Resisting Roots (Lotus House Book 1)

by Audrey Carlan

  Dara’s eyes got big. “Oh, yeah, and is that someone tall, as in…really tall?” She held her arm up way above her head.

  I smiled and nodded.

  “And does he have the thickest-looking brown hair?” One of her eyebrows rose into her forehead.

  “Maybe.” I bit down on my bottom lip, and a flush of heat rushed to my cheeks.

  “And would he possibly be the sexiest baseball player alive with a rugged jaw, sensual hazel eyes, and a body that’s worth drooling over?”

  “Uh-huh,” I chuckled.

  Dara reached out and shoved my arm. “You suck! I so was gonna hit on him. He is scrumdidilyumptious. Great score on that one.” Her eyes twinkled.

  What else could a girl say? She was not wrong. “I know.” I hugged myself as a sleek silver Maserati rolled up in front of me and parked in the loading zone. Total bad boy.

  Trent slowly exited the car. His limbs were long and encased in a pair of dark-wash jeans. He wore a black henley that sheathed his muscles like a second skin. Dang, Trent Fox was something right out of a hot sports guy catalog. He limped over to me, but the limp was slightly less pronounced. Either he was having a good day, or the yoga was helping. I hoped it was the latter.

  “Gumdrop…” He leaned right in front of me, got on my level, wrapped a hand around my neck, tipped my chin up, and took my lips in a soft all too-short kiss. “Missed you today, babe.”

  “Hot damn!” Dara said under her breath but loud enough for both of us to hear.

  Trent did a super cool chin lift move in greeting. “Dara, how you doing, beautiful?”

  I cringed at hearing him call her beautiful. As the first prick of jealousy hit my nerves, I chastised myself. Man, Luna and Amber were right. I’d been out of the game too long.

  “Not as good as you two, I see. Your auras are shining so bright they’re blinding me. Wow. You’re gonna have some fun with that.” Her lips twitched.

  “With what?” Trent asked.

  Not a lot of people knew that Lotus House’s resident meditation specialist also read auras. And her readings were never wrong.

  “The fun you’re going to have tonight. With one another.” She pointed to the two of us and shook her head. “Your auras are flaming red.” She waved at her face as if she had caught a hot flash of her own.

  Trent shifted his hands to my hips, and he brought me close. “She a kook?”

  I giggled. “Yes, also dead accurate with her readings.” Though it didn’t take a mind reader to know Trent and I had passion sizzling between us. It was like an electrical current the moment his hand hit my neck and his lips briefly touched mine.

  Trent lifted his head and turned toward Dara. “It was good seeing you, beautiful. Catch you next week for a couple pastries, yeah?”

  “Sure thing, handsome,” she replied. “Bye, Viv. Have fun.” She waved her fingers and waggled her eyebrows.

  Me? I was downright annoyed. He called her beautiful and she called him handsome. I hadn’t even come up with something clever to call him, and here she was giving him a proper nickname. And it was a good one, too. I pouted.

  Trent leaned close again and rubbed his forehead against mine. “What does a red aura mean, anyway?”

  I grinned and lifted my face up so I could better assess his eyes. They were more of a deep green than hazel in this light. “Means passion, love, hunger, immediacy, charged energy, stuff like that.” My voice had taken on a lower, more sultry timbre.

  He hummed low at the back of his throat. “Then she has a gift, gumdrop. Looking at you wearing that outfit, that bright red lipstick coating your kissable lips, I was thinking a lot of those things.”

  I couldn’t help but smile wide, rub his nose with mine, and tell him exactly where I was. “Me too.”

  He ran his hand down my arm and tugged. “Time to get dinner, or before long, I’ll be eating you instead.” As he opened my door, he blatantly adjusted his crotch.

  I held back the laughter bubbling under the surface. Everything about this man made me feel light, girly, and most important…wanted. It had been so long since I’d allowed myself the affections of the opposite sex, and now that I had, the floodgates had opened and my entire body was awash with sensation. A physical heat throbbed between my legs, up my belly, over my chest, neck, and through each arm to my fingertips. I was wired, charged for anything. One single touch, even brief, could set me off. I’d never felt more alive than I did right then.

