An Accidental Gentleman (13 page)

Hampered by her sling, chafing under what she repeatedly called damn-fool restrictions, she directed him in brisk, bossy tones. But she prized kindness, too, despite her irritation and haste. With gentleness, she adjusted his finger-holds when he misunderstood her directions as she rebuilt the guts piece by piece. Showed him what she wanted while she repositioned things this way and that. The whole time, she talked about what she did and why. Not so much about herself, though he sneaked in a few questions. Her short answers leaned heavily on her granddad’s teaching, a sore spot, judging from how quick her smiles turned wistful. Missing the old man.

Whenever she rolled her shoulders, he stopped digging for personal details to store away. They had time. He’d learn eventually. If he pushed for emotional intimacy as hard as she pushed for the physical, he’d send her running. So he soaked up her voice and her faint hint of pineapple amid the grease-and-solvent odors under their noses, and he held his tongue.

Going on seven, the turntable lid lowered into place. No thuds or clicks, thanks to the thin felt bumper around the edge.

“I bet that baby didn’t look half so good the first time it came off an assembly line.”

Stroking the side panel, Katherine smiled. “It’s a beauty.” She fiddled with the knobs, and static crackled. “Can’t tell now how broken it got, shut up in a basement all those years.”

A classic rock station twanged and drummed into existence. The tuner translated nonsense into signal. Fading chords shifted into a new song—longing and love floating on a slow-moving guitar river. Perfect for dancing.

He extended his hand. “May I—”

“It’s after seven.” She scurried back from the worktable. “I need to lock up the front. Don’t touch anything.”

Not touching a thing. Especially not her. And not the wall five feet away where she’d rocked against him, her ass thumping his cock while she rode his fingers. Six days ago. Closing his eyes, he added the soundtrack of her gasps and moans to the radio.

“Daydreaming?” She spoke beside him, almost in his ear. “I’ll have to dock your pay for that, apprentice.”

His cock stiffened, but he maintained his cool. Tough to sneak up on a man trained to stay alert, even when said man took a desk jockey analysis post. The tease in her voice, though, fuck. Irresistible, despite instincts reading her move for a deliberate counter to anything deeper than sex.

“Consider the labor free—in trade for you sharing dinner with me. You don’t want to go out, so I brought the food to you.” He patted the picnic basket with overzealous enthusiasm and flashed slapstick comedy eyebrows. Hell, he’d throw in a fake glasses and nose routine and chomp on a cigar if burying his heart under more layers of laughter helped put her at ease. Whatever she needed to realize and accept that he wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Her squinting suspicion lost ground when she gave in and chuckled. “Set up your dinner, then. I need to make a call.”

She lifted the old-fashioned phone off the wall-mounted base beside the door and dialed. Push-button, not an old rotary, but the handset was the clunky kind from his childhood with the long corkscrew cord perfect for strangling brothers in the kitchen.

Twisting the cord around her fingers, she swayed in the doorway. “Mom?”

He set the basket on the cleared space in the center of the floor. Blanket first, a blue-and-gold plaid he’d picked up three aisles over from the deli counter. The checkout gal, old enough to be his grandmother, had thrown herself headlong into helping when he’d sheepishly explained he needed a last-minute picnic.

Shaken out, the thick blanket covered as much ground as a king-size mattress. Waterproof backing, padded fill layer, soft top. He might’ve gone overboard.

Katherine stood with her back to him, rubbing her toe against a worn spot low on the door frame. “No, don’t hold dinner for me.”

Seemed like she’d grown up in this shop. Maybe she’d played jump rope across that coiled phone cord while grown-ups talked. Dragged over the battered metal-and-rubber stepstool to answer the phone in a little-gal voice weighted with big-girl importance.

“I’m going to grab something and eat in while I finish up.” She twirled, slowly, winding the cord around herself. “Oh, from the drugstore counter up the block, I think.”

Busted. He laid the cold-cut subs beside the container of macaroni salad—two forks—and bottled waters. Made fresh today, all but the water, and the label promised it’d come straight from a mountain spring. As close to a homemade picnic as his skills allowed.

Katherine folded her lips over, tucking away the smile filling out her cheeks. “They have those ready-made deli sandwiches. And pasta salad, maybe. I’ll make sure I eat something filling.”

He moved the basket off the far side of the blanket to hide his own smile. Bristly surface, soft-center Katherine would be slow to admit liking his picnic, if she admitted it at all.

