Naked (4 page)

“What the hell.” He plucked it from the fork and ate it from his fingers.

I watched his lips close over his fingertips and suck away the soy sauce. Warmth swirled inside me, which was stupid, but hey, a girl can look even if she can’t touch. We both finished our orange juice at the same time.

Then we sat in silence. Alex might be trouble, but he sure wasn’t chatty. Not that I got a snobby vibe off him or anything, as if he just didn’t want to talk to me. More like he wasn’t sure what to say.

“How do you know Patrick?” It was ask or leave the kitchen for the chilly wilds of upstairs, where I’d have to dress and go into the colder outdoors to head home. Besides, I wanted to know.

“We met in Japan.”

“You work for Quinto and Bates?” That was the law firm where Patrick worked.

He shook his head. “No, I was brought in as a consult with Damsmithon Industries while Patrick was there for the international business meeting.”

“So you’re not a lawyer.” I swirled a finger in the remains of the pot sticker juice in the bottom of the container. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but couldn’t resist the savory tang.

He laughed. “Hell, no. But Patrick and I hit it off, hung out after the meetings. Kept in touch. When I told him I was coming back to the States he said I should stop by to see him.”

All of this didn’t sound like it should go along with the image of Patrick’s face and his warning to me about Alex being trouble. “So…you’re friends?”

“What exactly did Patrick say about me?” Alex’s bangs fell down again, and he didn’t brush them away.

I paused for a second before answering. “Not much, actually.”

Which wasn’t like Patrick at all. He usually had something to say about everybody, and if he didn’t have anything, sometimes he made stuff up. I pondered this while Alex got up and went to the fridge. Patrick had warned me away from Alex, but hadn’t given me details. No gossip. Strange.

Alex brought back the pitcher of juice and a tinfoil-covered plate of cookies that had escaped my notice. He offered them to me first, and don’t think I didn’t notice that he had manners. I didn’t pretend to myself or him that I shouldn’t eat any cookies. It was too late for that. Come January I’d be moaning about the size of my ass, but so would everyone else I knew, whether it was warranted or not.

I picked up a gingerbread man with a huge erect cock. “Hmm. Normally I bite the heads off first, but…”

Alex snorted and picked up one for himself. “Now there’s a dilemma.”

We were still laughing when Patrick came down the back stairs. He wore a silk kimono and a bleary expression. His blond hair stuck up in corkscrews all over the place. He gave us both an imperious look from his spot on the last step.

“We can hear you all the way upstairs.”

“Sorry.” Alex sounded contrite.

I didn’t bother. “Oh, Patrick. C’mon. It’s, like, noon already. Get your lazy ass up and about.”

Patrick yawned broadly and swept past me, then turned to give me a real glare. “You didn’t even make coffee?”

“Your fucking machine is too complicated,” I told him fondly, though of course he knew that, and of course he was still miffed that I hadn’t started it brewing for him.

“I’ll do it,” Alex said, and was up and around the table before either Patrick or I could do more than blink at each other in surprise. “I should’ve thought of it, man. I’m sorry.”

I raised a brow at this sudden leap to obsequiousness, but hell. I didn’t know the guy beyond what? A warning, a karaoke serenade and a drunken blow job in a dark room. He hadn’t quite seemed the servile type to me, but then I was forever being surprised by what I didn’t expect.

“Thank you,” Patrick said a little stiffly. “Alex, this is Olivia Mackey. Olivia, Alex Kennedy. Olivia is an independent contractor with her own graphic design company, and Alex does consulting for several international corporations.”

Coffeepot carafe filled with water in his hand, Alex turned while Patrick made the cocktail party introductions. He and I shared a look past Patrick’s kimono. I gave Alex a tiny shrug. I didn’t get it, either.

“We met,” I told Patrick. “What is up with you?”

“I’m just being a good host.”

“Thanks, Patrick,” Alex said, and set about making the coffee.

He figured out his way around Patrick’s kitchen, faltering only once, when he opened the wrong cupboard to pull out the coffee pods, and found the spice jars, instead. I turned in
my chair to watch him. He was no casual houseguest. He knew how to make himself at home.

