Man Candy: A Real Love Novel

by Jessica Lemmon

  When he turns serious, and I lie back, eyes closed, hands clutching the picnic blanket for purchase.

  I come.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  I lose count, but Dax doesn’t.

  When I surface and he’s on top of me, shorts down, sliding deep, he reminds me I have one more to give him.

  I give him that one too.

  On a shout that quiets the birds.

  Chapter 23

  Becca

  THURSDAY

  Rare is the occasion when Lara has a spare minute, so when my brother offers to take the girls out for ice cream and give her some alone time, I pounce.

  Carefully, because she doesn’t get a lot of time to herself.

  “Mani-pedi?” I ask, holding up the small cosmetic bag where I store my emery boards and polish.

  Lara knows me well and narrows her eyes suspiciously. “What’s the charge?”

  “Free.” I grin.

  Her eyes narrow so much I lose sight of her irises.

  “The fee is that you listen while I talk through my relationship questions,” I confess. “You can talk through yours too.” I make a face as I reconsider. “Only, no intimate sex details about my brother or else you’ll scar me for life.”

  “Deal.” She shoos me away and grabs her purse. “But we’re discussing this over chardonnay, and you’re not required to do the manual labor.”

  Within the hour we’ve moved our girls’ day to a nail salon, where Lara and I sit side by side with our feet in warm, bubbling water.

  We decided on pedis only, followed by lunch out. She texted Tad that he’s in charge of the girls for longer than he anticipated, and if he minded, he never said so.

  He’s smarter than I give him credit for.

  “All right. We have wine in hand and our feet in miniature Jacuzzis. Out with it. What did you want to dish about?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing!” I sort of whisper-shout. Lara giggles at my plight.

  “You’re going to have to back up and fill me in on what I’ve missed.”

  After my hike and “picnic” with Dax yesterday, I tried to make amends with Tad. I returned to the office about thirty minutes later than I’d promised—hey, a girl’s gotta eat, plus I worked out a lot. My late arrival didn’t give way to smooth sailing. Tad was all, “That asshole has to go! He’s not allowed on my property!”

  Hopefully Tad doesn’t do something stupid—like pay Dax a visit. I love my brother, but I have a feeling if those two tussled, I’d be visiting Tad at the hospital and his entire body would be in traction.

  I kid, I kid. I don’t think Dax is that mean. But if Tad went over there and flapped his lips about me, I bet Dax would at least pop him in the nose.

  Today’s my day off, so I haven’t seen Dax. I’m not sure if I should. There are so many conflicting thoughts in my head that I don’t trust myself to go to the cabin and make any rational decisions. Not until I straighten myself out.

  Hence my running to Lara for help.

  “You’ve been cool about Tad and Dax nearly going to fisticuffs at Dad’s dinner,” I tell her.

  She shrugs and sips her white wine. I do the same. It’s delicious and, paired with pampering, downright heavenly. Lara’s wine and pampering are hard won. She works so much harder than I do. Sure, I’m at the intersection of What’s Going On Street and Hot Guy Avenue, but it’s Lara who’s maintaining a household and raising tiny humans to be incredible adults. Plus she has to deal with my brother. Like, daily.

  “Boys will be boys,” she says. “I know Tad has a temper. You know your brother has a temper.”

  I nod.

  “I trust your judgment of Dax. I ran to your defense where he was concerned, and you put me in my place quickly. I was looking after you but you didn’t need it. You know what you’re doing, Bec. It’s different than what I’d do, but that’s not the point.”

  “What would you do?” I ask almost desperately. Then I realize I haven’t filled in the gaps for her like she asked. “If your one-night stand turned into a two-week stand and the ball was in your court and he liked you more than you ever imagined possible but you don’t know what to do because no one has ever liked you that much before—what would you do?”

  Her eyebrows climb her forehead as she listens to my run-on question.

  “I’d be thrilled,” she answers. “That’s what happened with Tad and me. I was determined to stay single and he fell in love with me in about forty-eight hours.”

