“Yes?” She looked up at me distractedly.
“You’re fucking beautiful.”
She smiled, her cheeks pinkening. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
As we were leaving, Eva remembered she had planned to pick up a couple things at the grocery store on her way home from work. I told her I’d go grab them so she could get Zoe.
We split up and I ran to the store to get milk, bananas, and breakfast cereal. When I showed up at Eva’s about an hour later, I found her and Zoe sitting on their front stoop, waiting for me.
“Mrs. Hayes is sick again,” Eva announced as I walked up the drive. “She just called me and told me she was too ill to take Zoe tomorrow. She sounds really terrible, Trig. I told her I wanted to take her to urgent care, just to be sure it’s nothing serious.”
“That makes sense,” I agreed.
“Would you mind watching Zoe while we’re gone?” she asked me. “It might be a bit of a wait. I think she might get bored, and I don’t want her to agitate Mrs. Hayes.”
“Sure thing. What do you think, buttercup?” I turned to the little girl. “Think we can find something to do while your mom’s gone?”
“YEAH!” Zoe yelled, standing up and pumping her fist. She ran to me and slipped her tiny hand in mine. “Come on! Let’s go play dolls!”
I looked askance at Eva as the little girl pulled me toward the door. “Uh… yikes?” I said.
She smiled. “Thank you. I owe you big for this.” She reached up and kissed me softly on the cheek.
“Actually, I think you paid me for it already, about an hour ago.” I wiggled my brows at her.
“Wow. I must be better than I thought, if you think that pays for playing dollies with a five year-old.” Her eyes widened in amusement.
“Babe, you have no idea,” I chuckled.
Eva ran inside and grabbed her purse and keys, then headed out the door with a quick wave to us both.
“Well, now, buttercup,” I said, turning to Zoe, “What’re we gonna do with ourselves?”
“Dolls!” she repeated firmly. “You can be the dragon!”
I spent the next half hour or so roaring my way through a free-form stream of consciousness “story” that Zoe was weaving, involving a couple of Barbies, a stuffed horse, and a mean dragon who apparently just needed to make some friends to turn into a nice dragon. It was weird as hell, but also kind of charming. And hearing the way Zoe erupted into fits of giggles whenever I did my dragon roar went a long way toward making me feel like less of a complete jackass.
Eventually, she tired of playing dolls and asked if we could go draw on the patio with sidewalk chalk. We grabbed the chalk from a low shelf filled with books, and were on our way out the sliding glass door to the backyard when a beeping noise stopped us.
I looked in the direction of the sound to see it was coming from a cell phone sitting on a small table by the front door.
“Huh. Your mom must have forgotten to take her phone with her,” I said to Zoe.
I went to answer it, on the off chance that it was Eva herself, calling from someone else’s phone. I noted the name on the display — “David” — and pressed the answer button.
“Eva’s phone,” I said into the mouthpiece.
There was a moment of silence, followed by the sound of someone taking a breath. “Hello?” a man’s voice said abruptly. “Who is this?”
“This is someone answering Eva’s phone for her,” I replied tersely. “Who’s this?”
“This is Eva’s ex-husband. Zoe’s father,” the voice said back just as tersely.
Interesting. “Well, Eva can’t come to the phone right now.” I looked over at Zoe, who was looking at me impatiently and pointing toward the back patio. “Do you want to talk to Zoe?”
More silence. Then: “Where is Eva? Is she there?”
“I’ll leave it to Eva to tell you what she wants to tell you.” She hadn’t told me a lot about the man who was her ex-husband, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to give him any information she might not want him to know.
“Do you want to talk to Zoe?” I repeated.
“Yes,” said the man, his voice cold. “I would like to speak to my daughter, please.”
“Zoe,” I motioned to the phone. “It’s your dad on the phone.”
Zoe’s reaction was strange. At first, she ran up to me excitedly, but as she got closer, she seemed to reconsider. When I handed the cell to her, she hung back for a moment, then reached for it reluctantly.
