Uncommon Pleasure (19 page)

None of her revenge-based fantasies included him scaring the
living hell out of her in Ben’s parking lot after a quickie, three hours of sleep…and another quickie. That’s what she liked about Ben. She could call him at one in the morning and his bed and his body were at her disposal. If he was home, and alone. She wasn’t sleeping with anyone else, but she harbored no illusions she was Ben’s only bedmate.

Driving home on autopilot, her car was already in the crosswalk when the light blinked from yellow to red. She slammed on the brakes and jerked against her seat belt harness. As usual, she was too tired to be driving safely, let alone dealing with Sean Winthrop’s sudden appearance out of the predawn darkness.

“Oh, God,” she moaned.

No perfect outfit. No sexily tousled hair, just a snarled mess thanks to Ben’s hands. Her mouth was probably the right shade of red, though, and her nipples and thighs still tingled from his morning stubble. She’d gaped like an idiot until her exhausted, sex-befuddled brain realized she wasn’t hallucinating, that Sean was actually right there. And if she could see that he was bigger, bulkier, holding himself with a tense, vibrating masculine energy that was new, he was close enough to see…everything.

Including her incorrectly buttoned blouse. “Oh,
God
,” she said.

The car behind her honked impatiently. She sat up straight and floored the accelerator before letting up on the gas. She’d gotten two speeding tickets in the last six months. One more and she’d lose her license, which meant she’d lose everything else, and Ben had made it perfectly clear from their first night together that he didn’t fix tickets, bail drunk girls out of jail, or get asshole ex-boyfriends’ cars towed in exchange for sex.

The car behind her sped past on the right, the driver alternating his attention between the road and his own face in the rearview mirror as he shaved his jutting jaw with an electric razor. He looked so stupid Abby almost laughed, but she was afraid if she started she wouldn’t stop.

The clock on the dashboard read 5:22, and the day stretched out in front of her, every single minute booked. Get home, get Dad up, take a quick shower while he dressed, give him his breathing treatments, fix him breakfast, get to school for extra time in the lab, work at her homework, followed by her shift at No Limits. Weekends involved a whole different but equally pressing set of responsibilities, cooking, cleaning, and the never-ending homework.

Exactly what Sean thought she couldn’t handle. He hadn’t said as much in his e-mail, but she could read between the lines. A lot of growing up to do. That’s what he said. Because a twenty-three-year-old college graduate who still lived with her father and didn’t have a job wasn’t nearly as mature a Naval Academy graduate and Rhodes Scholar who was about to lead twenty-two men into combat.

“I’ve done it,” she said. “I am all grown up, Sean. As you just saw.”

She wished she could have seen his eyes. Were the Oakleys in the darkness before dawn some kind of military thing he’d picked up overseas, looking cool and tough and bad? Because he’d looked all three of those things. Square-jawed and ready for action, especially when Ben came down the stairs.

She pulled into her garage, killed the engine, left her No Limits heels strewn on the passenger floorboards, and hurried up the stairs leading into the house. After the diagnosis her Dad had moved from the master bedroom upstairs to his former office downstairs, sleeping on a single bed wedged between his big oak desk and the wall. She knocked on the closed door and cracked it open.

“Dad,” she said softly. “Time to get up.”

His rough, phlegmy breathing halted then started again. He coughed, and she heard rustling as he started to extract himself from the covers. It would take him twenty minutes to get up, shuffle to the downstairs bathroom, and get himself dressed. In that time she’d shower, dress, start breakfast, and tidy up the main floor.

“I’m going to take a shower, Dad,” she said.

A grunt was her only answer.

She raced upstairs to the bathroom in her bedroom suite and started the shower running to warm up the water. She stripped off her clothes and stuffed them into the laundry hamper. Time to do laundry.

When she turned back to the mirror she froze. Nothing so gauche as a hickey marred her neck. Ben was older than her, and if even half the rumors were true, vastly experienced. But looking at her there was no doubt she’d recently had sex. Her hair wasn’t quite a rat’s nest, but there was no mistaking the
man’s hands in it
look. Her lips were pouty and swollen, kiss-reddened, and the orgasmic flush still stained her throat and collarbone. Her nipples were dark pink and only just softening, and the red triangle between her thighs was flattened.

