Olivia (4 page)

“Chester ran away,” he said without making eye contact. Her family didn’t look at each other, either.

“He’ll be back,” she assured him, same as she always did.

Chester was her father’s horny Boston terrier. The dog could smell a bitch in heat anywhere within a fifty-mile radius, and had sired over a hundred offspring before the humane society finally convinced Eugene to have the dog neutered. It stopped the unwanted puppies, but not the incessant humping of every female dog in Juliette and the tri-city area. Even without fully-functioning balls, Chester still ran away at least once a week to get his groove on.

Eugene didn’t hug or pet or cuddle Chester, but it was obvious in the way he said the dog’s name that he loved the horny little bastard more than he loved Olivia. Depressing, yes, but Olivia had come to terms with that sad fact of her life a long time ago.

Olivia unlocked her front door. “You want to come in for awhile?”

By way of answer, he took a long drag off his cigarette and his boney knee bounced away.

“Ok… Good night, then…”

Olivia waited for a response, but she shouldn’t have bothered. Eugene wasn’t much of a conversationalist. He was a little like Rain Man, but with a milder case of obsessive compulsive disorder. He wouldn’t look at you, touch you, or really talk to you, but he had never met a broken small appliance he couldn’t fix better than new.

Eugene spent his days, and a good portion of his nights, repairing toasters and coffee makers and waffle irons for people who were too cheap or too poor to fork over the thirty bucks at Walmart to buy a new one, but he refused to take any money for it. He’d been collecting disability for as long as Olivia could remember, and he worried Uncle Sam would find out about the extra income and throw his ass in the slammer. Due to his deep, debilitating fear of forced human contact that jail would entail, Eugene insisted all payment for repairs made come in the form of one of the three C’s—Camels, Coca-Cola, or Cheez Doodles—or a combination thereof.

Because of Eugene and his phobias, Olivia learned how to clip coupons before she mastered coloring inside the lines. Eugene had done the best he could to raise her, but he was wired for living a solitary life, preferably in a cave somewhere. It wasn’t that he didn’t like people, he just didn’t like them being anywhere near him. How Olivia had managed to be conceived in the first place was one of life’s greatest mysteries.

Her mother, Camille, was a bit of an enigma. Olivia knew for a fact that she existed, but that was pretty much all she knew about her. Olivia didn’t even know if Camille was her mother’s real name. No one ever talked about her, especially Eugene, which had made her even more intriguing to Olivia as a child.

Olivia was born at the Women’s Correctional Facility in York, Nebraska, where her mother had been imprisoned for fraud and embezzlement. Other than the five minutes her mother had held her immediately after she was born, Olivia never saw her again. When Olivia was a little kid she used to tell people she was an ex-con released on good behavior, like her mother, but once she realized how pathetic she sounded, she decided to quit talking about her con of a mother and the story of her birth altogether, and has since kept that bit of information to herself.

Olivia gave up on waiting for a response from Eugene and went inside. George’s granola bar had done nothing to fill her up, so she made a bowl of cereal and flipped channels while she ate. Nothing was ever on in the wee hours of the morning, except infomercials. She had her choice of learning about a mop that could suck up a swimming pool amount of water or how to Be-Dazzle pretty much anything. She chose the mop.

Not long after she finished her cereal, Eugene came in and sat on the opposite end of the sofa from her. She pulled a half-eaten bag of Cheez Doodles out from under the coffee table and tossed it to him. They sat in silence, except for Eugene’s incessant crunching, and watched the overexcited television host pawn his wares until dawn.

Chapter Two

Olivia was running late for work again the next afternoon, and it was all Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s fault for being so damn fine. A marathon of
Saved by the Bell
re-runs had come on after the mop infomercial, and she’d had no choice but to watch it and reminisce with her old middle-school crush. It had been well past ten in the morning before she had finally managed to pull herself away from his dreamy, blue eyes and collapse into bed. He had then proceeded to invade her dreams, causing her to sleep through her alarm three hours later. If not for the bank calling to remind her she had forgotten to make her credit card payment, she would’ve been late for sure. Sam was a pushover, but every man had his limits. She had no intention of finding out if seven tardies was his, especially not when her bank account was sitting so empty she’d probably have to forget to pay her electric bill for a week or two as well.

