by Jess Bryant
“Nothing.” He shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich, chewing before he spoke again, “Just, my little sister is the same way. Says it’s all about the texture. We give her a hard time about it.” His lips twitched again, “She’s kind of a princess too.”
Ashtyn chose to ignore that last remark, “You have a sister?”
She had a vague memory of him mentioning his brothers earlier. Two of them she was fairly certain. But he hadn’t mentioned a sister.
“Yeah, well, half-sister, but we don’t make those distinctions in our family since we’re all equally fucked up enough as it is.”
Ashtyn raised an eyebrow and finished chewing the grape she’d popped into her mouth, “See, that’s the kind of thing that requires further explanation, Tyler. You can’t just say something like that and then not elaborate. I’m too nosy.”
He smirked and picked up his beer, taking another drink before glancing back at her, “You want to hear about my fucked-up family?”
“Absolutely.” She grinned, wiggling in her seat to get more comfortable. “I love knowing I’m not the only one with a screwed-up family life.”
“Yeah. Right.” He rolled his eyes and took another drink of his beer.
“Don’t do that.” She pursed her lips and when his blue eyes flashed back to her, she glared at him, “Don’t pretend you don’t know just how messed up my childhood was. Everyone in this city knows, hell, everyone in the state knows about how I found my mom after her suicide attempt. Whatever princess bullshit you’ve got in your head about me, my life hasn’t been a cakewalk, Tyler.”
He winced and put his beer back down, “You’re right, I’m sorry. I’d forgotten about that to be honest.”
“Yeah well, you’d be the only one if that was true.” She picked up her own beer for the first time and took a few large drinks before wiping her mouth and putting it back on the table.
The room fell silent as they each focused on their food and Ashtyn hated it. She hated the weird tension that seemed to thrum between them now when it hadn’t been there before. She was trying to think of something to say, to change the subject, to get them back to whatever easy sort of friendship they’d begun making when Tyler cleared his throat.
“My mom was my dad’s second wife. He already had a son with his first wife. Vaughn was a teenager when our dad met my mom and truth be told, my mom is only a handful of years older than him. It made things rough on Dad and Vaughn’s relationship to say the least. They’re still estranged.” Tyler stared off into space and then shook his head, “Anyway, Vaughn is eighteen years older than us. Well, me anyway, not quite that many with Hunter. Hunter’s my other older brother. We have the same mom and the same dad.”
Ashtyn licked a crumb off her bottom lip, “That’s doesn’t sound all that fucked up except maybe for the age differences.”
“I haven’t gotten to Tatum yet.”
“That’s your sister?” She raised an eyebrow when he smirked.
“Yeah. She’s the baby of the family.”
Ashtyn narrowed her gaze, “And you said she’s your half-sister so I’m guessing your dad and mom split up at some point?”
“Correct.” Tyler tipped his beer towards her and then snorted, “But the real kicker is that she’s a half-sister to me and Hunter but she’s a full sister to Vaughn.”
“What?” Ashtyn’s mouth fell open of its own accord and she worked to close it again when Tyler laughed.
“Yeah. Dad…” He shook his head, still chuckling, “He had a few other women in between but eventually he ended up back together with Vaughn’s mom and they had Tatum. They’re still together to this day. If it wasn’t for the huge age gap between Vaughn and Tatum and the fact that Hunter and I exist, they’d seem like a perfectly normal family.”
Ashtyn covered her mouth when a laugh tried to escape, “Okay. No, you’re right. That’s not normal.”
“Thank you.” He grinned and she found herself shaking her head in amusement.
“I bet holidays are wild.”
“Nah. Not really.” Tyler shrugged, his mood sobering, “The four of us, Vaughn and Hunter and Tatum and me, we figured out a long time ago that we were better off relying on each other rather than on the man that gave us half of his DNA. Vaughn was always more of a father figure to us than Dad was anyway, so we don’t see our parents much. We’re close though, the four of us. We even have Sunday dinners every week so we can catch up on what everyone’s doing.”
Ashtyn felt a sharp pain beneath her breastbone as she listened to Tyler talk about his family. He made it sound as if it wasn’t a big deal that his father didn’t have much to do with them but she could tell from his expression that it still hurt him. She was glad in that moment to know he had two older brothers to look after him and that he seemed close to his little sister too. She had a feeling family, conventional or not, was just as important to Tyler as it was to her.
She bit her lip, “That’s nice.”
He squinted one eye at her, “Which part?”
She laughed a little, letting him lighten the mood, “Sunday dinners. I like the sound of that.”
“It is nice.” He smiled softly as he tipped his beer back, finishing the contents and then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You do realize if I take you to Vegas that I’ll miss Sunday dinner, right?”
She pursed her lips, “Don’t try to guilt me into backing down. It’s not going to work.”
“Worth a shot.” He shrugged and grabbed his plate, pushing to stand suddenly. “If you’re serious about hitting the road tomorrow, we should get some sleep.”
“Oh…yeah.” She nodded, glancing from him to the blankets and pillows on the couch beside her. “Yeah. Sure.”
He chuckled as he took her empty plate and beer from her, “You do know how to make up a couch to sleep right?”
