Clean Slate (7 page)

Her expression was one of shock.
Dismay
, even.

He thought perhaps she’d slap him, but before she could
conduct herself in that way, they were both distracted at the sight of Jerry
and Trinity, out of the ditch and now wrestling in the muddy grass several
yards from where they stood.

Jerry knew his woman. Knew how she’d react. Knew that
eventually she’d come around, and she had already, judging by the way she
laughed and tried to press his face against the drenched soil.

Ben scrambled out of the ditch and extended his arm to
Daisy.

She grasped it and accepted his aid back up into the yard.
Once steady, she took a deep breath and started toward the house.

“Daisy, I…”

She turned around and pelted him in the face with a mound
of soft mud. “You were saying?”

He nudged dirt from his eyes and slowly opened them to
find her standing hands on hips, staring at him with her lips set in a tight
line.

Ouch.

He put his hands up in a consoling gesture. “Sorry, I was
saying sorry. It was childish of me. I’m getting better.”

The tension in her face eased and her shoulders relaxed
from their high position near her ears. She blew out a breath and nodded. “I
don’t like being taken off-guard,” she said. She opened her mouth to elaborate,
but a flash of lightening crashed to the Earth very close to the property and
suddenly Jerry and Trinity were blurs passing them.

“I think the storm’s moving this way!” Jerry shouted back.

Ben took off after him, grabbing Daisy’s arm and pulling it
on his way past. It was as if she’d been rooted to the ground.

Halfway to the house, one or both lost traction on the
soft soil and tumbled into a particularly large mud hole.

“
Verdomme
!” he
murmured, struggling up onto hands and knees, then onto his feet. He pulled
Daisy, now shivering beneath her muddy coating, up to her feet and pulled her
along.

Yeah, this was a bad
idea.

Although it was thirty yards farther from the house, his
instinct was to pull her to the garage apartment he’d been making his home for
the past couple of months. They pounded up the exterior stairs and he
shouldered the unlocked door open. He pulled her into the pristine lodging and
shut the door against the sideways rain.

They stood there, muddy, dripping on the terra cotta tile
floor for a moment until he found his wits and nudged her toward the bathroom.
He urged her into the shower with her clothes on and turned on a warm stream of
water.

“We’ll have to get you something to wear, but at least
you’ll be warm,” he said, stepping in behind her and readjusting the nozzle so
the spray was from higher up and water showered down onto both of them.

She scrubbed muck off her face and turned around to tip
her chin up so the front of her hair got wet.

He took off his shirt and twisted it between his hands to
wring out muddy water. “Do you want some shampoo? It’s probably not as good as
you’re used to. I buy the dollar stuff. Works fine on an inch of hair or less.”

She nodded.

He tried to ignore the bright blue of her bra through her
sodden shirt as he reached around her, but it was hard to miss. It was his
favorite color. He grabbed the bottle out of the shower hanger and handed it to
her.

“Thanks.” She turned her back to him and began to work the
hair sticking to her neck out of her collar, and he realized shampooing
wouldn’t do her a bit of good if her neck and shoulders were filthy.

“Uh. Let me just get my clothes rinsed out and I’ll leave
you for a proper shower. I’ll run over and see if Trinity has anything you can
fit.”

Shit. What did Jerry
say about make-up sex
?

“I doubt she will. She’s kind of small.” She wound her
long hair into a wet, messy bun at the nape of her neck and unbuttoned the
first fastener of her shirt.

“Well, she’s short, so…” He stared dumbly as she loosened
more buttons and slipped her sleeves down her arms. He couldn’t resist peeking
over her freckled shoulder to see if the pattern continued down into the cups
of her bra. No, it didn’t. Just creamy, smooth skin that gave way to dark pink
areolae visible just over the top edge of her bra.

Shit.

She probably wasn’t even aware. She simply reached for the
bar of green deodorant soap and lathered her neck, shoulders, and arms.

Shit.

