Zoey And The Nice Guy (Big Girl Panties #1) (10 page)

The sobbing coming from the living room woke her up. Zoey hurried out in her nightshirt to find Maya clutching a phone to her ear and crying. Whoever was on the other end of the line was yelling.
 

Zoey marched to her, snatched the phone, and said, “Who the fuck is this?”

“How dare you!” shouted the female voice, and then the line disconnected.

Zoey slammed the phone onto the table. “Who was that?”

“My mother-in-law,” Maya sobbed.

“She called to yell at you at seven in the morning?”

Maya’s sobs were uncontrollable. Zoey couldn’t take it. She’d had absolutely enough of this behavior from Lois Bradley. The woman was being deliberately obtuse, and she simply needed someone to hold a mirror to her face.

Zoey stormed back to her bedroom and dressed in jeans and a sweater. Once dressed, she grabbed her car keys, climbed in her car, and drove to the Bradley house.
 

Snow had been falling steadily for a while. The roads were dusted over. The Bradley’s lived just a couple miles down a dirt, country road. Her tires slipped once or twice, but she was a woman on a mission. Nobody victimized her best friend like that.
 

The tires slipped and slid into the gravel before making it to the concrete carport. She got out, slammed the door shut, and stomped to the front of the house. She hammered her fist on the door, hoping the loud knock scared the shit out of them.
 

The door opened on the seemingly sweet Mrs. Bradley. She had the same demeanor as Kellen. Placid and nice.
 

Zoey shoved past her into the warm house, turned, and said, “What the fuck is your problem?”

Mrs. Bradley’s smile faded, and she drew herself up. “Young lady, I suggest you watch your language in my home.”

“Fuck you! That woman over there has been beaten and broken, and you have the nerve to yell at her? What kind of a sick, hateful person does that?”

Mr. Bradley entered from the kitchen to Zoey’s left. He had a cup of coffee and a deer-in-headlights look. “I’m sorry, may I ask what’s going—“

“Your bitch of a wife called Maya to kick her while she was down!” Zoey turned back to Mrs. Bradley. “Is that what you do? Steal candy from children? Knock crutches out from under injured people? Blame an innocent woman for what her drunken brute of a husband does to her?”

Mrs. Bradley’s bottom lip quivered. Tears filled her angry eyes. “You should leave.”

“So it’s okay for you to scream at a woman who’s just lost everything, but it’s not okay for me to call you out? Thanks, Mrs. Bradley, for setting me straight on the rules. Y’all have a great day.” She flipped off Mrs. Bradley. Before leaving, she flipped off Mr. Bradley for good measure.
 

She muttered curses all the way to her car. She managed to turn it around and head back up the driveway. She got all the way to the turnoff for the road when her tires stuck.
 

“Oh, no,” she muttered. She gunned the gas and her tires spun. She tried reverse. She tried rocking back and forth. “Oh, no, no, no, no…,” she murmured as she climbed out of the car.
 

Mud. Her back tires were mired in mud. The snow was wet, the ground was too warm for everything to have frozen yet.

“Shit!” she shrieked. She pushed on the front, and then she pushed on the back. The damn car was going nowhere. She thunked her head on the roof of the car and took a moment to curse her incredibly bad luck.

Then she got back in and reached for her phone in her cup holder. Only her phone wasn’t in her cup holder. It wasn’t in her pockets. It wasn’t in the passenger seat.
 

“Son of a bitch!” she screamed. “I hate my life. I fucking hate my life,” she muttered as she trudged all the way back to the Bradley house.
 

She got to the front door, gave herself another mental kick in the ass, and knocked.

Mr. Bradley opened the door, this time, still looking somewhat shocked. Zoey tiptoed up and saw Mrs. Bradley on the sofa sobbing violently.
 

“Hi,” Zoey said, smiling as big as she could. “I’m so sorry, but I seem to have gotten my car stuck. Do you have a truck or anything?”

Mr. Bradley shook his head, nonplused.
 

“Shit. Okay, well, could I use your phone?”

She didn’t wait for an answer because she was afraid of the door getting slammed in her face. She just nudged past him and scanned the room for the phone.
 

“Uh, in the kitchen,” Mr. Bradley said, before returning to his wife’s side.
 

