Coming Apart at the Seams

by Jenna Sutton

  He tore his eyes away, but it was too late. The hard-on he’d woken up with had returned, and he cursed under his breath.

  Her head jerked toward him at the sound, her eyebrows winging up her forehead. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he mumbled.

  He enjoyed Teagan’s company, but if his body kept acting this way whenever he was around her, he was going to have to stop hanging out with her. It was impossible to avoid touching her altogether, and walking around half hard wasn’t comfortable.

  He’d always had complete control over his body, unlike his mouth, and he didn’t know why it got excited around Teagan. She was his friend and his best friend’s little sister.

  He’d been having sex four times a week, sometimes five, with a couple of women he’d met at the gym, so it wasn’t as if he were sex-deprived. He might need to add another woman to the rotation, maybe someone dark-haired and blue-eyed.

  Teagan pulled her robe closed and cinched the tie around her waist before leaning against the counter. She yawned, not one of those delicate ones that women give behind their hands, but a jaw-popping one.

  “Late night?” he asked.

  He told himself he was way too interested in what she’d been doing, but that didn’t stop him from leaning forward to hear her response. She nodded, but surprisingly she didn’t elaborate. He narrowed his eyes. Was she purposely not telling him what she’d done last night?

  “Doing?” he persisted.

  The coffeemaker beeped, and Teagan pushed away from the counter without answering. She opened the cabinet, pulled out two mugs, and filled them with coffee.

  Grabbing some half-and-half from the fridge, she splashed a generous amount in his mug, just as he liked it. She dumped a huge amount of sugar into her coffee, and he shuddered at the thought of how sweet it would be.

  She placed his mug in front of him before picking up hers. She gazed at him over the rim of it as she blew on her coffee.

  “So, you’re bored,” she stated flatly. “You’re desperate for company, and you want to do something touristy today.”

  She took a small sip of her coffee, waiting for his reply.

  “Right,” he answered, although he wasn’t being entirely truthful.

  He wasn’t desperate for company. He knew other people in the city now. In fact, he knew more than a few in the biblical sense. And he definitely wasn’t bored. How could he be when he spent so much time with Teagan?

  “What do you have in mind?” she asked, pushing her tangled hair away from her face.

  “Brunch. JFK Library.”

  She stared at him, an unreadable expression on her pretty face. When she didn’t respond, his stomach cramped a little at the thought that she might not want to go with him. The outing wouldn’t be any fun without her.

  After a long moment, Teagan nodded and left him in the kitchen, presumably to get ready. As he raised his mug and took a drink, he realized two things: he didn’t like her coffee, and he didn’t want to spend his free time with anyone but her.

  Chapter 7

  “I had no idea my family had so much in common with JFK’s family,” Teagan said as she stood in front of a large exhibit in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Nick looked over the plaque next to the exhibit, which traced the thirty-fifth president’s ancestry all the way back to Ireland, where the Fitzgerald and the Kennedy families hailed from.

  “Most Irish immigrants came to America because of the potato famine, you know, but my great-great-grandfather got here several years before that happened. We don’t know for sure why he left Ireland, but we think he got into some trouble with the British.”

  Nick cocked his head, interested to hear more about the man who built Riley O’Brien & Co. He loved history, and that was why he’d decided to major in American history at USC.

  A lot of people assumed he had chosen history because it was an easy major. There were certain undemanding majors that jocks picked so they could maintain their academic eligibility, and history was one of them.

  But he’d settled on history because he’d always been interested in the past and how it impacted the present. People would be surprised to find out he watched the History Channel a lot more than he watched ESPN.

  “How d-d-d-did he get to the Bay Area?” he asked.

  “We’re not sure. My Grandma Vi was interested in genealogy, and she found out he came here on a coffin ship from Dublin. He arrived in Boston in 1839, and then he showed up in San Francisco in 1843.”

  “Go on,” he prompted Teagan, using one of his many verbal tricks that encouraged other people to keep talking.

  She stared at him. “Are you really that interested?”

  He nodded emphatically, and she smiled. He stared at her rosy lips, watching them shape words he had trouble pronouncing.

  “Well, once Riley O’Brien arrived in San Francisco, he opened a dry goods store. His store was known for having the largest selection and the best price—basically the Walmart of the 1800s.”

  Her description made him laugh. She certainly had a way of painting a picture with a few words. It was just one of the many reasons he had so much fun when he was with her.

  “One of the biggest mysteries about Riley O’Brien is where he got his money to open the store,” she continued.

  He raised his eyebrows. By and large, Irish immigrants had been poor, and the ones who’d had money were usually involved in all sorts of illegal activities.

  “Criminal?” he guessed.

  “Maybe. But there might be another explanation. Grandma Vi found a book with a bunch of posters advertising fights across the U.S. in the early 1840s, and some of them referred to a brawler called the Irish Mountain. I think the Irish Mountain was Riley O’Brien.”

