Proving Paul's Promise (3 page)

“I like Kelly,” I protest.

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m not stupid, Friday. You clam up every time she comes in here.”

I sit down across from him in a rolling chair. My skirt slides up my thighs and his eyes land there, but I don’t care. I’m wearing fishnet stockings. He runs a hand through his blond hair and jerks on it when he gets to the tips. Then he closes his eyes and takes a breath.

“I don’t
dislike
her,” I say.

“Mmm hmm,” he hums.

“Did you tell her about the kiss?”

“Yes.”

“In detail?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know how to talk about that.”

“What do you mean?” I am so confused.

“Do we really have to rehash this?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Until we’re done with it.”

“I’m done with it now.”

“Fuck you.”

He chuckles.
Finally.
“Fuck you,” he tosses back. “Look,” he says, “I didn’t mean to ruin everything. Let’s just go back to how it was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before I kissed you.”

“If I remember correctly, I kissed you.”

He grins. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“I thought I was wrong once, but it turned out I was mistaken.” I shrug my shoulders.

“Friday,” he growls, but at least he’s laughing now.

“What?”

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

“Probably not.”

He goes back to unloading the box and putting the ink away.

“So, what did you tell Kelly?” I ask quietly.

“I told her that I couldn’t fuck her anymore.”

“That’s all it was? Fucking.”

He looks up at my mouth and stares at it until I start to squirm in my seat.

“What?” I ask.

“It tears me up inside when you use dirty words. You should do it more often.” He grins at me.

“Like you could stop me.” I snort. Everyone knows I have a colorful vocabulary. My mother called it a potty mouth. When I’m around Paul’s daughter or Matt’s kids, I have to work really hard not to use bad language.

He rolls his eyes.

“So…” I say really slowly, rolling out the
O
.

He quirks an eyebrow. “So?”

“So, about fucking Kelly.”

He tosses a bottle of ink a little too hard. “I don’t want to talk about fucking Kelly.”

“Was it fucking Kelly or was it making love to Kelly?” I wince because I know that sounds stupid. “That’s a dumb question,” I murmur.

“No.” He shakes his head. “That’s actually a good question. It was scratching an itch. It was easy. You get used to one person because you know what she likes and how to get there. And she knows what you like and how to get you there.” He shrugs. “It was easy.”

“Do you still love her?”

“Nope.”

“How do you know?”

Suddenly, he grabs the edge of my chair, falls to his knees, and rolls me into him. With one gentle hand on each of my knees, he parts my thighs and wiggles until we’re chest to chest. My breath stalls. He’s an inch from my face when he speaks, and his breath becomes mine. “Because you’re all I can think about. I wake up with you on my mind and go to sleep with you in my dreams. I wouldn’t be having these intense thoughts about you if I were in love with anybody else. I’m not that kind of guy.” He kisses the end of my nose. “I know you already know this about me. I’m a stand-up man, Friday, and I’m loyal.”

“I want to tell you I feel the same,” I say. I close my eyes, and he startles me when he places a kiss on each of my eyelids in turn.

“What’s stopping you?”

“That guy I was with yesterday,” I say. I put a hand on his chest to push him back, but I don’t want him to go anywhere.

He leans back on his heels, but he leaves his hands on my knees. I close my legs, because without him there, I just feel…empty.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Then why was he kissing you?”

“So, I could make you jealous,” I blurt out. I cover my face with my hand because I’m mortified to admit that.

“Well, fuck. It worked.”

Why doesn’t that make me feel good? “I thought you kissed me and then crawled back into bed with Kelly,” I admit.

“I can see how you’d think that.”

“But that’s done?”

“Done.” He dusts his hands together. “You want to have dinner with me tonight?” he asks. He brings my fingertips to his lips and regards me over the top of my hand. He lingers there long enough for his warm breath to tickle up my arm and shoot desire straight to my girlie parts.

“Um, well,” I say.

“What now?” he asks.

“Cody and Garrett,” I start. I don’t even know how to tell him this part.

“The guy from yesterday and the guy from last week?”

“Yeah.”

