His Curvy Craving

Chapter 2

2

TRENT

I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I walked past Catherine Park toward my borrowed vehicle. Asking if I could contact her again was not a part of my plan, but neither was having everything I thought I knew about s*x with a stranger knocked off center. Holy hell, the woman was a dream.

I climbed into the SUV and turned the key. It coughed to life and the damn thing farted. It was worse than my old shepherd mix, Kenny. The SUV didn’t smell as bad as Kenny, though.

I took the familiar turns through town until the Estate came into view. I double checked that no one was following me and made the turn into the driveway that wound around the end of the Cove and opened up into the property I called home for half my life.

MacKellar Estates. My father and grandfather liked grandeur. They wanted flash and recognition. I was sure that was why my father agreed to donate land and name the town square for my mother, but the old story said she was the one who insisted on it. It didn’t matter anymore. She was gone, and before long, he would be, too.

“Good evening, sir,” Andrew said, meeting me in the driveway. “Would you like me to put the vehicle in the garage?”

I hesitated, then nodded. “I’ve told you to call me Trent, Andrew.”

“Very good, sir,” Andrew said, as always. He never called me Trent. Not when I was a kid, and definitely not now when I was deciding the future of the Estate.

Andrew folded himself into the vehicle and rolled away slowly. I hated being overly cautious, but the vultures would descend if they knew I was there. They always did. Coming over with gestures of goodwill and requests for all sorts of things. I hated it. It was why I left MacKellar Cove as soon as I could. I was invisible outside the town named for my family, but inside…

I let myself into the house through the front door and toed off my shoes. I set them in the closet tucked behind the door, out of sight and out of the way. The house was still a museum. Cold and lifeless and fragile. The one and only room in the house I ever felt like I could relax in was my bedroom, a space I had to beg to have how I wanted. As a teenager, it was lounge furniture and nothing breakable. As an adult, it hadn’t changed.

I walked into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. I leaned against the counter and drank it while I thought about the woman I just left.

She was an impulse, but one I couldn’t bring myself to regret. After Michelle, I wasn’t sure I’d be open to getting involved with anyone for a while. I definitely wasn’t building a relationship with a woman who lived in a town I never wanted to live in again, but she was a nice distraction while I was around.

“Is there anything else you need, sir?” Andrew asked from the hallway.

I set my glass in the dishwasher and turned to him. “No, Andrew. Thank you for thinking of the car. I’m going to go up to bed.”

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Andrew.”

Andrew walked silently toward the staff side of the house. A door closed with a quiet click, the only indication he’d moved. I sighed heavily, wishing I was home with X and McJenna instead of in the cavernous space I hated.

I took my time working my way to the stairs. Selling the house wasn’t as easy of a decision as I thought it would be. For years, I asked my dad why he hung onto it. Now that the decision was being left to me, I struggled the same way he did. My mother was still there, memories of holidays and parties and random days she made special. Losing her was part of the reason I was eager to get out of MacKellar Cove, but it’d been almost twenty-five years since she died. Since I walked through the house with her by my side.

All the pictures she took of us were still on the mantel. The family portrait from the spring before she died still hung over the fireplace. The entire house was frozen in time, like nothing had changed, even though everything had.

I ignored the pang in my chest and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. I closed the door to my room and turned on the TV. I needed noise to drown out all the thoughts running through my mind. McJenna was always good for noise, but she wasn’t there. No one was there.

A week passed after my night with the stranger, and I was still thinking about her. I would wake up from dreaming about her and have to take myself in my hand to ease the pulsing need inside me. I thought I caught glimpses of her almost daily. I smelled her scent in the air.

I was losing my damn mind.

X called me on it more than once, catching me daydreaming and only offering a snicker in reply. I always answered with a one-finger salute. Mostly because I had no other answer for why the woman had captured my attention so completely.

“I need to go,” X said, walking into my office and closing the door behind him. He had come home for lunch, but he was due back at the station any minute.

“Go where?”

“Get McJenna from school. She got into a fight. Can you believe that?”

I raised an eyebrow at him and kept my mouth shut.

“Don’t give me that look. I’m doing the best I can.”