  “Makes sense,” he agreed. He couldn’t imagine many men who would have been larger than Riley O’Brien. “And the jeans?”

  Teagan nodded, understanding his question. Sometimes he felt as if she could read his mind.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” she warned him.

  “Continue,” he directed, using yet another verbal prompt. He had a lot of them.

  “We’re not sure how Rileys came to be, exactly. It’s urban legend, for the most part. Apparently, quite a few of Riley O’Brien’s customers were angry the pants he’d sold them weren’t very durable.”

  “Prospectors?”

  “No, the Gold Rush hadn’t started yet. These were just regular working guys. Somehow he got the idea to make pants out of the same canvas material that tents were made out of. Of course, the material was a light color, and it showed dirt, so he sent a swatch of tent material to fabric manufacturers in France looking for a similar material in a darker color. They sent him a fabric called serge de nimes, which is basically serge fabric from the town of Nimes. That’s why it’s known as denim.”

  “France?”

  “Yes. Back then, the French were a lot more advanced than other countries in producing textiles. Riley O’Brien had to ship the denim in bulk from France to San Francisco, where he had a team of seamstresses to sew the pants.”

  “Cool.”

  He found the entire history of the O’Brien family fascinating. In fact, he knew more about Teagan’s ancestry than his own. He didn’t know the origin of his last name, and he didn’t know where his ancestors were from.

  Teagan shifted next to him, drawing his gaze. Her sundress was the color of watermelon, and a cardigan sweater of the same color draped over her arm. And just like watermelon, she looked cool and sweet and reminded him of summer.

  She had twisted her dark hair on top of her head, leaving her shoulders bare except for the skinny straps of her sundress. It dipped a little in the front, revealing her abundant cleavage, and Nick wished for the hundredth time she’d worn something else—something that didn’t make him t
hink about running his tongue down the valley between those plump mounds.

  They’d reached the end of the permanent exhibits, and Teagan turned to face him. “Do you want to see the special exhibit, too?”

  He nodded. He was really excited about the exhibit, which was called Moon Shot: JFK and Space Exploration.

  “I’m so glad.” She smiled brightly. “I saw it advertised on the side of a bus, and I’ve been dying to see it since then.”

  She shifted her brown leather bag from one shoulder to the other, and he noticed deep red grooves where its straps had dug into her creamy skin. It must be heavy.

  For some reason, it bothered him that the bag had marred her smooth skin. He didn’t want her to have to lug it around any longer, so he reached over and gently pulled it from her shoulder.

  Holding the bag loosely in his grip, Nick was surprised by how much it weighed. What the hell does she have in it? A set of encyclopedias?

  He transferred her bag to his shoulder, where it settled comfortably. He couldn’t care less if someone saw him carrying a purse. There weren’t many people who doubted his masculinity, at least not to his face.

  Teagan smiled in appreciation. “Thanks. My shoulder was starting to hurt.”

  Before he thought about it, Nick stroked the marks on her shoulders, running his fingers over them. Her skin was so warm and smooth, and he couldn’t stop himself from tracing her delicate collarbone before touching the silky skin of her throat.

  She swallowed, and he felt the movement against his fingers. She looked up into his face, her eyes a dreamy dark blue behind her glasses.

  “Nick,” she said huskily, “are you only spending time with me because you’re bored? Because you don’t know anyone else in Boston?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Frowning, he dropped his hand from her throat. He didn’t know why he kept coming back to her door, time after time. He didn’t know why he craved the sound of her voice, the sight of her smile, the music of her laughter.

  He didn’t know why he thought about her when they weren’t together, even when he fucked other women. He didn’t know why he was surly and bad-tempered on the days when he didn’t see her.

  He didn’t know why . . .

  * * *

  Teagan didn’t know why she’d asked such a stupid question when she already knew the answer: Nick spent time with her because they were friends.

  She needed to keep reminding herself of that fact before she made a fool of herself over him. He already had enough women doing that.

  She turned away from his golden good looks and headed into the special exhibit, determined to focus on how President Kennedy had managed to get America to the moon before Russia.

  As she studied a model of the Friendship 7 Project Mercury space capsule, Nick joined her. She gave him a sideways glance, noting that he managed to look manly even though he carried a purse.

  His big hand pressed against the leather, holding it close to his body, and not for the first time, she noticed his fingers. They were long, tapered, and tipped with short nails. She really loved his hands, and when they were together, she stared at them a lot, imagining them on her breasts and between her legs.

  He had really nice forearms, too—tan and sinewy with muscle. She especially liked it when he wore a long-sleeved, button-down shirt and rolled up the cuffs in front of her. It was so erotic, and it always made her panties damp.

  Right now, though, a short-sleeved USC T-shirt showed his forearms. It was ancient, maybe even one of the shirts he’d had since college, and the faded red cotton was soft and clung tightly to his torso, almost like he’d outgrown it a bit.

