Mr. Fix-It (10 page)

Detrick leaned back, draping an arm over the padded back of the bench seat.

“Your honorary blackness has finally kicked in.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“The writer. She’s the reason you spent a fortune on that cake,” Detrick snorted. “A funny-lookin’ cake, at that.”

“Literacy is a cause near and dear to my heart,” Carter deadpanned.

“I know what you want near your heart, and it ain’t literacy.” Detrick scanned the custom beers on the back of the menu. “I think I’ll have the Bunker Hill Bluebeery Ale.”

“Didn’t you have enough girlie drinks back at the auction?” Carter taunted. He opened his menu and looked over the appetizers and entrees. “If you’re gonna drink beer, drink a real beer.”

“Unlike yours, my palate is somewhat refined,” Detrick retorted. “If I’m forced to drink beer, I don’t want one that tastes like beer.”

Carter chuckled. “Your palate wasn’t so refined in school when we’d sneak out after lights out to choke down your Aunt Sukie’s corn whiskey.”

“That corn whiskey put hair on your chest, boy,” Detrick said, lapsing into the Alabama accent he ordinarily took pains to hide. “Put hair on Aunt Sukie’s, too, come to think of it.” His gaze shifted beyond Carter’s shoulder. “Your little admirer is coming back, and she’s bearing gifts.”

Carter glanced over his shoulder. He didn’t know how Detrick had seen their waitress amidst the throng of baseball fans. But then he spotted a circular tray laden with baskets of food, a bottle of wine and two long-stemmed goblets seeming to surf the shoulders of the crowd. Then, as Detrick had, he recognized their waitress’s bangled and braceleted wrists beneath the tray.

“Whew!” she exclaimed, emerging from the crowd at the bottom of the ramp. “The Sox better win tonight after all this. I hope you guys are hungry.” She set the tray on the table and began serving them, placing a giant platter of nachos in front of Carter and a basket of calamari before Detrick. “The ladies are a little on the wild side tonight.”

“We didn’t order this,” Carter told her.

“These are courtesy of those ladies right over there.” The waitress pointed to one of the bars, where several women in business suits raised their glasses to Carter. He politely waved back. “And the drinks came from that lady in the leather skirt over there, under the Red Sox Parking Only sign.”

Carter took a quick peek at a tall blonde in a leather miniskirt so short it looked more like an extension of her black top. She lowered her chin and kept her eyes fixed on him.

“Ooh, that one’s giving you the hard look,” Detrick said in a low voice. “I give it five minutes before she comes over here and starts throwing her hair and laughing at everything you say.”

The waitress leaned in close to Carter, her hands on her knees. “You know what they say—the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

“Excuse me,” Detrick interrupted. “I’d like to try the wine.”

The waitress seemed transfixed by Carter’s face, staring at him with a dreamy smile.

“Miss?” Carter prompted.

“Hmm?” she cooed.

“Just take it back, please,” Carter said quietly.

“The wine?” the waitress asked.

“The wine, the food, all of it.” Carter stood, drawing his wallet from his back pocket. He lifted out two five-dollar bills and dropped them on the table. “I’m not staying.”

As Carter started for the exit, the waitress shared a look of confusion with Detrick, who cast a final longing look at the wine before scooting off the bench. He dropped a bill of his own atop the two fives before hurrying after Carter.

“What gives, man?” he asked, catching up to Carter halfway to the lot where they had parked.

“I’m not hungry,” Carter said.

“Since when do you pass on free food?” Detrick fairly trotted to keep up with Carter’s long, fast strides. “You haven’t paid for a meal in years.”

Carter halted in front of another bar, this one so full its patrons had spilled out and were milling in front of the neon-illuminated front window. Every drinking and dining establishment on Brookline Street was full of Red Sox fans reveling in the hometown team’s three-run lead over the Yankees.

Three women in pink and white Red Sox jerseys did a long double-take after passing Carter on the sidewalk, one of them even stumbling over her feet. His oldest and closest friend stood there staring curiously at him, but Carter had never felt more alone.

“I want more,” he finally said.

“Okay, then let’s go back and get more,” Detrick said. “That waitress would have given you steaks and lobster on the house. She looked as though she would have cooked up a small child for you, if that was what you wanted.”

