Blackstone_Four Fathers Read online

  I turn around and storm back through the house and out the front door. Twenty-two feet across the front lawn and I make it onto her ratty front porch. The counting starts every time my closed fist meets her worn door. One, two, three, four… At seven banging seconds, she answers.

  “Hi, can I help—”

  “Sign the contract,” I blurt out, trying to focus on the girl in front of me, who doesn’t seem to be a girl at all. Fuck. Her ash blond hair blows across her oval shaped face with the evening breeze. Her eyes, the color of emeralds gaze politely back at me, as her full lips curve into a soft smile. My heart beats out of my chest. I should have popped a Xanax on my way over.

  “Excuse me?” she asks, her voice light and sexy as fuck.

  Focus, man.

  “I said sign. The seven hundred-fifty thousand will be wired to your bank within an hour after we close. I can make that happen as early as tomorrow morning. Now, stop wasting my time.” Ten, nine, eight, seven… God she has perky breasts. Her tight tank top hides nothing of her full C-cup. Perfect nipples. She’s just under five-six, approximately six inches shorter than me. Six, five…

  “I’m not signing anything. Like I told your realtor, I’m staying until the end of summer just like the original contract states. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  My hand goes out, stopping her from slamming the door in my face. Four, three, two… I should have taken the call from Dr. Winters this morning. The counting is getting worse.

  “Excuse me! Remove your hand, sir, or I’ll call the police!”

  I snap out of my episode. Sir? Did she just call me sir? “What did you just call me?”

  “I called you sir, and you’re currently trespassing. Get off my property.”

  Jesus Christ, how old does she think I am? I look down at my chest peeking through where my button used to hold my shirt in place. Muscle. I see fucking muscle. I might be nearing forty-five, but I feel great. I look great. Not a single gray to be seen. I’m tan, smooth skin. My goddamn ex waxes my eyebrows for Christ’s sake, and my dick works better than it did when I was a teenager. How the hell do I look like a sir?

  “Hello? Are you deaf now?”

  “Are you insinuating I’m old and can’t hear?” She gives me a peculiar look while I look at her as if she’s blind. Clearly, I’m not old. Or deaf.

  “What? Maybe, but you’re still on my porch.”

  “I’m not old enough to be called sir. Take it back.” Apparently, I’ve resorted to child’s play as well.

  Her brows go up. “Seriously? You're offended I called you old?” Damn straight. I’m half tempted to show her just how not old I am by fucking her so hard over this ratty porch, the hinges break beneath us. “Hello? You sure you aren’t deaf? You seem to also have a staring problem.”

  I can’t deny that. I can’t stop staring at her perfect lips tempting me to do so many things to them. Jesus. When was the last time I got laid? The numbers start at it again, counting down the months, hours, minutes from the last time I was with a woman. Dammit. “Stop,” I burst out loud to my brain.

  “No, you stop, you’re the one staring.”

  “What? No, not you.” This is turning out to be a big fucking disaster. I shove my hands over my face and through my thick dark hair while she observes my every move. A dumb part of me hopes she notices how thick my hair is. Someone who’s old wouldn’t have such a great head of hair.

  Maybe I did this all wrong. Threatening her to sign the new contract may have not been the right angle. Maybe being a gentleman would have worked better. I try to start over.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. Can I come in?”

  Her eyes bug out at the question. Apparently, that wasn’t the right move either. “No. And no! You come banging on my door, threatening me, and—not gonna lie—creep me out with all your staring and number mumbling, then think you can come in? No, you most certainly cannot.”

  Dammit. I can’t remember the last time I scared a chick. Because I never have. This girl must be blind. I start equating the amount of time I’ve been in her presence and how short the timespan of her ability to perform an adequate perception of me—

  “You’re doing it again!”

  “Doing what?”

  “Counting!”

  What in God’s name has come over me? I pull at my shirt again, needing more air down my chest. Speaking of chests, I seem to have a liking for hers, since I keep finding my eyes there. She catches on and crosses her arms over her tits, making them even perkier. Fuck. Go home, Trev. Let Clara handle her.