  “I remember.” I smile. There was so much happiness in my brother’s voice when he called me and told me about Lara, I almost didn’t recognize Tad Stone on the other end of the line. “You were determined to stay single?”

  “Yep.”

  “And he changed your mind?”

  “I regrouped.” She puts a hand on my arm. “After two months. In my head, it was too soon to know, even though I really did know. Now that I look back, there never should’ve been any doubt.” Her smile is genuine and the slightest bit softer thanks to the wine. In her eyes dances the wisdom of a woman who got it right. She has a nine-year marriage and two beautiful kids under her belt. “I was afraid of the unknown. That’s what you’re feeling, Becca.” She loses her smile abruptly and says, “Unless it’s not that. Is he behaving like a jerk?”

  “Dax isn’t a jerk. That’s the problem. I’m used to dealing with jerks. He’d be easier to categorize and send packing if he treated me like crap. I know how to react when a guy is a flake.” I shake my head. “Dax tossed my playbook out the window. When he brought up the possibility of my coming to Ohio, I was quick to step in and tell him that I wasn’t going. I told him I didn’t want him interfering in my life or with my family. He backed off.”

  The women administering our pedicures return with polish colors and Lara and I choose—she goes with pale pink and I choose hot pink. She always was the tame one of the two of us—with nail polish colors, anyway. In relationships I’m the one scared of my own shadow. Lara is brave compared to me.

  I lower my voice, considering we have an audience now, and lean closer to Lara. “He backed way off. Sex when I say and no more talking about personal matters.”

  “And that’s what you want?” Lara asks, her tone neutral.

  “I thought so. I don’t want to live in Ohio. I like Tennessee. I like working for Grand Lark. Being close to my nieces is really nice.”

  “My, what a glowing statement.” Her voice is playful. “Besides ‘liking’ where you are and it being ‘really nice,’ are you feeling called elsewhere?”

  “I don’t know.” I set my wine aside. Heart pounding, I ask her the question that’s been knocking around in my head since last night. “Would you follow a guy you barely know to another state in the hopes that it works out?”

  “Depends on how much potential I saw in the guy.” Lara waggles her ring finger at me.

  I must look pretty crestfallen, because she pats my arm, consoling me.

  “It was the right decision for me to leap in with both feet with your brother, but that doesn’t mean the same action is right for you. There’s only one you, Becca. Only you know if it’s right to answer the call or let it go to voicemail. You can always try and return the call later.”

  “Return it later,” I mumble aloud, a burst of hope in my chest. “We can finish out the week, and he can leave, and then if I miss him, I can pick it up later.” It’s stupidly simple.

  I lift my wineglass, feeling free. Excited about there being another choice. Not a yes or no, but a maybe.

  Oh, how I love maybes.

  “Unless he meets someone else when he goes back to Ohio,” Lara says before the wine reaches my lips.

  I snap my attention to my sister-in-law who swallows the wine in her mouth before apologetically amending, “Which would be totally okay! Then you’d know it wasn’t meant to be!”

  “Would you have been okay leaving Tad in fate’s hands?” I alread
y know the answer. Lara prefers control over her destiny. Her wan smile tells me she absolutely wouldn’t have been okay leaving Tad in fate’s hands.

  “If you love something, set it free,” the dark-haired woman at my feet says.

  “If it loves you, it’ll come back.” Her blond cohort nods as she carefully paints Lara’s toenails.

  “Love,” I murmur, feeling the burdensome weight of all four letters.

  “You don’t have to love him to set him free,” Lara says, picking up the dropped ball.

  “Good.” Love is big and scary and I’m not sure I completely understand it. It looks like obligation and risk. Except for where my brother and sis-in-law are concerned. Then it looks like matrimony and two kids and a household that’s run like a small business.

  Yikes.

  I don’t know which sounds more terrifying.

