Sterling

by Willow Summers

  A moment later, though, his voice floated back into the room. “Uh oh. There’s a white Cadillac SUV pulling up in front of the house down the street. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Noah’s heart thundered in his chest. His palms got sweaty. He was possibly losing his mind.

  Greg’s head popped back through the kitchen entrance. “Just don’t be too eager, hmm?” With an annoying grin, he was gone again.

  Noah stopped himself from scarfing down the rest of his sandwich. He couldn’t show up right after they got home. She would know he’d been watching out for her, and that was more than a little creepy. No, he had to give it some time before he barged in.

  Twenty minutes later, as long as he could last, he was outside of her door, poised to knock. Before he could, the door swung open.

  “No, Mother,” Cynthia yelled over her shoulder, “I am not going to go over there when I get back. He has better things to do than—” Her eyes rounded when she saw him, and her mouth snapped shut. Red infused her cheeks.

  Noah gawked for a moment. She wore a blue blouse that enhanced the deep blue of her eyes, covered with a stylish jacket. A light dusting of makeup enhanced her lovely features and her hair had been tamed—now sleek, straight, and shiny, it cascaded down past her shoulders. Black slacks completed the ensemble, ending in Converse sneakers.

  “Yes, you most certainly will—” Tamie walked into the entryway. “Noah, how lovely to see you. Come in. Please.” She held out her hands, and he got the sense she’d drag him in if he didn’t go willingly.

  “Sure.” Noah’s gaze went back to Cynthia, who was still blocking the doorway, staring at him mutely. “You okay?”

  “Of course she’s okay.” Tamie laughed, a nervous sound. “She’s just surprised. She was on her way to the store. Come in.” Tamie reached the door and put her hand on Cynthia to move her. “Noah, come in.”

  “I’ll just head to the store,” Cynthia said quickly, shooting her mother a look.

  “Great idea! Noah, you can go with her. I’m sure your mom needs something. You can save gas by going together. Take my car. It’s much more comfortable.” Now Tamie was herding them outside, completely transparent about her desire to get Noah and Cynthia together. For once in his life, he welcomed that kind of behavior. Because without Tamie, he felt sure Cynthia would’ve taken off without him. Even now, she was arguing with her mother about the need to take him along.

  He didn’t have time to wonder about the change in her demeanor since yesterday. Before he knew it, he’d been pushed into a black Mercedes in the driveway and the door closed behind him. A moment later, the mother-daughter bickering cut off as Cynthia was pushed in after him. The door slammed shut.

  Cynthia let out a huge sigh and sagged in the driver’s seat.

  A knock came at the window. Tamie’s face filled it a moment later. She smiled and pointed at the ignition. “It’s a push start. You have the keys, so just go ahead and step on the brake and push the button. It’ll start right up.”

  Cynthia shot her mother a look of death before doing as instructed. It wasn’t until they were pulling out of the driveway that she spoke.

  “One of these days, I am going to learn to say no to that woman.”

  Ten

  Embarrassment raged through Cynthia, thankfully overshadowing the other emotions that had zipped through her when she’d found Noah standing on the porch. Like the longing and desire she remembered from her X-rated dreams last night. Or the feeling of her middle melting down into her suddenly wobbly legs. Or the odd sensation of all the spit drying up in her mouth.

  It was bad enough that she’d gone to bed with a smile, remembering the afternoon she’d spent with Noah. And plenty bad that she’d thought about him constantly since saying goodbye yesterday afternoon. Bad because, despite all her defenses, he was getting to her.

  She gritted her teeth as she drove down the street. It pissed her off how delighted she felt by his masculine scent. By his mere proximity.

  The worst part of it all? Her freaking mother’s smug smile because she thought her strange and obvious matchmaking antics were working.

  How did I get myself into this mess?

  “Do you need anything besides diapers?” Noah asked, his voice calm and sexy and annoying because of it. There was no way she’d sound so unaffected. Not when trapped in the same car as him, with that smell. It should be bottled up and sold so all guys, everywhere, would smell as freaking delicious as he did.

