An Accidental Gentleman (3 page)

“Go grill the damn steaks.” Nora wasted no time hollering orders. Helluva shift from the shy blusher he’d met last summer. “Beer, fridge. Steaks, grill. You, outside!”

Shit, these days she scared him more than Sherwood did. “On my way. You folks take your time, now.”

The fridge held the promised beer and a platter of beefy red beauties. He hauled both outside and fired up the grill. Fifteen minutes to kick back before that puppy heated. Bypassing the picnic table smack in the setting sun’s path across the yard, he dragged one of the sloping loungers into a shady spot on the porch and slapped his feet on the rail. Not bad. The balcony on his apartment measured three by six in a generous accounting. Rob’s place, now—room to sprawl, no neighbors setting off smoke alarms—this was the life. Except the huge fucking yard to mow.

He’d put a good sear on the steaks and lowered the temp on the grill by the time Rob trotted out, barefoot and in jeans, wrestling a T-shirt down his back. “Sorry, Surfer Boy. You drop by unannounced, you gotta expect to wait.”

He saluted with his longneck. Condensation splashed his cheek. “Husbandly duties. Far be it from me to stand in the way of a man getting some regular.”

“Regular.” Rob snorted, snatched the tongs, and prodded the meat. “With Nora, every time’s a fresh adventure. You ought to give long-term a try. Find a woman, settle down.”

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll get right on that.” The woman tonight, though. Casual competence and a brilliant smile. “I did, actually. Find one.”

“Are you bullshitting me?” Rob dropped the lid on the grill. “What’s her name?”

He scrubbed his head. Maybe a genie would pop out and deliver the answer. “I don’t know her name. Yet.” Thank God her truck offered a clue. “But I know where she works.”

“Didn’t get her name. Uh-huh.” Standing in the yard, Rob knocked Brian’s feet off the rail and planted crossed arms in their place. “Sounds like the Brian I know. Let me guess—you got distracted by her bouncy bits, deployed your tongue, and forgot to ask after.”

“Shows what you know, married man.” He swigged his beer, the last of the bottle coating his throat. Taking her at her word, mystery woman loved to fuck. Just not him. “She thinks I’m a nice guy. A smart, non-sexy nice guy. Says she doesn’t date—she fucks. I gotta find a way to get her to date me.”

Easy, except she turned him into the flustered seventh-grader clutching his math book over his intractable hard-on and rehearsing his invitation to the dance for Jenny Shlovski. He’d whiffed with his knee-slide and Bon Jovi serenade. The first girl to pick someone else over him, but not the last. At least she’d had the courtesy to tell him to his face.

Nora swished by in a blue sundress. “You sure it’s really this woman you’re interested in?” She deposited a lumpy foil packet beside the grill and plates and silverware on the picnic table. “Not the challenge of chasing her?”

“Hey, I don’t chase women.” His class clown routine roped them in and gave him his pick. Always had. Almost always. “They chase me. I’m good-time Brian, the life of the party. One and done.”

True for twenty years. If she wanted one night and he wanted the same, they could have an explosive experience. But the words tasted sour this time around. Anticipating a single all-night fuckfest ought to make him energized, not weary. At the least, the sex ought to be more enticing than a vision of her guarding his flank next summer when he walked into a gym full of balloons, streamers, and people he hadn’t talked to in those two decades.

Rob hung back and drummed his thumbs on the rail. “You do have a hard time letting a victory flag go, though.” Shading his face, the porch brought his narrowed gaze into focus. The ex-sarge’s inspection attitude signaled a demanding interrogation in the offing. “You mad she’s one-upped your usual move?”

“Whoa, unfair.” He set his empty beside the chair and rolled to his feet. He didn’t leave a string of broken hearts behind or lie to women to get them in his bed. “I’ve always made it clear up front when I wasn’t looking for more.”

“And so is she.” Nora, plates distributed, had claimed a corner of the picnic bench. Frowning, she rubbed her stomach. “What, a woman can’t be looking to skip the date and go straight to the after-party?”

“Not this woman.” The answer punched out without a speck of thought, faster than a Navy fighter catapulting off the boat and twice as cocky.

Mouth clamped tight, Nora stalked past him and into the house. Hawk-alert, Rob stared after her. The screen snapped and bounced twice in the frame before settling.

