by Macy Beckett
Too bad the same couldn’t be said about his taste in friends.
Chapter 4
“Hey, Golden Boy,” Bobbi whispered in Trey’s ear. “Wake up. I need you.”
When Trey felt the warm, wet tip of Bobbi’s tongue flick his earlobe, his eyes shot open and he sat bolt upright, fisting his cotton sheet in one hand and covering his heart with the other. With his pulse racing, he scanned his bedroom, seeing nothing but a pile of unfolded laundry atop his dresser, but then Bobbi cleared her throat in a teasing ahem, and he jerked his head toward the sound.
“Hot damn,” he breathed.
There she was, kneeling beside him on the bed, wearing a black satin bra, matching panties that laced up the front with pink ribbon, and a smile that oozed dirty, dirty sex. Either he’d died and gone to the Playboy Mansion—aka heaven—or he was dreaming.
“Lie down.” She shoved him back against the mattress and straddled his chest, bringing those glorious thighs so close he could smell her cinnamon-scented skin. “I’ve got a big problem.”
Yeah, he had a big problem too—nine inches of trouble growing stiffer by the second.
She dipped two fingers inside her bra and produced a tiny bottle of oil, then unscrewed the cap and poured its contents into her palm. She locked eyes with him while bringing her hands together and rose onto her knees, rubbing that oil all over her thighs. His erection went from standard wood to ball-clenching steel, and he lifted his hips in a desperate need for friction—anything to ease the pressure. But again and again, she teased him, moving just out of reach, until he feared the tension mounting between his legs might actually kill him.
Never breaking her seductive gaze, she bit her lip and moaned as she massaged herself, those long, glistening, red-polished fingers kneading deeper into her flesh with each stroke.
“See?” She pointed just below the lacy crotch of her panties to a patch of dry skin. “I keep missing a spot.” Sliding her fingers up and down the length of his chest, she begged, “I need your help.”
She didn’t have to ask twice, especially since this was a dream. His promise to Luke only extended to the physical realm. In the filthy recesses of Trey’s subconscious, he could ride her ten ways from Sunday. But when he tried curling his hands around her hips, they slipped off her oily skin and bounced against the mattress. He reached out more than a dozen times, never able to grasp her.
“What’s wrong?” She furrowed her brow. “Don’t you want to touch me?”
Yes! he tried to say through frozen lips, but apparently, he’d gone mute too.
As he failed to give Bobbi what she needed, she grew more impatient, finally sighing and moving off the bed. “Never mind. I’ll ask Colton to do it.” She padded out of the room while he silently screamed for her to stay. With a shrug, she called over her shoulder, “I’ll bet he knows how to use his hands.”
When Trey awoke, it was to the most painful morning wood he’d ever experienced, and at twenty-eight years old, he’d had more than his fair share of boners. Squinting against the sunlight, he glanced at the tent he’d created beneath the sheet. Hell, that was no ordinary tent—it was a friggin’ Ringling Brothers Big Top. You could fit a clown car under that dome.
The reason behind the blue-balling nightmare was obvious. Last night he and Luke had carried Bobbi upstairs and tucked her into bed. Poor thing had been scratching her nose and chugging sangria for hours and couldn’t even take off her own shoes, so he’d stayed behind to unfasten her sandals. All alone with the unconscious redhead, he’d stared at her long, tanned legs—especially those thighs—and felt a compulsion to touch her that’d had his fingers trembling like an alcoholic’s.
Of course he hadn’t laid a hand on Bobbi. Even if he’d had Luke’s blessing to roll her in the hay, he still wasn’t a pervert who molested women in their sleep.
But he’d looked. A lot.
The phone rang, and he decided to let the answering machine get it so he could take care of his raging hard-on. But when he heard, “Trey? It’s your mother. Pick up. I know you’re there,” he unhanded his johnson and swore loudly. He didn’t know a man alive who could spank the plank to the tune of his mother’s chiding.
Groaning, he rolled to the side and answered the phone. “Hey, Mom.” He cleared the huskiness from his throat. “It’s the butt crack of dawn. Somebody better be dead.”
