Dangerous Curves Ahead (Watchers Crew) (7 page)

“He’s very handsome,” said my mother. “And single.”

“Well, that’s good for him. I’m sure there will be many female teachers looking out for that. Or single mothers.”

“A girl like you could do much worse.”

I nearly hung up.

“He’s looking for a new English Literature teacher, and since you’re unemployed…”

“I’m not unemployed,” I rose from my seat and crossed my arms over my chest, tucking the phone between my cheek and chin. “In fact, I signed a new publishing contract.”
 

The phone went silent, but I could hear her roll her eyes and groan. I felt a lecture coming. So, I preempted it.

“And I’m seeing someone.”

That may not have been the right thing to say. But at least I didn’t get a career goals lecture. Instead, my mother launched into a thirty minute, one-sided conversation trying to draw out the details of my new relationship.

I wasn’t seeing Christopher in the dating sense. But I decided I would see him in the literary sense. I pulled up the email with his phone number.

I didn’t think my parents would approve of Christopher. His mom owned a sex shop for God’s sake. He drove a fast, sports car and not a sensible town car. I had no idea what he actually did for a living -that is, if he worked outside of his mom’s shop. Maybe he was unemployed?

Could I be one of those modern women who supported her man? It had ripped apart my parents’ marriage. But then again, I saw no joy in my sister’s marriage where she was the one supported by her husband who offered her no support in her work as a homemaker.

My mother and sister weren’t bad people. Not really. My mother did charity work. My sister was on the PTA and volunteered at a food kitchen for the homeless. Maybe it was my dad and brother-in-law who were the bad guys?

Christopher seemed so self-assured. In fact, he was so self-assured that he thought nothing of getting two women into his bed. Which meant he was predisposed to cheat. I clicked the red X on the web browser, closing his email.

God, what was I thinking?

I knew nothing about this man I’d married and had one and a half kids with in my head. Yes, I was already pregnant with the second. Imaginary-me really liked sex.

In my mind, I packed a bag and backed out of the picket fence. I pushed aside my silly dreams and fantasies of a blue-eyed man with an angelic face and a mischievous grin. In the real world I opened my word processor and went back to my manuscript.

An hour later I was even more frustrated. The words were not coming. Especially not the words in the male point of view. I still had no clue what men thought. That’s why there were always big misunderstandings in my stories. The heroine would misinterpret the hero’s intentions until the last chapter of the book where they would finally sit down and have a heart-to-heart where he cleared everything up.

The male character in this manuscript was not following any of the plot points I’d set out for him. I wanted him to chase after my heroine, but he stood in the crowd of his friends watching her with an unreadable expression on his face.

I wanted him to call her up on the phone. But her phone never rang.

When I tried to peer into his head, I got nothing.

I had to get this story done. My livelihood depended upon it. I shoved aside my keyboard. I picked up my phone and dialed. It rang four times before anyone answered.

“Watchers Crew Auto and Detailing.”

I pulled the phone away from my face and compared the number on the computer screen to the number on my cellphone’s screen. I’d assumed this was Christopher’s cell phone. But it appeared to be a business line to a mechanic’s shop. Was that what he did for a living? It would make sense with the fancy car he drove.

“Is Christopher there?”

“Christopher? There’s nobody here named – oh wait. Crow! Phone.”

There was audible juggling of the phone, and then I heard his voice clear across the other end of the line. It reached down into the core of my being and lit a fire. It curled up into the top of my head and shined a light on the fantasies I’d tried to turn off.

“MK?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Only my mother calls me Christopher, and she has my cell number. What’s up?”

I took a deep breath and prepared to deliver the speech I’d practiced in my mind.

“Oh wait,” he said. “I forgot to tell you.”

Forgot? We hadn’t spoken in days. But here he was talking to me now like we were old friends that just got off the phone earlier this morning.

“I was watching this movie last night. It was called
A Walk to Remember
. It’s based on a book by another author. I don’t know his name?”

It was one of my favorite books. I knew the author’s name.

“Yeah,” Christopher said, “Nicholas Sparks, that’s it. It made me think about you.”

