Bachelor's Secret

by Emily Bishop

  “Where’s he from?”

  “Houston,” I answered, realizing that we were quickly reaching the limit on what I knew about Shane.

  “Houston,” my dad repeated, staring out of the kitchen window contemplatively. I knew that his mind had gone straight to the memories of what had happened the last time he had been to that particular city. They weren’t pleasant memories.

  It was time to come clean about the date. Maybe that would distract my dad from going down memory lane. “We’re going out tonight.”

  “You are?” His eyes came to rest on mine. “Where is he taking you?”

  “I’m not sure, he just told me dress comfortably and wear flat shoes,” I admitted.

  “At least it sounds like your date will be more adventurous than dinner and a movie,” he said. “Right up your alley.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What does he do for a living?” my dad asked.

  I sighed, hating that I didn’t actually know. “He runs his family’s business.”

  “Yeah? What line is that in?”

  “I don’t actually know. But that’s the point of the date, to get to know each other better. All that I know is that his name is Shane Perkins, and we have some of the same hobbies. Drew put him up to asking me out.”

  My dad’s face fell, and he blanched.

  “Perkins?” he stammered.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Butch Perkins’ boy’s name was Shane.”

  My heart started slamming into my chest, and my stomach rolled. Butch Perkins was the man who ran my dad out of business when I was a child.

  My dad had always been a very hardworking man who had poured all his heart and soul into his oilfield service company. It used to run tools out of Conroe, where I was born and my mom was buried. His company had worked almost exclusively for the rigs that Perkins Enterprises owned.

  One day, just after my sixth birthday, Butch Perkins decided to go with a different service company out of the blue, without even informing my dad. There had been no warning, and no time to brace himself for the hit.

  My dad tried to save the company, but a year later it went bankrupt, pushing us to move back to my dad’s hometown of Mystic.

  Butch Perkins was the reason we had lost everything. Saying his name in my house was like cursing. Shane couldn't possibly be his son, could he?

  “Maybe it’s a different Shane Perkins,” I blurted out. I mean, sure, the guy had irritated the heck out of me a few times, but he wasn’t evil. Butch Perkins was pure evil.

  “Maybe, but a Shane Perkins from Houston who runs his family business? I’d put money on it that the family business he runs is Perkins Enterprises.” My dad’s voice was lower than usual.

  “I have to cancel our date,” I murmured, not knowing what to think about the latest development.

  “Whether you go or not is up to you, sweetie,” he said.

  My dad had been bitter and angry for a long time after everything had been taken from him, but since his retirement a couple of years ago, he’d been trying to let go of all the negative emotion he had been hanging on to.

  He’d started what he called his “journey of forgiveness,” but I doubted very much that he’d reached the point where he was ready to forgive any of the Perkins family.

  I was floored, unable to believe that the guy who made the air between us crackle with electricity every time that I was around him could be the son of the man who had caused my dad so much pain.

  “I’m going to go for a walk, then I’m going home. I need to process all of this.”

  Later that night, Shane showed up on my doorstep five minutes early. Despite my conversation with my father earlier, a combination of curiosity and lust propelled me to my door.

  When I opened it, his eyes roved over my body. His pupils dilated, and he sucked in a quiet breath. He was dressed casually, wearing a V-neck shirt that matched the color of his eyes, and jeans that hung low on his hips. My breath caught, and my heart fluttered in my chest.

  Feeling like a traitor, I smiled shyly. “Hi.”

  A slow grin spread on his lips, his eyes running over my body. “Hey.”

  I suddenly felt hot everywhere under his intense scrutiny. I wanted to drag him into the house and take him right there in my entrance hall. I wanted to explore every one of the hard ridges of his body and trace every muscle.

  But I didn’t do any of that. He didn’t make a move toward me either. We just stood there, shamelessly giving each other a long once over.

  “You ready to go?” he asked, once his eyes had traveled up the length of my body to settle on mine.

  “Yeah, is this outfit okay for whatever you had in mind?” I asked, my voice bordering on breathy.

  Damn it. I had to get myself under control.

  Shane smirked. He definitely knew what was going on in my head. Though I was still sure that it was the same thing that was going on in his when he answered.

  “Perfect. It’s perfect. You look gorgeous.”

  I didn’t. I looked the same as I did every day but the way he had looked at me like he wanted to devour me made me feel like I did look gorgeous. Sexy, even. We had to get away from my place before I gave in to my body’s demands. My bedroom was far too close, and I still didn’t know who he really was.

  “Great,” I said. “Let’s go, then.”

  I had thought that it was going to be hard to go through with the date but it wasn’t. We were quiet on the way to his truck but it was a comfortable silence. I was shocked at myself for not being angry with him or irritated with him for not telling me who he was. But I just wasn’t.

  Shane opened the door for me and waited until I was comfortably seated before crossing the front of the truck quickly and settling in the driver’s seat. As soon as he shut the door behind him, it was like all the air in the cab rushed out. There was only him. Only me. Only the intense need for one another that was flowing between us in the confined space of the truck.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, trying to ignore the pull that I felt toward him.

