Never Say Never (McLaughlin Brothers Book 3)

by Jennifer Ashley

  “Why?” I demand. “For closure?”

  “Yes.”

  He’s a solid wall in front of me. I could go back out through the kitchen, but my blood is hot, and I secretly agree with him. We need to clear the air.

  Not only that, the idea of facing off with Austin, letting everything out, appeals to me. Arguing with him could be bracing.

  “Fine,” I say. “We’ll go to my house. You drive.”

  His brows draw down. “Not exactly neutral ground.”

  “No, but if I throw you out, you’ll have the means to get yourself home.”

  I don’t trust myself going to his house or his office. Not because I think Austin is enough of a jerk to try to confine me in either place, but because I might capitulate once I’m on his territory.

  I love his house, which he and his brothers restored, and his office—the McLaughlin family business—which radiates comfort and camaraderie. I might fling myself into Austin’s arms if he takes me to his home. I’d nearly done so last Sunday night.

  My house is crap, but it has four walls and a roof, and nothing sentimental associated with it. Easy for me to face him there.

  Austin watches me for a long moment, then he gives me a stiff nod. “Fine. Your place. I drive.”

  He turns and strides out, trusting that I’ll follow. I can easily run the other direction, back to the yard and my family and all their cronies, but I join him, and we leave the house together.

  Chapter Six

  Austin

  Brooke is silent during the drive. She lives a few miles from her parents, in an uninspired Phoenix development, the kind that sprang up like mushrooms at the end of the last century. The development has faded now, the houses not that well-built to begin with, and now they’re showing a lot of wear.

  I pull into Brooke’s driveway. Her home is small, with gravel in the tiny front yard and a palo verde tree to lend shade in the hot summer months.

  A few solar lights line her driveway and front walk, pinpricks in the darkness. I hear kids screaming like banshees next door, and loud splashes as they slide into a backyard pool.

  Brooke unlocks her front door. She walks firmly away from me after we enter, leaving me to close the door. I don’t slam it, but all the walls shake.

  “Damn.” I study the crack in the plaster above the doorframe. “I don’t remember it being this bad.”

  “It’s a place to sleep. I don’t need a lot.”

  She’s always said that. Brooke can afford so much more than this, but she wants to show she’s all about business success and not material pleasures. I’m far more into comfort, which was another thing we yelled about. She saw me as frivolous while I tried to show her a person can do well at their job and enjoy life too.

  Brooke is behind the breakfast bar that separates the galley kitchen from the living room. She takes wine glasses down from a cupboard.

  “What’cha doing?” I ask. The fevered heat that had swept me when we’d argued in her family’s dining room has cooled, but we’re both tense. “I thought we were going to fight.”

  “Doesn’t mean we can’t have a glass of wine and be civilized.”

  “Yeah? Does a break-up argument almost two years after the fact call for red or white?”

  “How about a tawny port?”

  “Interesting choice.” I move to the breakfast bar and lean on it, resting my arms on its pristine surface. “I usually drink it with dessert.”

  “It’s all I have.” Brooke wrenches out the cork and trickles the red liquid into two narrow glasses.

  I take the glass she shoves at me and raise it to her. “To …whatever this is.”

  “Closure.” Brooke touches her glass to mine and drinks.

  I take a sip, and everything slows. This port might be all she has in the house, but Brooke knows how to choose a wine. It’s full-bodied and sweet, but at the same time, not heavy. “Very nice.”

  “I don’t have any cigars, sorry.”

  I give her a tight smile. “I’ll forgive you.” I don’t smoke the things anyway, but she thinks I’m all about decadence.

  Brooke takes another sip and sets the glass on the counter. “Are we going to do this?”

  I don’t want to. Airing our grievances now seems like a bad idea. I scrutinize her rundown kitchen cabinets, the small window through which I can clearly hear her neighbor’s kids, and the out-of-date appliances.

  “You know, your ex happens to be in the renovation business. We could do your house. We’d give you a true friends and family discount.”

