could probably make a guy hard before a dirty word was ever spoken. It’d be lethal.
He liked Oakley a lot already but had accepted yesterday during dinner that he was too far from her type to get anywhere. She wasn’t looking to sow some bad-boy oats. She’d moved beyond that phase of life. But if the lovely Ms. Easton wasn’t as buttoned-up and conservative as she was portraying, if she was up to some naughty, secretive business behind closed doors, that put a whole new shine on things. Because nothing was hotter to him than a woman who had her shit together during the day but who could also let loose and play dirty at night.
Maybe that had been part of what had gotten him in trouble with his teacher. She’d been strict in the classroom, so put together. But one day he’d walked up on her in between classes. She’d been bending over to get something on the floor and had stumbled, giving him the glorious sight of her lacy red thong before she could right herself. After that, he’d lost hours in that class imagining what she was like outside of school, picturing what happened when she took the pins out of her hair and stripped off that stern expression. And one day when he’d run into her in town on a weekend, he’d found out.
But that had been his young infatuation and a raging libido at work there. He’d been dumb and eager. She’d been lonely and recovering from an abusive relationship. Looking back, he’d been the epitome of non-threatening, which is why she’d probably crossed lines that should’ve never been crossed. He hadn’t known what to do with that kind of situation then.
But now the thought of discovering a woman who had that ability to play both sides of the line had his mouth watering. The girls he usually hooked up with wore their sexuality on the surface. One-dimensional. Like the one he’d kicked out the other night. Physically, she probably would’ve been game for whatever he suggested. But it often lost its punch when a girl was doing something simply to impress him—to win the I’m-the-hottest-girl game. To play the porn star to his rock star.
So much of it was pure bullshit.
But a woman who wanted to do things because it would make her feel good, because she craved it? Well, that’d be an altogether different rodeo.
“You look lost in thought over there,” Oakley said, sliding a glass of tea his way.
He took a long sip from the glass.
“Nickel for your thoughts?” Reagan said, mouth half full of pizza. “And if you say them, Mom actually pays you a nickel. I’ve got a big jar of them. I have lots of thoughts.”
He nearly choked on his drink. His thoughts were so not kid-friendly, and he had a feeling it was showing on his face. He needed to pull it together. Here he was sitting in a kitchen with Oakley and her daughter in the middle of suburbia eating pizza and spinning some bent fantasy that the woman in the Disney shirt was secretly a phone-sex operator. He was an idiot. “I was thinking you should tell me what kind of music you like.”
Reagan’s face brightened like this was her favorite topic in the world. “Have you ever heard of punk rock?”
He laughed. “A time or two.”
Oakley slid onto a stool and grabbed a slice of cheese pizza. “Reagan is very into the eighties.”
“Is that right?” he asked, directing the question to Reagan. “How’d that happen?”
“Because Mom’s a whore.”
“Reagan!” Oakley said.
Pike spit out his drink.
Reagan’s eyes went wide as she looked between the two of them. “What’s wrong?”
Oakley looked like she’d swallowed a porcupine but managed to lower her voice, replacing it with a terse but calm one. “Where’d you learn that word? That’s not a nice word.”
“Whore?” she asked, all innocence and doe eyes. “On TV. How is it bad? It just means you like to keep a lot of stuff. That’s how I found all those records and magazines from the eighties.”
Pike bit his lips together, trying not to laugh as Oakley pressed her fingers between her eyes and rubbed. “It’s hoarder, baby. Hoarder. That’s the correct word. The other one means something different.”
Reagan seemed undeterred. “What does the other one mean then?”
“It’s an ugly word. We’ll talk about it another day. Finish your pizza. You need to be in the bathtub in fifteen minutes.”
Reagan didn’t look as if she wanted to let it go. But after a few seconds she rolled her eyes, muttering a “whatever,” and went back to her meal.
Pike had grabbed a paper towel and was dabbing at the spray of tea he’d sent flying. He cut Oakley an amused look.
She shook her head in kill-me-now chagrin, but the humor in her eyes warmed him right to his toes. Vixen or not, this woman was beautiful.
She pointed a finger his way. “Not a word from you.”
He raised his hands. “I didn’t say a thing.”
But boy was he thinking them.
Many, many things.
After tucking Reagan in for the night, Oakley plopped down on the couch, settling against the side farthest from Pike. Like that would help. The guy had a gravitational field like a black hole. She could feel the force of it dragging her toward him, threatening to consume her completely if she let her guard down for one second. “All right, she’s zonked out. We’re good to go until ten as long as we keep our voices down.”
“Then you turn into a pumpkin?” he asked, looking up from the legal pad he had in his lap.
“Got to get my beauty rest.”
“Yes.” He nodded gravely. “Very important for a whore.”
She grabbed a throw pillow and tossed it at him. “Hey, only eleven-year-old kids are allowed to call me that.”
And almost every single caller every freaking night. She’d nearly died when the word had rolled off Reagan’s lips. For one panicked moment, she’d thought Reagan had somehow broken through all of Oakley’s safety measures and had discovered what Mom did at night.
“She seems like a sweet kid,” Pike said, glancing in the direction of the stairs. “And surprisingly knowledgeable about bands that existed decades before she was born. Good taste, though.”
Oakley tucked a leg beneath her. “That’s her thing. When she finds something she likes, she obsesses about a subject and wants to know everything about it. Wants to live and breathe it.”
“Nothing wrong with passion. I was a lot like that when I started getting into music. Though, I was a little older than her when I got to the obsessive phase.”
Oakley smiled. “I love that she’s passionate and smart. But it doesn’t win her many favors socially. She struggles with the group stuff, so I’m hoping this project
