Walk On The Wild Side (11 page)

“Ugh, if I hadn’t done so much damage last night I’d suggest we go out to the Last Chance for a nightcap,” Sadie said around her own yawn as she followed Molly into the kitchen carrying a couple of wine glasses. While Sadie rinsed, Molly loaded the dishes and glasses into the dishwasher, then followed as almost everyone migrated toward the front door to say their goodbyes.

Her phone chirped in her pocket, signaling an incoming text.

My house. Thirty minutes.

Her gaze involuntarily darted across to the kitchen where Brady was chatting with Damon as he helped pack the leftovers into Tupperware and store them in the refrigerator.

She quickly texted back, “OK,” and watched him slide his own phone out of his back pocket. He read her reply without so much as a flicker of an eyelid, but she didn’t miss the way his lips pulled up in a faint half smile.

“I’m so bummed we didn’t get to hang out more,” Sadie said beside her as she shrugged into her jacket. “One on one, I mean.”

“Me too,” Molly said, her stomach pinching as she and Sadie exchanged a long, fierce hug. With all of the wedding festivities there hadn’t been time to so much as share a cup of coffee and really catch up. Since Sadie had moved back to San Francisco, they’d kept in touch with frequent texts and near daily phone calls, but it wasn't the same.

Sadie bent her head so she could whisper in Molly’s ear. “And you know you need to call me this week and give me a full report.”

Molly laughed and pulled away, forcing her gaze not to wander in his direction. “I don’t know that there will be much more to tell. We’re trying to keep things pretty straightforward.”

“I know,” Sadie said, her smile fading a little. “But I know how quickly things can veer off track, no matter how straightforward you may try to keep them. Make sure you take care of yourself, OK?”

Molly rolled her eyes. “This from the woman who just last night told me to go for it?” she whispered.

Sadie shrugged. “I’m not saying it wasn’t a good idea. I just want to be sure you still know what you’re getting into.”

Sadie’s words rang in her head as she pulled up to Brady’s place thirty minutes later. It was on the outskirts of town, across the bridge on the other side of the river.

He’d bought the beautiful piece of land with its unobstructed view of the mountains shortly after he’d moved here last winter. The dwelling was a modest prefab, a quick and cheap solution put in place by the previous owner.

She’d heard him talking with Damon about eventually building something bigger, maybe out of logs or stone.

Something more permanent, he’d said.

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay.
His words from the other night, and the mysterious family emergency, the details of which he’d yet to share with anyone, made her wonder if he would still need something permanent in Big Timber.

She shook the thought out of her head as she pulled her car in behind Brady’s truck. It didn’t matter to her one way or the other if Brady was here for a few more weeks or a few more years. Once the spark between them flared out they would go their separate ways. Molly would continue her life her in Big Timber, and where Brady ended up would be his business.

She got out of the car, shivering a little with anticipation as well as cold as the October air cut through the soft knit of her sweater. Her stomach fluttered as her boots crunched up the driveway and up the three stairs of his front stop. From inside, she could hear the murmur of voices, and assumed Brady was watching TV.

The porch light was on, illuminating the fog of her breath as she tapped at the metal screen door that fronted a wooden door behind it. Heavy footsteps approached and the sound of the talking got louder until Brady flung open the door.

He looked vaguely disheveled and sexier than any man had a right to be with his bare feet, shirt untucked from his faded jeans, and his thick, dark hair ruffled as though someone had been running fingers through it.

He was also, she realized, on the phone, which would explain the voices—or voice—she’d heard. He pointed to the phone he held to his right ear. “Sorry,” he mouthed.

From the look on his face, all furrowed brow and tight jawed, the conversation wasn’t a happy one. Molly made a placating gesture and started to back down the steps. He gave his head a quick shake and grabbed her wrist to pull her over the threshold. He pulled her gently but firmly through the little entry way and into the main room that comprised the kitchen and the sitting room and over to the couch.