“I know you are, but you also know you fold in a heartbeat when she lets the waterworks fly.”

“She doesn’t have it easy, Trent. She’s—”

“I know, I know. Her mom ditched her and you’ve done your best, but a teenage girl needs a mom. I get it.”

X glared at me. “Then why does it always feel like you think I’m not doing enough.”

I sighed. I hated when X started in on his own limitations as a parent. Everyone had limitations. None of us were perfect. But X thought he should be, and his version of perfect meant letting his daughter have her way. All. The. Time.

“I love J, and I love you, man. But a teenage girl needs a dad, too. I know you’re trying to be everything to her, but you need to be her dad. You need to lay down the rules and make sure she’s sticking to them. There’s a time to be soft, and there’s a time to be firm. When she’s getting into fights, it’s not the time to take her for ice cream and tell her you understand why she did it.”

X grumbled under his breath, a sure sign he knew I was right. Maybe because it’s exactly what he did the last time she got into a fight. He thought going easy on her would mean she wouldn’t do it again.

“I need to find out what’s going on with her. I took the rest of the day off.”

“Good. I think it’ll be good for both of you to get some time away. Do you need anything?” I asked.

“Any chance you want to run the afternoon broadcast for me?”

I chuckled and shook my head. X and I met when I was hired as his assistant at a small, local studio. He was the executive producer for the midday and afternoon news segments. I wanted to prove to myself that I could contribute to the world and stayed in the job for the better part of a decade, but when my father got sick, I had to step back and take on a leadership role in the family business.

“I’ve been out of TV for too long. Don’t you have a new assistant who can run things while you’re gone?”

X shook his head. “Not one I trust as much as you.”

“Well, I’m in meetings all day, so not an option. Give someone a chance. Maybe they’ll surprise you. I did.” I smirked at him, remembering the day I told him who I really was. He had no clue I owned the studio we worked for. At first, he was uneasy, but he quickly realized I told him because I trusted him. He was the only one.

“I hate it when you’re right,” he mumbled.

“I know.” He headed for the door, and I called out, “Enjoy your ice cream.”

He flipped me off as he walked away.

It wasn’t long before there was another knock on my door. My executive assistant, Jeffrey, walked in with his laptop and notepad, ready for our first meeting.

“Is everything set?” I asked him.

“Yes, sir. Today’s call is just about finalizing the details of the events and reviewing the contract.”

“Good.” Every year the hotel had a lineup of events for New Year’s Eve. The first call was going to be easy. The rest of the day? Not so much.

My meetings went better than I expected. Everything was set and ready for New Year’s Eve and the start of the year. We were starting talks to take over another local hotel chain, which didn’t go as well as I hoped, but I was confident that would work out eventually, too. When I left work for the day, I was exhausted and ready for a drink. At home without anyone looking at me.

“Why did you think that was a good idea?” X shouted as I walked into the condo.

Fuck. I’d forgotten about McJenna getting into a fight. It sounded like X was taking my advice, and it wasn’t going well if they were still talking about it.

“She was a b***h, Dad! Was I really supposed to let her say whatever she wanted? Would that have been better?”

“It would have been better if you hadn’t gotten into a fight, J. The principal said it’s your last chance. If you step out of line one more time, he’s suspending you.”

“Good. I hate that school anyway.”

I sighed and waded into the middle of it. “Don’t say that, J. Hating something is giving power away to the people who want to take it from you. It’s not doing you any good.”

“You don’t understand,” J said. Her voice cracked in a way that told me there was a lot more to whatever the situation was than I knew. Kenny was stretched out across her lap, his body covering her, protecting her. She rubbed his ears absently as the big dog looked up at me with an expression that said he would even protect the kid against me. I couldn’t blame him.

“Then tell me what happened.”

She looked up at her dad and nibbled her lip. “They were really mean. Said no wonder my mom left.”

X’s face fell. He sank to the couch and dropped his head into his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Because they said she left both of us. That you weren’t good enough for her either.”

He opened his arms, and she fell against him. I just stood there, watching them. X and I met just before J’s mom came into the picture. X fell hard for Denise. When he wasn’t working or with me, he was with Denise. He said he loved her, and he was talking about forever with her. Then she got pregnant.