  * * *

  TRENT

  Genevieve was quiet in the car on the way to the restaurant. I was taking her to the one at the top of my building. It had a sky lounge that I used regularly. I knew the people there and had a standard Friday night reservation. The food was good, the atmosphere business casual, and the view superb. I pegged Genevieve for a woman who hadn’t spent a lot of time being wined and dined.

  We pulled up to the valet for the twenty-four-story building that sat in the center of Oakland, just east of the business district. My apartment was located on the twentieth floor and had a great view of Lake Merritt, but I didn’t intend to tell her that. She’d think I was planning to get her into bed. Which, incidentally, wasn’t exactly untrue. I hadn’t had a woman in two weeks. Sure, I’d had a single taste of the sweet Genevieve, and every last bit of her that I tasted was succulent. I wanted more. So much more.

  “Wait here,” I said.

  Using the curves of the vehicle as leverage, I moved around the car as quickly as my injured leg would allow and opened her door. The smile on her face when she looked up and put a booted foot to the asphalt was worth the hustle. Christ, she had the most exquisite face I’d ever seen. Her skin shone like sculpted ivory. The red of her lips against her flawless skin made something in my heart tighten as well as something my jeans.

  “You ever been here before?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t usually spend a lot of time in Oakland. Oddly enough, almost all of my time is spent in Berkeley. I work there, my friends live there, and my siblings go to school there.” She shrugged. “Really hasn’t been much reason to branch out.”

  “No baseball games?”

  She grinned. “I haven’t been to a professional game in years. The last one was when my dad took Rowan and me. I was his age then, sixteen. He was eight. We rooted for the Ports though.” Her grin turned into a shy smirk.

  “Is that right?” I led her up the steps to where the doorman held the door.

  “It is.”

  “Well, we’ll have to see about getting you in the stands for one of my games then, won’t we?”

  My entire body tightened when she stopped dead in her tracks.

  She lifted her head and seemed to search every inch of my face when she looked at me. “Trent, don’t say things you don’t mean, okay?”

  Her words were spoken in a whisper, but the emotional punch they held hit me right in the gut.

  “Gumdrop, I…”

  She waved her hand and walked toward the elevator, me hot on her heels. “No worries. It’s just I don’t want to get attached.”

  Again, stupidly, I scowled and responded with no fucking filter. “What if I want you to get attached?”

  Genevieve spun around quickly. “Seriously, we both know what this is. Let’s not make it anything more.”

  We stepped into the elevator.

  “With your infinite yogi wisdom, what would you say this is?” I moved toward her.

  She stepped back until I’d caged her in. Unable to control myself, I pressed my body into hers.

  She gasped when my body came in contact with the length of hers. “Fun. Casual. Maybe more.” She spoke in that sultry, low timbre that filled my mind with thoughts of fucking the hell out of her.

  Trying to rein in the lust, I ran my nose along hers and then down to her neck. Inhaling her sugar-and-spice scent right at the back of her neck, I laid a kiss there. She sighed and melted against me.

  Growling against her warm skin, I kissed along her
neck. “Casual? Maybe.” Kiss. “Fun? Definitely.” Kiss. “More? Absolutely.” I brought my lips to hers and claimed her mouth.

  She opened to my searching tongue, instant participation. Wild, searching, passionate.

  We kissed without any regard to who might have come and gone from the elevator. Eventually, the doors dinged, and someone cleared his throat. I wanted to throat punch the man that held the door open as I pulled back from her sugarcoated lips.

  “I believe this is your floor.”

  I recognized the restaurant’s host, and he had the decency to cast his gaze down.

  “Restroom?” Genevieve asked immediately, wiping below her kiss-swollen lips.

  A sexy smudge remained from our kiss, and by the end of the night, I planned to have the candy apple red color all over my body instead of hers. God willing.