Patrick and I could hold entire conversations without words, but this morning he was deliberately not giving me the right signals. Or he was misreading mine. He could be selective that way. Before I could get him to tell me what the hell was going on, Alex turned from the coffeemaker.

“Anyone hungry for pancakes?”

“I couldn’t,” I exclaimed.

Just as Patrick said, “Alex, you’re a darling.”

Patrick looked at Alex. Alex looked at me. I looked at Patrick.

“Actually,” I said, “I should get going. I’ve got some work to do—”

“On Sunday?” Patrick asked incredulously. “What’s the point of working for yourself if you can’t take the weekend off?”

I stood and stretched. “The point of working for myself is that I can work whenever I want.”

“Yeah, and work whenever you have to.” Alex leaned against the counter, one long leg crossed over the other at the ankles.

I nodded. He understood. Patrick, who worked eighty-hour weeks but also took a month’s vacation every year, understood the importance of hard work, but would probably never comprehend why I’d quit a stable salary to go out on my own.

I hugged my former boyfriend and kissed his cheek. Patrick softened, finally, his embrace unwilling but inevitable. He held my face still and looked into my eyes.

“Don’t work too much, Livvy. It’s the holidays.”

I put my hands over his on my cheeks and carefully peeled away his fingers to release his grip. “You want me to take back all the presents I bought you?”

He laughed the first real Patrick laugh I’d heard in a few days, and squeezed me close. He whispered in my ear, “Remember what I said.”

Most of the time when Patrick hugged me I could take it for what it was—a physical expression of the affection and love between two friends. Platonic friends. And then there were the times when I breathed in the scent of him, the cologne I bought for him so many years ago and which he’d never switched from, even though he could afford something trendier and more expensive. When I felt the press of his body along mine and I had to close my eyes and remind myself to let him go, and when I found it almost impossible to do so.

Still locked in Patrick’s arms, I forced myself to open my eyes. Alex’s gaze found mine over Patrick’s shoulder. With that scrutiny as motivation, I patted Patrick’s back quickly and stepped away, hoping my nipples weren’t hard through my T-shirt or that my cheeks weren’t as flushed as they felt.

Patrick caught my wrist before I could get entirely away. “Stay for a while. It’s Sunday.”

“Patrick…”

He didn’t let go. “Alex, tell Liv she should stay.”

“Olivia. You should stay.” Alex, still leaning, smiled.

I smiled, too, even as I turned and gave Patrick a good, hard poke. “I have a life, Patrick.”

He scoffed. “What are you going to do today? Hang around that cold apartment and fiddle with your pictures? She’s a photographer,” he added for Alex’s benefit, and jabbed at my ribs.

“Cool. What do you take pictures of?”

“Everything!” I said over my shoulder as I tried to dance out of the way of Patrick’s poking fingers.

I looked at him, hard. Last night he’d warned me off Alex as though my mortal soul depended on it, and now he was begging me to hang around for the day. Of course, he often persuaded me to stay longer than I’d intended, and often I let him. But I did have work to do in my studio, which wouldn’t paint or clean itself, and which had been sadly neglected since I’d bought it six months before.

“Patrick…”

Knowing he was manipulating me didn’t make it any easier to resist him. When he flashed me the familiar pout, the one that had always swayed me, I sighed. I glanced at Alex, who was watching us both with an expression I could only describe as intrigued.

“Alex is making pancakes,” Patrick said.

I looked at Patrick. Patrick looked at Alex. And Alex…Alex looked at me.

“I am,” he said. “And I’m really good at it.”

I knew enough to admit defeat.

“Fine, but I’m taking the first shower, and I don’t care if you run out of hot water,” I told Patrick, who smirked how he always did when he got his way.

Upstairs I bumped into Teddy coming out of his bedroom.

“You’re staying?”

Another man might have hated the fact I was still so much a part of Patrick’s life, but not Teddy. But then I’d never seen him hate anything. Teddy fully believed in that crap about lemons and life.

“Yeah. Just for a little while. I do have to get home tonight.”

He laughed. “You should move back up here, Liv. It wouldn’t be such a long drive then.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re as bad as he is. Annville’s only half an hour away, for crying out loud.”

Teddy had spent his entire life in Central Pennsylvania, a place where crossing the Susquehanna River could be considered entering a whole new world. He grinned. “But it’s Annville.”