He moved faster, splaying his toes to get the mud out and
nudging down the cargo shorts he didn’t even know anymore if were his or
Jerry’s. Now down to his briefs, he wrung out the shorts and tossed both them
and his shirt over the top of the shower door and heard them splat on the
floor. He could finish his shower later.

With a hand on the door handle and back turned to the
shower spray as he prepared to exit, Daisy tapped his shoulder and pressed the
soap to him.

“Can…can you get my back?” she asked. “So I can shampoo?”

He turned around and almost missed the slight widening of her
eyes and the intake of breath as her gaze momentarily drifted downward. She
probably hadn’t realized how much he’d disrobed.

Her own state of disrobing made the blood in his head
drain to things much further down. He turned his gaze up to the ceiling as he
wrapped his fingers around the soap bar. “Certainly.”

She turned, blessedly, and he worked the soap over her
skin in meticulous circles from her shoulders, down her arms, the sides of her
ribs, and back up to the space above her bra band. He put the soap in the
little indention in the wall designed for that purpose and used his hands to
spread the lather down to the small of her back.

There. That was everything, except that one little spot at
the crook of her neck he perhaps hadn’t paid enough attention to. He placed his
hand flat against it, and pressed his fingers around the tight muscles,
kneading, massaging, until she lolled her head to the side.

“You’re all wound up,” he said, putting his other hand on
the neglected shoulder of the other side.

“You mean high-strung?” She put her chin against her chest
to facilitate his caressing of both shoulders at once.

“No, I don’t think so. Just…stressed, maybe?” He took a
step closer and let the palms of his hands trail down her spine. “If I’d
thought tossing you in the mud would upset you as much as it did, I would have
shown more restraint.”

She gave her head a small shake and said in a small voice,
“Stressed, yes. I’m always stressed.”

When his hands paused at her bra band she picked up her
head.

“I wasn’t upset about you being playful. I just had a bad
memory about something and being in the ditch reminded me of it.”

“Oh.”

He wanted to press—find out what exactly had
happened in a ditch that had stunned her so badly, but wasn’t sure if she’d
respond well to the inquiry. Usually he could tell when women wanted him to
probe. Usually women
wanted
to
talk…and talk…and talk some more. This one, though… This one didn’t seem
interested in sharing, and he didn’t know if it was because she genuinely
didn’t like him enough or if something else stilled her tongue.

He removed his hands from her back as she picked up the
shampoo again, and was about to step out when she said, “Not long after I got
married, my ex-husband thought it would be fun to push me into an open septic
tank.”

He stilled. “I’m sorry? You mean, a tank for waste?”

She nodded and unwound her bun. “They’re common out here.
Jerry probably has a couple since he’s too far from town to get county sewage
and water service.”

She squeezed a copious amount of shampoo into her palm,
and then set the bottle into the caddy.

“Anyhow, we were visiting his grandmother. She lives out
near Gates. I’d gone into the back yard to get laundry off the line for her
since she’d been having problems with her arthritis. I had to go in and get a
second basket for the sheets. I walked behind them to fetch it, and didn’t see
him darting out from the side. He just kinda hip checked me, and down I went.”

Ben didn’t have a single word of consolation to offer for
that. What grown man would do that to someone he supposedly loved?

She shrugged and worked suds into the ends of her hair.
“We were young. Barely nineteen, I think. He was drunk off his ass.”

“That doesn’t excuse it.”

She turned, expression serious as death, and nodded as she
rinsed her hair. “I know that now.”

He hoped her words were truthful. She was a woman worth
something, even if she didn’t know how much herself.

When the last of the suds were rinsed away, her hands
moved to the catch of her shorts. With an apologetic shrug, she nudged the
fastening free, revealing a dirty horizontal line of demarcation of skin
needing a good scrub. She unzipped as she turned, and before she peeled her
shorts down to her ankles, Ben fled the shower.

Shit
.

“I’ll leave you some towels on the toilet,” he said with
his swimming head inside the linen closet. “Try to save me some hot water,
ja
?”

“Thanks.”

Maybe the cold water
would be better for me
.

