Getting Played (Getting Some, #2)(40)

His eyes search mine. “What’s the problem, Lainey?”

“Is it a good idea to just spring it on her like that? I’m going to show up at her house pregnant and with my teenage son—two children, with two different fathers. Your grandmother is from a whole other generation . . . won’t she think I’m, like . . . a whore?”

Dean throws his head back and laughs, deep and rumbly. And that Adam’s apple is there—taunting me again with its sexiness.

Maybe I am a whore.

Dean’s laughter fades as he looks down at me. “Back in the day, Grams was an attorney. She had my mom later in life and worked a lot when she was growing up—her office was in the city. Her main area of expertise was women’s rights—sexual harassment claims, fighting for equal pay, abortion rights. She’s burned her bra on the steps of the capital and argued before the Supreme Court. Though not on the same day.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Yeah.” Dean nods. “But the moral of the story is you could have seven kids by eight different fathers and she wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. You’re having her first great-grandchild and I’m happy when I’m around you—that’s all that’s going to matter to her.”

His words trip around in my head. “I . . . make you happy?”

Seems a little early to make that call.

But that playboy smile drags across his lips and his voice goes low.

“You make me hard.”

Like a magnet to metal, my eyes make a beeline for Dean’s crotch. And—oh my—he is hard. The long, thick outline of him strains against the zipper of his jeans. My mouth waters, remembering the taste of him and the hot, smooth feel of his flesh against my tongue.

“The happy tends to follow close after the hard, so yeah—I think happy qualifies in this situation.”

Deans leans in and presses a quick kiss to my cheek.

“Don’t be nervous, Lainey. I’ve got you.”



~



Mr. Giles, Lakeside’s local carpenter, has a few scrap pieces he said I could pick up tonight, so I suggest taking my truck to pick up Dean’s Gram and the wood along the way.

Dean stands in the driveway. “Sure. I’m confident enough in my manhood to ride bitch.”

Beside him, Jason strikes a similar stance, nodding.

“Me too. I don’t mind riding bitch.”

And I wonder if Dean knows he’s got a burgeoning mini-me who already idolizes him.

He opens the truck door and shuts it closed behind me after I climb aboard. I don’t get out of the truck when we get to Mr. Giles’s place, but instead watch in the rearview mirror, with a strange swirly tenderness swooping through my belly, as Dean and Jay load the long boards of oak into the bed for me.

Then Dean directs me across town, and we pull up in front of the school-size brick building of the senior center. He hops out and a few minutes later, exits the building with a petite, gray-haired woman—literally half his size—shuffling along beside him.

Dean opens the passenger side door. From behind round, violet glasses that take up more than half her face, his grandmother peers bewilderedly at the distance between the ground and the seat.

“Going to need an assist with this one, Deany.”

He lifts her up into the truck, then buckles the seatbelt around her as he introduces us.

“Grams, this is Lainey Burrows and her son, Jason.”

I hold my hand straight out and a bit too eagerly—I don’t have a lot of experience meeting the parents. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Walker.”

She puts her frail hand in mine and smiles. And I notice, Dean gets his eyes from his grandmother.

“Call me Grams—everyone does.”

Jason waves from the backseat and Grams waves back.

“How was movie night?” Dean asks as he climbs in.

She clucks her tongue like an annoyed hen. “Just terrible. It was Driving Miss Daisy. Why would I enjoy watching a film like that—I’m practically living it.”

Grams runs her hand over the dashboard.

“I like this vehicle, Lainey. Very muscular. I bet no one messes with you in this bad boy.”

I smile. “That’s true. And it comes in handy with my work.”

“Lainey’s a decorator, Grams.” Dean tells her. “She makes furniture, artwork. She’s redoing the old house on Miller Street.”

“Oh, that’s a lovely home—it’s nice to know a young family is living there again.”

And it’s all going so well.

Until Dean says, “Hang a left up ahead, Lainey—onto 2nd Street.”

But when I make the turn, and my wrist brushes the button on the steering wheel that activates the bluetooth. The speakers come alive inside the cab, and the truck automatically syncs to my phone—playing the audiobook of A Brand New Ending by Jennifer Probst—a fabulous romance I started listening to when I was doing the backsplash work in the kitchen.

The narrator’s voice comes through loud and clear.

“She dragged her teeth over his flat stomach, blowing her breath over his hardened shaft until he jerked with need.”

I press button after button, but I can’t find the right one. “Where’s the button? Where’s the fucking button?” I think I say it out loud, but it’s hard to hear myself over the blood pounding in my eardrums.