Hold on Tight (Sea Breeze #8)(37)

Then Dewayne Falco walked off. I sat there and watched him leave the cafeteria without a backward glance.

“Come on, Sienna. Let me introduce you to everyone. Most of them have been asking about you for a while now. Dewayne’s made you pretty damn popular with the guys.”

He had?

I stood up, took my meager lunch, and let Dustin lead me over to the popular table, where basketball players and cheerleaders gathered. The head cheerleader who had been on Dustin’s arm all last week glared at me. I wanted to go back to the safety of Dewayne. Kimmy Bart was not someone I wanted as an enemy. She owned this school. She was also tall, thin, and blond. Guys ogled her legs like they were the Holy Grail. And all that long blond hair made her look like a princess.

“Sienna, this is everyone. Everyone, this is my girl, Sienna Roy.”

And just like that . . . I became Dustin Falco’s girl.

Present day . . .

DEWAYNE

I hung up the phone with Momma after finding out she had Micah with her. Sienna had needed to work overtime and she’d called Momma to see if she would mind getting him from his after-school day care. Momma had been tickled pink that she got to keep him this afternoon.

I had turned my truck to the salon, and I was parked out back beside Sienna’s car, waiting on her to get off work. We needed to talk, and I didn’t want to do it at her house where Micah could come home or my momma could see I was over there alone with Sienna. She’d asked me five times already why I had been over there Saturday morning. Lying to my mother wasn’t easy.

The back door opened and Hillary walked out. Shit. Not who I wanted to see. She looked at me and her eyes narrowed. Then she came my way. I hadn’t seen Hillary since I’d gotten out of her bed after a one-nighter. She’d been drinking. I’d been drinking. And she had a really damn good body.

My window was already rolled down when she reached it.

“Leave her alone, Falco. She’s a good girl. A sweet girl. And you”—she pointed at me—“ain’t something that girl can deal with. She doesn’t understand guys like you. I’ve watched her, and every man who walks into that place hits on her, and she ain’t got a clue. Even Gretchen’s clients can’t keep their eyes off her. She’s sweet. Too sweet. So crank this truck and get the hell out of here.”

Not what I had been expecting. She wasn’t out here to yell at me for running out on her after sex. She was warning me off Sienna. Interesting.

“She’s the mother of my nephew, so I can’t stay away from her. She’s family.”

Hillary’s eyes went wide. Apparently, Sienna hadn’t told them Micah was a Falco. Which was something that bothered me—I didn’t like Dustin’s boy not having his last name.

“Well, shit,” she muttered. “I didn’t know the kid was Dustin’s.”

I just nodded. The back door opened again, catching my attention, and Sienna stepped out. Her eyes immediately found my truck, and they shifted to Hillary at my door. Then she jerked her attention away from us and hurried across the parking lot to her beat-to-shit car.

“Move,” I told Hillary before I swung my door open and headed after Sienna.

“Sienna, wait,” I called out. She paused with her hand on the door handle. “I came here to see you,” I explained, as if I had been doing something wrong. Jesus, I’d only kissed her. If I was here seeing Hillary, it was would be perfectly fine. But for some reason it felt like I had been caught cheating.

She glanced back over her shoulder. “Why?”

“Because we need to talk. And not at your house,” I said, and motioned to my truck. “Come for a ride with me.”

She seemed unsure until her eyes followed Hillary, who was headed inside. When Sienna looked back at me, she let out a weary sigh but walked toward me. “Okay,” she said, and we walked side by side back to my truck.

I opened the passenger-side door and held out my hand to help her up, but she ignored it and climbed up on her own. Which made her sweet ass stick up in a very appealing way in those leggings she was wearing.

I closed the door, the image of her in those tight pants taunting me as I made my way over to my side of the truck. I climbed in and looked over at her. She was wearing sleeves that stopped just below her elbow. Still covering her bruise. Fuck me. “How’s your arm?” I asked her.

“It’s fading and it doesn’t hurt anymore,” she said with a smile that didn’t meet her eyes.

“I’m a f**kup, Sienna. The bruise on your arm proves that. I shouldn’t get to breathe the same air you do.” I stopped myself before I said anything more. I wasn’t ever going to get over that bruise. It was going to haunt me long after it faded away. “And I’m sorry. About the kiss. It was uncalled for, and I shouldn’t have.”

She tensed up beside me, but only for a moment. Then she relaxed her shoulders and crossed her legs, and damned if that wasn’t fascinating. “Probably not a good idea. You’re right.”

So she agreed. We shouldn’t have kissed. “I don’t want things to get awkward with us.”

She nodded. “Me neither.”

“So, we can just be friends. Or family. We’re family.”

She nodded again.

She didn’t feel like family. I watched as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and I wanted to reach out and see if it was as silky as it looked. I’d missed that opportunity when I’d been eating her alive. My hands had gone from her face to her ass. I should have felt her hair.