“Who are they to you?”

“Well,” I say. I close my eyes and steel my heart for the next part. “One of them might have gotten me pregnant.” I open my mouth to tell him about the surrogacy. But he interrupts before a sound can move past my lips.

“Fuck!” he swears as he gently shoves me back from him. My chair rolls backward until it softly bumps the wall. He jumps to his feet.

“I didn’t know you had feelings for me at the time!” I yell.

The bell over the door to the shop tinkles, and Paul yells, “Out!” at the top of his lungs. I see Sam back out the door, with Logan behind him. Sam is explaining to Logan why they’re leaving when they just got here. At least as well as he can. He probably has no idea.

“I won’t even know if it’s positive for nine more days!” I yell.

“You let me pour my fucking heart out when you were fucking those two guys?”

My gut twists. “You think that highly of me, huh?” I ask.

“What else am I supposed to think?” he yells. Paul never yells. He has this quiet way of leading.

“Nothing!” I yell back. “You’re supposed to think nothing!”

I get up and smooth my dress. Paul just glares at me. Then he looks at my stomach. I lay a protective hand over it.

“I didn’t know you had those kinds of feelings for me,” I say.

“I liked it better when I thought you were a lesbian,” he says.

“Yeah,” I toss back. “Me too.” I jerk a thumb toward the door. “You had better go let your brothers in.” All of them are pressed against the front window with their hands wrapped around their eyes so they can see in, even Matt, who must’ve showed up while we were yelling.

“You go let them in,” he says. And he stomps toward the back of the shop.

Paul

It was so much easier lusting after Friday when I thought she liked to eat pussy as much as I do. I could put my arm around her and pretend like the scent of her didn’t shoot straight to my dick, since I couldn’t do anything about the attraction anyway. But now all I can think about is putting my arm around her and having her perfume shoot straight to my dick. Then I think about kissing her again. Then pulling her on top of me and letting her ride me until we’re both sweaty and satisfied.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I have rotten luck. And even worse timing, apparently.

Friday could be pregnant. That means she’s been getting it on with one or the other, or both, of those bozos. She’s been having a great time while I’ve been wearing my hand out to thoughts of her.

I get a bottle of water from the fridge and tip it up, closing my eyes as I drink it gulp after gulp.

The privacy curtain I pulled shut makes a clinking sound, and I keep drinking with my eyes closed. I know it’s not her because my skin doesn’t start to sizzle. When I open my eyes, I find Matt leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. He has a smirk on his face that annoys the hell out of me.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks.

I hold up my water bottle. “Drinking water, numbnuts. Why?”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” His foot starts to tap.

“None of your business,” I murmur. I hate it when Matt does this. He’s so gentle and quiet. He’s pretty much the opposite of me in every way, except for our looks. And even in that, he’s thin and wiry, but strong. And I’m…not thin or wiry.

He points toward the front of the store. “Friday is all of our business,” he hisses quietly. “She’s family, Paul.”

“I know,” I breathe. “Another reason why it’s best to keep things the way they are.” I throw my bottle into the recycling from across the room.

“Well, you’ve already fucked up the atmosphere,” he says. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m going to do nothing.”

Friday has been a part of our circle for four years. But almost all of that time, I thought she was a lesbian. The five minutes when I didn’t is when the trouble started.

“It didn’t look like nothing when we got here. You were kissing her eyelids and she didn’t seem too put out by it.”

“She’s not in the right position for what I want,” I say. I can’t tell him about her being pregnant. It’s not my story to tell.

He grins. “Well, what position did you want her in?”

“Shut up,” I grouse.

“If she’s in the wrong position, flip her the fuck over.” He throws up his hands. “Hell, turn her upside down if you have to.”

“It’s not that easy.”

His gaze softens. “Nothing worth having is easy to get.”

If anyone would know, it’s Matt. He battled cancer and thought he would never get married or have a kid, and now he has three with twins on the way. He fought, and he won.

“Is she worth having?” Matt asks.

“I don’t know.” I shake my head.

“Do you want to find out?”

“I don’t know.” I drag a hand down my face.

