His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Read online

  For once I don't have a quick come back. I'm so shocked he'd even dare speak to me like this out in public, I stand there with my mouth hanging open.

  This time it's Mike who maneuvers his basket around mine, walking into the grocery store like he didn't just say what he just said about Josie and me.

  And suddenly the day, which seemed so bright and full of blessings a few minutes ago, turns dark and ugly.

  I rush back to Beau and Josie's home, the same Tudor style mansion Beau grew up in, which I had to pretend to have never seen before when Josie showed me around on my first day. I do a sloppy job of putting all the groceries away, promising myself I'll come back later and fix it. Part of my job is to make sure everything is placed logistically so Beau can find what he needs without any help from Josie or me.

  I poke my head into Beau's study. He's on his computer, typing slowly on a special braille keyboard that talks to him as he types out certain words.

  “I've got a couple of calls to make, but then I'll be right back down to take you to your appointment at the hospital,” I tell him.

  Beau gives me a thumbs up without looking up from his computer, and I rush upstairs to my attic room, far away from where he can hear. My first call is to Josie.

  “Are you all right? How are you doing right now?” is the first thing she asks me after I finish telling her what happened with Mike, minus all the backstory about how he knows me, of course. In my version of the story, he saw me coming out of their house and decided to approach me at the grocery store.

  “I'm fine,” I tell her. “But he was off the chain, Josie. I'm more worried about you.”

  “We both need to be worried about his ex-wife. We're in the middle of helping her change her name and move to another state because he's made things so bad for her since they divorced and she was rewarded full custody of their children. But the process of moving out of state without opening her up to legal ramifications is really tricky-especially with children involved. And unfortunately, he's got friends in high places. He can't find her, so now he's coming after Ruth's House. We've had just about every sort of surprise state and city inspection you can think of visited on us in the months since we've been helping his ex-wife escape. Luckily, she was smart enough to keep meticulous records of all the times he put her or their children in the hospital, or we'd have to be dealing with visitation rights, too.”

  It's a chilling story for sure, but not one I can say I'm all too surprised to hear. I'd long suspected that the Mike who'd so casually destroyed Colin's violin just because Colin “got in his way,” was closer to the real Mike than the one who had sweet-talked me that summer.

  “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “This helps,” Josie assures me, but she sounds wrung out. Like Mike Lancer is drying all her energy up, when this should be the happiest time of her life, what with her engagement to Beau and all.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” I ask her.

  “Yes, but you might not like it.” I can practically hear Josie chewing on her lip on the other side of the phone. “I'm going to need you to not tell Beau about any of this. He's got that big event for his new charity coming up, and I don't want him worrying about me.”

  Now it's my turn to chew my lip. The thing is, Beau wouldn't just worry about Josie. She's his whole world. There's no doubt in my mind if he knew Mike Lancer was threatening her, he'd do something about it.

  “I don't know, Josie. I don't want to be the one to tell you how to handle your personal business, but don't you think Beau's going to want to know about this?”

  Josie lets out a weary sigh. “Yes, but I don't want him to do anything that would get him in trouble. Or the shelter. Please, I know it's a lot to ask, but can you keep quiet about this for a little while longer, just until we can get his wife out of town?”

  “Okay, yeah, I guess I can do that,” I say. Not because I necessarily think it's right. More because I don't think somebody who's keeping as many secrets as I am should force the woman who'd been nothing but generous to me to tell her husband that the wife abuser down the street has been talking all sorts of trash.

  Still, it's a relief to get off the phone with Josie and then back on it with my grandma.

  “It's my best grandbaby!” my grandma says when she picks up.

  I smile. My grandma is old school. She has ten grandchildren, and even more great grandchildren, but she'll call me her “best grandbaby” in a room chock full of them. And if anyone tries to tell her you're not supposed to play favorites, she'll say, “Any of you want to move in here with me and take me to all my appointments on your day off?” Then she uses the quiet that follows that question to call me her best grandbaby again.

