha up to?”

“I just left the shelter and now I need to pick up Leo.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Your father and I just did a tour of the White House.”

“Wow, Dad’s taking a day off?” I asked as I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

“Just the one. He’s been very busy—busier than usual. It’s made me miss you a lot.”

“Because if he wasn’t busy, you wouldn’t miss me?” I teased. I knew what she’d meant, of course.

“I just keep thinking I should come up for the weekend while your father is busy. Spend some time with my girl.”

“No,” I said too quickly. I heard the sharp intake of breath from my mother. While I was never afraid of not fitting into the mold of the traditional preacher’s daughter—a woman of high morals and devoted to her church—I still never, ever showed my parents any kind of disrespect. I may not have been leader of the church choir or number one volunteer for the church’s youth group, but I was definitely someone who deferred to her parents. Telling my mother no was so out of character for me that we were both silent for that moment.

“I just mean, there’s no reason for you to drive all that way for just a weekend.”

“Well, it’s only six hours away and I can stay longer than the weekend if you’d like.”

While stopped at the light, I placed my phone in the car mount so I could be hands-free. “No, it’s okay, Mom. I’ve been so busy anyway, we wouldn’t have a ton of time to spend together.”

“Hmm,” she murmured into the phone. I imagined her sitting perfectly straight at her table, rolling a pen in her hands thoughtfully. “Well, there’s always the last week when you come here. I suppose I can wait until then to see you.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, not looking forward to this at all. “Actually…” I heard her pull in a breath and I winced. “I was thinking I’d just stay here. Finish packing and spending time with my friends before you come home and then I leave.”

“You wouldn’t come here to see us?” She sounded hurt and a little disappointed, and it was a battle just to keep myself from saying
never mind, I’ll come
.

“I mean, I want to, Mom. But I have so much going on here that it’s probably better that I stay home that week and then we immerse ourselves into family time once you two get back.”

She was quiet for a minute. “Are you sure? I don’t like thinking of you all alone.”

I laughed a little into the phone as I turned the car into the parking lot of the football field. “You’re going to have to get used to feeling that way, because pretty soon I’ll be out of the house, far away.”

“Don’t say that,” she said, her voice wavering a little. “I’m not ready for that kind of reality.”

“It’ll be here sooner than later.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. I gotta run, honey. Call you later?”

“Sure,” I said, even though I didn’t think she actually would. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I hung up and put the car in park right by the door to the locker rooms. After a couple minutes, the door opened and Leo exited, in mid-laugh, followed closely by his friend Cameron Hunter. Cameron looked my way for a second, narrowed his eyes against the sun and then turned to Leo, saying something I couldn’t hear from inside the car—something that caused them both to laugh hard.

Instantly, my knuckles gripped the steering wheel and my teeth clamped tight. Whatever it was they were saying, I couldn’t help but feel it had something to do with me. Was Leo bragging about bedding the preacher’s daughter to his friends?

My blood was boiling as I watched them talk, Leo giving Cameron a gentle punch to his chest. After another look in my direction, I knew Cameron was saying something about me. And it made me want to punch him, but a whole lot harder than Leo had.

When Leo finally began walking toward the car, I was sure that my temper was at its boiling point.