She met her eyes in the mirror. “That’s what all grown up looks like.”

The words disappeared into the spray and steam from the shower. He told her she needed to grow up, toughen up, and she had, but he wasn’t supposed to see the one thing that gave her release and helped her cope. And while she’d gotten right in his face and told him off, the memory of it made her smart. It wasn’t the coolly disdainful persona she wanted to project to him. The next time she saw him, she’d leave him with no doubt that he mattered not one little bit to her.

Her dad’s coughing followed her into the shower, and by the time she stepped out again, it hadn’t stopped. She dressed and hurried down the stairs, mentally tabulating chores and weighing them against the time she had before she was due in the lab at school. More chores than time, as always.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD, a disease that caused shortness of breath and a lasting cough, now regulated
her life. She’d gone to college in Houston, where her mother moved after she divorced Abby’s difficult, brilliant father, but Galveston remained home. When her father was diagnosed after a lifetime of smoking and working at a chemical plant, she’d moved home to take care of him, because no one else would. But her father proved to be a combative patient, resisting the diagnosis, then the various treatments his doctors prescribed. He took his medication irregularly, or not at all. That was the first task of the day.

Her father’s face was gray, his face deeply lined and puffy from poor circulation. “Ready for your breathing treatment?” she asked lightly.

Another grunt. She set up the nebulizer and measured out the medications, something he could easily do himself but refused to, then held out the mask. When he had the mask secured over his face, she got up and opened the fridge. The plate of sliced turkey breast, asparagus, and mashed potatoes she’d left for him sat on the second shelf, uncovered and drying out. “You hardly touched your dinner.”

“Wasn’t hungry,” he said after a deep inhale.

The man in front of her bore little resemblance to the hulking, imposing figure from her childhood that dominated the house with his mood swings. His clothes hung on his frame like a suit on a hanger, jowls sagging from his jaw and neck as they hadn’t even a year ago. A profound mixture of love, irritation, and fear bubbled in her stomach. “Dad, you need to eat.”

“It didn’t taste good. No flavor.”

That wasn’t her cooking. A lifetime of smoking unfiltered cigarettes had destroyed his taste buds, and his precious Tabasco sauce gave him unbearable heartburn. “Hold your breath after you inhale. Two, three, that’s good. I’ll make you eggs for breakfast if you’ll promise me you’ll go for a walk with me before I head over to the lab.”

Her father had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, COPD,
and rapidly clogging arteries, and eggs were theoretically off his diet. His churlish eyes lit up. “With a side of bacon.”

“With a side of orange juice, and only if you promise,” she said firmly.

“You’d think you’d be more accommodating, what with spending the night out.”

“I can make Cream of Wheat with a side of fresh peaches,” she said brightly, holding on to her patience with her fingernails.

He inhaled again, held his breath, then exhaled and tugged the mask down. “Goddamn thing.”

“Cough, Dad.”

He reached for a tissue and began the laborious task of clearing the secretions the medication loosened. “The doctor said no eggs.”

“Cream of Wheat it is,” she said.

He looked at her, his eyes red and watering, lips wet and trembling, and a wave of recrimination swept over her. “Watch your tone, missy. Eggs’ll be fine.”

She pulled out the nonstick pan and spray.

“That nonstick stuff’ll give you cancer,” he said as he coughed again. “Cast iron and bacon grease. That’s how you fry a good egg.”

She took a deep breath and counted to ten, then scrambled two eggs and four whites in the nonstick pan, toasted the bread and buttered it with a spread designed to lower cholesterol, set the breakfast and a glass of OJ in front of him, then sat down at her place. He gave the eggs a dismissive snort but ate them, and the toast, and drank half the orange juice. She washed the nebulizer components, then the breakfast dishes, and ran the dishcloth over the counters in the time it took her dad to get up from the kitchen table, heading to his recliner in the family room.

“Not so fast, Dad. We’re going for a walk.”

“I don’t feel up to it.”

“I don’t care, Dad. It’s a beautiful morning. Just down to the corner and back. You haven’t been outside in two weeks.”