“Yeah. Thanks.” She headed to her right and found the phone. She couldn’t help admiring the large kitchen. You could bake a lot of cookies in that thing. She looked at the phone and realized she didn’t know who to call. Maya was out of commission. Addy’s Mercedes wasn’t going to help her get her car unstuck.

There was a phone book on the counter. She found a couple of towing companies and called them. Being a bad weather day, they were all two hours from being able to get to her.

With a sinking in her gut, she realized she only had one option. She dropped her head back. “God dammit!” she cried to the heavens.

The Bradley’s turned to gape at her. She held up her hand. “Sorry!” she yelled to them. “No problems. Would one of you be able to give me Kellen’s number?”

Mrs. Bradley glared at her, but Mr. Bradley said, “It’s three on the speed dial.”

“Thanks.” She turned her back to them and hit the number.

It rang four times, and she was beginning to fear he wouldn’t pick up. But then he answered. “Yeah?” His voice was sexy raspy.

“I need you to come get me,” she said, glancing nervously over her shoulder at the Bradley’s who were now arguing and gesturing to her.
 

“Who is this?” he asked.

“It’s Zoey, ass-face, I need you to come get me.”

“What? Come get you where?”

“At your parent’s house.”

“What? Why—“

“Your mom called Maya and made her cry, so I came over here to yell at her, and as I was making my not-so-graceful exit, my car got stuck in the mud, so I need you to bring your truck and get me unstuck. Now.”

Crickets.

“Kellen?”

Which was when she realized he was laughing. He must have dropped the phone.

“Listen, you son-of-a-bitch! Get your lazy ass out of bed and come pick me up.”

“Oh, God,” he laughed. “Yeah. Sure, Zoey, I’ll come get you. Listen, I need you to ask me nicely.”

“I beg your fucking pardon?”

“Say please, that’s all. ‘Please come get me, Kellen.’ And then I’ll be right over.”

She just stood there with her mouth hanging open. “I’m sorry, at what point was it you thought you had the upper hand, here? Your poor mother is in severe distress. Come and get me so I can get out of her life!”

Zoey hung up and leaned back on the counter. She folded her arms over her chest and kept her head down. He would come. He cared too much not to come. In the meantime, maybe if she was real quiet, Mr. and Mrs. Bradley would forget she was there.
 

After three agonizing minutes, Mr. Bradley came in to refill his coffee cup. “Um,” he said, “help yourself to coffee, if you want. There’s plenty.”

She winced. “Thank you,” she said. He left, and she helped herself. She kept her back mostly turned to the room as she sipped her coffee.
 

This must be what time feels like in hell,
she thought. Her cup was nearly empty when she heard the sound of tires on gravel.
 

A moment later, Kellen stumbled into the house, still laughing. “Oh, God. Zoey…where’s Zoey?” He was looking at his red-faced mother.
 

She pointed balefully toward the kitchen. He turned and saw her.
 

The last thing she expected was to react to the brightness in his eyes. God, he looked absolutely beautiful as he made his way over to her, his hands in the pockets of his leather coat, his jeans hanging low on his trim hips. On top of that, he had a black eye and his bottom lip was slightly swollen. The effect was a more rugged version of the nice-guy. “Got a little flare up of foot-in-mouth disease?” he asked.

She straightened. “No. I meant everything I said. I just wasn’t planning on getting stranded here.”

His grin widened as he looked down at her. “It’s things like this that get your picture put on the dartboard.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What happened to your face?”

“Got in a bar fight.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“You? In a bar fight? No. I don’t believe that.”

“Well, it’s true. You can ask Jayce.” He gently tugged at a strand of her hair.
 

“Um,” Mr. Bradley said.

Kellen turned and Maya saw Mr. Bradley standing there.
 

“Um, if you two want breakfast or anything….”

“Jesus, he’s even nicer than you are,” Zoey said to Kellen.

Kellen placed his fingers over her lips. “That’s enough talking for today, huh?” He turned back to his dad. “We appreciate that, but we’ve imposed enough. I’m gonna get this little firecracker out of here and on her way.”

His dad nodded. “Got more havoc to wreak, does she?”

Zoey’s jaw dropped.

