by Hadley Quinn
“I sure as fuck hope that you’re not over here because of my last name,” Jay told the girl in a low voice. “Because that would be really bad fucking karma on your part, princess.”
She narrowed her eyes resentfully as Beck and Kyle led him toward the exit, but all she did was stand there glaring without a response.
But as promised, Jay thought about the blonde from earlier as he left the club. That was all he promised her, after all. Just to remember her.
He always kept his promises.
***
Melanie jolted awake and stared at the ceiling for a moment. What in the world had woken her up? Then she heard the front door slam shut, and then the bird kept spouting off the f-word over and over.
Jay must be home, she groaned to herself. The parrot only rambled that word on and on when Jay was around.
“Shut the fuck up,” she heard him say, and then there was a loud crash.
She jumped out of bed and hurried down the dark hallway. There was enough moonlight in the front room to see Jay on the floor next to the overturned coffee table.
“Did I miss the couch?” he mumbled.
“Oh my God,” Melanie sighed. She turned the coffee table upright and stacked the magazines back onto it. “Are you okay?”
“Uh huh,” his muffled reply came through the carpet. His face was right down in it and Melanie turned him on his side.
“Jay, get on the couch, okay? I can’t leave you here and you’re too heavy to pick up.”
“Ahh, shit,” he groaned. But he pulled himself to his knees, and then slowly used the couch to stand up. “I should get some water…” he began to say, but he started to sway a little bit.
Melanie grabbed him before he fell toward the coffee table again, and even though she tried to veer him onto the couch, he leaned his head downward onto her shoulder.
“The room is spinning,” he said.
“Well, yeah, that’s kind of what happens when you get shitfaced, Jay.”
He chuckled a little bit, and if his laugh hadn’t sounded so funny, she might have gotten mad at him. But she could also smell cheap perfume all over him and she wanted to gag.
“Are you spinning too?” he slurred. “Are we spinning? We’re spinning together,” he sighed, and she could hear the smile on his lips.
“You are so wasted,” she scoffed with a laugh. “And you stink like whore. Sit on the damn couch and I’ll get you some water.”
He dropped onto it when Melanie aimed his ass the right direction. She thought he’d end up just passing out again, but instead, he took his damn shirt off. Classic Jay. He always took his shirt off at home, drunk or sober. She couldn’t blame him, though. If she had a sexy body that looked like that, she’d be half-naked all the time too. Before her sister married Teague, and before they’d even moved in with him, it was a little overwhelming to see both Teague and Jay in the same house shirtless. It was every girl’s freaking dream. But even now, seeing Jay without a shirt on was still one of her favorite things in the world.
She returned from the kitchen with a bottle of Gatorade. Jay was stretched back against the couch with his eyes closed, but his hands were against his chest, lightly rubbing his pecs for some reason.
“Feeling yourself up?” Melanie joked. “I would have thought you already had that taken care of for the night.”
He opened his eyes to look at her. Even in the dim light she could tell how glassed over they were. From the confused expression on his face, she thought he might not have heard what she said. All he did was sigh instead of banter back with a smartass retort.
She sat down on the couch and handed him the opened drink. She watched him curiously as he took it from her, along with the aspirin on her palm.
“Do you want me to help you to your room?” she asked when he handed back the half-empty bottle of Gatorade.
He slowly shook his head no as he laid his head back against the couch. “This is fine.”
“Okay.”
She moved to get up but his hand softly wrapped around her wrist. “Thanks, Mellie,” he whispered. “For…this.”
His eyes were still closed and he didn’t say anything further, so she glanced down his muscular chest and across his shoulders. She had never been this close to him while his shirt was off, and she took a moment to study his tattoos a little better.
Yeah, she could admit that Jay was hot. She had even told him so before but also added that his ego was a total turnoff. But physically Jay was one of those men that could walk into a room and make the women wet their panties just because he had an overwhelming presence. Guys didn’t want to mess with him, and girls wanted to do whatever he asked.
In a way it was disgusting, but Melanie had decided since meeting Jay that she had absolutely been the female version of him.
Five months ago, at least…
Chapter Two
“Holy fucking hell,” Jay groaned, turning over onto his back.
But gravity seemed to screw him over and he dropped a couple of feet with a thud, face-planting into the carpet. He jolted upward onto his elbows to assess his surroundings, and released a breath of air.
“Thank God,” he mumbled, realizing he was in Teague’s living room.
He pulled his knees under him to work his way to a standing position, but a blanket was tangled around him. Once he freed himself, he chucked it onto the recliner and stood, but the room started to spin. He dropped to the couch and put his head in his hands, just as the front door opened behind him.
“Rawk! Bye-bye!” the parrot screeched.
“It’s hello,” Melanie’s voice corrected him patiently as she entered the house. “Say hello, Geraldo. Hello?”
“Rawk! Bye-bye!”
She sighed as she walked past the living room, but stopped to stare at Jay when he craned his head her direction.
“Wow, I thought I scored big time when I chose not to resuscitate you last night,” Melanie stated dryly.
