Warning Track (7 page)

Before Parker could even think, Margo raised her hands and splashed a wave of water in his face, coating his open eyes with chlorine-filled water. He wiped the water from his eyes just in time to get another splash of water directly into his peepers.

“Motherfucker,” he swore, as he turned his back away from her and listened to her laugh at his expense. If her laugh hadn’t sounded like pure heaven, he would have tackled her to the bottom of the pool, but instead, he listened to the angelic sound coming from her mouth. Fuck, he needed to get laid if a laugh was doing it for him.
 

Parker hopped out of the pool and turned around to find Margo with a towel wrapped around herself, covering up her gorgeous body as she wrung out her long wet hair.
 

“You might have won that round, but I’m going to get you back.”

“You think so? Not too sure about that, Kirbs.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure about it, Mo,” he accentuated his new nickname for her as he spoke.
 

She just smiled and took off into the house; Parker followed her like a little puppy looking for any kind of scraps she wanted to feed him.
 

“Where are you going?” Parker asked, as he saw her grab a duffel bag that was on the couch.
 

“Some of us do have to work, you know. I usually come here for a swim during lunch, but you disturbed that,” she grinned.

“I’m not sorry.”

“I didn’t think you would be.”

They stood in the living room, staring at each other, waiting for the other one to talk, but not saying a word. For some reason, in a matter of minutes, the dynamic between them was changing and Parker didn’t know why, but he liked it. He’d spent his entire college career hanging out with Margo, but for some reason, this was different; she was different and he wanted to get to know her more. He wanted to get to know the confident and sassy post-college Margo.
 

Margo turned to go into the bathroom when Parker said, “Have dinner with me.”

Slowly, she turned her body to look at him with one eyebrow raised in question. “Why? You going to try to poison me?” she asked with mirth lacing her voice.
 

“No, just want some company.”

Parker didn’t want to sound desperate, but for some reason, he felt desperate…desperate to spend more time with Margo. He didn’t want to be alone, even though at first he thought that’s what he wanted. That all changed the minute Margo splashed into Jake and Lexi’s pool.
 

She looked Parker up and down and said, “You’re buying and I get to pick the place.” Once again, she smiled, turned her body and walked away.
 

Damn.
 

He didn’t care where the hell they went; as long as he got to stare at those pretty green eyes, pink lips and sweet face some more, then he’d be a happy man.
 

As he went back out to the pool area, he thought about how life was funny. He’d spent four years with Margo and thought she was a beautiful woman, but he’d never had naughty thoughts about her like he was having right now. The minute he saw her in her little white bikini, he wanted nothing more than to untie the damn thing with his teeth. Either he was horny as hell or he was a dumbass all through college; at the moment, he was thinking it was the latter.
 

**Molly**

“Winnie, please don’t suck on that. It’s gross. Yucky.”

Winnie peeled herself away from making out with the handle of the grocery cart for two seconds to smirk at her mom and then went back to town. Molly refused to think about the number of germs her daughter was contracting and focused on the list that was in her hand while looking for the bakery section. There were always free cookies for kids and Molly would rather her daughter suck on a cookie than a grocery cart handle that had probably seen more germs than a strip club’s bathroom floor.

“Do you want a cookie, Winnie?” Molly asked.
 

Winnie didn’t even bother looking up; she instead ran her tongue along the length of the handle and giggled as drool dripped everywhere.

Fuck, it was too revolting. There were some things Molly just couldn’t take and drool was one of them. The first time Winnie ever drooled into her mouth, she lost it. Molly had to distance herself from her daughter for a good five minutes before being able to look at her again.
 

Finding the free cookies, Molly looked around the store before grabbing a couple to shove in her pockets, not because she couldn’t afford them, but because Molly was going to need some reserves with the way her daughter was making out with the cart handle. Who knew her daughter was going to have a personal relationship with a grocery cart handle?
 

“Look, Winnie, a cookie.” Her daughter didn’t look up, so Molly squatted and peeked underneath the drool-drenched bar to make eye contact with Winnie. She waved the cookie at her and said, “You want a cookie, baby girl?”
 

Once Winnie saw the cookie, she simultaneously broke up with the grocery cart and started a new relationship with her cookie. Molly shook her head as she straightened out her pants and stood.

Looking down at her daughter, Molly said, “Alright, you little monster, let’s get going.”

Molly looked up and started moving forward when she ran directly into a man who was staring at her, but it wasn’t just any man…it was her man. Luke.
 

Molly gasped and stepped backwards as she tried to compose herself. It was still such a surprise to see him. She hadn’t seen him in four months, and she’d only seen him once since he’d been declared dead.
 

“Luke…” Molly said breathlessly as she took him in. He was just as attractive as ever. When she saw him when he first came back, he was skinnier and paler than normal, but it looked like in the four months since he’d been back, he’d spent his time not only in the gym, but in the sun as well because the boy was looking damn fine. His clear blue eyes stood out against his unshaven five o’clock shadow and his hair was unruly, just begging for her fingers to run through it. All she wanted to do was run her hands all over his body and hold him, but she knew that wasn’t an option.
 

“Who is that?” he asked, as he eyed Winnie.
 

She wanted to say “your daughter,” but wasn’t so sure that would go over well.
 

“This is Winnie.”

Luke studied their daughter as she sucked on her cookie while drool and crumbs ran down her hands and arms.
 

“She’s kind of gross.”

