by Hadley Quinn
Her eyes narrowed but she had no reply.
For a moment, I didn’t know what exactly it was about this lady that set me off, but when she started to stare at me again, it all came rushing back. I didn’t like it—the intensity her eyes seemed to hold—so when I slipped into my SUV without another word, I didn’t feel bad in the least bit.
Thankfully she walked away, but still, as I backed out of my spot, carefully checking that my path was clear, I feared she was going to jump out and scare the shit out of me again. The entire drive home creeped me the hell out and I had a constant dread that she was going to appear out of nowhere, just to haunt me.
By the time I got home, I’d become paranoid. I rarely ever shopped in the same place more than once in a month, so how the hell would she have tracked my routine? And I never even went on the same day or time, so that made it even more impossible to know my whereabouts. I even changed out the make and model of my vehicles every few months and alternated which one I drove.
I could only conclude that she knew where I lived and had followed me. Lots of people knew what building I lived in, that was no surprise since the media had stalked me quite a bit, but even though I’d always felt extremely comfortable with its security, knowing that the fortune lady also knew was unnerving.
I called up Luke at his security firm and filled him in. At first I thought he’d laugh at me, but he assured me he’d look into it. When he gave me a ring an hour later, he basically told me I had nothing to worry about. Her name was Gretta Sorenson, divorced, thirty-six years old, had a mortgage, a car payment, one teenaged daughter, and nothing that waved a red flag. She didn’t even have a traffic citation against her.
“I think she’s just taking her hobby a little too serious,” Luke said. “That, or she’s just star struck by you. If you want me to pay her a visit, I can do that too.”
Hell, I didn’t want to cause trouble where there wasn’t any. And I really didn’t want anything that could drag my name into negative media.
I told him not to worry about it for now. He was right, she hadn’t done anything wrong. Running into me in a parking lot wasn’t grounds for a legal intervention. I hoped it was all just a coincidence, so I let it go.
Until I got something strange in the mail three days later. I was taking the elevator back up to the sixteenth floor as I shuffled through the pieces I’d picked up from my lock box downstairs. There was a blue envelope—like what would hold a small greeting card—addressed to me but with no return address. I opened it as I stepped into my apartment. Inside was a postcard that had one word written on it:
i v o r y
I threw it from my hands and it drifted to the floor, and after staring at it for several seconds, I forced myself to call Luke. My privacy had been invaded once again, but this time it screamed harassment to me.
Luke did a bit more digging on the woman, discovered that she’d lived in L.A. for a while years back, trying to make her dent in the acting community. She’d been rejected right and left before moving back to Chicago, got married, had a child, divorced five years later, and then opened up her psychic reading business. No doubt she was a scam artist, and I wasn’t going to let her bother me any more.
Luke made a return visit to her store and explained the amount of trouble she could get into if she continued pestering me. Apparently she wouldn’t answer any of his questions, speak about her reasons for harassing me, or even admit to somehow getting a piece of mail into my box. She did, however, offer to do a reading on Luke, which pissed him off. He made it clear that she needed to stay away from me or he’d have to take legal action, and then he left.
All of it rattled me pretty hard, even to the point where I stayed home for a few days straight. I considered it to be one of my rejuvenation periods like I had every six weeks or so. I’d catch up on movies, read a couple of books, find new music… All of that helped recharge me, and it especially refueled my creative juices. It was necessary for me to take a few days off from writing and composing every so often, and even though it hadn’t done much good in the past few years, this time it seemed to help.
When I went back to work at my piano, I wrote a new song within five hours. It wasn’t my fastest work, but that’s not what I was hoping for. It was also quite a bit different from what I was used to, but then again, I had stalkers and crazy people and paranoia on my mind. A different subject was nice for once, but it wasn’t something I would ever produce. It did what it was meant to do, though: it inspired me to keep the production rolling.
My technical writing flow was back.
15
You can’t—Ugh! You’re such a cheater!” Ree yelled at me, smacking my arm with her hand as she laughed. “Stop cheating!”
“How am I cheating?” I laughed with her.
“Because I hate losing.”
The look on her face was hilarious, and had she not flat out admitted it, I would have known anyway because of her blatant body language and facial expressions.
“If you’re gonna try to hustle someone at pool, you might want to work on your poker face a little more and not give up halfway through,” I told her, trying to keep a straight face.
She glared at me, and the toughness she was trying to muster up was so freaking funny. “Me hustle you?” she scoffed. “Who’s the hustler here, huh?” she asked, pointing her cue at me.
“Hey, I never said I was bad,” I shrugged. “I only said I hadn’t played for a while and you said it didn’t matter because you were terrible at it. That was a lie, so who’s the hustler now?”
She began racking up the balls for another game since we were playing best of three. I let her win the first one…she was apparently surprised that I got better after warming up a bit when I smeared her in game 2.
Okay, so I was good at billiards. Especially since Luke’s brother opened up his sports bar a few years back and we’d frequent the pool tables afterhours—or before, like now. Marcus never minded as long as we didn’t mess with anything. I used to spend many hours in here a week on my own sometimes, even without Luke. Music was my method of coping, but watching sports and playing pool was my way to shut everything out and stop thinking.