Christopher was thinking about me when I wasn’t there? And he thought about me in the same stream of consciousness with one of my favorite movies and books. In Sparks’ book there was a misunderstood bad guy with a heart of gold who befriended and then fell for a shy and modest minister’s daughter. The hero gets the minister’s daughter out of her shell and helps her find her voice. In return, she becomes his path to redemption.

I wondered what sparked Christopher’s comparison between me and Mandy Moore’s character? Was it that she was introverted but full of hope? Was it that she turned the hero’s bad boy ways around? Was it that she tried new things with him? Things she never imagined herself doing?

“The hot, shy chick was like that character in your book I read. It just sucks that the shy chick dies in the movie. So what’s up? How’s the writing going?”

“I… it’s… I’m blocked.”

“You want some help?”

I pressed my thighs together. Beneath my t-shirt, my nipples hardened into tight pebbles.

“I can be over in a couple of hours,” he said. “Give me your address?”

I pressed my lips together, but somehow the coordinates to my apartment found a way out. Belatedly, I wondered how he planned to unblock me? Was he coming over to unblock the plot or the barrier to my core? I decided to deal with it when he got here.

Chapter Nine

I changed clothes three times, making a wasteland of my closet. I reined my model behavior in when I began contemplating underwear. There was no way this guy would see my underwear. Still, I wore a black lace set beneath a blue sundress that was near the color of Christopher’s eyes.

Dressed, I went into the kitchen and marinated two chicken breasts. I chopped some red potatoes and veggies to roast. I chilled a bottle of wine. Then I sat and worried that Christopher would be the kind of guy who drank beer.

I checked the clock. Did I have time to go out and pick up some beer? Did I know what brand of beer a guy like Christopher would drink?

The doorbell rang.

I raced down the hall in my wedge sandals and flung the door open. Christopher stood on the other side. He was dressed casually in jeans and a crisp, white-collar shirt. There was a devilish glint in his eyes and a curl to his lips.

“Hey, MK.” He reached out and brought me into his arms. “I missed you,” he said into my ear as he squeezed me to him.

Every plan I had went out the door as he stepped into my apartment and closed the it behind him. I was thankful I’d worn the nice underwear.

He released me and rubbed his hands together like he was preparing to dig into a hearty meal. “So, where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The manuscript,” he said. “I can’t wait to see what you wrote.”

“You want to read my first draft?”

“How else would I get you unblocked?”

I broke eye contact, disappointed that he’d come over to help with my work instead of trying to get me worked up.

Through my disappointment, I noticed he had a package in his hand. The package had the logo of his mother’s shop on the front. He set it down on the table. “You left this behind the other day.”

It was the book and the DVD from the sex shop. I hadn’t pulled up another porn website since the day I’d gone to Holly’s shop. I couldn’t bear to watch those women with the vacant eyes act as though they enjoyed the pounding of those men into their most sensitive areas. Especially not now that I knew exactly how sensitive those areas were. I didn’t understand how someone could fake the wonder that was an orgasm.

Christopher walked over to my desk, which housed my laptop. “Is this it?”

He hit a key to wake up the system. It opened to my manuscript. He pulled out my chair, sat down, and started reading.

My feet were immobile. I’d never seen a man read my work. I’d never thought of men reading my work. No one had ever read from my laptop. No one had ever even touched my laptop.
 

I watched Christopher’s fingertips as they caressed the scroll pad. He used his thumb to adjust the angle of the screen for his viewing pleasure. At one point his eyes widened. At another he grinned. Then he laughed.

He turned to me with a grin, then his nose wrinkled. “Is something burning?”

My eyebrows squished together at his question. My nose wrinkled when I smelled the smoke. I dashed off to the kitchen to save the potatoes. As I set them in a serving dish, Christopher came in.

“It’s really good,” he said.

I turned with serving spoon hand. “You finished?”

He nodded. “I learned to speed read when I was a kid. I always wanted to go outside and play sooner. I was home-schooled.”

He popped a hot potato in his mouth.