He placed two fluffy white towels on the back of the
commode and fled the humid room with his wet clothes tucked under his arm.

“Look,” Jerry said, extending his tablet computer for
Ben’s perusal.

Ben turned the device sideways and studied the position of
the dot on the map. Their mother’s flight had left Brussels. In a bit over
twelve hours, she’d be in Norfolk.

“Are you sure she boarded the plane?”

“Pretty sure,” Jerry responded. “I was worried about the
same, so I called her just before her flight was scheduled to start boarding.
Sounded completely off-kilter, even for her.”

“I wonder why.”

Jerry shrugged. “Was probably worried I’d tell her
never mind, don’t come
.”

Trinity appeared in the archway between the kitchen and
greater living area and gestured toward the other room. “Dinner is served.
Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for any of it. As patient as Daisy is,
eventually she gave up on me in regards to the chicken. But the mashed
potatoes? I mashed the hell out of those.” She pointed to her small, but firm,
bicep and cocked her chin up.

Jerry goosed her rear end on the way past. “That’s all
right, pix. We can’t all be good at everything.”

Daisy, dressed in a pair of Ben’s gray Belgium Olympic Team
staff sweatpants rolled at the waist and legs, an N-by-N T-shirt she found in
her car trunk, and with her hair swinging in a long braid down her back, wiped
her hands on a dish towel and bobbed her head toward the stove.

She grinned and Ben wanted to pull her into his arms and
reward her with a squeeze. Instead, he jammed his hands into the pockets of his
shorts and leaned his rear against the countertop edge.

“It’s nice cooking on a stove that heats evenly,” she
said. “I think the one at my house needs to be taken out back and shot.”

“Did you just make a joke, Daisy?” Jerry asked as he
pulled four plates down from the cabinet. “I’m pretty sure you did, but maybe
my mind’s playing tricks on me.”

“Hey, Daisy has a sense of humor.” Trinity pulled open a
drawer and extracted four forks. She pulled open the one beneath it and
retrieved cloth napkins. “You remember last year when Juan couldn’t figure out
why all of the packing boxes were inside out?”

Jerry guffawed as he handed Ben a plate. “Yeah, he would
show up for work in the morning and all the boxes he’d brought out of the shed
would be assembled so the seams showed. He swore we had a ghost.”

“That was Daisy.”

Jerry made an appreciative grunt and grinned at her.
“Why’d you do it?”

Daisy blushed then stared at her bare feet. “I’d been
walking around a full day at work with my shirt inside out, and no one had
noticed until Juan. He thought it was funny. Wouldn’t let it go.”

Now it was Ben’s turn to grunt his admiration of the
trick. It sounded like something
he
would do, but he would have stuck around to receive his credit for pulling it
off. Daisy, on the other hand, was content with anonymity. She’d done what she
needed to, and backed away gracefully. She made a point without having to
harangue. Hadn’t she done the same thing earlier after being unchivalrously
dunked in muddy water?

Maybe she wasn’t meant to be redhead, after all. Certainly
lacked the disposition.

* * *

Daisy couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such an
enjoyable meal, even if she
had
cooked
it herself. In fact, she mostly picked at her meal. The food was fine, but she
was so overwhelmed by conversation, her hunger took a backburner to her
curiosity. It wasn’t that Trinity, Jerry, and Ben were talking about anything
particularly fascinating, but the energy between the three of them was just so
infectious, it was difficult for her not to cling to their every word. And then
Jerry, always the diplomat, had worked so hard to ease her into the
conversation, although she would have been perfectly content with just being an
observer. She didn’t have much to say, but when she talked, they at least
pretended to be interested.

“Looks like the rain’s finally giving up,” Trinity said
from the counter. She stood on tiptoes, staring out the window as she waited
for the coffee decanter to fill with water.

“Where’s it moving, south?” Jerry asked. He closed the
freezer door and clutched a half-gallon of butter pecan ice cream.

“Yeah, that’s what my weather app said. Shouldn’t affect
your mom’s flight.”