Ree hung up the triangle and asked why I got so quiet all of a sudden. I shared all of that with her and she seemed to consider it for several seconds.
“Wanna know what I took to after I got clean?” she asked as she lined up to break. She paused, eyed her target, and shot the cue hard. Balls clacked around, one stripe went in, and the rest all settled motionless. Standing upright, she faced me. “Don’t laugh, okay?” she added, her mouth forming a tight I’m-trying-not-to-smile type of frown.
“Why would I laugh?” I asked. “Whatever appeals to you—”
“Milking goats.”
I froze where I was, not sure I heard her correctly. “What?”
She chuckled. “You heard me right. Milking goats. One of the counselors at my recovery clinic has a family farm an hour south. As part of our “healing process,” we had to write down a bunch of things—past and present—goals and such, things we wish we hadn’t done, things we wish we could do… Yeah, lots of lists and breaking them down and such. Anyway, Karla saw that I’d never milked a cow before—I’m not even sure why I wrote that one down—so she took me to her family’s dairy farm. Long story short, I kinda liked the goats instead of the cows.”
I leaned against the wall and studied her for a second, ultimately shaking my head. “You’re full of surprises, you know?”
She grinned. “I guess that makes me exciting, yeah? Or is being unpredictable a bit scary to you?”
Truthfully, it kind of was. But I wasn’t sure if it was scary as much as it was refreshing. I’d tried a plethora of new things to keep me from focusing on my losses but nothing seemed to work. The only thing I had as an outlet was my music. Bottling up my feelings had never been an option. I had to get everything out, and if I didn’t do it on my own, it just sort of overflowed out of me anywa
y. I always hoped that the truth I poured out of myself would heal me, set me free from the misery that bound me breathless, but what I got in return was another Platinum album and no other solution to my agony; just a fear that I would never be able to perform again like I used to, and the same constant heartache that wouldn’t go away.
I felt like I’d fucked myself over somehow. I’d laid my heart on the line for everyone to pick apart, and it hadn’t even helped me. To say I was bitter was sort of an understatement. I felt lost. Useless. Incompetent in doing something that used to come so naturally to me. Music had always been my lifeline, but performing had been necessary for my soul. Sharing what I loved used to make me feel complete.
Now…it was almost impossible to feel that way. One night changed my entire life, and it seemed to kick my ass any time I would get up on a stage to share my passion.
“You’re in your own head again,” Ree stated as she lined up for another shot. When the balls stilled, she set the cue on the table and turned to me again. “Let’s go milk some goats.”
It’s not every day a beautiful woman says “let’s go milk some goats.” I found it amusing yet intriguing, so I followed her out the back door to my SUV after Marcus hollered goodbye from the office.
“Okay, point the way,” I instructed as we climbed into my car.
We were going to milk some goats.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been on a farm. I’m not sure if I ever actually had. I’d been to plenty of state fairs because my band used to perform at them years ago, but I didn’t think I’d been on an actual farm.
“So am I dressed okay?” I joked as we walked from a small parking area toward one of three red barns. “These goats…will I impress them enough for them to allow me to squeeze their tits?”
Ree laughed as she looked me up and down. I was just in jeans and a Henley, but she shook her head. “They’re called teats. And you might have fared better with one of your adorable button up shirts but…I’m sure that will do.”
“Adorable button up shirts?” I repeated, thoroughly amused. “And what might that mean?” She suddenly seemed shy, which made me want to press even harder. “Oh come on, my button up shirts are adorable? Or…they are adorable because they’re on me?” I teased.
She was seriously blushing and I was highly entertained right now. View me as a shit, but I wanted to call her out on her attraction to me if she felt that way. I don’t know, maybe I was dying to eliminate that “I like you as a brother” kind of thing. I really didn’t want her to think of me like that. At first I did—it was much easier to associate with females when there was nothing there but friendship—but the more I’d gotten to know Ree, the more I found myself trying to talk myself out of my attraction to her. That told me a lot. And I knew it was healthy for me to move forward, but it scared the hell out of me at the same time.
Finally she stopped right in front of the barn we were headed toward. “You seriously question your sex appeal?” she asked me. “After billions of photos and publications and news shows about you, you don’t know that you’re fucking hot?”
Hot. And fucking hot, at that. Well that was a change from “adorable.” And I was slightly confused by the way she suddenly seemed agitated, so I felt bad that I’d struck a nerve somehow. I took it that I’d embarrassed her, and even though I’d meant to tease her a bit, I guess it wasn’t the best thing to tease about.
A bit humbled, I softly answered, “I don’t care what all of those people think of me. You called me adorable. Then hot. There’s a difference, and to say I’m somewhat interested in what you think of me is a huge understatement. What you think of me matters tremendously, but no one else’s opinion does.”
She raised her eyebrows but then they settled into creases with worry as she glanced down at the ground. I got a great view of that sprinkling of freckles across her nose while she avoided eye contact with me.
“Adorable was just my form of being respectful,” she answered quietly. “I didn’t want to offend you by being too forward with my thoughts, but yes, you are gorgeous, Jude. So handsome in so many ways… Beautiful from the inside out.”