  I answer her like I always do. “It's my best grandma!”

  “What you up to, child, calling me in the middle of the week? You ain't trying to cancel on this Friday are you? Because I got three appointments scheduled.”

  “No, no, no, Grandma. I'm still coming up, and I can't wait to see you, but I was wondering if I got a package.”

  “You sure did,” she says. “But I didn't open it. Because I didn't want to have to put up with your tall ones about it being against the law to open my own grandbaby's mail.”

  “It is against the law,” I tell her. “I wish you would stop acting like that's a story I made up. But in this case, I'm going to let you go'on ahead and open it.”

  My grandma doesn't have to be invited twice. I immediately hear the sound of ripping paper, then a “Hmmph…”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It's a book with some white woman on the cover…” Grandma answers. The sound of pages flipping. “It's got a signature on the front page. Let me get my glasses. Looks like an autograph, but I can barely read the name. June… Cortes… Cosh, I think?”

  “June Carter Cash?” My whole heart floods with warmth, and suddenly my good day turned bad turns right back to good again.

  “Is that the white woman on the cover? I guess it could be-hey, a card just fell out of the book. Let me bend down here and get it…” Rustling sounds and then my grandma says, “All it says is 'From C'? Who's 'C'?”

  “Um…” I answer.

  “And why's he sending you a book with June Carter Cash on the front of it?” she asks me.

  “Um…” I say again, feeling almost as uncomfortable as I did on the phone with Josie. “It's a long story.”

  “A long story?” My grandma repeats, suspicious as Halloween night in a big city. “Best Grandbaby, do you need to bring this 'C' person round to see me?”

  Chapter 15

  “Do you know how hard it was to explain to my grandma about the June Carter Cash autobiography?” I ask Colin the next day, when he calls me while I’m putting together Beau’s lunch.

  “What, she don’t like Mrs. Carter Cash?” Colin answers. He doesn’t sound remorseful at all. Just amused.

  “She’s more a ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain,’ sort of grandma. Even Kirk Franklin’s a little rowdy for her,” I answer.

  “Well, pass on my apologies, then,” Colin says. “I hope I didn’t upset her too bad.”

  “You didn’t upset her at all,” I say, throwing two chicken breasts into a pan with a little olive oil. “But she’s nosier than a bloodhound, and I know she’s going to be asking me to bring you around to see her on every phone call from now on.” Only after grumbling all this do I remember my manners enough to say, “And thank you by the way. That was a nice gift. Real thoughtful. I can’t wait to read it when I go home on Friday.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything in there that wasn’t in the Lifetime movie.”

  “You did not watch the Lifetime movie!”

  “Why are you always trying to tell me what I did and didn’t do, Purple? Lifetime ain’t just a woman’s network anymore, you know.”

  I do know, but at this point, I’m laughing too hard to answer. I do that a lot with Colin, I notice. Laugh.

 
; “How about you?” he asks. “You like your grandma?”

  “Nosey? A little bit, I guess. But I’ve got a ways to go before I get as bad as her.”

  “No, I meant religious.”

  The question startles me, and I answer carefully. “Well, I believe in God, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Me too,” he says. “But I’m talking about the other stuff. Like saving yourself for marriage and all that.”

  “Um…” To say I’m surprised by this turn in the conversation is an understatement. But I go with it. Colin and I have had some pretty heated conversations about politics over the last few months. Why not religion, too?

  “I guess that’s fine for some folks, but I’m not really one to wait until marriage to find out if the sex is bad or not.”

  “Me either,” Colin says with a wry chuckle. “So when’s the last time you had sex, good or bad?”

  I blink, nearly choking on my own spit. “Excuse me?”

  “Okay, I’ll go first,” he says, like I’ve just won some sort of negotiation I didn’t remember having with him. “It’s been a while for me. Since the beginning of the year, and I got a full check-up before starting this tour. So I’m clean. How about you? Had a check up with the lady doctor lately? Did it come back clean?”