  “Cynthia?”

  “Huh?” she said, running the back of her hand across her mouth. Drool was becoming a problem. Another horrible thing.

  “What do you need besides replacement diapers?”

  “A few things for dinner tomorrow.”

  “Ah. Is your mom putting on the spread, or are you all helping?”

  Cynthia laughed. “Well, I’ll help unpack the turkey dinner when it arrives tomorrow, put it in nice dishes, and set it out on the table. My mother and sisters don’t like cooking big meals. Not that I blame them. And their husbands don’t mind the meals being ordered, just as long as they’re left out of it. My family is not your typical American Pie family.”

  “I didn’t think mine was, but…” He shifted in his seat, his shoulder leaning across the center and glancing off hers. The shock of fire it sent through her made her close her eyes for a brief moment.

  “What’s that?” he asked, righting himself. He now had his phone in hand.

  She gulped, because a tiny moan had escaped her lips, and he’d clearly heard it. Oops. “I didn’t say anything,” she said. “It must’ve been the voices in your head.”

  “Ah. Yes. They are distracting.” He worked at his screen for a moment. Probably a text.

  By the time he was done, she was parking at the grocery store and had developed an intense sweating problem.

  “You look beautiful, by the way,” Noah said as he came around the car.

  Were butterflies supposed to eat a person’s stomach lining? Because that was what it felt like they were doing.

  She clicked the lock button on the fob before putting it into the multicolored sack acting as her purse. “Thank you. Tera and my mom made me go shopping this morning. Luckily, I do know how to dress myself properly when I want to, so I didn’t have to take as many of their suggestions.”

  “As many?”

  “My mom was paying. Therefore, she got a large say in what was bought. She has a certain image in mind for me.”

  “Because of me, I take it?”

  Her cheeks felt hot. Possibly she shouldn’t have told him about that yesterday. Not that he wouldn’t have been able to guess. “Yep. They gave me a rundown on which parts of my personality I should subdue so as not to scare you away. It was, as predicted, a remarkably long list.”

  “I see. Like what?”

  She gave him a side eye. “Really? You don’t think it was bad enough for me to have to listen to that, you want me to recite it for you?”

  “No, you’re right. Let me guess.” He thought for a moment. “Your jokes have to go, right?”

  She couldn’t help but smile at his teasing tone. “Oh yeah. Definitely. They are rude, and crass, and—most importantly—not funny.”

  “Right. I can see your mother not finding your jokes funny.” He paused in the grocery store, waiting for her to consult her list and point them in a certain direction. “The way you dress is obviously a problem. And your unbrushed hair.”

  “Yes and yes.” She held her hands up to frame her head, indicating her new hairstyle, before grabbing a basket.

  “But you got to keep the shoes, at least. I’ll take that.” He took the basket from her.

  “Oh. Thanks.” She continued on. “It wasn’t until we got home that Mom realized I didn’t have any fancy flats. She worried about sending me out in heels again. Falling on one’s face isn’t ladylike, apparently. Who knew? That was also on the list, by the way.”

  “Falling?”

 
“Clumsiness, as if I’ve been rolling around like a clown my whole life intentionally.”

  “Well, now it’s on the stop being you list. Surely that’ll help extinguish the problem.”

  She laughed as she grabbed a container of strawberries. “Surely. I told her that Chucks go with everything. That everyone my age knows that. She hates when I call her old or not in trend. She’s probably googling it now, and I fully expect her to call me on it when I get back.”

  “Even if I’m there? Because I can play bodyguard if you want.”

  “Nah, it’s fine,” she croaked out. “You have a life.”

  “Not this week, I don’t. What are you looking for?”

  “Uh…” She hadn’t been. She’d been staring at nothing while her stomach flip-flopped and her girlish excitement keyed up a notch. “Date.”

  “Dates?” His brow furrowed as he looked around.