  The host showed her the way and got our table together. When she walked back out moments later, her lips were perfectly red and glossy. Genevieve was every man’s fucking dream girl. Her hair was back in place and hanging in soft curls over her shoulders.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I said instantly.

  She clucked her tongue once before responding. “You mean like Dara?” She pursed her pretty lips.

  I closed my eyes with a chuckle. “I didn’t take you for the jealous type, gumdrop.”

  “I’m not. But when the man you’re going on a date with calls you beautiful after calling your friend he just saw on the street the same, it kind of waters down the impact.”

  “Duly noted.” I led the way to my normal table by placing a hand to her lower back.

  Man, this woman didn’t miss a beat, and beyond that, she was a challenge. One I absolutely got off on.

  Once we were seated and I ordered a beer ordered for me and a cosmo for her, I started in on the questions. Until now, the way I operated, I’d meet a chick, feed her a couple drinks, and bang the shit out of her until neither of us could walk. With Genevieve, I was actually interested in learning more.

  “Please explain what’s up with the siblings. Why is it that they are your responsibility alone?”

  Genevieve took a sip of her drink. Seeing her wrap those ruby-red lips around a sugared rim, my dick throbbed painfully in my jeans.

  “My grandparents are dead. Both Mom and Dad were only children. I don’t have aunts or uncles in the conventional sense. I have my next door neighbor, Amber, who’s also my best friend, and her grandmother who help out when they can, but Amber is a full-time student. And when I say full-time, I don’t mean twelve credits. I mean eighteen. She’s going to be a doctor.”

  I nodded, focusing on the way she spoke, what she was saying, and her hand movements. Graceful and direct. Everything was free and easy with Genevieve. Ask a question, she answered it. No games. No bullshit. No trying to get in my pants. That last one rather sucked. The woman had no ulterior motives. She wasn’t looking to hitch herself to a wallet or ride on someone’s coattails, nor did she seem the type of girl who would ever be a trophy sitting on a man’s arm, although she was pretty enough. The woman defied everything I’d ever learned about women.

  “So you said you were going to be a hairdresser. And that stopped because…”

  A sadness swept across her features, and I wanted to take the question back immediately to save her from the obvious sorrow that appeared in her frown and the slump of her shoulders.

  She looked out over the lake, which was really a man-made lagoon. “Mom and Dad had their accident when I was a few months shy of getting my license. By the time I could even consider focusing on schooling again, I’d lost time. I’d need to take an entire semester again, which would cost some serious cash.”

  “Did your parents leave you an inheritance?”

  She snorted. “Yeah, but the house I live in is old, beautiful, and worth tons of money. What money there was covered paying off the remaining mortgage but not the property taxes or what it takes to keep it up. I sold their cars to pay the taxes the last couple years and have been working as much as I could to pay the rest, utilities, provide food for the three of us, baseball equipment and gear for Row, and dance tutus and classes for Mary.” She hid her eyes, looking down and away. “There just wasn’t any left. Someone had to work and keep things afloat. So I teach yoga and cut hair in my garage to make extra money.”

  Thinking of her working her ass off to take care of her siblings and her family home equally angered and stunned me. The woman was, by all accounts, incredible. She gave up her dream to take care of her family, worked too many hours, yet still seemed to be one of the happier people I knew. How she wasn’t cowering in a corner throwing a pity party, I didn’t know. Every single woman I’d known until now, aside from my mother, was the save-me-Trent and pay-my-way and buy-me-presents type of chick. Genevieve hadn’t asked for anything. She’d even tried to avoid going out with me.

  “Do people with money make you uncomfortable?” I asked out of the blue. The question weighed heavily on me.

  She scrunched her nose in that cute way I liked, a cross between disgusted and confused. “No. Why would you think that?”

  I shrugged. “No reason. You’re just down to earth and not impressed by the things that other women are.”

  She chuckled. “You mean like your fancy car or job title?”

  I grinned and cocked my head. “Something like that.”

