Guided Love (Prick #1)

by Tracie Redmond

  Oh, God. I was rambling and Lucas was smiling at me. The crooked one that always made me want to kneel down at his feet and thank the good Lord for creating such a beautiful creature.

  "Sorry," I said weakly, and tugged on the end of a lock of hair, something I did when I got nervous. If I was around him too much, I would end up bald one day.

  He chuckled and winked at me, "It's good to have you back, Ash."

  The wink.

  The famous wink that caused me to never have any girlfriends, they were all extremely jealous of me because he only ever winked at me. I always thought it was because he knew I was the only one that could handle the force of that sexy tease and unleashing it on the other girls of the world would lead to the dwindling of mankind because women wouldn't ever settle for anything less than Lucas. Of course, he would probably take it upon himself to replenish the earth with inhabitants and have a great time doing it.

  Another reason why I was nowhere on his radar.

  He was experienced.

  I was not. Not even a little bit.

  "Are you okay?" His voice was deep and smooth, so incredibly sexy and it washed over me and snapped me back to the reality I couldn't seem to stay in for longer than a few seconds.

  "Huh?"

  "You seem a little distracted. I was asking you if your dad was still in or if he left for the station already."

  "Oh! No, he is still here. Come on in."

  I opened the door a little wider and stepped to the side, making a space big enough for him to move his gorgeous frame inside, but small enough that he had to come a little closer so I could smell the familiar scent that always seemed to radiate off of him. I was good at this little move after years of practice. No one had a clue what I was really doing.

  And there it was.

  A spicy, masculine scent that made me dizzy and brought back memories that wouldn't help me with my lack of attention at all.

  He cleared his throat when I stood there longer than what was considered normal with the door still open and my eyes grazing his entire body. He was tall, standing at about 6'3", a little bit wider in the shoulders than before, a lot more muscular, and it was glorious.

  I finally shook my head clear and shut the door with a soft click.

  "I don't mean to pry," he said cautiously, "but why are you back?"

  Pry? He could pry me all he wanted. I wouldn't complain.

  I stifled a girlish giggle that bubbled up from my thoughts. "Oh, um, had a little mishap back in Ohio."

  "A mishap," he repeated and his brow furrowed in confusion.

  Growing up the way I did, I learned to be smart, and not just smart in school or with numbers, but street smart. I was always careful, always weighed my options before making a decision, and rarely made mistakes. Guess I shouldn't be too surprised that he would be confused.

  "Yeah, I guess the guy I was dating thought I had more money than I actually let on, but instead of leaving me a few bucks to keep on living, decided it was more frugal of him to just take it all."

  I had been staring at his chest while I rambled and noticed his muscles tense a little more with each word that left my mouth.

  Good.

  At least the people that mattered to me were upset by what happened. The so called friends I had back in Ohio told me it was my fault and laughed about it. Another reason I didn't belong there anymore.

  "How the hell did that happen?" Lucas asked, his voice now strained with the first signs of anger. I wasn't sure what to expect from him since he always reacted the way my brothers always did. He grew up protecting me the same way, at least, when they were around he did. My brothers had been close to coming to Ohio to drag me away, but only after torturing the man who cheated me. Dad talked them down, barely.

  "I trusted him? That's the only thing I can come up with. He took my cards out of my purse when I wasn't in the room and when I got back from work the next day, I found my apartment empty. He sold all my stuff, too."

  Now, I know how this sounds. Extreme. What kind of a person does that to the woman he has been dating for five months and how does she not see any sign of foul play beforehand?

  A desperate kind of person does that and the woman who doesn't see it coming, well she was just being ignorant. Apparently, his real girlfriend was pregnant back in Virginia and he was just killing time before the baby came, screwing over anyone who was stupid enough to trust him.

  One day later and he would have left with a lot more than my Visa. I thought I had been ready to give up the other V-card currently still in my life.

  Yes, I am a twenty eight year old virgin.

  Unheard of nowadays, right?

  Well, I guess my brothers did something good for me. They taught me to keep my legs closed until I was absolutely one hundred percent ready to give that part of me to someone. The trail of broken hearts they left behind reinforced my resolve every day. I had no intention of ending up like one of those girls.

  Lucas looked like he was ready to tear someone apart while I just kept rambling.

  "The funny thing is that all but one of my cards was already closed. All he got was my bank card, so he got a little over fifteen hundred bucks after five months of paying for dates that were really just a waste of his time," I laughed. Really, it was funny if you thought about it.

  Why put all that time in for someone who you weren't absolutely sure was rich? Just because I dressed nice and had a nice apartment didn't mean anything. Dad helped me out with that stuff. I made just enough to feed myself every month and pay my bills.

  "There is nothing funny about it, Ash. Who the hell is this guy?" he bit out, his bright blue eyes flashing with fire.

  "I already took care of it, Lucas," my dad said from the kitchen doorway. His tall frame and broad shoulders filled the space he stood in. He was what my idea of a fairytale hero looked like. Strong and confident. No one could mess with my dad and get away with it. "Wish I could have beat the tar out of him myself, but not much I can do from across the country."