In a rushed frenzy, she threw on the first clothes she laid hand on, shoved a Twinkie into her mouth, and barreled through her front door—crashing smack into a solid wall of muscle. She bounced off and let out a cry of pain when she landed smack on her tailbone, her purse flying out of her hand, scattering its contents across the deck and back into her trailer.

“You really have to stop crashing into me,” Wall of Muscle said through his rolling laughter as he held out his hand to help her up.

Olivia ignored the hand and ignored the man and scrambled to her feet on her own. Muttering profanities, she rubbed her ass and scooped up keys, her wallet, a variety of candies and gums, her cell phone, close to three dollars in loose change, lip gloss she didn’t remember buying, a lighter, packets of hot sauce, emergency tampons… Oh, screw it. It would all still be there when she got home and she was late. She pulled her front door shut and brushed past Wall of Muscle.

“Hey! Wait up!”

“I don’t want whatever you’re selling,” she said, making a break for the Buick before he could start his sales spiel.

Wall of Muscle followed her down the stairs. “I’m not selling anything, Olivia.”

She turned at the sound of her name and laid eyes upon the magnificent body attached to the voice for the very first time. Her heart slammed against her ribcage and her tummy did that weird, flippy thing that made her insides tingle.

“Ah…” was all she could manage to eke out. She could barely breathe, let alone think coherently.

Wall of Muscle was the finest male specimen ever to walk the earth. He was tall—not giant tall, but perfect tall—the kind of tall where she could rest her head upon his sculpted shoulder while they slow danced to smooth jazz. His skin was tan, his hair dark, thick, and neatly trimmed. He wore a bit of stubble on his face but none on his neck, and his muscular arms were covered in the perfect amount of male hair. Everything about the man was so perfect it was almost as though he had been spawned from another world, except for the faint scar on his cheek which revealed his human mortality, making him even more beautiful.

His mouth was moving and words were coming out, but Olivia had suddenly lost the ability to hear as the world around her moved in slow motion. If she were in a movie, this would be the precise moment when the director would cue Gary Wright to sing “Dream Weaver.” Her hair would start blowing sensually in the breeze, and he would be drenched in sunlight, both of them filmed through a filtered lens as chemistry pulled them into each other’s arms.

Depending on the director’s mood, he might have them pause before they kissed, breathing heavily as they gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes. Or maybe they would go right for the kill, kissing like only movie people kiss—without spit, without funky breath, without making that funny, smacking sound that always made Olivia giggle inappropriately—

“Whoa there.” Wall of Muscle grabbed her upper arms and gently pushed her away. He was laughing again, but it had taken on more of a “this is uncomfortable” tone instead of a humorous one.

Olivia snapped out of her trance, flushing in horror as she realized that her face was scant inches from his, her lips licked and puckering for a kiss.

“Oh shit.” She backed up a few fast steps and bumped into her car. “I’m sorry. What the hell was that? Right?”

“Right.” He let out a nervous laugh. God, he was gorgeous, even when he was looking at her like she was a freak.

“Right,” she said on her last breath, nodding like a moron. A few heartbeats of awkward silence later she added, “Well, ok then. Bye now.”

She ducked her head and hunched her shoulders in shame while making a desperate dive for her car.

“Wait!” He grabbed her car door, stopping her from slamming it.

Luckily, she didn’t slam the door. She would have smashed his perfect fingers. And oh, what magnificent fingers they were. They were what Leonardo da Vinci could only attempt to capture. She stared at his gorgeous digits, imagining them doing completely unholy, but oh-so-wonderful things to her, and she let out a dreamy, sighing moan of pleasure.

“Are you ok?” He gave her that look again, snapping her back to reality.

“Umm…yes?”

“Are you sure?” He laughed.

It was the sound of angels.

She nodded. “Uh, huh.”

“Well, all right… I’m Mitch Toler.” He took his hand off her car door and held it out for her again.

All she could do was stare. And fantasize.

“The guy you backed into at the Get ‘n Go.”