“I never took you for being a quitter.”

I heave in a breath. “I’ve never quit anything on purpose. But this fight might be more than I want to take on.”

“Hell, you knew she had baggage. Layers. You told me you wanted to find out everything about her. Find out why she doesn’t have a family. Find out why she’s all alone in New York. Find out why she’s living in Pete’s spare room until tomorrow.”

I spin to face him. “She’s living with Pete and Reagan?” I didn’t know about that. “Why?”

He shrugs. “She had to move out of the dorm after graduation. They had an empty room. But Reagan’s parents are coming to stay for two weeks, so she’s going somewhere else.”

“Where?” I ask quickly.

He shrugs. “Does it matter?” But he’s grinning.

Fuck yeah, it matters. “Is she going to stay with one of the douchebags?”

“What douchebags?” Matt scratches his head.

“Never mind,” I say. Hope swells within me. I shouldn’t let it, but it does. I get out a piece of paper and write on it in magic marker:

ROOM FOR RENT
PRICE NEGOTIABLE

ONLY BEAUTIFUL LITTLE
BOMBSHELLS NEED APPLY
PREFERABLY ONES NAMED FRIDAY

I walk out of the back room and go to the bulletin board. I stick a thumbtack in the “advertisement” and walk away.

I hear a snicker from behind me and turn to grin at Logan.

You’re a d-o-o-f-u-s
, he signs, fingerspelling the last word because there’s no sign for something so stupid.

I know
, I sign back.

He looks a little worried for me, but I don’t care. I can’t get where I want to go if I don’t take a first step. Regardless of whether or not she’s pregnant, she needs a place to stay and I have two empty rooms. And she’s family, for Christ’s sake.

I’ve never wanted to eat out a member of my family, though. I scratch my head. I should probably stop thinking like that.

I whistle to myself as I walk to my office. I have some paperwork to do before my first appointment arrives. And I need to give Friday time to find my ad.

Friday

I’ve been working on a particularly tricky tat for a client, and I can’t quite get it right. I motion Logan over to take a look.

“What do you think?” I glance up at him. He pinches his lips together and shakes his head. “What?” I ask, throwing up my hands. “Use your words.”

Instead, he takes my pencil and spins the paper toward him. He draws on it for a second and then shoves it toward me. He hands my pencil back and grins.

“I hate you,” I say, when I see that he just added two lines and made my drawing perfect.

“I love you, too,” he says. He leans over quickly and kisses my forehead. I squeeze my eyes closed and let him.

He makes a noise and goes over to the bulletin board. He starts to draw little hearts around the edges of a posting. I tap his shoulder so he’ll look up. “What are you doing?”

“Adding hearts,” he says, like I should have guessed.

I tap him again so he’ll look at me. “Why are you doing that?”

He shrugs. “It needed hearts.”

“What needed hearts?” I ask. I lean closer so I can read the paper.

My own heart thuds. “It doesn’t need hearts,” I say. It needs condoms. Well, that is, if I’m not already pregnant. I look up at Logan. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing, does he?” I ask.

He squeezes my shoulder. “Go easy on him, will you?”

“Why?”

“He quit Kelly for you, Friday.” He glares at me. “Like, cold turkey. He quit her. He’s been fucking Kelly for years. And he broke things off with her.”

“How do you know all this?” I ask.

“We talk.” He gestures toward his brothers, who are all draped around the room like furniture. Really big, good-looking furniture.

“Of course, you do,” I say. I pull the thumbtack from the ad and take a deep breath.

“Go easy on him,” he says again.

“Fuck that,” I reply.

He grins and shrugs. “I can’t say I didn’t try.” He takes my shoulders and turns me toward Paul’s office. “Go Friday on his ass.” He slaps me on the butt while Pete and Sam snicker and high-five one another.

I walk to the back of the shop and knock on Paul’s office door since it’s closed. That usually means he wants to be left alone. “What?” he calls.

I open the door and stick my head in. “Do you always answer the door like that?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says. He has the phone balanced between his shoulder and his ear. “What do you want?”

“Are you on the phone?”