Forsaking Gray (The Colloway Brothers Book 1) (4 page)

I hear her laugh first. It’s deep and sensual and enthralls me like a siren’s song. I look around to find the source that’s stirring my dick. When my eyes settle on a waitress two tables down that I’ve never seen here before, I feel this strange buzzing in my chest. My God in heaven, she’s stunning and I can only see her profile.

Then she leaves their table, turning our way. My breath catches and my dick hardens painfully when our eyes connect. This magnificent green-eyed, chocolate haired beauty
is
a siren and I will gladly follow her to the depths of the ocean, even if that means my certain death.

I’m not one of those guys that believes in love at first sight, but I guess even I can be proven wrong. There is something special about this creature. I don’t know her name, I don’t know her age, I don’t know her hopes and dreams, I don’t know if she’s already spoken for, but I do know this. I
want
to. I have to know every single thing about her. I’ve dated a lot of women. Fucked a lot of women. But I have never felt like this about any of them without even a word uttered between us.

Her steps slow briefly as she heads our way and I know she’s also feeling the heat that’s running hot between us right now. I feel like my skin is on fire and if anyone touches me, they’ll get scorched.

My brothers quiet, following my gaze until the curvaceous vixen stops right in front of me. Her eyes leave mine and land on my brother Conn and my temper flares. Conn could charm the panties off of a woman with a simple scan of her body and a crook of his finger. I don’t want her looking at my brothers. I only want her eyes on me.

“Hi. I’m Livia and I’ll be taking care of you boys tonight. Can I start you with a round of beers, maybe?”

I can’t help but notice she’s avoiding all eye contact with me now as I continue to stare. I hear Conn and Ash talking, but I have no idea what they’re saying or what the question was because I’m stuck back on her name. Livia. Sounds like the perfect name for my wife.

She walks away without another word in my direction and I follow her with my eyes until she rounds a corner and I can’t see her anymore.

“Careful there, lover boy. You’re going to scare her away if you keep looking at her like you want to eat her,” Ash says while laughing.

“I do.” I don’t laugh, because I’m dead serious. I want to consume her.

Livia spends the rest of the evening trying to ignore me, but much to my brothers’ chagrin, I ask her out repeatedly. And she repeatedly, but politely, declines. I know when a woman is playing hard-to-get, but Livvy isn’t just playing. She
is
hard-to-get, which only makes me try harder.

What she doesn’t understand though is that she snared my soul the second she stared into my eyes. If I didn’t think she was interested, I would leave it alone, but I know she is. I see it with every shy stolen glance. I see it in the flush of her skin. I see it in the flutter of her pulse when she’s standing next to me.

I want her. Desperately. And my desperation makes me relentless.

I smile remembering my feeble attempts to impress Livvy that first night backfired when I boasted that I would be finishing my undergrad in business at MIT that spring and would be applying at Wharton for my MBA. She told me I was arrogant and ‘accidentally’ spilled a glass of water on my lap when she was clearing the table, to which she barely apologized. My brothers laughed their asses off and told me I was losing my touch.

I was. She had me so flustered that night, so completely infatuated, that I was acting like a sixteen-year old trying to ask a girl out for the first time. It was embarrassing.

That evening, I left her a tip that was double the price of our meal, which I paid for the next night when I returned and asked for a seat in her area.

When she sees me, she stops dead in her tracks for a moment or two, a slight blush creeping adoringly up her neck. She is not as unaffected by me as she’d like me to believe. Her mouth lied, but her eyes and body did not. And I would absolutely use that to my advantage.

“I don’t need your charity,” she says caustically as she approaches my table.

I can have any girl I want. I am young, smart, good-looking and rich, and someday destined to take over my father’s business, along with my two brothers. But I don’t want just anyone. I want her. I want this girl beyond any rational reason and I will not let up until I have her. In my bed and in my life.

“It’s a good thing I’m not a charitable person, then,” I reply, drinking in her essence as if it’s the only thing keeping me alive. I’d gone twenty-four hours without looking into her mesmerizing eyes and I was starved for her. How I would go back to Massachusetts for my final semester after the holidays were over, I didn’t have a clue.

“Go out with me,” I state plainly.

“Are you really that conceited or are you just stupid? I thought MIT was a college for smart people?”

I laugh, shaking my head. My God, I love her wit. “I’m that confident.”

“I already told you I didn’t want to go out with you,” she huffs, but once again I call bullshit.

“I don’t give up that easily, Livvy.”

Anger causes her face to redden. “My name is Livia. Not Livvy.”

“Tomorrow night. Just one date.” My voice remains stoic and calm, but inside I am begging.

“I have to work tomorrow night.”

“Then the night after that.”

“Sorry. I have to work every night for the next six nights. Some of us need to make a living.”

The rest of the meal she conducts her obligatory waitressing duties, asking if I’d like another beer, asking if I’m ready for the check, but refuses to make any more small talk or answer my question about when she would be free.

But she’d unknowingly given me a piece of information, which she’d regret the rest of the week.
She’d given me her schedule. And it didn’t matter how much pizza I had to eat or how many parties I had to miss, my ass would be planted in her section every night until she relented.

Every day I came in she softened a little more, gave up a little more information about herself and when she saw me there on the sixth night, I knew I finally had her.

“Aren’t you getting sick of pizza yet?” she sighs, a small smile turning her gorgeous lips. Lips I desperately wanted wrapped around my cock.

“To tell you the truth, I’m really starting to fucking hate it,” I tease, drawing a laugh from her. I will never forget it. My very first laugh.

“Then why do you keep coming back?”

“You.”

She looks at me thoughtfully, like she’s trying to work out a puzzle. “What are you really after, Gray?” she sighs.