“Pfft.” I waved a hand. “I’m taking a shower. I hear there are pancakes in the making.”

Teddy rubbed his stomach. “Yum. Our guest, I assume, not our beloved Patrick.”

Patrick never cooked. “Yeah. Hey, Teddy…” I paused and leaned against the doorjamb to my room. “What’s the story with him, anyway?”

“Alex?”

“Yeah.”

Teddy shrugged and his smile became a tiny bit strained. “He’s a friend of Patrick’s. He needed a place to crash. He’s only going to be here for a few more days. Nice guy.”

That answer floated between us, a bit of fluff on a current of not-going-to-bring-up-certain-topics. The topic in question being why Patrick felt he had any right or interest in my love life, or lack thereof. I shrugged, finally, because sometimes you simply have to put aside things that have no answer.

“Taking a shower,” I said, and Teddy left me so I could.

Forty-five minutes later, my stomach full of pancakes and turkey bacon and good, strong coffee, I was attempting to kick Alex’s ass at
Dance Dance Revolution
and failing pretty miserably.
I had Teddy beat, and was pretty well matched with Patrick, but Alex…he was a superstar.

“My feet keep slipping on the dance pad,” I complained, out of breath.

“I’ll set myself to advanced,” Alex offered with a wicked gleam in his eye. He was practically rubbing his hands together and twirling an imaginary mustache. “You can stay at basic.”

I wasn’t going to turn down that offer. “You’re on.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you start playing,” Patrick said from his place on the couch, where he was reading a thick paperback novel.

At the sound of affectionate amusement in his tone, I looked at him while Alex used the Wii remote to switch the settings. Patrick, bundled under a heavy quilt, had gone back to his book. Teddy’d disappeared, probably to play
The Sims
on his computer upstairs. And Alex and I were playing
DDR.
It was a picture of lazy Sunday bliss, so why did suddenly it all feel so…wrong?

“Olivia?”

I turned at Alex’s question and flashed him a smile I couldn’t be sure looked real. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

He tilted his head the tiniest bit. “You want to take a break?”

Patrick must have heard concern in Alex’s tone, because he looked up again. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” I waved a hand. “Too many pancakes. Let’s go.”

Alex had changed out of his Hello Kitty pajamas and into a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, but his feet were still bare. He tapped one against the dance pad, but didn’t start the next song. He looked from me to Patrick.

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

But there was no way I could beat him, even with the different levels set to make it more to my advantage. I was distracted by the sudden, unexpected wave of nostalgia and something else, something I couldn’t parse. My performance was sucktastic.

“I think you’re letting me win,” Alex said.

Patrick scoffed from the couch. “Olivia never lets anyone win. Take your victory and savor it.”

I gave Patrick a narrow-eyed glance. His teasing had a ring of truth to it that sat wrong with me. “I should get going.”

This got Patrick’s attention, and he looked up. “Now? I thought you’d stay for dinner, at least. Alex says he’s going to cook lamb chops.”

Alex laughed. “Dude.”

I looked at him. “Now you know the real reason he’s letting you stay.”

My teasing, too, had a ring of truth to it, but Patrick didn’t seem to care.

“It’s okay. I like to cook.”

In the background, the music of the game blared on and on, though I couldn’t blame my inching headache on that. I looked at Patrick again, settled so neatly on his couch with his book, and his friends around him, catering to him. Giving him whatever he wanted. Patrick annoyed me sometimes, the way anyone can on occasion. I hadn’t hated him in a long time, but I remembered, suddenly, how it felt to hate him.

“I’m sure they’ll be delicious, Alex, but I can’t stay. It was nice meeting you.” I reached for his hand, and he took mine. Shook it firmly and let it drop.

He put his palms on his hips. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

“Well, if you ever come back to visit Patrick, I’m sure you will.” I was already turning to go.

“I’m staying in the area, actually. I got another consulting job. Just short-term.”

I paused. Patrick looked up. He put down his book.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“My contact with Hershey Foods just got back to me,” Alex said. “I’ll be here for about six months. Maybe eight, depending.”

This caught Patrick’s attention and he sat straight up. “Where are you staying?”