Rough Play (10 page)

She laughed and shook her head. “I don’t. I’m more aunt and god-parent material.”

He stared at her and her face remained serious as she turned a page. Huh. “Really?”

“Having children doesn’t really interest me.”

“You say that now, but what about—”

“I say that always.” She smiled at him. “I have no desire to have a baby. They’re cute. Glad my parents made me or I wouldn’t be here, but that doesn’t mean I want one.”

He glanced up, but everyone else was too far away and involved in books and conversation to even pay any attention. So he leaned over for more. “Why not?”

A slender brow cocked. “How come you don’t have a pet?”

He blinked. “I don’t have the space for one or the time to take care of it.”

“Exactly.”

Okay, true. “But one day you could be in a situation for time or space.”

“Actually I have space if I wanted to sell my stuff and create a baby room, but I don’t. I’m not giving up my guest bedroom either because you just never know when someone might get kicked out and need a bed. That’s all the spare rooms in my house. But either way, I still don’t want one.” She turned another page in the magazine. This time a little harder. The pages snapped under her hands. “Call me unnatural, call me a sin against women and uteruses everywhere or whatever you want, but I don’t want a baby.” A long breath slid out of her and she loosened her crinkling grip on the magazine. “I’ve never wanted one.”

Unnatural?
He shrugged. He wouldn’t call it unnatural, just different. Not that he should be surprised. This was Flora. “You seem to know what you want.”

She turned another page, her grip loosening even more, color flooded back into white knuckles. “If you don’t know what you want, don’t know what’s around you, then you can’t get off the rug before it’s ripped out from under you.”

He frowned, not liking the sound of that at all. “Where does that come from?”

She gave up the magazine all together and rubbed her arms. “Experience.”

“What happened?”

She faced him. “When?”

“Before. This ‘experience’ that made you anti-kids.”

She groaned. “I’m not anti-kids. I don’t care if they’re in restaurants or sitting next to me on a plane, I just don’t want to have them. I don’t want the responsibility of growing another person for the rest of my life. Or the constant worry and fear of what they’re doing and where they are.”

He covered her hand and squeezed her fingers. “It’s fine, Flora.”

Her brows pulled together and low over her eyes. “Then why the third degree and all the questions?”

“I’ve never met a woman before who didn’t want them.”

“Well now you have.” She pulled her hand out from under his.

He grinned. “I have.”

“So stop with the questions.”

“I’m still curious about your childhood, even if it’s unrelated.”

She rolled her eyes and picked up her phone, making that her answer.

He sat back in his chair knowing he was damn lucky for that much of a conversation. He tugged at his suddenly tight t-shirt. Not that he really cared about her thoughts and opinions on life or anything. Or that he had an opinion on her outlook. Didn’t matter to him what she wanted out of life.

It was just different. And curious.

Noises and footsteps echoed over the floor. Jacob looked over his shoulder at Rebecca’s friends walking to them. A slender blonde woman looked at them while wringing her hands. “She’s ready!”

Jacob blinked. “She’s having it now?”

Another girl, this one with brown hair sat in a nearby chair. “She took a big leap in the last half hour. That baby is ready to come out.”

Sudden and unexpected tightness wrapped through his veins. Hands gripped the metal of the chair. Holy shit. This was it. A slim and cool hand clasped his. He glanced at Flora’s fingers and pink nails then glanced to her face and she smiled again. “It’s going to be fine.”

“The baby is just going to rip her in half and it’s going to be fine. My brother is probably freaking out.”

She chuckled. “Women have babies every day. She’s going to be fine. Your brother will be fine. You’ll see.” She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Give it an hour and you’ll be holding that new baby girl. Who knew you were such a sensitive guy?”

Worries over the baby weaved out of him as he stared at her. He was not a sensitive guy. He was concerned about his family. That’s all.

She started to pull away, but he squeezed her fingers, holding her to him. She met his gaze, the smile on her lips softened the corners of her eyes. “Everything will be okay.”

She smiled at him and returned to the article in the magazine, her warm hand in his the whole time. It was…nice. Comforting.

No throat choking images by the comforting move. Not that it meant anything. They were friends. At least, as much as he’d call himself friends with another woman he wasn’t related to.

And Flora hadn’t been lying about the time it would take. Not mostly. It was more like an hour and a half and
bam
, a bundle of pink with jet-black hair like her mother’s was placed in his arms.

Chunky little cheeks. Wrinkled up face. He met Rebecca’s eyes. “Nice work.”

She stopped cramming food in her mouth for a few minutes and smiled. There was no missing the wetness glossing over her eyes. “Thanks.”

Grant shuffled his feet. “And I did nothing.”

Jacob shook his head. “Oh, right. Nice job patting Rebecca’s stomach all day and saying ‘good job, honey’. I know that must have been a real bitch.”

A chorus of ‘
heys
’ was shouted at him and he glanced around and found Flora’s gaze. She shook her head. “Got to start cleaning your language up.”

Oh, right. Dang, babies took a lot. A hell of a lot. He smiled down at the sleeping baby. So cute. Seemingly no fuss. Just some puffy pink cheeks wrapped up in pink blankets that required middle of the night duty and nonstop attention during the day. He nearly shook.

Lane stepped in the room and Jacob walked to him. “Your turn.”

He transferred the baby girl over and Lane froze with the helpless baby. He started to stay there with him, afraid the doe-eyed look of his brother might lead to fainting, but Gretchen tucked the edges of the blanket in and Jacob stepped back to his spot by Flora.

He started to whisper to Flora she might need to spank him anytime he cursed, but before he could, Lane was passing the infant off and heading out the door.

Jacob started after but Flora grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Don’t.”