  Brooke shrugs. “I spend all my time at work. Did you bring me here to drum up business for your brothers?”

  “Not my job. That’s Ryan and my dad.”

  Brooke’s eyes narrow. “Yes, but you’re sales and PR.”

  “True.” I grin. “I’m the sweet-talker. Abby and I do that together now. She’s overhauled the website and finds advertising opportunities, and I talk up the business to the ad platforms and make sure the ads bring in a decent return.”

  “I remember seeing your picture plastered on the side of a bus last year,” Brooke’s lips twitch, amusement at my expense. “Didn’t exactly help get you off my mind.”

  “Yeah, well.” My face heats. “A PR firm’s idea. We didn’t renew our contract with them. But hey, it did bring in some business. People remembered it.”

  “It was … memorable.” Her look turns teasing. “Sexy smile for the ladies.”

  “You know I was smiling at you, sweetheart.” I point one finger around my glass at her.

  Her frown returns. “Don’t give me that.”

  “It’s true. You are the one lady I can’t get off my mind. So, here we go. You never called me, and I never called you. I figured if I did you’d lecture me on being hotheaded and rash, and we’d never solve anything. Then I started wanting you to call—I’d talk to you no matter what, but I guess you were too busy. After a while, I figured you weren’t giving me time to cool off, you were dumping me.”

  “I wasn’t dumping you.” Brooke folds her arms. “Whenever we were together it was … stormy. Not always in a bad way, but it was hard to take. How could I think it would ever be different?”

  “I get that. Or I’m trying to. You wanted to put all your focus on your job, to prove you were good at it. You sure proved it—you’re about to own the business. You won. But the truth is, you never got in touch even when your battles were done. I took that to mean you no longer wanted to be with me. I can deal with that but wish you’d had the courtesy to tell me.”

  “Do not put this all on me.” Her chin is up, Brooke’s signal that she’s full of righteous indignation. “If you were pouting and waiting for me to apologize, what was I supposed to do? Listen to you tell me how right you were?” She deflates a little. “By the time I was ready to swallow my pride and talk to you no matter what, hoping we could still be friends, Calandra’s telling me you have a new girlfriend. Which you didn’t have the courtesy to tell me about.”

  “Because I didn’t think you’d care.” My voice goes up in volume. “I wouldn’t have even known you were alive without Cedric or your mom.”

  “Whose fault is that? From what they told me, you were pretty pissed off at me. I couldn’t deal with soothing you down and concentrating on my job.”

  I shove from the counter and stride to the center of the living room. “Of course I was mad at you. I didn’t think I was so high maintenance that you couldn’t have a job and me at the same time.”

  “I never thought you were high maintenance. But look at us right now. This is what I’m talking about. I couldn’t handle this plus the guys at the dealership expecting me to be a bubble-headed bimbo.”

  “And when I tried to help with that, you threw me out. Okay, I went a little far—I admit that, and I’m sorry. But you weren’t mad that I told them they were dickheads—which they were—you were mad at me for embarrassing you.”

  Brooke charges around the counter to me, her wine forg
otten. “Exactly. You assumed the weak little woman needed her macho boyfriend to stand up for her. I told you, I had to battle it out for myself.”

  “And you did it. I was only trying to make things a little easier for you. So at the end of the day you could relax. Which you seem incapable of doing.”

  “I don’t want easy. I want to earn respect, show I’m not Babbling Brooke who will never be anything but cute and sassy.”

  She was cute and sassy, but I didn’t dare say that right now. I’d be out the door, maybe with the bottle of port thrown at me.

  “You seriously need to realize that people having your back doesn’t mean you’re weak,” I shout. “It means they care about you.”

  “I’m not saying I was totally right.” Brooke’s volume increases to join mine. “I was scared and distracted, and you kept trying to fix everything for me, to cushion me when I wanted to face the world.”

  “Yeah? So sue me.”

  Brooke comes closer, but her hands are fists, nothing tender in her. “Then once I realized how much I missed you … you were with someone else.”