Molly chuckled. “She hasn’t learned manners yet.”

For a brief moment in time, Molly saw the bright and fun-loving man she once knew flash through his eyes. The slight wrinkle in the corner of his eyes led her to believe that he was actually amused, rather than brooding.
 

Luke tore his gaze off of Winnie and then looked Molly up and down. The full-body appraisal left her shaking in her heels, but she didn’t show the way he made her nervous and giddy all at the same time. She stayed neutral, but if she thought about it, she couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at her like that.
 

“You look good.”

“So do you.” She wanted to say so much more. She wanted to tell him she loved him, that she would do anything to have him back, to just give them a chance, but when she went to open her mouth, she was cut off.
 

“Are these the kind of English muffins you want?” a fake-titted blonde asked as she sidled up next to Luke.
 

All the air in her lungs completely expelled as the wind was knocked out of her and replaced with a feeling of utter hopelessness.
 

He glanced down at the breakfast staple and slightly nodded before looking back up at Molly. Once they made eye contact, the man she thought she knew vanished and in his place was a man she had never seen before. If she wasn’t so devastated, so torn and ripped apart, she would have clawed at the bitch in front of her until her fake saline sacs popped and leaked all over the grocery store floor.
 

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, as he nodded toward the door.
 

Luke started to walk past Molly, but a part of her couldn’t let him go that easily. So she mustered up all the courage she had and she placed her hand on his shoulder and gently turned him so he would meet her eyes.
 

Taking a deep breath, she asked, “Luke, what’s going on?”

“I suggest you take your hand off me,” the malice in his voice was something she never heard before.
 

“Luke…” Molly said, holding back the tears that were ready to fall as her throat constricted.
 

Luke got in her face and said, “Don’t fucking touch me, bitch. You dug my grave, so go fucking sleep in it.”

The change in his demeanor was something she had never experienced before. Stepping back for a second from Luke’s harsh words, Molly pressed forward. “They told me you were dead,” Molly cried, not caring about causing a scene.
 

“Yeah, and you had quite a time at the fucking wake. What, did you wait, two hours before you went and fucked another man so you could have his child?” Luke nodded at Winnie.
 

“What?” Molly felt like her eyes popped out of their sockets. “Winnie is yours, Luke; she’s your daughter. Don’t you see that she looks just like you?”

“Fuck off, Molly.” Luke wrapped his arm around the blonde and walked away, not even giving her a second glance.
 

As they walked away, Molly heard the blonde say, “Are we going back to Nash’s place?” Luke nodded as they retreated.
 

What the hell just happened? Why was life so cruel to her? Why did she have to run into him and give her a glimmer of hope only to have it ripped away from her as fast as it came? She felt deflated, disappointed, and extremely confused. What was she supposed to do now? Just give up on him when he was so close?
 

Just as she thought she was going to puke, something the hooker said stuck out in her mind. She said Nash’s place. Nash, as in Luke’s friend from the army, that Nash? Was that where he’d been crashing this entire time? She quickly pulled out her phone and sent a text to Connor. If Luke was staying with Nash, there was no way in hell Nash was being a good influence on Luke…hence, the floozy with the English muffins.
 

Molly’s thoughts were interrupted by Winnie reaching out to her.

“Mama,” Winnie said as she held out her drool-soaked remainder of a cookie, offering it to Molly.

“Thank you, baby,” Molly said, as she pushed the cart through the store, waiting for Connor to text back.
 

She was determined to put her life back together, and if that meant ripping the man she loved away from his current residence and making him stay with her, then so be it. She was going to have to arrange for Winnie to say with Jim and Marcia, Luke’s parents, for a while because she knew having Winnie at their place was not going to be good for mending her relationship with Luke and it wasn’t going to be good for Winnie either.
 

Chapter Four

**Margo**

“Holy shit,” Margo said under her breath, as she stood in front of Lexi and Jake’s beach house. She couldn’t believe she was actually about to go out on a date with Parker Hill, the one man that could destroy her, the one man she’d been pining after for years…too many years.
 

Lexi was friends with Parker first back in college. They were best friends…even tried dating once and that turned out to be a horrible idea, but the minute Margo laid eyes on Parker and was introduced to him, she couldn’t get him out of her mind. To this day, he was always present in her mind when it came to her love life and what she wished would happen and who would be her partner in crime. Never did she think she would actually be going out on a date with the man.
 

Straightening out her light teal jumper as she stood in front of the house, she hoped she’d picked the right outfit. She wanted to seem casual, but hot at the same time. She wanted to give Parker a taste of what he’d been missing out on for years.
 

When she was getting ready in her small apartment, she’d decided on the strapless jumper that showed off her bronzed legs, round rear and full cup. She belted the waist to make her look tinier in the middle and paired the outfit with a pair of brown sandal wedges that were casual, but sexy as well. Her hair was simple, wavy and cascading down her shoulders. Make up was neutral and a pink gloss was the only thing that popped off her lips; she was ready.
 

Gathering all her bravado, she knocked on the door, which was weird because she never knocked on Jake and Lexi’s door. She fidgeted in place until Parker opened the door, taking her breath away.
 

The damn man always looked good, and tonight was no exception, as he stood in front of her wearing a pair of navy blue cargo pants, a white polo shirt that clung to his biceps and sandals. His hair was styled into a faux hawk and his face was cleanly shaved. He looked absolutely yummy.