“Yeah, I think she keeps a pretty full schedule. Come on, Zoey.” Kellen took her by the arm and led her past Mr. Bradley. She turned and smiled at him, though, and he smiled back.

“Your dad’s cool,” she said as she climbed in Kellen’s truck.

“Mm-hmm.” He drove them to the end of the driveway just past her car. “You wanna go put it in neutral for me?”

They climbed out and she put her car in neutral while he hooked a wench under her car. She stood back as the wench slowly pulled her car forward and out of the mud. He unhooked it and then came to stand in front of her. “You’re all set. Come have breakfast with me.”

“With your parents?”

“No. God, don’t you think they’ve been through enough?”

“Your mom was a real bitch to Maya.”

He shrugged, clearly not wanting to get into it. “Let’s go to Belle’s for pancakes or something.”

She recognized it for what it was. A date. “I can’t. I need to get bagels for everyone at the house.”
 

He looked her up and down, no trace of the humor that had been there earlier. “You can do that after.”

“No, Kellen. Thank you, though.”

His jaw muscles flexed, making his smile look tight and forced. “All right. Another time, then.”

“No.”

The smile vanished and his eyes turned hot. “Tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Tomorrow I’m coming into town and take you to breakfast.”

“No, Kellen, I said I don’t want to.”

“Well, I want to, dammit! I’m sick of always doing whatever makes everyone else happy. I don’t care most of the time. It’s fine. But I want this, Zoey, and you’re gonna give it to me. So I’ll see you at nine tomorrow morning. Give you time to get your family fed before I take you out. Okay?”

She fought as hard as she could to keep from smiling. She loved the way he was trying to be aggressive. She loved that he called Maya and the kids her ‘family.’ Her lips quirked up and so did his. And then she was laughing.
 

He watched her for a moment. “So, is that a yes?”

She bit her bottom lip and looked up at him through her eyelashes. “Tell me what happened to your face.”

His expression sobered. He blew out a breath. “Damon was at Jayce’s last night. I went to talk him into leaving and we got into it. Mom was pretty pissed that I got my brother thrown in jail.”

Zoey felt the rage build again. “I don’t know if I’m angrier at him or at her. How can she be so blind?”

He shrugged, again. “So tomorrow. Nine o’clock. ‘Kay?”

She studied him for a long moment before giving him a nod.
 

His smile made all the stress of her day worth it.
 

“Great,” he said, “I’ll see you then.”

She nodded again. He got in his truck and drove a few yards down the road, waiting to make sure she got going. She made it onto the road and then followed him into town until he turned off down the highway that would take him home.
 

Kellen didn’t get nervous dating women. It just wasn’t something he dealt with. He’d always found it easy to be with them.
 

Naturally, he was perplexed by the butterflies in his stomach. He hadn’t slept at all last night in anticipation of his breakfast date. He kept having nightmares. The kind where you’re at the mall and look down and realize you’re in your underwear. He kept snapping awake, dozing off only to have another dream.

He didn’t look his best, even after splashing water on his face and drinking a half a pot of coffee. But it would have to do. He drove into town and pulled into Zoey’s driveway. She didn’t make him wait. She didn’t even make him go get her. As soon as he put the truck into park, she was jogging out of the house. She had on a long, wool coat over her jeans and a red scarf wrapped around her neck. Her hair hung loose and wild.

“Hey,” she said breathlessly as she climbed in the truck. “Addy’s sitting with Maya and the kids, and she is not happy, so you’d better go before she comes out here and talks me out of this.”

Kellen didn’t bother asking what Addy’s problem was. He knew her heart was in the best place. She was afraid he would get hurt. More evidence that women equated niceness with weakness. Everyone just assumed that because he was nice, he was also fragile.
 

He drove them downtown to a little diner called Belle’s. It was deliberately vintage. All the waitresses wore blue and white, plaid dresses with white aprons and bouffant hairdos. Kellen parked in the lot behind the restaurant. He wanted to hold Zoey’s hand walking into the restaurant, but he wasn’t prepared for the rejection if she pulled away.
 

She made it easy for him and tucked her mitten-covered hand into his. He smiled down at her and led her inside. There was a counter up front and then seating beyond it. They went to a corner booth. Patsy Cline was playing on the jukebox. Zoey took off her coat and scarf and said, “I love this place.”