Taming My Whiskey

by Melissa Foster

  Conroy flashed his pearly whites and said, “Good, then maybe you girls and my boys can remember that for the next generation.”

  “You know we will,” Dixie said, looking around the crowded bar. “This is quite a party.”

  “We’ll take any reason to get the gang together,” Conroy said, looking around the crowded bar. “It was great visiting with you last night, Dix. You need to come out and see us more often.”

  “Or you could drag your butt down to Maryland.” She took a sip of her soda and said, “My parents would love to see you.”

  Conroy glanced at the bar and said, “We’ll do that. But right now I’d better go help serve drinks. You girls have fun.”

  When he walked away, Marly said, “Not that I’m into your uncle, Mads, but he is so hot.”

  “He does have three available sons,” Madigan pointed out.

  “Don’t get me started…” Marly glanced around the room and sighed. “Do you ever feel like you’ll be single forever?”

  “I know I will, and I look forward to it,” Madigan answered.

  “I forgot about Little Miss I Don’t Believe in Love,” Marly teased.

  “I believe in love for other people,” Madigan insisted. “I like going on dates, and I like that feeling of excitement when you’re just getting to know someone. But I just don’t see love in my future.”

  Madigan had never been one to sleep around or play head games with guys. She was in her early twenties and always seemed happy doing her own thing.

  “Well, I hope that’s not true, because I think love is beautiful. Dixie, how did you and Jace meet?” Marly asked.

  “It was a day I’ll never forget.” Dixie remembered the thrill of trying to get Jace to notice her. “I was at a bike rally with my brother Bear, and he kept talking about this motorcycle designer he wanted to meet named Jace. I literally stopped dead in my tracks when I saw him.” She told them the whole embarrassing story, which led to Marly and Madigan exchanging their embarrassing stories.

  The conversation turned to other topics, like family and hobbies, and Dixie told them about the book club. She gave them the link to join, and then she and Marly exchanged phone numbers so they could keep in touch after Dixie returned to Peaceful Harbor. When they circled back to talking about relationships and the girls discussed their opposing viewpoints, Dixie’s thoughts returned to Jace. She reveled in all the wonderful things he’d said to her earlier when he’d poured his heart out like he couldn’t hold anything back. She didn’t want to hold back either.

  She picked up her glass and said, “I’m going to leave you two to discuss the merits of love while I go do a little hands-on research.”

  JACE WATCHED DIXIE making her way across the room. She stood out among the crowd like a diamond among gemstones. Though he knew she’d refute it if he said it aloud, she moved with as much strength and confidence as she did grace. She stopped to chat with Justin’s mother, her eyes darting to him, that secret smile he adored curving her lips. She was so different from the women he knew. Most women dreamed of being showered in diamonds and furs. He knew Dixie didn’t dream of those things. She longed to be wrapped in his arms at night and to wake up in them in the mornings. She dreamed of him joining her in the world in which she was happiest, surrounded by her family and a sense of security.

  She hugged Justin’s mother, and then she set her catlike eyes on him. He had no doubt that he’d started falling for her years ago. His attraction at first had been physical, but it had taken only a matter of minutes before he’d realized all that she was and that attraction had burned stronger than anything he’d ever known. He’d compared all women—grown women—to the tough, confident eighteen-year-old she had been. Over the years he’d noticed how loyal and loving a sister and daughter she was. He’d watched her from afar as she’d grown into a sharp businesswoman, wiser and even more beautiful with each passing year. She was the most intriguing woman he’d ever known, and he’d fought the urge to get close to her, to get to know her, building impenetrable walls around himself in order to keep his distance, to protect her from his unwillingness to be the man she needed. Their time in New York had tipped the scales. He wanted to give her everything she’d ever dreamed of. But he was a man of his word, and he would never in a million years let Dixie settle for empty promises.

