An Accidental Gentleman (7 page)

Elbows bent out, head cocked, freckled cheeks shining—Christ, she impersonated a college kid but for her grown-woman skills and confidence. “Twenty-eight.”

Close enough for government work. Halle-freaking-lujah. Swooping in on anyone under twenty-five came with plenty of drama and no commitment. The former he’d never liked, and the latter—well, she’d changed that, hadn’t she?

She wagged a pert finger. “I’m letting your breach of the man-woman contract slide solely because I owed you for jumping to conclusions.”

“This is where I take a mile, then? What about”—tapping his chin in master-villain mode, he hummed,
ta-da
—“a not-a-date?”

“Are you inviting me to fuck in your tiny car?” Cheeks rounding with a smile, she tipped her chin toward his groin. “You’re packing a hefty tool. Could be a tight squeeze.”

Annnd the pressure at his fly returned. Better divert her from the subject of fucking before his pants split. “Softball.”

“That’s a date.” She tripped over him with her answer, so fast she must’ve been coded in an automatic loop.

“That’s not a date.” Lie. Bringing her to the game absolutely would be a date. “That’s catching lazy pop flies and drinking beers from a cooler on a Saturday afternoon.” Not a classic date where he bought dinner and she surrendered her body, but the kind where his quasi-family vetted the woman he’d chosen and she experienced the sort of life he’d offer. “Like forty, fifty people. You don’t want to spend time with me, you’ll have plenty of folks to choose from.”

Hell, softball had worked for Rob. Why not him?

Stalking back and forth in front of appliance-laden white metal shelves, she lacked only a cat’s tail twitching. Long silences and sidelong glances she managed fine. As she rocked to a stop, she swiped her knuckles across her forehead. “We take separate cars, and if you introduce me to a single, solitary person as your date or your girlfriend, I walk.”

Holy fucking shit, she’d delivered a yes. Negotiating terms, not the date itself, because that was a yes. Green light on Operation Real Relationship with Katherine. A prelude to permission for waking up beside her, watching her eyelids flutter as she dreamed. Arousing her with kisses down her gently sloping nose to the rounded tip. Planting one on her sweetheart lips and nibbling to his heart’s content.

She coughed. “Unless you don’t want—”

“Nope, nope, I want.” Christ Jesus. Standing here daydreaming while the woman at the center of his fantasies waited for his reply. Hell of a showing. “I’ll text you details, and I’ll tell everyone you’re a stranger who followed me to alert me my taillight’s out.”

She laughed, thank God. Sweet and low, wrapping him in love-fog, the same substance that must’ve addled Rob’s brains last summer. He hadn’t warned the stuff would be so damn addictive. But maybe every man had to figure that one for himself.

* * * *

Rattling off her number, she rushed him out the door. Any more of Prince Charming’s temptations tonight, and she’d start calling him the devil. As he swaggered out of view, he left behind an uncommon vacancy. The strange pull demanded more than his dick, though she wouldn’t scrape a healthy serving of that off her plate, either.

With the sign flipped to
Closed
, she rested against the door and replayed the best five minutes of her day. Well, maybe seven minutes. The notion of timing him had flown away as soon as he’d spun her toward the wall.

The way he took control—no guy won that concession from her. Maybe the difference accounted for the surge of something-ness urging her to see him again. Micromanaged, most one-nighters got the job done, but the satisfaction dissipated in the final few climactic shudders. With Brian, the buzzing high had driven her toward more dangerous games. Grabbing his ass while her customer waited out front. Fuck, she’d lost her mind. His damn fault.

By the time she got the shop closed up and the mixer waiting in the back fixed, she’d be late for dinner again. Hung-up, moony-eyed girlfriends depended on a man to keep them company. She’d finish up on her own and like it, dammit. And stop fucking jumping back to thoughts of him. At least Mrs. Baxter provided a credible excuse for running behind. Brian’s contribution would stay locked in the vault of better-left-unsaid.

A secret, gotten-away-with-naughtiness thrill.

She’d goaded Mr. Nice Guy into credible bad-boy behavior. He hadn’t slunk away from the challenge, oh no. He’d owned it. Owned
her
, for those too-short minutes. The danger of a date-date with him didn’t come from her giving an inch and him taking a mile. The danger came from wanting to offer him the mile. Softball would give her a people-buffer from his persuasive touch and seductive voice.