  She hadn’t meant dates. She’d meant just one. With him. Which was a horrible slip of the tongue and mind.

  She went with his confusion. “Date fruit. Yes, dates. Hmm. I wonder where dates are.”

  “Oh. Over there. I see them.” He turned sideways with his hand outstretched, something she’d come to realize was him herding her so that she’d go first.

  “Right, yeah.” She glanced at her list as she walked. He stopped beside her, and she followed his gaze, her eyes landing on something she’d never bought from a grocery store before, let alone eaten. “Right.”

  How many did people buy at a time?

  She grabbed a bag and reached for them…then hesitated. No scoop in sight. Clearly a hand was the correct scooping mechanism here.

  “Do you need help?” Noah asked, probably wondering why she wasn’t getting to it.

  “Nope, I’m good.” She scooped a few up, felt weird for not knowing anything about dates—like if you were supposed to eat them as they were, or prepare them a certain way—and dropped them into her bag.

  “Right. Great.” With a last look at the dates, which she would now be trying when she got home, she headed for apples.

  “So what else was on the stop being you list?” he asked as he followed her. “Was your intelligence on there?”

  She frowned at him as she tore off a bag in which to collect apples. “My intelligence?”

  “Yeah. Did she tell you to dumb down your conversation for me?”

  “Oh.” Cynthia barked out laughter. “No. My mom has never put any stock in my intelligence. She thinks my boredom is ADD.”

  “Skipping a grade wasn’t enough to convince her?”

  Cynthia shrugged. “My mom is weird. She’d rather I look and act classy than focus on what’s between my ears. Like landing a husband is more important than any of my jobs or higher education. Joke’s on her, obviously. I aim for the opposite whenever I am in her presence.”

  “Ah. So you don’t wear Converse all the time?”

  Cynthia laughed as she headed to the baby section. “No. I mean, I love my Chucks, and I’m definitely a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl whenever possible, but I don’t mind looking nice or dressing up some of the time. I just see no reason to at my mom’s house. I left most of my nicer clothes in storage. I only brought the bare necessities.”

  “Is that because you were worried you’d want to stay forever, and if you had all your stuff, it would be far too easy to do so?”

  “Yes,” she said with a serious face. “Exactly, yes. I was worried that I’d have so much fun at my mom’s house that I would never want to leave.”

  “Is she becoming your BFF?”

  “How did you know?”

  He nodded solemnly. “I’m having the very same problem myself. I mean, my dad just gets me, you know?”

  She shook in a fit of giggles. “We talked about all of my personality traits my mom is desperate to subdue—what about you? Your dad seemed like he was on your case about the lawyer thing the other day. Did I read that wrong?”

  All the humor left Noah’s face. He held out the basket for her so she could drop in a pack of diapers. “He wants me to take a certain path that…I don’t want to take.”

  “He wants you to become a lawyer, and you don’t want to?”

  “Basically, yeah.”

  “But you took the bar. Did you just quit after that?”

  “No. I got a job with my dad’s friend. I worked there for a while, but…” He shook his head and a troubled, haunted look crossed his face. She could nearly hear the skeletons dancing in his closet. “It wasn’t for me.”

  “Why not?” she asked, turning to face him eye to eye.

  His beautiful brown eyes delved into her, and she sensed he was teetering on whether or not to tell her. Maybe whether or not to trust her. But a moment later, he turned away. “It just wasn’t for me. I decided to move on.”

  Curiosity tugged at her. She wanted to pry it out of him. After all, she’d given the guy a list of her faults. The least he could do was share some of his own. But two things stopped her. One, a grocery store was the wrong place to convince someone to spill the goods. And two, part of her feared that if he gave her a window into his soul, she’d get sucked in and lose herself. That was dangerous territory. While Noah had definitely changed over the years, the guy didn’t do commitment. He was always single and looking, banging his way through girls as he did so. She didn’t want to be roadkill, tossed in the trash like those diapers.

