Free Agent

by Catherine Gayle

  I tried not to let my grin get too big, because I didn’t want him to think I was laughing at him. Then I picked up my own sample and demonstrated the new stitch a few times while he watched. “Your turn,” I said once he had seen me do about a dozen double crochets.

  His concentration fully on his work, I sat back and watched the comedians on the show making fools of themselves.

  About halfway through an episode, I realized that Blake was laughing just as hard as I was. I glanced over. He’d finished a few rows, and his stitches were starting to look more even, but he’d set it aside and was leaning back against the cushions, the same as I was.

  He shot a look over at me, as if he sensed my attention on him. “Finished those rows,” he said.

  “So I noticed. I thought you were going to tell me when you were ready to move on.”

  “Didn’t want to disturb you. I like hearing you laugh. I’ve missed it.”

  I blinked in surprise.

  “Your eyes get these crinkles around the corners when you laugh,” he said. “They’re so fucking sexy.”

  Something warm and unfamiliar and addictive curled within my belly. I had to look away before it completely took control of me.

  “Bea,” he said, and my pulse shot through the roof.

  “Hmm?” I replied, not trusting myself to say more than that.

  “Thank you. For teaching me all this shit. For trying to help me.”

  He reached out his hand, and I had to fight down the urge to flinch, but he was only reaching for his water bottle. He unscrewed the cap and took a sip, then returned the bottle to my coffee table.

  “I don’t deserve it, but you’re helping me anyway. Not too many people would do that.”

  “You might be wrong about that,” I forced myself to say around an overly thick tongue. “A lot of people would help.”

  “Not when you’re someone like me.”

  Someone like him? Someone rich and famous and seemingly without need for help? Or did he mean something else?

  But he didn’t elaborate. Instead, he started returning the yarn and other supplies to his bag. “I should let you get some sleep. I shouldn’t have come here so late in the first pl—”

  “You don’t need to apologize for coming over this time,” I cut in. “But next time, maybe try texting me first, hmm? Give me a bit of warning?” I’d like to at least have clothes on the next time he showed up at my front door—not that I intended to point out my less-than-dressed state just now.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

  He got up and finished gathering his things. Then I found myself following him to the door—to lock it behind him, or so I told myself. But in truth, there was more to it than that.

  When we reached the door, he turned and stared down at me, an undeniable sort of longing clouding his expression. I told myself he merely wished he’d had a teacher like me back when he’d been in school. That could be the only reasonable explanation for a look like that, at least when it was coming from a man like him and directed toward a woman like me.

  But then he bent down and pressed his lips to mine, and everything I thought I knew about him and myself and life flew out the window.

  SHE LET OUT a soft gasp of surprise when I pressed my mouth to hers, but then she rigidly held her body away from me, even though her lips softened against mine.

  Surprise? Hell, I was surprised, too. What the fuck was I thinking, kissing Bea Castillo?

  Answer: I wasn’t.

  Or at least I wasn’t thinking about anything other than how fucking adorable she was when she glared at me. Yeah, pissing her off seemed to turn me on. Her eyes flashed fire when she was mad, and that fire lit another one that burned inside me. It was a sickness. And one I wasn’t overly fussed about curing anytime soon.

  She was also insanely adorable in those moments when she decided not to be pissed off at me. The hint of softness that came through in her expression just wrapped around me and refused to let go—much the way I wanted to wrap myself around her and hold on as long as I possibly could. I wanted to dig my fingers into the curve of her hips and waist. I wanted to draw her softness against me and revel in it.

  Bea was completely unlike any woman I’d ever been with before.

  She was fiery and fierce when it came to her students, but there was also an undeniable layer of caring in there. She was fierce because she loved them and wanted the best for them.

  And then she was tough and demanding when it came to me, not letting me get away with anything. Which was good. Obviously, I needed a firm hand in life, helping to guide me through all the shit I fouled up.

  Oh, and there was her laugh, too. She had a laugh that turned me on like nobody’s business.

  She was everything I never knew I wanted until tonight, sitting next to her while she tried to teach me to do some of her crafting shit.

  But for now, I supposed I’d have to make do with a kiss. Cautiously, I tested the seam of her lips with my tongue.

  She hesitated, making me question my decision again, but then she opened for me. Her arms slipped up around my neck and shoulders, and she fell back against the doorjamb, dragging me along with her.

  Hell yes.

  I was all too happy to crush her body against mine, leaning in closer so I could feel the supple length of her and all those amazing curves pressing tight against my frame. My dick was happy about it, too. It’d been too damn long since I’d been with a woman. Chicks liked to throw themselves at me because I was a hockey player or something, but once I opened my mouth and said a few things, I tended to scare them off.

  Dating was a minefield for me. A one-night stand, sure, I could do that without fucking up too badly. Everyone went in with low expectations, and no one ended up getting hurt when it ended after only a single night.

  But I didn’t want a one-night stand with Bea. And I didn’t think she was the type who’d go in for something like that, anyway.

  Her hand slid cautiously up my chest, and she wrapped her fingers around my collar as if to brace herself.

  I ached to feel those fingers on my skin. Her fingers. Her lips. Her tongue.

