Fix Her Up: A Novel

Under the guise of watching passing scenery, Travis couldn’t stop himself from stealing glances at the reflection of Georgie’s legs. Jesus Christ. Shit had definitely taken a turn. He’d thought Georgie making his dick hard the other night had been a fluke. Not anymore. This off-limits attraction was insanely real, and weirdly, it had gotten worse during their separation. What the hell kind of sense did that make? Out of sight was supposed to mean out of mind. Yet the other night, he’d been cooking a steak on the stove and caught himself staring into space, remembering the fringe of her jean shorts.

Okay, more like the skin he’d seen it touching.

Travis turned to study Georgie’s profile under the pretense of adjusting the air conditioner. Had her upper lip always been so fucking full?

Think of her as an awkward kid. Think of her as an awkward kid.

Travis took a deep breath in through his nose and closed his eyes, searching through his memory bank for something that would remind him not to think of Stephen’s little sister as a sexual being. Immediately, a moving image came to mind of Georgie at thirteen, waving at him from the bleachers, the light catching her braces, nachos balanced on her lap. All right. Braces and nachos definitely weren’t sexy. But the memory didn’t generate anything but . . . fondness. Comfort. It never occurred to him before now that she’d come to almost every single one of his games. Home and away. His own parents hadn’t even come to the games.

Back then, she’d had a commitment to him, but he’d never returned it. He’d never returned a commitment to anyone. Hell, he didn’t have the first clue how. His example had been two bitter adults who hadn’t bothered to shield him from the ugliness of their divorce. What was he playing at, allowing Georgie to feel guilty enough to drive him home?

“Should I call Stephen and tell him you won’t be back at work?”

Georgie’s question stopped Travis from venturing any further into the past. “No work. It’s an inspection day.”

“Oh, okay.” She paused, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “So it looked like you had quite a fan club back there.”

It took him a moment to realize whom she meant. Right. The two women who’d asked him for autographs and refused to take his cues to end the conversation. When he’d given up and started walking away, they’d seemed more than happy to join him, even after he’d rudely answered a phone call from Donny. His agent had called to inform him a name on the short list for the commentator job had been nixed, thanks to an intoxicated rant outside a club that went viral. That left only Travis and two other candidates. And hell, it was kind of nice not being the one to have a public indiscretion for once. “Asked me to sign their balls—they thought that was pretty funny,” he muttered. “Wasn’t really helping my cause having them follow me like that.”

“What cause?”

The kick of anticipation in his bones wasn’t lost on Travis. He’d been keeping the news about the on-air position to himself for days. But there was no denying he wanted to tell Georgie. Get her take on it. He hadn’t wanted that from anyone else. Combined with his definite noticing of her physical attributes and he was entering dangerous territory. “My agent has a line on a commentating job with the Bombers. For me.”

The car swerved and Travis didn’t think, he just threw an arm in front of Georgie to protect her. She squeaked. With the screech of tires, they swerved onto the shoulder, and there he was. With a handful of little-sister tit.

“Christ, Georgie.” He let her go like she’d caught fire, but not before registering the fullness of her breast, the way it tucked into his palm like a sweet little peach, her nipple tightening on contact. “What are you doing?”

“I got excited.” With a bright pink face, she stared straight out the windshield. “It’s okay. I know it was an accident.”

His cock didn’t care about categorizing the touch. It only wanted to react to the shape and size of what Georgie kept inside her bra, blood rushing to fill the organ until it stiffened in his jeans. From one tiny grope? Who was he anymore? “You’re goddamn right it was an accident.”

Her throat worked with a swallow. “It’s way too soon after I told you about Dale.”

Travis dropped his head into his hands. “Jesus, don’t bring that up now.”

“I figured it might be better. You know. To address the five-hundred-pound vibrator in the room.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It wasn’t. It wasn’t better.”

“Just drive, Georgie.”

“Good idea.”

The car’s engine revved gently, and they pulled back onto the thankfully empty road. He couldn’t help but notice she continued to fidget in her seat, though. Why couldn’t she just sit still? That skirt was fighting a losing battle to cover her thighs. Travis had to grip the seat to keep himself from reaching over and tugging the hem back down to her knees. At this rate, he wouldn’t be able to climb out of the car in an upright position.

“Travis, this is huge.”

No shit, Georgie.

“The Bombers. I mean, Garland is having the season of his life right now. Nunez has already thrown two no-hitters. Everyone is watching the games. Are you seriously telling me you’d get to do the play-by-play?”

“It’s a possibility.” Travis couldn’t hide his amused smile. “I didn’t realize you paid such close attention to the stats.”

“I got into the habit of memorizing the numbers when you played for the Hurricanes,” she said in an offhanded way, before snapping her mouth shut. “I mean, you couldn’t go anywhere in town without seeing the games. They were on every screen.”

“Yeah?” Thinking about how he’d taken that support for granted caused an uncomfortable tug in his chest, but he coughed his way through it. Honestly, he could have gone hours talking baseball with Georgie, enjoying the way she came to his defense and pulled no punches about the other players. It felt normal. She made him feel normal. But he didn’t know how much time they had together, especially if he got the job. But that was still a big “if.” “We both know I was on those television screens for a lot of different reasons. That’s what might prevent me from getting the job.”

