Bad Boy Good Man (8 page)

“Oh.” That was…

He cast a glance toward the boy, whose gaze
was fully transfixed on the television. In a lower voice, Antony
said, “I’m the black sheep of the family, thank god.”

“Never been to prison?” It came out like I
was teasing him, and I wished it hadn’t. “Never been to jail?”

“Oh, I’ve been to jail,” he said, like it was
no big deal. “I got arrested at an anti-war protest when I was
eighteen. Spent the night in a holding cell, never charged.
Beer?”

I nodded. “Was that what made you want to
become a lawyer?”

He popped the top—with a bottle opener this
time, and not his amazing forearm—and half-smiled. “2005 was a
crazy time.”

I leaned back on the counter and took a sip
of my beer as he stirred the Hamburger Helper simmering in a
skillet on the stove. He was right, he was definitely not a great
chef, but there was something charming about seeing him in such a
domestic context, when I’d only known him before as a player.

“Actually, I’ve wanted to be a lawyer for a
while. When I was twelve, before my dad went away for the second
time, he said, ‘It’d help if we had an attorney in the family,
‘cause these court appointed ones ain’t worth a damn.’”

“So, you’re a defense attorney,” I
guessed.

“No. I work for the prosecutor’s office.”
Now, there was definitely a grim set to his jaw, and he fell
silent.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” Although,
I wasn’t sure I had; he’d volunteered most of the information, like
he was confessing to a crime.

His smile returned, but it was forced, again.
“No, I’m just maudlin tonight. I’ll tell you about it when he’s
asleep.”

That was pretty confident of him, assuming I
would be staying. But I was going to. I couldn’t pretend I
preferred my empty apartment and
Friends
on Netflix to
spending time with him.

I set the table—for three, at Antony’s
insistence—and choked down some of the super high-sodium dinner
he’d made. I made a mental note to take the risk of being
passive-aggressive and get him a good cookbook.

Of course, maybe coming home from work and
having to deal with a kid made it easier to open a box. My parents
had had it easy; they could always afford to have someone cook for
us.

After dinner, Antony sent Tony off to brush
his teeth and wash his face. When the kid skipped off to the
bathroom, Antony turned to me. “You wanna hang around for a minute?
Have another beer after I get him to sleep?”

There was a subtle desperation there, and I
realized…hot neighbor guy was
lonely
. Sure, he had his
nephew here with him, but adult human company had to be hard to
find when you were arranging it around a kid. And, there was more
to this story, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. All I
knew was, Antony was deeper than the player caricature I’d created
in my head. I’d been thinking of him as a sex god who lived to bang
chicks when he wasn’t being some hotshot lawyer.

Shame on me for making such callous
assumptions. I had to clear the lump out of my throat to answer
him. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Tony came back from the bathroom and frowned
at the living room couch. “Where’s my bed not out?”

“
Why
is your bed not out,” Antony
corrected him. “My friend is going to be here until after bedtime,
so you can start in mine.” He picked the kid up like a sack of
flour and carried him to the bed, which looked like a football
field in comparison to the boy’s teensy body. “Just a quick story
tonight, okay?”

Oh my god. He was going to read him a bedtime
story. Could that
be
any hotter?

“Let me get these dishes,” I offered, waving
him off when he tried to decline. As upbeat as he was, there were
dark circles under his eyes.

I took the few dishes to the sink and filled
it with hot, soapy water while Antony read
One Fish, Two Fish,
Red Fish, Blue Fish
. Not a short story at all, but halfway
through, I could see the boy’s tiny body relax in the crook of
Antony’s arm. By the end of the book, the dishes were washed, and
the kid was sound asleep.

“Do we have to whisper?” I asked, doing
exactly that.

He shook his head and went to the fridge,
producing a bottle of red wine instead of beer. He held it up for
approval, and I nodded. Opening the bottle, he shook his head.
“That kid could sleep through a helicopter landing in here.”

We went to the dining table, to our places
from dinner, though he sat a bit closer to the corner than before,
his body angled toward mine. “I hope you don’t feel like you have
to hang out. I realize I’m kind of….needy. But it’s nice to have
another grown-up to talk to. I start to feel like a soccer mom
after a while.”

“What was I going to be doing?” I shrugged as
he poured wine into my glass. Switching gears, I asked, “Do you
watch him a lot?”

“Every night except Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
He held my gaze for a long moment, to see if I got his meaning.

“Yeah, grown-up interaction seems to be at an
all-time high on those nights.” I raised my eyebrows and held up my
glass to clink it against his.

“Antonia went away for a year. Just got
back.” He lowered his voice, as though the sleeping child would
hear him despite his statement to the contrary. “Possession of
cocaine, first offense. I told him she went to college.”

“Oh no.” The kid was so adorable and sweet.
As stern and sometimes cold as my parents had been to me, I would
have been traumatized by one of them disappearing for a year.

“He lived here with me while she was gone.”
He shrugged. “I was actually considering moving out, into a place
that would have been bigger for us, but then Antonia came back and…
Let’s just say that I didn’t want it to seem like I was planning
for the future, like I didn’t trust her, you know?”

“I understand what you’re saying, but I
wouldn’t say that I
know
.” I couldn’t imagine being
responsible for someone else’s kid while they were in jail, fearing
the whole time that the same situation could happen, again.

“She’s got a job now, so that’s good. That’s
why I have the kid every night.” He nodded toward the bed and
leaned his forearms on the tabletop. With the sleeves pushed back,
I could see the flex of his muscles as he toyed with the wine
glass, and the dark hair on them that I’d only been able to feel
the night before.

“Every night except Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
Which were beginning to make a whole lot more sense. “I can see why
that would make dating hard.”