X was excited about it. Said he always wanted kids, and even though they’d only been together for four months, he knew she was the one for him. He doted on her every day of her pregnancy, told her how much he loved her. Promised they’d get married as soon as she was ready since she refused to have pictures document how huge she was during her pregnancy.

Then McJenna was born. I was in the hospital that day, the first person outside the two of them to see her. She was perfect. Small and squishy and absolute perfection. I didn’t know I could love another person that fully until I looked into her eyes. She had my heart from that moment. Unfortunately, her mother didn’t feel the same.

Denise was discharged before McJenna and left. She disappeared from the hospital and never looked back. She signed over all her rights as a parent to X and never had more contact with them.

By the time J was five months old, I moved them into my condo with me. The three of us had been together ever since. But I wasn’t her dad. I was her Uncle Trent, her godfather and confidant, but still on the outside. They didn’t mean to make me feel that way, but at times like that one, I was reminded that I was almost thirty-nine and alone.

X wiped J’s tears and cupped her jaw. The way his lip wobbled said it hurt him as much as it did her that someone said they weren’t worth sticking around for. Those little shits at school were wrong, but we didn’t listen to the good in our lives. We had a tendency to focus on the negative and hurtful and let it get into our heads.

“How about room service tonight?” I asked, breaking the tension the only way I knew how. “Steaks? Mac and cheese? Ice cream?”

They looked up at me with matching smiles. Both knew I was trying to make it better. I couldn’t fix what happened to them, but I could spend some of my fortune on them. J would only be with us for a few more years, and then she’d go off to college and work and whatever else she decided to do with her life. X and I didn’t talk about what that would look like, but it was coming. We weren’t ready yet, so we buried our heads in the sand and pretended it wasn’t going to happen in less than four years.

I called down for room service, telling them to send us half the menu. J found a movie she wanted to watch and the two of them curled up on the couch with Kenny and waited for me to join them. I stared at the screen without really seeing the movie. My mind wasn’t on it.

When room service arrived, I waved off X’s attempt to tip the guy and handed over a hundred dollar bill. I always tipped my employees very well because they made sure no one bothered me. The only people allowed to deliver food to my penthouse condo were employees who’d been working at my hotel for more than a year. People I knew wouldn’t snap pictures of us and sell our story to the tabloids.

Because owning a regional hotel chain, living with my best friend, and raising his daughter together was definitely fodder for a tabloid. I didn’t have the kind of money most hotel owners had, but I had more than enough.

We ate dinner and finished the movie, and McJenna went to bed. X asked how my afternoon was, but he was just being polite. It wasn’t long before he walked off to bed, too, leaving me alone again.

I finally grabbed the beer I was looking forward to hours earlier, but it didn’t have the same appeal. I put it back in the fridge and pulled out the bottle of scotch I kept in the cabinet above the fridge. I poured two fingers into a glass and took a sip. I let the burn filter through my body and soak in.

I put the bottle back and returned to the couch. I tried not to think about the woman from MacKellar Cove, but after the day with J and X, she was on my mind. I dug out my phone and went back over the few messages we sent back and forth before agreeing to meet for a drink.

She was funny and clever. It had been a long time since a woman made me laugh like she did. And when I walked into O’Kelley’s and saw her on that stool, I was pleasantly surprised because not only did I not recognize her, but she was stunning. Lots of curves and an easy smile for Hudson that made me jealous of the guy in a second.

But I was the one she left with. I was the one she was there to see. The caveman in me couldn’t deny that felt damn good. Almost as good as her coming while I was buried deep inside her.

Fuck. I was hard again just thinking about her. I didn’t usually visit more than once every few months, but I flipped through my calendar to see if I could get away again soon. I wanted to see her, and I didn’t want to wait long.

I was booked up for the next few weeks, but in about a month, I could make another trip. If I planned it out right, I could meet with a real estate agent during the same trip and find out what my options were. I still hadn’t decided if I wanted to sell, but I had to decide. And that meant gathering more information. A real estate agent would know what the house would sell for and what it would take to maintain it. Then I could decide.