Illicit Temptations (Tempted Series Book 1) (29 page)

I bit back my smile as Mikey held my hand while we walked across the parking lot towards a diner. We had just crossed the state line finally making it to Florida, but we still had about an hour more of driving until we reached Aunt Gina’s house. We decided to stop and get a bite to eat giving me time to catch him up on Aunt Gina and Nana and the shenanigans that were to be expected of them.

I glanced down at our joined hands as the waitress escorted us to a booth the memories of last night as well as the wee hours of this morning came rushing back to me. I guess I never paid much thought to how it would be if Mikey and I had sex and by that, I don’t mean the actual deed but the aftermath. I would’ve pegged Mikey for acting completely weird shutting me out or telling me it was a mistake but he did none of those things. In fact, I woke up this morning with his head between my legs. Yeah Mikey was all about starting the day off right.

We sat across from one another and Mikey ordered us each a cup of coffee as we took the menus from the waitress. I opened my menu my stomach growled as Mikey placed his on the table and stared at me distracting me from trying to decide what I wanted to eat.

“What?” I asked quietly, looking at him from the top of the menu.

“Nothing,” he said smiling.

“Right,” I closed the menu and placed it on the table on top of his cocking my head to the side. “So you’re just staring at me for no reason?”

“I’m staring at you because you’re easy on the eyes.” He winked at me. “Why? Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” I said automatically, but pointed towards him and wagged my finger. “But don’t get any ideas. I’m not into getting it on in the bathroom of a diner.”

He leaned over the table, eyes trained on mine and whispered.

“That’s a shame Princess because spontaneous sex is the best kind.”

“I didn’t say I was against spontaneous sex just not into being propped against the door of a bathroom stall or bent over a sink while we wait for our burgers,” I smiled sweetly and reopened my menu again.

“You paint a pretty picture,” he said one of his hands disappearing under the table as he did so. “Just picturing you bent over anything has me hard as rock.”

“Keep your dick in your pants Mikey,” I bit my cheek to stop from laughing when I heard him groan. The waitress placed our coffee on the table and gave us a few more minutes to look over the menu.

“Fine I’ll try to behave,” he said, a slight frown playing on his lips before he took a sip of his coffee. We ordered our food and ate like savages. Mikey was a bottomless pit clearing his plate in mere minutes before picking at mine. It was kind of cute and didn’t feel like we were just friends sharing a meal instead it felt strangely intimate. I liked it maybe too much.

I picked at my fries as Mikey leaned back and looked around the diner.

“This place reminds me of back home,” he said as he stared at the patrons that ate at the counter joking with the people behind it.

I glanced at the counter, then back towards him.

“You think so? These people seem a lot friendlier than the ones that work at the Vegas Diner,” I said, thinking about the diner that we frequented back in Brooklyn.

“I don’t mean Brooklyn,” he said turning back to face me. “I mean in Pennsylvania.”

“Oh,” I said quietly. This had been the first time Mikey had mentioned Pennsylvania the first time he had referred to it as home. “Do you miss it there?”

He shrugged his shoulders thinking about my question. “I don’t think so it’s not like I had much of a life there,” he paused. “But I had my mother. I guess I associate home with her so missing her makes me miss there if that makes any sense.”

I nodded. “It makes perfect sense,” I looked down at my plate. “Do you think when this is all over you’ll go back there?”

“Back to PA?” He asked. I lifted my head to meet his gaze and nodded. “For what?” He shook his head and I let out a sigh that I hadn’t realized I had been holding. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You lived there for ten years Mikey I’m sure you had some sort of life
. You had a job
, you had friends, and women I am sure you must have had some sort of life,” I said finding myself wondering about the life Mikey had left behind in Pennsylvania.

“The first few years we lived there I was mainly focused on sports even had an opportunity to go to college and play until I injured my knee,” he laughed slightly. “Like everything else those dreams were squashed.”

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. I probably should’ve dropped it, but my curiosity to know everything about him got the best of me. “So what did you do then?”

“I dropped out of college and started taking on some odd jobs. A friend of mine worked with his father in construction and when they needed an extra hand on a job, they’d call me. They started calling more and more eventually giving me a steady job so for the last few years I have been doing that.”

“So you’re good with your hands,” I said smiling.

“I don’t know am I?” He smiled playfully at me.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” he paused. “I’m good with my hands. I’ll build you your dream house one day Princess.”

He wasn’t smiling when he said it and his eyes shined with sincerity making me
almost
believe that one day he would. Almost.

“Was there anyone special there that you miss?” I asked him suppressing the urge to cringe at my own words.

“You mean a woman?”

I nodded in response.

“There were lots of women, Nikki,” he admitted honestly and I didn’t know I felt about that, but before I could give it, any more thought he started to speak again. “There were lots of superficial women who held no substance and not because they didn’t try but because I didn’t. I didn’t go looking for a woman that I could hold on to I went looking for the type of woman that would have nothing to offer me the type that wouldn’t want me for anything more than my dick. I steered clear of any woman that would want something substantial from me because I never wanted to feel anything,” he shrugged his shoulders.

“After that shit happened with my knee I started to think that I wouldn’t amount to anything. I began to think I was destined to be a street guy like my old man only there were no streets to run in Pennsylvania, which in turn made me think I was just muddling through to get by. I’d never be anything and sure as hell would never be good enough for anyone else. So I stayed away from anyone who would allow me to believe in the false pretense that I was good enough to be in their life or make me believe that I could do something with my own life.”

“Why would you feel like that?” I asked my heart aching from his words.

