Bad Habits (Nashville Outlaws #1)

by Cheryl Douglas

  “Sounds great.” She sighed. “Thanks.”

  “What’s wrong?” I recognized that sigh, and every little hint at a mood change. Sometimes I felt like I knew this girl better than I knew myself. “Something got you down this mornin’, sweetness?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doin’, Knox.” She rested her chin in her upturned palm. “I really like Auden. He says he likes me too. Yet I’m holding back with him and I don’t know why. Am I crazy or what?”

  “Or what.” I knew I had to tread lightly. She was coming to me for advice as a friend, someone she trusted to have her best interests at heart. I needed to think about what was best for her, not what I wanted. “Babe, you haven’t known him all that long,” I said, cracking eggs into a non-stick skillet. “And no one could blame you for being a little gun shy after what went down with the other jackass.”

  She took a sip of coffee before she said, “I know, but I don’t wanna screw up a good thing just ‘cause I’m scared.”

  I added bacon to another skillet before popping four slices of bread in the toaster.

  “Here I am sitting on my lazy ass,” she said. “I haven’t even offered to help.”

  “Not enough room in this kitchen for two, but thanks.” I wouldn’t mind crowding in behind her while she manned the stove though. Feeling that firm little ass pressed against me while I kissed her neck and let my hands explore…

  “Jesus Knox, be careful! You’re not even wearing a shirt.”

  The bacon grease was spitting out of the pan, landing on my chest and I’d been too caught up in my fantasy to even notice.

  She jumped up and turned the burners down before wetting a paper towel with water and dabbing my chest.

  Damn. I closed my hands around her wrist, looking down into her eyes. I was dying to kiss her, but knew if I did that would provoke a bunch of questions I wasn’t ready to answer. My friendship with Cece meant everything to me. And before I thought about putting it at risk I had to think it through, weigh the pros and cons, just like I knew she would.

  She turned quickly, a blush creeping up her cheeks. “You’re right, there’s not enough room for both of us in here. I’ve got this.”

  I tried to tear myself away, but couldn’t. I closed my hands around her waist instead, inhaling deeply. As long as I could keep it light I wouldn’t have to stop touching her. “Damn, girl. You smell good. What is that?”

  She giggled when I brushed my stubble over her collarbone. “Vanilla sugar.”

  “Hmm, perfect for my sweet tooth,” I growled, skimming my teeth over her shoulder. “No calories and my dentist wouldn’t even object.”

  She leaned into me, her breath stalling as she turned the burners off. “Damn, Knox. Don’t do that. Every girl has a spot… and you just found mine.”

  “Oh yeah?” I wanted to lick every inch of her. My hands moved up, grazing the bare skin under her tank. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” My tongue was exploring now, tracing her neck, grazing her soft skin with my teeth. I was hurtling towards the point of no return and with a bed just a few feet away I wasn’t sure I could stop myself.

  “Knox…” She gasped, closing her hands over mine. “I know we’ve, uh, fooled around before, but I thought we agreed it was a bad idea.”

  “Bad idea.” I sucked her earlobe into my mouth before nibbling it. “Why again?”

  “Because of…” She sighed, curling her arms behind her, around my neck, giving my hands free rein. “Our friendship.”

  “Right.” I flattened my hand against her taut stomach, teasing the button on her shorts. I was barreling full steam ahead, thinking about how long it would take to get her naked, but I had to slow the hell down and think this shit through.

  This wasn’t just any woman. This was Cece. And I’d only been having these obsessive thoughts about her for like, a day. What if I felt differently next week and this stupid stunt ruined everything?

  I took a step back, drawing a shaky breath. “You’re right.” I covered my face with my hands. “Shit, I’m sorry, Ce. I don’t know what the hell I was thinkin’.” Yes, I do. I was thinking I may be falling for you. Hard.

  “It’s okay.” She smiled, touching my hand. “It’s no big deal. Honest. Why don’t you go grab a quick shower while I plate this up?”

