things were calm. Asher worked at the shop and hung out with Julian in his spare time. Cal had called Jill one more time last week, but when she started sputtering more excuses for her drunk husband, Cal hung up on her. He didn’t have the time or patience for that shit.
Cal still hadn’t taken Asher out on his bike. It’d been almost a month, but he still needed to get Asher a helmet that fit him. He’d promised him soon. Things had been a little busy lately, since Jenna was getting ready for the big event for the employees of MacMillan Industries. An event Cal was going to attend, as Jenna’s date.
Normally, he’d never be caught dead at Tory Country Club, but he knew how much work Jenna had put into the party, so he agreed to go in support of her. He wasn’t thrilled, but this was where the trying thing came in. He was trying. So that meant going to this fancy party.
Jenna wasn’t paying attention to him now, as she danced a little around the kitchen. When she got close, he snaked an arm around her waist and tugged until she fell in his lap.
She made an oomph sound and frowned at him. “Hey.”
He snuck his hand under her shirt and tank top, so his palm rested against bare skin. “Hey, yourself.”
She sagged against him and placed her hand on his arms. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and her thumb rested on the edge of the sun on his shoulder. He leaned in and pressed a kiss under her ear. She shuddered in his arms. “Cal, I gotta leave soon.”
He ignored her. Apparently, Jenna had a meeting at the country club for the party that was next weekend.
When he ran his tongue down her neck, she moaned. “Your brothers are in the other room.”
“They’re busy,” he mumbled against her skin. He couldn’t get enough of her taste, the feel of her in his arms. The way she melted into him with a simple touch. He was gone for her fifty times over, more than he ever had been as an immature teenager. It was weird how love evolved in his head as he got older. Love? Was that what this was, all over again?
She pouted. “I’m going to be late.”
With a sigh, he pulled back and slapped her denim-covered ass. “Fine, then get out of here.”
She stuck out her tongue at him and hopped off his lap. He smiled and picked up his pen to do more bills.
JENNA HAD BEEN gone a half hour when his doorbell rang. “Can you get that?” Brent called from the couch. “Shit, fuck, this damn fucker—I’m kinda busy here!”
Cal rose from the table where he was finished with the bills and walked past Asher and Brent in the living room, still playing video games.
When he opened the door, a tiny vision in red with huge black sunglasses shoved her way past him into the house.
Delilah Jenkins pushed her shades onto her head and gave him a once-over with her dark eyes. She wore a bright red dress and strappy shoes with a purse that was bigger than her head. He’d known Delilah as long as he’d known Jenna. She was the tiniest woman he’d ever met, but she was still too much for him. Too much personality, too much color, too much everything. He thought maybe she and Brent would hit it off, but they’d hooked up once years ago and left it as friends.
Delilah was good people, though. She was smart, owned her own business, and most of all, she loved Jenna. So Delilah was aces in his book.
Brent took his eyes off of the screen for one minute to lean back in the couch. “Hey, D!”
She waggled some fingers at him. “Hey, B. Not here for you, so you can go back to killing pixels.”
“ ’Kay!” he answered.
Delilah turned back to Cal. “Well,” she said, her gaze lingering on his bare chest, “as much as I’m enjoying the view, you’re going to have to get dressed, because no shirt, no shoes, no service and all of that.”
He blinked at her. “Come again?”
She waved a hand at his body. “I need to take you shopping for this shindig Jenna is throwing.”
All these words were foreign. “You need to take me shopping?”
He didn’t shop. He didn’t know how to shop. Most of his clothes were holiday gifts from Brent, because his brother was vain as hell and did shop.
Cal? Not