Page 19 of Accidentally Mine

Roselynn

M y head told me to push him away.

Problem was, pretty much the rest of my body wanted to pull him closer. Maybe I was just as horny as Aunt Marie. Because when Brent was around, I was far from that good girl. I was the Rebel he kept calling me. And he knew it.

He probably even knew that I wanted to tackle him on my aunt’s tiny front lawn, even with all the neighbors watching.

This was not good. I needed to control myself.

Fear and excitement swirled in my stomach. I hadn’t been with a guy in years. And I’d definitely never been with a guy who made me feel this way, like a horny beast. It was thrilling and electric and…

Wrong. So wrong. I. Had. To. Leave.

But here I was, surrounded by chocolate and freaking candles and little china mugs with the best coffee I’d ever had, staring into the eyes of a guy who definitely did things to my body. For the first time in years, I felt happy.

So I kept saying to myself, one more minute. Just one more minute. Until I’d been there with him for two hours, and I’d nearly cleared out every piece of chocolate he had in the basket.

We’d gradually been creeping closer to each other.

I felt drunk and giddy. All those earlier lies I’d told him, about being here for school and not being from around here, he must have realized they weren’t true.

After our conversation about fate, I’d told him that my roommate in college was a palm reader and had taught me a little about what she knew.

He sounded interested, as he shifted toward me, lying on his side, propped up on one elbow. I was sitting beside his head, on the incline, so that there wasn’t much space between us. “And what did she teach you?”

“Well, I learned that your dominant hand is your past, and your nondominant hand is your future. Do you want to know your future?”

His smile was wolfish, his stare penetrating, and I found myself enjoying it way too much as he lifted his palm and gazed at it. “I’m done with my past,” he said.

“Okay, so…” I motioned to his left hand, but he gave me his right. “Left-handed?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yep.”

“Interesting. I’m left-handed too.”

“I always knew I liked you.”

I lifted his palm into my lap, holding it with both of my hands. He watched me in amusement as I traced my finger over his palm. He had calluses there, the sign of someone who liked to work with his hands. Strong hands. Hands I could see working their way up the curves of my body.

I suppressed a shiver at that thought. “You have a very nice, long, straight heart line. That’s this one. So that means you have a good handle on your emotions. You know what you want, when you want it.”

His voice was husky, intimate. “Sounds right.”

I could sense his eyes on me as I slowly stroked his fingers. But I could only think of the way his skin felt against mine. It was just our hands touching, and it was electric, sending a frisson of energy through my body. “This deep, long head line means your thinking is clear and focused.”

He let out a snort but didn’t say anything.

I lifted an eyebrow. “No?”

“About some things.”

I ran my finger over the curved line that went to his wrist. “This is your life line. It’s very strong and semi-circular, which indicates strength and enthusiasm.”

He touched a line in his palm, his fingers grazing mine. “And what does this one mean?”

“That’s your fate line. It’s very faint, but it shows that you will not let fate control you.” I smiled. “Interesting, Mr. Heads or Tails.”

I looked up at him, and his eyes were on me.

Oh, my heart. I definitely loved chocolate, but the best chocolate was the color of his eyes.

He was closer now and smelled so good, kind of like cedar, only spicy, and all man. My heart did a jig in my chest. Is he going to kiss me?

A bolt of fear shot through me.

Before he could make the move, I looked down again, breaking the spell. “And it looks by the shape of your hands that they are definitely fire hands,” I added lightly. “Which means you’re impulsive and spontaneous.”

I dropped his hands quickly when I remembered that Anthony also had fire hands.

This was such a big mistake.

“I want to see your hands,” he said, his voice commanding.

I hid them behind my back and shook my head. I couldn’t say I believed in palmistry, but in the off chance a reading of my palm would reveal any one of the thousands of things I was trying to keep under wraps, I couldn’t risk being that exposed.

Didn’t matter how much I wanted to touch him again.

“If that’s the way you want to play it. I’ll have to read you some other way.”

When I looked up, I realized he was staring at me in a most disconcerting way, making me flush. “And how would you do that?” I murmured.

He opened his mouth to say something, but just then, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out, studying the words from a text. He straightened. “It appears your aunt is being admitted into the hospital.”

I jumped to my knees. “What?”

“She’s all right. She had another episode while she was at her appointment. Ernest is going to stay with her until we can get there.”

I reached for my phone, which I’d stupidly had on silent.

There was a phone message from an unknown number.

I tapped the button to listen. “Hi, doll, it’s your auntie.

It appears they’re not letting me out of their sight just yet and they’re transporting me up to Charlestown for observation.

Do you mind bringing me some of my things? My pajamas and toothbrush?”

She sounded calm, but that didn’t make me feel better. I jumped to my feet as I ended the message. “Oh. Oh god. I’ve got to go.”

Brent began piling everything into the basket as I ran inside and into her bedroom.

I filled her overnight bag haphazardly, then grabbed the keys for her ancient boat of a Buick Century from the hook in the kitchen.

I ran to the front of the house and stopped short, nearly skidding right into Brent’s broad chest in the center of the foyer.

He took the suitcase from me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Roselynn. Calm yourself.”

I held out the keys for him to take. “I’m freaking. Can you drive me?”

He didn’t take them. He didn’t do anything for a long second. Finally, he said, “We can just take the T. It’s four stops up on the Red Line.”