He rolled his eyes even though pain shot from every corner of his eye sockets. But he couldn’t help the little smile at the corner of his mouth, either. “Good one, baby doll. You’re getting better at this bitchy mom thing. You’ll be ready to put a dozen kids in their place in no time.”
“Pssh, I’m done after one,” she replied as she headed for the kitchen. He watched her little five-month baby bump disappear around the corner.
Jay listened to the thumping in his head for a few beats before he heard Melanie open the fridge. Then came the obvious sounds of pans being pulled out from under the stove, and hell if he didn’t think she was being loud on purpose. He rubbed his temples and tried to be tolerant of the noise, but it was too much.
Finally the kitchen was quieter, but he was up and heading for the hallway in search of a shower. He was already shirtless, so he stripped the rest of himself as he shut the bathroom door. While he stood under the hot water, he tried to rub the cloudy thoughts out of his head. He remembered everything up until the moment he walked through the front door and then…nothing.
He heard the bathroom door open and Melanie said, “I’m just bringing in towels from the dryer so don’t get in a tizzy.”
“I already know you’re memorizing my cock-silhouette through the curtain.”
“Right. Like I’ve never seen a dick before.”
“You’ve never seen my dick,” he smirked.
“And I never will, so keep your tallywacker behind the curtain.”
“Oh my God,” he laughed, thoroughly amused. “You would actually call this monstrous thing a tallywacker?” he asked, yanking the curtain wide open.
“Jay!” she shrieked, but he couldn’t believe that she actually had her eyes squeezed shut as she faced the towel shelf. “Shut the curtain, you man child!”
He could only laugh as she felt for the shelf and placed a stack of four towels onto it. Even when she turned she faced away from him, and then she was out the door before he could respond.
Still laughing, h
e shook his head. Melanie Jacobs was not exactly a prude. He knew that from the first night he met her. She had about four guys eating out of the palm of her hand and she loved every second of it. Sometimes he wondered how the night might’ve ended if his first words to her hadn’t been, “I’m off limits, sweetheart, so get over it quick.”
“Total dick move,” he murmured to himself. But he didn’t exactly regret it. Teague had warned him to steer clear, and because he respected his cousin’s wishes, he didn’t think twice about it. And it was a good thing, too. It wasn’t even three weeks later that she showed up pregnant with some fucker’s baby.
He didn’t need that drama in his life.
He finished up his shower and shut the water off. These last few months had been a damn rollercoaster. He still couldn’t believe Teague was married, and even worse, now Jay had to share his bathroom with a peppy cheerleader.
He glared at the makeup and shit that was scattered all over the counter as he stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. He actually kept his toothbrush in his bedroom. He was not only afraid of what she might do to it if she were feeling facetious enough, but he really didn’t want any of her girly crap somehow transferring onto his stuff. The last thing he wanted was to brush his teeth with a mouthful of hairspray or something.
“Jay?” Melanie’s voice asked from the hall, just as he wrapped himself in a nice warm towel.
“Oh God, that feels good,” he murmured to himself, but obviously not quietly enough.
“Ew! What the hell?”
“I’m talking about the towel!” he retorted through the door.
“You’d better be! Do that shit when I’m gone. Jeez. Do you know what happened to the strawberries that were by the sink?”
He cringed to himself. “Um, I ate them?”
Pause. “Are you asking yourself if you did?”
“No,” he smiled. “I ate them. Sorry.”
“The whole container?”
“Yes?”
He heard her sigh. “Okay.” And then she was gone when he opened the bathroom door.
While he trekked the four steps to his bedroom, he made a mental note to pick up more strawberries.
“Holy shit,” he grimaced, squeezing his head between his hands. He moved his guitar from the edge of the bed and sat down. What was supposed to be a fun night out for Kyle’s birthday had turned into another game of bury-the-guilt. But then the waitress reminded him exactly why he couldn’t trust the opposite sex with more than just an impersonal fling.
Growing up with the McCallan name wasn’t a blessing in his case, but even though his father pretty much got dropkicked from the scene, Jay still got thrown into the Hollywood playboy heap now and then. He was still Neil McCallan’s grandson, and although his notoriety wasn’t near the level of his Uncle Craig or his cousin Max—or Teague’s, even—Jay still chose to keep a low profile. He’d witnessed enough shit in his life to know better, and he learned from a young age that the vultures liked to stalk their prey alive.
He threw some clothes on and headed down the hall. The smell of food caught his attention and he wondered what made Melanie decide to cook. She rarely ever made anything that required time or the use of appliances, unless she was baking desserts with Camryn.
“Hey, you wanna eat?” she hollered when he passed the kitchen.
Jay slowed and angled her direction. He spanned his arms to brace himself in the wide entry and smiled suspiciously. “I’m not in the mood to be poisoned today, babe. I got shit to do.”
“I’ll poison you when you’re least expecting it, but for now, will you try this? I can’t tell if it’s good or totally awful. I mean I think it’s good, but lately I’ve been craving some crazy stuff. Maybe my taste buds are way out of whack with these pregnancy hormones.”
He looked over the plate she held in front of him and lifted an eyebrow. It was a perfectly constructed omelette, and it at least looked edible. And he was starving. With a raging headache and a growling stomach, he was already irritable as fuck.
