Author: Olivia Cunning

“I love you too much to watch you throw your life away,” he said emphatically. “He’s not right for you, Rebekah.”

“He’s perfect for me, Isaac. You just don’t know him.”

“I don’t think I want to know him. He’s crass. Low class. Violent. I worry for your safety. He punched me without provocation.”

She shook her head at him. “Without provocation? You kissed me, Isaac. I’m his girlfriend. I don’t approve of him punching you, but I understand why he reacted that way.”

“Like a mindless thug?”

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to you insult him. I think it’s time for you to leave.”

Isaac hugged her tightly, reminding her how safe he always made her feel. “I don’t want to leave. I’ve missed you so much. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about your new job.”

Rebekah really didn’t want to sit by herself while she waited for Eric to call. But she didn’t want to be alone with Isaac either. He was confusing her. Nothing new about that.

“Yeah, okay.” She climbed from the bed and headed toward the door. “Let’s go hang out with Dave. He could probably use the company.”

Chapter 26

Eric had lured the guys to his house with promises of a huge turkey dinner and football, so they weren’t too pleased to find out they were actually being put to work.

“Did you seriously sign us up for kitchen duty?” Trey grumbled.

“Yeah,” Eric said. “It’ll be fun.”

“Fun?” Brian said. “What’s fun about shoveling food on the plates of homeless guys?”

“You’ll see,” Eric promised.

“It’s great publicity,” Sed said in his deep voice. “Jerry is getting a news crew to cover it.”

“Aggie wants to join us. Is that okay?” Jace asked.

“Yeah, I signed up the ladies too,” Eric said.

“And Rebekah?” Trey asked.

“I don’t know if she’ll show up or not.” Eric secretly hoped so. “She’s the one who suggested it originally. Her family does it every year. I kind of got carried away on the sign-up list and volunteered everyone.”

“So we’re supposed to give up our Thanksgiving dinner and football because you were trying to impress a girl?” Trey said.

“I wasn’t trying to impress a girl,” Eric said. “I thought it would be good for us.” Impressing the girl was just an added bonus. And she hated him now, so it didn’t really matter anyway. He’d called her like a thousand times, and she never answered. When he drove past her parents’ house, her car was never there. He checked his messages every twenty seconds. She was obviously avoiding him. Probably busy planning her wedding with Dr. Perfect. Fuck!

God, he wanted to see her. He hadn’t slept all week.

“Dave was excited when he heard we were all going to be there,” Eric added, trying to get the guys to cooperate. “I think he wants to show us that he’s willing and able to get back to work.”

“We’re going,” Sed said, and that was the end of all arguments.

Eric rode with Aggie, Jace, and Trey in Aggie’s brand-new Mustang. Brian and Myrna rode with Sed and Jessica in Sed’s Mercedes. It was great to have everyone together again. Everyone got busy with their own thing when they were home on break, and he didn’t get to see them. At times, Eric longed for the good ol’ days when they’d all been bachelors, but then he saw how happy his bandmates were with their significant others and decided he’d been just as happy when he’d had Rebekah. Home wasn’t supposed to be hell.

When they arrived at the shelter, the news crew started hounding them before they were even inside the building. Sed—bless him—stopped to talk to the reporter about “Sinners’ new Thanksgiving tradition,” while the rest were directed into the kitchen and given sharp utensils.

While most volunteers were too intimidated to boss them around, Myrna had no such reservations. She had Jace and Aggie peeling potatoes, Jessica putting ice in cups, and Trey spraying whipped topping onto pieces of pie. An entire flock of women watched him the entire time, probably because he got a lot of cream on his fingers and kept licking it off in a most Trey-like fashion. Brian mostly followed Myrna around trying to talk her into taking it easy due to her pregnancy and insisting on lifting anything that weighed more than two ounces.

Eric looked around for something he could do.

“You can help me with the cinnamon rolls,” a familiar voice said behind him.

Eric’s heart was already pounding before he even turned around. Rebekah offered him a timid smile and lowered her gaze. She’d dyed her hair all one mousy brown color and was wearing a plain white blouse and trim black pants that accentuated the gentle flair of her hips. His eyes automatically went to her throat. Instead of the sapphire butterfly necklace he’d given her, she wore a slender silver chain. Her wrist was completely unadorned. He took her lack of jewelry as an obvious sign of rejection. She hated him. And she looked so abysmally normal and sedate. What had happened to the vibrant, quirky girl who’d captured his heart? Had that all been an act? Or was this girl-next-door persona an act?

“I don’t know how to make cinnamon rolls,” he admitted.

“But no one shakes spices like you do.” She glanced at her mother who was staring at her with stern disapproval.

“I do have good wrist action,” Eric said and simulated jacking off vigorously.

Rebekah laughed, her eyes lighting up with delight. Mrs. B cleared her throat, and Rebekah’s smile faded. “Do you want to help?” she asked the middle of Eric’s chest.

“Sure.”

Eric followed Rebekah to a large mixer. Isaac, who was mixing one hell of a huge ball of dough, smiled warmly at Rebekah. “It’s almost ready, angel.”

