Home Sweet Gnome (13 page)

We didn’t talk about the kiss. We didn’t talk about anything. That didn’t mean I couldn’t think about it and how crazy it was. I didn’t even like the guy! But man, he could kiss. I felt more in that short kiss than I did sleeping with Roger. Of course, it could be that it had been so long that my memory was poor. Either way, it made my nipples perk up and my lady parts come out of hibernation. But he was ditching me in Sturgis for a woman named Sarah. A dentist who he figured could give him what he wanted. He wanted the whole picket fence thing, but he’d probably just end up getting sex. Most guys were fine with that. JT would probably be fine with that too, but he’d still go looking for it again with the next woman. Perhaps he just hadn’t found the right one yet.

Perhaps I never found the right guy. Was it as simple as that?

I didn’t have a chance to consider this because a group of six or seven Harleys pulled up, their engines loud.

They dismounted then came over to us. “Dude, that’s a shame about your bike,” one guy said. They all were typical bikers, jeans, black boots, either a white or black T-shirt. One had a beard, another a handlebar mustache, another had a red bandana around his head. They all stood around the trailer, staring at JT’s bike in mourning.

“It’s getting fixed in Sturgis.”

“What happened to your RV?” Another guy came from the Titanic side and joined us by the trailer. “What the hell is stuck in your windshield?”

“That would be a garden gnome,” I muttered.

I shouldn’t have spoken up because the men shifted their attention from the dead bike to me. “Holy shit, you’re Silky Tangles.”

“Dude, you lucky dog.”

JT was getting his back slapped and I was getting ogled.

“We didn’t know you were headlining in the area. Where’s your show? The Ripe Peach?” Different men were talking and I couldn’t keep up.

“Are you two stopping for lunch?”

“Yeah, join us.”

“Shit, we’re having lunch with Silky Tangles!”

Like a pack of wolves, I was culled from JT and led inside. The men were nice enough, courteous and thankfully kept their hands to themselves. They introduced themselves: Frank, Digger, Trey, Arty, Tom, Mike and Patrick. After about ten seconds I forgot who was who.

Once inside, word spread like wildfire. I was placed me in the middle of a large circular booth, three men on each side of me. I wasn’t going anywhere unless I wanted to slip beneath the table and crawl out, and I wasn’t going to do that because it would give them some really pervy ideas.

JT stood at the table, hands on hips.

“Is he your manager or something?” one guy asked. I think he was Arty.

“Something,” I replied. JT eyed me, probably trying to read my mind. I just rolled my eyes at him and shrugged my shoulders, which had him going over to a seat at the long counter, the waitress dropping a menu in front of him before wandering off.

“Please don’t say he’s your boyfriend, it would ruin it,” Frank said hopefully.

“Ruin it?” I repeated, and I saw JT tilt his head to listen in. He wasn’t far away. I felt safe, considering I was surrounded by a bunch of strange bikers. It wasn’t the fact that they were bikers, it was more that they stood up for each other, like brothers, even if they were strangers. The guys that sat with me weren’t the only bikers in the restaurant and I worried for JT. If someone did cross the invisible line, it would be him against a whole band of biker brothers.

“We know it’s all an act, but I like knowing I’ve got a shot,” added Tom.

I think I heard JT chuckle, but it was hard to tell.

“It’s every guy’s fantasy to be with Silky Tangles.”

I felt myself flush, even though I wasn’t her. “You know Silky Tangles is a stage name?” What her real name was, I had no idea, but no mother would strap her daughter with that from birth.

“How did you get into acting?”

“Is the guy John Boner really that hung?”

“Do you do yoga to get that flexible or are you double jointed?”

“Was it painful when you got your clit pierced?”

The barrage of questions was overwhelming, but the last one had me choking on a piece of toast. JT spewed his coffee—once again—and swiveled around on his seat to hear this answer.

The idea of a needle going anywhere near…
there
had me cringing. I thought of Goldie, who had the lowest embarrassment threshold known to man, where ridiculous questions and whispered talk slid off her like an egg in a Teflon pan. I could tell them I wasn’t really Silky, but it wouldn’t work. It didn’t work on JT and he was jaded. These guys, well, I had them eating out of the palm of my hand. Figuratively, but I had no doubt they’d literally do it if I asked. So there was nothing to do go with it. I envisioned what Goldie would say.

“It’s not actually the clitoris itself that’s pierced, but the little hood that covers it.”

Every single man within a fifteen-foot radius stared at me. Coffee cups were poised halfway to mouths, hands stopped cutting pancakes. JT’s eyes flared with something a whole lot different than surprise. Even lust. It was a possessiveness I saw that had me taking a deep breath.

The waitress, who’d been refilling coffee cups, broke the silence. “So, did it hurt? I mean, would you recommend it?” She bit her lip and eyed the other men, worried they’d judge her, but they didn’t even look her way, just kept staring at me.

“I’d um…I’d talk to your doctor about that one. It’s a big step.” Yeah, a big step I had no interest in taking.

“Can I get a picture with you?” she asked.

Why a woman wanted a picture with me, I had no idea, but I just nodded my head. She pulled her phone from her apron pocket, handed it to a guy walking by the booth. She turned so she faced the camera and the guy got the shot.

“Thanks,” she replied, then walked away.

“Can I get one too?” The guy who took the photo asked.

Once they saw pictures were being taken, guys lined up for one of their own. I was allowed out of the booth to stand with my fans and JT volunteered to be the photographer, snapping one shot after another. Ten minutes in, my face was hurting.

“Thanks, Silky. I’ve already put this on my Facebook page. My friends aren’t going to believe me when they see it,” Arty said, phone in hand.

“Yeah, I tweeted my picture,” Digger added, holding up his phone to show me the picture.