Director cues the sound of needle scratching across vinyl album—
screech!—
abrupt end to her fantasy. Shit.

“Oh, yeah.” Olivia grimaced and climbed out of her car. “Umm…sorry about that.”

“I called the insurance agent you wrote down, Reggie Young, and he claims he doesn’t know who you are,” Mitch said. “Did you maybe give me the wrong name?”

“That asshole!”

Instantly pissed, Olivia dug through her half-empty purse and pulled out her cell phone. The stupid prick was always pretending he didn’t know who she was whenever someone tried to make a claim. Asshole had no problem cashing her premium checks, but the second she needed his services he—

“Reggie, you motherfucker!” she shouted into the phone when Reggie answered.

“Ah, Olivia, how are you this fine day?” he asked, his polite words wrapped in dread.

“I’d be better if my insurance agent wasn’t such a dick! What the hell, Reg?!”

“What’d I do this time?”

“You know dang well what you did.”

“Honestly, Sugar, I have no idea.”

“Quit playing stupid.” Olivia rolled her eyes. “I’m standing here with Mitch Toler and he would like to talk to you about making a claim. And before you ask—yes, it was my fault. Again. He was parked when I backed into him at the Get ‘n Go yesterday. Do what you do and pay the man!”

Olivia shoved the phone at Mitch. “Make it quick, Mitch. I gotta get to work.”

Mitch took the phone and walked a few steps away from Olivia while he talked to Reggie. She made a point to sigh heavily every forty-seven seconds so he would truly understand the importance of her urgency. Mitch turned his back on her after her fourth sigh. After the sixth sigh, he held up a finger to tell her to wait. After the tenth one, she was officially late for work and still parked in her driveway. She gave up and sat on the curb.

“Thank you,” Mitch said ten minutes later when he handed the phone back to her.

“All taken care of?” She tossed the phone into her purse. No point in calling into work. Sam already knew she was going to be late. Shit. Here’s hoping eight’s his limit.

“I think so.”

“Great. See you around, Mitch.”

Mitch started for his smashed-up truck, and Olivia cocked her head a little so she could watch his booty while he walked across the road. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Mmm,
damn, his ass was fine—hard, firm, delicious gluteus maximus defined in an extremely flattering pair of Levi’s, his stride accentuated with the slightest hint of a swagger as he walked—away from her! What was she, an idiot?

“Hey!”

He stopped and turned around. “Yeah?”

She lost herself in his eyes. The deep, smooth pools of melted-chocolate made her tummy flip again, sending a tingle all the way down to her toes and stirring an ache in her girly parts that hadn’t seen any action in… Well, let’s just say way too long.

A hint of a smile played across his lips. “Yeah?”

She paused for one more second, long enough for her to register the pounding of her heart and the last ounce of her sanity slipping away.

“Oh, fuck it.” She flung herself at him, crashing into his muscular body again, smack in the center of the road.

Mitch let out a grunt of shock, and then froze as her mouth clamped down on his. Her hands gripped onto his neck to hold him in place as she kissed him as though she were the romantic lead in that movie in her mind.

She worked him with her lips and ran her fingers through his hair. She pressed her body into his. She sighed. She moaned. She did everything she was supposed to do… and he stood there in complete and utter shock, and did absolutely nothing.

He didn’t kiss her back. He didn’t sigh her name. He didn’t pull her closer or caress her or gently part her lips and taste her breath. He didn’t do anything the male lead was supposed to do. He simply stood there—frozen.

Right as she was about to pull away, right as the voice in her head was about to scream at her to run—run far, far away—right as she was about to literally die of embarrassment…

He kissed her back.

His arms came up, encircling her in primal masculinity as he opened his mouth and kissed her with the kind of raw, feral passion Olivia had only ever dreamed of. He demanded control, something she ordinarily wouldn’t relinquish, but he gave no choice in the matter. She handed over the reins and allowed his body to take hers along for the ride.

Mitch had a fire to him. It spread to Olivia through his lips and hands, his breath and his skin, his very being, as he kissed and caressed and consumed her. A fierce urgency took over as they dug into each other trying to find relief for the intense pressure that was rapidly building into an inferno.