Free Hard Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 2) by Marysol James Page A

is. When you really like a woman, it makes you nervous to be around her.”
    “Not helpful. Makes it harder to be a boyfriend.”
    “I totally agree,” King said. “That’s why you have to be brave, and you have to be honest with her about how you feel.”
    “Tell her?”
    “Yes. You tell her that you like her.”
    “Then?”
    “Then I don’t know.” This was the part that also had King stumped about Naomi. “Sometimes she likes you back and you can be happy together. But sometimes, she likes someone else. Or she doesn’t want a boyfriend. Then, it can be hard.”
    “Because you can’t be happy with her?”
    Damn, Noah really gets this, huh?
    “Exactly. Because you can’t be happy with her.”
    The two men gazed at each other.
    “If I don’t tell her, I can’t know,” Noah said slowly. “But if I tell her, maybe I’m sad.”
    “Yep. That’s the eternal conundrum.”
    Noah looked puzzled.
    “I mean, that’s the risk you have to decide if you want to take,” King said. “You need to decide if you like her enough to maybe be sad when she says no.”
    “And maybe happy when she says yes.”
    “Right.” King smiled. “She might say yes.”
    “If I’m honest, maybe she’ll say yes.”
    "Yep. Maybe."
    Come on, man. She might say yes if you’re honest. The answer may be yes.
    Am I talking to Noah or to myself?
    **
    Naomi hesitated when she saw her mother’s number come up on her cell phone. Her first instinct – as always – was to avoid the call. But one thing she’d learned over the past eight months was to face things head-on… most especially the things that she most wanted to duck away from. Her Mom topped that list, no doubt about it.
    She grabbed her new eight-month sobriety coin from her purse and squeezed it, drawing strength. This one was red and she thought that in some ways, it was the most hard-earned one yet. Seeing Matt three or four times a week when he dropped Callie and Noah off was wreaking havoc on her head and her heart.
    He never stopped surprising her – in good ways. Despite what Reena and Mitch had told her about his man-whoring ways, she still longed to drop her guard with him, to flirt back just a little bit. Because dear God , the man flirted. He flirted like it was an Olympic event and he was going for the damn gold.
    Amazingly, it was nothing sleazy or offensive. Instead he was engaged in a pretty unrelenting campaign of the good, old-fashioned approach of being sexy and charming as hell. He talked to her, he complimented her. He asked about the plans for expansion on the center, he offered some ideas. He made her laugh, he made her feel beautiful. And he confused her the whole fucking time that he did so, since she knew it all meant less than nothing to Matt Kingston. She was just one more woman to pass the time with.
    Pushing aside thoughts of Matt, Naomi picked up her phone. “Hi, Mom.”
    “Naomi.” Yep, her Mom was slurring at nine o’clock in the morning and Naomi gripped the chip tighter. “He cheated on me.”
    She closed her eyes. “Bruce?”
    “Yeah. The bastard fucking cheated on me… I found out last night.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that, Mom. You doing OK?”
    A loud bark of laughter made her move the phone away from her ear. “Are you fucking serious? Of course I’m not OK! Didn’t you hear what I said? He cheated on me!”
    “I know.”
    “Yeah, the fuckers are all the same, baby girl… you remember that, OK? All men are the same – all cheaters. Your father, and every single guy I’ve known since then. Liars, cheaters, assholes.”
    Naomi stayed silent in the face of this all-too-familiar diatribe. She could recite it by heart and word-for-word, God knows. She’d been listening to it since she was six years old.
    “Your father.” Her mother’s voice was a hiss now, and Naomi braced herself for what was coming. “That fucking piece of shit. Stuck his pathetic little dick in anything that moved, then up and abandoned