“Except the enormous cock you suddenly have hidden in your pants.”
“Nothing new there.”
She laughed and turned the gentle touch of their inseparable lips into another deep kiss. When she finally pulled away, she was breathless. “We’d better go if we want to watch the sunset on the beach.”
“Do you want to go to Galveston? Kelly has a beach house—”
“We won’t be alone if Kelly’s there.”
“Right,” he said, almost managing to hide his disappointment from her. But she already knew how to make it up to him. He reached for the door handle, but she pressed a hand along the door seal to keep him from escaping.
“Call me selfish, Owen, but I want you all to myself this weekend. Maybe if you weren’t so gorgeous and sweet and charming, I’d be willing to share you with Kellen. But you are, so I’m not.”
He looked at her over his shoulder, his face flushed with pleasure, and shrugged. “I see your point. Kelly’s probably too busy screwing Dawn to hang out with us anyway. He has a lot of years of sexual frustration to work out of his system.”
“So Dawn and I will both be walking funny for a few days.”
He laughed and opened the passenger door. “How about you let me drive?”
No one had driven her car besides her, so she hesitated before asking, “You don’t drive like a granny, do you?”
“I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
She held his gaze for a moment and decided there was no way this man drove like an overcautious senior citizen.
Her knees a bit wobbly all of a sudden, she sank into the passenger seat and took a deep breath when he closed her door. He was grinning ear to ear when he climbed behind the wheel, and after a few seat and mirror adjustments, he started the engine with the push start. The car roared to life, the big engine rumbling when he revved it.
“Nice,” he said before shifting into reverse and peeling out of the parking spot. He did several donuts in reverse, narrowly missing a curb, before screeching to a halt and shifting into first. Caitlyn clung to the console and her armrest to hold herself steady and blinked at him before bursting into laughter.
“Ah, the allure of an empty parking lot,” Owen said, doing several more donuts, this time in the forward direction, before finally turning into traffic.
He was a bit more cautious on the road than she was and spent most of the drive cussing out idiots while at the same time courteously letting other speed demons into his lane without cutting them off.
“So why do you drive a Jeep when you obviously love a fast car as much as I do?” Caitlyn asked.
“I tend to ignore curbs,” Owen said.
The smile dropped from Caitlyn’s face. “Now you tell me.”
“I promise I won’t damage your car. I only take curbs in the Jeep because I can.”
Traffic wasn’t bad for a Sunday afternoon—and good compared to the typical weekday bumper-to-bumper crush—so they made it to her home in record time.
She was laughing at what was probably whiplash from being slammed against the seat when Owen screeched to a halt in her driveway, but her wide smile—and the day’s fun—evaporated when she recognized the familiar Mercedes parked there.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Caitlyn narrowed her eyes. “He’s supposed to be in Rome banging his coed all summer.”
“You have a visitor?” Owen asked, looking far more morose than he had for a single second that entire day.
“That’s my ex-husband’s car.” She hoped it had materialized in her driveway without its owner attached.
“We could, uh, just leave,” Owen suggested, suddenly looking way younger than her. Embarrassingly younger. Not quite college-freshman embarrassing, but definitely younger.
“He better not be in my house,” she said as she opened her door, climbed out of the car, and slammed it with the fury she always felt whenever Charles invaded her life.
It turned out he was in the house. She’d had the locks changed, but she still kept her spare key in the place they’d always kept it, so he hadn’t had any difficulty finding it.
“Breaking and entering!” she shouted at him when she found him lounging in the den reading some dusty work of literary fiction.
The bastard had the audacity to look even more gorgeous than usual with his newly acquired tan and stress-free expression as he lifted his head from his book.
“Ah, Caity dear,” he said. “I was hoping you’d turn up soon. I tried to call . . .”
He lifted his hands and shrugged. A lock of dark hair curved over his high forehead. The traces of gray flecking his otherwise perfectly maintained short hairstyle made him look more attractive, not less so. And those deep, inquisitive eyes of his still managed to make her feel exposed. Not her body—he’d never ruled her body the way Owen did. But her soul and her mind, those were the parts of her that he’d always understood best.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in Rome?”
The small smile that twisted the corner of his mouth wasn’t even slightly happy. “Rome was magnificent, as usual. Remember when we went to the Colosseum and discussed what it must have been like there at the height of the Roman Empire?”
Of course she remembered. Fondly even. And she didn’t want to entertain fond memories of her marriage to Charles. She wanted to remember it as all bad so she could continue to despise his very existence. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
“You need to get out of my house, Charles. You have no business being here.”
