Not Quite Perfect (Not Quite Series Book 5) (12 page)

“Did you have something in mind for food?” she asked.

“Leaving that up to you. I picked last weekend.”

She glanced around before grabbing his hand and pulling him into a Mexican restaurant.

Mary liked her food spicy. She splashed hot sauce all over everything and didn’t break a sweat when she popped a jalapeño in her mouth.

They had just enough time to walk to the launch ramp and grab a water taxi.

The sailboat was large enough to have a small galley and a place for Mary to change. A crew of three waited to take the two of them halfway around the island to where only the sound of the waves hitting the hull would distract them. Mary emerged wearing a cover-up over the patches of red material Glen had all but burned into his memory.

“If you two are ready,” the captain said once they were both seated.

Glen rested his arm on the side of the boat and encouraged Mary to sit back. “You’ll love this,” he said so only she could hear.

“Good thing I don’t turn green on boats or this day would have been ruined.”

Glen placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her into his side. She fit, perfectly.

The crew hoisted the sails and the material caught the wind. The wind also caught Mary’s cover-up and Glen was treated with an up close vision that a camera couldn’t do justice to. Mary tilted her face to the wind and the salt spray hit her closed eyes.

They spotted a pod of dolphins . . . or did they call it a school? Glen didn’t know, and the two of them debated it for ten minutes before attempting to look up the information on their phones. But a signal was nonexistent, which had them both turning off their phones and putting them away for the duration.

Mary removed a tube of suntan lotion from her bag and distracted him by running a generous portion down her legs and over her arms. “Did you hear what I said?”

He almost said yes . . . then realized he had no idea what she’d just said. “No. I’m having a hard time hearing anything with you doing that.”

She slid her arms out of her cover-up and let it drop around her waist, and Glen’s brain fried. She was beautiful, curvy in all the right places, slender in all the others. His mouth watered. “You have a picture in your phone.”

He let his eyes drop for a nanosecond and promised himself a longer look when she wasn’t watching him. “It isn’t the same.”

“It’s just a bathing suit.”

“It’s not the suit.”

Maybe it was the reflection of the sun off the water, but he swore she blushed. “How is it you’re not used to compliments?”

She continued with the lotion, this time higher on her thighs. The tips of her fingers moving between the material and her skin.

Lucky fingertips.

“I don’t get them as often as you might believe.”

He waited for her to struggle with the spaces she couldn’t reach, and took the liberty of removing the tube from her hand. “Then you either don’t wear a bikini when you’re swimming or you’re hanging out with the wrong men.”

She pulled her hair over her shoulder and presented him with her back. Her skin was soft and warm . . . his hands covered her shoulders and rubbed the lotion in with slow, strong strokes. He figured as long as she was getting a massage out of the application, she wouldn’t realize how much time it took for him to apply the SPF 30. So he used his thumbs up the edges of her delicate spine and rolled the tension up her neck and back down. Mary stopped talking and moaned.

That simple noise took his semi–state of arousal into high gear and had him sucking in a deep breath.

Get ahold of yourself, bud!

Talking to himself, in his head, wasn’t new. In fact, it was becoming a necessary part of dating Mary. He promised himself he’d take it slow, not scare her off. They had too many mutual friends and too much chemistry to push this fast.

Mary was quickly turning to putty in his hands.

“How about I lie down and you do that for an hour.”

“Because we have an audience and I don’t trust myself to do this that long and remain a gentleman.”

She passed a look over her shoulder of complete trust. “You surprise me.”

He moved quicker to avoid his hard-on becoming more prominent. “Oh, how so?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t think you’d be so careful with me.”

“What did you expect?”

She leaned back to say something in his ear when her arm brushed against his erection.

He didn’t move a muscle and she delivered a knowing grin. “I expected you to think a little more with that.”

“
That
has a mind of its own. I don’t always listen.”