“Of course I do.” She lied through her teeth and she had a feeling he knew it when he shot her another of those sly grins. “You know, a polite host would offer to give up his bed for his guest.”
Tyler laughed loudly as he headed towards the kitchen, “I never claimed to be polite, princ…” He seemed to catch himself, “Ashtyn.”
She hid a grin even though his back was to her. He hadn’t called her princess. He’d actually used her name. That had to be a good sign.
“If we’re really going to be on the road come tomorrow that means I have nothing but shitty roadside motels in my near future so no, I’m not giving you my bed. I’m going to enjoy my last night of good sleep in my own bed and you, runaway bride, can deal with the couch or ask me to take you home.”
She glared at him when he stepped back into the room, “The couch is fine.”
He gave her a smug wink, “That’s what I thought. Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
She gaped but he only chuckled as he flipped off the kitchen light and then disappeared down the hallway towards his bedroom. She cursed him under her breath as she forced herself to stand and pull apart the sheets and blankets in an attempt at making the couch more comfortable. He didn’t have bedbugs so she pushed that awful thought out of her mind instantly. Then again, who was she to say whatever motel they were forced to stop at on the way to Vegas, wouldn’t? She shivered in disgust as she finally managed to make a small sleeping bag out of the items he’d given her and then crawled inside.
Bedbugs. Roadside motels. A trip to Vegas on the back of a motorcycle with a man she barely knew but wanted to more with every moment that she spent in his company.
Clearly, she had lost her mind today but she wanted this trip more than she’d wanted anything in a long time. She wanted to check off all those seemingly simple items on her bucket list. She wanted to prove that she could and then, once she did, she’d decide if it was just the heat of the moment and her need to be anywhere but married to Aaron. She’d decide if she was ready to come back home and settle down, or if she should add some far riskier activities to an all new bucket li
st.
Like mountain biking in Bolivia.
She bit her lip and stared down the dark hallway at the open bedroom door. She couldn’t see anything on the other side of it. The room was dark but she knew that somewhere in there, Tyler was curled up in blankets as well, probably wondering why the hell he had brought a crazy woman home with him.
Who was Tyler? That was the question that kept her awake until late into the night when her eyes finally grew too heavy to keep open. When she drifted into sleep, she still didn’t have any concrete answers.
All she knew was that her first guess had been wrong. He wasn’t a friend of Aaron’s, no way. He didn’t seem like one of her father’s friends either, but maybe he knew someone in the bridal party? He did seem vaguely familiar though she was certain they’d never met before today. She fell asleep knowing that she’d figure it out eventually.
For now though, all that mattered was that she felt safe with him, that and he’d agreed to take her to Vegas tomorrow.
6
They’d been on the road for over 3 hours and were nearing Memphis. Tyler couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe that they’d made it this far and his passenger had given no indication that she wanted him to stop, turn around, or take her back home. If he’d put money on her changing her mind about this whole stupid road-trip after a good night’s sleep, he’d have lost his entire bank account. She’d been dressed, packed and ready to go by the time he stumbled out of his room and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
For the first hour, he’d all but held his breath, waiting for the tap on his shoulder that would tell him to stop. He knew that riding on the back of a motorcycle was not the most comfortable form of transportation and considering she’d only been on a motorcycle once, the day before, there was no way she was ready for a days-long trip.
By the second hour, he’d been relaxed enough to realize how in tune she was with both him and the bike. She moved when he moved, leaned when he leaned. He’d known then that she was a natural, which annoyed him to no end.
She shouldn’t feel so at ease on the back of his bike. She shouldn’t feel so good tucked behind him, wrapped around him, occasionally resting her head against his back as if he was giving her comfort. She was a high-society debutante and she had no right to fit against him so damn well.
That was what annoyed him the most.
She was beautiful, there was no denying that. He was a red-blooded man so of course he’d noticed. But he hadn’t expected his body to react to her so viscerally. Having her wrapped around him for hours on end, her breasts pressed to his back, her legs straddling his, had begun to fray his nerves somewhere around hour three and he needed to get off the damn bike, stretch his legs and get some space from her for a little while.
Only he didn’t want to be the one to force them to stop first, so he kept driving.
He was almost on the other side of Memphis, the city traffic fading behind them, when he finally felt that tap on the shoulder that he’d been hoping would come. He almost sagged in relief as he signaled to take the next exit and coasted the bike into the gas station at the bottom of the hill.
Once the bike was stopped near one of the pumps, he put down the kickstand and pulled his helmet off as he muttered, “About time.”
“What?” She slid off the bike behind him, remarkably adept at it without that billowing white dress to hinder her movements.
She pulled her own helmet off and his heart gave a weird kick that unsettled him more than this whole stupid trip did. She’d braided her long blonde hair into a thick rope that morning but as she pulled off the helmet the top showed whisps and strands that stuck up all over the place. It was pretty damn adorable considering she didn’t seem to know or care, instead grinning at him as she ungracefully shook her legs like she was trying to get feeling back in them.
“You know, you could have warned me about the vibration.” She pursed her lips but her blue eyes twinkled with mischief.
