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He grinned. “Let’s eat fast, flower girl.”
Chapter Six
They dawdled over dinner, Dillon’s earlier eat fast directive soon lost in a lazy, meandering conversation that greatly resembled one of his motorcycle rides. Usually he didn’t pick a route, just chose each road as he came to it. Veering right, then left, then right again, following the slant of the sun or the shadows the leaves made over asphalt. Sundays were his to while away as he wished, alone on a back road. That was his heaven on earth.
Spending time with Alexa Conroy was another.
The pain he glimpsed in her eyes called to him, coaxing a gentleness from him he hadn’t given in to often enough. He liked taking care of people—and yes, women in particular, as rare as it was for him to get that involved with one these days—but somewhere along the way, he’d stopped doing it other than in his work with the charity and with his family. On a personal level, it was much trickier business. But Christ, he didn’t want to turn into Cory, so isolated and caught up in his work.
Lately he’d become too obsessed with the manual aspects of his job that wore him out and left him little time to dwell on the future, when he’d always loved getting out there and talking to people. He didn’t need to become a Cory clone. Hell, his mother had flat-out said they didn’t expect that. There were all sorts of possibilities for him to further embrace his role in the business.
Such as helping a store renting one of his properties.
If Alexa succeeded, so would Value Hardware. They could work together. One business feeding the other. Fuck, he didn’t even like frozen yogurt.
“You’re being too nice,” she said, sipping her take-out cup of coffee.
The raspberry chocolate blend wasn’t his favorite, but he’d had a feeling she would enjoy it. He’d been right, as proven by her delighted squeal after he’d gone down to the car to grab the forgotten cups. “Is there such a thing?”
“When you’ve spent as much time as I have trying to show everyone that you don’t need help then yeah, there is. I’ve already let you do so much for me and I haven’t put my foot down.” She smiled. “Or thrown a hissy fit.”
“Yeah, you did. Remember your reaction to where I got the part?”
“Trust me, that was me set on mild.”
“You? I don’t believe it.” Actually he did, quite well. She was fire and ice, sweet and a hell of a lot of spice. Especially in that little cotton ensemble she had on now, with its lacy straps, delicate pink-and-yellow flowers, and high-cut shorts that showed off her endless legs.
His dick had hurt since he’d walked in the damn door. Shit, just glimpsing the shadows between her breasts made his thoughts dive right for the gutter. Never mind her hard nipples, outlined in vixen-innocent cotton. What he’d give to suck them while he sank his fingers inside her again. And this time he wouldn’t stop until he’d tasted all of her.
“I’m Daddy’s little girl. Mommy’s too.” She sighed as if she’d just shared a weighty secret. “For most of my life, I took whatever was offered me, because hey, it was my due. All hail the princess.” She toasted him with her cup, obviously remembering his name for her.
With a few notable exceptions, she’d dropped the princess routine so swiftly he half-wondered if he’d imagined it. Then they’d come together that night, and learned a lot about each other awfully fast. Her walls had come down, and some hadn’t fully come back up. Yet.
He was scared how much he wanted to keep her open and bare to him. For him. Not to exploit, but so he could find the real Alexa. Though he’d yet to share the real Dillon James with her, the one with a financial empire he’d yet to fully lay claim to, but would have to soon.
Working with the Helping Hands charity and rehabbing the business’s income properties had actually eased him back into the fold faster than he’d expected. Earlier today his stepfather had asked him to do a demo in the store next week of a new line of miniature power tools, and he’d not only agreed, he was looking forward to it.
Slowly but surely, he was moving into the role he’d been meant for all along. With his parents’ impending move, the time had come for him to step forward. Maybe he’d even find a use for his office yet—besides having a place for his freelance charity organizer to work when she needed a stationary location—especially considering his timing couldn’t be worse with Alexa. He might as well enjoy his temporary sex life now, since the more steps he took toward Value Hardware, the further he moved from Alexa.
Even if she didn’t realize it yet.
“Why’d you change?” he asked, wishing he could erase her pensive expression.
“I wish I could say I had some big lightbulb moment, but it was more insidious. I suspected Roz was sick.” She pressed her fingers hard into the sides of her coffee cup. “She never said a word. I complain if I break a nail, but she was dying and she never felt sorry for herself, not for one minute. So I tried to keep up a brave face for her while she was still running the business, but I started checking into the books. And I saw how much trouble we were in.”
“She died last year.”
“Yes. She was young. Too young. It took a while, but looking back, it was all so quick. There’s never enough time.” She blew out a breath. “Nellie and Jake were falling in love at the same time. My brother and my best friend,” she explained. “And Roz was just gone. She’d been my babysitter growing up, one of those family friends who sort of drifted away, but our bond never changed. She was as close to me as my mother. In all the ways that mattered, she was my mother, right along with my own.”
He shifted on his chair. “How do you find so much room for people inside you? You already had a mother.”
Much to his relief, she didn’t stare at him as if he’d just revealed a forked tongue. “I love my mom to pieces, but we’ve always had a weird relationship. She doesn’t fully get me. Neither does my father. Jake is their golden child. The one who pleases them by breathing. I’m the one they have to watch.”
“Why?”
“It started when I was caught skipping school in junior high and sort of devolved from there.” She shrugged jerkily and drank more coffee. “I’d skip class and go shopping. Date all the bad boys and miss curfew. I think they half-expected me to either get expelled or end up pregnant by senior year.”
“Neither happened?”