  My dick wants me to do all the handling, but I'm pretty sure the freaked out look on her face tells me I’m not impressing her enough to offer her to suck my cock as an apology.

  I take a step back.

  Then another one.

  “Sign the contract. Take the money. Don’t make me come back here.” I threaten having to come back here, but my dirty mind fantasizes me doing just that. Sneaking into her bedroom, eating her raw, then fucking her bareback. I shake my head. What the fuck is wrong with me?

  I turn, treading back across the lawn. Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen…

  “Hey, Numbers?” her sexy little voice calls, and my head whips around. “You’re wasting your time. I don’t want your extra money. I’m not going to close any earlier than the original contract states.”

  “We’ll see about that.” I offer her my handsome, panty-dropping smile, then continue my path, counting the remainder of steps back to my house.

  Chapter Three

  Lucy

  “No, Katie, you don’t get it, he was a weirdo. If he hadn’t opened his mouth, maybe it would be different.”

  “So, he was smokin’ hot—old, but hot. And semi challenged? Is that what I’m getting? You move to Tampa for the summer to find yourself and meet a man and that’s what you come up with?”

  I laugh at her breakdown. “He’s not challenged. He was just...interesting, I guess. He kept mumbling numbers. Like calculating everything he was saying. It was strange. But then again, he had this authority to him. This aura that screamed power. Control. It didn’t make sense.”

  “Well, did you even ask how old he was? Age is just a number nowadays, girl.”

  Ugh, she’s kinda right. Jimmy, my ex, cheated on me, left me with a pile of debt, and tons of trust issues, and he was only a year older than me.

  “Did he seem into you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s the one trying to push up the closing date on Gran’s place. Not gonna happen. The last time we spoke, she made me promise I would come out here to find myself, so that’s what I’m going to do,” I say with more confidence than I feel. I hope I figure my shit out in two months. August first will be here before I know it, and I have a lot of shit to figure out.

  Katie bursts out laughing through the phone. “What happens if the summer ends and you’re still lost?”

  “I’ll go to the closing, sell the house they’ll no doubt bulldoze, and come home.” The ache already settles in my chest at the thought of letting Gran down. My parents died when I was in high school. My Gran raised me. I was heartbroken when she moved to their summer home in Florida, once shared with my Grandad before he passed, to spend out her retirement. Gran had begged me to come with her, but I was head over heels for Jimmy and the best I could do was manage an occasional phone call here and there. Pathetic.

  When she fell ill, I told her I’d drop everything to take care of her. I owed it to her. But she lied and masked how sick she really was. But when I got the call, I knew. I got to spend a few days with Gran before she left me too. In that time, she lectured me about all the wrong decisions I’d made in my life. She had valid points. I was a walking hot mess. I was broke, heartbroken, and jobless, since I quit to spend the summer in Florida at their home—the home my grandparents owned way before Tampa became a hotspot for vacationers. I knew the closing didn’t take place until the end of the summer, so I promised Gran before she died I would take some time for myself. And here I was.

  “Damn. I hope that doesn’t happen, since you picked up your entire life here in Minnesota to spend it on the beach. Do you even own a bathing suit?”

  I laugh. I didn’t as of two weeks ago when I officially made the decision to come to Tampa. Water has never been my thing, hence the hesitation when I learned Gran’s house overlooked the ocean. “I doubt I’ll spend too much time in the water. More like on the back deck reading my romance novels and sipping on some spritzers. Hey, maybe I’ll even look for a part time job.”

  Katie gags before I even finish my sentence. “You did not go there to work. Relax. Read your smut. Get laid by a random—possibly your sexy, weird neighbor. But I’m pretty sure your gran didn’t mean find work when finding yourself.” True. But with my horrible track record, even searching for a man to get laid sounds like work.

  I end up letting my friend go. The weather today is clear; not a cloud in the sky. I have high hopes of knocking out a whole book while catching some sun on the back deck. I’ve spent most of the week going through Gran’s boxes of old photo albums, piecing together her life. There’s no denying I shed a few tears at how happy my grandparents were and seeing old pics of my parents when they were young. I wish Gran were here to tell me stories behind some of the photos.