He could feel Georgie’s knowing look from the other side of the car. “But you’re not interested in being that way anymore, right? Being . . . Two Bats. Unless you feel differently now—”

“I don’t.” They held each other’s gazes for a heavy beat. “Anyway, they don’t want their network associated with the guy who used to ask out reporters during press conferences.” He shook his head at the cringe-worthy memory. “Family network, family image.”

“I see.” Georgie pulled up along the curb in front of his house. “How are you going to manage that?”

He blew out a breath. “Hell if I know. Maybe I’ll get a cat.”

“A cat would definitely help with your rat problem.”

“I don’t—” Travis cut himself off and pushed open the passenger door. “Never mind. See for yourself.”

What was he doing? He didn’t need to invite her upstairs. He was perfectly capable of getting home by himself—the shoulder barely hurt anymore. But when he should have thanked her for the ride and urged her to leave, Travis guided Georgie into the building instead. All right. He’d simply prove he’d kept the apartment immaculate and send her away. They’d hang out for twenty, maybe thirty minutes tops. Just long enough so that she couldn’t make her date with Pete.

You’re a bastard. A bastard who had no business manipulating Georgie’s social life. God, though. There was something about her on a date that didn’t sit right. He couldn’t explain it.

Oh no? His body’s reaction to Georgie’s ass in that skirt as she climbed the stairs was a pretty fucking effective explanation, now wasn’t it? There was no sense pretending he wasn’t hoping and praying for that seam running down the middle of her ass cheeks to rip. Fine. Georgie Castle was hot. With a side of cute. An ass built to curve against his lap . . . and freckles. If that combo wasn’t a mind fuck, he didn’t know what was. Where did she learn to walk like that? Or was she walking the same as usual and he was just noticing every tick-tock of her hips, every curve of her thighs and calves?

When they reached the top of the stairs, Travis withdrew the house keys from his pocket and searched for a way to take his mind off Georgie’s butt. “So. A sea salt caramel mocha is the female version of an icebreaker?”

“Rosie, Beth, and I usually kick things off with tequila, but a mocha will do in a pinch.”

Travis slipped his key into the door and nudged it open, gesturing for Georgie to precede him. “Kick things off. Like what?”

“Oh, we’re moonlighting as vigilantes now.”

“Are you?” Travis followed after her, trying to see the apartment through her eyes. He wasn’t lying when he said he’d kept it clean and organized, almost nervous she’d show up and be disappointed. Now, she turned in a circle and gave him a thumbs-up, causing a ripple of satisfaction to pass through him. Damn, he liked seeing her happy with him, especially after the fireplace shit show. He could only grunt in reply, however. “I hope you haven’t been fighting crime at night in your clown costume, because that’s just scary.”

“You say ‘scary,’ I say ‘effective.’”

She went to his freezer and started wrapping ice in a dish towel. Taking care of him in a way he’d always had to do for himself. In a way he’d always wanted to do for himself, abhorring the thought of depending on another person. Why didn’t he mind when Georgie did these things?

“Anyway, clowns aren’t scary. We live to make people laugh.”

“You’re right,” he said hoarsely. “You could never be scary.”

“How do you know?” She twisted the ice-filled towel, approached him, and carefully laid it on his shoulder, causing something to stick in his throat. “You’ve never seen me perform.”

“I don’t need to watch your act to know you can’t pull off scary. You’re nothing but a sweetheart.”

Georgie’s breath hitched at his unplanned words. “Are you forgetting my lo mein fastball?” she murmured. “I’m not sweet.”

Ignoring a mental warning to stop flirting with Georgie—right now—Travis tipped his head toward the makeshift ice pack. “Sure about that?”

She let the ice pack go as if it had bitten her, forcing Travis to catch it with his good arm.

“Okay, I’m going to take off.” She stepped back with an unconvincing smirk, but Travis could still make out the concern in her eyes as she scrutinized his shoulder. “Make sure to ice on and—”

Panic caught him off guard. Over her leaving? A week ago, he couldn’t get rid of her; now she was going to put burn marks on the floor running away. “Hold on. I want to hear more about this club.”

“You do?” Visibly gathering her words, Georgie rubbed her hands down the sides of her skirt. “It’s . . . a fight club,” she said.

“Try again.”

“We’re starting our own line of organic hand sanitizer.”

“Nope.”

“Phone sex operators?”

“That’s not funny.” His chest was crowded by the urge to laugh for the first time in days. It seemed to be his permanent state around this girl. “Tell me. Or I’ll pay a visit to your mother and ask her to get it out of you.”

Her face transformed with feminine outrage. “That’s cold. You know we can’t lie to her.”

“And she could never say no to me.”

Georgie shook her head. “The old square-jawed smirk. It’s a one-two punch.” With an eye roll, she turned on a heel and stalked off down his hallway. “Where do you keep your Advil?”

