A Little Harmless Addiction

by Melissa Schroeder

  “Yeah.”

  “You both suck. And Evan, I hope you get this in spades when you and May decide to have children.”

  Evan leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out. “I’m made of sterner stuff than that, son.”

  Chris rolled his eyes. “So what are you two here bugging me for?”

  Jocelyn cocked her head in Evan’s direction. “He’s here because May’s working. I’m here because Cynthia said we were all going to have dinner here.”

  Her brother’s skin paled.

  “Well, maybe I’m just having dinner. Did she just get sick and that’s why you are?”

  He held a napkin over his mouth. “Yeah. The doctor said she was okay.”

  She wanted to give him more of a hard time. He deserved it for some of the things he pulled on her, but she heard the worry there, the fear. She reached across the desk and patted his hand. “I am sure her doctor’s right. I worked with a sous chef who spent all nine months sick. It was really hard on her, but she delivered a very healthy baby. Everything will be all right. Why don’t you and Cynthia go home?”

  “Yeah. I’ll have dinner with Jocelyn,” Evan offered.

  Surprised, she looked over at Evan. “Sure. That’ll be great.”

  Chris sighed. “I really wanted to spend the night together, but I just don’t have the energy to do it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, she and Evan were sitting in a booth together.

  “I didn’t realize he would worry.”

  She snorted and put the menu down. “He is a worrywart, but I know that’s normal. She has been sick a lot, although not more than some. I just dread the birth. Can you imagine? He’s going to drive us crazy.”

  “Are you going to be here then?”

  It was a good question. She had a feeling that her family had been dancing around it not wanting to ask. “I think I might. I’m still not sure yet.”

  He nodded. “No reason you have to decide right now.”

  She sent him a repressive look. “That’s what you non-planners always say.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, Micah gets after me, but then he worries enough for both of us.” He studied her for a second and then said, “If you would like a free pass to Rough ’n Ready, I can give you one.”

  She felt her eyes widened then she laughed. “Oh, God, no.”

  He frowned. “I don’t want to pry, but Chris told me a little bit.”

  Her laughter died.

  “Not that much, but if you have issues, you can work them out there.”

  She sighed. “Not my thing, really. Even before Greg and the mess. I explored it, but it’s just not my thing.”

  He nodded. “Just let me know. We do have a therapist who works on and off there if you need to talk.”

  It was so sweet, and again, she was thankful for Chris’s friendship with Evan. It was like getting another brother without all the issues she had with her blood brothers. She leaned across the table and kissed his cheek.

  “You really are sweet.”

  His cheeks reddened.

  “Moving in on my man, Jocelyn?” May said with a laugh.

  Jocelyn turned to face her and felt her words dry up in her throat. Behind her stood the rest of the Aiona clan, including Kai.

  She swallowed. “Naw. Just thanking him for being so sweet.”

  May looked at her husband. “As I live and breathe, are you blushing, Evan?”

  He grabbed May by the waist. “Make sure you behave or you will get payback.”

  “Only if I’m lucky.”

  Evan kept one arm around May and looked at his in-laws. “What are you doing here?”

  “Night out on the town,” Mr. Aiona said. “Hello, Jocelyn.”

  “Hello again,” she returned with a smile.

  “So are you going to buy your family some dinner tonight?” he asked Evan.

  The smile Evan gave his father-in-law was filled with affection. Evan had never really known his real father and his mother had been a drug addict. Each time Jocelyn saw him with the Aionas, she could sense the connection between May’s family and Evan.

  “Do I have a choice?” Evan asked.

  Danny shook his head. “Not really.”

  Feeling like an interloper, she started to move out of the booth. “Why don’t I let y’all have a family dinner? I was supposed to eat with Chris and Cynthia, but she was kind of queasy so they went home.”

  Danny patted her hand. “No, you join us. We need a lovely lady to make dinner enjoyable.”

  She glanced at Kai but his face still held no expression.

  “Sure, darlin’. May says we always need a woman around to keep us in line,” Evan said.

  “Okay.” She didn’t dare look at Kai while they were hustled out to a bigger table. Of course, Danny worked it so that Kai and she were sitting together.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, leaning so close she could feel his heat. It took all her control not to lean closer and rub up against him.

  She looked up. “What for?”

  He grimaced. “I know this wasn’t in the plans for your evening.”

  “What, dinner with five very attractive men.” She smiled at the table, then looked at Kai again. “I wasn’t raised to be a fool. And only a fool would turn down this kind of invitation.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but May walked up to the table and started taking their orders. Jocelyn settled back and decided she would make it through the night without jumping his bones.

  “Kai, why don’t you walk Jocelyn to her car,” his father said.

  Heat filled Kai’s face. God, his family never had any kind of subtlety.

  He noticed that Jocelyn paused in pulling on her sweater. But other than that, she said nothing.

  “If Jocelyn doesn’t mind.”

  She gave him an innocent smile. “Why would I mind?”

  She stood and then went to the end of the table where his father sat. He stood and she gave him a hug. “Thank you for the wonderful evening, Danny.”

