Free Sculpt-Paige_Michaels-Becca_Jameson by Becca Jameson and Paige Michaels Page A

can afford the plane tickets. They live in the South, so I don’t get down there that often.”
    “Would you like to see them more?”
    She swallowed past the lump in her throat and looked up at him. “They don’t really like me that much.” She took a deep breath and tried to remember that she was happy with who she was. “It’s okay. I’m a lot for anyone, and I do get that I’m not everyone’s flavor.”
    He slipped out of the car and came to her side, taking her hand gently and pulling her out. “Parents are supposed to look past our flaws.”
    She tried to smile. “I’m not sure mine got the memo. It’s okay. I mean, when I was in high school, it was a revolving door of boyfriends in and out of my room, and then at art school, well, let’s just say my parents don’t exactly approve of my sexual openness.”
    “Their loss,” he said and dropped a kiss onto her forehead.
    “You’re not going to tell me that maybe I should try to be more discrete and circumspect around them?”
    He laughed then and shook his head. “Sweetheart, I don’t see you ever being able to take the you out of you, and I’d never want that for you. If they don’t see how special you are, it’s too bad for them.”
    “The thing is that they wanted a Southern deb. They wanted me to be a trophy wife who married a good Southern boy and raised lots of babies and got fat. My brother married one of those girls. They live next to my parents now and give them grandbabies, and his wife tells me how horrible I am every time I visit.”
    “She what?”
    Lucinda took a deep breath and plowed ahead. “When I was a little girl, my mom put me on the pageant circuit. I did pretty well too.”
    He nodded. “I can see that.”
    “But then when I was sixteen, I got caught blowing one of the judges in the changing room, and that sort of ended that.”
    He laughed, and warmth curled up inside her. “God, I would have loved to see that. Were you trying to ensure your win?”
    “No. I didn’t care about winning. At that point, I already had huge tits that spilled out of my bikini, so I was pretty sure that all the Christian matron judges were going to low ball me anyway. But the dude I was blowing…”
    She stopped in front of the door into his house and considered whether she should be telling him all this. Would this be a reason he’d later give about why he didn’t want to keep her?
    “Don’t stop now, sweetheart. I’m deeply amused, and the picture in my head is making me hard as a rock.”
    Well. Then. In for a penny, in for a pound.
    “The dude I was blowing was the father of one of the other contestants. She’d been a huge bitch to me on the pageant circuit for years, always saying all these snide remarks. I blew her dad because I knew I’d get caught and I knew it would humiliate her.”
    He laughed. “Oh, brat, I shouldn’t laugh because revenge is never a good idea, but I can’t help it. I love thinking of my adorable slutty brat using all her resources to defeat her enemy. Clever girl. So you got her back?”
    “Yeah, but she got me back in her own way. She married my brother and moved next door to my parents.”
    He laughed even harder. “Of course she did.”
    She laughed too. “I’m better now. I don’t get jealous of other women. I believe in myself.”
    “Really?” And the way he said it, suddenly serious with all the laughter in his voice gone, made her squirm. He didn’t know about Julian and Morgan. She hadn’t told him. But would he have found out?
    “Well, mostly,” she settled on. She wasn’t ready to tell him about the rest of it. This admission about her blowing her sister-in-law’s dad was enough. She didn’t need to give Theo another reason to walk away from her.
    He cupped both her cheeks and delivered the softest kiss to her lips. She sighed.
    “I know you’re keeping things from me. I suspect you have enough stories in that brain to make even the most liberal person feel squeamish. I