On the Fly (10 page)

I climbed in and fastened my belt,
trying to ignore her sexy pout.

Yeah, Rachel Shaw
definitely needed a keeper, or a helper…or I didn’t know what. But
she needed
something
. And damn if I didn’t want that
something
to be me.

“Yes! I beated
you! Woo woo!” Tuck’s victorious squeal bounced
around to fill every corner of Brenden and Jamie’s shared living
room. He dropped his controller and leaped up from the floor, both
hands fisted as he punched them through the air in time with the
goofy dance of his feet. “I beated Mr. Jamie! I beated Mr. Jamie!”
he chanted in a sing-songy voice.

He continued pumping his fists into
the sky while he raced circles around Jamie, who was seated
cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV in a posture that made
him look like an overgrown boy, and Maddie, who was lounging back
on a beanbag chair. Both of them held video game controllers in
their hands.

I hadn’t intended to come to the guys’
place after we’d finished eating. I’d meant to take Tuck and Maddie
back to our condo and go on with our lives as though the disaster
of our surprise breakfast for Jamie had never happened, but halfway
between the diner and our building, Jamie had asked the kids if
they wanted to come over and play Mario Kart with him. Tuck’s
excitement had been so great, and even Maddie had seemed interested
in playing, so I hadn’t been able to tell them no.

And now, here we were. Exactly where I
didn’t want to be.

“
I want a rematch,” Jamie
said. “Maddie and I both want one, don’t we?”

Maddie’s beanbag chair was
far enough away from Jamie that she could feel safe. Or maybe it
was far enough away that
I
felt she was safe. Whichever. He’d brought the
chair out from his room and set it up for her without even batting
an eye as soon as we’d come back to the building. It was just
something he’d thought to do without any sort of prompting. Like it
was natural for him.

Maddie had never been much of a video
game player before. She’d always stayed back and watched as other
kids played. But not today. At first she’d held her controller like
it was a foreign object, something she wasn’t comfortable with, but
she’d gradually become more accustomed to how it worked. Right now,
the ghost of a smile crossed her face as she nodded in
agreement.

That brief smile, if nothing else,
made me glad I’d relented and let the kids come to play. It was a
very rare thing of late to see my little girl happy. I’d give
anything to see those little smiles more often.

The heated expression on Brenden’s
face, however—and even the simple fact that he was so close to me
on his couch—made me wish I’d held my ground. He kept acting like
he wanted to be with me, but at the same time it felt as though
everything I did upset him. I didn’t know what to do with that. It
seemed a little unstable, and I had already experienced more than
enough instability for one life, thank you very much. The few years
I’d spent married to Jason had been all I could handle and more,
and things had only grown increasingly out of control in recent
months.

I shifted my weight, trying
to get more comfortable. The problem with that idea was that
my
body
wasn’t
uncomfortable; it was my mind. I couldn’t seem to wrap my brain
around why he had been so determined to pay for our meal, why he
had believed he needed to tend my feet earlier, why he’d been
carrying me around ever since. Was he just being a nice guy, like
Jamie with the beanbag chair, or was there something he expected in
return for his kindness?

I’d made it pretty clear that I had no
intention of dating him. Barring me changing my mind, I couldn’t
imagine what he thought he would get from helping me. In my life,
there had been very few people who’d done nice things simply for
the sake of being nice. It was such a rarity that I had a hard time
believing that could possibly be the reason for his recent
behavior.

We hadn’t talked much over breakfast,
Brenden and I. Jamie and Tuck had kept us all in stitches, making
goofy faces at each other and other silly things like that. Jamie
seemed to really bring out Tuck’s true nature in a way that I
hadn’t seen enough of for too long.

When we
had
talked, it had mainly been to
respond to the two of them. Nonetheless, I hadn’t been able to stop
myself from noticing all the times that Brenden’s gaze had fallen
to me. He’d stared so much it had made me squirm.

Had he been serious about wanting to
date me? Really, truly serious? Why would he want that? It was
difficult to fathom, considering how much he was glaring at me
today. But what if his glares were because I’d rejected him? Could
I have hurt his pride? I supposed it was possible, albeit
unlikely.

None of it made any sense to me. I
mean, I could never be the sort of woman who would attract the
attention of a man like him. I was a single mom with two kids, and
most of my life I’d barely managed to scrape by. He was a
professional athlete, probably a multimillionaire. Weren’t they
all? He could have any woman he wanted.

Except me. If he did want
me, not that I believed that he could. But even if he
did
want me, I couldn’t
take the risk of letting someone—anyone—that close to me because it
would mean letting them close to my kids.

“
I’m gonna catch you,”
Jamie said, setting off a series of Tuck’s giggles. My eyes flitted
over to the two of them and Maddie. I had to force away the
unwanted thought that I was already letting Jamie close to my
kids.

