I Knew You Were Trouble Page 17

“Nick, meet Twinkie.”

  His head snapped up. “Oh, hell no. Twinkie? The pink collar is one thing. Let her have some dignity.”

  “Wasn’t my idea,” she said, holding up her hands. “I had another name picked out, but then they told me she was five, and I couldn’t bring myself to change her identity on her.”

  “What did you want to call her?” he said, obliging with a belly rub as Twinkie rolled to her back.

  “Sprinkles.”

  He laughed, his eyes still on the dog. “No. Seriously.”

  She scowled at him. “Seriously.”

  He looked up and saw from her expression that she was for real. “You lucked out,” he stage-whispered to Twinkie.

  “Yeah, okay, it’s not the best name,” she said, getting up from the couch and joining him in the kitchen.

  “It’s not bad,” he said, taking the wineglass from her and helping himself to a sip. “If you’re a seven-year-old girl with pigtails.”

  Taylor looked away, but not fast enough.

  He reached for her hand, pulled her closer. “Hey.” He waited until she met his eyes before asking, “Is this your first dog?”

  She nodded.

  “But you wanted one as a kid?”

  She gave a rueful smile. “Yeah. A Yorkie. And yes, I was going to name her Sprinkles.” She held up a warning finger. “But I did not have pigtails.”

  He kissed her finger. “The dog didn’t happen?”

  Taylor gave him a look. “I know you never met Karen, but based on everything I’ve told you about her, what do you think?”

  She felt a little guilty criticizing Karen, but lately she’d been wishing that things had been, well…different. That Karen had told her it was okay to cry, and that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if a dog peed on white carpet.

  Maybe then she’d know how to be enough for a guy like Nick, and she wouldn’t be terrified that the dog wouldn’t love her back, and…

  “I think,” he said softly, “that Twinkie is very lucky to have you.”

  Twinkie apparently agreed, somehow managing to wedge her body between their shins, panting happily at being the middle of the sandwich.

  “You’re not mad?” she asked.

  “Nah.” He gave her a quick kiss and stepped back. “I like dogs.”

  She watched as he got himself a wineglass and helped himself to the bottle she’d opened.

  “Just like that?” she said. “You’re not going to give me crap for how I should have checked with you first?”

  He studied her over the wineglass. “It’s your apartment, Taylor. I just pay you rent.”

  He didn’t say it cruelly—it was merely a quiet observation, and perfectly true. And yet she felt his words like a blow across the face.

  “Right,” she said quickly, trying to recover. “Of course, we’re just…”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Yes?”

  Roommates? Sleeping together? Having fun? Frenemies with benefits?

  “Are you sleeping with other people?” she asked.

  He lowered his wine. “What? Did you seriously just ask me that?”

  Twinkie sensed trouble and wisely retreated to the bedroom to resume chewing her squeaky toy.

  “I don’t know!” Taylor waved her glass around wildly. “We’ve never talked about being exclusive, and you just told me that you basically just happen to live here, and you’ve never said you want me to be your girlfriend, and now I’m starting to realize that there’s a very real chance that the dog’s going to like you better than she likes me, and—”

  Nick set his glass down, walked to her, and took hers out of her hand before she sloshed its contents all over the floor.

  “You should come with a warning label,” he murmured, pulling her to him. “Or at least an instruction manual.” She started to step back, but he didn’t let her. “I’m not seeing anyone else, Taylor. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. You consume me.”

  “Yeah?” She stepped closer, ran a hand over his shirt.

  “Yeah.” His mouth dropped to hers for a kiss. He tasted like coffee and promise.

  “Taylor,” he said at last, his mouth drifting back and forth over hers softly.

  “Mm?” She tried to deepen the kiss, but he pulled back slightly and waited for her to open her eyes.

  “Let’s do this for real,” he said. “Girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever.”

  Taylor’s heart leapt. “More than roommates who sleep together?”