  Being Sunday, I decide to take a break from memory lane. I snatch a worn historical romance paperback from Gran’s bookshelf and slide into my brand new white bikini. Grabbing my towel and a Mike’s Hard Lemonade from the fridge, I head out back.

  The sun feels amazing on my skin. I inhale the breeze, tasting the salt of the ocean on my tongue. I drop my towel on the lawn chair and get comfortable. My shades are down, and my book is ready to be dominated.

  “This is nice,” I h
um to myself, lifting my lemonade and taking a nice sip.

  And out it all repels as I spit and choke on it.

  “Jeeeesus Christ.”

  I knock my sunglasses halfway down my nose as my eyes threaten to fall out of their sockets. Where in holy heavens did he come from? The half-naked man leaning on his balcony across the way. My tongue about falls out of my mouth. Is that Numbers? And holy shit, when did he get so much muscle? I’d call him fit, but that’s not fit. That’s like, “Hi, I eat muscle for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and now I’m just all muscle.”

  I wipe at my chin, unsure whether it’s lemonade splatter or I'm drooling. I’m probably drooling. I wasn’t paying attention to much of him yesterday when he was acting all crazy on my front step. I just wanted him gone. To be honest, while he was babbling, I was trying to dig in the back of my brain for my old high school karate moves in case he tried something on me. Looking at him now, I wish he had.

  He lifts his hand, threading his large hand through his hair and dragging his fingers down his hard chest covered in a dusting of hair. “Oh boy, where’s that hand going?” I mumble, licking my lips. Oh yeah. I see where this is going. Yep, oh yeah... Did I just moan?

  Oh, hell yeah I did, but it’s so worth it. His hand dips down into his board shorts and he adjusts himself. Feel free to pull them down. Show us the goods, I think, mentally visualizing just how big his junk is. He’s a pretty big guy. Big hands. Theory says, and all.

  Watching him fondle himself in all his hot glory, my curiosity piques. How old is he really? He sure had a reason to take offense by my calling him old. He certainly doesn’t look old. He surely looks a zillion times hotter than Jimmy, and he was only twenty-eight. I’m not an age wizard, but if I had to guess, I’d say late thirties, early forties. Definitely a bit out of my age range. Why? No idea. No real reason screaming stay away. Well, besides the major one being he wants to evict me, tear down my Gran’s life of memories, and probably build a gym in its place.

  Yeah, that’s a good enough reason.

  It also reminds me it’s the guys who look appealing on the outside that usually turn out to be dicks on the inside.

  His hand is still in his pants, and I can’t imagine he’s so large, it’s taking him that long to adjust. Is he…he…masturbating! I lean forward, hoping a few more inches will give me a better prognosis. There’s a peg in the way, so I twist to the side for a better view. His hand is still working. Oh, it stopped. It’s pulling out. My eyes follow, until his hand is up his chest, rubbing at his—

  “Oh shit!”

  His eyes meet mine, and I jolt, dropping my lemonade, startling myself again when the bottle smacks against the deck and shatters. Shit. Did he just witness me gawking at him? I’m trapped, unable to pull away. He’s sucking me in. Pull away! Abort!

  The thing is, I can’t. Dammit is he hot. He also looks mad. Probably so, since I kind of pulled a peeping tom on a personal moment.

  “See something you like?” he calls over, confirming I’m busted.

  “You two should get a room,” I yell back, since there’s no point in denying the fact that I had been watching, and I had been enjoying. I lean back in my chair, acting unfazed, even though my heartrate has picked up and a little tornado in my lower belly has my core on edge.

  He breaks into a smile, but it's not an easygoing, friendly smile. It’s…predatory.

  Jeeeesus.

  Go back inside, Lucy. Stay clear.

  “We’re looking for a third if you want to come over and assist,” he yells, causing the heat to spike. Man, Florida weather is ridiculous. I fan myself, blaming the ball of fire in the sky while picturing myself helping him out. I’m sure he’s not thinking I’m as sexy right now with the look on my face. It’s a face that’s trying to determine if my small hand would even fit around his large package.