“That’s just it, Trick,” Carter said, clenching his fists in frustration. “I don’t want that. Not anymore.”

“Don’t want what?” Detrick said, speaking around a large group of Northeastern students that ambled between them. “I’m not following you.”

Carter started walking again. “I don’t want to be adored. At least not without earning it.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Carter kept silent until he could work out an explanation other than the truth: that he had just quoted a line from one of Khela’s books. The line perfectly summed up the frustrations that had been niggling at him since his weekend with Khela. “Women look at me and decide who and what I am based on this,” he said, jabbing a finger at his face. “I want someone who looks in here.” He slapped a hand against his chest.

Detrick smiled uncomfortably. “Uh, I’m not sure what’s goin’ on with you, man, but I do know you need to stop watching
Oprah
.”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Carter continued to the parking lot.

“I’m sorry, Carter, I didn’t mean any disrespect.” Detrick hurried after him. “You gotta admit, you’re behaving a little strangely tonight.”

“I’ve just got some things on my mind, that’s all,” Carter responded tersely. Head down, he moved steadily forward through a rush of rowdy Sox fans going in the opposite direction. Carter’s shoulder collided hard with an oncomer, spinning the solidly built man around.

“Watch it, douche bag!” the man shouted over his shoulder.

“You have a good night, too, pal,” Carter called back grimly.

The man pushed up the sleeves of his red sweatshirt, revealing forearms the approximate width of a fire hydrant. “What did you say to me, hick?”

“C’mon, let it go,” Detrick urged, taking Carter, who had stopped, by the arm. “You’re not in college anymore. Leave the brawling to the kiddies.”

Carter shrugged him off. Foot traffic around him and the man in red slowed.

“I was just being neighborly,” Carter said, his calm a bit too measured.

“Watch where you’re walking, hillbilly, unless you want that pretty face rearranged.” The man cracked his big knuckles, displaying a chunky Boston University ring.

“Thanks for the advice, son, but don’t you have some binge drinkin’ and a date rape to get to tonight?”

Beer and baseball was a common recipe for brawling in Boston, a fact Carter had learned during his college days. His reflexes were much faster than those of the intoxicated collegian, so he easily ducked the fist the kid threw at his face. The kid’s momentum carried him forward and he crashed into a parked car, setting off its alarm. His laughing companions scooped him up and carted him away before the car’s owner arrived to deactivate the alarm.

Carter and Detrick turned into the parking lot.

“You need to work things out with that writer,” Detrick said, breaking his silence as he unlocked the passenger door of his yellow Jaguar XK for Carter. “I can’t go through this again. I won’t.”

“What the hell are you talkin’ ’bout?” Carter asked.

“When you walked out on Savannah, you brawled with anybody for any reason, every chance you got.” He pointed to a faint scar above and to the right of his right eyebrow. “Exhibit A. Remember this? I got it the night I had to pull you off that loudmouth in Hooters right after you saw Savannah for the last time. The only time you break out the fisticuffs is when you’re pining for a woman.”

“I ain’t pinin’ for nobody,” Carter said sullenly as he climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

“Says you,” Detrick challenged him. “I pity the fool you run into if your big cake date with her doesn’t work out!”

* * *

“What are you reading?”

Carter glanced up from the pages of his dog-eared paperback to see a man staring at him. The black eyes set deeply in his dark brown face glittered merrily, reminding Carter of a leprechaun. “Uh,” Carter began, slowing his pace on the recumbent bicycle next to the inquisitive stranger’s, “it’s a book.”

“
No!
Really?” the stranger said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. He decreased the resistance on his own bike, slowing his pace so he could talk and work out at the same time.

“A friend of mine wrote this.” Carter flashed the cover. “It’s just a book. And she’s not really a friend; she’s more of an acquaintance. Well—”

Carter’s fellow bicyclist held up a hand. “No need to explain. I actually like a good romance novel myself. One of my best friends is a romance novelist. Victoria Ronaldinho?”

“Sorry,” Carter said.

