Grinder (Seattle Sharks Book 1) (11 page)

T
he sun was out
, and I felt it more than in the sixty degree high we were expecting today. There was a lightness in me that I was cautious to call happiness, but it was there all the same.

I knew exactly who was responsible for it: Bailey.

Last night...God, she’s been so perfect that I wanted to wax poetic. My eyes strayed to the section of the counter I’d taken her on, and my body inconveniently reacted.

Jesus, you fucked her three times last night, settle down.

Once in the kitchen. Once in the shower. Finally, once in the bed when we’d woken up this morning. We hadn’t really gotten around to talking about what happened, though. She’d been gone by the time I’d gotten out of the shower, and I wasn’t expecting her until later when we’d give Lettie her present a day early.

It was hard to hide a swing set the size of a small building.

“—so that’s when I told her that I wasn’t really looking for something serious,” Rory said, pulling another beer from the fridge and me from my own thoughts.

“Sounds fair to me,” Warren said with a shrug. “You got those, Gage?”

“Yeah,” I said, taking the last beer and slipping it into the cooler.

Beverages on ice and ready for delivery, we carried the cooler out the back deck and down the flight of stairs to the only level place I had in the yard.

“Beer!” Rory called out.

While the other Sharks grabbed a cold one—half the team had shown up to help build this thing—I surveyed our almost-done handiwork. The castle itself was huge, with two towers that boasted rock-climbing walls, and two slides. A set of swings came off one end, and a little zipline would be on the other. Maybe she wasn’t quite big enough for the zipline, but it had been really fucking cool, so I purchased the add-on.

“Wow, it looks amazing,” Bailey said from behind me.

I turned immediately, a smile already on my face as I found her standing in overalls with buckets and a huge toolbox. “Hey, I didn’t think I’d get to see you until later.”

She gave me a timid smile. “Your mom took her for a birthday pedicure, so I thought I’d get started on that dragon we talked about.”

“Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Are you sure you don’t mind?” Her talents were way better than the side of a soon-to-be four-year-old’s play castle.

“I’d love to. That way she’ll always have a piece of me here.” That sad smile of hers reappeared.

“Well, I love the idea, but you’ll be here, too, right? Is something wrong?” Fuck. Had I screwed up last night? She’d come at least five times. I’d counted. I’d wanted to make sure that if she ever left my bed, she’d have an impossible time replacing me.

Then again, I was kind of hoping she wasn’t going to want to leave.

“No,” she said, but she was looking at her feet.

“Bailey. We’ve been friends since we were kids, I think I can tell when you’re lying.”

She looked up and hit me with those gorgeous eyes of hers. “I’m fine, seriously. I just… we didn’t really get a chance to talk about…”

“About the incredible, mind-blowing sex? Or the fact that we kind of blew apart the line we’d agreed not to cross? Or how I can’t keep my mind from wandering to how perfect you fit around me?”

She blushed. “Quiet,” she ordered in a whisper.

“Why?” I shrugged. “I don’t care who knows. Hell, I might need to kiss you publically just to mark my territory around these guys. You can’t trust horny hockey players.”

“Let’s just keep this between us for today, ok? At least until we can talk alone, later?”

I wasn’t a fan of the way that sounded. I leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Sure, as long as you know that I plan on getting you very naked later.”

She smiled and shook her head at me. “Later.”

It took every ounce of restraint in my body not to kiss her, but I respected her wishes. Hopefully she didn’t think I was going the one-night stand route, but after all she’d seen, I couldn’t blame her if she did.

I’d just have to rectify that line of thinking tonight. I could hardly wait.

Hammer in hand, I climbed to flat part at the top of Lettie’s castle and started to attach the shingles to the top of the towers. After each row, I looked down to see Bailey at work, her concentration purely on the green-scaled dragon that would guard my Princess’s keep. Not that Lettie needed it. My girl was more likely to grab a sword and defend her own castle.

But I fucking loved that Bailey was pouring her love into Lettie’s present the way she had our home—with no reservations and no regrets.
Yet.

I kicked that thought out. Bailey wasn’t every other woman. If she left, it would be for a damn good reason. I just had to make sure I didn’t give her one.