Eric closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. The man just had to breathe and it pissed him off.

“What are you doing here?” Isaac asked Eric.

“Helping the less fortunate,” Eric said, forcing himself to meet Isaac’s displeased gaze.

“Which would be me,” Rebekah said. “I need help sprinkling the cinnamon.”

“I was going to help you with that,” Isaac said. He dumped the mountain of dough onto the silver countertop that had a coating of flour over its surface.

“I think my dad needs help carving turkeys.”

Isaac located Father Blake carving one of dozens of turkeys. “Looks like it.” When Isaac turned to walk away, Eric almost cheered. He’d never been happier to be considered inept with a knife. There would be no turkey carving in his immediate future.

Rebekah handed Eric a big silver shaker. “I’ll let you know when to start shaking,” she said.

Truthfully, he was already shaking. He wanted to draw her into his arms so badly he had to grip the shaker with both hands to control the impulse. He watched her roll out the dough with a big wooden pin.

“How have you been?” she asked, concentrating on her task. She was probably avoiding looking at him.

“Okay. You?”

“Okay.”

She rolled the dough into a big rectangle. An awkward silence stretched between them. She reached for a tub of softened butter and spread it over the dough with her hands. He was imagining buttering up her breasts until they were slippery, pressing the succulent globes together, and sliding his cock…

“Eric?”

Rebekah’s inquiry pulled him out of his delicious fantasy. A fantasy he could have made a reality less than a week ago. “Huh?”

“You can start shaking the cinnamon and sugar now.”

“Okay,” he said breathlessly.

He moved to stand beside her. She worked her way down the dough, still spreading it with a thick layer of melty, slippery butter, and he followed, shaking the cinnamon and sugar mixture over the butter. He was soon lost in fantasyland again. Rebekah was rubbing that butter all over her breasts, her nipples standing erect and begging to be licked. Instead of shaking sweet powder over the dough, he was stroking his cock and spurting cum all over her chest. His attention riveted to her chest.

The first signs of her arousal produced two small bumps on the front of her blouse. He was showing off his own arousal as a bulge in his pants. They had both stopped working and were staring at each other’s hard evidence.

“What are you thinking about?” she whispered.

“Watching you spread butter on your breasts until they’re all slippery, while I jack off and come all over your tits,” he whispered back.

“I want it in my mouth,” she whispered.

Eric groaned. It wasn’t nice to tease him like that. Wasn’t she going to marry Isaac? He opened his mouth to ask her just that when Mrs. B appeared on Rebekah’s opposite side.

“Are you two about finished?” Mrs. B said. “We’ve got to get those in the oven.”

Mrs. B helped herself to Rebekah’s butter and spread it over the dough. Eric’s erection withered to nothingness. He was no longer entertaining fantasies of slippery breasts.

“I’ve got it, Mom,” Rebekah said, spreading butter faster now.

Eric shook his shaker more vigorously to coat the buttered dough.

“Go get the baking sheet,” Mrs. B said to Rebekah.

Rebekah glanced at Eric and then went to retrieve a baking sheet, her buttery hands in the air.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Mrs. B said to Eric as soon as Rebekah was out of earshot. “Trying to interfere with her relationship with Isaac. It won’t work. She will marry that young man, and you will not mess things up.”

Wow, this woman hated him. It wasn’t the first time someone had hated Eric, but it didn’t usually bother him this much.

“Why are you busting my balls, lady?”

Mrs. B’s eyebrows attempted to disappear into her hairline. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you any manners?”

“No, actually, she deserted me when I was four years old.”

“I can understand why,” Mrs. B huffed.

Eric set his jaw in a harsh line and dropped the shaker on the counter. He felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. He didn’t often think about the mother who had left him behind. He sure as hell didn’t agonize over his situation or let it bother him, but that… that hurt. Stomach in knots, heart aching, eyes stinging, Eric turned and strode away before he called Rebekah’s mother a fucking bitch to her face.

“What did you say to him?” he heard Rebekah ask her mother as she returned with the baking sheet.

“Nothing,” Mrs. B said in a saccharine sweet voice. “Isaac,” she called. “Would you mind helping Rebekah cut the dough into strips? She was never any good at it.”

“Sure thing, Mrs. B,” Isaac said eagerly.

Aggie snagged Eric around the waist as he stalked by. “We could use some help,” she said. Eric found himself wedged between Jace and Aggie. They continued to peel potatoes. Eric stood there and gulped air.

“You okay?” Jace asked.

“I was until Mrs. Bitch showed up.”

Jace sniggered. “She makes a guy miss his mama not at all.”

“I think she’s even worse than my mother,” Aggie said, “and that’s saying something.”

“She gets along with Isaac fine. She just hates me.”

Aggie bumped Eric’s leg with her hip. “She doesn’t know you, doll. If she got to know you—”

“She’d hate me even more. Maybe I should get a haircut and wear something nice and be more careful about what I say and—”

“Don’t go there, dude,” Jace said.