  He touched a finger to her lip. “Yes. More than that.”

  For how long?

  She didn’t ask it, though. For now she let it be enough, and threw her arms around his neck.

  “Never thought I’d be going steady with Nick Ballantine. Or that we’d have a dog together.”

  He snorted. “You managed to twist that fast.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, pulling back and turning to gesture at the living room. “How can you not love Twinkie alrea…” And then her mouth fell open because the living room was covered in tufts of white fluff. “What the heck just happened?”

  “Your dog just gutted her stuffed animal,” he said, retrieving their wineglasses and handing her one.

  “Our dog,” she persisted stubbornly.

  He glanced skeptically at the living room, but his eyes were warm, and there was a smile lurking on his lips. “Yeah. Okay, Carr. Our dog.”

  Chapter 25

  Twinkie lobbied hard for a spot on the bed, but in the end, Nick’s stubbornness won out. After all three of them had taken a quick trip to the corner pet store to get a dog bed, Twinkie lay curled in the corner of Taylor’s room, muzzle resting on the carcass of her gutted cow toy, eyes closed.

  “Wish I could fall asleep that early,” Taylor said, finishing her nightly routine of putting lotion on her hands and climbing into bed.

  Nick glanced up from the book he was reading. “If you need help getting to sleep, I know some things.”

  “I’m well aware,” she said, leaning over him for a kiss.

  His hand lifted to her hair, and she heard the book tossed aside as he deepened the kiss. His tongue pressed deep, exploring every corner of her mouth as his other hand played with the skinny strap of her nightgown.

  Taylor lifted a leg to straddle him, and though he let her, instead of tugging the nightgown down, like she expected, he instead reached for her hands, clasping them between his own, brushing a quick kiss to her fingertips.

  “Hold up a sec. I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Tired of me already?” she teased.

  His eyes drifted down to the lace of her nightgown. “Not even a little bit.”

  Still, his expression was semi-serious, and she sighed, sitting back. “Lay it on me.”

  “There’s a writers’ conference next week. Portland.”

  “Oregon or Maine?” she asked.

  “Oregon.”

  “Yay!” She punched his shoulder gently. “Your home turf.”

  “Exactly. I’d been contemplating going for a while, was on the fence. But I just found out my mom’s getting hip replacement surgery around the same time. Timing works out well for me to see the family while I’m out that way.”

  “You should,” she said emphatically.

  His smile was fleeting. “Between the conference and helping my folks out, I’ll be gone for two weeks or so.”

  Her stomach plunged uncomfortably at the realization of how much she’d miss him.

  He smirked, reading her mind in that annoying way he had. “You’ll miss me.”

  “Nonsense. I have Twinkie now. Girl power. You, on the other hand…” She traced a nail down the center of his chest. “Will miss me.”

  He held her gaze. “You could come with.”

  She went still. “Go with you? To Oregon?”

  To meet your parents?

  Nick shrugged, looking a little embarrassed beneath the scowl.

  She was tempted and terrified. Or maybe terrified because she
was tempted?

  She’d never met a guy’s parents, and maybe that was a little sad, but it was also just smart.

  Tangling up with someone’s family meant that when things inevitably went south, you weren’t just saying goodbye to one person, you were saying goodbye to several.

  Plus, with her atypical upbringing, Taylor wasn’t at all sure she even knew how to do the family thing. She’d never be the one to make casseroles with his mother, or the one his nieces and nephews begged to have babysit.

  “The timing’s probably not right,” he said, giving her an out. “With the new job. The dog.”

  “Right, yeah, it’d be tricky.” She bit her lip, but he reached out a finger to soothe the spot.

  “Taylor. Don’t worry about it, really. It was just an idea. I realize my atypical career path makes my schedule more flexible than most.”

  “Maybe next time?” she asked.

  He smiled. Again, it was fleeting, as though sensing her hesitancy. “Yeah. Next time.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Friday morning. Haven’t booked the return flight yet, but like I said, two weeks or so.”