His unaccustomed defensiveness retreated into a touch of panic. Rob had been closer than his brothers for twenty years, and in the last year Nora had become the closest he’d ever had to a woman friend. “Shit, did I piss off your wife?”

Rob quirked his lips and shook the tension off his shoulders. “She’d let you have it if you did.” Meandering to the grill, he waved him over. “Tell me about this woman.”

Where to start, Christ. He hopped the porch rail and landed in a crouch on the grass. This woman out-toughed the obstacle course at Lackland, and he quailed before the flutter in his chest. “She’s got this no-nonsense tone, but then she’ll throw a deep curve on it and fire a sly laugh in the pocket.” As Rob lifted the silver lid and the last rays of sunlight flashed, he circled the smoke. “She talks like she’s got places to be, and I want to be the place she’s going.”

“Conversation, laughter…” Grill sizzling as fat burst into flame, Rob snatched the steaks clear. He tossed the foil packet in. “What’s she smell like?”

“Sweet and thick.” Mmm, yeah, she did. Her short-cropped hair made her neck a tempting target. “Pineapple, salt, and motor oil.”

Tongs frozen in hand, Rob stared.

“What?” Brian yanked his shirt from his jeans and stretched out the tails. The spare’s tread pattern across his chest would give his dry cleaner fits. “She was fixing a car when I met her.”

Rob took his time tenting the steaks under foil and slotting the tongs over the tool rod. “You know this is the first time you’ve described a woman you wanted to bang and didn’t lead off with the size of her tits?”

They’d landed in the same training squadron as eighteen-year-olds. Longer ago now than the years they’d counted behind them then. The charge couldn’t be true—but Sherwood didn’t lie, and no name came to mind to refute him. “Maybe.”

Feet planted at-ease, Rob crossed his arms. The screen door claimed his full attention. “Conversation. Laughter. Scent. My daddy told me that’s how you know you’ve found the right woman.”

Right meaning Nora. Marriage. A house together. The total commitment to one woman for the rest of his life. Fuck no, not for him. Maturing beyond banging a nameless woman along the side of the road didn’t transform him into a slack-jawed, yes-dear spouter. He tamped down a patch of uneven grass. “My dad advised me to ‘clean up your act, you smart-assed punk, and stay out of jail.’”

The screen crept open, Nora leading with her back and making a slow turn. An oversized salad bowl occupied both hands.

“Flip the veggies in a minute.” Rob shoved his shoulder and hustled to the porch steps. “You all right?” He jammed the bowl in the crook of his elbow. “Let me take that. You need anything?”

Smile growing, Nora gripped his free arm and descended. “I just got a little queasy. We’re fine.”

“Sure?” Rob rubbed her stomach, his broad hand flattening her dress to her body. Her not-quite-flat body.

“Holy shit. You two are growing a baby?” They didn’t waste time. Engaged at Christmas, married at New Year’s, a squaller any flipping minute. Guess the newlywed honeymoon phase— “Goddamn, Rob, you were fucking your wife when I got here. What if you hurt the kid? Shit, should she sit down? Nora, get off your feet.”

“Oh God, now I have two of you to contend with.” Burying her face in Rob’s chest, Nora slapped her husband’s shoulder and laughed. “Rob, you tell him the ground rules, because I’m not putting up with male nonsense for the next six months.”

“I will. Promise.” Salad in one arm, wife in the other, Rob kissed the top of her head. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?”

As Nora delivered a proper kiss, Brian turned his back and flipped the foil pack. A baby, hell, that’d be over the top. But the easy trust and friendship with a woman? A dinner companion and bed partner who got beyond, “So, what do you do?” and “Where’s the condom?”

Envy flickered quick as the lightning bugs buzzing around the lawn in a mating dance. The first star winked into existence past the roofline. Pretty as a fucking postcard.
Wish you were here.

* * * *

Kit closed the door behind herself and leaned against the wood in the house’s last refuge. The girls’ clutter covered the sink surround, and the extra towel bars created dual-level drapery for the peach walls, but the bathroom came the closest to privacy in a home crowding six.

Washing up for dinner hadn’t cleared the road grime and stray grease streaks from her knees and elbows. A hot shower would soothe tight shoulders, too. Knocking the lug nuts loose had demanded brute strength.

She dropped her clothes in a heap and cranked the shower. Too tall, more giraffe than gazelle in school, her lanky height a deterrent for teen boys whose insecurities ran as deep as the girls’. She owned her skin now, all five-foot-nine of her from pixie cut and freckles to rounded biceps and nick-scarred fingers to padded thighs and arched soles.

