ClarenceBN (4 page)

“Yeah,” he managed to say. He knew that—Mikey would wake up some more or someone would show up with a kid or, God forbid, Tara would get here and catch Clarence and Tammy in this position. But he didn’t let go of her, not yet. He held her to his chest and tried to get his pulse to go back to normal.

He didn’t know how he was going to do that. He didn’t feel normal, not anymore.

“Maybe,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest, “I’ll get here a few minutes early tomorrow. For the coffee.”

“Yeah. It’s great coffee,” he lied. He swallowed, trying to sound less like a love-struck teenager and more like a grown man, for crying out loud. “I can bring you coffee. While you’re watching Mikey.” He swallowed again.
 

“Right. Mikey.” When she pushed this time, he took a step back. “I need to keep an eye on him. When he wakes up . . .”

“Yeah,” Clarence nodded, like he knew what she meant. “You go. I’ll be over in a moment. With the coffee.”

She giggled. Then they heard Mikey call, “Mommy? Mommy!”

“Oops.” Tammy hurried back into the Center, leaving Clarence alone with his hormones.
 

It didn’t seem right that a woman as sweet and soft as Tammy could give him such a raging hard-on, but the proof was not only unavoidable, it was making walking damn inconvenient at the moment.
 

Somehow, Clarence got back to the coffeemaker, which had finished. He poured her a big mug and then forced himself to swig some down. The sweetness was pretty much how he remembered it. “Ugh,” he said, trying to get the taste off his tongue. But it worked. It was hard to think about sex when his taste buds were trying to commit suicide.

He poured a second mug for Tammy and then dumped the rest of the coffee down the sink. He filled the carafe with water and ran it plain. Maybe that would flush the flavor out of the thing. If not, he was going to have to come up with a plan. Coffee makers were, what? Twenty, thirty bucks? He could buy a new one to make Dr. Mitchell and Tara less bitchy. Might be worth it.

He carried both the mugs over. No one else had shown up. Mikey was now back on the floor, making more ‘Vroom!’ noises as he raced the new truck around in circles. Tammy was sitting in the middle of the couch, looking like she couldn’t believe what had just happened.

Clarence hesitated, then made a decision. He walked toward her, stepped over Mikey and sat down on the couch next to her. “Here,” he said, handing her the first mug.

“Thank you,” she murmured, leaning toward him ever so slightly. Her shoulder touched his.
 

“Welcome.”
 

“Mikey,” she said, sounding more like her normal self, “what do you need to say to Mr. Clarence?”

“Pease Tank You,” Mikey said without looking up.

Clarence laughed. “Yeah, he’s got the basics down.” Then he pitched his voice down to a whisper. “I got some more cars and stuff at home, if that’ll help keep him happy while we discuss . . . coffee.”

A fire-red blush raced over Tammy’s cheeks as she studied her mug.
Damn
, Clarence thought. Too much. He’d scared her off.

“You’re going to spoil him,” she said in a too-quiet voice.
 

“Oh. Okay. No problem.” How had he screwed this up? He couldn’t even tell which part he’d screwed up. Did she not like the implication that they wouldn’t discuss coffee at all or him getting toys for the kid? Or, worse—both?

They sat there for a moment in tense silence, watching the boy play. Mikey was definitely waking up. Each ‘Vroom’ was getting louder and the path of the car getting wilder. Clarence could see how it wouldn’t be much longer before he was knocking shelves over again.

Outside, a car door shut. “I better go.” If it was a parent with a kid, Tammy would need to focus. And if it was Tara, Clarence needed to get the hell away from Tammy. “You want me to leave you this second cup?”

That got her to look up. “Do you mind?”

“Nope. I got it for you. I’m just glad you like it.”

She dropped her gaze again, but he saw this time she was smiling in that small way of hers.
 

Clarence decided to beat a retreat before he did something else stupid. He got back into the Clinic side just as Tara was walking through the door. “What’s up?” she asked, eying him suspiciously.
 

“Nothing,” Clarence defended, probably too quickly.

“Really,” Tara said, clearly not buying it. “Did you make more of that God-awful coffee?”

“I’m cleaning out the pot,” he said, heading back to do just that.

“What the hell, Clarence? Why are you destroying the coffee maker? You can’t like that crap.”

“I’ll fix it,” he called back. Eventually. He really didn’t want to drive back to Rapid City tonight, too. He wanted to do his time and then go to sleep for as long as possible.

Tara muttered something that sounded like a curse behind him, but he ignored her. After almost five years of working together, he was good at it.
 

He knew a lot about Tara. She had a girl named Nelly with Rebel’s brother Jesse, although they didn’t live together now. Tara had finished some secretarial classes and knew how to file. She ran the business side of the clinic well, so Clarence couldn’t complain too much. Before Tara had taken over, he’d been trying to do the paperwork and the nursing, and he wasn’t any good at paperwork.

But what did he know about Tammy? She was younger than Tara by a couple of years. She lived with her mom. She had Mikey, who was three or four. Mikey’s father was a dickbag and basically out of the picture.

But beyond that, he actually didn’t know much about her. She got along okay with Tara. At the very least, Tara didn’t spend much time complaining about Tammy. She saved that for Jesse.
 

How old was Tammy? Had she gone to college? She couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Could she really be interested in an old man like Clarence? He was pushing forty and most days, forty felt a hell of a lot like it was pushing back.
 

The coffee pot was done running the water. Clarence dumped it and made coffee with the regular stuff. He hoped it didn’t taste too funny. He really needed the caffeine at this point.

Once it was going again, he turned back to his work. And about jumped out of his scrubs when he found himself face to face with Tara. “What?” he demanded defensively.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“What do you mean, what’s going on? I’m making coffee.”