  His heart beat faster as Dixie set her glass on the table and lowered herself to his lap, claiming him in front of her family and friends. He thought she might chat with her cousins and friends, but her eyes were still on him, making him feel like a fucking king. As his arms circled her, the approving looks coming from around the table also felt pretty damn good.

  “Why did you sell yourself short?” she asked so sweetly he didn’t recognize her tone.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you first asked me to be in the calendar, I gave you a hard time about not taking part in the auction. I said some harsh things about you giving money so you didn’t have to donate your time. But Marly just told me how you two met and everything you’ve done for her, and your sisters mentioned scholarships, internships, and mentoring programs that you set up at Silver-Stone.”

  “Dix, those are just things I wanted to do. I didn’t do them so I could get a pat on the back. Marly needed a guiding hand, and college kids need a leg up. It’s hard to find a place in our world. I was lucky that Maddox gave me a shot and believed in me when I was just a college kid trying to make something of myself. It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s a very big deal.” She pressed her lips to his in a tender kiss, and then she whispered, “What do you say we get out of here so I can apologize properly?”

  She didn’t have to ask twice.

  They said their goodbyes, congratulated Justin on his show, and promised to catch up the next time they were in town.

  On their ride back to the cottage, with Dixie’s warm body pressed against his back, her hands playing over his stomach, he was consumed with missing her. Every day without her had felt like an eternity. She was with him now, and still he longed to be closer. He thought about the first time she’d ridden on the back of his bike and how proud he’d been, how right she’d felt. He hadn’t admitted it to himself at the time, but he had been staking his claim.

  He cruised down the long driveway of Bayside Resort and followed the gravel road to the cottage. A gust of salty air swept up the dunes as they made their way inside. They didn’t turn on the lights or say a word as they took off their boots and socks by the door. Dixie took his hand, leading him into the bedroom. Moonlight spilled through the windows as he pressed his lips to her shoulder, trailing kisses along her warm skin. He lifted her shirt off and then kissed her softly as he unhooked the front clasp of her bra and slipped it off, too. He dipped lower, tasting her neck and bathing her breasts in kisses and slow slicks of his tongue. Dixie breathed harder, pulling at his shirt. He tugged it over his head, and as he reached for her, she put her palm on his chest, her eyes riveted to the new tattoo over his heart.

  She traced the design that matched the one he’d tattooed on her wrist. Her eyes flicked up, her silent question hanging between them. He covered her hand with his, holding it over his heart while trying to come up with the words to explain himself, but the closest he could come was “I felt too far away from you.”

  Her eyes dampened, and he gathered her in his arms. He held her for a long moment, their emotions filling the silence. Then he cradled her face in his hands and covered her mouth with his, pouring all of himself into their kisses. When he knelt to help her step out of her skirt and panties, he had the overwhelming urge to worship her, to show her just how special she was to him.

  He ran his hands up her legs, kissing along her knee, thigh, and hip. He slowed to kiss her belly and felt her watching him as she threaded her fingers into his hair. He continued caressing, kissing, treasuring her. He stepped back to strip off his jeans and briefs and she brazenly drank in every inch of him. He hadn’t been kidding when he�
��d told her that their time in New York had been everything. She had changed who he was and opened his eyes to who he wanted to be.

  He pulled the covers down to the foot of the bed, in no hurry to rush their time away. She lay on the sheet, and he came down over her and cradled her in his arms, filled with a sense of coming home. He wanted to savor their closeness and gazed deeply into her eyes. Moonlight reflected in them, heightening the greens, bringing out the golds, drawing him even deeper under her spell. My Dixie. He didn’t think it was possible to feel so much, so close, to another person. God, when had she become his everything?

  “Dixie…” he whispered with a sense of awe as their bodies came together slowly, perfectly. The intensity of their connection pulled a long, surrendering sigh from both of them, bringing rise to another all-consuming sensation.

  For the first time ever, Jace felt complete.

  They lay in each other’s arms, their bodies joined so deeply, they felt like one being. Neither one of them moved, their hearts beating to their own private revelry.