“But.”

She patted his arm. “Gretchen has it. Grant doesn’t need two of you running out on him in one night.”

Chapter Ten

Jacob sat back in his seat and watched the flat scenery of south Louisiana speed by as he and Trent raced after their idiot younger brother. “Nearly there, I think.”

“Hour at the most.” Trent adjusted his visor from the blinding afternoon sun.

Lane fled the hospital last night and next thing they knew, he not only left the hospital, he left the whole fucking town in the middle of the night to return home to his hovel of a cheap trailer in south Louisiana. Why, was the part Jacob couldn’t figure out. He’d hit a good stride with Gretchen. They all knew he was crazy about her. Leaving her was the last thing any of them expected. It didn’t make any sense.

Jacob stretched in his seat. “I’m going to kick his ass for making us drive eighteen hours roundtrip to drag him back home.”

Trent shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he has his reasons.”

“Or thinks he does.” Gretchen told them where Lane had run off to and gave them a little bit of advice to offer forgiveness. Whatever the hell that meant. Gretchen hadn’t been specific. All Jacob knew was he planned to grab some more time with Flora, but couldn’t.

Trent flipped down his visor. “You’re awfully grouchy.”

“This is the last thing I wanted to do today.”

“Had big plans with Flora?”

“I had plans with her. Not sure I’d call them big. Not like a date or anything.”

“Tonya said Flora doesn’t really date.”

“She doesn’t.” He slouched in his chair, wondering why that bothered him. Hell, he didn’t like to date either, so what was the deal with him anyway? Girls like that shit. He usually suffered through a few dinners, afternoons doing something, movie trips. Whatever. Flora was going against the grain. He couldn’t figure out if he liked her more for it or just appreciated the lack of effort required.

“Well sorry you’re having to take a few days away from your fuck-buddy so you can help your brother.”

“Piss off. It’s not like that, and it’s not that I don’t want to find Lane, I’m just…I don’t know.” He slouched further in his chair and stared back out the window. This wasn’t supposed to be the slightest bit complicated, but it’d somehow become that way. Because that’s exactly what she was, wasn’t she? A fuck-buddy. Just didn’t fit her.

He’d never had anything this complicated before. He usually would have bailed long before now, but thing of it was, he didn’t have a reason to bail.

It wasn’t Flora. It wasn’t like she suddenly started talking about wanting marriage and shit or long term. Living together. It wasn’t her. Christ, it was
him
.

Trent turned down the radio. “Do we need to talk about your feelings?”

Jacob flipped his brother a middle finger. No. Hell no. There were no feelings to talk about; there was just stuff. Some kind of stuff that he couldn’t exactly put a name to. When there was no name, there was only one thing to do: avoidance and change of subject. “Do you want to talk about yours? About Tonya?”

Trent shook his head. “Nothing there to talk about. She’s got a long-distance boyfriend. He’s in the military.”

“That sucks. I couldn’t do it.” Hell, he didn’t do relationships at all, but to not even get laid while being supposedly committed to each other?

Trent chuckled. “Yeah, but I like that about her. No expectations there. She’s just cool. Works hard. I change out things like high light bulbs and she doesn’t charge me for biscuits and gravy in the morning. She’s like a guy.”

“With boobs.”

Trent shrugged. “Yeah. She has those. She’s a girl. But she can play poker better than you.”

Yeah, yeah. He couldn’t argue that point because it’d come back to Flora. And talking about how he’d been smooth cleaned out during their last poker game because Jacob had been thinking and watching Flora. Those kind of thoughts were the exact opposite of avoidance. All right, fine. He had questions. That’s all. Just questions. “What do you think about kids?”

Trent swerved and jerked the truck off the shoulder and back on the road. “
Did you get Flora pregnant?
”

“What?” He shook his head. “No. God no.”
Fuck no.
“She doesn’t want kids.”

Trent visibly relaxed and rested an arm against his door. “Huh. That’s weird.”

Jacob frowned. “Why?”

“Different.”

“I’ve never met a girl who didn’t want kids. I mean, I’ve met ones who didn’t want them now, but Flora was pretty clear that she doesn’t want them at all. Ever.”

“Y’all are more serious than I thought.”

“Not really. We’re just, us.” He groaned. “Or not even an ‘us.’ We’re an occasionally together temporary thing.”

Trent wore a big toothy smile. “That doesn’t sound complicated at all.”

“Shut up.”

Trent laughed. “Hell man, you had the kid discussion. Face it. You’ve landed yourself in a serious relationship. Not an occasional temporary thing.”

Were they? No. A relationship had more in it. Some kind of more…something. “The kid discussion was more like a chat.”

“Uh-huh. Because people just chat about having kids all the damn time with people they’re seeing.”

“We’re not seeing each other.”

“Right. And what about you?”

“I’m good with not seeing each other.”

Trent raised a brow and then shook his head. “Flora doesn’t want kids. What about you?”

“I don’t know.” It was true that he didn’t care either way. He couldn’t stop being impressed that she knew so much about what she wanted, why she wanted it. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot since she mentioned it.”

“Which was when?”

“Late yesterday at the hospital.”

Trent gave him that older brother look. “That was how many hours ago and you’re looking at changing your life? That means it’s serious. Face it.”

“I’m not looking at changing my life. It’s just, I don’t know….”

“Something to think about?”

He nodded. “Right.”

“So what happens if you fall in love with her? Do you think she’ll change her mind?”

“Who says I want her to change her mind?” He rubbed his face. “I think I’ve always run from a long term thing because I wasn’t ready for the whole family deal. But maybe what it is, is that I don’t want the whole family deal. At all.”

“Do you?”