Stripped Down (30 page)

“Beckett. You cannot give away free beer.” Mia slapped her hand against her forehead.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s counterproductive.”

West rocked his head side to side. “Well, no. Not if you did a loyalty card.”

“Like Starbucks?” I raised my eyebrows and rested my forearms on the bar as I leaned forward. “Are you seriously suggesting giving people a free beer for every ten they buy?”

Beck looked at me. “It works for Starbucks.”

“Yes,” Mia said slowly. “Because people don’t drink six Starbucks coffees a day. Guys who come in here drink at least six or seven beers a night. If they’re local and here every night, you’ll be giving away beer left, right, and center.”

“She’s right,” I agreed.

“But it’ll encourage people to buy beer,” West pointed out.

Mia slumped forward on the table, burying her face in her arms. After a visible deep breath, she sat back up and looked between both men. “They’re going to buy the beer anyway, dumbasses. All you’re doing is offering them a free beer for something they’re already doing.”

“Oh.” Beck scrubbed his hand across his stubbled jaw.

“Honestly, it’s amazing you guys ever managed to get a business off the ground with these kinds of ideas.”

She kind of had a point. The card thing would have worked if the businesses were flopping, but they’re not.

“I think you guys are just trying too hard now,” she went on. “The deals we have in both clubs are working. The bachelor tokens here are a better deal than any of the clubs around us. The bachelorette cocktails and cut prices for the bridesmaids keep the women coming into Rock Solid. Combined with the happy hours and all the other offers, we don’t need to add more. When they stop working, we’ll reconsider.”

“That’s why I shouldn’t be able to shower alone,” West said. “I warned you I think up dumb shit when I shower alone, but you refused to join me.”

Mia looked at him flatly. “Yes. Because we were already late, and if I got into that shower, we wouldn’t even be here now.”

“It’s not my fault you look good naked and wet.”

I choked on my water and banged my fist against my chest. Well, all righty, then. “I’m fine,” I said, putting the bottle down on the bar in front of me. “I’m fine.”

Beck grinned. “Mia broke West’s filter. Now, he just says what he wants in front of anyone.”

“Right. Because you don’t do that.” West snorted. “You’re worse than anyone I know for talking before you think.”

“Nah, I think before I talk. I just always think that what I have to say is awesome.”

Mia shook her head and got up. She joined me at the bar as they bantered back and forth. “Sometimes, I look at them and see these successful, thirty-year-old businessmen. Other times, I look at them and wonder if their moms washed their Batman pajamas this week.”

I burst out laughing. That was probably the best analogy I’d heard to describe their relationship, and so damn accurate.

“It’s the pajamas thing right now, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yep. I’m also wondering if their Spiderman underpants have been washed.”

It made so much sense.

“Do they ever not do this?”

She slid her green gaze toward them. “Believe it or not, I’ve seen them have a mature conversation, so it does happen. So do conversations without sexual innuendos, if you were wondering.”

“Really? The only time we’ve ever had one of those is when we’re yelling at each other.”

“Ah, yeah. Did you forgive him for the divorce-papers thing?”

“Did you know about it?” I looked at her.

Her red hair flew around her shoulders when she shook her head. “Not until West told me yesterday. Hell, I was mad for you. I knew he was crazy, but that seemed way too crazy.”

“I was so mad I thought I’d be in orange by the end of the day,” I admitted. “I couldn’t believe he hadn’t done it.”

“Are you guys filing them now? Or did he already do it?”

I looked down at the bar and picked at one of the bar mats. I tapped one of the corners against the bar and smacked my lips together.

“You’re not doing it?” Mia asked in a low voice. “Seriously?”

I raised one shoulder and let it fall again. “It’s not... I don’t know. He explained to me why he didn’t, and when he gave me the chance to get in the car and do it yesterday, I just... I couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t.” She sounded amused, and the twitch of her lips showed it.

“I couldn’t,” I repeated. “The idea of it... I don’t know. So I don’t know what’s going to happen, but right now, it looks like that whatever it is ends up with us the way we are right now.”

“What about CiCi? Does she know anything?”

“She thinks he’s my boyfriend, but he told her that. I’m just going with it because it seems better than the alternative.”

“Okay, so, for my next question... If you’re not getting divorced, why aren’t you wearing rings?”

I opened my mouth, but... That was a really, really good question. One I didn’t even have an idea about an answer for.

If we weren’t getting a divorce, were we treating this as a relationship where we’d eventually wear rings, or we were diving right on in? It hadn’t been mentioned. I hadn’t even considered it. Was it as simple as the fact that he hadn’t, either? Or was it a deliberate thing so, just in case it screwed up, nobody had to find out we had been married?

But he was so certain we could do it. Wouldn’t we wear the rings if he believed that? Or was it me?

Why was this entire thing still so fucked up?

“I’m going to take that as you don’t know,” Mia said quietly.

I nodded, looking down at the bar. I grabbed the cloth from beneath it and wiped it across the surface where my bottle had left a rim of water on it.

“It’s not easy, Cassie.” Mia was still speaking quietly. “I know. I did this with West. Back and forth, wondering if it was the right choice to make or not. If he was worth it.”

“But you moved here, right? So you must have known he was.”

“Sure, but it took me almost losing him to realize that. I had to watch my best friend get married the next day, and as much as a relationship freaked me out, I knew then that, if I was ever going to get married, it had to be to West. So, if you really think it’s hard, ignore the fact that you two got married courtesy of tequila and mentally take him out of your life. Put yourself back to where you were three weeks ago, where he was just your boss. And then look at how your life would be without him.” She took the cloth from me, lifted my water bottle, and wiped beneath it to stop it dripping. “Think, Cassie,” she said, putting the cloth back in my hand. “Not because you’re under pressure, but because sometimes you need to be without someone to realize how much you need to be with them.”

