Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(68)

“How you doing, teacup?”

“Fine.”

“I realized something as we were taking off.” He passed the open bag of peanuts to Nicole. “I never hear you saying you have to call or visit your parents or anything.”

“I’ve never been to Arkansas.”

“Where’s your mommy and daddy?” Nicole asked, immune to my subject-changing strategy.

“Far away. And we don’t talk much at all.”

“Why?” Nicole placed a peanut on the center of her tongue and closed her mouth around it. I sneered at Brad.

“Because sometimes people drift apart. It happens. Sometimes there’s so much wrong between people it makes talking to them hard, so you don’t talk anymore.”

Brad’s eyes narrowed as if he didn’t trust my answer.

“What?” I ripped open a fruit roll.

“No big fight or nothing?”

“We’re too polite for that. My father resents that I got him in trouble with the State Department. I resent getting dragged all over the earth. I can’t tell him to turn back time and be a different parent and he can’t tell me he wishes I’d been a morally upright daughter. So we say nothing.”

I wedged the granola bar between my back teeth and tore a piece off. Nicole made a smiley face out of peanuts.

“If you’re not going to eat them, just don’t eat them,” I said. “Don’t play with them.”

Nicole pushed them into a pile.

“That deal you got with your dad sounds real productive,” Brad said.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Tell me about Arkansas.”

Under the table, Brad’s bare foot found mine. Over the table, he opened a granola bar and a bag of chips for Nicole.

“It’s home.”

“I like the sound of that. More. Tell me more.”

He popped a peanut in his mouth. “I can walk down Dickson Street any time of day and see someone I know.” His foot crawled up my leg. “Everywhere you look is family. Every face. Even the cousins you don’t like, they’ll come when you need them.”

His foot pressed the inside of my knee and pushed it out, opening my legs under the table. I jerked my chin to Nicole, who was eating a strawberry yogurt bar and drawing on her iPad. He was undaunted, running his toes inside my thigh. I swallowed hard, letting my body decide for me. I had pants on. It was all right. Even if she saw, she wouldn’t understand.

“Redfield Lumber is right outside town.” He popped another peanut, perfectly calm above the table while his foot pushed my other knee out. “Few miles. My dad worked there from when he was seventeen. Supported us with just that one job. I was in high school, just fu—messing around. I cut a few classes in my day. I worked in the yard in the summers. So I figured I’d just work there once I graduated. School didn’t matter. I had to show up for tests, and sometimes I did.”

He put his foot flat between my legs.

“Brad.”

He didn’t stop. I looked over at Nicole. Her head was on the table. The seasickness medicine did that to kids. She’d be out for two hours and not sleep at night.

“The day my dad’s fingers got cut off, my sister came to class to tell me. But I wasn’t there. I was smoking behind Sweetzers’s Candy and messing around with Ginger Halley. I didn’t want to be found. Well, my sister Susan, what did she do? She didn’t panic. Didn’t put out an APB. She told three people she needed to find me.”

He pushed against me, straightening his knee, the ball of his foot finding the warmth on the other side of my jeans. I slid down to increase the pressure. I couldn’t help it. He was rubbing me in the exact right place with exactly the right intention.

Above the table, he counted off on three fingers. “A cop. The garbage man. And Mrs. Liston, who knows where everyone is, all the time. Twenty minutes after my sister went back to the hospital, Buddy came around the back of the store and told me what happened with my dad, and he wanted a pack of cigarettes while I was at it.”

I heard him, but I couldn’t create intelligent questions or make a good joke. I had nothing but the friction of my body against him.

“You should see your face,” he said.

My lips parted. “I can’t.” I glanced at Nicole. Even sleeping, her presence was going to keep him from finishing me.

He put his foot on the floor. It felt like he was ripping off a Band-Aid, and I gasped in disappointment. He leaned forward.

“You have two choices.”

“Yes?”

“Behind that curtain is a sleeper. Behind the door is a bathroom.”

“Nicole in the sleeper.”

We vaulted into action. He scooped up Nicole, who didn’t wake, and I headed for the bathroom. It was small, but not as small as on a commercial flight. There was room for two, and it was clean and warm. I was barely in when he followed, snapping the door behind him, and suddenly the space was half the size and twice as hot. He pushed me against the counter, face smashed to mine, popping my jeans open.

He took his lips away from mine. “I want to see you. Lean back, beautiful.” I leaned back, putting both hands on the counter behind me. He slid his hands down my pants, unceremoniously finding my wet clit. I vibrated everywhere.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Like that.”