  “I paid.”

  She sent Evan a snarky smile. “Yeah, well, who would have paid if we had been alone?”

  “You’re as bad as your brother so I know I would have.”

  She laughed and walked to him. She leaned down, hugged him from behind and kissed his cheek. Kai knew it was a brotherly affection, but he felt a jab of irritation when Evan whispered something in her ear. Nodding, she stood up and looked at him.

  “Ready?”

  He nodded and followed her through the door. It was hard to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. It had taken every brain cell he had to concentrate since he’d walked into Dupree’s and seen her sitting across the table from his brother-in-law. What she was wearing didn’t help. As usual, it was bright. Neon pink sleeveless shirt, tucked into very worn blue jean shorts. And those legs…they went on for fucking forever. He had been dreaming of them wrapped around his waist.

  “I hope you don’t think I planned what happened tonight.”

  His brain wasn’t really working so it took him a minute to figure out just what she was saying. It was kind of hard to form words when there was no blood in your brain.

  “Uh, I didn’t think that.”

  She relaxed as she walked beside him. “Good. While I’ve gotten to be very fond of your father, I would never work with him to trap you into spending time with me.”

  He looked at her profile, trying to figure out if she was joking. When he saw nothing on her face to tell she was, he shook his head.

  “You don’t have to trap me to spend time with me.”

  They reached the rental he recognized. She rummaged through her purse.

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  She pulled her keys out of her purse and frowned at him. “You haven’t called me in over a week. I kissed you and you gave me the crap about me being ready.”

  He almost reacted to the anger but he could
see the pain beneath it. He had never expected to hurt her.

  “I told you to let me know when you were ready for more.”

  She narrowed her eyes and even in the dim parking lot light, he could see her irritation. “Really? So you’re not avoiding me?”

  Of course he was. If he had spent any time with her, he wouldn’t have been able to keep his hands off her. But he knew better than to tell her the truth.

  “No.”

  “So you just avoid the days I’m working at the bakery?”

  He couldn’t think of anything to say.

  She brushed past him to the driver side of the car. “Never mind. Listen, I am not some kind of charity case. I won’t bother you anymore.”

  He grabbed her arm and she froze. He silently cursed himself, but he wasn’t going to back down. He eased her around to face him.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to spend time with you.”

  “Then what? What the fuck is up your ass?”

  “If I spend any time with you, I want my hands on you. Hell, I was close to touching you under the table at dinner. It’s embarrassing.”

  He let go of her and paced back and forth, frustration riding his back. He had made sure to leave her alone, let her have her time. And what did he get? Nastiness. Women never change. They say they want a good man, a nice man, and you give them that and get shit.

  “So you’ve been avoiding me because you’re afraid I’m not ready?”

  He stopped and looked at her. “You just got here, and let’s be honest, I’ve heard some of the stuff that has been talked about. Hard to avoid. So yeah, I was trying to be good and not bother you.”

  She let out a frustrated sound that sounded more like a growl than a sigh. “I am sick to death of people deciding what is best for me.”

  “I—”

  “No. You can hide behind that, you can say that you were trying to give me time, but you weren’t. Let’s be honest. You can’t keep your hands to yourself? Like I’m so pathetic I can’t say no?”

  He opened his mouth but she rolled right over him. She grabbed his shirt and yanked him to her. Before he could react, she was kissing him. Her tongue slipped past his lips, slid over his and then she pulled back. She was breathing heavily, her breasts rising above the neckline of her shirt.

  “Ask me now. See if I want you in my bed tonight.”

  “Jocelyn.”

  “Yeah. Never mind. At least I don’t have to hear excuses from my batteries.”

  With that, she marched to her car, slid in and started it. He was still trying to get his brain to function again and she was pulling out of the parking lot, almost running over his toes in the process. By the time he could, he cursed.

  “Having trouble with the ladies?” Evan asked.

  Fuck. “No.”

  Evan chuckled as he walked toward him. “I came out here to keep an eye on you, but apparently I need to keep an eye on Jocelyn.”

  Kai closed his eyes and willed embarrassment away. Damn, nothing like having another man witness Jocelyn bitching him out.

  “Have you really been avoiding her?”

  Kai opened his eyes. “Yeah. She’s…well, she’s a little too much to resist.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  He gave his brother-in-law a strange look. Evan shrugged.

  “She was like a little sister to me. I never had one, so I sort of adopted both her and Shannon.”

  “Is Shannon any sweeter?”

  “A bit, if you don’t mind her mouth. Woman is always telling people what to do with their lives. But you have to give Jocelyn some credit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before she came here, she was barely surviving from what Chris told me. She wasn’t acting like her old self.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, you are starting to see why she was good at her career. She did have the nickname of Queen Jocelyn when she was in the kitchen. She knows how to handle herself.”

  Kai blew out a breath.

  “You are going after her, aren’t you?”

  Kai looked at the exit to the street, “No. Not tonight. She needs some time to cool off.”