He rose from the wing chair and set his book in his seat. He took a step toward her, looking all tall and stern and in control of himself. But not in control of her. Not anymore. Caitlyn forced herself not to take a step back.
“I made a mistake, Caity. She’s nothing like you were at the beginning.”
“You do not get to come here now and try to make amends, Charles. You tried to destroy me in the divorce. Tried to take my company, tried to force me from my home.” He’d definitely stripped her of her pride, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting that to his face.
“Those things were ours,” Charles said. “Not just yours. Ours.”
“Just because we were married when I built the business from the ground up and used some of the earnings to build my dream house—”
“Our dream house,” he interjected.
“My dream house, does not mean any of it was ours,” she spat at him. All her hard work had been responsible for their financial and business success. Her hard work, not his.
“That’s the definition of marriage, Caity. What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine.”
But he didn’t have anything. And it still pissed her off that she had had to buy him out of both the business and the house—millions upon millions of her hard-earned money—when they’d divorced. She was still making fucking alimony payments because most of her money wasn’t liquid but was tied up in her successful business. She’d done that—all of that—with no help from him, and no one would ever convince her otherwise.
“Don’t you mean what’s mine is yours and you have nothing to offer me? Never had anything to offer me?”
“I didn’t come here to fight, Caity.”
“Stop calling me Caity!” It was much too intimate. She could still hear the way he whispered her name when they’d made love. Caity was what he’d called her when they came together.
“Um, Caitlyn?” Owen spoke from behind her.
Fuck! How long had he been standing there? Maybe not long. Charles hadn’t even registered his existence. But then Charles had a way of making a person feel less than human and inferior without even trying.
“I think I should bail,” Owen said. “Give me a call when you get this sorted out.”
“No, don’t leave. I don’t want you to leave, I want him to leave.” Caitlyn threw out a hand in Charles’s direction.
“He’s cute,” Charles said with a dismissive chuckle. �
��I wondered why there were vibrators, dildos, and condoms all over the house. I guess you’re more like me than you want to admit. Sex with the young and inexperienced is always more fun.”
Owen’s brows scrunched together. “Did he just call me inexperienced?”
Caitlyn laughed, some of the tension draining from her body. She’d almost forgotten that a man could make her feel something other than angry. A man didn’t have to subject her to constant condescension. A man—this man—could make her feel happy and good about herself. Good about being with him.
“So where did you pick him up?” Charles asked.
“A sex club,” Owen said. “I’d like to thank you for pissing her off so much that she was giving off men-suck vibes. Her attitude scared off all the other men in the room long enough for me to approach her.”
There was something embarrassing about Owen sharing details with Charles. Embarrassing, yet karmic. She wanted that affronted look on Charles’s face to be captured, enlarged, printed, and framed so she could remember it eternally.
“Well, when you’ve had your fill screwing this boy,” Charles said, “and are looking for something more substantial, I’d like to talk.”
Caitlyn scowled. “What makes you think what I have with Owen isn’t substantial?”
Charles lifted his brows, and she again hated that he was Pierce Bronson handsome. She wished he was as ugly as he made her feel—like a snot-and-wart-covered troll.
“Maybe by the way you’re walking. Sex isn’t everything, Caity. You need to have more in common to make a relationship work for longer than a few weeks.”
Charles brushed past her, bombarding her with his familiar scent. She still liked the way he smelled. The way he looked. The sound of his voice. But she couldn’t stomach the way he spoke to her like she was still that naïve freshman who cared more about his opinions of her than her self-respect.
“Says a man who never fucked his wife in an elevator or on her desk,” Owen called after him.
“Owen,” Caitlyn said, shaking her head. The dig was unnecessary and gave some substantiation to what Charles had said. Sex wasn’t everything, yet it was all she was prepared to share with Owen at the moment. Charles’s intrusion had somehow diminished her already superficial relationship with her sweet rock star. And when she heard the front door close as Charles saw himself out, it was exactly the figurative cold shower she needed to finally get her head on straight.
“Maybe you should go,” she said to Owen, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at the wall. She no longer felt like going to the beach and picnicking as they watched the sun set. The only reason they were going there was to have sex again, to check off another fantasy from her list. And she was no longer in the mood for fantasies.
“Do you want him back?” Owen asked, turning toward the doorway through which Charles had just walked.
“Of course not,” she said, “but maybe now you can see why I’m not ready to get serious with another man. Not even someone as good and kind as you. It’s too soon. I need to find more of me before I have anything to offer you but my body.”
“I can help you find yourself,” he said. “You’ve come out of your shell so much already since we’ve been together.”