She got right to the point. “Your father’s leaving me.”
“What do you mean?” He sat up, rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand. “Like for an assignment?” Dad had retired from the army ten years ago, but he still took the occasional contracting job.
“If by ‘assignment’ you mean spending time with his latest whore,” Mom said coolly, “then yes.”
Trey shook his head and fell back against his pillow. He had neither the time nor the inclination to get sucked into his parents’ bullshit today. For thirty years, his asshole father had messed around, and for thirty years, Mom had pretended not to care. He didn’t understand why she stayed with the old bastard—they had more money than God, and she’d get half of it if she left—but she’d always refused to call it quits.
“This is nothing new, Mom. He’s not leaving you.”
“He most certainly is, Trey Alexander Lewis.” By the smooth tone of Mom’s voice, you’d think she was discussing the latest sale at Nordstrom. He didn’t expect her to say, “He had me served with divorce papers last night, right in the middle of my Bunco game, in front of all my friends.”
He pushed to his elbows. “You’re serious?” After all the years Mom had spent holding the family together and putting up with Dad’s affairs, he was the one bailing? And to lower the boom in front of Mom’s dice-tossing, chardonnay-swilling friends was a lousy way to handle it, even for a jerk like the Colonel.
“Why would I joke about this? It was mortifying. The whole city’s talking about it.”
He doubted anyone in Chicago gave a rat’s ass about the Lewis divorce, but he held his tongue. For a woman like Mom, who calculated a person’s worth based on how close he lived to the Magnificent Mile, being publicly jilted probably seemed like a fate worse than death.
“I’ll try talking to him,” Trey said, “if you want him back.” Personally, he didn’t see the point of staying in an unhappy marriage, and he’d never witnessed a happy one. Well, except for June and Luke, but what they had was an anomaly. “Why not let him go, Mom? Start fresh.”
“Fresh?” Her voice was so cold he felt the frost from a thousand miles away. “I’m fifty-five! I gave all my fresh years to that bastard, your father, and by God, he should have to live with the stale ones now!”
“All right, all right. I’ll call him, but I can’t guarantee he’ll answer.”
And Luke wonders why I don’t do relationships. Marriage is an institution, all right. For lunatics.
“Oh, he’ll pick up. I told him your big news last week.”
In other words, Trey was forgiven, now that he’d finally agreed to a civilian contracting gig to clear his besmirched military record. Dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War, each generation of Lewis men, and even a couple of women, had served in the U.S. Army—until Trey had ruined the family legacy with his other-than-honorable discharge seven years ago. Dad had barely said a dozen words to him since.
“Try not to worry, Mom. No matter what, you’ve always got me.”
Apparently, that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She made a lame excuse about having to rush off to one of her social clubs and disconnected. Two hours later, Trey had the extreme misfortune of speaking with the Colonel. Both parents in one morning, never a good way to start the day.
“Mom’s upset.” Trey pressed his cell phone between his shoulder and ear while steering the Chevy onto the main road with one hand and fishing for his sunglasses with the other. “Says you’re divorcing her. What’s going on?”
“I’m divorcing her.” Dad took a pull from his cigarette, taking his sweet time before exhaling. “The rest’s none of your fucking business.”
“It’s my business when she calls me in hysterics.” To the outside observer, Mom’s display might’ve seemed controlled, but Trey knew any betrayal of emotion from her constituted a full-on meltdown. “After all the shit she’s put up with over the years, you owe her—”
“I don’t owe that woman a goddamn thing!” his dad barked, then muttered under his breath, “All the shit she’s put up with? You don’t know the half of it.”
“Listen,” Trey ground out through clenched teeth, “I don’t know what she sees in you, but she wants to stay married. Why not scrape together some of that honor you’re always talking about, and go back home?”
“Don’t lecture me, you pissant. You wouldn’t know honor if it bent you over and screwed you in the shower.” He spoke the next words in a rush. “I’ve got a chance to start over with someone else, and I’m taking it. Worry about your own business.”
The line disconnected.