  “First of all, I don’t think anybody calls gynos ‘lady doctors’ anymore. Second of all, there’s no way I’m telling you that!”

  “Because you’ve got something embarrassing you don’t want to tell me about?”

  “No, because it’s none of your damn business!” I flip Beau’s chicken breasts.

  “Okay then, I’m going to take that answer as a ‘Yes, Colin, my STD panel came back clean, but I’m too much of a wise-ass to just go ahead and tell you that.’ Same goes for whether you’re on birth control or not?”

  My mouth falls open, I’m so outraged. “I’m not telling you that.”

  “Look, Purple. Let’s both be adults here? I’m okay with condoms, but I think we’ll have more fun finding out if the sex is bad between us if we don’t have to bother with them. So I’m asking you to either keep on taking your BC or get on it right now. Your choice.”

  My heart stops, and I just stand there at a loss for words, as the chicken sizzles in the pan.

  Eventually I say, “You seriously want to find out if the sex is bad between us?”

  His answer comes after his own bit of silence, quiet and grave. “Yeah. Yeah, I seriously do.”

  More shocked silence on my part. Honestly, I have no idea what to say, or how to deal with this out-of-the-blue proposal for possibly bad sex.

  “You still there or did you hang up on me?”

  “I’m… still here.” It feels like the words are struggling to climb out of my throat. “I’m just… surprised.”

  “Tell you the truth, I am, too. You’re not my usual type, but I’m feeling something between us. Something I’ve been thinking about following up on for quite a few of these phone calls now.”

  The thought of him thinking about me like that… I feel my face heat and I’m glad he’s on the other side of the phone, because he’d for sure be asking me why I’m blushing right now.

  “What’s your usual type?” I ask, too curious to keep the question inside.

  “Submissive,” he answers. Casual, like he’s talking about the weather.

  And I laugh, because Colin really is the king of saying the most inappropriate thing at the most inappropriate moment.

  But he doesn’t laugh, and in the ensuing silence, I realize… he’s serious.

  “I’m… I’m not submissive,” I tell him. “I mean, I haven’t even read Fifty Shades of Grey, that’s how not submissive I am.”

  “Nope, you’re not,” he agrees easily.

  “Then why me?” I ask him. “I mean, you’re a big deal. Don’t you have, like, a truckload of groupies dying to be your sub or whatever it’s called?” I send a silent thank you to Grandma’s talk shows for educating me about the finer points of kinky sex lifestyles.

  “Sure,” he says. “But you got something they don’t.”

  He goes quiet on the other side of the line, forcing me to ask, “What?”

  “A smart mouth,” he answers. “And I want to close it.”

  Outrage. That is the only emotion I should be feeling at this moment. But instead I feel heat. Not just in my face. No, this time, a crude, undeniable hotness floods my entire body and pools between by legs, tugging so hard, it makes my core ache.

  It’s not a familiar sensation. But it is one I’ve had before. A very long time ago, when I was too young to handle it. And for moments on end, I’m stuck between then and now, with feelings I shouldn’t be having raging so intense inside of me, they steal my voice.

  “I’m in town for a few days at the end of the month,” he says into my silence. “Thursday through Monday. I’ll send you the details and the address for where to meet me. Then I won’t bring it up again. If you show up, you show up.”

  I should say no. No, of course I’m not going to use my days off and a couple more besides to meet up with him so he can live out his BDSM fantasy on me. That would be crazy. And what about our friendship? This thing we’d been building for the last two months now. What is he trying to do here? Doesn’t he value what we already had? Because I sure do, and I’m not looking to wreck it with… weird sex.

  But instead of saying that, I ask. “And what if I don’t show up?”

  “If you don’t show up… alright then,” he answers.

  That’s not really an answer. But I get pretty quickly that it’s the only one I’ll be getting from him.

