“Most of them. But only when the defense is on the field. You’re not supposed to cheer when it’s the offense, but not all teams’ fans know that. We have the best fans in the world.” He grinned.
“I didn’t realize that about the offense. To be honest, I don’t even know what ‘the offense’ is. Maybe you could teach me about football.” She kind of wanted to know so she could be supportive of him.
“I’d love to.” His stomach rumbled. “Sorry, I guess I’m ready for lunch.”
She reached for her smartphone and checked the time. “It’s almost two. Want to order something?” What were the chances she could talk him into pizza?
“Why order something when Sweet Louise has stocked your fridge and freezer? I saw some smoked brisket, potato salad, and green beans. How does that sound?” He stood. “Or I can throw together a spinach salad.”
She would have loved to have been able to throw together anything edible, but she just might be the only person in the world who’d burned salad. “Let’s go with door number one.”
“Barbecue it is.” He stood and shot her a look. “Stay right where you are. You need to take it easy.”
After ten minutes of him rattling around in her kitchen, he handed her a heaping plate of food.
“Thanks.” She took it. It had to weigh about ten pounds. She had a hard time believing that the women he dated actually ate large amounts of food. Yet another clue that he wasn’t interested in her in that way. It shouldn’t have hurt—she’d just met him, after all—but it hurt all the same.
She spooned up an enormous forkful of potato salad. It was wonderful, and she really didn’t even like potato salad.
Using his fork, Pierce cut off a large hunk of brisket. “I’ve been thinking. I’m going to stay here for a while. I need to make sure you take it easy and that the media doesn’t drive you crazy.”
She chewed and chewed. Next time she’d try smaller, daintier bites.
“I’m glad you agree that would be best.” He grinned.
She finally swallowed. “You waited until I had a bite in my mouth to tell me that. I noticed you didn’t ask.”
“No, I sure didn’t.” His grin turned into a full-on laugh.
“I knew you were moving in with me. If those angry Halloween kids burn down my house, I’m holding you responsible. If we don’t die, I’m going to kill you.” She shoved a chunk of brisket in her mouth. At least she got to spend a little more time with him.
Chapter 13
An hour later, Pierce’s arm was going numb, but there wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to move it. Chloe had fallen asleep, and he’d inched ever so slowly closer to her until her head rested on his shoulder. Gently, he rested his against hers and took stock.
He’d never been this at peace with himself. Around Chloe he didn’t need to check his phone for something to do, and he didn’t think about work constantly. It was enough, and he felt like he was enough, just to be in the same room with her. Right now, his only focus was her—the rest of the world, and particularly football, didn’t matter.
He wanted nothing more than to make her smile, to discuss everything and absolutely nothing with her, and to make her laugh. And he really wanted to sleep with her. He wanted to explore her body and find the sensitive areas that made her lose herself. Tenderly, he kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled like strawberries and vanilla. He liked her new look, but he had also liked her old look. With the exception of her putting him firmly in the friend zone, there was nothing about her that he didn’t find intriguing.
His kissed the top of her head again.
She shifted and jolted upright. “What?” She looked around like she couldn’t remember where she was. “What happened?”
“You fell asleep. You’ve been out for almost an hour.” He dropped his arm from the sofa back and flexed and released several times to get blood circulating again.
She glanced at his arm. “Sorry, I fell asleep on top of you. I bet your arm is numb.” She started massaging his forearm.
She was touching him skin to skin. It was innocent but somehow erotic. She was close enough to kiss. He could just lean down and taste that beautiful mouth. He closed his eyes and thought long and hard about it. Just a taste. A first kiss. First kisses were special and exhilarating and a preview of the coming attractions. But she had him in the friend zone, so kissing her would definitely spook her.
He opened his eyes and caught her looking up at him. Her lips were mere inches from his. All he needed was a sign, some little encouragement from her, just a look or a tiny touch, or having her move a fraction of an inch closer to him. Her brows knit and she inched away from him. She let go of his arm.
His heart dropped to the floor and rolled away. He hadn’t felt this level of rejection since his father had made him feel so small and worthless his entire childhood. Even Brittany breaking up with him hadn’t hurt this much.
“Um … okay.” Chloe cleared her throat. “You know, you really don’t have to stay with me all of the time. I’m sure you have things to do. I’ll be fine here by myself. You should probably go check on your house or something.” Her eyes stayed on what must have been a very interesting spot on the floor.
That hurt. Not only didn’t she want him as anything more than a friend, but she wanted him to leave. “Nope, sorry. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
He had to change her mind on both accounts.
He picked up his phone from the coffee table. “You should go rest. I have plenty to keep me busy right here.” He waggled his phone.
“No, if I sleep a lot during the day, I won’t sleep at night.” She yawned and her stomach rumbled. “I feel like we just ate lunch,” she grinned, “but what’s for dinner?”
“I saw some of Grace’s chicken parmesan in the fridge. She makes the best in the world, so I was thinking that would make an excellent dinner.” He stood and headed to the kitchen.