“It does. I don’t get out to many clubs or
parties. Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t have it any other way. I
don’t like his dad, and I don’t like that the guy gets him even one
weekend a month. But it’s hard to find someone who’s cool with this
arrangement. Tony is always going to be first in my life, and a lot
of women don’t like that. They want to get married, have their own
kids. They don’t want to take care of someone else’s, let alone
someone else’s nephew.”

“I can see why casual is so appealing.”

“That’s the thing…” He paused, looking up at
me. His beautiful brown eyes were full of nervous uncertainty. “I
don’t really want to do the casual thing, anymore.”

“Oh?” I squeaked.

“Yeah. I met someone.”

My heart bi-located; it was in my throat and
stomach at the same time. “It seems highly unlikely that you met
someone today between the time we were together and the time I came
over here, but I have notoriously bad luck with guys, especially
guys figuring out that they want someone else after I’ve started to
like them—”

“No, it’s you,” he cut me off.

I pressed a hand to my chest. “Oh. Oh thank
god.”

“You seem pretty relieved,” he teased me,
then turned serious. “This is going to sound crazy, but I knew I
was into you when you accused me of cheating on my non-existent
wife.”

“That does sound weird,” I admitted. “Was it
my sparkling personality that won you over?”

“No, I was really pissed off.” He grinned.
“Then, I started thinking about it. You leapt to the defense of my
wife. She didn’t exist, but you were so outraged, you were willing
to stick up for her. I thought about it later. Nobody in my life
would do that. They’d just ignore it and go about their business.
It’s the DeLuca family motto: don’t get involved.”

“I have some very definite opinions on
stuff.” I toyed with the stem of my glass. “Expressing them doesn’t
always work out as well as this. Interfering? Never does.”

“But it worked out this time?”

I took a swallow of wine and nodded.

A slow smile started tentatively across his
face. “So, you’re into me, too?”

I sighed. “Yeah. Obviously, it started with
physical attraction, because of the whole
meeting-you-wearing-a-towel thing—”

“That’s how I do it. I get you hooked with
the free preview.” His tone was flirty, betraying that he shared my
excited sense of possibility.

I arched an eyebrow at him and continued.
“And, aside from when I thought you were a skeezy cheater, you
seemed like a nice guy. And then, then last night…”

“I rescued you, like Shrek rescuing Fiona.”
He winced at his own words and sighed in resignation, nodding
toward the bed where Tony slept. “Sorry. He is really my only
social life.”

“I’m starting to understand your constant
references to children’s movies,” I laughed.

“We don’t know each other very well,” he
admitted, looking away and back before he went on. “I don’t know if
I should say this, but fuck it. You and I are both living the lives
we’re living because of other people. You didn’t become a baker,
because your parents didn’t want you to. I became a prosecutor
because my family didn’t want me to. I feel like you’re somebody
who might get it.”

“You’re not wrong.” That was some kind of
thing to say to someone you weren’t even dating yet.

He shook his head. “I just completely ruined
my aura of raw sexuality, didn’t I?”

“Your aura? Oh, please.” I laughed. “I
wouldn’t mind getting to know you better. It’s weird to go out on a
first date with someone you’ve already had sex with, but we might
be able to pull it off.”

“Or we could say that our first date was the
blackout,” he suggested, reaching over to take my hand in his. “Or
dinner, tonight.”

“I’m a pretty cheap date then, aren’t I?”

He gestured to my foot. “Not really. Do you
know how much money I would have made doing that if I were a
doctor? And, I gave you my beer.”

“I think you were amply compensated for it.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off his mouth as he leaned toward me. He
cupped my cheek and jaw with his big, square hand and tilted his
head slightly to bring our mouths together. It was as soft and
sweet as all the other kisses he’d given me, and just like those,
it led to something more intense and hungry. Something that we
couldn’t exactly indulge in at the moment.

Both of us broke away at the same time.
Stroking my arm, he apologized, “Sorry. It’s not a Tuesday or a
Thursday.”

“But tomorrow is.” My needy body wasn’t as
fine with it as my rational mind was.

“You know, I think it is.” He kissed me
again, lingering gently until the last possible moment.

“I’m gonna go, before this gets…unignorable.”
I had no self-control; I’d be stifling masturbation noises about
five minutes after leaving the apartment.

He walked me to the door. “I promise the next
date will be a real date. Not a Hamburger Helper dinner.”

“And, I promise, that on the next date, I’ll
put out.” I rose onto the balls of my feet to whisper in his ear,
“I mean, it’ll be our third date, right? And, it
will
be a
Tuesday.”

Jenny Trout
 is an author,
blogger, and funny person. Writing as Jennifer Armintrout she made
the 
USA Today
 bestseller list with 
Blood
Ties Book One: The Turning
. Her novel
American
Vampire
 was named one of the top ten horror novels of 2011
by 
Booklist Magazine Online
. Jenny writes award-winning
erotic romance, including the internationally
bestselling 
The Boss
 series (written as Abigail
Barnette), as well as young adult and new adult novels.

As a blogger, Jenny’s work has appeared
on 
The Huffington Post
, and has been featured on
television and radio, including 
HuffPost Live, Good Morning
America, The Steve Harvey Show
, and National Public
Radio’s 
Here & Now
.

She is a proud Michigander, mother of two,
and wife to the only person alive capable of spending extended
periods of time with her without wanting to kill her.

Young Adult fiction by Jenny Trout

Such Sweet Sorrow

New Adult fiction by Jenny Trout

Choosing You

By Jenny Trout writing as Abigail
Barnette

The Boss

The Girlfriend

The Bride

The Ex