“I promise, I will if I need you.” She drifted toward the wall hook. The cord untangled as she spun. “Uh-huh. Love you, too. See you tonight.”

The phone clicked into the cradle. The radio station played a low, rocking beat.

He patted the wide, empty fabric. Plenty of room for her to sit as far away as she liked. “Hungry?”

“Famished.” She dropped into a tailor pose, crossing her legs as she sat. “We’re not dating, so you know. This is not a date.” Her furtive glances between the food and his face made her seem spring-loaded. “I’m eating this food because I told my mom I would.”

“Of course.” Her excuses slid right off him, not least because of how she kept checking his bullshit meter. She’d broken the mechanism with her last whopper. “We’re not dating.” Never mind he’d made history by bringing her a picnic at her office, a first-time event in the annals of Brian’s Guide to Getting the Girl. “You’re just not lying to your mom. I respect that.” He nudged the plastic salad container her way. “Better eat up.”

She unsnapped her sling and laid it aside. A blue brace supported her left wrist from her knuckles almost to her elbow. “Points for the stylish way you’re trying to get in my pants, though.”

“What?” Maybe he should tell her to keep the sling on. Or offer her an ice pack from the picnic basket. “Not trying to get in your pants.” Well, fair enough, he did mean to—just not yet. Not until when he did, she promised the first time wouldn’t be the last. “Besides, you’re injured.”

Bite by bite, she devoured a third of the turkey club. She swigged her water and smiled at him. “I can lie back and think of endorphins.”

He coughed through swallowing macaroni salad. Christ, she delighted in tempting him to step across the lines he’d set. Sex with her would be one dare after another. “I’d like our first time to rank a few rungs higher than tolerable. At least not registering on the pain scale.”

Watching him, she chewed through a few more bites. “You say first like there’s going to be a second.”

“I’m an optimist.” That he wouldn’t choke to death trying to eat a meal with her. The ham and Swiss on rye went down easier than the slippery pasta.

Katherine picked at the salad. She raised her fork with a single noodle and wrapped her mouth around the plastic, overlooking the less-than-f serving. “I haven’t.”

Backtracking gave him nothing. “Been an optimist?”

“Been hurt by an ex who lied to me or broke his promises.” She laid her fork tines-down on the lid. “That’s what you think, right? Some guy broke me and you can fix me. Because you’re a nice guy. Mr. Fix-it.”

“I don’t—”
want to fix you
. He wanted to understand her. But maybe, kind of, yeah, to fix her. To ride in all white-knight and be the hero like Sherwood instead of the Michigan Surfer Boy. Shit. No wonder he’d avoided relationship complications before. “I want to get to know you. Why you are the way you are. Is that so bad?”

“Why I am—” Her laugh echoed to the metal crossbeams in the ceiling. “Jesus. A woman can’t enjoy sex just because she does?”

“No, you can, I want you to.” Nope, making things worse. “I, not that I’m giving you permission, or—fuck.” Taking a deep breath, he reached for the calm center of the shooting range. The peaceful pause before the punch in the boxing ring. “You’re angry about sex, or dating, and I want to understand what makes you so defensive. Secretive.”

With a quiet snort, she tipped backward and lay with her knees up and her arms folded across her stomach. “Yeah, because the reaction from society is so fucking positive. A woman who likes sex is still a slut.” She snipped the “T” in a hard bite. “Even people who don’t say it are thinking it.” She stared at the ceiling. “You are.”

Christ, he’d done more than given her the wrong impression. He’d landed in the lump of sad sacks who cast judgments while they sampled the forbidden fruit. “I’m not, I swear I’m not. I just—the guys you’ve been with, none of them hurt you?”

“No.” She sighed, and the snap in her voice softened. “I’ve always been in control. They were my choices, Brian.”

He pushed the food aside and settled on his elbow beside her. “Then I don’t care who or how many. They don’t matter to me or change what I think of you.”

“My sister…” She flinched. “She married her high school sweetheart. Two weeks after graduation, both of them eighteen and dumb as fuck.”

Ouch. Her bitterness stung sure as a smattering of BB pellets on unprotected skin. He’d received the full blast more than once, courtesy of his older brother’s teenage stupidity. Katherine’s brother-in-law could’ve gotten the marriage version from one angry dad. “Shotgun wedding?”

