Love Me Two Times (Rock Royalty Book 8)

by Christie Ridgway

  Beck breathed in the fragrance of her hair while etching every moment of this interlude onto his mind. He thought, if given the choice, he’d give up all the memories that were missing to hold onto this particular one forever.

  Chapter 10

  Beck must have dozed off, because he awoke to rustling sounds and the awareness that he was hogging the mattress. But it didn’t matter, because when he opened his eyes and flipped over on his back, he discovered he was alone on the sheets. Jewel stood on the other side of the room, turned away from him, as she shoved her arms through a thin sweater.

  “Sweetheart,” he said softly. “No time for pillow talk?”

  She kept position for another moment, then she slowly turned to face him, her color high, her mouth swollen.

  Yeah, he’d told the truth earlier. Sharing orgasms hadn’t done a thing to quell his appetite for her. He felt sated at the moment, true, and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but his interest in getting her naked hadn’t abated in the least.

  “I’ve got things to do,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulders in a nervous gesture.

  “So you told me earlier.” He pushed himself to a sitting position and held out his hand. “Get over here, sugar.” Not really a command this time, because he smiled while he said it.

  She followed direction anyway, a wary expression on her face. He caught her wrist when she came near enough and drew her down to the mattress. His gaze shifted to her other arm, where he’d wrapped that strip of T-shirt.

  Maybe it took his warm mood down a little when he saw that a wide silver cuff bracelet was in its place.

  “Are you doing all right?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want you to—”

  “I’m not in the mood for a lecture about my post-coital attitude…” she started testily.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” Taking her by the shoulders, he turned her to more fully face him. “Let me just say that you are an incredible lover, okay? Thank you for allowing me to please you. Thank you for making the top of my head explode.”

  Her spine softened a little, and a smile flirted with the corners of her mouth. “Am I supposed to compliment you next?”

  “I can get you started,” he said helpfully, hoping to keep her in this more comfortable state. “Thick. Long. Turgid.”

  She blinked. “Um, I think that last one is a synonym for pretentious.”

  “It is not.” He frowned. “It means swollen or distended. Tumescent. Tumid.”

  “I’d feel stupid using tumid. I can’t say the other with a straight face. And I’m not going to use turgid until you take a look at a dictionary and confirm the definition.” She jumped up from the bed, her hips swinging more than usual as she crossed the room.

  “Someone’s feeling pretty spirited,” he said, that unfamiliar feeling inside him surging again.

  She threw him a smile over her shoulder. “Why don’t you take that as a compliment.”

  “I will.” He surged from the sheets and saw her eyes widen at his nakedness. “Tumescent,” he said, as if apologizing for his rock-hard erection. “I can’t help what you do to me.”

  “And I can’t help with the…the…tumescence.” She licked her lips. “Not right now. I have to get to my storage unit.”

  “I’ll dress and go with you.”

  Questions were written all over her face. “Beck…”

  He palmed his cock on the way to where he’d tossed his jeans. “It’ll go soft again, sugar. And then harden right back up when the time is right.”

  If she had questions about that, she didn’t pursue them. But when they were both fully clothed and heading out the front door, Jewel paused and shot him a look.

  He knew exactly what it meant. “How about this—let’s live in the moment, okay? I can’t recall our past and—”

  “There’s no future for us, I get that,” she put in.

  Everything inside of him rebelled at repeating it. “Just live in the moment, sugar,” he said again, and took her hand to lead her into the day. This day. Their day.

  Live in the moment.

  The mantra didn’t keep him from nearly losing his temper once they made it to the facility where Jewel had her storage unit.

  “What kind of place is this?” he asked, hands on his hips.

  The business, if you could call it something so professional, was a dilapidated building. The front half had dinged up metal doors on either side that you could drive right up to over crumbling blacktop. If there were security cameras, he didn’t see evidence of them. The “premier” storage units were enclosed by a wrought-iron fence, but once you made it beyond that—and Beck figured he could climb over it in seconds—the units themselves looked to be protected by the same flimsy padlocks.