  “I never knew it could be like this,” Dixie said softly.

  Jace brushed his lips over her cheek, breathing her in as he whispered, “I always knew it would.”

  Chapter Twenty

  JACE WAS IN no hurry to open his eyes, much less move from where he lay with his head on Dixie’s stomach, his arms around her. He’d wanted this—her—for so long, he didn’t want to rush it away. But now that his brain was firing, his dreams came rushing back with such clarity, they felt real. He’d dreamed of a life that wasn’t his, one in which Dixie was walking along a beach with a baby in her arms and he was watching from afar. He’d seen flashes of her and the baby with her family, but he couldn’t get to them. They were on the other side of a treacherously deep and craggy, uncrossable ravine. He’d seen himself riding his motorcycle, desperately trying to find a road that led to her. But road after road brought him to the edge of the cliff, close enough to hear her voice and see her holding that baby, separated by the jagged abyss.

  His heart raced, and he opened his eyes, hoping to forget those dreams. Dixie’s beautiful face came into focus, easing his panic.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, smiling sweetly, and said, “Thank God you’re up. You’ve been holding me so tight it was hard to breathe, and I have to pee.”

  “Sorry, babe.” He kissed the pink marks his beard had left on her skin, then leaned up to kiss her lips. “You should have woken me up.”

  “You were so tired last night, I didn’t have the heart to. And you were holding me like you were afraid I’d run off.”

  “Can you blame me?” he asked as she stepped from the bed, enjoying the playful look she gave him almost as much as the view of her gorgeous naked body as she headed into the bathroom.

  He sat up against the headboard and stretched, surprised to see one of the pictures of him that Hawk had taken on the nightstand. He loved knowing she’d brought it with her. Beside it was a framed picture of Dixie and her family—and the people the Whiskeys treated as family, Truman, Gemma, Josie, Jed, and all their children. They were all wearing pajamas, even Biggs and Red. The men wore flannel pajama pants with their boots. Bullet also had on his leather vest. He probably slept in the damn thing. The women wore various sleeping outfits, but his eyes were drawn to Dixie, wearing a short black nightshirt and her favorite knee-high black leather boots. He loved those boots. She was facing away from the camera, and I DARE YOU TO BRING OUT MY DARK SIDE was printed on the back of her nightshirt. She was holding Truman and Gemma’s son, Lincoln, kissing his little cheek.

  You and your babies…

  She came out of the bathroom, hair brushed, a bright smile on her beautiful face, and his heart did a double take. He held up the picture and said, “Please tell me how you convinced a roomful of bikers to wear pajamas.”

  “That was taken in the hospital the night Maggie Rose was born.” She climbed onto the bed beside him and said, “Sarah went into labor when we were celebrating Hail’s birthday with a pajama party. He and Josie had a tradition of spending his birthday in their pajamas. I didn’t have to convince anyone. We all love Hail and Josie. We’d do anything for them. Anyway, the night of Hail’s birthday, when Sarah went into labor, we all went to the hospital to wait for the baby to come.”

  “You’re telling me these guys went out in public dressed like that?” He laughed.

  “Yup. I’m sure you’ve heard about Halloween when Kennedy asked the guys to dress up like cheerleaders because she wanted to be a football player. I’ll have to show you those pictures sometime.” She bumped him with her shoulder motioning to the picture, and said, “That was a really big night. Besides Hail’s birthday and Maggie Rose being born, Jed proposed to Josie in the waiting room of the hospital in front of everyone. He was just so overcome with love, he blurted it out.”

  “In a hospital waiting room, wearing pajamas?”

  “I know it doesn’t sound romantic, but it was. There’s something beautiful about a man who’s so in love he can’t hold back, and everyone was there to witness it. I think it was especially cool that Hail got to see it. I don’t think he’ll ever forget that birthday.” She snagged the frame from his hands and set it on the nightstand. “You’re just jealous that nobody threw you a pajama party.”