  A shower. Right. An ice cold shower. That’s what I needed.

  Cece

  By the time Knox returned to the table, I was feeling better. More grounded. It scared me how ready I’d been to jump into bed with him. I was literally two seconds away from begging him… or dropping to my knees and offering to pleasure him right there in his kitchen. What the hell was wrong with me? This was Knox! We didn’t do shit like that. Okay, maybe we did. But we hadn’t in a hell of a long time.

  “Hey.” He brushed a kiss over my cheek. “I’m sorry, babe. Forgive me?”

  “Nothing to forgive.” I forced a smile as I pushed his juice glass toward him when he sat down across from me. “You woke up and wanted a little action. I get it.” I had to chock it up to morning wood or we could both be in trouble. More importantly, our relationship could be in trouble and I couldn’t have that.

  He dug into his breakfast, looking as awkward as I felt. “You were tellin’ me about your problem with Auden?” he said, topping his toast with an egg.

  Ugh. I didn’t want to talk about Auden now. But maybe it would help to get Knox and I back on the right track. The platonic friends track. Because I was not considering a friends-with-bennies relationship with this man. Anyone but him. I knew one roll in the sack with Knox would leave me wanting more. Like every day more.

  “Right. Auden.” I bit into a slice of crisp bacon. “Um, so like I was saying, I like him.”

  But if that were true would I have been rubbing up on Knox like a cat in heat? I’d never cheated on a man in my life, and after what happened with Leo I never would, so how could I have been so attracted to Knox if I really was into Auden? It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense anymore. How could I go from being best friends with a guy I spent almost every day with, to picturing him naked, going down on me, in the blink of an eye?

  “Uh huh.” He watched me as I took a bite of bacon. “And he likes you, obviously.” He gestured to me. “Because you’re you, and hot as hell. Any man in his right mind would want you.”

  I wanted to ask if he wanted me, but that would be crossing another line we’d drawn years ago. “You’re sweet,” I said, tucking a stray curl behind my ear. “But yeah, he says he wants me.” I bit my lip, wondering how much I should tell him about my relationship with Auden. If we were going to get firmly back in friends territory after our recent episode, it was probably best to lay it all out there. “He wanted to have sex with me last night—”

  He started coughing and covered his mouth with his hand before reaching for his juice. “Sorry,” he said, holding his hand up. “Went down the wrong way. You were saying?”

  I frowned at him. “That he wanted me to go back to his bus with him last night.”

  He was glaring at his plate when he asked, “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  That was the million dollar question. “I guess I just wasn’t feeling it.” I took a sip of coffee. “And that’s the problem. I should be feeling it. Auden’s great. We had amazing chemistry—”

  “Yeah,” he said, between clenched teeth. “The best you ever had. You told me.”

  Sometimes I forgot Knox wasn’t one of my girlfriends and guys were sometimes weird about that kind of oversharing. Not the guys in his band, of course. I was good friends with all of them, and could say anything to them about sex. But Knox was a different story. He always got a little weird when I talked to him about the guys I’d been with. Just like I shut him down whenever he talked to me about the girls he took home. Weird, I’d never really thought about that before.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Because I rarely censored my thoughts with him, I b
lurted, “Sex.”

  He rolled his eyes. “For the love of God, can we get off sex?”

  I smirked. “Why? You still wishing you hadn’t woken up alone?”

  He pinned me with those light blue eyes. “You have no idea.”

  Wow. Intense. “So yeah, back to Auden.” Because that seemed like the only safe place we had to go right now. “I like him. He likes me. We’re good together. So I can’t figure out my problem. Why am I holding back?”

  “What the hell do I look like, Dr. Phil?” he snapped.

  My jaw dropped. Knox wasn’t the moody or brooding type. He was fun, carefree. Always up for a good time. The guy I went to when I needed a laugh. Or a hug. He was someone who always gave me advice about relationships, so why was he shutting me down all of a sudden?