“Daddy?” she said into the phone, her voice tentative.
There were a few moments of silence on our end, through which I could hear the tinny voice of Eva’s ex-husband through the speaker.
“That’s Mommy’s boyfriend,” Zoe eventually said. More silence as she listened, and then. “He’s nice! His name is Trig. He has a dragon on his arm, and he bought me a dragon animal. They’re both named Toothless.”
Uh-oh. I was starting to think that letting Zoe talk to her dad wasn’t such a good idea. But still, you couldn’t stop a kid from talking to her father, could you? I had no experience with this kind of stuff.
“No, Mommy’s not here.” The voice on the other end of the phone grew louder. “Mrs. Hayes is sick, so they had to go to the hospital.” After a moment, Zoe added: “Trig’s playing dollies with me. Now we’re gonna do sidewalk chalk.”
Her voice started to grow more animated as she shared this with her father. Her face seemed to fall with his response, though. I guess he wasn’t interested in hearing about dollies and sidewalk chalk.
Something in my chest tightened as I watched Zoe’s little face darken in disappointment as she listened to him talk. Finally, in a tiny voice, she said simply,“Okay. Bye, Daddy.” She handed the phone back to me without a word.
I looked at it. He had hung up already.
Never in my life had I seen a little girl look so dejected as Zoe looked now. Jesus, what kind of shit for brains would be such a self-centered piece of shit that he didn’t even have five minutes to listen to his daughter tell him about her day? Eva had told me the guy lived in Seattle, and from what she’d told me he didn’t see much of his kid. It sure seemed like poor Zoe essentially had just enough of a father to make it worse than if she had no father at all.
“I don’t wanna do sidewalk chalk anymore,” she said miserably. Her eyes welled up, and I was afraid she was going to start crying. I had to think fast.
“Hey, I have an idea,” I said quickly. Pointing at the clock, I smiled at her. “It’s almost dinner time. How about you and I order a pizza and watch a movie while we eat. You pick the movie.”
She smiled up at me tremulously. “Okay… Can we get cheese pizza?”
“Sure thing.” I heaved a small sigh of satisfaction. Carbs and grease always made things better.
I made the call to a local pizza place while Zoe chose one of her DVDs to watch. She went upstairs briefly, and came back down with her pillow and a few stuffed animals, which she arranged around herself like a fluffy fortress on the couch. I grabbed a beer for myself, poured a glass of milk for Zoe, and sat down to wait for the pizza.
A little over an hour later, we were sitting happily in a food coma, watching some movie about an ice princess and her sister, when Eva returned.
“Hey,” she remarked as she took in the scene. “Looks like you ate without me.”
I hit pause on the DVD. “There’s still a few slices of pizza left.” I nodded toward the box. “How’s Mrs. Hayes?”
“Good news and bad news,” she replied, Setting down her purse, she fell into an overstuffed easy chair with a groan. “The bug that she had turned into bronchitis. It’s a little more serious in older people, which is worrisome. The good news is, she’s generally pretty healthy, so there’s every reason to believe she’ll be fine with rest and plenty of fluids.”
“Is Mrs. Hayes gonna be okay, Mom?”
“Yes, pumpkin, she’ll be fine.” Eva smiled at her daughter. “But she’s not
going to be able to take care of you for a little while longer.”
“That’s okay,” Zoe said cheerfully. “Trig can take care of me.”
Eva suppressed a grin. “I’m not sure Trig has time to babysit you every day after pre-K, honey.”
Without really thinking about it, I said, “We’ll work it out. If we can move around some of my therapy sessions, I can grab her from school on days you need me to, and watch her until you’re done with work.”
Eva stared at me, a curious expression on her face. “You’d do that?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Of course. You need help. I can help. It’s simple.” I thought for a moment. “Though you’ll have to show me how to hook her car seat into the truck.”
“Zoe,” Eva said then, standing up. “Trig and I are going to go in the kitchen and put the pizza away. You just keep watching your movie.”