He needed to put some distance between the two of them or he would kiss her. For as long as he could remember, he’d never kissed a girl who hadn’t wanted to be kissed. Right now, he couldn’t take any more rejection.
“It occurs to me that I don’t know much about you.” She turned around so she could watch him. “Apart from the fact that for some reason you like low-riding sports cars, play football, and you seem to know how to install medium-sized appliances.”
He caught her gaze. “What’s a medium-sized appliance?”
“A medium appliance is something smaller than a refrigerator but larger than a toaster. Dishwashers are medium-sized, and they kind of have a complex about it. It makes sense because they are the narcissists of the appliance world. They’re always like, ‘Look how clean the dishes are and look how quiet I am.’ Classic Narcissistic Appliance Disorder.”
“You’re the professional.” He took the baking dish containing the chicken parm out of the fridge. He looked at the note written directly onto the aluminum foil. “350 for thirty minutes.” He turned the oven to 350.
“By the way, I’m paying you for the dishwasher, the juicer, and the groceries. You’re on your own with the coffee maker. I don’t drink coffee.” She rested her chin on the sofa back.
“Who doesn’t drink coffee?” He smiled. He loved how her mind worked.
“Tea lovers around the world.” She grinned. “Sorry we took that little journey off course. You were telling me about yourself.”
“I was?” He slid the pan of chicken parm into the oven and closed the door.
“Yes, you were about to tell me everything about yourself, including the seemingly world-ending breakup you had in high school.” Her eyebrows bobbed up and down. “Everything.”
“What if I don’t have a bad high school breakup story?” He did, but it wasn’t the classic breakup story.
“Everyone has a traumatic high school breakup story. It’s part of the experience.” She readjusted her position so that her back was against the arm of the sofa.
“Who was yours?” If he was going to spill his guts, she was going first.
“Brad Simmons.” Her face squinched up like she’d bitten into a lemon.
“I thought you went to an all-girls school.” He took a bucket of fresh spinach out of the refrigerator. They needed something green.
“I did, but there were lots of planned activities with the all-boys school close by. Brad was a poetry-writing nonconformist—well, as much of a nonconformist as he could be at military school. He wanted to save the world one horrible poem at a time.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I slept with him.” She laughed. “Now he works for some nebulous government agency, where I’m pretty sure he kills people for a living.”
“Should I be worried?” He scooped a big handful of spinach into a colander in the sink. The spinach said it was triple washed, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “I did run over you with my car.”
“I’m pretty sure he couldn’t pick me out of a crowd even if I were wearing a nametag that said, ‘Hello, my name is Chloe Caldwell.’” She sighed dramatically. “After I slept with him, I found out that he’d slept with most of the senior class and half of the junior class. His numbers scaled down through the sophomore and freshman class.”
“What is it about a nonconformist that turns women on?” He had always wondered.
“I don’t know. I guess there’s something sexy about raging against the man.” She blanched. “Now that I think about it, there was nothing appealing about Brad. Well, he could spell ‘anti-establishmentarianism,’ so there’s that. And he liked to throw that word around a lot in casual conversation.”
“Proper spelling is important.” Using a vegetable peeler, he shaved off several slices of carrot.
“You’re right, spelling is important, but his grammar was horrible. What is it about ‘I’ versus ‘me’ that trips people up?” She rolled her eyes. “It’s ‘I’ before the verb and ‘me’ after the verb. How hard is that?”
“I know what you mean. Roger went to the movies with Chuck and me. No, Roger didn’t go to the movies with I, he went with me.” He shaved off a slice of red onion and added it to the salad.
“You’re handsome, smart, kind, and you understand ‘I’ versus ‘me.’ You’re fast becoming one of my favorite people.”
“Thanks.” He couldn’t help the stupid grin, and then he replayed her comment in his head. That was something she’d say to a friend.
“It’s your turn.” She drummed her fingers against the sofa back. “Spill … everything.”
“As it so happens I do have a bad high school breakup story, but neither I nor Ally were to blame.” He grabbed a soup bowl from the cabinet above the dishwasher and threw together a quick vinaigrette.
“Do tell.” She watched him like she was waiting for more.
“My junior year, I was in love with Ally Cunningham. She was a senior and she loved me too.” He tried to not grit his teeth. “I was so in love with her that during the championship football game, I glanced over at her cheering on the sidelines instead of catching the football. We lost and my father …” He didn’t want to say “beat the shit out of me,” because it made him look weak. Absently, he rubbed the index and pinky fingers of his left hand that the old man had broken that night. Of course he hadn’t gone to the ER to have them X-rayed. Pierce had just taped them up himself and hoped for the best. “He was very unhappy.”
“He made y’all break up?” She watched him closely. “He was violent, wasn’t he?”
How did she know that? Oh yeah, she counseled people for a living. “Yes.” He didn’t want her to think less of him, but he wasn’t about to lie to her.
Her eyes turned mean. “Anyone who takes advantage of a child is the lowest of the low. I don’t know if you believe in karma, but I do. Anyone who abuses a child will pay for it either in this life or the next.” Her voice was hard.