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t mean to be an asshole, but seriously Ce, I was thirty seconds away throwing you over my shoulder and draggin’ you into my bedroom not more than ten minutes ago.” He bit his lip as his gaze dropped to my breasts. “Tearing your clothes off and takin’ you places you’ve never been before. So forgive me if I’m havin’ a hard time thinkin’ of you with someone else right now.”

  I was tempted to fan my face, that’s how hot I was. Take me places I’d never been before? I had no doubt he was a man of his word and it was taking everything in me not to rise to his unspoken challenge. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” What? What had I done that was so terrible? I didn’t mean to piss him off. I guess I’d missed the memo that stated we weren’t allowed to talk about this shit anymore.

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” He covered his eyes with his hand. “This is me. All me.”

  “Knox, what the hell’s going on here?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  There was a long pause before I said, “Maybe I should go.”

  His hand seized mine before I could move. “Don’t. Dammit, I don’t want you to go. I just…” He sighed. “I don’t wanna talk about him anymore. Can we talk about something else? Anything else?”

  He seemed tortured, and I didn’t know what the hell I’d done to bring this on, but since I wanted to resume some sense of normalcy as much as he did, I said, “Wanna come with me to see my parent’s day after tomorrow?”

  He chuckled, making me smile. “You think if I’m there they’ll be on their best behaviour?”

  Knox knew my parents well enough to know their best behaviour was bat-shit crazy by most people’s standards, but I still loved them. And put up with them. In very, very small doses. “At least you can act as a buffer,” I said, nudging him with my foot under the table. This felt better, like we were back in familiar territory. “Come on, don’t make me go alone.” I was in full-on pout mode now and I knew Knox couldn’t say no to that.

  Two things he couldn’t stand: seeing me pout or cry. And I only resorted to one or the other when absolutely necessary. When I was really desperate I resorted to both.

  He groaned, but his lips were twitching when he said, “You know I can’t say no to you.”

  “You’re the best!” I meant it. Spending a few hours alone with my parents could mess me up for days.

  My dad was an old biker, with a scary mean streak when crossed and my mother was the relentless nag who always set him off. Their arguments never escalated beyond bickering, but the back and forth was constant. When I asked them why they didn’t just divorce already and get it over with, they’d look at me like I was crazy and claim to love each other. I didn’t get it, but I guessed it worked for them.

  “Your old man still working on that ’36 EL Knucklehead?” Knox asked, polishing off his eggs.

  One motorcycle was the same as another to me, but Knox and my father were both obsessed with classic bikes, and had bonded over that obsession from the first time they met. I suspected Knox was the son he’d always wanted. Someone he could watch sports and drink with, ride and fix bikes with, share wild stories about his glory days. Whenever they got together they retreated to my dad’s man cave and didn’t come out until my mother started screaming about the dinner getting cold.

  “I don’t know. He’s always working on something out in the garage.” Since he sold the auto body shop he’d owned for thirty years I suspected he hid out in the garage to get away from my mother. Not that I could blame him. She was a handful. A loud, opinionated, controlling, bossy handful. But we loved her anyway.

  Knox grinned. “Hidin’ from your mom, huh?”

  “You know it.”

  Knox was the only guy my parents ever liked. Not that I’d brought many boyfriends home. Daddy had colorful full sleeves, with a white beard and long hair, who weighed in over three hundred pounds and stood six three. Most guys pissed their pants when they saw him and came up with a convenient excuse to bail before dinner. Not that I could blame them. I’d probably run the other way if I saw him coming too. But my little sister and I had always been daddy’s girls and I knew that would never change. We could do no wrong in his eyes and I was content to let him go on believing we were angels. Pure as the driven snow, or so Daddy thought. No need for him to know there were plenty of tire tracks in that snow.

  Knox leaned back, stretching his arm across the back of the bench seat. “How’s your kid sister? You haven’t mentioned her lately.”

