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“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Laura greets me with an eye roll. “What are you doing here?”
Her annoyance with me just makes all of my own irritation fly right out the window, and I feel a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
“Well, sugar, I’m here for a wedding. You might have heard about it.”
Laura narrows her eyes at me, and it just makes me smile even bigger. I’m not going to analyze why I’m suddenly in a much better mood now, when the woman who is the cause of all my mental grief is standing right in front of me.
“I mean in this room,” Laura explains, hefting the large basket she’s holding higher in her arms. “Birdie asked me to drop off welcome baskets to a few of the guests who got in today, and Palmer’s manager was supposed to be in 409.”
“Oh yeah, LaVon had me switch rooms when I got back from getting breakfast this morning. I guess the guy’s wife specifically requested a jacuzzi tub with their reservation, and I had the last one.”
“So no bubble bath, huh? That’s a pity…,” Laura trails off, her eyes flittering down the front of me.
She quickly clears her throat, and her eyes snap back up to mine. I have just enough time to appreciate the flush that covers her cheeks, wondering what she’s thinking about, when she suddenly pushes past me and into my room.
“Well, I guess you can just have this basket then, and I’ll go grab another one for Martin.”
Closing the door behind her, I turn around and stay right where I am, before I’m tempted to pick her up and toss her on top of my bed.
She turns around to face me in the middle of the room, and my eyes guiltily fly up from her ass where they were glued. It looks like she showered and dressed for work since I saw her this morning. She’s wearing a clean Dip and Twist T-shirt stretched tight across her tits, another pair of tiny, tattered jean shorts that have my hands itching to clutch her ass and pull her against me, and all that blonde hair back up in another messy bun, making me want to attach my mouth to the side of her neck and taste her skin, the smell of vanilla now invading my space and making me hungry for something other than food.
“Where should I put this?”
I point to the table behind her where I had just been sitting, afraid if I open my mouth right now I’ll say exactly what I’m thinking.
Laura turns and sets the basket down in the middle of the table, amongst three other sketchpads and sheets of paper with drawings on them strewn all over it. She stares down at the mess, and I watch her head cock to the side as she reaches out with one hand, moving a piece of paper out of the way of the sketch I’ve been trying to work on all day.
“These are really good,” she says softly, the tips of her fingers tracing over the page with several 3D drawings of club-heads. “You’re like a golf artist. I never thought golf clubs could be so pretty. I also didn’t realize it took so much work to make one.”
Her words make me chuckle and my fucking heart flip-flop in my chest.
I never show anyone my work until it’s finished. My rough drafts are just that. Rough. They’re a complete mess I don’t want anyone seeing until I can work everything out in my head, getting the calculations and the aerodynamics for the club correct and the design exactly how I want it. There’s something about having her look at everything and appreciate it, even if she has no idea what she’s looking at, that makes me want to puff out my chest and pat myself on the back.
I take a lot of pride in my work. I get shit from people in the industry all the time because I refuse to use computers or fancy equipment, and it takes me twice as long to complete a project. I like that my hands are the only thing that ever touches the clubs I make. I like knowing I can create something from nothing that will improve a golfer’s game just by tweaking a few numbers. I enjoy the hard work, and I even enjoy the frustration when I don’t get it right and have to start all over again.
And I really like that I can impress Laura, since I’ve been nothing but impressed by her since she unloaded all her troubles on me on the beach last night. She has so much going on in her world right now. So much that is changing and throwing her for a loop, and all I can think about is making it better and taking her mind off of things.
“So how come you got tasked with delivering the welcome baskets? Shouldn’t you be at the stand?”
Laura finally looks up from my sketches, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her shorts as she turns to face me.
“Birdie and Palmer are busy down at the ferry dock, picking up more guests who are coming in today, so I told her I’d handle it.” She shrugs. “That’s the beauty of owning my own business. I can close it for a little bit if I need to do something for someone and don’t have anyone to cover for me. Something my parents never quite got the hang of.”
She chuckles softly, but there’s a sadness that comes over her eyes I don’t like one bit.
“They weren’t fans of closing down the stand for any reason?” Crossing my arms in front of me, I lean my shoulder against the wall in the small alcove of my room, wondering where this chattiness is coming from. Since when do I give a shit about talking with a woman?
“Oh God, no.” Laura shakes her head with another small laugh, tucking a strand of hair falling down from her bun behind her ear before those gorgeous blue eyes meet mine from a few feet away. “My favorite childhood memory ever is spending time with them at the stand when they’d let me, but they were both major workaholics. Always too worried about the ‘what ifs’. What if there’s an emergency? What if we don’t have enough money in the bank to cover it? They worked themselves to death. Literally. They never took off for my school concerts, plays, or sports, and they never closed for holidays or special occasions.
“They were good people, and good parents for the most part, but they were just never really around much. I always ate dinner alone and got myself off to school alone. I told myself I would never do that to my girls. I made sure I was always there to make them a home-cooked meal for dinner and put them to bed, and I made sure I was always there when they woke up in the morning to make them breakfast and get them off to school. And I have absolutely no problem closing the place if I need to so I won’t miss anything in their lives. My family always comes first.”
Her words and the strong conviction in her voice makes something break apart inside me. She really, truly loves her family. I’ve known that about her from all the stories I’ve heard over the years, but seeing it with my own two eyes makes me respect the hell out of her even more for what she’s created and done all by herself. And makes me wish I’d had even just a small piece of her dedication and love aimed my way growing up. Maybe I would have been a different man if I had someone in my life who actually knew what it meant to be a family and knew how to put others before themselves. My family is filled with nothing but selfish assholes who care more about themselves than literally anyone else. If I’d had someone like Laura in my life, maybe I wouldn’t have turned out to be such a cynical asshole.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a home-cooked meal in my life unless it came from a restaurant, and definitely not made by either one of my parents.” I chuckle humorlessly. “And the one and only time I asked my father to come to one of my football games back when I was in school, he replied, ‘Why in the fuck would I want to do that?’ My mom worked three jobs just to keep a roof over our heads, so she was never around much either, and never really hid how much of a burden I was on her.”
Jesus, way to sound like a pussy, Dean. And way to take a depressing trip down memory lane, when you have a hot woman alone in your hotel room.
“I’m sorry,” Laura whispers, making that achy feeling come back to my chest with the concerned look in her eyes. “Parents really suck sometimes.”
