You Dropped a Blonde on Me (37 page)
Either she’d hide under her metaphoric covers again, thinking those dark thoughts about her skewed judgment when it came to the just barely evolved male species, or she’d maybe, just maybe, let the moment be what it was.
Right.
Campbell’s fingers went to his lips, calling up the taste of her tongue, the fight he’d had with himself to remember they were in a public place and not cup her breast when it was pressed so enticingly against his chest.
He wanted her tonight more than he’d ever wanted anyone.
Even the woman he’d been married to for eight years.
They’d had their time, and it was good, sometimes even great, but in the end, the vows they’d taken had decidedly different meanings for each of them.
Campbell forced his ex-wife Linda from his mind. She was what had brought him to Leisure Village South two years ago. She was why he knew exactly where Max’s head was.
Linda was the reason he understood moving on and knew the word “acceptance” almost as well as he knew how to fix a leaky pipe.
He was way ahead of Max in a healing process he’d almost let ruin his life. Wallowing had become an art form for him until his father had dragged his sorry ass here, fed him in the best way he knew how, spent endless nights reasoning with him, pushing him, and in the end, holding him while he wept like some candy-ass when his dark journey came to a grueling end.
Now if he could just bide his time and wait for Max to come to understand those things, too, maybe they’d find themselves in the same place at the same time.
A knock startled Campbell from his thoughts. He frowned, trying to figure out who would be knocking at one in the morning.
Campbell cracked the door, revealing Max, still in her blue dress, beautiful, and if he was reading her eyes right, uncertain.
When he let the door swing open, inviting her in, it was with the hope that somehow, luck had granted him the one thing he wanted most.
He and Max in the same place at the same time.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Note from Maxine Cambridge to all ex-trophy wives: A tip about TMI. Please, please, please, keep your Spanx-wearing to yourself upon your first intimate encounter since parting with your ex. In honor of those who’ve gone before you, just take my word for it. It will help protect what could have been an otherwise lovely moment to reflect upon one day. I hang my head in shame when I share with you—this is the voice of experience talking.
“You left your phone at the rec center. I—I—well, I figured you’d need it, in case . . .” What
had
she figured? Shit. So much for the high on hormones vixen she’d imagined herself while she’d walked over here full of piss and vinegar. Yeah. No doubt she’d expected to just knock on Campbell’s door and demand he quench her burning desires like she knew the first thing about getting a man into bed.
had
she figured? Shit. So much for the high on hormones vixen she’d imagined herself while she’d walked over here full of piss and vinegar. Yeah. No doubt she’d expected to just knock on Campbell’s door and demand he quench her burning desires like she knew the first thing about getting a man into bed.
She didn’t know seductress from nothin’. But the cell phone had been the perfect excuse.
Now, standing at his door, looking at his shirt unbuttoned, his hair mussed, and his pensive blue eyes, she wasn’t above hoping the ground would open up and swallow her.
Campbell caught the phone when she all but hurled it at him like it was on fire and gave her a confused cock of his head. “This isn’t mine.” He dug in his pocket, pulling out his iPhone to show her.
Oh. Grand. In that case, good deed over. She took a step back, teetering on her heels. “Okay, then. Well I guess I’d better go. It’s late. I have to walk dogs tomorrow. So many dogs to walk these days, you know? Lots and lots of poop to scoop. Oh, and I have to water Mrs. Whiteside’s lawn. So I’m out. Gone. Going. B—bye.”
As she turned to leave, Campbell grabbed her arm in a light hold, swinging her around to face him. “You didn’t come to bring me back a cell phone that isn’t mine, Max.” His accusation was low, seductive, but still an accusation.
Indignant was the perfect response when innocent was what you were striving to portray. “I did, too. Gail gave it to me and said you forgot it.” And then it dawned on her. Maxine ran her thumb over the screen, clicking on the icon for the phone’s number.
Campbell looked down at the phone and chuckled. “You’ve been duped, and well played on Gail’s part, don’t you think?”
Gail. Who else had an app for dancing garden gnomes on their phone? “I’ll kill her. I’m going to go over to her house right now and knock down all those stupid gnomes she has frolicking in her garden.”