Popping the register, she fell into counting with the ease of long habit. When her first-grade homework had demanded she circle pictures of nickels and dimes, Grandpa Jake, harrumphing behind his bushy mustache, had plonked her on the counter beside the register.

“None of that piddly bullshit—now watch you don’t repeat that and get Grandpa in trouble, mind—for my granddaughter. You’re old enough to work the till, Kitten.”

Through patient tutelage, he’d taught her the real-world skills elementary school tried to approximate. By eight, she’d been trusted with zeroing out the day’s transactions and dropping the zippered bag in the bank’s night-deposit box while Dad or Grandpa waited in the truck.

Nine-seventeen and change today, after setting up the starting cash for tomorrow. Not great, but not a bad take for a Tuesday. The refurbished Atari 2600—quick fix of a replacement adapter and some shine—had gone home with a new owner. The gaming console and a resurrected 1930s wood-cabinet radio stood out as the day’s big-ticket items on the floor. Repair work made up the balance. She’d miss the radio, with its pointy-domed cabinet pretty as a stained-glass church window. Have to keep an eye out for a broke-down model on her next fishing expedition.

Cash bagged, she dry-mopped the vinyl and flipped the lights to night mode. A warm yellow glow, welcoming and homey, filled the display windows as the rest of the shop went dark. The penetrating evening sun fell too short to make itself known.

Surefooted in familiar terrain, she wandered into the back. Replacing the gear and closing up her patient would take a few minutes’ work at the most. As she settled in her seat, her back tingled.

The wall revealed nothing of the evening. Paper, plaster, and paint couldn’t return the curling smile her muscles kept forcing on her mouth. Damn thing wouldn’t go down.

“Just like Brian.” Laughing, she narrowly missed smacking her head on the swing-arm.

Gal chatter and dick-pill commercials insisted men got less horny as they aged and had trouble staying hard. Jesus God, in mid-argument with her, he’d sported a noticeable bulge. If anyone had been trying to notice. Which she hadn’t, because—bullshit. Brian boasted a tight ass, a solid erection, and brawny arms, not qualified with for-an-office-worker, but straight-up damn fine.

Greased, the worm gear seated perfectly. The main shaft turned. Time to retrace her steps, clean as a conscientious hiker leaving no sign of her passage. Once the candy-red shell sealed up around her modifications, the mixer would work as if it’d never been broken.

Heels tucked on her foot rungs, she tapped the floor as she worked. The moves flowed easy, righty-tighty muscle memory. A small job didn’t demand an overpowered drill.

Brian understood that. She hadn’t believed he’d meet her dare, but fuck, he’d brought the skills and then some. Good enough to at least find out what he’d do with permission to use his sinful mouth. He talked an amazing game. Maybe his tongue had other uses. He’d had years to practice.

Thirty-seven, shit. And no wife, no kids—presumably. He hadn’t said so. Not that he owed her details, because they weren’t dating and they weren’t going to be. Conceding to a second meet-up—third, if she counted the blown tire—didn’t mean more than an appreciation for his fuckability. A little rough and a lot fast, he hadn’t for one minute taken his focus off what she needed.

The man auditioned for a starring role instead of understanding his bit part in her life.

Better not to get tangled and end up heartbroken and bitter like her sister.

Family first, always.

Grandpa Jake had intended for her to take over the business when the time came ’round. Upgrade Runyon’s Repairs from its post-war origins to the twenty-first century. Market the high-end vintage pieces online and simplify in-home repair scheduling. If things had gone as planned, they’d be hosting Saturday summer camp classes for tweens in basic electronics, letting them tear apart old VCRs to diagnose and troubleshoot while their parents paid thirty bucks a head for a two-hour science lesson.

With Erin fragile and stumbling from one career to another—massage therapy, cosmetology, bartending, a whole string of unfinished certifications and increasing debts—money had been tight for years. Warehouse picker fell somewhere above chicken beheader in her list of desirable jobs, and the climate and the hours sucked, but the pay came in steady. The girls wanted clothes and gadgets to keep up with their school friends. Mom needed routine eye checkups to monitor her declining vision. Grandpa Jake’s funeral—fuck.

She swiped her eyes with the backs of her wrists. Brian wouldn’t understand any of that. What thirty-seven-year-old man wanted to pick up his date at her parents’ house, the house she’d never left, the one where Mom still made her meals and she slept in the bedding she’d gotten for Christmas at least a decade ago?