  “Not really my fault.” I know I’m not totally in the right here—my actions could have led to worse consequences than making a couple of guys so angry they quit the dealership. I’d lost my temper and wanted to defend my woman. I’d seen nothing wrong with that, but yes, I’d rushed in without thinking and could have lost her the job. But hell, I couldn’t stand the look on Brooke’s face when she’d left work that night—it had broken my heart. I’d had to do something. I thought she’d overreacted, but then, so had I.

  “I wanted you to see I had options,” I continue. “You showed me you had them too.”

  “And I hated every minute of it.” Brooke is yelling now, leaning into me. “I didn’t want those guys, and I never went out with any of them more than once. I wanted you, damn it. I realized I’d lost you, when you were the very person I needed most in my life.” Her voice breaks on the last words.

  I’ve wound myself up to yell back at her, but her speech floors me. I blink a few times, take another breath, let it out.

  Tears glisten in the corners of her eyes. My Brooke, my strong lady who lets no one cow her, is crying.

  I glimpse in her the same loneliness that’s inside of me.

  I close the small distance between us. Brooke doesn’t step away, and I drag her against me. My hands go under her hair in its sleek, beautiful braid, and I pull her up for a passionate kiss.

  Brooke stiffens, and I expect her to shove me away, but then she relaxes.

  I taste her desire, her longing. Her hair warms my hands, her lips caress mine. The kiss turns deep, and I relearn the exact shape of her mouth, the sensation of her tongue.

  Brooke closes her fingers around my shirt. She rises on her tiptoes, one arm going around me. I remember that too, how she’d hold me so close, as though she’d stay against me forever.

  I can’t get enough of her. I kiss and kiss her. If we don’t stop, our mouths will be raw, but I don’t care.

  Eventually, Brooke breaks the kiss to catch her breath, but she doesn’t move from me. “Austin …”

  I cup her face. “I’ve missed you. Damn, I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too.” Her voice is low, like silk to my jangled senses. “Can we …”

  “Shh.” I kiss her lips. “Don’t talk. We always screw up when we talk.”

  Brooke proves how wonderful she is by kissing me again. The room goes quiet. Even the kids next door have ceased their screaming—probably their parents have called them in for supper. The only sound is the hum of the air-conditioner clicking on and rattling above us, another thing she needs to replace.

  Brooke runs her hands down my back, hooking her thumbs through my belt as she likes to. That way she can caress the hollow at the bottom of my spine, a place that spreads tingling fire through my body.

  I rest my palms on her waist, and as our mouths work, I slide one hand up to cup her breast.

  Brooke stills. I ease from the kiss but don’t release her. Will she say no, tell me to get the hell out? Leave me hard and wanting, facing my empty house?

  She regards me a long moment, while the breeze from the AC chills my skin and ruffles tendrils of her hair.

  Then Brooke makes a raw sound in her throat, grabs my shirt, and shoves it upward, as though trying to tear it from my body.

  I throw it off for her. Brooke gives me a savage smile and flattens her fingers to my chest, finding my nipples and making them tight. I’m burning now, my hard-on pushing against my zipper.

  When Brooke leans in and licks the nipple, I can’t stop my groan. “Oh, man, I’ve missed you.”

  “You mean the sex.” Her whisper brushes her hot breath on my chest. She follows that by suckling me.

  “Shit.” I close my eyes and pull her closer. “I mean you. All of you. You are a hot, sexy woman, and it was hell staying away from you.”

  I don’t want to restart the tirade about why each of us didn’t call the other, so I shut up. Brooke suckles me until I’m crazy, and she’s only doing it to my chest. Whoever thinks a man’s nipples aren’t sensitive is an idiot.

  She lifts her head and wraps herself around me for another kiss. I let my roving fingers find the buttons that hold her shirt closed in front and slowly undo them.

  Brooke shrugs the shirt off, and now we’re skin to skin, only her satin bra between us. Her breasts are as full and beautiful as I remember. I undo the hooks in back and catch the weight of one breast in my hand.