She took his elbow and guided him toward the front door, and the simple fact that she could shift his direction, force him to her will, made a lump swell in her throat. He already had his shoes on. She scuffed her sore feet into flip-flops and opened the door.

Her father blinked. She held his elbow until he stepped down the stairs, then he shook her off. “I’m fine.”

Sunshine dappled the driveway, filtered through the big oak in the center of the front lawn. Abby made a slight production of inhaling the slightly cooler fall air and looking around. Perfect picnic weather. The lump in her throat tightened until she swallowed it down. Her father focused on his feet, his once-large stride reduced to a shuffle as he navigated the shifting sidewalk, lips pursed to control the flow of air into and out of his clotted lungs. She kept one eye on him as she looked around, using the weather to steel her resolve and hide her emotions.

“Pretty day,” she said as they walked back up the sidewalk to the front door.

Her dad looked up, his eyes watery, his skin still paste gray. Usually a walk improved his color. “Lawn needs mowing.”

She bit her lips, counting to fifteen this time. “I know, Dad. Not today.”

Inside the house her father again cleared his lungs while Abby packed her bag to head to school. Getting back in her car brought memories of the morning rushing back. She flushed and straightened her shoulders.
Cool. Disinterested. Over him.
That was the goal. Prove, in no uncertain terms, that she was so over Sean Winthrop.

The Mustang’s passenger door flew open. Ty thudded into the
passenger seat, shook his hair back out of his face, then closed his eyes. Sean’s jaw dropped. Ty was leaving that gorgeous, smart, sharp woman alone…after what they’d just done? In Ty’s place Sean would have her under a hot shower, using soap and touch to inscribe on her skin how he felt. What it meant. What he wanted.

Except Lauren wasn’t Abby. Abby wasn’t his. Lauren, however, was Ty’s for the taking. That came through loud and clear during the ménage, her openness the exact opposite of Abby’s
step-back-you-fucker
attitude in the parking lot. Abby used to look at him like Lauren looked at Ty, heart and soul in her eyes.

The memory squeezed his heart into his sternum.

Start with the immediate.
“What the fuck are you doing in my car, instead of in her bed?”

“She was falling asleep. I didn’t want to wake her up. Drive.”

Lacking the authority to order Ty out of the car and back into Lauren’s bed, Sean turned the engine over and shoved the gearshift
into reverse. This wasn’t the Ty he knew. The Ty he knew went out of his way to take care of people, especially vulnerable ones. And a woman left alone after a down-and-dirty ménage with a total stranger definitely qualified as vulnerable. “So she’s gonna wake up alone.”

Ty ignored him, lost in thought, or lost in some internal hell. Sean knew the feeling. After an hour of the hottest, wildest sex he’d ever had, he should have been planning the next encounter. Where to go…
No Limits
…when to go…
the second the bar opened
…what kind of girl to go after…
anyone who wasn’t a redhead
.
No redheads.

“After what we just did,” Sean added as he drove out of Lauren’s neighborhood.

What they just did started at No Limits, where Abby worked five nights a week. She’d hear about it. He felt like an idiot on the dance floor, danced only under extreme duress, but something about the vibe between him, Lauren, and Ty dropped his inhibitions through the floor. He hadn’t been with a woman since Abby fifteen months ago, and when Ty turned Lauren to face him and she stepped into his body, soft breasts and grinding hips, the hot earth scent of lust rising from her damp skin, all he’d cared about was that he was about to
get some
, the Marine Corps’ unofficial encouraging cry, along with
hoo-rah
. But when Ty asked Lauren if she wanted to fuck him, he’d come to his senses to find most of the dance floor watching them, no mean feat in No Limits.

Abby was going to hear about that, for sure. He shook his head in a motion similar to Ty’s, like he was trying to dismiss a thought from his brain. He’d broken up with Abby months ago. She’d moved on. In theory he could fuck a woman on the hood of his car in broad damn daylight in the East Beach Parking Lot and it was none of Abby’s business.

A fist closed around his heart. Lauren had asked if there was
anything she needed to know about. What was he supposed to say?
No communicable diseases, just a broken heart, ma’am. Entirely my fault. No excuses
.

He cleared his throat. “I’m starving. You mind if I drive through somewhere?”