“Okay,” she said, reaching for the remote control. I handed it to her and followed her mom into the kitchen, grabbing the pizza box on the way.
We had barely made it into the next room when Eva wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me in for a deep, passionate kiss.
“You’re amazing, you know that?” she said breathily when she had pulled away.
“I don’t know what I did, but I’ll take it,” I replied, pulling her back to me. I pressed her against the counter, my hardness meeting her softness. She moaned into my mouth and pressed back.
I fisted my hands in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her sexy neck. My mouth moved away from hers and I grazed her sensitive skin with my lips and tongue. She gasped softly, then reached up and pushed against my chest. “We have to stop,” she whispered. “You’re going to push me past the point of no return, and there’s a five year-old in the next room.”
Reluctantly, I released her and stepped away. Eva looked down at my obviously hard cock and bit her lower lip. “That’s a shame to waste,” she said, shaking her head, reaching down to cup its outline through my jeans.
I groaned. “You are not helping the situation here.”
She giggled impishly and stroked me once, then pulled her hand away. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself.”
“Well,” I said, wrapping my arms around her waist and kissing her forehead. “I guess it’ll keep until later.”
She sighed and melted against me. “I meant what I said, you know. The part about you being amazing.”
“What did I do?” I asked.
“Offering to help me with Zoe while Mrs. Hayes is sick. I’m sure there are lots of things you’d rather be doing.”
“Eva.” I lifted her chin with a finger. “There is nothing I’d rather be doing than helping you out. Really.” I brushed her lips lightly with mine. “If I didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t have offered.”
She nodded. “I believe that.” Her eyes were shining. “Thank you. For wanting to.”
Since there wasn’t much we could do about our sexual cravings with Zoe in the next room, Eva grabbed a slice of pizza from the box and set about satisfying another physical craving. “Mmm…” she moaned as she took the first bite. “I haven’t had that much to eat today. This is heaven.”
“Yeah, that pizzeria is my favorite one in town. Even their plain cheese is good.” I grabbed a plate from the cupboard, put the rest of the pizza slices on it, and folded the pizza box into halves, then quarters. While I was working, I remembered the phone call earlier.
“Hey, you left your cell phone here while you were at urgent care,” I told Eva as I opened the cupboard where she kept the trash and stuck the box in. “Zoe’s dad called.”
Eva stopped eating mid-slice. “What?”
“Zoe’s dad called. I thought it might have been you calling from someone else’s phone, so I answered it.”
“You had no right to answer my phone,” Eva said flatly.
“Look, normally I probably wouldn’t have, but I thought it might be you calling,” I repeated. “He asked to talk to you but I told him you weren’t available. But Zoe ended up telling him where you were.”
Eva’s face had turned hard and angry. “You let him talk to her?” she cried.
“Well, yeah.” I nodded. “He’s her father. I didn’t think there was a problem with that.”
“How did Zoe seem after the conversation?” she demanded.
“Not great,” I admitted. “It seemed to put her into kind of a funk. Hence the cheese pizza and Disney movie.”
Eva shook her head in frustration. “Dammit, Trig!” she cried. “David barely bothers to remember Zoe’s birthday. He hardly ever calls, and when he does, he almost never asks to talk to his daughter. Poor Zoe’s already lived a lifetime of heartache and disappointment from him.”
She shook her head, her eyes shining. “I try as hard as I can to protect her from that. And you just let him talk to her and disappoint her yet again!”
“Look, I’m sorry!” I spread my hands wide. “How the hell was I supposed to know?”
“You should know not to answer my phone!” she retorted. “You should know not to make decisions about Zoe’s life without asking me?”
“Jesus, Eva, calm down.” I looked at her in amazement. “I said I was sorry. It was a simple mistake.”
But Eva wasn’t having it. I had no idea why she was taking this the way she was. I was trying to figure out what to do when she interrupted my thoughts.
“Wait. You said that Zoe told him I wasn’t here?” she asked. Her voice was sharp.