“Because it’s the truth,” he smiled slightly cocking his head to the side as he took a deep breath the conversation becoming too intense. “Everything I touch becomes tarnished in one way or another. I should’ve told your father that before he hired me for the club. Temptations never stood a chance with me as a manager. I’m damaged goods Nikki I’ve seen too much loss to believe that happy endings exist.”

“You really feel that way?” I asked, knowing the answer to my question already. I could see it written all over his face.

“Yes. I am not the kind of guy for a girl like you. I’m full of imperfections and I had no business touching something as perfect as you but I’m a selfish bastard because I’m not sorry I did. See?” He points his thumbs towards himself. “Not a good guy. You deserve a hell of a lot better than me, but I’m not ready to give you up.”

“I’m not perfect,” I said, hating that those words were all I could bring myself to say. I wanted to tell him he thought too poorly of himself, but I didn’t want to stir the pot fearing that he would cut me off.

“Damn near close,” he murmured.

His words left me feeling uneasy and wondering why he took the job with my dad in the first place. Had he hoped to change his life for the better or had he taken it because he felt like he had nothing to lose? I feared it was the latter and that he was willing to succumb to the same fate as his dad. Mikey had no ambition to be anything other than a failure because that’s what he had put in his head, but I knew better deep down Mikey was a good guy. I saw his drive to excel as a manager at Temptations and when the shit hit the fan there was one thing I was certain of beyond a shadow of a doubt he would’ve risked his own life to save mine.

His phone rang immediately interrupting my train of thought and I watched him fish the phone out of his pocket. He glanced down at the caller id before turning the screen towards me. Whoever was calling showed up in Mikey’s new phone as “Don’t Answer”.

“What are you doing?” I said, reaching for the phone as he slid his finger across the screen to answer the call. “But it says— “
      

Mikey shrugged his shoulders winking at me as he brought the phone to his ear. “Hello?” He placed the call on speakerphone and we both leaned over the table to listen to the caller.

“Can’t you read Dipshit?” Jimmy Gold barked through the phone.

I shook my head leave it to him to interrupt the moment.

“What do you want Jimmy?”

“Glad to see you take directions well,” he said sarcastically.

“Then why did you call me if you didn’t want me to answer?” Mikey asked as the waitress dropped the check on our table.

“I’m calling to see why the fuck you two aren’t at your destination yet. Vic’s ticked.”

“We’re about an hour away. We just stopped off to get something to eat,” Mikey nodded to me to get up, and we slipped out of the booth. Mikey dropped some bills on the table before placing his hand on my back and ushering me out of the diner.

“Well, enough funny business now get your asses there. Vic’s having a stroke worrying about you guys.”

“We’re fine,” he said looking me over as if to confirm that I was okay. I took the phone from Mikey’s hand.

“Jimmy how long are we going to have to stay under the radar?”

“I don’t know kid just hang tight. Your pops is working on it,” Jimmy said. “Put the Dipshit back on the phone.”

“I’m here asshole,” Mikey said as we climbed into the car.

“Don’t answer the phone unless it’s this number and do yourself a favor when you get to where you’re going to stay out of sight. I’ll be in touch.” He said before ending the call. Mikey placed the phone in the console and looked over at me.

“I fucking hate that guy.”

“I know you do,” I said with a smile.

“Does your Aunt have a pool?” He asked as he started the car a sly smile working the corners of his mouth.

“I think so. It’s one of those fifty and over complexes, I’m pretty sure it has a community pool. Why?”

“More incentive to get your sweet ass to your Aunt’s. Did you happen to buy a bikini at Target?”

“I did,” I said smiling. A sound escaped Mikey’s lips similar to a growl and then he mumbled something inaudible forcing me to think that we couldn’t get to Aunt Gina’s soon enough. Apparently leaving our old lives behind had its perks.

The sun was starting to set when we pulled into the gated community. I had to drive five miles an hour because there were speed bumps every ten feet a necessity for all the residents who drove their motorized scooters and there were quite a few. Two had just slow rolled alongside me as I drove slowly, looking at the house numbers.

“How old is your Aunt again?” I asked, cocking my head to the side to take in the two old ladies in swimsuits pushing along their walkers.

“Sixty something,” she said as she glanced over my shoulder. “Is that old man wearing a Speedo?”

I tore my eyes from the two ladies to catch a glimpse of the man hosing his front lawn in a Speedo and swim goggles he looked to be about a hundred years old. No way was Aunt Gina only sixty years voluntarily living in geriatric hell.

“Yeah, that’s a Speedo,” I confirmed poor guy his junk was on display.

“Wait, stop! This is it,” she said pointing out her window towards the last house in the row. It was pitch dark not a single light on.

“Are you sure? Let me see that,” I said, taking the piece of paper with the street address on it. Yep, this was it.

“Satisfied?” Nikki asked sarcastically as she raised one eyebrow and snatched the paper back from my hand.

“What the fuck are we supposed to do now? They’re clearly not home.” I said, shutting off the engine of the car staring at the dark house before us.

“How do you know they’re not home? Maybe they’re just sleeping.”

“At eight o’clock?” I asked incredulously.

“Have you looked around?” Nikki said, reaching to open her door. “It seems like the hip thing to do around here that and watering your flowers in explicit swimwear.”

I wasn’t sure what Vic was thinking hiding us away here at Shady Pines or whatever the hell this place was but then again this might be the perfect hideout. I couldn’t picture a fleet of gangsters rolling in through here in fact this was probably the last place they’d look for us. Nikki rang the doorbell and turned to me.

“If they don’t answer then maybe we should call Jimmy,” she said.

“Fuck that,” I replied, taking a step closer to the door to ring the bell again. “The less I talk to that imbecile the better,” I glanced up at the house.
Please be home
. I really didn’t want to call Jimmy.