Beckham - Olivia T. Turner
Chapter One
Beckham
“Two chocolates.”
The girl behind the refrigerated counter grabs a little red spoon and smiles at me as she puffs her chest out.
“Chocolate is good, but you have to try our new caramel fudge. It’s sensuously delicious.”
She bends over, showing me her cleavage as she scoops a tiny spoonful of ice cream and hands it to me with a grin.
“Want to try?” she asks with a hopeful look on her face.
“No.”
Nixie elbows my arm. I turn to her and she’s shaking her head in disbelief.
“No, thank you,” I add to the girl.
“Suit yourself,” the girl says with a shrug. She puts the spoon into her mouth and makes a show as she sucks the ice cream off with a sensuous moan. “It’s so good.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Nixie says with an annoyed look on her face. “Can you just get our two ice creams please?”
The girl’s smile vanishes and she quickly gets our two cones ready.
“You’re hopeless,” Nixie says to me as she waits.
When her ice cream is ready, she grabs it and disappears to a booth in the back of the parlor as I pay the girl. She doesn’t try to flirt anymore, which is a relief.
“What was that about?” I ask my eleven-year-old niece as I sit down across from her.
Her eyes flit to mine as she gnaws on her ice cream cone. “She was trying to flirt with you, Uncle B. How come you never even try to flirt back?”
“I’m not trying to meet a girl. I’m trying to have a nice afternoon with my niece.”
“We can do this anytime.”
But we don’t. Nixie used to live with me and Jaxon after her mother died, but since Jaxon and Stella got together, she lives with them. Maybe it’s that or because she’s getting older, but I feel her starting to slip away.
“Don’t you want a girlfriend?” she asks. “You don’t even notice when a pretty girl is flirting with you! You’re never even paying attention.”
I sigh as I bite into my cold ice cream. I notice. I pay attention.
I just don’t want to let anyone in. I wouldn’t do that to someone.
“She was into you,” Nixie continues. “And that single mother from school—Jessie’s mom. She was into you too.”
They wouldn’t be so interested if they knew what was standing in front of them.
“Are you ever going to date?” she asks. “Don’t you want to fall in love?”
“Love is a fairytale,” I say with a sigh. “It’s not meant for everyone.”
“Love is not meant for everyone?” she repeats with an exasperated look on her face. “Uncle B, you can’t believe that.”
I bite into my ice cream and focus on the ice-cold burning on my teeth, wishing we were talking about anything but this.
She’s still staring at me, waiting for an answer.
“It’s meant for guys like Jaxon,” I tell her honestly. “Not for guys like me.”
“Love is meant for everybody,” she says. “If not, I wouldn’t love you like a father.”
My heart melts whenever she refers to me as anything close to being her father. I feel the heat rising to my cheeks.
“Do you love me?” she asks.
My heart breaks that she even has to ask that. “Of course, Nixie. I love you more than anything. You know that.”
“See?” she says with a triumphant smile on her face. “Then love is for everyone. Even you.”
I watch her as she starts attacking her ice cream cone with a grin. This kid is an old soul, but she’s still just a kid. After her childhood, she knows more than anyone that there are horrors in this world. She watched her real father go to prison and he’ll be there until she’s twenty-four years old. If that wasn’t enough, her mother—my sister—died of breast cancer. So, yeah, she knows there are horrors in this world, but she doesn’t know everything. The horrors I saw before her age could make grown men cry…
“It’s time to leave the past in the past,” she says.
My eyebrow raises as I look at her. She’s walking on thin ice and she knows it.
“I know it hasn’t been easy for you,” she says with a hint of uneasiness in her voice. “What happened with grandma and grandpa…”
I look over my shoulder at the couple sitting behind us. Ice cream is dripping onto their fingers as they gaze out the window. They don’t have a care in the world. God, what I would give to trade places with them.
“Uncle J told me,” she says.
“Jaxon shouldn’t be talking about that,” I snap.