Ross 02 Rock Me(32)
When she emerged from the store carrying a single sack, he openly scrutinized her and found that it was far worse than he’d initially thought. Even from this distance, he could see how puffy and red-rimmed her eyes were. She could’ve just had a crying jag in the store, for the way she looked. Grasping the side of the truck bed, he bounded out and landed lightly on his feet. Ghost made some grumbling, obviously smart-ass comment he didn’t catch. He was already headed toward her, never mind that she quickened her pace as if she were going to attempt to run from him. Again. This time, he wasn’t letting her get far.
Panic swelling in her chest, Candace strode directly for the sanctuary of her car, but he got there at the same time she did and grabbed her hand as she reached for the door handle. Horrified, she realized she was about five seconds away from total meltdown. His fingers were warm and familiar and so comforting…
“Candace, what’s wrong?” he demanded.
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Cherrie Lynn
Oh, God, and he looked…
She shook her head desperately. Brian took off his wraparound shades and settled them on the bill of his black baseball cap, hitting her with the full force of his dark blue eyes. Out here in the blinding sun, she could see herself reflected in their depths.
“I didn’t follow you here,” she snapped. “I was out of coffee.”
For a moment he looked puzzled, then he chuckled. “Sweetie, that never even entered my mind. But you can follow me any damn place you please, all right?”
She was struggling to contain the impulse to throw herself onto his white sleeveless tee right there in the middle of the busy parking lot. Why did he have to bust out the tattoos today, of all days? They were visible from shoulders to wrists. Beautiful. She wanted those arms around her. She wanted that voice telling her not to worry. But he and his friend appeared to have plans of some sort, and she didn’t want to keep him from them. He deserved to go and live his carefree life without worrying about her baggage.
“In fact…follow me now,” he said. “Come with us. You look like you could use a getaway.”
Her heart stuttered. “W-where?”
“The bunch of us are going to Dallas for a rock festival. I have friends up there we’re crashing with. You’d love it, Candace. I know you’ve never been to anything like that before.”
He was the serpent standing there holding out the forbidden fruit to her. Escape. Safety. And dare she even think it? Fun.
“And I also know you’re mad at me, so look, I won’t—”
“I’m not mad at you, Brian.”
“Well…there are issues, then. How’s that? So this could be just us hanging out for the weekend. No pressure, no worries. I think it would do you some good.”
She did too. A world of good. She could be with him, even if she wasn’t with him. And that actually made sense to her short-circuited brain.
But she had a commitment. She had to be at the church at two. Two p.m., rather. Couldn’t forget that. He must have forgotten, but then again, she didn’t recall telling him when the wedding was. She doubted he kept up with the Lifestyle section of the newspaper.
And not only did she have to be there at two p.m.—in the afternoon, lest she get confused—she had to walk down the aisle with her would-be date rapist. Couldn’t forget that, either. But she had decided that no matter what machinations her mother devised, she was not going to the lake house for the fun, oldfashioned family get-together. It wasn’t happening. She wasn’t waking up in the middle of the night to find that freak crawling into her bed. The very thought made her nauseous. Brian’s thumb gently stroked the back of her hand. “Come on. We can get you a ticket, no problem. Come with us.”
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Her mouth opened. No words would come out. They were too conflicted, jumbling together as her heart and her brain warred back and forth.
“Go home, get your stuff together, and we’ll pick you up in twenty minutes or so. Wear something comfortable for today. Once we get there, you’ll be on your feet all day long.”
He looked so eager and excited for her to go with them. She imagined how her mother and Deanne were going to sneer at her when she walked into the dressing room this afternoon. She imagined Michelle wearing the same cool expression toward her she’d worn last night after her revelation, all traces of warmth gone.
Deanne hadn’t wanted her there in the first place. She knew it. Now no one wanted her there at all. I’ll take five minutes with him over a lifetime with them any day. She’d meant it with all her heart when she’d said it to Michelle. But the next quiet word that came out of her mouth would truly put it to the test.
“Okay.”