“Uh huh,” he said to whoever was on the other line and walked over to the small kitchen. He poured a glass of wine from a bottle open on the counter and brought it to her.

“Stay,” he mouthed.

Molly nodded as she brought the glass to her lips, frowning as he abruptly turned and headed for the hallway off the other side of the kitchen. Footsteps were followed by the sound of a door shutting.

She sipped at her wine, but it didn’t do much to mellow her out as the thin walls of Brady’s house didn’t do much to muffle the sound of his side of the conversation.

“Goddamn it, I’ve only been gone for three days! How can it already be gone?”

Her head cocked, interest piqued as she surmised whoever was on the other line was involved in the mysterious “family emergency” that had him packing up at the end of August to deal with a situation with a family no one—well, not Molly anyway—ever knew he had.

Then, “Yeah, I do think I get to tell you what to do when I’m the only one who…” Molly couldn’t quite make out the rest. Her curiosity to hear what he was saying was no match for the voice in her head reminding her that it was rude to eavesdrop.

But Brady’s voice had dropped to such a pitch that short of sneaking down the hall and draining her wine glass to put it up to the wall, she wasn’t likely to catch more than an occasional word here and there. She decided to distract herself by poking around Brady’s house. Until now, she’d only seen it from the outside. The only other time she’d been out here was to drop off a check one week when she’d been a little late getting payroll done. As a result, his paycheck, rather than being ready to collect by Friday close, wasn’t available until Monday, when Adele’s was closed and everyone had the day off.

Whether he was being contrarian or engaging in another of his many missions to piss her off, Brady refused to come to the restaurant on his day off and insisted Molly drop it off at his place.

Even though she could have easily asked one of the others to do it—Janelle, for example, who lived close and would only have to go a couple minutes out of her way—Molly had been compelled to do it herself.

She would never have admitted it at the time, but even then she was curious about where he lived, about this place he’d been so excited—as excited as Brady got, anyway—about when he bought it.

That time she’d only seen it from the outside, and now she took the opportunity to study the interior.

The house was sparsely furnished, with just a small beige sofa, wood coffee table, and a lamp occupying the small front room, along with the obligatory flat screen TV that took up most of the wall space. The kitchen was separated by an L shaped countertop. In front of the countertop was a single barstool.

For some reason she couldn’t name, it made her a little sad to think about Brady sitting on that solitary barstool, drinking his coffee or having one of the few meals he ate outside of the restaurant.

She shook her head, reminding herself that Brady was hardly lacking for company, female or otherwise.

Still, she couldn’t help noticing that there were no pictures on the wall, no photographs of family or friends.

He’d lived there for nearly a year, and from what she could see it was furnished like a room in one of those long term efficiency hotels, almost like no one lived here. Of course, if he was planning to build a new home on the property, it didn’t make sense for him to put a lot of effort into this place. But it didn’t seem like it would take too much money or effort to put a rug under the coffee table for a pop of color, maybe a couple of throw pillows to wake up the sofa—

Stop. You have no business decorating his house in your head. Remember the last time you chose furnishings for a man’s house? He took that beautiful antique farm table you found in Bozeman to Texas with him so another woman could eat off it.

She drained her wine and poured herself another half glass, agitated as the minutes dragged on and Brady’s muffled voice continued to bleed through the walls.

###

Brady hit the end key and pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyes as though that could somehow ease the tension building back there. He glanced at the clock radio on the bedside table next to the king size bed he was sitting on.

Fuck. Molly had been cooling her heels for a solid fifteen minutes while he tried to deal with this latest mess from hundreds of miles away.

He’d be lucky if she hadn’t bailed by now.

Maybe it’s better if she does. You know you can’t give her what she wants.

As if that hadn’t been clear enough back at Damon’s, listening to her wax on about the Patton’s perfect picket fence life, the phone call he’d received on the way home had hammered it home.

He’d never talked much with Molly or Ellie directly about their upbringing, but from the bits and pieces he’d gleaned he knew they’d moved around a lot for the first part of their lives, before Adele moved back to Big Timber.