The man reached over and grabbed the book, taking a long look at the cover. “
A Curious Affair
,” he read aloud, and then grunted his approval. “That’s Khela Halliday, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Carter began his cool-down, slowing his bike from twenty miles per hour to fifteen. “You know her?”

“I’ve read a couple of her books,” the grinning stranger said. “I loved
Satin & Secrets
, her follow-up to
Satin Whispers
. That girl has a knack for creating heroes that you just want to take home and lick from head to toe.”

Carter chose not to picture that image. “Is that right?” he said. “You don’t find them a little…unbelievable?”

“In what way?”

“Well, take
Satin & Secrets
, for example. Do you really think a man would just drop everything—his job, his friends, even his dog—to pack up and go chasing halfway around the world to find a woman who might not even love him?”

“If he knows what’s good for him, he’d better,” the stranger said bluntly. “I lived in the United Kingdom for a few months, and my significant other was running his design house in New York City. Long-distance relationships are for the birds, not fairies! When that man showed up one day with an ultimatum, I had a real-life romance novel moment of my own.”

His curiosity getting the better of him, Carter slowed his bike to eight miles an hour. “Oh yeah? What happened?”

“That man showed up and said all the right things. He said, ‘Bernard, we need to close the distance between us.’ That man crossed the ocean to bring me home, and we’ve been together ever since. There would be millions more happy women on this planet if more men read books like those.” The man chuckled. “Hell, there’d be a lot more happy men, too.”

Carter’s fellow gym rat looked him up and down, his gaze lingering on the muscles exposed by the torn sleeves of Carter’s T-shirt before moving slowly down his well-defined arms. “Unless my gaydar has short-circuited, you are one of the last men on earth I’d expect to find reading a romance novel.”

Carter’s feet came to a stop, but he kept them on the bike pedals as he spent a moment catching his breath. “This is homework,” he panted. “I’m more of a Tom Clancy kinda guy.”

“Oh, I know what kind of guy you are,” the stranger said knowingly. “Whoever she is, I hope she knows that you’re willing to sit up in the middle of Boston’s toniest gym studying a romance novel for her.”

“I’m reading a romance novel
by
her,” Carter muttered.

“Son, you are as sneaky as you are handsome. You know, they say that the way to a writer’s heart is through her words.”

Carter dismounted and tossed a thick white sweat towel across his shoulders. He took a couple of steps toward the rows of weight machines and then turned back. “Is that really what they say?”

“If they don’t, they should,” the stranger chortled.

* * *

Carter stared at his reflection in the mirrored wall, concentrating on maintaining the proper form as he pulled the cables that hoisted the weights that would work the perfectly carved caps of his deltoids and lats. If he noticed the Lycra-wrapped gym bunnies in full makeup drifting slowly past him, he gave no indication of it.

In groups of twos and threes, they paused at the huge piece of equipment he worked at. A tall, busty blonde stood close to the mirror, making a production of rolling up the cuffs of her skin-tight exercise Capri pants. Her rear end protruded toward Carter, her invitation as blatant as that of a female baboon in heat.

Carter paid her, and the others like her, no attention.

“Need a spotter?” a perky brunette in a Patriots half-shirt asked, appearing behind Carter.

“Thanks, but I’m good,” Carter told her on a sharp exhalation that helped him return the weight stack to its original position.

The brunette followed him to the next machine, one on which Carter could work his biceps and triceps. He sat on the black foam bench and leaned forward to reposition the pin in the weight stack.

“Wow,” the woman said, watching Carter’s movements. “You curl fifty pounds?”

“Sure looks like it,” Carter said. He began his set, scowling slightly when the brunette sat behind him on the bench.

“There are better ways to work up a sweat, you know,” she said close to his ear. “I’m right down the street, at the Holliston.”

Carter let the weights clang back in place. The Holliston, one of downtown Boston’s ritziest addresses. The woman had serious coin if she called the Holliston home. Carter picked up his sweat towel from the floor and mopped his face and the back of his neck. There was a time in the fairly recent past when he would have hightailed it back to the Holliston faster than a chicken on fire.

But things had changed since he’d spent time with Khela at the auction last month. The pretty brunette was just the latest in a string of pretty brunettes, and blondes, and redheads, none of whom held any appeal for him. Carter mustered a polite smile of refusal.