JT threw some cash on the counter and grabbed my hand. “Gentleman, it’s been…interesting. Silky’s got to be going.” He put his arm around my shoulder in the way he’d done at the bowling alley. I just hoped these men were a little more civilized and I didn’t have to punch any of them in the face.

“To answer your question from earlier,” JT looked to Arty. “She’s taken.” JT kissed my forehead in a way that was gentlemanly yet extremely possessive all at the same time.

All six men stood, shook JT’s hand with accompanying manly murmurs.
Way to go. Take care of her. Lucky bastard.

They said their farewells to me, too. “Thanks, guys, for lunch. You’re all sweet.”

JT tugged on my hand and we were out the door. “You put them in their place,” he replied, smiling. “I didn’t even have to do it.”

“Oh?”

JT opened the door to the RV, let me climb in first.

“Sweet? No guy wants to be called sweet. That’s
friend
territory.”

“And where do they want to be?”

JT stepped closer so I had to tilt my head back to look at him. “Right here.”

He lowered his head and kissed me, cupping the back of my head in his palms, his thumbs brushing over my cheeks. This wasn’t a
sweet
kiss. This kiss was an assault, aggressive and filled with all the frustration and anger over the past few days. It was also filled with all the lust that had been between us.

No matter how much I wanted to deny it, I was attracted to JT. He made me feel things I hadn’t felt in a long time, perhaps ever. In fact, he made me
feel.
The men I’d been with in the past were safe choices, who were sweet and I could leave them without a backward glance, without any heartache. It was safer to leave first. Even Roger. I’d used him at the end for his apartment alone. It had been easy to stay away from him because my heart hadn’t been engaged. When I’d discovered he’d moved on with another woman, I was more upset I had no place to go than to have been dumped.

With JT, he made me mad, made me hot, made me feel for the first time. I didn’t know what to do about it, and the way he was kissing me, I didn’t have the brain power to think about it. So I settled into the kiss. My nipples tightened, my skin heated, and the way JT maneuvered my head this way and that as he wanted was very caveman of him. All he had to do was grab me by the ponytail and pull me into the back bedroom and that fantasy would be complete.

“Wait. Stop,” I said against his lips. He moved to my jaw line with little nibbles and I swear I didn’t intend for my head to tilt back to give him access to my neck and that deliciously sensitive spot behind my ear. “JT, we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Why?” he murmured, his tongue flicking out to taste my pulse point.

“Because you’re looking for the girl next door and I’m looking for…I don’t know.” I couldn’t think straight when he fanned his breath along the shell of my ear and the sensation beelined straight for my hoohah.

“You’re pushing me away now, aren’t you, before you can feel anything.” He didn’t stop his attentions, thank god.

“I’m feeling an awful lot right now.”

“Me, too.”

Yeah, I felt a whole heck of a lot against my hip.

I grabbed the sides of his head, his hair silky beneath my palms and pulled his head back. JT’s eyes were half lidded with desire, a little frown marring his brow.

“We don’t even like each other,” I said.

“I’m liking you more by the minute.”

“JT.” I sighed. “You Tased me.”

“You punched me in the face.” It was his turn to sigh. “Jesus, Daphne, I’m just starting to think you’re not so bad after all.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why? Because I’ve got men falling over themselves to have me and you want to be first?”

He stepped back and I let my hands fall to my sides. “That’s pretty low. I’ve done nothing but protect you from those lunatic fans. I’d say I’m getting quite possessive of you. Do I want you for myself instead of let any one of those guys have you? Hell yes.”

“I’ll be leaving again for my next assignment.”

“You mean run away. Look, you’re starting to like me and you don’t like it.”

“I barely followed that,” I ground out. “Going to Sturgis and forgetting about life in the arms of Sarah
is
running away.” I put my hands on my hips.

“I saw a family of four dead from a drunk driver.” He ran his hand through his hair, his eyes switching from lust filled to bleak in a heartbeat. “That family was everything I never had and everything I want, and now they’re dead. If I want to forget for a little while, then so be it.”

He stomped to the back of the RV, opened the door to the bedroom. Hissing and meowing had JT slamming the door shut.

“If a family—a
normal
family—is everything you want, then why are you kissing me?”

“Damned if I know.”

CHAPTER TEN

All along Interstate 90 cars and motorcycles passed us, slowing down and staring, then driving on. I drove for this stretch as JT was working his phone, which was fine with me because his kiss not only stirred up feelings of lust that had been dormant, but stirred up old emotions too. An orgasm would be nice, a trip down memory lane was not. It didn’t take a psychiatrist for me to know I had abandonment issues. My parents left me when I was five. I could never live up to Aunt Velma since she was larger than life. I never measured up with anyone, never felt like I truly belonged, so I kept everyone at a distance. It was easier, safer that way. With a job that had me traveling all the time, it was easy to keep things simple. If things got tough, I just took the next assignment, the next plane out of Dodge.

But JT had messed all of that up. I missed the plane to Thailand and, using Goldie’s line, everything went to hell in a hand basket from there. JT kissed me, Velma praised me, Esther had confidence in me enough to recommend me for a fill-in for the championship in roller derby, which she did not take lightly. Goldie entrusted me with her RV, which when I thought about it, wasn’t saying much.

Because of the little Taser incident, it had made me start to think about my life and I hated when I did that.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he muttered, breaking me out of my thoughts. “If you pull up your hash tag on Twitter, it’s saying you’re riding in a beat up silver dildo-shaped RV that has a horn out the front like a unicorn.”

“It’s not my hash tag,” I replied. “I said it was a metallic pickle. Esther called it a dildo.”

“Whatever,” he countered. “You can’t go incognito in this thing. No wonder everyone’s honking at us.”