And their dad appeared nowhere in the picture, as Molly confirmed earlier.

Nothing, as far as he was concerned, compared to the chaos that had been created when Lizzy Flannery of the notorious Flannerys of Sandpoint, Idaho, had hooked up with Patrick McManus of the not quite as but getting there notorious McManuses.

His family, both immediate and extended, was about as far away from Molly’s picket fence dream as you could get.

With their marriage came the union of two extended clans populated alcoholics and drug addicts, most of whom made their living as drug dealers and petty thieves. There was even a murderer in there for a while, until his Uncle Emerson was posthumously cleared of the kidnap and murder of young Michael Beckett twelve years ago.

But even finding that the real killer was not a trashy Flannery but a wealthy longtime friend of the Beckett family wasn’t enough to even begin to wipe away the stain saturating the family name. Besides himself, the only normal, contributing member of society was his cousin Erin Flannery, daughter to his mother’s sister.

Erin had figured out even before Brady that the only chance she would have at a future was to do the exact opposite of whatever her family had done. So she’d worked hard in school, gotten good grades, and worked at a local restaurant in Sand Point, Idaho, thirty miles from where Brady had grown up, to earn money for college. And then she’d gotten the hell out.

It had taken Brady a few brushes with the law for drinking and fighting—luckily while still a minor—and getting suspended from the football team for him to clue in. When his coach had handed him a brochure from the local army recruiting office, Brady had taken the hint.

The only thing Erin had ever done that made him question her judgment was her harebrained decision to move back to Idaho five years ago to run the restaurant Mary Curtis had left her in her will.

As far as Brady was concerned, someone could offer him a million dollars outright to move back, and he would still refuse to get near that hornet’s nest.

But the silver lining was that with Erin in Sand Point, at least there was a sane person close by to help him deal with this latest episode in the dysfunctional family feud.

He heard the sound of slow footsteps pacing on the other side of the wall and forced his thoughts away from the fucked up situation back home and instead on the beautiful woman he’d kept waiting for far too long.

He walked down the short hallway into the living room, trying to school his expression into something other than the scowl it naturally creased into whenever he dealt with his family.

Tried and failed, because when Molly turned the expectant look on her face went wary.

She set her wine glass down on the kitchen counter. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” he said before he could stop himself. “But it doesn’t matter,” he said and started toward her, the anger and frustration with his family already fading at the prospect to of peeling Molly out of her sweater and jeans.

He felt the familiar need rising in him—for Molly, but also to lose himself in the primal release that sex always provided. The only thing that could make him forget—if only temporarily—about the chaos his family continued to create, no matter how far away he managed to get.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

He couldn’t hold back the rough laugh. “You’re the last person I want to talk to about it,” he said again, then wondered where the fuck his internal editor had gone as hurt flashed in her eyes.

“Maybe I should go,” she said and started for the door.

He caught her before she made the second step, curving his fingers around her upper arm. “You definitely shouldn’t go,” he said and pulled her until she was flush against him, the soft rounds of her tits pressed tight against his chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean it like that. I just want to forget about it all for a while. I want you to make me forget about it all for a while.

Even though he knew he was being selfish, knew he was rotten company, he needed this. Needed
her,
like he needed his last breath.

He covered her mouth with his, heard her startled gasp at the force of it, his lips crushing hers, his tongue delving deep, starving for the taste of her.

He told himself to slow down, ease up, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from wrapping his arms around her so tight she could barely catch her breath.

“Brady.” There was no mistaking the undercurrent of unease, or the way she’d stiffened against him.

You need her so much but you can’t ever give her what she needs.

Even as the sly whisper echoed through his head he slid his hand up her ribcage to cup her breast through the soft fabric of her sweater. He could feel her nipple harden through the fabric of her sweater and the bra beneath, heard her gasp as he pinched it hard between his thumb and forefinger.