  Dax

  Friday Morning

  I’m up at dark, coffee in hand when a truck pulls down my rental’s driveway. I watch out the window until Becca’s brother parks and climbs out, and then makes his way toward the house. I sigh in resignation and go outside to meet him. I figured it’d come to this.

  He’s not boiling over like he was last week, but he ain’t happy with me.

  Imagine that.

  “Morning.” I lift my mug and offer, “Coffee?”

  “This isn’t a social visit.” He ascends the steps of the porch slowly. Shoulders pushed back and chin up. Ready to rumble.

  I hope I don’t have to hit him.

  “I don’t want any trouble, Stone.” To prove my point, I take a seat on one of the rocking chairs and sip my coffee.

  He hovers indecisively for a moment before sitting in the rocker next to mine, eyes to the forest in front of us. After a few minutes of birds chirping, he says, “I came here to ask you to leave.”

  “I figured.”

  An indecisive squirrel darts down the tree, then up, then down again.

  “What are you doing with my sister?” Tad asks.

  “If you’re asking for specifics, you’re not getting them.”

  He grunts in agreement, but we both know that’s not what he’s asking.

  “If you’re asking what my intentions are—”

  “Are you moving her to Ohio?” he asks, his patience waning. I’m surprised he had any to start with.

  “Far as I know, I’m the only one going to back Ohio. Becca has no interest in joining me.”

  “Good.” His mouth flattens and he watches the same squirrel dart about before shifting gears. “I married a smart woman. A woman who told me that you made a valid point that night at Dad’s.”

  Wow. I didn’t that see coming.

  “The night I almost kicked your ass,” he adds.

  It’s a cheap shot I let him have. I smile at the rim of my mug.

  “I don’t trust Becca for one simple reason. She’s never given me a reason to trust her not to hurt herself. She’s the baby. She’s the one who jets off without notice and leaps into traffic without looking and—”

  “Goes zip-lining without warning?” I interject.

  “Did she make you do that too?” he asks, and for the first time, I witness him lightening up. “She’s careless. She doesn’t worry. Which meant I have to be the careful, worrying one. Someone has to look out for her.”

  “You feel responsible for her.”

  “She’s my sister and I don’t want to see her hurt.”

  “So your idea was to boot me out of Grand Lark not because of what I did but because—”

  “Of what you’re doing with her.” We glance at each other and then he frowns. “Of what I thought you were doing with her. You’re not using her, are you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You were serious about Ohio.”

  “I was. She’s not interested.”

  I watch his face as that info sinks in. Then Tad’s expression changes altogether. Suddenly, he’s a guy who can relate to another guy who likes a girl a lot more than she likes him.

  “She shot you down and you backed off,” he concludes with a nod.

  It’s not a question, so I don’t answer. I didn’t exactly offer, and she didn’t exactly shoot me down, but close enough. The result’s the same.

  “But she’s still seeing you.”

  “On her terms,” I tell him.

  “You’re letting her do what she wants. Come and go as she pleases. It’s what she does best.”

  I drink my coffee.

  “Shit, Vaughn.” He laughs. “I don’t need to kick your ass. Sounds like Bec did it for me.”

  I let him have that one too. I promised Becca I’d be who she needed me to be while I was here. Socking Tad in the mouth isn’t about her at all—it’d be about me. And as we’re all clearly aware, I’m checking out soon. No good could come of punching him in the face, save a fleeting moment of triumph.

  Tad walks down the porch steps to his truck, pausing when he pulls open the door. “Guess I should’ve warned you about my sister when you sat down at my bar. She’s the heartbreaker, not the one who gets hers broken.”

  “I wouldn’t have listened,” I call back.

  “Yeah.” He nods, adding another head shake as he climbs in the truck. “Yeah.”

  He drives off and I toss the remainder of my cooling coffee in the greenery below as the friendly neighborhood squirrel darts from tree to tree like he’s already had a cup or three.

  I wouldn’t have listened, but would I have approached her differently?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  But I would’ve approached her. No doubt about it.