Daisy stood and gave her back a good stretch. She gathered
up her dishes and carried them to the sink. “Ben, if you think my clothes are
dry, I guess I’ll head home. I know you guys have a lot to do tonight.”

Trinity stopped her filling of the coffeemaker, edged closer
to Daisy at the sink, and cleared her throat.

Daisy raised an eyebrow and whispered, “What?”

Trinity gave her head a tiny cock toward the center island
where both men were engaged by ice cream.

Daisy shook her head, not understanding.

Trinity said quietly through clenched teeth, “He’s
pretending he didn’t hear you.”

“Why?”

“Jesus Christ.” She went back to the coffeemaker and gave
Daisy a bug-eyed look.

“How many scoops do you want, Daisy?” Ben asked, twirling
the scooper through his fingers and offering her a small smile.

“Um, one. Thanks.”

“Two it is.”

“I—”

Trinity bumped Daisy’s hip her on her way to the drawer to
fetch coffee filters, effectively silencing her.

Once the ice cream was scooped and coffee poured, Daisy
followed the trio into the living room where they clumped on the sectionals. Jerry
fiddled with the remotes.

“You get to pick, Daisy, since you’re the guest. Guts,
glory, comedy, or romance?”

“Hmm.” She clucked her tongue. Which choice would make
conversation least likely? It wasn’t that she didn’t like talking to them. She
did. She was just talked out for the day. “Let’s go with glory.”

“All right! Superhero flick it is.”

She’d made a good choice. They were all so captivated by the
fantasy and non-stop action that no one said anything for a while. They just
ate, sipped, and when dessert was gone, stared at the screen.

Trinity slipped away about halfway through and returned
with four glasses on a tray and a bottle of schnapps. She passed a drink around
to each, and the silence continued until the bottle started making its way
around, too.

Daisy lost track of how much she drank. The schnapps was
so sweet she probably didn’t pace herself the way should have. At one moment,
she was staring at some action figure leaping from one skyscraper to a ledge
far below, and the next, she opened her eyes to find the living room dark and
eerily quiet.

She sat up slowly and flexed her hand for the drink that’d
been in it, but found her fingers free of it.

Given it was summer, the darkness meant it must have been
past nine. The quiet of the house implied that it was probably far later.

Shit. I have to go
to work in the morning.

She tried to turn her body, which had been sideways and
laid out on the sofa, but her left leg met resistance as she moved it toward the
floor. The firm object gave way and the pillows she thought were behind her
shifted and groaned.

She turned her head as far around as she could and found
Ben at her back rubbing his eyes.

“What happened?” she asked, though she could guess.

He eased back to give her some space, and she realized she
would have preferred for him to stay put, pressed against her like that. He
felt nice there.

“Perfect sleeping conditions,” Ben said. “Physical
exertion, stormy weather, heavy meal, and alcohol.”

“Hmm.” She squinted at the red digits on the satellite
dish receiver. Well after one a.m.

“I should get home. I have to get up early and go to
work.”

He let out a low chuckle. “Two of your bosses know where
you are. I think it’ll be okay. Besides, it’s late to be driving on those wet
roads.”

He had a point.

He pulled his legs in and swung them around to brace his
feet against the floor. “Come on. I think you’ll be more comfortable in the
guest apartment. Bed’s made.”

“I’m okay here.” She wrapped her arms around a throw
pillow to indicate such.

He shook his head. “You’ll wake up with a huge kink in
your neck from the sofa arm and will spend your day at work cranky.”

“I’m never cranky.”

“
Ja
, let’s not
start now.” He grinned and held out a hand.

She wedged the pillow next to the sofa arm and placed her
hand in his.

As she followed him through the back door and across the
yard to the garage, she wondered when the last time another man had held her
hand was. Prom in front of the photographer? No, her wedding when Barry had
dragged her down the aisle during the recessional. That had been the last time,
but that hadn’t felt special. It was just Barry moving her from one venue to
the next as quickly as possible so he could get to the keg his father bought
them as a wedding gift. But Ben holding her hand was different. Maybe it was
the gentle grip or the way he kept looking back at her as they navigated the
dark path, but there was more affection in that touch than there’d been in any
of Barry’s kisses or hugs or…
anything
.