Her wildness belonged far away from home. Bad enough she’d let him get her so riled she’d brought sex into the shop. Last time she’d made a mistake, she’d been twenty-one. Young enough to excuse her stupidity in bringing a hookup home on a Friday night.

More than a little drunk, they’d stumbled through the door after midnight. She’d shushed him down the hall to her bedroom. Emery. Like a freaking nail file.

“Board,” he’d said. “As in ‘stiff as.’” He’d slapped her hand on his dick right in the bar, and she’d been wasted enough to find him the funniest fucking guy in existence. Hence the home-going.

Fun until she’d tried to hustle him out the door before six a.m. on a Saturday. With hangover brain, she’d forgotten the girls would be camped in front of the TV set, giggling at infomercials and God-knew-what cartoons, quiet so they didn’t wake Erin, who demanded no wakeups before nine on a weekend.

Six and seven, Jess and Abby had popped their heads over the back of the couch quick as prairie dogs.

“Is that your boyfriend?” Abby studied him with animal intensity.

“Do you want my cereal milk?” As Jess held out her bowl, the liquid slopped across the rim and dripped. “It’s pink.”

Extra pink when landing on the living room’s beige carpet.

“What the fuck?” Whispering didn’t do Emery any favors. “You have kids?” His hoarse smoker voice grated as she propelled him out the door. “Crazy bitch.”

Tears streaked Jess’s cheeks. “I spilled. Mommy’ll be mad.”

“Aunt Kit?” Curling around the couch back, Abby lifted her feet and kicked the air. “Did that man give you a baby? Can we trade Jess for it?”

Seven years later, as she remembered the morning, the chill still draped her chest and the numbness attacked her fingers. The girls didn’t need to witness her hormone-fueled mistakes. She hadn’t brought a man home since. Backseats of cars got the job done. The occasional motel room when the guy was an out-of-towner. No repeats, no strings, and no getting personal.

She’d grown smarter. She had the strength to handle Brian without losing herself no matter how hard he tried to tangle her up. His dick hadn’t gotten more than a cloth-covered cameo tonight. She owed herself one good, casual fuck with him. A man who thought himself a bad boy but acted like a nice guy—except when pushed, and then he responded with macho meet-that-dareness. She’d give him a tune-up for his next woman, his settle-down girl. As long as she didn’t bring him by the house, they weren’t dating.

But the way he’d said her name rolled through her head and rumbled low in her belly. A turn-on, nothing more. The fluttering lightness in her chest didn’t have to mean anything but that she was late for dinner.

She left out the back, locking the door to the electric graveyard behind her.

* * * *

Sinking into the driver’s seat, Brian yanked the car door shut and exhaled. Loud and forceful, he beat out the rumbling of the air conditioner competing with the built-up, sunny-parking-spot heat swirling around him.

The steering wheel roasted his hands. A purring beast, the Audi slipped down the near-deserted downtown street. Tuesday nights didn’t bring the crowds even in midsummer. Too many empty and boarded-up buildings waited on urban revival.

They ought to be throwing a parade. Confetti, marching bands, the whole shebang. Kit would let her guard down at softball. Without background checks. Investigating her secrets would break the spirit of the relationship he aimed to build. Nobody stayed tense and wary through a whole afternoon of fun. Hell, he’d have settled for the nightmare of a coffee date, the will-she or won’t-she of wondering whether they’d upgrade their meeting to a meal. Softball constituted a massive victory.

Almost as massive as his unstoppable erection. Fuck, his dick ached, and no litany of polar explorers sufficed, not while his fingers held her scent. The AC fanned her sweet musk around him in a dizzying lure. With his pants bunched tight, he wedged his knee against the door.

Four fucking blocks and he scanned for a decent spot. A little privacy. Seven blocks and he drove past the rusting chain-link fence into the parking lot of an abandoned furniture warehouse. Faded yellow banners sagging in the front window advertised a factory-direct clearance sale four years gone.

Forced off the road by desire for a woman he’d met five days ago. One who trusted him to finger-fuck her in the back room of an open shop but not to pick her up at her house. Swearing, he cut the engine and tilted the seat back. Riding the perfect line between being the fuck-toy she seemed to want from her lovers and coaxing her into a greater commitment, now that was a new one to stick on the aphrodisiac list.