  She lets her bra drop, kissing me while I run my thumb over her skin.

  I remember every inch of her, like the tiny mole above her right nipple, and another on her shoulder. I kiss both. Brooke exhales as I lick them too.

  “Are we really doing this?” she asks in a low voice.

  “I think so.” I kiss her lips then let her go. “Hang on a sec.” I retrieve the bottle of port and glasses from the counter. “Don’t want to waste it.”

  Brooke’s grin makes me want to drop the wine and take her to the floor. I return the grin and follow her out of the living room through the hall to her bedroom. Watching her bare back and shapely ass under her shorts is a fine thing.

  Her bedroom is a mess, the blankets on her bed rumpled, clothes on the floor. She must have taken every shirt and pair of shorts she owns and tossed them against the wall.

  She shakes out the blankets, smoothing them, and sits on the bed. I take a moment to admire my lovely Brooke, who’s leaning on one hand, before I plop down beside her. I pour the port, thumping the bottle to the nightstand.

  “To us,” I say, and we click glasses again. A much better toast than the one we’d started with. I’m also happy we’re drinking this port and not the pinot noir Simon gave me. I want this to be about Brooke and me, no one else.

  “I thought you were hungry.” Brooke slants me a sly glance. “At the house you said you were starving.”

  “I am. But for something different now.” I sip the satisfying port.

  Brooke’s glance turns even more mischievous, and she upends her glass all over my chest.

  The next thing I know, I’m on my back with her licking the port off me. I’m laughing and groaning, trying to hold her while she works.

  She lifts her head, all smiles, her hair coming out of its tight braid and damp with wine. Then she dumps the port onto her chest, and spreads her arms.

  I love my playful Brooke, always have. I had to teach her to play, but she was a good student.

  Brooke squeals with laughter as I roll over her, my tongue getting busy. She’s tugging at my shorts now, wanting them off.

  I make her wait until I’ve licked every drop from her, then I back off the bed and drop my shorts. I go ahead and do my underwear and shoes to save time later.

  Here I am. Naked and unashamed, with my cock straight out to proclaim what’s on my mind.

  Brooke reaches out and strokes me from tip to balls.

  “G
ah.” I curl my hands. I want to savor this time with her, because I may never be near her again, not like this, naked and wanting.

  But all I can picture is me swan diving onto the bed and making hard and fast love to her. Brooke will squirm and laugh, and I’ll come in thirty seconds.

  Speaking of that … I turn and snatch up my shorts, digging through the pockets. There’s my wallet and inside, a condom, brand new and ready to go. I hold it up in triumph.

  Brooke cocks a brow. “Oh, great. Why are you so prepared? Did you plan this?”

  My face heats. “How could I have planned this? No, this is Ben’s fault. He barges into my office after he starts going out with Erin and tells me I have to always carry a condom in my wallet. It’s a long story …”

  “Because you convinced him to carry one.” Brooke shakes her head at my surprised expression. “I know. Abby told me. Erin told her.”

  I imagine the ladies whispering about us and laughing, and my self-consciousness rises. “No secrets in this family.”

  “Are you going to put it on, or stand there and hold it?”

  Before I can answer, Brooke leans to me and licks where her fingertips have touched.

  “Uh …” My eyes close and I lose the thread of the conversation.

  The condom leaves my fingers. I hear foil rip and then feel the wet material brush my cock. Brooke’s skilled hands unroll it up my shaft, sheathing me.

  “I guess that answers that,” I say in a strangled voice.

  “Austin.” Brooke stands up. She slides off her sandals, then unbuttons her shorts and shimmies out of them as she steps to me.

  I expect her to continue speaking, but once she says my name, she falls silent. Our laughter dies away, and I kiss her.

  Before this, we’d been playing, seeing how far we’d take things. Now she’s warm in my arms. Brooke’s eyes close as she kisses me, and I know I’m in the right place in the universe.

  I gently guide her back to the bed, and we fall upon it.

  Chapter Seven

  Brooke