Campbell pulled her close, his stance wide to encompass her legs, his arms warm. “Now don’t go getting all excited. I think Gail was trying to tell you something.”
Those feelings that had overwhelmed her back at the dance tonight began all over again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d set me up to help me force myself on you.”
Campbell leaned down, pressing a soft kiss on the side of her mouth. “She just gave you the perfect excuse to come over here. No force necessary. The rest’s up to you.”
Her nervous laughter swirled in the warm night air. “Does she have any idea what can happen leaving something like this up to me? It’s like leaving a toddler in charge of Watergate.”
His finger trailed along the side of her cheek, extracting a purr from her lips she was forced to stifle. “Come inside, Max.”
Wasn’t that what the evil stepmother said to Cinderella, or was that Snow White? Wait. That was an incident involving an apple. A poison apple. Or was it candy? Either way, Campbell wanted to show her his candy, that much was for sure, but she wasn’t totally sure she was ready to show anyone hers. It was old and had stretch marks.
Panic rose and fell in rapid shifts. Oh, Jesus and all twelve.
Yet, when he held his hand out to her and smiled, she couldn’t have stopped her hand from reaching for his if someone had chopped it off. Taking his hand just was. That was the only way she could describe it.
His steps back inside were easy, slow. Hers were stilted and clumsy. Blessedly, the interior of his father’s house was dark and cool. Campbell’s father, unlike her mother, obviously believed in air conditioning, and she was grateful. The flush of heat rising from every pore in her body was like having your insides microwaved on high.
Maxine fell into him due to leg wobble, but Campbell caught her with a shadow of a smile she could only see due to the overhead light on the range hood. His hands were at her waist again, rolling his palms over her hips, easing her toward him until the delicious friction was too much to bear and she allowed herself to be drawn into his embrace.
A sigh of homecoming trickled from her lips. Why he felt so comfortable, or how, was something she would never understand.
Campbell brushed a stray strand of hair from her neck, dipping his head to nibble the sensitive flesh. Her reaction was to melt, and surely, he couldn’t be so consummate a neck nibbler as to evoke a reaction like that from her. The thought crossed her mind that she hadn’t made love in well over a year now, and possibly this was her unattended libido overreacting.
Yet Finley had nibbled her neck a thousand times, and it was never as tingle inspiring as when Campbell did it. Tracing a path up along her jaw, he touched her lips with his, taking possession of them in a sweep of tongue and delicious mouth.
Her everything throbbed with a pulsing need to slake her desires.
But when Campbell’s hand cupped her breast, she froze. Not because it didn’t feel as good as a bacon cheeseburger with a chocolate shake hitting your stomach in a caloric jubilee of fat and sugar. It wasn’t even because she wasn’t hearing love songs in her head.
She was.
Air Supply.
Definitely Air Supply.
No. It was due to the fact that she was so nervous, her tongue just had to move. Their last encounter was unplanned. She’d come here with a purpose this time. What she’d forgotten was there’d never been anyone but Fin in her sexual experiences, and no matter how much her loins were screaming for her to put a sock in it, her brain was telling her someone was going to see her naked way faster than she’d had enough time to do crunches for.
Max pressed a hand to his wrist, mumbling from the side of her mouth, “They’re fake. Silicone. I had them done five years ago. I hope they hold out. I can’t afford to get replacements. That’s shallow, right?”
Campbell’s lips whispered over hers. “Wow. Really? They’re fake?”
“Yeah. So fake they define fake.”
Campbell let her hold on to his wrist, but he continued to caress the underside of her breast with his knuckles.
Her fake one
. Oh, God. “They don’t feel fake. Do fake boobs feel fake? I’ve never felt fake boobs before. So if they do under normal circumstances feel fake, big kudos to your plastic surgeon,” he teased, walking her backward.
Her fake one
. Oh, God. “They don’t feel fake. Do fake boobs feel fake? I’ve never felt fake boobs before. So if they do under normal circumstances feel fake, big kudos to your plastic surgeon,” he teased, walking her backward.
“He was really nice. He made me feel so much better about the process by telling me that my not fake, former boobs had stood up well against the test of time.”
“Very complimentary.” Campbell let his other hand roam down along the curve of her spine to settle on her ass, cupping her close to him.