“Nightstand. Bedroom.” Travis followed Georgie in that direction, hitting an invisible wall in the doorway to his bedroom. Leaning forward over his nightstand, Georgie’s shape took on a whole new meaning when silhouetted next to his bed. A wave of her hair fell off its perch on her shoulder, making her lips stand out against the dark backdrop. Last time she was in this room, he’d still considered her kind of a pest. Stephen’s sleepy little sister. Now? She’d become the sexy temptation in his bedroom at an alarming rate. That curve of her ass pressed to the skirt zipper, leaving nothing to his imagination. He wanted to drag that zipper down and find out what her butt felt like in his hands. Against his tongue. Wanted to learn the secrets of her body and pleasure more personal ones out of her mouth. And this definitely marked the first time in history he’d been eager to get inside the head of a woman.

“Here.” She straightened and offered him two Advil. “Take these. Promise you’ll call the doctor if it still hurts in the morning.”

He took the pills and tossed them back dry. “You’re not getting out of telling me.”

Georgie groaned up at the ceiling. “The Just Us League, okay? We started a club.”

Travis absorbed that. “You came up with the name, didn’t you? Clever.”

“Right?” She beamed up at him. “I thought so.”

“Seriously,” he rasped, a pill obviously having gotten stuck in his throat. Right? That had to be the reason he sounded like a wrench scraping on concrete. “I love it.”

They smiled at each other for a few seconds before Georgie shook herself. “We all have goals, you know?” Pink spread on her cheeks. “We’re just helping each other reach them.”

“What’s your goal?”

“Why?”

“Maybe I can help.”

She rolled her lips inward, leaving them twice as full when she freed them. Goddamn. “I want to expand my business from a one-woman operation to a full-fledged entertainment company. But first,” she rushed to add, before he could respond, “before any of that is realistic, I need people to stop treating me like a child. If my own family—this town—can’t take me seriously, I can’t expect . . . I can’t . . .”

Travis waited for Georgie to continue when she trailed off, but she seemed to be hypnotized by something over his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow. “You in there, baby girl?”

“I have a crazy idea,” she whispered. “‘Maybe you just need a different way to make them listen.’ Isn’t that what you told me?”

Yeah. He recalled the story he’d told her during their apartment cleaning session. He’d definitely said that. Apparently she’d taken it to heart. He didn’t know whether to be touched or regretful.

“You need the television network to believe you’ve gone family friendly. Travis, that’s me. I’m so disgustingly nonthreatening, I get noogies in the tampon aisle. Too much information, I know, but hear me out—”

“Georgie . . .” Caution crawled up his back. “Wherever this is going, it sounds like a no.”

“If you pretended to date me—”

“No.”

She clapped a hand over his mouth. “Just long enough for the network to think you’re settling down and definitely not going to swagger out of Britney’s hotel room—again. What would it be? A couple of weeks? Tops?” Excitement made her eyes a bright sea-glass green and he couldn’t look away. “We’d be killing two birds with one stone. You get the commentator gig. My family—this whole town—would stop thinking of me as the pesky youngest Castle kid.”

Travis grasped her wrist, tugging her palm away from his mouth, surprised to find his pulse racing, his breathing unsteady. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because, Georgie,” he blurted out. “Your stock will go too far in the opposite direction. You won’t get taken seriously. You’ll be labeled as another one of Travis Ford’s flings. People will be disappointed, thinking you had your head screwed on tighter than that.” He jabbed a finger at her. “You want to look like a grown-up? You will. One that makes bad decisions.”

“Wow,” she whispered. “You have a pretty low opinion of yourself, don’t you? Are you just worried about people thinking I’ve made a bad decision . . . or do you believe it?” Whatever she saw on his face made her eyes go soft. A little sad. “And here I thought you were cocky.”

He brought their faces close, listening to Georgie suck in a breath. “You don’t know a lot of things.”

“I could.” A beat passed. “You could tell me.”

With a concerted effort, Travis stepped away, swiping a frustrated hand along the back of his neck. When had this conversation gotten away from him? Suddenly this girl thought she could call him out? Attempt to examine him? No. Fuck that. He didn’t even have the nerve to examine himself. Bottom line, this ruse she’d proposed wasn’t happening. Not a chance.

“We wouldn’t actually be . . . you know.” She shifted. “Doing it. Obviously.”

Travis scoffed. “You’d be the first to want to date Travis Ford without the perks.”

Her eyelids fell to half-mast. “It didn’t sound like you were offering them.”

He moved into her personal space, his voice emerging harsh. “I’m not.”

“Fine,” she said, so low he almost didn’t hear. “I wouldn’t know how to take full advantage of them anyway.”

Virgin. Alarm bells went off, but he stayed right where he was, listening to their rapid breaths. Reminding himself she was his best friend’s little sister didn’t help when she was this near, close enough to touch. To taste. He could no more move away from the approach of Georgie’s lips than he could take on a thousand-man army. If he didn’t kiss her, someone else would claim that first kiss. No. No, he didn’t want that. Fuck. That.

Their mouths met.

Parted for two surprised beats.

And melded back together.