  Genevieve shook her head. “Money is money. Before my parents died, you could say we were doing pretty well. My parents’ home is worth a lot of money. Not baseball contract money”—she winked—“but my dad was a pretty big-time lawyer. They were young when they died, only forty, so they hadn’t amassed what they’d intended for their lives.”

  “Your parents were only forty?”

  A sad smile crossed her ruby lips. “Yeah, they had me young. Very young. Nineteen, right after school. They were high school sweethearts. Then they waited until Dad had finished law school and got set up as a lawyer. Then they had Rowan, and Mary was a surprise. Mom called her a gift. Said they were not planning to have more but were thrilled when they found out they were pregnant again.”

  Chuckling, I did the math. “Seems like they were on the eight-year plan. Every eight years they had a kid.”

  Genevieve’s eyes lit up. “True. Guess they had a pattern. What about you? Do you have any siblings?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. My parents wanted a house full of them. They had me, and when they were trying for another, Ma had some kind of exam that showed she had the first stages of cervical cancer. They had the option to attempt to save the uterus, but my father was adamant they remove it. Together, they decided a full hysterectomy was better. Ma’s mom died of cervical cancer, and they chose not to risk it. They had me and were happy.”

  Genevieve listened intently, leaned her elbow on the table, and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. She seemed totally focused on me and the conversation. Definitely not the average groupie I met on the baseball circuit. Not even in the same stratosphere.

  “Smart decision your folks made. It probably ensured she’d live a long time. Tell me about them.”

  Not one woman had ever asked about my parents. Yep, Genevieve Harper was unique. Soft spoken, a fireball sexually, and quite possibly the most devastatingly gorgeous woman I’d ever known. Being around her was like sitting in front of a fire on a cold Bay Area day. Warm, inviting, with all the comforts of home. What the hell did that mean for the future? I had no clue.

  Chapter Nine

  Camel Pose (Sanskrit: Ustrasana)

  This pose is considered an intermediate level pose. Though this pose is helpful for relieving back pain, anxiety, and fatigue, you must prepare your body to enter an extreme chest opener. Kneel with your knees hip distance apart, bend back at the waist, arching your chest forward, before reaching the arms back to rest on the heels, and then allow the neck to softly rest back. Also opens your heart chakra.

  * * *

  TRENT

  We�
�d ordered our food and the waiter delivered our plates. I ordered the steak, roasted red potatoes, and vegetables. Genevieve ordered the most inexpensive item on the menu—a simple angel hair pasta in a light red sauce with chicken. No salad, no soup, and she’d eaten none of the bread provided, whereas I’d already had to ask for another basket. The woman was curvy, and she definitely dug into her pasta when it arrived, but the two times I’d taken a groupie to dinner here, they both ordered the most expensive lobster or prawns dish, flashy wine, with a salad and soup and then pecked at it. Made me insane. When I took them to my apartment, I had no problem hitting the sheets and kicking them out after.

  Groupies I understood. They used me. I used them. We both got what we wanted out of the deal. In all honestly, I didn’t know how the hell to act half the time around Genevieve. She threw me off my game to the point where I didn’t even know where the board was anymore or how I’d gotten my pieces up and down to score any points.

  As with anything else I knew very little about, I’d decided to let the cards fall where they would and wing it.

  “My parents are great, amazing really. Dad owns Fox Mechanics, which my grandfather owned and still works at to this day. He doesn’t do much since he’s in his seventies, but he tinkers on the older cars, hangs out with my dad, and greets the customers. My father bought him out years ago, but Gramps still gets paid. Both of my dad’s parents are still living. My mom’s have passed.”

  “Tell me more about your mom.”

  Thinking about Ma always put a smile on my face. “Ma’s the shit.”

  Genevieve laughed, and it sounded like a song. One I’d like to hear a whole lot more of.

  “Crazy in her own way. Cooks like Betty Crocker, runs the household. She worked in the school district in Oakland for thirty years. Now she enjoys riling up my dad, painting, cooking, and tending to her garden. Basically enjoying retirement.”