He frowned, “Vibration?”
“Yeah, straddling a bike for hours on end? The hum of the motor and the vibration of the bike. I thought I was going to have an orgasm for the first half hour.” She laughed and Tyler stared at her, completely dumbstruck.
“I… uh… sorry?” he finally managed to squeak out.
She only laughed again, “No apologies needed. If you’d managed that feat, I’d be thanking you, even if having an orgasm with a motorcycle would be horrifying.”
Tyler blinked at her but couldn’t find the words. They were standing in the middle of a run-down old gas station on the outskirts of Memphis talking about orgasms. Never in a million years could he have predicted this. She just kept surprising him and he couldn’t be sure if he liked it, or hated her for not being at all what he had imagined.
He finally cleared his throat, “So, you wanted to stop. Does that mean you’re ready to head back?”
Ashtyn’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows hit her hairline, “What? No! Of course not, I’m just hungry and could use a bathroom break.”
“Oh…” He felt wariness creep back into his expression and knew she saw it when her pretty lips pursed again.
“Did you really think I was going to give up so easily?” she harrumphed. “Don’t answer that. It’ll make me like you a lot less and I don’t want to have lunch with someone I dislike.”
Tyler scrubbed a hand over his jaw, shaking his head at her logic. She was something else. One second she was talking about orgasms, which was enough to throw any man off his game, and the next she was getting all prissy and scolding him for thinking the worst of her.
Ashtyn Echols was an enigma and he couldn’t figure her out.
“What do you think?”
“Huh?” He glanced back up to find her standing there with her hands on her hips.
“You didn’t listen to a word I said. God, that’s annoying. Do you know how many men in my life ignore me when I talk? All of them. I thought you might be different, Tyler.”
He sighed and admitted the truth because if she was going to throw him off his game, he might as well throw her off hers too, “Sorry sweetheart, but you distracted me with all the talk about lack of orgasms. You can’t drop that in a conversation and then expect a man to forget it quite so fast.”
She rolled her eyes but instead of broaching that topic again she pointed to a little brick building across the road with chipped blue paint, “I think that’s a restaurant. If you want to fill up the bike, I’ll go place an order for us.”
He shook his head immediately, “Not a chance.”
“What? Why?”
“Ashtyn, in case you’ve forgotten, you’re sorta famous and after that little stunt yesterday, running out on your own wedding and leaving your groom at the altar, odds are good you’ve made the news. If we go in that restaurant, they’re likely to recognize you. They’ll take pictures and post it on social media and your family will know exactly where you are and likely call the authorities to come get you and haul you back home so your Senator Daddy can keep you locked away and protected from the media circus you created.”
Her perfect cupid’s bow mouth pulled down at the corners, “Oh… I didn’t think about that.”
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t really all that worried about someone recognizing her, but it was possible. After all, her father was a senator for the great state of Tennessee and Tyler had no doubt her runaway bride routine had made the news considering the jilted groom was the esteemed mayor. But they weren’t in Nashville anymore and the more miles they put between them and the city the less likely it would be that someone would notice Ashtyn as anything more than a pretty girl on a motorcycle.
He was more concerned with keeping her uncomfortable, which he knew was despicable but still a major part of his plan. The more uncomfortable he made her the more likely she would be to scrap this whole idea and tell him to take her home. She’d grown up with money and power so taking away all the perks of that lifestyle would undoubtedly
leave her fantasy of a fun-filled road-trip shattered sooner or later. He just had to hope it was sooner rather than later.
“So we shouldn’t go into any restaurants?” She furrowed her brow and glanced around. “I guess I’ll run into the gas station and see what kind of food they have. Tell me what you want and I’ll get you something while you fill the bike up.”
Tyler was having a hard time believing his ears, “You want to eat gas station food?”
“You’re using the term want very loosely.” She was grinning again. “But if it’s my only option, yes. I’m starving and you just said I couldn’t go into any restaurants, so gas station food it is.”
“The princess can lower herself to eating overcooked hot dogs that’ve been under a heat lamp for hours?”
She surprised him again when she flipped him off and turned on her heel to head towards the store, “You know what. Get your own food.”
“Ashtyn.” He called just loud enough to get her attention. “Stop.”
She spun to face him and there was pink on her cheeks. Anger maybe? The man inside him that couldn’t help but be attracted to the beautiful girl wanted to know how much of her fair skin that heat covered. Did it creep down her neck? Over her breasts? Tyler shook his head as much to clear his inappropriate thoughts as to tell her not to walk away from him.
“You can’t go in the store either. I’ll go in and get us a few things. You said you needed to use the bathroom.” He pointed at a sign on the corner of the building, “Looks like it’s over there. Do your thing. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Ashtyn followed his gaze to the sign on the wall, a spray-painted arrow pointing around the side of the building, and wrinkled her nose. Tyler hid a grin as he stepped around her and headed into the store. He had zero doubts that outdoor bathroom situation was a nightmare of epic proportions. Bathrooms like that in little stores right off the highway, always were. He consoled himself that Ashtyn would be so grossed out she’d likely throw a fit to go home right there on the spot as he gathered up some food and drinks for them.