  “I guess I’ll… think about it,” I say carefully, not quite believing the words coming out of my mouth even as a I say them.

  “Alright,” he says. “I got a show tomorrow in Grand Rapids. I can never remember if Michigan’s on Central or Mountain, but count on me calling you sometime around four your time.”

  “Alright,” I stupidly parrot. My body is still on fire, and it feels like I’ve had most of the words I’ve ever learned flushed straight out of me by this sudden fever.

  I hear Ginny’s voice in the distance say something to Colin, and he answers casual as you please. “Yep, sure, I’m finishing up here. I’ll be there in just a minute.”

  “My manager wants to go over the set list,” he tells me. “Talk to you tomorrow, Purple.”

  “Alright,” I say again.

  And then he hangs up.

  “Kyra? Kyra? You out there?”

  It takes me a few moments to realize it’s Beau’s Alabama accent coming at me now. Not Colin’s. Colin would never call me by my real name—I’m not sure he even remembers it from the one time I told him.

  No, it’s Beau. The only man, other than my Paw Paw, I’ve ever truly loved. His voice is now calling to me through the intercom, located on the kitchen wall. And the two chicken breasts I’m making him are close to burning.

  I slide them out of the pan and onto the waiting plate before pressing the intercom’s talk button.

  “Yes, Beau, I’m here,” I say, trying not sound as flustered as I feel. “What can I help you with?”

  Chapter 16

  I take Beau’s lunch with me when I go to meet him in his basement workout room.

  I’m not sure what the room looked like before, but Josie told me Beau and his old assistant, Mac, had rigged it out. Getting rid of the traditional workout equipment and barbell racks that were there beforehand, and replacing them with machines Beau could safely use on his own.

  Beau is very independent and usually comes to the kitchen to eat his lunch as opposed to making me bring it to him. But I see why he’s called me down here almost immediately.

  Or rather I hear it. “Alabama Girls Bring the Party,” Colin’s hit song about… well, how Alabama girls bring the party, is blasting on the room’s sound system. And Beau’s standing underneath his chin-up bar with his hands covering his ears.

  “Hey, Beau,�
� I yell over the music.

  “I need you to turn this crap off!” he yells backs, holding out his phone to me. “I’d do it myself, but it’s a Pandora station, and I need you to do that thing where you tell it to never, ever play this fucking song again.”

  I set the plate down on the room’s only table and do what he says. But I feel all sorts of weird as I push the thumbs down icon and Beau’s phone skips to an upbeat Luke Bryan number. What would Beau say if he knew I talked to the guy he considered his worst enemy every day, because his wife asked me to? A chill runs down my back just thinking about it.

  “This is a good song for working out,” I tell him, and I try to hand the phone back to him, but he says, “You can just go ahead and turn it off. I was about to break for lunch anyway, and it smells like you brought it with you.”

  “Yep, sure have, and I already put it on the table. Do you need me to—”

  “Nope,” Beau answers, taking back his phone before I can even halfway finish offering to guide him over to the table. “Got the room memorized. I know where the table is. Mac made sure I did when he put it there.”

  “Alright then,” I say. Then I blush, because I’ve somehow suddenly come to associate those three words with Colin.

  “Have a nice lunch,” I say to Beau, before I turn to make a hasty escape.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I answer.

  “You sound kind of weird. Like something’s on your mind.”

  “I’m fine,” I say again. Lie again. “Just let me know when you need me to come get your plate.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I can get it to the kitchen myself,” Beau answers with a smile so dazzling, I can easily see why Josie took him back with marriage on top at the beginning of the summer.

  I start to leave again. But then he asks me, “Did you maybe date somebody on the Forest Brook football team? I remember DeAndre Fields had a girl from Beaumont, and that’s where you’re from, right?”

  I shake my head, which is stupid because it’s not like he can see me do it. Then I say out loud, “I’m from Beaumont, but I’ve never heard of DeAndre Fields.”