“I wouldn’t accept it, though, and he finally had to take it back.”
He met her eyes and what he saw there nearly sucker punched him. Pride. Strength. Courage. None of this was easy for her, and he knew that. It made him proud of her, too. And he wouldn’t have been the only one. “Tyler would be proud of you.”
She gave him a smile that was so sweet and so sad that it felt like she’d reached inside his chest and squeezed. “That . . . that means a lot, Maverick.”
“Just calling it like I see it,” he said in a low voice. “He say anything else?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just that it wasn’t over.”
Of course it wasn’t. The fucker. “We’ll see about that.”
The ride home was quiet, and then they were back at his house again.
“Your stuff’s all in your room,” Maverick said. He dropped his keys on the kitchen counter.
“You didn’t have to unload it all. I would’ve helped,” she said, placing her purse next to his keys.
He shouldn’t like the look of that so much. Or the way it felt to have company in here at the end of the day. Or the way the clicking of her heels against the hardwoods echoed through the house.
“No biggie, Al,” he said, grabbing a soda from the fridge. Just to have something to do with his hands that didn’t involve getting them wet with the slickness he could draw out from between her legs. Yeah, they’d fucked this morning. But that didn’t mean she wanted it to happen again. He needed to rein his damn self in.
“Gonna change. Be right back.”
When she was gone, he raked his hand through his hair and mentally ran through his favorite parts of the rebuild he was doing. It had a copper-forged gas tank and copper-coated lower shock arms, rear fender strut, bar risers, and a bunch of other copper accents. When it was done, it was going to have a sweet throwback vibe.
Nope. Didn’t work. He still wanted to follow her back to her bedroom. Especially since his brain knew that she was stripping down and baring all that warm, warm skin.
Goddamnit. He needed to knock his head against a wall somewhere. Because the last thing she needed was him coming on too strong. Or, frankly, coming on at all.
“Hey, Mav?” she called. “Do you see Lucy anywhere?”
He pushed off the counter and made for the living room. “Not in here,” he said. He grinned to himself because he had a few surprises for Alexa where Lucy was concerned. He checked the hall bathroom next. As little as the thing was, she could be hiding just about anywhere. When he’d returned earlier in the day with Alexa’s stuff, the cat had been standoffish at first, but once her mama’s things started coming in, Lucy came closer, poking around and sniffing at Alexa’s clothes and bags, until she finally let Maverick pet her and even pick her up.
And then, naturally, he’d needed to win over the fucking cat all the way. So when he’d gone to the grocery store to make sure he had some of Alexa’s favorites in the house, he’d just happened into the pet aisle. Not seeing much, he’d stopped at the pet store, where a shit-ton of stuff had fallen into his cart. For fuck sake.
“Maverick?”
He followed her voice to the back of the house and found her standing in his bedroom doorway. She’d changed into a light green tank top and a pair of beat-up jeans that framed her curves perfectly, and put up her wavy brown hair into a ponytail. Standing there in bare feet, the threads of the frayed denim just touching the floor, she was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, peering inside the room.
Lucy was curled up asleep on his pillow. “Why not?”
Alexa’s eyes stayed on her cat. “Because Lucy was terrified of Grant. Wouldn’t go near him. Bolted out of any room he came into. The only exception was at night. She slept under my side of the bed to be near me.” Al finally met his gaze. “I thought she had a problem with men.”
Mav smirked, even though the awe in Alexa’s tone was doing shit to his chest again. “Only the assholes, apparently.”
She burst out laughing. “Only the assholes.”
A meow rang out from the bed, where Lucy was engaged in a long, exaggerated stretch.
“Hey, baby,” Alexa said, crossing the room. “What . . . what are you wearing?”
Grinning, Maverick waited.
“Oh my God.” She laughed and scooped the cat into her arms. “You bought her a sweater?”
He finally let his laughter loose. “I made her a badass.” The sweater covered the cat’s thin body from neck to back legs and was black with white skulls and crossbones.
Alexa kissed the cat’s head, and Maverick could hear Lucy purring from several feet away. “She didn’t mind you putting it on?” More of that awe.
“I wouldn’t go as far as saying that she loved it,” he said, moving closer and holding his hand out for the cat. Lucy forced her head against his palm. “But we made friends. Plus, um, I might’ve bribed her with treats.”
Chuckling, Alexa shook her head. “I’m sorry I missed that.” Lucy hopped out of her arms. Alexa’s expression slowly changed and sadness filled her hazel eyes. “I’m sorry . . . for so much.”
The word stirred up all kinds of things inside him, but Maverick just shook his head. “You’re all about the future now.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
His cell buzzed in his pocket. Looking at the screen, he found a text from Bunny.
You coming to dinner tonight?
He hadn’t planned to, not with Alexa here, but it wasn’t often that his mother asked that outright. Which had him feeling like she wanted him there at the clubhouse. Rodeo had confided that she still didn’t feel entirely comfortable being there.
“Everything okay?” Alexa asked.
He shrugged. “Mom. Asking if I was coming up to the clubhouse for dinner. She’s, uh, she’s still having a hard time.”
“I’m sorry, Maverick. I can’t believe everything that happened to her. You should go.”
“You, uh, you wanna come?” he asked.
“Oh. Uh. Really?”
“Is that a no?” he asked with a frown. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted her to agree until she’d answered.
“Not a no,” she said. “More of a ‘are you sure.’ I remember how Dare looked at me when I was there a couple of weeks ago. I know after everything that happened between us that he’s not my biggest fan.” She hugged herself. “I don’t blame him for that. Just stating the facts.”
“My cousin’s a pain in the ass,” he said. He couldn’t deny her words, so there was no point doing so. It wasn’t that Dare didn’t like Alexa; he didn’t like the way things had gone down between them five years before. But that wasn’t any of Dare’s business, and he’d get over it in five seconds if Maverick wanted him to.
“No, your cousin’s loyal,” Alexa said. The characterization earned her some points in Maverick’s book, not that she needed them. Just that he respected the hell out of her saying something nice about someone he cared about. And it was true, too.