  My hips ground against her, almost of their own accord, and I dug my fingers into the softness of her waist. I broke off the kiss so I could taste the column of her throat.

  A low whimper rumbled from somewhere in her chest and vibrated through me.

  I fisted my hand in the thick waves of her hair and held her head captive so I could kiss her again, taking it deeper so she’d understand what she was doing to me. She clung to me, her body pressed so tightly to mine that I could feel how hard and taut her nipples were through our clothes.

  I wanted more.

  I wanted to take her back inside her house, push her down onto her couch, strip her naked, and explore all her curves and softness with my hands and tongue and teeth. I wanted to suck her tits until she begged me to fuck her. I wanted to lick her pussy until she came all over my tongue. I wanted to hear the sounds she made when I was buried deep inside her.

  And even as all these things I wanted were racing through my brain, I was able to slow down enough to realize I was jumping the gun. Yeah, maybe she was letting me kiss her now, but we still had a long way to go before she’d be ready to bump uglies with me.

  She might never be willing to do that, actually. I was already pushing my luck just with this kiss.

  So instead of trying to drag her back inside to do all the things I wanted to do, I forced myself to tear my lips away from hers.

  “Sorry,” I said, my forehead pressed against hers as I tried to catch my breath.

  Bea was just as winded as I was. She kept her eyes closed, one hand still clenching my collar, and bit her lower lip. “Why did you do that?”

  Well, fuck. I racked my brain for an answer that could excuse my shitty decision-making, but nothing reasonable came to me. “I meant to thank you for helping me,” I said.

  “You did. You already thanked me. But why di
d…why did you kiss me?” She sounded wary, like she was searching for an ulterior motive. And she still wouldn’t look up and meet my eyes.

  I was at a complete loss. Couldn’t figure out what the fuck I’d done wrong, because it had seemed like she was as into this as I was. I mean, I hadn’t flat out asked her for permission to kiss her first, but she hadn’t said no or tried to shove me off or anything. Hell, she’d dragged me closer. Wasn’t that a pretty obvious sign that she was into it?

  I groaned in frustration. “Does a man really need a reason to want to kiss a gorgeous woman other than he thinks she’s hot and she’s been helping him and maybe he wants to thank her? Isn’t that enough?”

  But she just shook her head and didn’t say anything for so long it scared me. “You don’t thank someone with a kiss,” she finally said.

  “Maybe you do if you’ve got the hots for her,” I countered.

  “A gorgeous woman?” she said, sounding hurt and dubious. “And you’ve got the hots for me? You really expect me to believe that?”

  “Yeah?”

  And then she pushed me away—not hard, but with enough force behind it that there could be no possible way for me to misinterpret what she was doing—and headed for her door. “Knock it off, Blake,” she said. “You should go home. And I need to sleep. I’ve got to work in the morning. Good night.”

  “Wait,” I said, reaching for her arm to stop her, but she slipped her hand out of mine and went inside. “Bea, stop. Please. Tell me what I did wrong.”

  She tugged her screen door closed, but at least she didn’t slam the main door in my face. When she faced me again, she was blinking back tears.

  What the fuck had I done to make her cry? I wanted to bash my head against the side of her house in frustration because…what?

  “Please,” I croaked. “You’ve got to spell shit out for me, remember?”

  “I don’t appreciate being made a fool of,” she bit off.

  “Made a fool of?”

  “I agreed to help you. I’m trying to do that, and I didn’t ask for anything in return. But that doesn’t make it okay to toy with me—with my emotions. Just—if you want to thank me, say thanks. Don’t go and kiss me or whatever.”

  “It seemed like you were enjoying it,” I complained, dragging a hand down my face in frustration. “And lord knows I was.”

  “Yeah, you were enjoying making this into a joke. But it’s not a joke to me. It’s not funny.”

  “I don’t think any of this is a joke,” I practically shouted, only remembering to keep my voice down because of how dark it was out. I didn’t need to wake up her whole neighborhood. The last thing I needed was to have to explain to the team bigwigs why I’d been arrested in the middle of the night while standing outside a house I didn’t live in and shouting at a woman.

  “Well, good,” she bit off. “Because it’s not funny to me.”

  “Not for me, either. So what are we arguing about?”

  “About you treating me like—”

  But however she thought I was treating her, she couldn’t get the words out because she got choked up. Tears shone in her eyes, the wetness reflected by the streetlights, making me feel like the biggest jackass on the planet.

  Fuck, this was all wrong. “So I need to apologize to you?” I asked. “I fucked this up already?”

  “You should go home, Blake,” she said through sniffles. “It’s better if you just go home so we can both sleep on this and look at it with fresh eyes in the morning.”

  Better for who? Not for me. There wasn’t much chance I’d be sleeping any time soon. I’d spend hours lying in bed and trying to figure out what the hell I’d done wrong this time.

  I dragged a hand down my face, the scratch of stubble scraping my palm. “Would you please talk to me and explain what I did? I didn’t mean to hurt you or upset you. Whatever I did wrong, I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Good night,” she repeated firmly. Then she closed the door in my face, and I heard the soft snick of the lock settling into place.