  “Well, then…” Taylor wiggled closer, deliberately pressing her hips down, watching his eyes flare with desire. “I’d better make sure you won’t forget me.”

  The kiss started out light, their touches playful and teasing, but Taylor sensed an undercurrent—a need to connect that was as emotional as it was physical. A need to reassure the other person that they’d figure out how to make this work, because it was too good to let go of.

  Nick’s hands clamped on her hips, rolling her to her back. His hands ran up her inner thighs, making room for himself between them.

  His thumbs hooked into her underwear, sliding them down her legs and tossing them aside. He’d skipped the boxers tonight and was wonderfully naked against her.

  Nick’s fingers drifted over her, testing her readiness. He groaned when he realized she was already wet and aching for him.

  “Only you,” she whispered before she could stop herself. It’s only been this way with you.

  Nick pushed inside her with a single thrust, hard enough to make her gasp. They were still for a moment, breathing hard. Savoring the moment. Or maybe just trying to survive it.

  Then he began to move, tempering the roughness of his thrusts with the tender way he braced his elbows on her pillow, cradling her head with his hands.

  Nick wanted control, and she gave it to him. Her legs went around his waist, her nails digging into his shoulders as she held on.

  There. Right there.

  He understood. He quickened his pace, his eyes locked on hers as he took them both to the brink of pleasure and then over it.

  Nick muffled his cry in the crook of her neck, and then they were both still, save for the rapid rise and the fall of their chests as they let their heartbeats return to normal.

  Finally he pressed a soft good-night kiss to her shoulder, then shifted so that he was lying beside her, his arm tight over her waist.

  He fell asleep almost immediately, and though her eyelids were heavy, her mind was buzzing too much to allow her to sleep—although what specifically it was buzzing about, she couldn’t quite figure out. Every time she seemed to settle on one thought, it drifted into another.

  But nearly all of them were about the man beside her.

  Taylor jumped a little when she felt something on her other side. She looked over to see that Twinkie was unabashedly settling in on the other side of Taylor, as though it was her right to sleep on the bed.

  Taylor smiled and gave the dog’s rump a pat. “Don’t tell Nick,” she whispered.

  The dog’s tail wagged, and the last thought Taylor had before finally drifting off was that maybe she hadn’t gotten a dog so that it had someone to love it.

  Maybe she’d gotten the dog so that she had someone to love her.

  Chapter 26

  “So, when are you going to tell me about the girl?”

  Nick gave his mother a look. “Isn’t it enough that I’m making you cinnamon rolls and coffee?”

  “The cinnamon rolls are from a can, and the coffeepot did all the work.”

  “All right, then. Maybe I’ll just leave them over here, out of your reach,” he said as he spread some of the store-bought frosting on top of the freshly baked—if not homemade—pastries.

  His mother frowned at him from her place on the couch. “Don’t you dare deny the invalid sugary treats.”

  Nick’s mom was short and plump, with a chin-length white-blond bob, brown eyes, and a constant smile. He loved that while she’d always been round, she’d never shown the least bit of interest in changing her shape, always saying that smiles trumped skinny every time.

  “How much mileage are you planning on getting out of this whole hip replacement business?” he asked, bringing his mother a plate with two cinnamon rolls and a cup of coffee, heavy on the French vanilla creamer.

  His mother had been out of the hospital for three days and was milking every moment of having her husband and children dote on her. He supposed it was fair considering she’d devoted a lifetime to doting on them.

  But his father and siblings were all busy with other stuff today, which meant that his mom finally had her East Coast son all to herself to interrogate.

  “As much as I can get away with,” Belinda Ballantine responded, popping a sugary piece of roll into her mouth as he settled into the living room chair with his own coffee. “Now. The girl.”

  “I never said there was a girl,” he said.

  She smirked. “You didn’t have to.”