“Hand me another one?” I asked Warren, and he continued our assembly line as I conquered this side of the roof and Rory hit the other.

Another shingle in hand, I lifted it to the roofline and started to swing—

“Well, if this isn’t just the cutest thing!”

The saccharine-sweet voice grated on my every nerve and shot them all to hell in the millisecond it took her to speak.
Helen.
My head swung to see our intruder, and my jaw dropped at the same time the hammer did.

Onto my mother-fucking finger.

“God fucking damn it!” I shouted, tossing my hammer to the floor next to me and examining my hand.

“Well, I don’t think it’s really appropriate to use that language around our daughter, do you?” she asked, putting her perfectly manicured hands into fists and placing them on her Prada-clad hips. She pursed her lips under huge sunglasses as her long, blonde hair trailed down her back, and ice-cold rage charged my veins.

Every hammer stopped around us as we became the center attraction. “Since Lettie isn’t here, I’ll use whatever language I see fit. What the fuck are you doing here, Helen?”

“Screw that, let me see your hand,” Warren snapped, examining my throbbing third finger on my left hand. “Damn it, you smacked it hard. Can you bend it?”

“Lettie. What a horrid nickname. I came to see Scarlett since her birthday is tomorrow, of course,” she said like it was simple—like she was the kind of mom who even thought about her kid.

“Oh, are you coming to the party?” The rookie asked.

“Shut the fuck up, Rookie,” Rory snapped.

“Party, tomorrow, huh?” Helen asked.

“Can you bend it?” Warren demanded a second time.

It was hard—like looking away from a spider you need to kill—but I took my eyes off her. And bent my fingers. “Yeah, but it hurts like hell.”

The digit was angry, red, throbbing and probably going to need to be taped.

“At least it isn’t broken.” Warren looked over to where Helen waited. “Maybe take it inside,” he whispered. “Not all these guys need to hear your business two days before we take on Ontario.”

I nodded my agreement and jumped down from the top of the castle. Stupid, given that I could have just fucked myself up in a myriad of ways, but this wasn’t going to wait any longer.

“Gage,” Bailey called.

“Later,” I snapped at her, then closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and turned toward where she stood, splattered in paint, even on the tip of her delectable nose. “God, I’m so sorry, Bailey. Just...I need to deal with this.”

She nodded, the motion small. I wanted to kiss the frightened look off her face, to assure her that I wasn’t going to do anything with Helen that I might regret, but I needed to get the viper out of our house first.

“So nice to see that you’re still trailing after Gage, Bailey,” Helen sang.

I saw red. “Get in the fucking house, Helen.”

She sashayed her ass up the stairs ahead of me as I composed what I was about to say. I wanted to rip her limb from limb for abandoning our daughter, but I had to keep my head on straight. I’d been waiting for this opportunity for almost two years and I couldn’t blow it.

“It’s nice,” she said, surveying our breakfast room into the kitchen. “An artist, huh?” she asked as she saw the twin easels Bailey had set up in the sunlight so she could paint with Lettie.

“Bailey’s a good influence,” I said, as I passed her and went straight to the desk in the kitchen. I pulled open the file cabinet at the bottom and pulled a manila envelope from the bottom.

“I’m actually really glad you came by,” I said, trying to keep my voice as even as possible as I came back into the breakfast room. I didn’t want her in the kitchen. Helen was like a disease, and I wanted her as far away from Bailey’s favorite room, and my favorite memory as possible.

“Me, too,” Helen said, pulling her sunglasses to the top of her head. “I’m sorry that Scarlett isn’t here, though. Does she ask about me?”

Her eyes were wide, but there was no sadness there, no genuine concern for the little girl we’d created.

“No.”

Her mouth popped open. “Really? I mean...I’m her mother.”

“In biology,” I admitted, but that was it. “You left when she was barely two, the minute the doc said I’d miss the rest of that season and all of the next. All she knows about you is that you’re not here.”

She straightened. “Well, I’m here now.”

“For three days. You haven’t so much as called her since you walked out.”