“I wish. At least then we might’ve seen the end coming. But no.” Her breaths lifted her arms in a rolling sine rhythm. “I was twelve, and their marriage seemed like a fairy tale. The heaps of flowers, the yards of fabric on Erin’s dress—so extravagant it had to be true love, right? He was her perfect husband for three years. And on his twenty-first birthday, he walked out and never came back.”

She didn’t deviate from her cynical tone as the wave crashed in his head. The blue of her wrist brace, the slip in the mud, the anger that had driven her to swear at him and run. He’d cracked a fucking joke about wedding rings. About guaranteeing faithfulness and forever.

“My sister had a one-year-old and a nine-week-old. She and the girls moved back home. My nieces don’t remember having a father.”

He’d been half-right, at least. A guy had broken her trust. He just hadn’t been her guy. “You know you’re judging every man for one asshat who couldn’t hack responsibilities, don’t you?”

Huffing, she rolled her eyes, as rebellious as any teen. “You know not every woman’s dying for a big wedding and a bunch of babies, right?”

“Good. I don’t want a houseful of babies, either.” Just her. They’d rewrite her fairy tale with a woman who didn’t wait to be rescued and a man who wanted commitment, in whatever form it took. “And a piece of paper wouldn’t change how I feel about you. Signing on the dotted line just tells the state where my assets go and who gets to visit me in the hospital.”

* * * *

Holy—marriage.

In his casual, offhand way, he’d yanked happily-ever-after from the scrap heap and set to tinkering. He seemed to think he’d stick out a commitment without a ring and a legal obligation. As if he believed in keeping promises, too.

Heart racing, she turned liquid. Flooded with heat for a man who might stand by what he said, and—“Do you mean that? About not wanting kids?”

She prayed to God his answer would stay yes.

Propped on his elbow beside her, he squinted beneath lowered brows. “Do you?”

Ah. He hadn’t been serious. He wanted one or two, the same as most guys, enough to keep up with his married friends. He’d fallen behind on the life track. Not the future she wanted for herself. Thanks for playing, folks.

Still. Fucking him once without keeping him remained a solid option. With her good hand, she gave his shirt a teasing tug. So formal in his tucked-in button-down. The tails ought to be out. “You know how babies are made, don’t you?”

He clasped her wrist and curled her fingers away from his stomach. “Yeah, but I don’t want one.”

“Seriously?” Some kind of thing between them might just work. Without kids, without commitment, but more than a backseat fuck in a deserted parking lot.

“I’m thirty-seven.” He rocked forward and back. “I like my space.” Dragging her arm along for the ride, he gestured in wide swings as his voice picked up speed. “I like not having kiddie shit all over the place and demanding munchkins deciding what I can do and when I can do it.”

A quick shove would roll him on his back. His belt might take two hands to unfasten, but she’d be nimble despite the brace. Her jeans, though. She’d need to shimmy out of them for the main event. Lying down or stand up and give him the full ass-wiggling show?

As he caught his breath, he clamped his mouth shut and watched her with wide eyes. He peeled strong, gentle fingers from her wrist. “Sorry, I—”

“God, that’s hot.” Fuck, too much daydreaming and she’d left him wondering.

“It is?”

Yikes, he must’ve met way too many baby-hungry women. She should take him off the market, make him hers on her terms. And when he someday changed his mind and wanted a settle-down gal, she’d cut him loose.

“Nice guys always want babies.” She sneaked back to his shirt and restarted the undressing effort. “They’re all, ‘Oh, boo-hoo, I’m missing my chance at fatherhood.’” Spreading beyond the bottom button, his shirt slid out of his dress pants in a vee. A sexy patch of pale curls filled the gap. “I half-raised my sister’s kids. I don’t need my own.”

“Being Geezer Dad at graduation isn’t a dream of mine.” He ran his knuckles across her shoulder and down her bare arm to the edge of the wrist brace. “Besides, Rob and Nora plan to fill their farmhouse to the rafters. If I get a yen for fatherhood, I’ll borrow one of theirs for a day, and that’ll cure me.” On the return trip, he kept going, tickling her neck and ruffling the hair above her ear. “I didn’t look at you and say, ‘Wow, what a baby factory.’”

“Yeah? What did you say?” With a tug and a push, she freed his shirt button. Peek-a-boo, solid wall of abs.