“These are good,” he said as he tried to talk and blow and chew at the same time. “You write. You cook. You have amazing orgasms. Is there nothing you can’t do?”

The spoon clattered to the linoleum and heat rose up my neck.

Christopher bent down and picked up the spoon. He looked at me with a grimace on his face. “Did I go too far? Sometimes I have trouble with boundaries. If you knew my family you’d understand.”

I thought back to his mother who’d smiled proudly at me after her son gave me an orgasm. She’d been congratulating other men and women on their orgasms as they left the meditation class. Yeah, I could see how boundaries might be a problem in his household.

“We’ll yes,” I said. “It was too far; talking about a woman’s orgasms. But I do want to talk with you about it.” I swallowed and concentrated on the floor. “Orgasms, I mean. I know what they feel like for a woman -thanks to you. But I don’t know how to describe them from the male point of view.”

“You want me to describe my orgasms to you?” His lips curled up, and he waggled his eyebrows.

My toes curled and something waggled in my core.

This was not the plan. The plan was to approach this in a businesslike manner. I was supposed to propose that he be my consultant for the research on my manuscript. That was the plan. What came out of my mouth next, I could only blame on the lacy underwear that was a size too small and biting into my skin and cutting off circulation.

“I’ll pay you,” I said.

Christopher’s face fell. The ever-present devil in his eyes was replaced by a wounded cherub. “I’m not a prostitute.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I’d be taking up your time; time you could be spending elsewhere… with others.”

“I don’t mind spending time with you,” he said. “I like you. What you do fascinates me. You fascinate me.”

It was definitely the circulation-cutting, lacy underwear muddling my brain. My breasts felt like they were swelling in the too small underwire.

“So what happens next in the story?” he asked.

Chapter Ten

Christopher had two servings. He also had decent table manners. I’m not sure why that surprised me. Maybe because I kept expecting him to show his true colors and lunge across the table at me, rip my clothes off, and have his way with me.

He didn’t do any of that. All of his concentration was on the food before him. He took a mouthful of the chicken. Then used his utensils to slice a potato. Once the spud was in two, he abandoned it to try one of the roasted vegetables. Then he came back to the potato, paired it with a slice of meat, topped it with a vegetable, and took it all in in one bite.

My food sat untouched. Instead, I watched Christopher eat. I watched his tongue test the drippings of my roast. I watched his eyes close as he chewed. I listened to his groans of satisfaction as he swallowed. He licked his fingers after his second helping of everything. With his plate cleaned and his fingers sucked dry, he turned his attention to me.

Particularly, my breasts.

Instead of crossing my arms over my chest, my back arched and my nipples hardened in memory of the last time I had all of his attention on that area of my body.

“So, you’re Catholic?” His eyes dipped to my rosary. The cross rested in the valley between my breasts. “That’s why you’re waiting?”

“No. I mean, yes.” My hand went to the cross that rested on my heart. “My family is Catholic, but we’re not very good Catholics. The rosary was my grandmother’s.”

“A rosary,” he rolled the words around his tongue. “It reminds me of my auntie’s mala beads. Buddhists use them to help focus during meditation. She gave me some when I was a kid, to help me sit still.”

“Did they work?”

He grinned, but didn’t answer.

“That’s not why I’m waiting for… you know.”
God, Mary Katherine. If you can’t say it, how can you expect to have a conversation about it
. “I’m waiting to have sex after marriage because I want a lifelong commitment with a man. In sickness, health, rich, poor, better or worse. I’m the type of woman who goes all in.”

He nodded sagely. “You’re looking for your soul mate.”

“Yes.” I held in a breath and then let it go in a whoosh. “You believe in soul mates?”

“I should. I was raised by two of them. My parents knew they would spend the rest of their lives together when they were kids. They’ve been together for over forty years now. I know that type of love exists. It’s just rare.”

My fingers traced the beads of the rosary as I focused my entire being on him. “You don’t think you’ll find it?”

“I’m not out looking for it. I told you, I have a short attention-span.” His eyes held on my chest. I watched the movement of his pupils as I fingered the beads. “Tell me what you need help with? You have more sex questions?”