She smiled sadly. “That’s just the part of me that complements you, Owen. It’s not all of me. Not much of me, really. Just like when I was with Charles. I showed him the parts of me that complemented him. So when I began to find myself—especially my ambitious side—we no longer worked. I don’t want to end up in the same place with you.”
Owen’s jaw was hard, his eyes a bit glassy. She could tell he was struggling with emotion, but she couldn’t give him much wiggle room.
“I thought this relationship was just about sex,” he said, the crack in his voice shredding her heart.
“It can be,” she said. “If that’s what you really want, then stay. I can handle that sort of relationship with you and discard you when I get bored. But if you want something more—and today has shown me that I do want more—you have to give me some time to sort myself out. And you have to go.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Part of her wanted him to stay and ruin any future they could have together by them fucking until they tired of each other, but the bigger part of her needed him to make the decision that being with her was worth more than the blistering hot sex they shared. They could have both the serious, fulfilled relationship and the amazing sex life if he was patient. Just a little patient. She didn’t expect him to wait around forever, just until the ink was dry on her divorce papers and she figured out what her next step was going to be. She’d really thought she’d be single for a while—a long while—not fall for her rebound guy.
“I had a wonderful time with you this weekend,” Owen said, tugging her into a gentle embrace.
He kissed her temple, and she blinked back tears. She was the one forcing him to give her time to find herself, so she didn’t have the right to cry. At least not in front of him.
“I hope you don’t keep me waiting for long. I don’t think I can stand it,” he said. “Goodbye for now.”
He kissed her just long enough to make her heart ache and then turned. She clung to the hem of her shirt so she didn’t reach for him as she watched him stride away. He’d chosen her—not her body—but her. So why did she feel so fucking miserable about it?
Chapter Fourteen
During the drive back to Austin, Owen had had a long time to second guess his decision to leave Caitlyn even temporarily. It was obvious that her old ex-husband—dude had to be pushing fifty—wanted her back. Owen trusted that Caitlyn just wanted a little time to sort through her feelings, but he didn’t trust that ol’ Charlie would stay away for long. Owen just had to make sure the ex- stayed away longer than he did.
Owen had just tossed his overnight bag into the mudroom when his doorbell rang. A small part of him wondered if Caitlyn had already decided she’d made a mistake and had followed him home, but he probably would have noticed her bright yellow Camaro in his rearview mirror, so he went to the door to investigate, not in the mood to listen to a salesman’s spiel or have his soul saved by Jesus or even endure a friendly visit from a neighbor. Peeking out the postcard-size window in his front door, he groaned aloud. Normally he’d have been happy to see his mom—and tell her about his latest heartache—but she had Lindsey with her. Since he’d last seen her yesterday morning, he’d almost forgotten Lindsey existed. Her presence on his doorstep was like a bucket of ice water thrown over his head.
He opened the door.
“I saw you drive by,” Mom said. “I thought you were going to be out of town until tomorrow.”
“Change of plans,” he said.
“Can we come in?”
He wanted to say no, especially when he noticed Lindsey was staring at him all doe-eyed as she clutched a plastic container to her chest, but he couldn’t tell his mother to get lost, so he stepped aside and ushered them in.
“We have a little problem,” Mom said.
And they were hoping he could fix it, so he said, “How can I help?” Why did he have to be such a nice guy? Or maybe he was a doormat.
“Lindsey had an asthma attack in her new place, so I called Ben and he came out and tested for mold.”
There was one reason to continue to be nice like his mom, Owen mused; nice sometimes earned benefits. Busy contractors like Ben didn’t usually drop everything on a weekend to test for mold.
“It’s everywhere. Apparently the apartment shower has been leaking behind the walls for months, and we’re going to have to rip it all out and redo it.”
“I’ll grab my tools,” Owen said.
“You don’t need to do that,” Mom said. “We’ve already hired Ben to do it.”
Which meant the job would be done right, but they’d have to wait months.
“I can at least rip out the old stuff. Get the mold out of there so she doesn’t have another attack.”
“She ca
n’t stay there without a functioning bathroom, Owen. She’s pregnant.” Mom squeezed Lindsey’s arm. “And pregnant women definitely need a functioning bathroom.”
He refused to look at Lindsey, knowing that if he did, he’d give in to her plight. “I can give you some more money. I’m sure you can help her find a place nearby. There’s an apartment building over on—”
“Owen,” Mom interrupted, reaching out to pat his hand. Now she was giving him the doe eyes. “There’s already a place nearby that she can stay for free.”
Owen’s stomach dropped. He knew what she was going to ask of him.
“It’s preferable that you two are married before you live together, but she can keep an eye on your house while you’re gone,
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