  I was really glad I hadn’t bailed when things were still awkward between us. Hanging back and talking about my family helped re-establish the comfort zone we were used to living in. “She’s good.” I tugged my hair out of the bun and ran my fingers through it. The elastic was pulling a little too tight, catching a few strands.

  Knox watched me run my fingers through my hair, like he hadn’t watched me do it a hundred times before. But this time he seemed transfixed. Shit. Things were getting weird again.

  Back to my sister. “She’s an amazing V.A., and I think she likes freelancing, but it would be nice if she could get a gig in Nashville. You know, as a personal assistant to someone in the biz. You know she’s as obsessed with music as we are.”

  My sister and I had been singing, playing instruments and writing songs together since I was twelve and she was eight. I’d been blessed with a good set of pipes, but she was able to play half a dozen instruments, so I was a little jealous of her sometimes.

  “Yeah.” Knox bit his lip, looking thoughtful. “Hey, you know what, I heard Dade is looking for someone. I should give him a call, see if he might like to meet up with your sister next time she’s in town.”

  “Dade Jarvis?” Like we knew anyone else named Dade. I loved Dade, as a friend. He was a country music God, but he also had the worst track record with women and my sister had been crushing on him since he broke on to the music scene twelve years ago. “Uh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Didn’t I hear he was between girlfriends again?”

  Knox laughed, slapping his palm against the table. “That’s right. I forgot, your little sister has had a thing for him forever, hasn’t she?”

  “Uh yeah, like I said, bad idea.” My sister had the worst taste in men. She loved the bad boys, and unfortunately they loved her back, twice as hard. She was a knockout. And I knew one look at her and our poor old buddy Dade, the ultimate bad boy, would be going down for the count again.

  “Dade would love her.” Knox’s smile spread. “Like seriously, he would owe me big-time for making that introduction.”

  I kicked him under the table. “Would you shut up? That’s my sister you’re talking about. You’re not using her to score points—”

  “Who said anything about scoring points?” he asked, raising his hand. “Dade’s a good buddy. I owe him one for lending us his drummer when Catch was out with Mono last year.”

  We did owe him a favour but I wasn’t serving up my baby sister. I knew she was a grown woman, but I still looked out for her. I loved Dade like a brother, but he was the last guy on the planet I’d want Charli working for. I had no doubt she’d be having his car serviced one day and he’d be servicin
g her the next.

  “Besides,” Knox said, still trying to convince me. “After that shit show with the last fiancée, who cheated on him, he’s sworn off women.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Dade’s sworn off women. For how long, a day?”

  “Come on now,” Knox said, reaching for my hand. He played with my fingertips, running his thumb over my smooth polished nails. “We can trust him. We’ve known the guy forever. If we tell him your sister is off limits, he’ll respect that.”

  It was hard to concentrate now that he’d started drawing circles on my palm with his thumb. Knox had always been a touchy-feely guy and it never bothered me before, but today it was making me all tingly.

  “Don’t be so sure. When my sister sets her sights on something she usually gets it and she hasn’t just had a little thing for Dade. I mean, she’s crushin’ on that man hard, Knox. Put those two in a room together and we’re talking… explosive.”

  “Explosive, huh?” His grin was dirty, but his eyes said it all. “I love explosions. You?”

  I pursed my lips, trying to keep a straight face. I was used to his filthy mouth and the sexual innuendoes, but now that we’d stepped into a gray area in our relationship I wasn’t sure how to deal. “Shut up.”

  “What?” He pulled the silver wave ring off my left hand and moved it to my right. “I’m just sayin’…”

  “I’ve gotta go make sure the girls are up. We’ve got rehearsal in an hour.” I stood, but he was still holding my hand and pulled me back before I could get past him.

  “Hey, think about what I said about letting Charli work for Dade. I think it’d be good for both of them.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but it wasn’t my decision to make. Both Dade and Charli were adults. If they wanted to hook up there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I had enough trouble sorting out the mess that was my own life.

  “I’ll think about it,” I promised. “See ya later.”

  “Can’t wait, beautiful.”

  Chapter 5