She made him take the plate and then handed him a fork. “If you don’t like it, just say so, but can you at least try a bite?”
He set the plate at the breakfast bar and sat down. Even if it tasted like shit he would eat it because of how hungry he was, but really, how could you go wrong with a simple egg dish?
She was waiting eagerly for him to take a bite, so he did. For a brief moment, as the taste began to coat his tongue, he thought she was going to burst out laughing at the joke. It was disgusting, but he could actually tell she was hopeful that he’d like it.
“Well?” she asked, her hands clasped together. “Is it okay? It’s a spinach tofu omelette.”
Tofu? Jesus Christ, he groaned to himself. He looked at the creation again as he forced the food down his throat. “Um, it’s…okay,” he shrugged.
“Just okay?” she frowned. “So I really can’t taste things correctly?”
That made him smile, but he really didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “I’m just not used to tofu. And of course it doesn’t taste like anything because, well, it’s tofu. And I usually put Tabasco sauce on an omelette—”
“Oh, right!” she exclaimed, and she produced a bottle of it from near the stove. “I was about to put some on it but then you came out. So…it’s really awful, huh? What would make it better?”
He took another bite of it because hell, he was starving. And Mel was sweet when she wanted to be. He wasn’t up for making fun of her this time.
Besides, he ate her damn strawberries.
“Maybe some other stuff in it,” he answered. “Mushrooms, peppers, cheese… I don’t know, real meat?”
She flashed him a beautiful smile but rolled her eyes. “The point was to be meat and dairy free.”
He shoved another bite into his mouth after shaking Tabasco sauce all over it. “Don’t tell me you’re getting into all that hype.”
“What hype?”
“Vegetarian, vegan, whatever the hell it is.”
She poured a glass of juice and set it in front of him. “No, I was just trying to make it plain.”
“Um, yep, you succeeded.”
“Glad I actually achieved what I set out to do for once,” she replied lightly.
Jay didn’t know how to respond to that. When she wasn’t at his throat, most of Melanie’s personality these days tended to be laced with self-doubt. Lately she’d been making subtle comments about her life, her lack of direction, and oftentimes her immaturity and/or contribution to the world around her.
At least one of them was able to admit it.
But seriously, it was true that she’d changed a bit within the four months he’d known her. She was still happy-go-lucky, sweet and flirtatious, and sometimes just feisty like her older sister. But little by little Melanie seemed to have taken on a different opinion of herself and it was making her pensive more often.
Jay downed the glass of juice and stood. He took his dishes to the sink and rinsed them, and to avoid any kind of serious conversation with her, he offered a big smile, kissed the top of her head on his way by and said, “You can achieve anything you want to, honey.”
***
“That is fucking gorgeous,” Beck almost whispered, taking another walk around the hood of the car. Jay watched his buddy drink in the bare ’68 Chevelle SS and knew Beck so well he already knew what he was going to add. “Or at least…it will be,” he grinned.
“So you want in?”
“Fuck yeah,” Beck chuckled. “But are you sure, man? You could flip this easy for yourself.”
Jay took a step toward the sorry sight of a car and placed his hand on the roof as he peered inside of it again. He’d been stalking this car for three weeks now and came up with a half-dozen mental scenarios that he didn’t know what to do with. He had four thousand in cash to buy it—at least if the owner was willing to settle on his offer—but he needed another thousand just in case he didn’t. That’s what he needed Beck for,
and he’d pay him for it—with interest—after he re-sold the car.
“Yeah, I know,” he finally sighed. “But with me moving out of Teague’s house tomorrow, the money down on the new place will do me in.”
“Teague and his lady want more privacy, huh?” Beck winked.
Jay barely smiled. “Nah, they’re not kicking me out.
“What about Mel? She a pain in the ass?”
“Melanie’s staying. She doesn’t really have a choice. And no, she’s all right, I just…think I need to go with the changing tides, you know? Teague’s married now, he’s happy as fuck, and me? … Well, I’m just trying to live a day at a time.”
“It’s all any of us can do.”
Jay only nodded like he agreed, just as the homeowner stepped out of his house and joined them in the driveway.
“You Jay?” the guy asked Beck.
“I’m Beckett, that’s Jay,” he jutted a thumb to the side.
“Chris,” the guy said, extending his hand.
“Nice to meet you,” Jay nodded as he shook it. “So you need to get rid of this thing, huh? You’re asking seven grand. That’s a little steep, man.”
“It’s gonna be a badass car once it’s in the right hands. I don’t have the time for it right now. Got a new baby and my other kid is a tyrant. I just want to get what it’s worth before I fucking kill myself from my wife giving me shit about it all the time.”
Jay pressed his lips together as he walked to the front of the Chevelle. “I wouldn’t even pay more than four just by looking at the exterior. If the engine condition impresses me, I’ll be shocked. Can you pop the hood?”
Without a word, Chris obliged, but Jay could read the expression on the guy’s face easily. It was expected, but Jay knew exactly what this car was going to need and financial calculations were already rolling through his head.
Beck joined Jay when the hood lifted, and let out a low groan at the condition. “Hell…”