  Evan slipped an arm over his shoulder. “I’m not going to push, but I will say you have a lot to learn about women.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jocelyn came awake on a gasp. She gulped in deep breaths of air as she tried to calm her heart. Sweat dripped down her spine as she shivered. It had been bad, so vivid. It had been weeks since she’d dreamed of the attack. She rubbed her arms, trying to push away the memory of what it had felt like when Greg had griped them, leaving marks.

  “Just a dream, Jocelyn.” The words came out as if a prayer. She closed her eyes, pulled in a deep breath, then released it as she opened her eyes again.

  She swung her legs over to the side of the bed. With more strength than she thought she had, she pushed out of bed and padded barefoot to the bathroom. She turned on the light and winced as the bright light pierced her eyes. Damn. She couldn’t go without light. It was a moonless night, and she didn’t know the house well enough yet. She rubbed her temples as her head started to pound. Of course, a headache. Just what she needed. Not that she’d had a wonderful evening to begin with. First her embarrassment with Kai, then her dream.

  She opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed some aspirin. She dropped two into her hand, then placed the bottle back on the shelf. It sat next to the prescribed meds. One was to make her happy, to forget everything and just float through life without any worries. She had been on them until recently, until she’d convinced her doctor she hadn’t needed them anymore.

  Maybe she did. But she couldn’t take going through life in slow motion. She hadn’t had any panic attacks while on them, but she hadn’t felt anything else. She would rather live in terror than exist like that.

  She filled a cup with water as she thought about the sleeping medication also in her cabinet. She could take it tonight, but it would make it impossible for her to make it to work tomorrow. She needed a good eight hours of sleep before they wore off. And she didn’t want to take something that made it hard to wake up. She didn’t want to exist in that dream.

  While staring at the bottles, she tossed the aspirin in her mouth and then drank the water. It was a tiny bit of defiance, or maybe she was trying to test her resolve. She would not succumb to them. Not tonight.

  She turned off the light and walked back into her bedroom. A glance at the clock told her she wouldn’t be getting much more sleep, so she went into the kitchen to start coffee.

  She waited at the counter and thought about her embarrassing behavior. What the hell had she been thinking? She hadn’t been.

  The problem was she felt smothered. Everyone was mothering her, handling her with kid gloves. It had fit her when she was on the drugs. It hadn’t bothered her at all. Hell, she couldn’t feel a damn thing on them. So what was a little overbearing from well-meaning friends? And she had needed it if she were honest with herself. Mike had been a complete ass about the whole thing, and when she had needed someone to lean on he had left. It wasn’t the way she had expected that relationship to work out. In fact, they had talked of marriage, but that had dissolved because of Greg’s behavior. Of course, if there was one thing that came out of what had happened, it was learning what a complete loser Mike had been. He might be considered a celebrity chef, but he was an ass in her book.

  But some of her dreams had disappeared when he’d left... They had talked of opening up a restaurant together. She sighed, but that idea was no longer viable. Right now, she didn’t know what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. And that was fine. Even if she had to repeat that phrase a few times.

  Mike had tried to mend fences months later after the attack. While she had accepted his apology, she has sent him packing. She didn’t need a man who wouldn’t stand by her when she needed him.

  Her coffee machine dinged that it was ready and she filled a cup and walked into
the small kitchenette area. The dream might have cropped up because of her behavior. The rush of emotions could have brought on the nightmare that had plagued her after the attack. Or could it be that she was sliding? She waited for the regular panic to fill her, but it didn’t. In fact, the only thing she felt right now was well, being embarrassed as hell.

  She closed her eyes and the image of Kai’s expression when she left him standing in the parking lot came to the forefront of her mind. Damn, she had been such a bitch. It hadn’t really been his fault. No, partially it was his fault.

  Did she really believe the bullshit that he didn’t come around her because he couldn’t keep his hands off her? She scoffed and took a sip of coffee. As she went over the night in her mind, little things came to mind. His knee kept brushing against hers, and every now and then he’d seemed to lean closer to her. Maybe there had been a little truth in that. He had been beyond aroused when she’d kissed him. She’d felt the long, hard length of him through their layers of clothing.

  She sighed. It still didn’t make it right that he was giving her space without telling her, other than the cryptic comments. That pissed her off. Maybe it was because people had been walking on eggshells around her for months. Even before Greg had attacked her, she had become a raving bitch. Hard not to with her boss and mentor hassling her, making her life a living hell. Not to mention Mike accusing her of cheating. She had started to implode and had gone full diva on more than one employee.

  With a sigh, she realized she would have to apologize to Kai. It was going to suck, but she would do it. Then, the ball would be in his court.

  “Hey, Kai, isn’t that your lady?” Vince said. For the second time in as many days, there was someone waiting for him when they docked. This time it was Jocelyn. Damn, she looked good. She was wearing another halter dress, this one in sunny yellow. It was cut down far enough to give him a fantastic view of the swell of her breasts. He sighed.

  “Damn, if you aren’t going to date her, do you mind if I call her?” Tommy asked.

  He resisted the urge to break Tommy’s legs and then beat him over the head with an oar. Barely.

  “No. You stay away from her or I’ll kill you.”