Prince Charming had noticed. His roaming gaze had crisscrossed the border between blatant and subtle often enough to unlace a thousand inhibitions, but his move had been a polite request for a date. She intimidated him. Too much for his nice-guy sensibilities.

On a Saturday night at the dirt track, she’d have grabbed him by the front of his white-collar button-down and dragged him out to his car for a hard-and-fast fuck. Sat on the trunk, worked his jeans open, and played with the cock bulging beneath denim.

He’d tried hiding those flashes of interest. As if she hadn’t stolen glances of her own. Crouched beside her, one knee down as he hefted the spare, he’d managed a simultaneous stiff declaration and hair-sniff.

Hot water blasted her tight back. No—a sun-warmed car trunk. She propped her feet on the bumper as he muscled between her legs. Thick and solid, he claimed the space in a wrangle of teasing pressure. Rough and dragging, he popped her fly and unzipped her shorts.

“This what you want, Kit?” Her gruff gentleman asked and assumed in the same motion.

She climbed his sturdy frame, hooking her legs around his waist. Her ass lifted off the car. “What do you think?”

With a sharp yank, he shoved her shorts and panties to her knees. Locking them together, he drove her legs to her chest with his weight. “I think I’m gonna take what you’re offering.”

Dragged to the edge, hot and wet, she flexed into his first plunge.

He sucked the salt from her neck, his hips snapping an unstoppable rhythm. Their sweat steamed the air.

“One time only.” She huffed half-truths through short breaths. One night, but she’d take him as often as he managed to stand up for her before dawn. “Better make this count.”

“You counting?” Perfect and relentless, he pumped. The tendons in his neck strained. “Count for me, Kit. Every thrust.”

“One.” She rose and met him in the squeeze between his body and the hot metal.

“Two.” Rocket fuel raced along her blood vessels.

He clamped his teeth in the curve of shoulder and neck. His breath soaked into her bones. Their bodies rattled the car, challenging the suspension to keep up.

“Three.” His fine hair defied her. She scrabbled for purchase. “Four.”

“You can count faster than that, Katherine.” He drove her hands down and pinned her wrists. Their arms lined up, his blond fuzz atop her freckled tan, same length, same muscled strength. Her world ignited.

“Aunt Kit!”

Her back thudded against the plastic tub-shower combo. Frantic fingers froze. As the door banged the wall, a blast of cool hallway air rustled the shower curtain.

“Have you seen my aqua scoop neck? I need it for tomorrow.” Abby talked a mile a minute while cabinet doors opened and slammed. “Jess swore she didn’t take it, but she’s a liar, and I know…”

Flinging the handle to cool, Kit pounded her fist on her thigh. So damn close.

The teenage diatribe dragged on. “…that time she stole my red top, you know, the one with the white flowers.”

Good God, an opening. “Did you check the hamper? If your mom or grandma found a shirt on the floor, that’s where it’d go.”

“Thanks, Aunt Kit.” The shout faded in retreat as feet scampered down the creaky hall.

The shower curtain still rustled. She launched a desperate plea. “And close the door!”

The creaks returned. Sans apology, but the bathroom door clicked shut.

Too late. Her Brian-gasm had disappeared. Furtive strokes under the bedcovers or a Saturday night hookup might restore the passion, but shower satisfaction soared out of reach.

Didn’t matter. Condomless car sex with her hot-as-fuck bad boy belonged to fantasies. Brian was a nice guy. And he didn’t even know her name.

Cruising slow, Brian circled past the faded yellow-brick drugstore and came around the block again. At the consignment store with bright summer clothes on display, he slipped the car into the parking lane and inched forward.

Runyon’s Repairs occupied the first floor of a red brick tri-story so old the side wall boasted faded advertisements for refreshing Coca-Cola and whites-whiter, colors-brighter Borax. Fancy pavers, swept free of street litter, lined the sidewalk out front. A “closed” sign hung on the door.

Thank Christ. The shop lacked a website or any online presence, and he had no reason to show up on a Monday after work—or any time, truly, given Ms. Fix-it’s rejection. Better to survey the landscape in the clear before confronting his hostile quarry.

Ducking and staring through the lowered passenger window limited his view to a narrow strip of storefront. An old typewriter occupied one display. Model trains and slot cars seemed poised to race in the other.