“And you’re doing a damn lousy job of it.” Tara looked him up and down, as if she could see evidence of the kiss on his scrubs. “Is there something going on between you and Tammy?”

Clarence panicked, which was ridiculous. He’d sewn guys back together who’d accidentally discharged their weapons or walked into a rotor blade back when he’d been in the Navy. He should not be scared of a receptionist with an attitude problem.

But he was. Tara was the biggest obstacle he had to get around to get to Tammy. He didn’t want to say
no
because that wasn’t true and if Tara told Tammy what he said, it might make Tammy mad. But he didn’t want to say
yes
either, because he did not need to deal with Tara all day long—all week long. It was only Tuesday.

So instead, he said, “Why would you think that?” and tried to shove his way past Tara.
 

“Because . . .” Tara followed him as he headed for the supply closet. “You never make me coffee and you never make Dr. Mitchell coffee.”

“Bull. I make coffee.”

“You
like
Tammy?” Tara said it like she had discovered a grass snake in her shoe. “
Seriously
?”

“I got work to do.” At this point, he would scrub toilets with a toothbrush if it got him out of this conversation.
 

He unloaded the sterilizer and tried real hard to ignore the pricking at the back of his neck that meant that Tara was glaring at him. He was not having this conversation, not with Tara—not with anyone.
 

They stood there like that, him unloading the sterilizer and Tara trying to stare him to death, for a good two or three minutes before she said, “You break my baby sister’s heart and you’ll have to deal with me.”

Like that was a news flash. “First off, I already deal with you five days out of the week, so if you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing a lousy job of it.” Which was only partly true. He knew that, if Tara put her mind to it, she could make his life a living hell. “Second off, I’m not out to break anyone’s heart.” Especially not Tammy’s. But he kept that part to himself. He gathered up his clean instruments and said, “Now, if you don’t mind, I have a Clinic to run.”

He was surprised to see a confused look on Tara’s face, like she wasn’t sure if she could trust him or not. He shouldered past her and began to get things set up.
 

She walked past him and, after only a moment’s hesitation, sat down at her desk and began to pull files. Which meant she was going to let it drop.

For now.

He didn’t know how long of a reprieve he had.

Chapter Four

“Mommy?” Mikey said in his almost-awake voice when he got up from his nap.

“Yes, baby?”

He gave her the look that, in a mere ten years, would morph into a true teenage eyeroll. “I’m not a baby, Mommy.”

She swooped him into her arms and kissed him. “You’ll always be my baby, baby.” He shrieked and giggled as he squirmed in her arms, but he didn’t break free. “Now, what’s up?”

“Is Mr. Carence gonna keep bringing me toys?”

It wasn’t exactly the $10,000 question, but it was maybe the $1,000 follow-up question. Because it sure seemed like Mikey getting presents went along with Tammy getting that sweet coffee—which all seemed to fall away under the $100,000 question—Was Clarence going to kiss her again?
 

No, that wasn’t really the question. The real question was, was Clarence just playing—or was there something more to that kiss, those cups of fancy coffee?

Tammy had been played once. She had no desire to repeat the experience.

But she had a lot of desire, actually. Desire that she worked very hard at ignoring because the last time she’d followed her heart over the edge, she’d wound up pregnant and alone at twenty.
 

She had absolutely no desire to be pregnant and alone—again—at twenty-four.

“I don’t know, baby. But maybe we should write a thank-you letter to Mr. Clarence. It’s always good to thank someone. Why don’t you find some paper and draw him a picture?”

Mikey hopped down and went to look for his crayons. And, just like she had approximately every thirty seconds all day long, Tammy thought back to the kiss.

The
kiss. The one that had probably been far too long and had definitely also been way,
way
too short.
 

Clarence had kissed her. Yesterday he’d touched her lip and then licked his thumb and today he’d skipped the middle part and just licked her lips. God, just thinking about it sent a rush of heat straight through her.
 

Rationally, she knew it’d been a stupid thing to do. Kissing a man—even if it was Clarence—in the middle of the Clinic while pointedly not doing her job—watching her own son—in the Center? Yeah, that’s how people got fired.
 

But rationale had very little to do with things right now. It was always good to thank someone when they did something nice for you—and hadn’t that been what the kiss was about?
 

She smiled at that little lie. Because it wasn’t, not really. That kiss had been about possibly everything in the world
except
coffee.
 

It’d been about want and need and lust and maybe—just maybe—something more.
 

For the first time in years, Tammy had felt wanted and needed. And it’d felt
good
. Most days, it felt like she had everything going against her—she wasn’t rich, tall, thin or pretty and who could forget the single-mother part?

But today? Yesterday?

She hadn’t felt like any of those things. She’d felt like someone who could still feel love. Who could still
be
loved.

Now what? It was all very well and good for a cup of coffee and a kiss to happen in the Clinic—but the kiss was pushing it. Even though she knew the Mitchell sisters needed her and Clarence to keep each side of the place running, Tammy couldn’t imagine that the two women would turn a blind eye to their employees getting it on in a supply closet.
 

Tammy sighed. She wanted to see where this thing with Clarence was going but . . . She lived with her mother and her sister—privacy was at a minimum. Her mom had a job pulling the night shift at a convenience store and Tara took her daughter Nelly over to see her father Jesse in the evenings. And of course, paying for a sitter wasn’t an option, not on her budget.

“I drew Mr. Carence a picture of my truck!” Mikey announced, which snapped Tammy out of her thoughts.
 

She needed to get dinner going. “That’s great, baby. Can you write your name on it?”