Wow. A smile, a laugh
and
the use of my name. I got a triple tonight. I’m hoping for a homerun and a “yes” to going out with me would get me there.

“You,” I tell her sincerely.

She shakes her head. “You’re a good-looking guy. You could have anyone you want. Why me?”

I’m a little taken aback at that question and her lack of confidence in herself. I try for humor but she just cocks a brow at my joke. “You think I’m good-looking?”

I try again, going with the blatant truth this time. “Why
not
you, Livvy? I find you extremely attractive, but there’s something more about you, unique, different. And I have this visceral need to figure it out. There’s white hot chemistry between us and I know you feel it too.”

She hesitates before answering. “You’re going back to school soon.”

Excuses, excuses. “What are you really afraid of, angel?”

Her gaze drops momentarily to the floor before sweeping back up to mine. “We’re very different, you and I.”

If she means social status, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t care that I’m going to MIT and she’s going to a community college. I don’t care that she’s a waitress and I’m being positioned to run a multi-million dollar company. I don’t care about her address or the clothes she has on her back or what kind of fucking car she drives. I don’t care about any of that. I care about her, but I can’t tell her that without sounding like some crazy asshole that’s just trying to get into her pants.

“I’ve heard opposites attract,” I say instead.

She smiles and chuckles lightly, eyeing me shyly. “I don’t sleep with a guy on the first date, so if that’s what you’re after then you might as well not come back.”

I smile back. “Good. Neither do I.” That’s a lie, but I find that even if she wanted to end our first night together in bed, I’m not sure I would. It would demean the evening and her and I want far more from her than just sex. She just doesn’t know it yet.

“Okay,” she says quietly.

“Okay? Okay you’ll go on a date with me?”

Her lips curl. “You’ve worked pretty hard for it so I guess I’ll throw you a bone.”

I lean back in my booth and grin. She stands there for long seconds smiling back at me before pulling out her little notepad and writing on it. She rips off the paper, handing it to me. Glancing down I see it’s a phone number.

“This real?” I ask, shaking it in the air.

She laughs. God I’m already addicted to it. To her. “Yes. It’s real. Well, ah, I guess I should get back to work.”

“Okay. I’m going to call you later.”

She nods and turns to leave, taking care of her other stations. For the next hour I watch her work, barely touching my pizza, barely drinking the beer sitting in front of me, because I can barely take my eyes from her. Whenever she catches me, she beams and it makes my heart soar.

Later when she brings me the check, I finally ask her what I’ve been dying to know all night. “So, ah…what date
do
you sleep with a guy on, then?”

Smiling, she answers, “I guess you’ll know if you get there.”

After finally convincing Livvy to go on a date with me, the rest, as they say, is history. We clicked, like I knew we would, and spent every free minute together until I had to return to school three weeks later. I loved school, but being away from Livvy was excruciating and the last few months dragged by slowly. We talked and skyped daily. I came home as much as I could and she came to see me when her class and work scheduled allowed, although that was infrequent because she couldn’t afford the plane tickets and was too prideful to let me pay. I hated it, but loved her all the more for it at the same time.

That’s one of things that I ended up loving about Livia the most. She was extremely proud. Her mother left her when she was young. Her father was a gambling addict and they had to struggle for everything they had. She was a born fighter. Livia worked hard to put herself through school because all she ever wanted to be was a teacher. I wonder if she’s doing that now. Teaching somewhere. I hope so. She was always suited for that calling.

Once I moved back to Detroit that May, Livia and I were inseparable. We spent most nights at my apartment, because she still lived at home with her father and younger sister. I remember feeling insanely jealous when she insisted on sleeping at home, because I wanted her always with me where she belonged. But I also understood her need to spend time with Alyse, her younger sister, because her father did a piss poor job taking care of her.

Livia was the first serious relationship I ever had and I haven’t had a serious relationship with any woman since because I am not whole and I never will be. I can’t offer something of myself that isn’t available. I am irreversibly damaged, a part of me dead and gone with her. I’ve done my fair share of dating recently—if you want to call it that—but with each slide between a woman’s legs, I can still only imagine Livvy. I have base needs to sate, but I don’t want the women I fuck. The only thing I really want is
her
.

When I felt the weight of a stare across the ballroom, the hair on the back of my neck prickled, and when our eyes connected, my breath stopped. She was alive. And seeing her in that tight, short black dress and those red fuck-me shoes gave me an instant hard-on.

Throughout the years, I’d often imagined I’ve seen Livvy. At a bar, at a restaurant, walking down the street. But it was never her. Having no choice, I left my date, Lena, in the dust and chased after her to see if
this
Livvy was real, but she ran. Just like she’d done so many years before. And once again, I was ruined.

The day after the fundraiser, I tried unsuccessfully to find her. If she has a phone number, it’s unlisted. I’ve been struggling ever since on what my next step will be. I have this gut-wrenching, burning, instinctive need to find her. Now that I’ve seen her again, now that I know she’s alive, I will not let Livia Kingsley off the hook that easily. She owes me some fucking answers and I aim to get them. I don’t know if she’s living in the city, but when I told her I had moved to Chicago, she could not hide her surprise, so I have to believe she’s here. Somewhere.

And since I can’t find her on my own, I’m doing the only thing I can.

Bonnie, my admin’s nasally voice, rang through the speaker. “Mr. Colloway, I’m sorry to bother you, but a Burt Jaffrey is on line one. He insists it’s important.”

“It’s fine, Bonnie. I’ll take it.” Pressing the flashing light, I answer the call I’d been anxiously waiting for. “Burt, I have a job for you.”

“Of course, Mr. Colloway.”

“I need you to find a woman. Livia Kingsley. She doesn’t appear to have a listed phone number and I can’t find any type of account on social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no LinkedIn accounts, but I do believe she’s living in Chicago, or the burbs somewhere.”