I swallowed and glanced at Beck. He was laughing with West, leaning back on his chair, his head thrown back. His laugh echoed off the walls and his smile lit up the whole damn place.

“Just theoretically though, right? I don’t actually have to, you know. Be without him.”

Mia smiled and tapped my hand. “You know what? I think you’re thinking for the sake of thinking. You already know what you want. You just really need to let yourself see it, because if you don’t, you’re going to think yourself into the wrong choice.”

For the first time this week, I’d completed a full day of work.

It felt good. Even if I was now pretty damn tired and my mind was still swirling with Mia’s words.

She was right. She was so right, and I knew it. The problem I had wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with Beck. I’d accepted that was the truth, because it was. I wanted him and I wanted us.

It just didn’t stop the gut fear and the doubts fear brought with it. Only, now, it wasn’t the same fear. It wasn’t of being left. The fear was of opening my life and my world to another person so suddenly.

This wasn’t your average love story.

This wasn’t man meets woman, they fall in love slowly, they live happily ever after.

This was man gives woman tequila, they get married, they fuck, and then they are fucked.

There was no natural life adjustment for us. It was literally an explosion, a world-rocking quickness that was hard to swallow.

I knew my life. I knew where everything fit and how everything worked. I knew where I had to be and when. I knew every single little detail.

Beck didn’t fit into it, yet somehow, he did. He shouldn’t have fit into my world, but slowly, he was starting to. How much of it he worked in, I didn’t know. On the surface, he fit perfectly. He loved my daughter. He made me feel a way I hadn’t been sure I would ever allow myself to feel again. He made my life easier where he just happened to be my boss.

The bigger picture though... How did he fit into it? Did we fit into his? I didn’t know. Because, in the end, this never would be man meets woman. It would always be man meets woman and her daughter, and that love story was never easy.

I was overthinking again. I knew I was. I didn’t need anybody to tell me, but this kind of overthinking, this knowledge of an entire upheaval of my life, of our lives, was so much more overwhelming than I’d imagined it would be. Apparently, when I’d considered not having Beck in my life, I hadn’t considered the differences of having him in my life.

And, now, I was very, very overwhelmed with everything. I needed to stop being overwhelmed. I needed to stop thinking about thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and ugh.

I slapped my own cheek. This was so stupid. Beck wasn’t some useless, careless little boy. He was a strong man who knew what he wanted and had his life in order.

If you ignored the fact that he’d gotten drunk and married someone.

I buried my fingers in my hair and ran them through. CiCi was splashing like crazy in the pool, laughing at whatever Beck was saying to her. I was sitting on the back deck, curled on the sofa, with them in my direct view.

Beck climbed out of the pool, his turquoise shorts clinging to his muscular legs. His entire body glistened with water droplets, and in the late afternoon sun, he looked the closest thing to male perfection I’d ever seen. Every water drop that trailed down his body had to handle the dips and curves of his toned stomach before they ultimately disappeared into the waistband of his shorts or traveled even farther below.

I ogled him. Admitting it was my only option. I eye-fucked him without shame until the moment he stopped and caught my eye. Then my cheeks flared red hot, but he only grinned slowly and sexily... And then, like he was in a slow-mo movie, he clasped his hands and stretched his arms above his head. His muscles went taut and tight, his stomach seeming even more defined as his back arched.

He was such a smug shit. He was damn hot and he knew it, and that was why I kept looking at him. His grin never left his face as he dropped his arms and winked at me. Asshole. Hot asshole, but still asshole.

Then he bombed into the pool, leaving CiCi shrieking with laughter as she floated in the corner of it. Her laugh was loud and uncontrollable, a full belly laugh that had her entire body shaking as it left her. My own lips twitched, my building giggles as uncontrollable as hers sounded.

She was laughing the best kind of laugh—the one that made a baby fairy come to life.

Beck surfaced from the pool and wiped his hair back, chuckling as he wiped his face. I felt like an intruder as I watched until he said something to CiCi and she turned to me.

“Come on, Mommy! Come in!”

“Oh, no, I’m okay,” I called back. “I’m watching you have fun!”

“Mooooooommy! Please!”

I really didn’t want to get in that pool, but she was turning puppy-dog eyes on me.

“Come on, Blondie.” Beck leaned against the side of the pool, his biceps bulging as his eyes twinkled at me. “Come get wet.”

“If I wanted to get wet, I’d take a shower.”

“I’m going to ask you nicely one more time,” he said, holding one finger up.

“Yeah? And if I don’t get changed and in the pool?”

“Then I’m going to get out, come after you, and throw you in fully clothed.”

CiCi giggled.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I said.

He wouldn’t. Would he? Then again...

He launched himself out of the pool in one push, swinging his leg around onto the side so he could get out. Water dripped off his body as he stood and started down the stone path that linked the pool with the deck.

“Oh crap!” I stumbled as I got off the sofa. Luckily for me, I was much closer to the house than the pool, so I darted into the kitchen and ran through as quickly as I could.

It looked like I needed to get changed.

“Cassie!”

A scream left my mouth as I ran up the stairs and noticed a very wet Beck behind me. How the hell had he not slipped on the kitchen floor?

“No, no, no!” I yelled, almost tripping over the top step and turning toward his bedroom.

“Yes, yes, yes! I warned you!”

“I’m getting changed, I’m getting changed!”

But I wasn’t quick enough. He snatched me up in the doorway of his room and spun me around against the wall. His hard, wet body pinned me there, and he laughed breathlessly as he rubbed himself against me, getting me wet anyway.