“You probably see it a lot in your line of work.” He wanted to talk about anything else, but he wasn’t a coward.
“Actually, no. I don’t see it often, because children in abusive homes are taught from an early age to never talk about it or seek help.” She looked at him with admiration. “Thank you for telling me. Is he still living?”
“Yes.” He drizzled dressing all over the salad.
“I don’t suppose you’d give me his address?” Her eyes were hard again. “I’ve been taking kickboxing, and I sure would like to try out a couple of things on him.” She threw a hand up. “I know counseling retribution is a terrible thing, but making him bleed would make me feel better.”
She was standing up for him again. She wanted to shield him like she’d done when she’d taken the blame for him. It was nice to have her in his corner.
“I like the idea of you taking him on. Unfortunately, karma has already done that. He’s in a coma after wrapping his pickup around a tree after way too much tequila. He’s been that way for the last five years.” Using a couple of large spoons because he couldn’t find any salad tongs, he portioned the salad out onto two plates. He had the means to pay for a very nice facility for his father, but he’d chosen the one that took his father’s Medicare.
“Well that’s disappointing, but the coma’s good.” Her eyes found his. “Sorry, that was insensitive.”
“Why? He’s just the man who raised me. My family is the team.” And her. She was now his family too, or at least he wanted her to be.
He added forks to the salad plates and headed her way.
Her eyes zeroed in on the two plates of salad he was carrying. “Is that salad?”
“Your keen observation skills are astounding.” He handed the plate to her.
“What happened to the chicken parm?” Her eyes narrowed. “Or in your world, is chicken parm code for salad?”
“It is possible to eat both salad and chicken parmesan. Most people call this,” he pointed to his plate, “an appetizer.”
She stuck out her tongue.
He wanted to suck it into his mouth and then explore hers. He tore his eyes from it. “I think we need to talk about the five-pound bag of gummy strawberries I found in your fridge at the back of the vegetable drawer.”
“Is that where they were? I hid them from myself like a month ago and then I couldn’t remember where I’d put them.” She stabbed some salad with her fork. “Vegetable drawer. Yeah, now I remember.” She pointed at him with her full salad fork. “Now if you find the strawberry Pop-Tarts I hid from myself a year ago, I’ll love you forever.”
He would tear this house apart looking for them. She’d only said that he had to find them, not that he had to let her eat them.
She shot him a look. “You’re not going to let me eat them, are you?”
“Not a chance.” He gave her his brightest smile.
She returned the smile. “You have to sleep sometime.”
“You’re one foot down. I think I can take you.” He forked in some salad.
“You’re a junk food bigot. Your close-mindedness on the subject of junk food is alarming and shameful. I don’t know how you can hold your head up knowing you’re such a hater.” She shook her head. “Just shameful.”
In response, he shoveled in more salad. After he chewed and swallowed, he said, “I was engaged, but it didn’t work out.”
He wasn’t about to tell her that his fiancée broke up with him because she’d written in to a stupid relationship blog. How sad would that make him sound?
She watched him very carefully. “Did she call it off?”
He should have known she would figure that out. “Yes, she said I loved football more than her.”
She put her hand on his thigh and patted lightly. “Did you?”
“Yes.” It was so clear to him now. Brittany hadn’t been the right person for him. If he hadn’t been so embarrassed at having had the engagement broken off, he would have seen that.
“I’m sorry she broke your heart. It must have hurt. You must have cared for her or you wouldn’t have pro
posed.” She had the uncanny knack for seeing the real him and not the version of him he portrayed to the world.
“It did hurt, but looking back now, I think it was more embarrassment than heartbreak.” He should have been embarrassed by telling Chloe the truth, but he trusted her not to judge him. “We need to talk about tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?” She ate the last few bites of her salad.
Score one point for nutrition.
“We have many fake dates to photograph. I was thinking a trip to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and then a trip on the Zilker train.” If he played photographer, he would get to be on the dates with her.
“And also the Thinkery. And just so you know, I’m getting a snow cone at Zilker Park, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Her eyes held a challenge.
“We’ll see about that.” He took her empty plate and headed to the kitchen.
Taking care of her was the only way he could show her that he cared, and he would take care of her even if it killed him.
Chapter 14
The next morning, Pierce called from her walk-in closet, “Don’t you have any spring dresses?”
“No, I have work clothes and then I have lounge clothes. I think Grace and Debra brought some over yesterday. All of those clothes are on my dining room table. I haven’t had a chance to go through them yet.” Who besides her mother separated out her clothes by season? If Chloe did have spring dresses, the only thing that would make it a spring dress was the fact that she wore a regular dress in spring.
Chloe was propped up on pillows in her bed. She yawned and stretched. Pierce was a cheerful morning person who’d gotten her up at six o’clock in the morning for some reason.
Pierce stepped into the bedroom from the attached bath. “I’ll go get the clothes and we can go through them together.”
He brought an armload of clothes in and laid them on the end of the bed.
“Do you go through women’s clothes a lot?” She arched an eyebrow. “I don’t have to worry that you’re going to start trying on my clothes, do I?”
Sage Advice Page 11