  She took a deep breath and turned away, deciding to stick to more trivial matters. “So what are you doing instead? Because you’re clearly making money. Or is that trust fund money?”

  He gave her a mock frown. “I don’t have a trust fund any more than you do.”

  “More’s the pity.”

  “Tell me about it.” His face fell, and he ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m a fitness model. A few of my friends and I have sponsorships, so we have to post videos and do social media stuff. I’ve also done a few book covers.”

  “Wait.” She wasn’t sure why he’d be embarrassed about that, but she was super intrigued. “You get paid to be buff, basically, and are also on book covers? Like…Fabio?”

  A sexy grin lit up his face. “An author approached one of my photographers, asking if I’d be willing to pose for a book cover—”

  “What type?”

  His blush deepened. “Some kind of romance.” He shrugged, and she could tell he was trying to make light of it. “I’m hot, what can I say? Girls want to write fantasies about me.”

  He was joking, but there was never a truer statement.

  “So your dad isn’t into that?” she asked.

  “He’s not a big fan, no.”

  “I don’t know why not. Clearly there is good money in modeling. Rock that bitch.”

  An uncomfortable look crossed his face and he turned away to study something on the shelves. It was an odd reaction, especially because he’d willingly talked about the book covers, embarrassment aside.

  That he would close down now seemed strange. Like there was more to it.

  Plus, there was no way he was this interested in diapers.

  Her phone chimed and she pulled it out of her bag. A text from her mother. Don’t let him see you buying the dessert.

  Cynthia rolled her eyes. She nearly ignored it, but then thought about the dessert she was getting—and the hilarity of her mother using it to try and lure Noah to dinner.

  “Since you’ve made so much money from posing for daydreaming women,” Cynthia said, pivoting and heading toward the front of the store. She fished the keys out of her bag and held them out. “Pay for those groceries, would ya? Then head to the car. I need to get a few secret items.”

  “Secret items?”

  “Yeah. Off ye git.” She bumped his chest with the hand holding the keys. “Get gone.”

  A lopsided grin lit up his face. “What sort of secret items? If they are feminine products, I’m not worried about it.”

  “Maybe I am. What then?”

  “You shoul
d get over it, that’s what.”

  “Good grief.” She grabbed his free hand, opened it, and pressed the keys into his palm. She closed his fingers over them, electricity sizzling from the simple contact.

  Breathing became difficult. Warmth infused her cheeks, but not from embarrassment. This time, it was from raw, throbbing desire. She longed to step forward and soak up more of his heat. To touch that hard body.

  His pupils dilated as he looked down at her. His gaze roamed her face, settling on her lips. It almost felt like a phantom kiss, and her lips tingled from it. A soft moan escaped her mouth.

  He leaned in, slowly closing the distance between them. His eyes focused on his intention.

  Her mouth.

  He was going to kiss her for real.

  She should move. Should run, maybe. Scream? Anything to stop what was about to happen. His kisses were like a gateway drug. She’d heard about that growing up. One kiss from Noah Arnold and you were lost.

  But her legs wouldn’t obey her mind. Her body wouldn’t turn away.

  His lips connected with hers, soft and warm, and a spark of fire lit within her. Flames surged up and out from it, filling her body with heat, when she opened her lips to him and he flicked in his tongue. She ran her hands up his chest and over his broad shoulders before hooking them around his neck.

  Then the inconceivable happened.

  She completely lost control.

  She pulled him closer, her body now flush with his. The jingle of keys rattled against the ground. The hard plastic of the basket clattered down next to it. His hands splayed across her back, increasing the pressure, bringing her even closer.

  “Hmm, Noah,” she murmured against his lips, breathing the same heated air before feeling his lips move against hers. His hands slid down to her butt, and he squeezed while bending and rocking forward. His hard length dug into her, and more than anything she wanted it inside of her. Thrusting deeply. Pushing this aching desire to higher levels.

  “What in the— This is a grocery store!” a woman hollered.