Page 7 of Dirty Mind
She looked out the window, obviously trying to hide her smile. “What would you call it?”
“Hot.” Her legs were bare in the short white shorts she was wearing, and my fingers were itching to know whether they were as smooth and soft as they’d been last night. “Memorable.”
“Is that right?” She set her purse on the ground at her feet. “I imagine you kiss a lot of women. What made that somemorable?”
Charli was fishing, and I didn’t mind. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who needed me to stroke her ego, but if her ego was the only thing I was allowed to stroke tonight, I’d take it. “It was you.” I licked my lips and swore I could still taste that cherry balm she favored. “And I’d been waiting a hell of a long time to kiss you.”
She batted her naturally long lashes and smirked. “Why Dade, are you flirting with me?”
I inhaled deeply, trying to resist the urge to pull over and finish what we’d started in bed that morning. “You want me to be?”
She laughed. “To what end? You’ve already slept with me.”
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, sensing a shift in her demeanor. She’d laughed, but there was underlying sadness I couldn’t ignore. “Is that what most men want from you, Charli? Sex?”
She crossed her arms protectively as we turned onto the private road that led to my rural estate. “They may want it,” she said, hesitantly. “But I don’t sleep around, if that’s what you think.”
“I don’t think that.” I wanted her to know that I liked and respected her, even though my actions that morning may have given her the wrong impression.
“I’ve lived with a few guys.” She winced. “I didn’t plan it that way. We just started dating and they, uh, fell on hard times. Lost their jobs and, um, needed a place to stay.”
So she’d been taken advantage of too. Nice to know she could understand, on some level, what I’d been through. “I get it.”
“I know you do.” She glanced at me before she said, “So, they’ve been my only serious relationships, meaning the only guys I’ve slept with, other than you.”
I didn’t need to know about her sexual history. We’d used condoms last night, but I appreciated that fact that she was willing to open up to me. I felt I owed her the same. “I know people think I must be a man-whore because I’ve been married twice and engaged, but trust me, I’m not.”
“Really?”
I waved to the guard at my gatehouse and pressed the button overhead to swing the iron gates open. “I’ve been looking for forever, Charli. That’s why I made the mistake of getting married and engaged. I know now that forever just isn’t in the cards for me.”
“Too bad,” she said, clucking her tongue, “that bitches like that made you want to give up on finding love.”
I drove my truck to the side of the house, in front of the garage, before raising one of four wood panels with the built-in opener and pulling inside. The lights automatically turned on and when I cut the engine, I turned to face her.
I expected her to be embarrassed about letting that comment about my exes slip, but the stubborn little tilt of her chin told me she had no regrets and was taking nothing back.
“What makes you think they were bitches?”
“My sister and I talk.” She reached for her purse, settling it in her lap. “And I’ve read a few articles online.” She raised a shoulder. “Like I said, I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time, so I guess I was curious.”
“I can’t put all the blame on them.” Though my friends would have been happy to. “No one twisted my arm.” Though each one of those three women had been pretty adamant about getting a ring. “I saw the warning signs, but I tried to ignore them.”
“Why?”
Because she seemed genuinely interested and I didn’t want to shut her down, I said, “Look around you, Charli. It gets pretty lonely out here.” I loved my rural lifestyle and the privacy was essential to help me recharge after months on the road, but sometimes the echo of my own footsteps was deafening.
“So you just wanted someone to be here when you got home?” Her face was a mask of displeasure when she said, “That’s what everyone wants to feel like, Dade. A convenience. Or better yet, a toy you take out and play with when you have time.” She reached for the door handle. “Maybe I need to re-think what I said about those women. Could be they were just trying to fill the void withthingsbecause you were never around.”
Ouch. She’d hit a sore spot because I’d been accused of being an absentee husband too many times. I couldn’t claim innocence, not when my first love had always been music.
I met her at the door leading to the house and curled my hand around her upper arm. “Look, I don’t want you to think I’m a selfish bastard, Charli.” Her opinion mattered to me, maybe too much. “I haven’t been the perfect husband, Lord knows, but I never pretended to be someone I wasn’t to lure a woman in either.”
Because she was a foot shorter than I was, she had to tip her head back to look at me, and when she did, something constricted in my chest. Those beautiful jade eyes, so curious, so trusting, made me want to be the man who finally earned her trust.
“I’ve always been honest with women, right from the start, about what they were getting with me.”
She considered my words before nodding. “I believe you. Last night, before we had sex, you told me it was a mistake, that we shouldn’t be doing it. You told me you were no good at relationships and you had no right to be with me.”