  “What do you say? He’s looking for a new friend.”

  I’m about to suggest a playdate, because he’s got me super horny and clearly fogged in the brain, when two women in bikinis walk out.

  What the fuck?

  They take a place on either side of him, then snuggle closer, wrapping their arms around his waist. The one on my side leans in, laughing and whispering something in his ear.

  You have got to be kidding me! What a prick! He pulls his eyes away from mine to reply to whatever the tramp said. What am I doing? Was I seriously just about to get played? Wow. Good to know my neighbor is a huge douchebag. I sit up quickly, grab my book, and stand. Avoiding the broken glass, I lift my eyes to the neighbor who’s staring back, flip him off, then storm inside, forfeiting the sun, and sadly, the playdate.

  Chapter Four

  Trevor

  “I don’t care, Darlene.”

  “I know, but if you just let us use this property for the party, I promise I’ll stay out of your hair.” She squeezes my waist again, and I push her and Kiki off me. Jesus, these fucking women won’t leave me alone. And they interrupted a possible introduction between my cock and sexy neighbor.

  “You can’t use the house. Last time I let you, it got trashed and one of your hooker friends started a fire in the kitchen.”

  Her pout drives me fucking mad. That shit used to work on me, when I disappeared for days at work and she claimed she needed a weeklong spa retreat in the Alps to forgive me. Who the fuck knows what she actually did on those trips. Knowing what I know now, I wonder if she’s been muff diving longer than she admitted.

  “I promise we’ll behave.”

  “I said no. Now, you asked to use the house to lay on the beach. Do it before I kick you out. I have shit to do.” And by shit, I mean figure out why that little firecracker just flipped me off, then figure out a way to get her to sign the contract and move the closing date up.

  I push both women off me and walk back inside.

  Heading to my room, the call I placed to my overpaid realtor pushes itself to the forefront of my mind. Clara had no luck. I pay her a shit ton not to come back and tell me she couldn’t get the signature. I thought about going back over there and taking her hand and forcing her, but I was too much of a mess to handle it. I knew I should’ve called Dr. Winters and scheduled an appointment, but I wanted to be done with her. I was getting better. I didn’t need her.

  This week proved otherwise.

  I knew I was starting to relapse when I went to work calculating the probability of seeing her when I left. The ratio of favorable outcomes had me at seventeen. The problem was, I didn’t see her once. I was off, or she was hiding. But why? What was she doing in that shack? The list of those probabilities was so long. Over a hundred possible outcomes. By the time I laid my head down, forcing sleep, I was too far gone to do that. So, I went to the beach—a place I always seem to find solace. I swam, and jogged up and down the shore, hoping to exhaust myself. But the numbers kept forming.

  I have no idea why I’m obsessing over this girl. She was in my presence for less than ten minutes and I can’t get her out of my mind. I want that signature. But I want something else with it. I’m a man. Admitting I wanted my dick in her mouth isn’t wrong. It’s honest. I beat off to the thought of her sucking my cock more times than I could count. Literally. But my mind always went back to numbers. The probability of that outcome. Getting her to suck my dick. Fractions among fractions, thinking of all the ways to get that to happen.

  I need to shut it down. She isn’t as young as I imagined, but she’s still young. I’m guessing mid-twenties. Half my age. Not that age ever stopped me before. Pussy is pussy. But would she just be pussy to me?

  She should be. I’m not in the right state of mind to get involved with anyone. I need to stay focused on the business. But having her watch me fondle my cock still has me at half-mast. I should go over there and force her to finish him off just for teasing me.

  I shake my head. Get a grip, asshole. Call Dr. Winters. No. I can handle this on my own. I’ve been stressed before and dealt with it. I’ve been dealing with it my entire life. It wasn’t until Jerald Winslow, a counselor from the shelter I had been visiting, took interest in me that I realized what I was. Or at least confirmed I wasn’t retarded like my mother told me just before she left me on the beach, wanting nothing to do with me.