  “It’s close by,” Jewel said as she pulled keys from her purse. “And inexpensive. I think most people use theirs for holiday decorations and camping gear, but for my purposes—”

  “It’s complete crap,” Beck said flatly.

  “Wait until you see what I have in here,” she said, then opened the door to the unit.

  He peered over her shoulder as she flipped a switch for the overhead fluorescent light. “Oh,” he said, his irritation dying. “It’s complete crap.”

  She laughed. “I told you. Though it’s not that bad.”

  Utility shelves ringed the space, about the size of a walk-in closet, and stacked on them were cardboard boxes, some labeled “Rings,” “Brooches,” “Earrings,” and “Chains” while others appeared to be filled with a tangled mass of all four. Beck lifted out a long, dusty necklace that appeared to be a yellow metal links on which enameled daisies were affixed at intervals.

  “Crap,” he said again.

  She appeared to study the piece for a moment. “That’s really not terrible,” she said. “I could remove those daisies from the chain and fasten them to these little tiaras that are all the rage for junior bridesmaids and flower girls. They would work well for an outdoor wedding. I’ll call Alexa.”

  “Bing’s girl?” he asked.

  “Her family owns a bridal boutique. They take many of my designs.”

  “Okay.” He draped the necklace over her head, then rummaged in that same box to pull out a glass pin that was the shape and color of a jack-o-lantern. It wore a garish grin that gave him the willies. “But please tell me why you’re keeping this.”

  A strange expression crossed her face. Embarrassment? “You’re going to think I’m silly. It’s for Grandma.”

  “Grandma likes creepy pumpkin jewelry?”

  “She likes just about anything bright and shiny. Doris, too. They go out to garage sales, junk markets, junk shows, and bring me home special finds. I reimburse them, and I eventually go through the boxes—with the occasional happy discovery like the daisy necklace—but most of it I eventually deliver to a thrift store.”

  “But you don’t get rid of it right away in order to spare their feelings.”

  “They don’t have a great recollection of what they purchased, so it works.” Looking down, she fingered the chain he’d dropped over her head. “But once I complete the tiaras, they’ll love seeing them and knowing they helped.”

  He drew in a long breath, blew it back out, trying to work air into his tight chest. “Well, I see a lot of expensively framed finger paintings and cherished but lumpy clay mugs in your future, sweetheart.”

  She looked up, puzzled. “What?”

  “Soul’s. You go a long way to make your grandmother feel good. Think what you’ll do for your daughter. She’s one lucky little girl.”

  “Oh.” Jewel whirled around to show him her back. “Our daughter, you know. I don’t want you to forget that.”

  “Not gonna happen. I won’t forget her. Or you, ever again.” A solemn promise.

  She turned back to stare straight into his eyes. “Even when you’re in Alaska and wherever you go after that?”

  “I…” Her serious gaze unsteadied him, and he threw out a hand, knoc
king over a box and spilling its contents to the cement floor. “Shit,” he muttered, though he was ridiculously glad for the diversion.

  Talk of Alaska and beyond was the future, and they were living in the moment, not anticipating him leaving his daughter and her mother behind.

  “Oh. My. God.” Jewel was staring down.

  “What?”

  “You found the jewelry set. The Nicky Aston set.” She bent over to scoop some glittering gems into her hand. “They must have gotten mixed in with some of Doris’s junking finds.”

  He thought of the little old lady. “That seems plausible.”

  “Let’s get these boxes moved to the new unit. I can’t wait to tell her when she gets back home.”

  “You don’t want to give her a call? Let her know right away?”

  Jewel laughed, her mood bright and no longer somber, thank God.

  “Doris and Grandma do not do cell phones. We tried, but they can’t remember how to work them or remember to charge them or even recall—no surprise—where they left them.”