“She was two!” she snapped. “What do you say on the phone to a two-year-old?”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my uninjured hand and tried to ignore its insistent throbbing. “You know what? I don’t want to fight.”

She sighed and walked over to me, swinging her hips. Her fingers trailed over my chest, and I swallowed back the urge to vomit. “Me, either, Gage. I know walking out on you was horrid, but it really was for the best. And I have missed you, I promise.”

“Right.” I stepped out of her range.

“I want to see Scarlett.”

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?” I snapped.
You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Mom’s advice swirled in my head and I did my best to cool my temper. Besides, we each had something the other wanted. Leverage was never bad. “Look, I’ll let you come tomorrow on one condition.”

“What’s that?” she asked, putting on a fake, sexy pout that held no allure. Not after I’d spent an entire night listening to Bailey’s genuine, breathless sighs in my ear.

I stood a little straighter, realizing that for all the charms she’d had, Helen really had no hold on me anymore. “You sign these.” I handed the papers to her.

She opened the envelope and her eyebrows rose. “You want me to sign over all my rights to Scarlett?”

“It’s just the legal form of what you’ve already done. Let her move on. You already have.”

“How about I think it over?” she asked, batting her eyes at me.

Nope, not fucking working.

“How about you get those notarized and then hand them over before you walk in the door tomorrow, or I don’t let you near my daughter.”

“Our daughter,” she corrected.

Hell no.
“She ceased being your daughter the moment you walked out on her. Now, if you want to come say goodbye, I’ll give you that. It will be good for Lettie to not spend her life wondering. But those are my conditions.”

We had a wordless battle, staring each other down. But I was stronger than I’d ever been with her—and I thought I’d loved her for being the mother of my child, any trace of that love was gone.

“Fine,” she snapped. “What time?”

“One,” I answered, my chest tight with every emotion it could fit.

“One it is,” she said. “See you then, lover.”

She walked out of the house, and I immediately breathed a little easier. I’d been waiting a year to give her those papers. The process server had tried twice and failed. All I had to do was play it cool and Lettie could be free.

She wouldn’t have to pay for my mistake.

I flexed my hand again, wincing at the pain, and went back out to the yard.

The guys had continued working. We would be done in another hour. But even watching the construction unfold, and Bailey paint her dragon, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d just handed Helen the key to my destruction. Before she was harmless—now, she knew that she had something I desperately wanted.

I walked over to Bailey and tugged her to her feet. “Everything okay?” she asked. I hated the fear in her voice. She was already apprehensive about starting anything with me, and I’d just gone and shoved Helen at her.

“Come with me,” I said, leading her to the sliding glass door of the downstairs level.

I closed it behind us once she was inside and found her wringing her hands. “Look...about last night, and what just happened, I would never stand in the way of Lettie’s happiness—”

I shut her up with a kiss, pressing her against the wall. She melted under me, and I took her mouth the way I wanted to take her body at this moment, with long, powerful strokes that had her whimpering. Fuck, I loved that sound.

I kissed her until she grasped at my shirt, until her leg raised so she could rub that insanely perfect pussy against my already hard cock, until her little sounds turned to moans and my hands filled with her ass and one tightly budded breast.

My lips lingered against hers for a moment as I caught my breath and went through the fifteen reasons in my yard that I couldn’t take Bailey upstairs right now and make love to her.

“Don’t ever say that again,” I warned her, making sure she looked straight in my eyes. “You are Lettie’s happiness. You’re
my
happiness.”

“But Helen…”

“Is nothing. I gave her the papers to sign over her rights to Lettie and told her if she’d sign them, she could come tomorrow. It seemed like a little price to pay.”

Fear ran through her eyes. “What if she won’t?”

I shrugged. “I’ll eventually have to take her to court. But I also don’t want Lettie to always wonder. She’s probably too young to remember this, but at least I’ll know that I did the best I could to give her a goodbye.”

She nodded, “You’re an amazing father.”

I shook my head. “No. An amazing father would have chosen a better mother for her in the first place. I’m just a guy who lucked out getting two of the best girls in the world in my life.” My thumb traced the soft skin of her cheekbone.