  “Fields of Fire,” he said, referencing an outdoor adventure park nearby. “Have you been?”

  “Not for a long time.” Excitement bloomed in my chest. I loved that park. I had been meaning to go at night but I hadn’t been able to convince anyone to go with me. “And I’ve never been at night.”

  “That makes two of us.” He glanced at me quickly, grinning when he caught my eye. “You’re not disappointed that we’re not just going to dinner like normal people do on first dates? The climb takes three hours. No ducking out halfway through with some bullshit excuse.”

  I laughed. “I could always just climb faster than you. No bullshit excuse required.”

  “Well, I guess that makes it easier then. You don’t need to pick up a friend or family member who has suddenly developed a dire medical condition?” He smirked. “So, if you’re feeling so adventurous, might I suggest the blue course?"

  “Why not the black?” I countered. The black course was the hardest of the obstacle courses that the park had on offer, with the blue one a close second.

  “I read online that the black is supposed to be brutal… This is still a date, you know.” He jokingly wagged his index finger between us.

  He was right. It was a date. A date that was bound to be interesting, to say the least.

  Chapter Eight

  Shane

  We walked through the trees, which were lit up with LED lights spiraling up the trunks and branches. Flames of a fire pit crackled from below. It was a surreal experience, unique to the Fields of Fire.

  A DJ played energetic remixes of popular music, filling the night air with a pounding, driving rhythm. I saw a group of people roasting marshmallows and making s’mores at one of the fire pits scattered throughout the park.

  Fiona’s eyes lit up when we arrived, delightedly scanning our surroundings. She was practically buzzing to get started.

  I reached for her hand, la
cing our fingers together on the way to the training portion of the evening. Fiona surprised me by scooting closer and nestling to my side while we listened to the instructor but she moved away quickly when she realized what she was doing.

  “I was enjoying that,” I told her, wanting her to return.

  Fiona flushed. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “I still enjoyed it. Want to come back?” I patted my shoulder.

  She smiled shyly but shook her head. “Nope, your shoulder is too hard.”

  That wasn’t the only thing that was hard, especially after the way that the tension had crackled between us in the truck earlier but I doubted that pointing it out would be helpful. “Fine, later then.”

  We were interrupted by a child wailing from the nearby tree line. “Mommy!”

  I knew absolutely nothing about children and generally ignored them but even I could see that this one had clearly just lost his mother and needed someone to walk him to the organizers. I couldn't just ignore that.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, jogging the short distance to the kid. “What’s going on?”

  Tears streamed down his face when he lifted his sad little eyes to mine. The muted light made him look like a depressed cherub as he sputtered, “My mommy is gone.”

  “Yeah? Want me to help you find her?” I asked, bending down to reach his eye level.

  Fiona looked on silently, her head tilted as she watched the interaction.

  The kid hiccuped and nodded so enthusiastically that I was afraid he was going to give himself whiplash. Then again, I’d heard that children were surprisingly resilient, so I didn’t worry too much about it.

  “Will you excuse us for a minute?” I asked Fiona, who nodded almost as enthusiastically as the kid had.

  “I’ll walk with you,” she said.

  With my hand on his little shoulder, I guided the kid to the entrance, where I’d seen an information booth when we’d arrived.

  A frantic-looking woman was gesturing wildly with her hands, speaking to the man behind the desk. She sank to her knees in front of the boy when she spotted us walking toward her, throwing her arms around his shoulders. “Kayden! Where’d you go?”

  “Went to get a marshmallow. Then you were gone.” He sobbed into her embrace.

  “Oh, baby, I told you it was time to go soon,” she said to him, then looked at me. “Thank you so much for bringing him over. One second, he was with us, and the next, he was gone.”

  “That’s okay. I remember being that age. It’s easy to get distracted.” I turned to Fiona and reached for her hand again. She hesitated for only a second before accepting my outstretched hand. “You ready to get started?”

  “When you are.” She smiled.

  We said our goodbyes to the boy and his mother, who must have thanked me a million times before letting us go. Then we headed to the starting point of the blue course.

  I helped Fiona into her harness, trying to ignore how close my hands were to her breasts when I buckled her in. My fingers lingered just a second too long against her taut stomach. Her breathing hitched, and a flush rose on her cheeks.

  She was as affected by me as I was by her. I’d seen it the moment she opened her door to me, her gaze raking over me like she wanted nothing more than to mount me right there on her front porch. The feeling had been mutual.

  It had taken every ounce of strength I had to turn around and lead her to my truck, instead of pulling her toward me, kissing the shit out of her, and making my fantasies a reality.

  The click of the double locking mechanism on her harness pulled me from my rapidly degenerating thoughts. She stepped to the platform.

  Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she turned to face me. “Ready to get left in the dust?”

  I clicked my harness into place. “In your dreams.”

  “You have no idea what goes on in my dreams,” she quipped. With that, she leapt from the platform and zipped her way to the next, leaving me curious and already semi-hard.