  He stepped over to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek before patting Lucas on the back.

  "True," Lucas said, but he was still frowning.

  "You ready for the meeting today?" Dad asked him, changing the subject for good. He knew I didn't really want a lot of people to know what happened, but around Lucas, I lost my head and always said too much.

  His grin finally appeared and his eyes flickered with excitement for a brief moment. "Always."

  Oh yeah, Lucas is a cop, too. A detective, working for my dad.

  Yet another reason why nothing could ever happen between us if he was ever interested.

  God, I wish he was interested. He was dressed in dark jeans that hung from his hips just right and a white dress shirt that looked like it was made for him and was opened at the collar. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows showing off his tanned muscular forearms. Arms I would kill to have around me. His tie was loose at the collar, like he was waiting to cinch it up the minute he got to work. It was the same blue as his eyes, like the sky on a cloudless summer day. Holy crap I was getting poetic already. I really tried to stop my eyes from wandering, but they did their own thing and like always, I didn't punish myself. He was just too handsome from his tuggable dark hair, his sharp jaw, full lips, and dimples that were hidden at the moment but I knew popped out when he really smiled. He rarely smiled like that, but the few times I caught it were singed into my memory.

  Like seeing the original Mona Lisa for the very first time.

  "So, what can I do for you, son?" Dad asked and wrapped his arm around my shoulders.

  He was really happy that I was back home again. Even though the situation made him furious and he felt bad that it happened to me when I had been attempting to be independent. He liked having me around and I loved being around, I just always wanted my own life away from the suffocation of everyone steering clear of the captain's daughter.

  Oxymoron type phrase? Yes. But it was suffocation. The l
oneliness had been stifling.

  My thoughts must have been given away by the look on my face because Lucas was watching me intently now and his brow was back to being furrowed, but his expression went back to neutral a split second later.

  "I was just hoping to speak to you about the Banetti case before we got to the station, sir. I wanted to make sure I was fully updated on anything I might have missed over the weekend."

  That was my cue to leave.

  I needed some space anyway before I ended up sprawled out on the floor. I felt like such a pathetic mess. I had dealt with this for years. Years! I should be able to control the emotions that coursed through me whenever he was around. It had been seven years for hell's sake, I should be over it.

  "I'll be upstairs unpacking if anyone needs me. If not, then have a good day." I kissed Dad on the cheek and he smiled sweetly at me which in return, got him another kiss. He was such a good guy. A man everyone in the family and those outside of the family who were close friends, looked up to.

  I turned to Lucas and he smirked. "Do I get one of those, too?"

  I felt my face burn with a blush, but I didn't look away from those perfect blue eyes. I'm a woman now. Yes, I had a crush on him for most of my life and yes, I was mortified that he had been told how big of a crush by my brothers, but I wasn't going to let that turn me back into the little girl I had been on my birthday so long ago. The little girl that he wouldn't dare to care about more than he would care for a sister.

  So what did I do?

  I shakily stepped forward until we were toe to toe and my hands lifted to his shoulders because he was tall enough that I would need the support to reach his face. My efforts were rewarded when I saw his eyes widen in surprise. He never expected me to take risks.

  Good.

  A little surprise would be good for him. Show him that I had grown up and I was strong.

  I raised to my tip toes and turned my face up to him until my lips touched his cheek. I made it quick because I had been holding my breath since I made the decision to do this and I was starting to feel lightheaded. Plus, the warmth that spread through me from the touch and the smell of him was heady.

  I stepped back and did my best to smile elegantly. His eyes were still wide, but he was grinning now and if I wasn't mistaken, a little pink around the cheeks.

  "It's good to see you, Aislinn," he breathed.

  "It's good to see you, too, Lucas," I replied and successfully kept the quiver out of my voice.

  My lips were burning from the short second they had been on his skin and they wanted more. I turned away and climbed the stairs without looking back, feeling his gaze on me and smiling to myself.

  I heard a soft smack when I reached the top and was out of sight. Dad must have smacked him because when I peeked around the wall, Lucas was rubbing the back of his head.

  "Eyes, Lucas."

  He cleared his throat, "Yes, sir."

  Then they disappeared through the kitchen door.

  As I made my way to the bedroom I had grown up in, that Dad hadn't felt the need to change at all, I thought of the only thing that my brothers didn't know about Lucas. The thing only I knew and would never share because I was selfish like that and wanted it all to myself.

  My birthday may have been an awful reminder of the day my mother died of cancer, but it was also the day that Lucas gave me a gift that made the memories of her brighter.

  On my eighteenth birthday, one year after she passed, he had given me a locket with her picture inside. She was a beautiful woman and Dad always said I looked just like her with my long brown hair, grey eyes, and genuine smile. It was my favorite picture of her and it may have been nothing, but I always hoped his gift meant he felt something more for me than just brotherly love. The next three birthdays, he made me my favorite S'more cupcakes, the ones Mom discovered when she was pregnant with me and always baked for me on my birthday. Lucas would come over early in the morning, before my brothers woke up and would light the lone candle he had sunk into the cupcake and tell me to make a wish.