“That’s not fake. My butt, I mean. But of course you can tell that because you have to reach down to the backs of my knees to hold on to it.”
His reply was husky. “I like your knees, Max. I like all of you. Fake or not.”
All of her liked all of him, too. But . . . “But you like the Max that has Spanx on underneath her clothes. They smooth out all your unsightly bumps. It’s like wearing an iron maiden, only with more give, and thank God I was wearing them the night I left Finley. God knows I couldn’t afford them on my salary. But you might not like Max once she spills out of this sausage casing. In fact, we might need the Jaws of Life to get them off me, and I’d hate to rip them. They cost a fortune—in fact, they’d cost three whole weeks of poop-scooping.”
“You wanna let me have a go at it and we’ll just see?”
Her libido screamed, “Hell to the yeah!” but her fears lobbed roadblocks the size of boulders. She placed a hand at his shoulder. “I think it’s time for some extreme honesty here. I’m so turned on I could weep, but I’m also petrified. I’d bet almost all of my next paycheck you’re far more experienced than I am at this,” she said as he pulled her into his bedroom. Which was nice. Very nautical and beach-ish with primitive wood anchors on the wall and fishing nets across the windows held in place with fake starfish.
“What makes you say that?” he asked, setting her on the edge of his bed with blue and white sailboats floating over the comforter.
“I know what people think about cheerleaders and prom queens. That we put out. I definitely behaved as though I put out that night in the woods, but that wasn’t the case back then. My mother whooped the fear of God and Planned Parenthood into me when I was in high school. I never . . . Finley was my only . . .”
“Can I say something here?”
“Yes. Say something. Say anything to shut me up.”
“I’ll admit I’ve had more than one lover. When I—how do I put this—you know—outgrew puberty and my body changed, I didn’t exactly abstain. But to hear you say I’m only your second lover is a little special.”
“Right,” Maxine snorted, looking for a reason to create some dissidence. “Even though I may not have put out like it said on the boys’ bathroom wall, I know a line when I hear one. I’ve watched a lot of reality TV. A lot of MTV.” Like that made her all in the playa know.
“So what you’re saying is even though I chased you all over this village, and continued to do so even after you called me some really offensive names in public, I’m just looking to get laid?”
Well, when he said it out loud and gave her those intense eyeballsingeing glares . . . “The pickin’s in the village for a hunk like you are pretty slim. I mean, I can almost see Mrs. Knickerbocker’s appeal, she definitely looks pretty hot for sixty, but I just don’t get the impression she’s your type. I’m sort of the obvious choice. I’m the
only
choice unless some other ex-trophy wife shows up. Or, if you’re lucky, my mother’s friend Mary’s niece. She’s gorgeous. I’ve seen pictures.”
only
choice unless some other ex-trophy wife shows up. Or, if you’re lucky, my mother’s friend Mary’s niece. She’s gorgeous. I’ve seen pictures.”
Campbell’s dark eyebrow rose in clear amusement. “Lemme get this straight. You’re just convenient because I’m too lazy to get out of my own way and go outside the village to scope chicks?”
Maybe? No. Everything he said was always so logical. If he’d just let her get carried away with her wild notions, everything would be fine. “I think I’m not sure what I’m saying.”
Cupping her face, his eyes captured hers once more. “I think you’re creating excuses just to create them. Pay attention, Max, and maybe I can still that spinning head of yours. You’re not just some easy lay. Nothing about this has been easy,” he teased, his eyes taking on an amused glint. “You’re not someone I want to screw and ditch tomorrow so I can say I tapped the one-time head cheerleader from Riverbend High at our next reunion. I’m not going to stop chasing after you even if our lovemaking sucks. If it does, we’ll work on it until it’s what we both hoped for. I’m not even going to stop chasing you if you say no to me tonight. I’m not in this to bag and tag. I’m not in this because I take a physical commitment lightly. I’m in this because I want
you
—as neurotic and full of crazy notions as you are. I don’t care that you’ve had plastic surgery. I don’t care that you wear Spankys—”
you
—as neurotic and full of crazy notions as you are. I don’t care that you’ve had plastic surgery. I don’t care that you wear Spankys—”
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