Trey found his Oakleys and fisted them so tightly a plastic lens cracked.
“Ah, hell.” He threw them aside and pulled down the sun visor, focusing his attention on the road before he killed someone. He should’ve known better than to waste his breath on that cold son of a bitch. Not only had he broken his favorite pair of shades, but he had no idea what to tell his mom.
Glaring at the asphalt, he sneered and mockingly repeated his father’s words. “You wouldn’t know honor if it violated you in the shower.” To hear the old man talk, you’d think Trey had sold military secrets or poisoned his own men, when in truth, it’d been an honorable act that’d wound up getting him in trouble.
He and Luke had been stationed together in Germany, and Luke had married a local girl, Ada, who’d started cheating before the ink was dry on the marriage license. When Trey’d busted Ada with a captain from another unit, he’d done his best to get the jerk to back off, and it had ended in a public fistfight. The army’d given Trey the boot for striking a superior officer.
That didn’t make Trey a dishonorable guy, damn it, but try telling that to the rest of the world, who couldn’t see past the label on his discharge papers. Finding decent work was harder than winning the Nobel Prize when a guy had a mark on his record like that, which was exactly why he wanted it expunged. All he needed to do was complete two years of security detail in Dubai, and his OTH would be lessened to a general discharge. As much as he’d like to stay in Sultry Springs and run Luke’s nonprofit, Trey wanted something more—maybe his own contracting business—and businesses were built on reputation.
He’d get his good name back if it killed him.
***
By the time he pulled up to the Sultry County Community Center, a tension headache gripped his temples in a vise, his balls felt heavy as watermelons, and he was in an all-around shitty mood. But thanks to the clear weather, at least his leg didn’t hurt. Hanging Sheetrock was a lot easier when he wasn’t gimping around with his bones on fire. He pulled on his Cubs ball cap, grabbed his cooler, and used one boot to push open the Chevy door.
“Hey, boss.” Little Carlo Hernandez—otherwise known as Gopher—loped over to meet him, smiling from beneath shaggy, black hair that reached his jaw. Trey scanned the gangly boy, taking in the denim cutoffs that barely clung to his waist with a “belt” of discarded rope.
“I told you,” Trey said, pointing at Gopher’s knobby knees, “no shorts on the job site.”
Shrugging, the boy shoved his hands in his pockets. “I only got one pair of pants ’n’ they’re dirty.” His stomach growled loud enough for Trey to hear it five feet away. Jesus, did the kid’s parents ever feed him?
“Here.” Trey pulled out his wallet and handed Gopher a twenty. “Walk down to Richman’s and bring back a couple dozen donuts for the guys. And for Crissakes, order some biscuits and gravy for yourself. Can’t have you passing out on my watch.”
The kid snatched the cash and made a run for it, probably afraid Trey would change his mind.
Most of the Helping Hands volunteers were parolees from the halfway house or folks working community service hours for misdemeanors. At thirteen, Carlo was the youngest crew member Trey’d ever supervised. He’d been on the job three weeks, ever since the sheriff had busted him painting “Hammertime” on half the stop signs in Sultry Springs. Trey had to admit he had a soft spot for the kid. Anyone who looked that happy to come to work every morning didn’t have much to go home to.
Thinking of Carlo always made Trey wish he had the budget to rebuild the community center into something special, maybe a two-story fitness complex with basketball courts and a gym on the first level, so kids would have a place to burn off their energy. Instead, the simple, boxy structure reminded him of the junior high school and boasted only ten small rooms and a kitchen. Turns out aesthetics weren’t as important to the county as low energy bills and cheap maintenance, so he’d given the board exactly what they wanted.
At least it was sturdy. He nodded appreciatively at the brick and stonework. Most of his guys were real yahoos, but a few had an aptitude for masonry, and they’d done a nice job finishing the front wall yesterday after he’d left. Speaking of which, it was time to quit eyeballing the place and head inside.
He’d just crossed the lawn and set his cooler on the front stoop when a sheriff’s cruiser came hauling ass into the parking lot with lights flashing and sirens blazing. Its tires squealed louder than a Deliverance actor, spinning wildly and tainting the air with clouds of rubbery smoke until it skidded to a halt beside Trey’s Chevy.