I could say the same thing about her but my voice didn’t want to work at the moment. And the way she seemed so hesitant to say that to me was a bit bothersome. Maybe I was too used to hearing it from no-name people and, like she’d said, media. I didn’t care about any of them, but I did care that she liked what she saw.
I closed the few feet of distance between us, not liking how the mood had turned so lonely for some reason. I respected Ree for everything she stood for and because of the trials in her life that she’d overcome. Yes, she was beautiful, but the inner beauty and outer beauty just magnified each other.
“You can always be straightforward with me,” I said, tipping her chin up to look at me.
My heart was banging in my chest because the second those deep mossy eyes stared back at me, I knew there was no stopping what I was about to do. I wanted to kiss her so bad, the intensity of that desire scared the living hell out of me.
“I feel like I’m straightforward with you,” she whispered. “For the most part.”
Ha, I could totally understand that without asking for clarification. But I was used to being extremely careful with what I said and did around people; giving the wrong impression could get me into a lot of trouble. I didn’t have time for any of that mess again, and furthermore, my life had changed in a heartbeat because of that kind of misunderstood bullshit.
With Ree, it was mutual and I knew it. We’d gotten comfortable around one another in a general sense, but at some point there was a bit of warming up to something more than that. The things in the past had nothing to do with what was going on this time and I needed to avoid letting those thoughts cloud my judgment right now.
I couldn’t deny the interest I had for her, but even with her right here in front of me, ready for me to kiss her, my head was still questioning it. My hand was now cradling the back of her neck. Her palms were against my chest and that’s exactly were her eyes were focused, like she was too nervous to look at me.
Or maybe I’d paused too long, which was likely. I’m sure my over-thinking was great at ruining moments in life that were supposed to be a lot easier than this. What happened to my intuition lately? I guess now was as good a time as ever to start using it.
The bottom line was…I felt I should kiss her, so I did. When she gave me her eyes again, I took her lips too.
16
You’ll never have the opportunity to redo a first kiss with someone. I’ve heard some couples say they still have first-kiss-like moments, where it never gets old and the excitement is always there. I was beginning to believe that type of thing might be true if my first kiss with Ree was any indication.
I may have gotten a little carried away with kissing her, but I sure as hell didn’t regret it. We had quite the physical connection with one another, and soon enough, I had her pressed up against the barn with my tongue in her mouth. Her fingers were tangled in my hair as she petitioned for more with quiet sounds that encouraged me.
It didn’t escape my attention that my manhood was also pressed into her at this point, and what effort I wasn’t quite putting into it yet, Ree easily picked up the slack by moving her hands to my ass and making it more deliberate. I was so turned on I pulled away, just so I could assess the situation a little better instead of risking someone seeing us making out in front of the barn. Ree had said her counselor friend was across the property at the house, but just because I hadn’t seen anyone yet didn’t mean we were alone.
When I pulled her into the barn and shut the door behind us, we got an assortment of greetings, from moos to big and little neighs, but I didn’t bother to notice any of the animals because Ree’s flushed, freshly kissed face was way more interesting to me.
I kissed her again, picking up right where we’d left off outside. She was easy to kiss, and that may sound like a stupid ass thing to think, bu
t being that I’d wanted privacy while we continued to make out told me that I really wanted to keep kissing her.
Or maybe a little more than that since my hands were dying to wander. I was reading her body language loud and clear—at least I hoped I was reading it correctly—and she wanted me as much as I wanted her. I slid my hand to her waist, dipping my fingers into the front to test her reaction.
She moaned when I unbuttoned her jeans, relaxing even more to give me permission. I traded her places, leaning my back against the wall but pulling her backside to me so I could slip my arm around the front of her. My fingers slowly trekked into her panties while I kissed the side of her neck, and the quiet moans that came out of her were assuring, pleasing, and sexy all at the same time.
When I finally touched between her legs, the warmth, the wetness… Hell, it was extremely intense. I knew she liked what I was doing—I could tell the moment I made her come—but I was finally having a fierce desire to be with a woman physically and wanted to sit her ass up on that workbench by the wall and—
The barn door suddenly opened, and thank God it swung toward us so it gave me time to pull my hand out of Ree’s pants. She quickly turned around to face me, so as to hide the fact that her jeans were undone, just as a woman peeked into the barn and saw us.
She appeared surprised that we were in an embrace, and I silently thought if she only knew what we’d been doing five seconds ago…
“I didn’t recognize the vehicle and just wanted to check that it was you,” the lady said with a pleasant smile.
“Yeah, sorry,” Ree answered. “It’s Jude’s SUV. Um, this is Karla,” she informed me. “Karla, meet Jude.”
Karla stepped over to shake my hand, and oh shit, I didn’t know what to do. I’d just gotten Ree off with that hand. There was no way I was going to shake another woman’s hand right after! It was bad enough that I had a raging boner in my pants with its own throbbing pulse—and thankfully Ree had it hidden with her body—but how the hell was I supposed to think straight right now? And this lady stood there, waiting for me to comply, and then she looked at Ree like I was a disrespectful prick when I didn’t.