“Yeah.” Oh, shit. Somehow I sensed this was about to go from bad to worse. I leaned against the kitchen counter. “And…” I said slowly, “Zoe sort of told him I was your boyfriend.”
“What?!” she yelled. Alarmed, she clapped her hand over her mouth and glanced toward the living room.
Well, no use trying to back out of this now. “She said I was your boyfriend, and that I was watching her while you were out,” I explained. Eva’s eyes widened. “But come on,” I continued quickly. “How bad can it be? What’s the big problem that he knows you have a boyfriend?”
Whoa. Eva and I had certainly never had the “relationship” talk, and here I was basically saying I was her boyfriend. Above and beyond the question of whether that’s what I actually was, this was probably about the worst possible time to be having that conversation.
“Oh, my God,” she muttered, clapping a hand against her forehead. “That’s just great.”
“For Christ’s sake, what the hell is the problem?” I demanded. “Why is this freaking you out so much?”
“Look, Trig.” Eva’s voice had grown cold as ice. “We were just trying to keep it light between us, right? No past, no future. Just the present. And now, here you are, butting into my life and messing everything up like a bull in a china shop.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I think you should go.”
The sick drop in my stomach was overshadowed by a wave of anger. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked in disbelief. “Two minutes ago, I was amazing and you were thanking the hell out of me for helping you out with Zoe. And now I’m butting into your life.”
Shit had started to hurtle out of control between us, and I had no idea how to stop it. But she’d told me to go. And if I was that easily dispensable to her, then maybe that was just what I should do.
I stood up. “Fuck it, then. Damn right I’m going, princess.”
Eva tensed instantly. The nickname had just slipped out, and I didn’t bother to apologize for it.
I took a step toward her but didn’t touch her. “You need to figure out what you want, Eva. Do you want a man in your life who’ll be there for you, who you can trust? Or do you want someone you can just fuck and then push away when he gets too close?”
Words were tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. I barely understood the implications of what I was saying until I’d already said it.
I was telling Eva I wanted to be her man. The one she depended on.
I should have been embarrassed, b
aring my heart like that. But I wasn’t.
Even though I was baring it to someone who obviously didn’t feel the same way.
I turned to go, glancing at her one last time. “Either way, I guess it’s not gonna be me.”
And with that, I walked out of Eva Van Buren’s house.
18
Eva
I was so upset I was shaking.
I watched Trig storm out of my house not knowing whether to cry, or scream, or throw things.
Or run after him.
That last part? Yeah, I didn’t expect that.
I was absolutely furious with him for answering the phone and talking to David. I was even angrier with him for letting Zoe talk to him. My ex-husband was manipulative, emotionally abusive, and controlling. Whatever he had been calling about — and I assumed it probably had something to do with money — I knew it hadn’t been to talk to Zoe. Which meant that he had asked for her in order to worm information out of her. Information which she had been too young and innocent to realize she was giving him.
And now as a result, David was in possession of knowledge I did not want him to have. I wanted my ex-husband to know absolutely nothing about my personal life. And I sure as hell didn’t need him knowing that I had left Zoe alone with some strange man.
Never mind that I knew implicitly I could trust Trig with her. And I knew, too, that David really didn’t give a damn who I left Zoe with. Hell, he barely remembered he even had a daughter most of the time. But he was a born opportunist, always looking to exploit a situation to his advantage.
My ex-husband was more than capable of using this information as a tool to manipulate me, either simply by holding it over my head, or by threatening to take me back to court on the grounds that I was neglecting Zoe. He would never want full custody of her, I knew. But that wouldn’t stop his vindictive nature from pushing for it just to gain the upper hand.
One way or another, I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard the last from David on this subject.
I was suddenly exhausted as I tossed the last pieces of pizza into a container and threw them into the fridge. I wandered out to the living room and sat down tiredly next to Zoe, who was once again engrossed in her movie and barely noticed I was there.
RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) Page 14
