Page 54 of Hopeless Romantic
Chapter 11
Levi knew what it had taken for Beckett to leave her scooter at home and carve out a night for herself. He was coming to understand the unusual amount of responsibility placed on her shoulders. In the early years, Michelle had been a hardworking single mom, raising Paisley and running the Crow’s Nest. But she’d always had people around to help out when times were hard. Or when she just needed a free night to herself.
At first there’d been Levi and his mom, then Gray had come along, and finally Emmitt, rounding out what had become the most unlikely family. They didn’t always agree, and they knew how to push each other’s buttons, but they always had each other’s backs.
Levi wondered who, if anyone, had Beckett’s.
Tonight, he wanted to be that person for her. He avoided involving himself in other people’s family issues because, well, he had enough on his own plate. But Beckett deserved to have a night of fun to herself. And he was going to make sure she got it.
Christ, what was it about Beckett Hayes that reeled him in?
Levi went for stacked, sophisticated, and no-strings. Beckett was willowy, perpetually frazzled, and becoming more and more intertwined with his world. And judging by the nervous way she clutched her phone, she was as close to having a fun evening as a DC politician was to crossing party lines.
He’d noticed that the farther from her house they drove, the higher the tension in the cab became, until they were a mobile powder keg, her cell was the fuse, and they were one call from blowing the whole night to hell. She had a definite handle-with-caution vibe going on, which he believed stemmed from her worry over what was going on back at home.
With a resigned sigh, Levi pulled into the bowling alley and parked toward the back. Instead of shutting off the engine completely, he left the heater running. “You want to talk about what happened back there?”
“God, yes.” She released a sigh of relief so large, the window momentarily fogged up. “I just wasn’t sure how to broach it.”
He unbuckled his safety belt and turned toward her. “I want to make sure you have fun tonight.”
“I do, too,” she said. “Just like I want you to have fun.”
“Good. Then we’re on the same page,” he said, but the fleeting, sidelong glance she gave him implied otherwise. “I just mean, I understand family dynamics and how stressful they can be. One time, my mom pretended her back went out so that she’d have an excuse to stay on my boat. After three weeks of sleeping on a lawn chair, the kind with slats, I woke up to find my mom and her water-aerobics friends doing synchronized swimming dives off the back of my boat. They had on matching suits, those decorative hats with rubber roses on top, the whole nine yards.”
Beckett laughed. “What did she say when you caught her?”
“She said as long as I was there, I could judge,” he said. “So, I don’t want you to get stressed about leaving your scooter at home. If you need to cut out early, just say the word, and we’ll head home.”
“You thought I was stressed about home?”
“You went quiet after we left your driveway. You keep checking your cell. And you’ve avoided eye contact. What else would you be stressed about?”
Curiosity had him leaning on the center console at the precise moment Beckett turned to face him. Her lips parted on a gasp, and he forgot what they were talking about, because he was a breath’s distance from discovering what flavor lip gloss she had on—with his tongue.
At her house, he’d picked up hints of spice, but after sharing the cozy cab of his truck for fifteen miles, he’d narrowed it down to cinnamon. From this distance, he’d bet what was left of his mom’s galaktoboureko that his stunning copilot had a thing for horchata.
“That I somehow gave you the wrong impression of what tonight will entail,” she whispered, looking up at him, andholy fuck.
“You might want to clarify what impression you’d hoped to give. Because you’re looking at me like you want the grand tour of my boat—starting with the master cabin.”
“Pretend that I don’t,” she said, her gaze zeroing in on his lips. “That’s what I do.”
“Ever since seeing you at the beach in that white two-piece, I’ve tried pretending,” he whispered. “It’s getting harder.”
“You remember what I was wearing last summer?” Her eyes became two big circles of wonder, and Levi’s chest ached.
He wasn’t sure what kind of assholes she’d dated in the past, but the Steves and Bruces of the world needed a serious ass-kicking if a woman as gorgeous and incredible as Beckett found it surprising that she was memorable.
“Beck, I can’t keep my days straight, but there isn’t much about you that I don’t remember.” And that was the truth. He tapped his temple. “It gets stored up here in my Dolittle box.” At her snicker, he raised a brow. “Try me?”
She crossed her arms and leaned back. “Okay, what was I wearing the first time we met?”
“That, Girl Wonder, is a trick question.” He waved a stern finger her way. “The first time you came into my bar, you were wearing a pretty blue top that had two tiny strings holding it together, jeans, and these black steel-toe boots that made you look like you wanted to bash in your date’s teeth.”
“My date was Zane, and no, he was not a Zamboni driver, he was a college music professor, with the attention span of a fly and the arms of an octopus. While he kept his teeth, his shins will never be the same.” She gawked. “That was eight years ago.”
“As for the first time we met and exchanged more words than ‘a pint of whatever IPA you have on tap,’ that was at the annual Bonfire Days. You showed up in the aforementioned slinky white two-piece, a green wraparound thing that knotted above your breasts, and these sexy sandals that crisscrossed all the way up your calves.”