  He said he did it because he knew how to bake and my brothers and dad didn't, so he was just trying to save me from getting sick on my birthday. He would never know how much it actually meant to me.

  After the incident on my twenty first birthday, I thought it was over. No more S'more cupcakes, no more wishes.

  When I arrived back at my Ohio apartment after a long day of work the next year on my twenty second birthday, there was a package waiting for me at the door.

  A cupcake with a candle and a note that said 'Make a wish'.

  Every year for the past seven years, the package was there. It was the only brightness I ever really got on that day.

  And why wouldn't it be? After all, the name Lucas means 'light'.

  Okay, so my parents obsession with name meanings had rubbed off on me a little. So what?

  When I came back to Oakland, I didn't think I would run into him right away. I hoped I would be able to find a place of my own and be doing my own thing first, but life has a way of surprising people.

  I started unpacking and hanging my clothes in the tiny closet that still held the pink and purple hangers Mom insisted I have. After Conall and Fergus, her only little girl was going to be thrown into a world of fairytales and unicorns. Unfortunately for her, I never really liked unicorns, and fairytales always bummed me out because they could never really happen.

  Now, at twenty eight years old, I read romance novels and went into a short period of depression afterwards because there were no circumstances in my life that I needed a hero to rescue me from and end up falling in love with me and having a happily ever after with. Granted, I didn't want to experience any situation where the people I loved or even myself were in danger, but a little excitement now and then never killed anyone. Right?

  After hanging the last of my clothes I started to organize my shoes and it made me smile. If Mom did one thing right, it was showing me how important shoes are. I had a lot of them, but never had the opportunity to wear most of them. They went into my just in case pile.

  I knelt on the floor of my closet and rummaged through the mess, frowning at the heels I would probably never get to use and humming to myself and trying not to think about the man sitting in the kitchen downstairs. I stared straight ahead and took a deep breath and let it out, feeling my nerves go back to a less frenzied state. I noticed the tiny button that blended into the back wall, one you would never see unless you knew it was there.

  Mom may have tried to get me into princesses and rainbows, but Dad got me into adventure and mystery. He spent a whole weekend building me a tiny space behind my closet that I could hold my most prized possessions or crawl into so I had the best hiding spot in the house that my brothers never knew about.

  Hide and seek with me was a bitch.

  Dad told me it was just for fun, but the dim light in his eyes told me there was more to it. The man had seen things I hoped to never see. He wanted his little girl safe if it ever came down to it because being in law enforcement didn't mean you were never in danger.

  I pressed the small button and a portion of the wall popped out and swung open. It was big enough that I could still fit through it and the space behind it was as tall as the closet itself so I could stand and move around a little bit. There were a couple shoe boxes off to the side that I didn't dare open. I knew one of them held pictures of Mom and me and ticket stubs and post cards from all the different events she took me to, just me and her. The other held three items, all of which were precious to me but forced too many irrational emotions to surface.

  The locket from Lucas, Mom's wedding rings, and the only wedding picture of her and my dad that they hadn't lost in the years they had been married.

  I used to wear the locket all the time, but the night my brothers decided to mortify me beyond repair and Lucas decided to laugh it up with them, I put it in this box and walked away. Maybe if I kept his gift away from my heart, my heart would slowly let
him go.

  I sighed and shut the secret door that only three people in the entire world knew about. Me, Dad, and of course, Lucas. I mean how could I not let him know about it? He had convinced me to reveal my hiding spot long ago when playing with my brothers. He never told anyone about it, though, and whenever he was the one looking around, he never came to find me.

  Another reason why the pieces of my heart belonged to him.

  "Let him go? Yeah, right. You are doing a great job so far, Ash," I snipped to myself.

  "Great job of what, my beauty?"

  I startled and fell back onto the huge pile of shoes while clutching at the clothes I had just hung, ripping them off the hangers. Dad had always been the master of stealth and grace. Me? Not so much. I still smiled at the familiar nickname in my moment of pure terror, though.

  Dad stood in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest and a huge grin on his face. Of all the people who knew about my infatuation with Lucas, Dad was the only one who was aware of how deeply I had actually fallen for him. He was the one I went crying to that night after all. He was the one who told me that things would work out for the best in the end and that no matter what happens in my life, I should follow my gut.

  At the time, my gut was telling me to run away. He helped me run.

  Got me into a nice apartment and helped me contact the people I needed to transfer my college credits and get set up to attend school in Ohio.

  Why Ohio?

  It's where my mother, Isabelle, grew up. It was the only place he was going to allow me to go. Isabelle means 'devoted to God', so you can imagine why he thought Ohio would be perfect. I was going to be close to my mother's parents who agreed to look out for me and who were also extremely religious. Unfortunately for Dad, they were already really old and both of them passed away within the first three years of me being there.

  However, he still trusted me and he still knew that I needed this time on my own no matter the fierce protectiveness he felt for me. That's why Dad was my real hero. Regardless of what he actually wanted to do, he knew what he needed to do when it came down to it.

  Let me live a life on my own.