  He’d paired the tee with khaki cargo shorts that had definitely seen better days. They were frayed at the bottom, and one of the pockets was missing.

  She wondered if his shorts were loose enough to slip her hand in the waistband and run her fingers across his abs. Saliva pooled in her mouth at the thought of what might be under his shorts. She wanted a peek, just so her fantasies would have some basis in reality.

  Pulling her gaze from his drool-worthy body, she found him staring at a picture of the moon with a rapt expression. She imagined he’d sported the same look when he was a little boy.

  “You wanted to be an astronaut when you grew up. Am I right?”

  “Yeah,” he answered without taking his eyes off the picture.

  “Why did you want to be one?”

  He met her eyes. “Because the moon”—he cleared his throat—“is far away.”

  “And you wanted to be far away?”

  He nodded, his eyes shadowed. He moved to stand in front of a glass display case that held a Project Mercury spacesuit, helmet, and boots.

  Teagan digested his answer. She knew his mother had died when he was young, too young to remember her. She couldn’t imagine growing up without a mother. She was a daddy’s girl, but she and her mom had a special relationship, too.

  “When did you stop wanting to be an astronaut?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She frowned, wondering why he played football if he wanted to be something else. She strongly believed people should follow their dreams.

  “Did you ever think of pursuing it?” she asked, moving to the next part of the exhibit, a lunar sample that was brought back to Earth by the Apollo 15 mission.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too tall.”

  She’d never considered Nick’s height might be an issue. How strange that one of the things that made him a great wide receiver also prevented him from being an astronaut.

  “You?” he asked.

  She cocked her head. “What?”

  “Your little-girl dreams.”

  “Oh, I wanted to be a ballerina, just like thousands of other little girls. But I changed my mind when I was twelve or thirteen.”

  “Because?”

  When she didn’t answer, he turned to spear her with his light green gaze. He raised his eyebrows, a silent question.

  “Obviously, I don’t have the body of a ballet dancer,” she replied, laughing self-consciously.

  Nick’s eyes narrowed before dropping to her chest, and she resisted the urge to shield her breasts with her sweater. She wasn’t ashamed of her body, not exactly, but it was certainly more robust than she would have liked.

  “No,” he said slowly. “You don’t.”

  Teagan wished she had lied and told him that she had wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. Desperate to change the subject, she asked, “When do you leave for training camp?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Oh! I didn’t know it was so soon.”

  Nodding, he clasped her elbow to move her out of the way as a large mass of people walked by. He dropped his hand to her waist, and the heat of it burned through her thin sundress.

  They’d reached the end of the special exhibit, and he ushered her out the door with a hand on her lower back. He touched her a lot, casual contact that didn’t matter to him but made her heart beat faster.

  Once they were back in the museum’s main area, she turned to him. Although she rarely bought anything at museum gift shops, she had a hard time bypassing them.

  “I want to stop by the gift shop before we leave.”

  He groaned, and she shook her head in exasperation. “Give me twenty minutes, and I’ll meet you out front,” she promised.

  He nodded and walked off, but she called him back after only a few steps. “I need my purse.”

  Grinning, he handed it over before heading outside. She turned toward the gift shop, and she’d barely stepped over the threshold before she spotted something she just had to have. She quickly completed her purchase and walked outside with ten minutes to spare.

  She lo
oked around the grounds, enjoying the view. Located at the tip of the Columbia Point Peninsula, the museum overlooked the entrance to Boston Harbor and the islands to the east of Dorchester Bay. Pine trees, shrubs, and wild roses dotted the land around it.

  Teagan spotted Nick about fifty yards away, sitting on a bench. His blond hair glinted in the sunlight, beckoning her toward him. When she sat down next to him, he shot her a surprised glance.

  “It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for,” she said, placing her purse on the ground between their feet.

  He nodded as a strong breeze blew a strand of his hair into her face. Waving it away, she tucked it behind his ear.

  “Are you going to cut your hair anytime soon? It’s almost as long as mine.”

  She was exaggerating, but she’d never seen it so long. It was thick and shiny, and she knew women who paid thousands of dollars a year to reproduce the shade he came by naturally.

  He nodded. “Before I leave.”

  “Is this some kind of silly superstition?” she asked, cocking her head.

  He laughed softly. “Silly? No.”

  “So you let your hair grow out during the off-season, and then cut it right before training camp?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you cut it throughout the season?”

  He nodded.

  “How long have you had this tradition?”

  He smiled at her word choice. “Since my first season in Denver.”

  “Are you nervous about playing with a new team?”

  Turning his head, he met her eyes. Something flicked in their depths before he looked away.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s making you the most nervous?”

  He rolled his shoulders, and she waited patiently for him to answer her question. When he didn’t, she nudged his shoulder with hers.

  “Tell me.”

  “New teammates, new plays, new coaches.”

  “I’d be petrified.”