“No. She’s not at Mecca. She’s up in Charlestown.”

“Charlestown? Fuck me. What’s she doing all the way out there in no man’s land?”

“Yeah, so we’d have to switch trains and take a bus, right? And that would take forever.” I shook the keychain in front of him. “But it’s probably a twenty-minute drive.”

He raked a hand through his hair and shoved both hands in his pockets. “I…don’t drive.”

“You don’t?” Surprised, I stared at him. “You said you weren’t fond of driving. I didn’t think that—”

“Sorry.” He said the word in a very final, conversation-ending way.

“No, it’s okay,” I said, hurrying down the steps, embarrassed. There was obvious pain in the admission. But I couldn’t think about that now.

He followed me, and I opened the trunk and threw the suitcase in. Then I went around to the driver’s side door and slid inside. I hadn’t driven since the day after I arrived in Long Grove, when I shipped my Subaru off to the scrapyard. But it was like riding a bicycle, right?

I took in a deep breath and leaned forward, studying all the weird, foreign controls.

This was like a buffet of everything that was not fun about driving, laid out in front of me.

I looked for the button to release the locks and then realized there wasn’t one.

I reached over and pulled up the passenger lock manually. He slid in beside me.

I pushed the key into the ignition, turned it, and the thing roared to life under us. I moved a lever and the windshield wipers streaked loudly over the dry windshield.

Fantastic.

Then I spent the next two minutes trying to calm my racing heart. Throw it in drive, girl. You can do it.

After a few seconds of wondering where the gearshift had gone to, I found it, attached to the right side of the steering wheel.

All I needed to do was yank it toward me, and slide it to D.

It should’ve been such a simple thing, but it felt like climbing Mount Everest. I wrapped my shaking fingers around it and clenched my teeth.

Then I pulled off my hat, threw it into the back, fisting my hair.

“Hey.” I looked over at Brent. The dimple was showing. “You can do this.”

He snaked his hand behind my neck and pressed his warm fingers into the tendons there, massaging the tension away.

If any other man had tried that, I probably would’ve socked him.

But with Brent, it felt amazing. Fingers of electricity traveled down my spine, turning every one of my nerve endings to jelly.

Desire flickered to life in me. For the briefest of moments, I wondered what else those hands could do to my body. And I wanted desperately to forget about this drive ahead of me, go back inside, and let him show me.

I shoved those thoughts away, threw the car into drive, and eased out of the tight parallel parking spot.

“Good job,” he said as I made it out on Leeds Street and to the stop sign. “You’re going to need to hang a left here.”

Right. I could do this.

“I haven’t driven in a really long time,” I said, adjusting myself in the bench seat to be able to see over the steering wheel. “But it’s okay. It’s coming back to me now.”

“I more than understand,” he said.

His hand never left the back of my neck. He stroked the whole twenty-minute drive up there, and by the time I pulled into MGH Charlestown, I felt completely Zen, as though I’d had a full-body massage.

After I found a parking space in the garage and we rushed through the sliding glass doors, I attacked the information desk. “Marie Monroe?” I asked hopefully, gripping the counter. “Is she okay?”

“She’s on the fifth floor,” the woman behind the desk replied, typing something into the computer. “It says she’s having some tests done right now. Take a seat in the waiting room and someone will let you know when she can take visitors.”

“Thank you.” I turned to the rows of chairs in the waiting room. It seemed so futile to just be sitting there, when my aunt, who’d done everything for me when I was a child, was in trouble.

I wandered to the seats and sat down. Rubbing my forehead, I noticed a gorgeous specimen of a man emerge from the gift shop with a giant bouquet of flowers. Some girl is really lucky.

I blinked as he walked right up and sat down beside me, and I realized it was Brent, and my aunt was the really lucky girl.

“Your aunt isn’t allergic to flowers, I hope?”

I leaned over and sniffed them. Gardenias. Her favorite. “No,” I said. “But you didn’t have to.”

The protest died in my throat as he gave me a deep, longing look that made my heart flutter like a schoolgirl’s.

My stubbornness didn’t work at all with him.

I was putty in his hands. Or, I wanted to be putty in his hands, wanted every inch of me to be molded and worked over by those beautiful, strong hands of his.

As bad as I knew it would be for me.

“You need anything?” he asked me, his voice liquid sex.

This wasn’t an appropriate place for the answer I wanted to give.

“Thank you for coming with me,” I said, trying to keep myself from reacting to him in all the inappropriate ways my mind was conjuring. “But you see, I—”

“You have a real problem accepting kindness from people, don’t you?”

Emotion burned my sinuses, and I blinked rapidly to keep it at bay. “Not all people,” I argued.

Just ridiculously handsome men. No. Just this man.

He seemed to read that message, loud and clear. “You don’t like feeling indebted to people. Is that it?”

I nodded.

“All right,” he murmured, placing the flowers on the seat beside me.

“Let’s just clear the air then. I don’t expect you to pay me back in any way.

I’m doing this for you to be a friend. That being said, you know I’m into you.

But you have the control here. Should you wish to, I won’t turn down any kindness you choose to extend to me. Understood?”

I stared at him. “By kindness, you mean…”

His gaze darkened. “I’ll leave that to your imagination, Rebel.”

Oh, he did not want to do that. Because while I may have looked like the good girl, the truth was, I could imagine quite a bit. Quite. A. Bit.

Damn my aunt and her soft-porn.