  Chapter 24

  Becca

  Friday, Late Morning

  Tad left the house at the ungodly hour of six a.m.—and he was whistling this morning. Whistling! I went back to sleep for several glorious hours before straggling in at my scheduled time of eleven.

  Okay, okay, 11:20.

  “Sorry! Traffic!” I announce when I walk into Grand Lark’s restaurant. “I allowed extra time, I swear. I don’t know where it goes. If minutes were made of marbles instead of thin air, I could keep better track of them.”

  To my surprise, one side of Tad’s mouth goes up in an amused half smile. He lifts a plate from a table and wipes it down. I help, clearing a glass and the silverware.

  The place is otherwise empty, so I take the opportunity to ask, “You okay?”

  “Yeah, Bec. I’m okay. When you have a second, though, we should talk.”

  My heart leaps into my throat. Sounds bad already.

  Tad tosses the damp towel on the bar top and takes the glass and silverware from my hand. In the office and I attempt to put the “we should talk” phrase out of my mind while I check email and answer a few phone calls. I’m successful, until Tad shows up leaning in the doorway, his arms folded over his chest.

  I end the call with the liquor supplier and swivel my chair in Tad’s direction.

  “Let’s hear it. What’d I do?”

  “It’s not what you did.” Arms still crossed, he pushes off the doorframe and lowers himself to sit on the only clean corner of the desk. “It’s what I did.”

  “Knock me over with a feather. This is beginning to sound like an apology.”

  He laughs. Actually laughs.

  “Or a dream. Did I doze off?” I make a show of pinching my arm. “Nope. Still awake. Unless this is like Inception and I’m in a dream within a dream.”

  “No one understands that movie.”

  “I know. It’s good, though.”

  “The best,” he agrees.

  “Leo,” we both say at the same time. My love for Leonardo DiCaprio started with the movie Titanic. Tad was a late bloomer with Scorsese’s The Departed, which didn’t tickle my fancy since Leo’s character— Well, I won’t spoil it for you in case you’re an even later bloomer and haven’t watched it yet. But seriously. Watch it.

  “I’m sorry, Bec. I treat you like you’re a kid and you’re not. It’s not right
and I’m going to do better.”

  I tap my chest just above my heart. “I’m having cardiac arrest. An actual heart attack. Has anyone ever died of shock?”

  He ignores my theatrics.

  “I paid Dax a visit this morning to kick his ass out of here. A guy doing you wrong has no place in my resort.”

  I open my mouth but Tad holds up a finger to shush me.

  “But. He told me he’s headed back to Ohio without you. I also believe that you’re in complete control of your faculties. He can stay.”

  I was going to yell at him for butting in, but I’m blown away by Tad admitting I’m in control of my faculties. He’s never admitted I owned faculties, let alone believed that I was in charge of them.

  “Plus, he wasn’t wrong when he told me I don’t trust my staff enough. I’m a control freak.”

  I snort my agreement.

  “Believe it or not, Bec, this has nothing to do with how capable you are and everything to do with the fact that I’m worried I can’t keep this place running. With a business, a wife, two kids, and us trying to have a third, it’s a lot of stress.”

  “A third?” I repeat, stunned.

  Tad stops running his fingers through his hair.

  “But Lara drank wine yesterday.”

  “We’re not trying at the moment. We’re taking a break. We haven’t been able to . . .” He winces, uncomfortable. “We tried for the last three months but she’s having some trouble. The doctor thinks it’s stress. Too much on her plate. Maybe too much on mine.”

  My heart sinks as I consider the stressors in his and Lara’s life. Taking on a sister who has no plans to leave can’t have helped.

  “I didn’t know you were trying for another baby,” I tell him, my voice weak with guilt.

  “A boy is the goal.” He gives me a soft smile.

  “Silly Tad. Lara makes beautiful girls.”

  “Exactly why I want at least one boy. Girls date guys and when that happens, I’ll have to worry if they’re being taken advantage of every minute of the day.” He tilts his head and spears me with a look that suggests I’m one of his worries.