  Her words barely registered. Only that laugh, her smile, her delicate features that got to him like no other’s. But none he would be around once Ren and Cilla’s wedding was over.

  “What are you frowning about?” she asked. “You’re going to be Doris’s hero.”

  Too bad he didn’t feel like one. But then he threw that off and remembered his mantra. Live in the moment.

  He kept that forefront in his mind as they made short work of the move to the more secure unit. While he still puzzled over why someone had tried to break into this ragtag storage place, he couldn’t come up with any reasonable answer. Then Jewel was dragging him back to her car, and she gave in when he insisted on taking her to lunch before going back to the Canyon.

  They beat Gavin, the two elderly ladies, and baby Soul by mere minutes.

  Beck didn’t think about why he nearly sprinted to the back seat and extricated his daughter from the car before the other man could. She blinked at him in drowsy surprise, gave him her four-tooth smile, then tucked her head under his chin and rested it on his shoulder.

  The warmth of her, the slight weight, made him want to build her a tower room in a castle surrounded by a fortress with a legion of protectors ready to fight to the death for her welfare. And against mean elementary school teachers. Bad high school boyfriends. Future bosses with grabby hands.

  Aware he wasn’t breathing well, he took a moment to close his eyes. Calm.

  And live in the moment, he told himself again, and forced his attention to the conversation Jewel was having with the others.

  “There they were, Doris,” she crowed, and held them spread in her two hands. “Beck found them.”

  “I didn’t—”

  But the older lady’s grateful look had him shutting his mouth. “It’s lovely to see them again,” she said. “I’m so grateful.”

  “They’re quite dirty,” Jewel said.

  Doris nodded. “I thought that was it, or my cataracts.”

  “Shall I clean them for you before you show them to the Nicky Aston curator?”

  “Would you?”

  “Granny,” Gavin put in. “I can take them to a professional—”

  “But Jewel is a professional.” She patted Jewel’s arm with a blue-veined hand.

  The younger woman bit her lip. “We should find a secure place for them afterward.”

  “You mean so I won’t misplace them again,” Doris said, frowning. “Curse old age.”

  “No, Doris,” Jewel said. “I merely don’t want you to worry.”

  “We’ll take the set to the compound after it’s clean,” Beck said. “The security system has been recently beefed-up, and I have access to a safe there.”

  Doris beamed at him. “Again, my hero. I’ll be happy, then, to leave the items in the capable hands of you and Jewel.”

  Gavin-the-Good didn’t look so happy as he bid everyone goodbye and took off with Doris. Maybe that was because he sensed Beck was determined to cock block him when it came to Jewel. The other man had given her his usual farewell cheek peck, but Beck had arranged himself right behind her and even put a hand on her shoulder. It made the dick halt an inch short to kiss air instead of her soft skin.

  Oh, and Beck thought the man understood he was going to daddy block him too. Soul was Beck’s little girl, damn it, and he’d held her tight in his arms as the Caddie drove away from the house.

  Maybe he couldn’t control what would happen later, but today—live in the moment—mother and child belonged to him.

  The remainder of the afternoon spun out, sun-glazed and relaxed. Soul took a short nap, and he watched Jewel clean Doris’s set in her workroom. When she finished, he suggested they take it to the compound where he could store it in the lockbox he had at Gwen’s cottage.

  They walked it there together, with Soul in the new stroller once she woke up. Jewel said she’d been to the compound in recent months for a few events with the others, and he was glad she didn’t seem interested in a tour and they could get out of the place quickly and back to her grandmother’s.

  Jewel invited him to stay for dinner, and he helped put it together while Soul sat in her high chair and delighted in throwing cereal rings over the side for him to fetch. Alison Malone, tired from her earlier outing, had chosen to have a meal of cheese and crackers in her room on her recliner while she watched her favorite show—in which a Mutt-and-Jeff pair collected items from all over the country for resale.

  So it was just the three of them—Jewel, Soul, and Beck—ranged around the kitchen table for the simple meal of spaghetti and meatballs.