  “Motherly intuition?”

  “No, just eyeballs,” she said, waving her fork. “You smile more. Laugh louder. Check your phone a million times a day, and talk on it late into the night. Classic signs of being in love.”

  “I’m not in love,” he responded automatically. “We haven’t been together that long.”

  “Aha! So there is a girl.”

  Yeah, he’d walked right into that one.

  “Yes, Mother,” he said on a sigh. “There’s a woman. And don’t even pretend that Celine and Kerry didn’t already give you every little detail.”

  She took another bite of roll. “I want to hear details from you. Name?”

  “Taylor.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Very.”

  “Nice?”

  “She’s…yeah. She’s nice.” Nick’s hand paused with the coffee cup halfway to his mouth, a little surprised by his own answer.

  Just a few months ago, nice wasn’t a word he’d have put in the same sentence as Taylor Carr’s name.

  More like sexy, volatile, all-around pain in the ass.

  But if he’d learned anything in the past few weeks, it was that some of the sweetest things came in extremely spicy packages.

  Taylor’s ice cube of a guardian might have succeeded in making her ward wary, but Karen Carr hadn’t been able to snuff out Taylor’s goodness. Hadn’t been able to stop Taylor from not only halting and raiding her purse for cash every time she saw a homeless person but also trying to coax the homeless person into conversation, letting them know they were worth talking to. Karen hadn’t been able to stop Taylor from giving her entire heart to an exceptionally ugly dog, or from making late-night cappuccino runs when Nick was on an evening writing binge.

  Taylor was opinionated and stubborn and sarcastic as hell, but that was only one side of her. And he liked that side nearly as well as the one that was warm, alluring, and surprisingly young at heart.

  “Looks a lot like love to me,” his mom whispered into her coffee cup.

  Maybe it was.

  Nick stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “All right, you want to do this? What if I told you that if I loved this woman, it would mean you wouldn’t get any grandbabies from me?”

  He refrained from mentioning Hannah—the grandbaby who wasn’t. His parents had been there for Hannah’s birth. Ha
d loved her as Nick loved her. But they were too kind to mention her name.

  His mom’s eyes went sad. “She can’t have children?”

  “Doesn’t want them.”

  “Oh, well.” His mom’s frown disappeared. “That’s different. Always breaks my heart, the women who want them and can’t have them. But if the mother thing isn’t her calling, who am I to judge?”

  “You wouldn’t be disappointed?”

  His mom dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “I’m not going to say I wouldn’t love to see miniature versions of all my children. But I have other grandkids. And I respect that there are other walks of life besides parenthood.”

  Nick took a sip of coffee, feeling his mother studying him.

  “But you want children,” his mom said softly.

  “I do,” Nick admitted. “But I also want Taylor.”

  “Can’t always get what we want,” Belinda said with tart pragmatism.

  “Very inspiring. Thank you, Mom.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say? That you can eat your cake and have it too? I wanted to marry a doctor who’d whisk me off to San Diego or somewhere warm, where I’d have three girls, two of them twins with blond spiral curls born on Valentine’s Day.”

  Nick scratched behind his ear. “That’s…specific.”

  “Point is, I didn’t get it. I got a bunch of messy boys, and my girls were brunettes, and not a damn one of you was born in February.”

  “So sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Be quiet and listen. What I’m trying to say is that I got what I was supposed to have, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Not about your father, not about you kids.”

  “Not even our birthdays?”

  “Maybe that,” Belinda granted. “Always was a pain in the ass that Kerry was born on Christmas Eve. But listen to your mother, Nicholas. The things we want change over time. That’s what life is. One big, endless, wonderful cycle of growing and changing and adapting.”

  “I should have brought a notebook to write all this down,” he teased.

  “I’ll email you the highlights. In the meantime, just remember this: There are plenty of fertile fish in the sea, plenty of women who want to be mamas, but none of them might make you feel the way this girl makes you feel.”