Mary’s hand dropped to his thigh. She nodded over the side. “The water’s kinda chilly, you know . . . if you need to cool off.” The woman loved to tease him.

Instead of asking the crew to lower the sail, he took Mary by the waist, not allowing her to put that damn wrap back on, and slid her close. “I have a better idea. How about you sit right here until this goes away so I don’t embarrass myself.”

She snuggled close. “Sometimes it’s nice to be a girl. We can be turned on and no one knows it.”

He glanced down the length of her body and let his fingers resting at her side squeeze her hip. “Your nipples are straining . . . and it’s not cold out here.”

He kept her arm from crossing over her chest. “Oh, no you don’t.”

“I am cold,” she told him.

“That was a lie.”

She shivered, but there wasn’t an inch of gooseflesh on her exposed skin.

Chapter Thirteen

Mary woke from her dream still feeling the roll of the ocean under her from the day she’d spent on the water with Glen. And she was aroused. Painfully.

They’d returned to the harbor, caught the charter back to the mainland, where they’d enjoyed a casual dinner before he drove her home.

He walked her to the door and kissed her like a lovestruck teenage kid, his hands just shy of rounding all the bases, before his strangled words ended their night.

And Mary, as improper as she could be at times, didn’t take matters into her own hands and pull him inside. Instead, she waved good-bye and ended the night with a cold shower of her own.

Only now, at two in the morning, she was hot and awake and completely frustrated. She flipped her pillow to the cool side, pounded it with her fist, and forced her thoughts away from the man whose smile made her body weep.

“I’m going to have a talk with that man if he doesn’t step up!” Dakota’s words first thing in the morning would have been appreciated if they weren’t being delivered so early.

“And what exactly would you say?”

Dakota was moving around really well on the crutches. Walt and Leo were having a little father/son time bonding on a Sunday morning so Dakota could get the weekend scoop at the crack of dawn.

“I’d tell him that you are
not
the one to make the first move.”

“I
can
make the first move.”

Dakota deflated that with a stare.

“I could if I wanted to.”

“How long have we known each other?” Dakota asked.

“Six years.”

“And how many times in those six years have you made the first move?”

She cringed. “I was raised by nuns.”

“It’s a wonder—”

“Oh my God, I forgot to tell you,” Mary interrupted her. “Mary Frances is dating.”

Dakota’s jaw dropped.

“I know! That’s exactly what my reaction was. Dating, Dakota. Like having coffee and pie with a widower.”

“Pie the night before and coffee in the morning kind of dating?”

Mary couldn’t help but wonder if it was her BFF’s influence that had her asking the same question earlier in the week.

“She denied that.”

“You asked her?”

“I was stunned. I asked her all kinds of things I probably shouldn’t have.”

“I wanna meet him,” Dakota announced. “What kind of guy dates an ex-nun? How old is Mary Frances?”

“Fifty-eight.”

“That’s not that old.”

“I know.”

Dakota dropped a hand over Mary’s. “She’s probably a fifty-eight-year-old virgin.”

That put things in a different perspective. “What a sad thought.”

“Tell me about the guy.”

Mary didn’t leave out one detail.

Glen didn’t call from twenty-five thousand feet, he texted instead.
Your wrap was in the Jeep.
Truth was, he’d “accidentally” left it on the floor when he’d handed her back her bag. He felt a little like a panty snatcher when he’d curled the material in his hand and smelled her most of the night.

You should probably toss it in the wash.

That is NOT going to happen.

It smells like suntan lotion.

It smells like you.

There was a dot, dot, dot on the screen, until finally . . .
I like the image that jumped into my head.

So did he.
I have to check my schedule about next weekend. When is a good time to call on Mondays?

Before two. Call my cell.

We’ll talk tomorrow.

Fly safe.

I always do, sweetheart.

“I’m leaving him.” Nina Golf sat across from Mary with her hands folded firmly in her lap, dark-rimmed sunglasses hiding the emotion in her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore.”