  THE COOL WOOD paneling of my front door wasn’t enough to calm the heat rushing through my body. Hurt, anger, lust, disappointment…all of it had combined to send me into a tailspin that was bound to keep me up for hours. I might as well not even try getting to sleep for a while, because it’d be an exercise in futility.

  I stayed by the door, listening for the sounds of Blake’s sports car door closing and his engine starting. It finally did, and then the soft hum drifted down the street and disappeared into the night.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have kicked him out. Maybe I should’ve been an adult about the situation and had him come back inside so we could talk about it. But frankly, I was too raw to talk about anything with him just now.

  He was toying with me, plain and simple.

  There was no other reasonable explanation.

  I might be many things, but I was not the kind of woman a professional hockey player in his mid-twenties hit on. So that meant I definitely wasn’t the sort of woman a man like Blake Kozlow would kiss.

  Not unless there was something else behind it.

  Was he doing it for a bet? Was it a joke of some sort? Did he think he’d get me to help him more by pretending to be interested in me? If that was the case, once he’d gotten everything he needed from me, he would move on in a heartbeat—and probably have all sorts of jokes to tell his buddies about the fat, old chick who’d thought he’d been interested in her.

  Well, he wasn’t going to get away with that. Not with me. I had no intention of falling prey to some cruel joke.

  I’d already been on the wrong side of those kinds of things too many times when I was a teenager. It wouldn’t happen to me again.

  Once I could finally peel myself away from the front door, I double-checked the locks and turned off the porch light, then headed into the kitchen. I grabbed a bottle of water and a yogurt out of the fridge for myself, a handful of shredded carrots for Neville and Luna, and I took a spoon from the drawer. I stopped by my guinea pigs’ cage and gave them their treats before heading upstairs to sulk with my yogurt.

  My phone was blowing up with text messages by the time I made it up to my room, so I took it off the charger and crawled into bed with the phone and my snack.

  Several of the messages were from Blake, but I wasn’t in the mood to read them just yet. I skipped over those and went to the rest of them.

  Dani: I think I’m in labor. These pains definitely feel like labor. It’s too early for me to be going into labor. Tell Cody to take me to the hospital.

  Dani, again: I told Cody I hate him and he’s never touching me again because I will not be having another child. We can do like Jamie and Katie and be foster parents or something. Or we can adopt. But I’m never going through this shit again. Don’t ever make this mistake. Don’t get pregnant. Not worth it, Bea.

  Dani, one more time: He still hasn’t taken me to the hospital. He said I just have gas because of something I ate and it didn’t agree with me. He’s a lying fucking liar and this is not cool. You need to come and get me and take me to the hospital.

  Dani, yet again: Okay, so maybe it isn’t labor and instead I’m dying. Why aren’t you answering me? I’ll be dead by the time you respond because Cody isn’t doing anything. Except laughing. He’s fucking laughing at me, the bastard.

  The next message wasn’t from Dani, at all. It was from her husband.

  Cody: I finally got her to take some Gas-X. Suddenly, she’s not screaming at me that she’s in labor, and now she’s not dying any longer…and she’s asleep. Crisis averted. Funny how that works. But she fell asleep grumbling about how you had abandoned her in her time of need or some shit, so be forewarned. You’re officially on her pregnancy-brain shit list. Welcome to the club. We have meetings every night at 3 am to discuss all the ways she’s abusing us and how we can get through the next few months without strangling her in her sleep.

  Chuckling to myself, I debated whether I sh
ould respond to either of them tonight. But if Dani was finally asleep, I didn’t want to risk waking her up again. Cody would probably murder me. So I made a mental note to check on her at a reasonable hour tomorrow.

  But then I didn’t have any good excuse not to look at Blake’s messages any longer. Bracing myself against the ache of disappointment that had more to do with me and my own unmet expectations than it had to do with him, I opened his message.

  Blake: You’re the best thing I’ve had going on in my life lately. I don’t know what I did to upset you. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I feel like an ass about it and I don’t even know why.

  I sighed in frustration. Apparently, neither of us would be able to let it go until we’d hashed it out.

  Sleep? Who needed sleep? I sure wouldn’t be getting any tonight.

  I propped myself up against my pillows and settled in for the long haul.

  Me: Why did you kiss me?

  Blake: What the hell kind of question is that? I kissed you because you’re gorgeous and I’m into you and I wanted to kiss you.

  Me: I’m not the kind of woman a guy like you wants to kiss, Blake. Don’t try to pull that with me.

  Blake: What does that even mean? You’re not the kind of woman…? A guy like me? Are you trying to tell me you’re trans or something?

  Me: What? No.

  Blake: Then what? I mean, I’m cool with that if you are. Whatever. I just like hanging out with you. I let you teach me how to crochet tonight because I wanted to spend time with you. Not for any other reason. I mean, yeah, I need to figure out how to focus and all, but I don’t think crocheting is going to do that. I just wanted to be with you tonight. That’s all.

  Me: Get off it already. No man in your position likes hanging out with an old, fat teacher.

  Blake: Who the hell is this old, fat teacher you’re talking about and why are we talking about her?