  No food had ever tasted so good.

  Soul entertained them with her attempts at eating pasta with a toddler-sized spoon and later, while Jewel cleaned her up, Beck cleaned the dishes.

  Just like a little family.

  But he didn’t let that spook him. It was moment-time, wasn’t it? When the baby emerged from a bath dressed in pink footed-pajamas covered with clouds he allowed himself to soak in the sight, saving it up for some frozen night on the tundra.

  He watched her toddle to her toy basket and fish out a book. She brought it to where he was sitting on the couch and hit him on the knee with the chunky, cardboard thing.

  “Ouch,” Beck said. “You ladies learn to deliver pain early.”

  “She wants you to read it to her.”

  “Oh.” And then he had to help her into his lap. A pink, sweet-smelling, cloud-covered bundle of baby girl who expected him to read a book about a ballerina. He thought he might have to turn in his Man card.

  Or maybe, a little voice inside him said, you’ve finally earned it.

  Whatever. Because this in-the-moment moment was to be lived and not examined. Still, that feeling from earlier in the day welled up inside him, and he faltered as he turned the page, recognizing what it was.

  “Dah!” said Soul, impatient. The flat of her hand smacked the book. “Dah!”

  Happiness, he thought. I’m happy.

  And the glow of it remained even as he lost his daughter’s warmth and weight because her mother said it was time for her to go to bed. He almost protested—but then he released her into Jewel’s arms. The present was damn good. Perhaps there could be another in-the-moment day.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. He picked it up and listened with growing disquiet. A definite chill had entered the room by the time Jewel walked back in.

  “She’s asl—what is it?” She dropped to the sofa beside him and put a hand on his thigh.

  Beck forked his fingers through his hair. “Ren and Cilla are coming over to talk.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.” A frown formed between her eyebrows. “About…?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  But they didn’t have to elaborate for him to feel like a shadow had been cast on his live-in-the-moment day.

  Waiting for Ren and Cilla to arrive, Jewel pressed her
hand to her stomach and told herself to stop worrying. It only served to mar what had been a wonderful day and evening.

  She wanted those pleasurable hours to stretch on forever.

  Beck popped up from his seat on the couch in the living room to peer out the wide front window. Tension radiated from his big body—so different than he’d appeared upon waking from his doze on her bed that morning. Then he’d been contented, looking her over with lazy approval.

  Remembering it made a shiver roll along her skin. Maybe she should have jumped right back into bed with him then. It might have been her last chance—

  No.

  Negative thoughts weren’t allowed to intrude, not on this day when on the heels of great sex she’d witnessed the father of her child treat his daughter with such tenderness.

  As he’d read Soul the book—just hearing him say the word “ballerina” made Jewel’s heart roll over in her chest—she’d barely stopped herself from blurting out she loved him. But it was a sentiment to keep to herself. It was much too soon for a declaration that he’d likely run from, seeing it as a binding tie.

  Binding tie. Jewel covered her left wrist with her right hand, over the silver cuff bracelet hiding her newest secret.

  Beneath the engraved metal lay the strip of dark T-shirt she couldn’t bear to remove.

  Me. Touching you. Letting you know I’m here.

  She glanced at Beck again, and he turned as if sensing her regard. A faint smile curved his mouth. “Look at you.”

  Her head dipped to take in her outfit, nothing but a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “I missed a spaghetti sauce stain,” she said, frowning at the small spot on the hem. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I don’t see any stain.”

  “Then…?”

  “I see a picture I’m going to take with me. The lamplight finding highlights in your hair and making dark liquid pools of your eyes. Your mouth, still a little swollen, I think, from my kisses.”

  Jewel felt the warm flush rising up her neck, that even the chill of I’m going to take with me couldn’t dissipate. “Use a little mental spot remover before you tuck that photo away, will you?”

  He laughed, then held out his hand. “Come here.”