He led her upstairs and closed the door behind them.

“Bed’s made. Your clothes are in the dryer. I can bring
you an alarm clock if you need one.”

She shook her head and indicated the pocket of her
borrowed sweatpants. “I have my phone. I can use the clock on it.”

He trailed her into the bedroom and together they turned
down the covers. As he headed toward the exit, her impulse control seemed to
slip away a bit and she called to his back, “Are you going to be at the barn
tomorrow?”

He stopped at the door and turned around. In the dim light
his blue eyes looked black. “For a while. Either Jerry or I will have to go get
Mother in the afternoon. Possibly both of us, but I think Nikki’s going to want
to debrief about the trade show.”

Oh, shit, the trade
show.
She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. If what Trinity had said was
true, Nikki was going to snap her fingers and demand new ideas to develop.
Nothing she had in her arsenal would be good enough. She should have gone home
after dinner and worked something out, but she’d been having too good a time.
She flopped against the pillow and groaned.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. Nikki’s going to think I’m a one-trick pony.”

“You’ll be fine. That’s what brainstorming’s for. You
don’t have to come up with everything on your own. That’s what being on a team
is about. Trust me, I was a relay swimmer.” He laughed.

She opened her eyes and found him grinning there in the
doorway.

“Sorry again for getting you muddy. Goodnight.”

He started to move away, but she sat up and said, “Uh, you
know, having some time between then and now, it actually seems kind of funny.”

“Oh?”

She shrugged. “I can imagine what I must have looked like.
Total dork, right?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Dork. That’s…”

“Sorry, uh…” She clucked her tongue while considering a
suitable synonym. “A dork is a person who lacks certain social graces. A person
with no charm.”

He moved into the room and sat on the edge of the bed near
her waist. When he spoke, his voice was a near-whisper. His grin had dissolved,
and his lips actually arced a bit in the other direction. “Then that’s not a
good word to describe you.”

She lie down again, and stared at the white ceiling. “I
know what I am.”

“I don’t know if you really do. Can I ask you something,
Daisy?”

The blood in her head seemed to drain at his serious tone.
She knew without a doubt he was going to ask her something she had no desire to
answer. But what would it be? Regardless of her fear, she nodded.

“When you said you’d marry me on the bus—why were
you thinking that?”

Oh. That
. She
squeezed her eyes shut and tightened her grip on the edge of the bed sheet.
There wasn’t really a simple answer.

Her eyelids sprang up. “I guess I’m one of those people
who regularly volunteers herself to be the martyr. It’s in my nature to do
tough things so other people don’t have to.”

The set of his jaw went tight. “You think it’d be so bad
being married to me?”

Maybe she’d phrased that wrong. “No, not at all. I just…I
don’t actually expect to ever get married again. I heard you and Jerry talking
about all the back and forth you do between here and Belgium, and I know how
much you two enjoy each other’s company and so…”

“So you thought that’d help.”

She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug.

The tension in his face seemed to ease as he leaned back
onto his palms. “You really think you’ll never marry again?”

That made her chuckle. “I’d be really surprised.”

“Why?”

“Let’s see if I can sum it up. My ex-husband thought I was
an idiot, and I guess he told me enough that I agree with him a little bit.
Ever since the divorce, my mother has been treating me like a child incapable
of making good decisions. I think she believes I would have been better off
with Barry.”

“Do you think so?”

She shook her head. “I believe putting him out was the one
good decision I’ve made in life. Of course the better one would have been never
marrying him in the first place.”

“So why did you?”

Another question she wasn’t sure how to answer.

Now Ben was leaning with his forearms over his thighs, and
looking at her sideways from the edge of the bed.

“He was my first and only and I couldn’t do any better.”

“I see.” He stood.

“Yeah, I’ve come to terms with—”

She was going to say “being alone” but before she could
form the sounds, he leaned down and stifled her words by placing his lips over
hers.