Riding in Brian’s truck toward Dallas when she was supposed to be getting ready to go to the church was probably the most surreal experience of Candace’s life. She’d left her cell phone sitting on her kitchen counter, thrown a bag of clothes together so fast she’d probably neglected necessities. And she couldn’t stop shaking. At times it was all she could do not to tell Brian to turn around and take her home. It was too late for that. She was crammed in the backseat of his truck with Starla and Janelle because Ghost had called shotgun and apparently that was a binding resolution. She really didn’t mind. This wasn’t a date, as Brian had said, just hanging out. Sitting pressed against him for three hours straight might decimate her already frazzled mind. Plus, the girls had wanted her in the back with them. Starla had patted the seat next to her with a big grin and said, “Come on back here with us, sexy.”
Ghost had gotten all kinds of excited about the prospects of some girl-on-girl action happening in the backseat, and offered the use of his cell phone to record it. Brian had shaken his head, laughing. The conversation hadn’t stalled since, and she found herself struggling to keep up. It was like wandering into a roomful of strangers who were speaking a foreign language, trying to decipher their gossip and inside jokes. They were probably all the more hilarious for their mystery to her.
“Dude,” Ghost proclaimed after about an hour and a half on the road. He dug deep into the duffel bag he’d brought and produced a CD, which he handed to Brian. “Play this.”
Brian took it and held it up in front of his face to examine it, but it looked blank from where she was sitting. “The fuck is this, man,” he muttered around the sucker in this mouth. She had to giggle at the way he often made questions sound like statements.
“Just play it. You’ll like it.”
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Cherrie Lynn
“I’d better or you’re walking the rest of the way.” He glanced back at Candace. “Ghost favors some unusual shit.”
“Very,” Starla agreed, passing Candace the bag of chips that had been circulating the cab. As Brian fiddled with the CD, Ghost surprised Candace by turning all the way around in his seat so he could look directly at her. “What’s up with your girl?”
Caught with a mouthful of BBQ Ruffles, she struggled to swallow before she spoke. “Huh?”
“Your girl. The one you came in with the other night.”
“Oh, Macy? What about her?”
“She have a dude?” His dark eyes were intent, almost unnervingly so. He normally seemed so nonchalant. But then, she’d only been in his presence a couple of times.
“Um…not at the moment.”
“Gimme her number.”
She laughed, looking at him incredulously. “I can’t just give you my friend’s number.”
“Why not? She’s your friend, ain’t she?”
“Yeah, that’s why I can’t hand her number out without her permission.”
“What I’m saying is, if she’s your friend, she’ll forgive you. But she doesn’t even have to know where I got it from. I won’t tell her.”
“Who else could you have gotten it from?”
“I’ll say you left your phone sitting in your seat or something and I swiped it and got her number out of it.”
“I didn’t even bring it.”
“Well, she doesn’t know that!”
Brian and the girls were laughing. Starla reached up and grabbed Ghost’s shoulder. “Down, boy, turn around now. Stop harassing her.”
Ghost ignored her. “She’s kind of prim and proper, huh.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Oh, shit,” Brian muttered, as if he knew what was coming next. “Dude, turn around. Eyes front.”
“Daaaamn, I love girls like that. I love getting them dirrrty.”
Candace giggled. “Good luck with that. Look up ‘dirty’ in the dictionary and it’ll say ‘Not Macy’.”
Starla yelped with laughter, but Ghost only looked pained. “Ah! You’re killing me here.”
He shook his head and turned back around, grumbling. “I still think you should give me her number.”
She was tempted to do it just to get a good laugh out of the situation. This poor guy didn’t know what he’d be getting himself into.
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Every time Brian had glanced into the backseat on the drive, she’d been smiling. She looked better already, and he had to congratulate himself. But then, his friends could always be counted on to keep the mood festive. Starla and Janelle had made sure she felt welcome without him even having to ask it of them. He’d been afraid Starla’s opinion of her had changed after last week. Apparently, that wasn’t the case at all. By the time they pulled up to the curb outside Marco and Kara’s house in the suburbs of Dallas, every line of tension in her face had smoothed out. Their plan had been not to call this a date, but God, he wanted to. He wanted to run straight to her side, wrap his arm around her shoulders and introduce her to his friends as his. His date, his woman, his girlfriend…hell, whatever title she would allow him to put on her. He couldn’t do that, but there was no denying the magnetism that pulled him toward her as soon as his feet hit the ground. She smiled at him as he came up beside her, and gestured to the sucker stick still in his mouth as she stretched her muscles after the long drive. “New habit?”