Shit, what now?
Figuring the sheriff had come for one of the workers, Trey darted a glance around the property to see which of his crew members had the guiltiest look on his face. He noticed Sean Flannigan discreetly toss a bag of weed into the bushes, but nobody took off running or voluntarily dropped to the ground.
When the cruiser’s engine cut off and the driver exited the car, Trey released a quiet sigh of relief. It was only Colton, that crazy SOB. He should’ve known. No other county cop drove like a drunken, blindfolded primate.
The good deputy tipped his Stetson at him, grinning like he knew something Trey didn’t, then he ambled around to the passenger door and opened it, revealing a familiar pair of long legs. Damn. This day just kept getting better and better.
Placing one high-heeled foot on the pavement, Bobbi took Colton’s outstretched hand and stepped into full view, wearing another pair of black shorty-shorts and a white top that left very little to the imagination. All at once, a dozen guys dropped their jaws and sucked in their guts, gawking at Bobbi in a way Trey didn’t like one friggin’ bit.
“For the love of God.” Unbuttoning his shirt, Trey stormed over to Bobbi. “What the hell’re you wearing?” After slipping his arms out of his sleeves, he wrapped the shirt around her shoulders and tugged it closed like a straitjacket while she gasped in shock. His knuckles accidentally brushed the hardened tips of her nipples, and he clenched his eyes shut, willing away another boner. “Half these guys are parolees, and you’re waving a leg of lamb in front of a pack of starving dogs. What’re you even doing here?” With Colton, no less.
She swept her gaze over the crew before it landed on Trey’s bare chest and held there. Slowly, she pushed her arms into his shirtsleeves, never taking her eyes off him, and pure pride lifted the corners of Trey’s mouth, especially when Bobbi swallowed hard enough to make her throat bob. He shouldn’t care that she obviously found him attractive, but he did.
“Um.” She glanced over his shoulder toward the cement mixer. “I need to do a preliminary interview with you two, and Colton was nice enough to offer me a ride.”
Oh, he wants to give you a ride, all right. On his lap. “Well, how thoughtful of him.”
At the mention
of his name, Crazy Colt used one finger to lift a lock of Bobbi’s hair to his nose, and before Trey knew what he was doing, he’d reached forward and smacked his friend’s hand aside. Colton just chuckled in a way that said, Game on, buddy.
“Let’s get outta this heat.” Trey pointed to the front entrance, still doorless and draped in thick plastic. “Just watch out for nails. I’d hate for you to ruin that pedicure, Bo Peep.”
He led them to the kitchen, the only space that wasn’t littered with Sheetrock and sacks of plaster, and hopped up on the dusty Formica countertop. Colton took a seat on a parcel of Pergo boards, and Bobbi hovered in the doorway, hugging herself and frowning at the scraps of wood and debris on the tile floor. Knowing her, she probably wanted to sort the mess according to size and color.
“Okay.” She pulled a tiny notebook and pen from her back pocket. “Since the documentary’s about the rural dating scene, I want to get a feel for your types and a little information about your romantic history.” She nodded at Colton, poised to take notes. “How about you? What do you want in a woman?”
He winked at her and drawled, “My schlong.”
Trey stifled a laugh while Bobbi’s fist tightened around her pen. “I’m serious.”
“All right, honey. Give me a minute to think.” A few seconds later, he shrugged one shoulder. “Someone who puts the toilet seat back up when she’s done?”
“And who knows when to leave,” Trey added. “I hate it when they wanna spend the night.”
“Amen to that, brother.”
“Oh, come on.” Bobbi slammed her notebook on the counter, then shifted her weight to one hip and folded her arms. Trey’s shirtsleeves covered her hands, making her look like a kid in oversized pajamas. “Don’t tell me you’re both Peter Pans.”
Trey shook his head. “I got nothing against growing up. I just don’t believe in relationships—gave it a go twice, and it sucked both times. Monogamy’s not natural.”