  It didn’t take me long to catch up to her, where she was making her way across a bridge made of cables.

  “You’re going to make a comment like that and not tell me what happens in these dreams?”

  “Yup,” she said, flashing me a smile over her shoulder.Her brow furrowed in concentration as she made her way the other side of the bridge.

  Fiona and I laughed and flirted our way through the course, pausing occasionally to let others finish an obstacle before we started with it. During one particularly challenging obstacle, I had to help two teenage girls disentangle themselves from a rope net. One clawed at me for leverage, causing Fiona to collapse in a fit of giggles.

  I loved that she was having so much fun with me. Choosing this place for a date had been a bit of a risk, and I wasn’t sure Fiona would be okay with it. Now that we were out here, she seemed genuinely happy that we hadn’t just gone to a restaurant.

  “So, have you always lived in Houston?” Fiona asked as we headed back to my truck after completing the obstacle course.

  “No, we moved around a bit when I was growing up,” I said, wondering where the question suddenly came from.

  “You did? Why?” Her brow knitted, as if she was trying to figure something out.

  “My dad was...” I paused, trying to find the right word to explain it. “Restless, I guess, before he had to take over the family business. He’d lived in Texas all his life and wanted to branch out but that didn’t quite work out.”

  “What do you mean? What did your dad do?”

  “He dabbled with a few things but eventually we had to move back to Texas, and he took over the business.” We were venturing into territory that I didn’t want to venture into with her. Not until I knew her better, if I got to know her better. “How do you feel about Guinness pie?”

  “Guinness as in the beer?” she asked.

  “Yeah, they use it in pies at this Irish Pub I discovered the other day. You interested in trying it?”

  She shrugged. “Sure, why not?” She climbed into the passenger seat of my truck. “You were saying? About your dad?”

  “That’s it, really,” I said. “Once he took over the business, we settled in Houston, and I’ve lived there ever since.”

  We pulled up outside of the pub and went in. It was like stepping into something out of an old fairy tale. It was located in an old building with a heavy wooden door, and inside, it was decorated in stone and dark wooden furniture. I loved it.

  “How about your dad?” I asked her, once we were settled in a corner booth and had placed orders for the Guinness pie and a pitcher of craft beer.

  “What do you want to know?” Her expression was guarded, as if she was uncertain about talking to me about him.

  “Anything?”

  “Well.” She tugged at her lower lip with her teeth, pausing with a faraway look in her eyes. “He raised me as a single father. He did his best.”

  I sensed that there was a lot more to that last part of her statement but also that she would tell me what it was when she was ready. “Where’s your mom?”

  Tears sprang unexpectedly into her eyes. “She passed away when I was four. Brain cancer.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” I slid over to her side of the booth and wrapped my arms around her. She let me hold her, taking a few deep breaths to regain her composure before pulling away.

  “No, it’s okay. It was a long time ago. It just still hits me sometimes, you know?” Her voice was soft and filled with emotion.

  “I think that’s perfectly normal.” The waitress arrived with our food just as I said it, placing our dishes and beer in front of us. Fiona looked grateful for the interruption, which I took as a sign that she needed a few minutes of silence to gather her thoughts.

  After the first few bites of the pie, she smiled again, even if it was a small smile. “This pie is delicious.”

  “I’m glad that you like it,” I said. “It’s become one of my favor
ite foods.”

  “You’re going to have to go climbing every day if you eat it too often,” she teased lightly.

  I was relieved that the moment of sadness had passed. I would’ve had no idea how to comfort her, other than the hug I’d already given.

  She still had shadows in her eyes, but I didn’t expect that those would go away quite as quickly as she’d managed to rally herself outwardly.

  “I run every day.” I smirked and patted my flat stomach. “And I row. So, I think I’m allowed a pie every once in a while as a reward.”

  Her eyes fell to the hand on my stomach for a second, then found my eyes again. “I think you might be right about that. In fact, you should eat more pie.”

  “More pie it is.” I dug in and practically inhaled the rest of my food.

  After our plates were cleared and our beers refilled, Fiona leaned back in the booth with a strange expression fixed on her beautiful features. She stared at me like I was a puzzle again, watching me closely.

  “You still want to hear about my family?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “After my mom passed away, my dad threw himself into his work. He had his own company back in Conroe, in the oilfield service industry.”

  I froze when she said the words, immediately knowing how her story would end. It was one that I’d heard dozens of times. I just couldn’t believe that I was hearing it from Fiona. I braced myself for what was coming next.

  “Anyway, he worked almost exclusively for one client. His company went belly up when the client dropped him overnight with no warning. The client was Perkins Enterprises. Have you heard of it?”

  My mind split into two warring sides. One wanted to tell her the truth. The other argued on the side of my dick, which wanted to be inside her. “No, I don’t think that I have.”

  If she was surprised, she didn’t show it much. Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second, and she sucked in a quiet breath before her expression returned to neutral.

  I inclined my head at our empty glasses and the equally empty pitcher. “You want to get out of here?”

  She didn’t say anything for a beat, then nodded. “Sure.”