  “Oh, is that what I am?” He tickled her ribs, and she laughed, rolling away from him. He grabbed her hands, pressing them down to the mattress as he shifted over her. “The only thing I’m jealous of is that I wasn’t there to take you up on that dare you were parading around.”

  “I had lots of offers,” she said tauntingly.

  His gut twisted. “I bet you did. I see you brought the picture of me with you, too. Guess you missed me as much as I missed you.”

  “That is why I brought it, but I actually came to the Cape early to try to move on from you.” She paused and then said, “I thought I was just your booty call.”

  He released her hands, remembering the pain in her eyes that had driven him to come to the Cape, and his heart sank. “Christ, Dix. Seriously?”

  “When you said New York had been everything, I thought you meant it was all we would ever have.”

  “How could you think that?” His voice escalated with his frustration. “I meant that our time together was everything to me, as in enough to fuck up my head so badly that I couldn’t think of anything but you. Why do you think I came to Peaceful Harbor to see you?”

  “I assumed to fuck me,” she said as casually as if she’d said he was there to buy her an ice cream.

  “You don’t mince words, do you?”

  “No, and you like that about me.”

  “Hell yes I do.” He loved how vehemently she stood up for herself, but didn’t she know how deeply she’d sunk her claws into him? “Dix, you have no idea what you’ve done to me. I sent one of my employees out of a meeting because he wanted to go out with you, and he was lucky I didn’t fire him. Yes, I wanted to fuck you when I went to see you—good and hard, too. But my God, woman, I also wanted to be with you. Don’t you get that by now?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You need lessons in communication, Stone.”

  His head dropped between his shoulders in defeat, and she laughed softly.

  He met her amused gaze and said, “I ought to keep you in bed all day and communicate six ways to Sunday just how much you mean to me.”

  She ran her fingers through his hair again and said, “I am so glad you’re a man of your word.” A wicked grin spread across her face as she dragged her finger along the seam of his lips and said, “Because I’m holding you to that.”

  DIXIE HADN’T HAD to hold Jace to anything. Neither one of them had wanted to be anywhere other than in each other’s arms yesterday. They spent the entire day loving on each other, dozing off, and lazing around the cottage. They read steamy passages aloud from the book Dixie was reading for her book club and then acted the scenes out, christening the surface of nearly every piece of furnitu
re in the cottage. They laughed, talked, and spent long, silent stretches of time doing nothing more than being together. They had dinner delivered and ate it on the patio as they watched the sun set over Cape Cod Bay. It was the most wonderful day Dixie could have ever imagined. She was in a dangerous position, falling deeper in love with Jace with every passing moment. When they’d made love Wednesday night, she’d had to fight with everything she had to keep I love you from rushing out, reminding herself that this was only a start, even if it felt like so much more.

  Friday morning greeted them with the promise of a warm, sunny day. They showered together, which had become one of Dixie’s favorite things when they were in New York. It wasn’t just that they took things slower in the shower or that the water made their intimacy even more erotic. What she loved most was the way Jace relaxed and the sounds he made when he first got into the shower. It was always the same: He tipped his head back and closed his eyes as water rained down on him. His shoulders relaxed, and the stress that so often showed in the tightness of his jaw and arms dissipated. A good ten or fifteen seconds would pass before he’d let out a deep, relaxing sigh. That sound was music to her ears. She liked knowing that the man who was busy traveling and working, and didn’t seem to have set schedules or continuity, had at least a few moments of letting everything go.

  Those few moments at the beginning of his showers seemed like the nonsexual equivalent of the blissful aftermath of their lovemaking, when it was just the two of them without any pretense or expectations.

  She pulled on her skinny jeans, catching Jace watching her in the mirror. She turned with her hand on her hip, wearing her jeans and bra. He was shirtless and barefoot, the button of his jeans open, and her eyes were drawn to his matching tattoo, proudly inked over his heart. She’d nearly cried when she’d seen it the first time. It meant more to her than if he’d given her a diamond ring.