Whether I let Jamie in or not, that
didn’t mean I should let Brenden close.

I looked up at him now under the
intensifying heat of his stare. His eyes were fixed on me like they
had been so often at the diner, not on the kids or Jamie or the
video game. The brown of his eyes was so dark that it blended into
his pupils until the colored part of his eye was a single entity.
He pushed to his feet, and I was once more astounded by his size.
Jason had been nearly six feet, but Brenden would make him look
small in comparison.

I shivered at the thought.

He stalked into the kitchen and opened
the fridge. “Can I bring you anything?” he called out over his
shoulder. “Water? Coffee?”

His question had to be intended for
me. Jamie and the kids had already started their rematch and were
immersed in their race, oblivious to the adults in the
room.

It struck me as odd that I hadn’t
included Jamie as one of the adults—but he’d latched onto Tuck, and
Tuck onto him, so quickly and so completely that I had a hard time
seeing him as the man he was and not simply a teenaged
boy.

I didn’t want Brenden to do anything
else for me, not even something as simple as bringing me water.
Maybe he was trying to do nice things for me so I’d feel compelled
to go out with him. Or maybe he had something more sinister in
mind. You couldn’t tell what a man was really like in the short
amount of time we’d known one another. I hadn’t been able to see
Jason for the monster he was even though I’d known him for more
than a decade.

“
No, I’m fine,” I finally
replied. “Thanks.”

He grunted, his head still buried in
the refrigerator while he searched through it.

I needed to use the restroom even if I
didn’t want Brenden to bring me a drink. I stood up quickly, before
he could come back and glare at me or try to carry me to the
bathroom despite the fact that I could walk there perfectly well on
my own.

Then I had to bite down hard on my
tongue. It was the only way I could keep myself from making some
inhuman, pained sound. I couldn’t stop my sharp hiss of breath, but
I hoped it would be quiet enough not to draw Brenden’s
attention.

It wasn’t.

He spun around with two bottles of
water in a single hand, his eyes landing on me with the same scowl
I was coming to equate with him. Granted, it was entirely possible
that he didn’t scowl all the time when he wasn’t in my
presence.

“
What are you doing?” he
grumbled, an accusation evident in his tone and the narrowing of
his eyes. In two steps, he crossed to the bar and set the bottles
down, and it only took him two more lengthy strides to reach
me.

Why was he being so surly? It wasn’t
like I had done anything to him. There was no call for him to be
upset. “I just have to use the bathroom,” I said, trying to skirt
around him so I could do exactly that. All the while, I attempted
and failed to ignore the stinging pain in my feet. His arm snaked
out and wrapped around my waist, stopping my progress before I’d
really made any.

As easy as could be, he had my feet
out from under me again, lifting me into his arms. “You have to
quit walking around,” he groused, stomping out of the living
room.

“
I can get to the bathroom
on my own.”

How was it possible that one man could
make me sound like an overworked teacher? He was bringing out the
worst in me, and that drove me bonkers.

If I couldn’t even get to the bathroom
on my own, how the hell was I going to get through a day at my new
job tomorrow? Yeah, it was an office job—at a desk—but I had to
park my car, get into the building, walk to my desk, leave for
lunch. For all I knew, I would be delivering memos throughout the
office or doing any number of other tasks I’d need my feet for. It
wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that I’d have to be on them
more often than not. I might as well start getting used to the
sensation now so at least I would be prepared for whatever pain I
had in store.

I was so confused over his
sullen behavior, my sourpuss responses, and the fact that I enjoyed
the play of his muscles beneath me, that I almost didn’t realize he
was carrying me down the hall angled off the main room toward the
master bedroom.
His
bedroom, since Jamie had fetched the beanbag chair from the
bedroom on the opposite end of the apartment.

“
Maybe you
can
walk,” he said, “but
that doesn’t mean you should.”

He didn’t even seem to be exerting
himself carrying me. I had never weighed much, only about 115
pounds these days, but that ought to cause him at least some
strain. Shouldn’t it? But it seemed like he could carry me around
all day without even breaking a sweat.

And
that
was the last thing I needed to
be thinking about—how strong he was, the tone of his muscled
chest.

I didn’t want or need him to carry me
around all day, even if I liked to be in his arms. I definitely
didn’t need to use the en suite in his room. It felt all kinds of
invasive, and I’d much rather use the more public bathroom in the
main part of the condo, one I wouldn’t have to traipse through his
bedroom in order to reach. “I thought I’d use the front bathroom,”
I mumbled.

Brenden shook his head. “I don’t trust
that Babs has kept it clean.” When we arrived at his private
bathroom, he set me on the floor.

I had two kids, for God’s sake. Messy
bathrooms weren’t going to faze me in the slightest. Not like being
alone with him—that was something I wasn’t at all sure how to
handle.