None of this was news to Mary, she’d seen it coming for months. Instead of saying those things out loud, she sat back and waited to see if Nina was going to open herself up.

“He’s too demanding. And crazy. He’s been over the edge ever since I started staying at Bev’s place.”

“Beverly is your single girlfriend?”

“Right.” Nina paused. “Just because she’s single doesn’t mean we’re out trolling for men every night. It isn’t like that.”

Mary waited . . .

“Jacob calls me a slut. I’m his wife. He shouldn’t call me names.”

“I have to agree.”

“He’s such an asshole. He called my mother and told her I was sleeping around on him.”

“Nina . . . did you ever tell Jacob what happened last winter?” It was time to remind her client of her infidelity, if in fact the last time she’d stepped out of her marriage was so many months ago.

“No. Of course not.”

“Do you think Jacob might have picked up on anything? You were very conflicted over the holidays.”

Nina removed her sunglasses and revealed dark circles from either a lack of sleep or tears.

“Do you think he knows?”

“What I think isn’t important. Consider this. You had an affair. And not just a one-night stand, but something that lasted for several weeks. You told me yourself how guilty you felt, and when it ended, you dedicated yourself to your husband with renewed energy. Didn’t you both go to Hawaii in January as a second honeymoon?”

Nina nodded.

“You returned and within a month you were both in here struggling again.”

“That’s because he is unreasonable when I want to go out with my friends.” Her defensiveness was palpable.

“What happens when you go out with your friends?”

“We drink . . . we dance.”

“Get picked up on?”

“If guys are attracted, I can’t help that.”

“I didn’t say you could. How does it make you feel when guys come on to you?”

Nina started tapping her foot against the air. “It doesn’t suck. It’s nice to get dressed up sometimes and feel like a woman.”

“Do you do those things with Jacob?” Mary already knew the answer to that but asked the question anyway.

“Jacob hates going out. Says he did enough of that when he was single.”

“So you go out without him and men try and pick you up?”

“That doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with them.”

Mary sat forward. “We’ve talked about this. Being unfaithful in your marriage is more than just an act of sex.”

“I’m not falling in love with them either.”

“Nina, I’m not asking you these things to corner you into saying something, or believing something. I’m asking you these things so you can look inside yourself and ask some important questions.” Because her sitting in front of Mary and denying everything was a massive flag of bullshit. If Nina was her friend and not a client, she’d call her on said bull in a heartbeat. Nina was doing her best to destroy her marriage on her end. “Do you wear your wedding ring when you go out, Nina?”

Her client lowered her eyes to her left hand and started to twist her wedding bands.

She didn’t answer the question.

Mary walked out of her office after seven. It was nearly dark, and she was exhausted. She checked her cell phone for messages as she walked to her car. Glen didn’t call her before she made it into work, but he’d texted her around three apologizing and saying he’d call her later that night at home.

She tucked her phone back in her purse once she realized there wasn’t any pending message. The thought of her favorite Mediterranean takeout, which happened to be on her route home, put a smile on her face. Rotisserie chicken sounded perfect.

Then she turned the key and her car moaned with a weak response. The light in the cab dimmed and her stomach dropped.

She tried again.

The noise in the engine, or lack of noise, and the fact that the dash didn’t light up, told her it was her battery.

The lights in her car automatically turned off and on so long as she didn’t override the switch. So why had it drained? The car was only a few years old, with less than thirty thousand miles on her.

Mary pushed open her door and popped the hood. Not that she knew what she was looking at. Most of the engine in the car was covered by a massive shield. There were bits sticking out here and there, but nothing that she could see was obviously wrong. She glanced around the nearly vacant parking lot and wondered if there was anyone in the building still around to give her a jump.

“It had to happen on a late night,” she said to herself.

With the hood still up, she leaned back into her car and removed her purse. Her AAA card sat behind her driver’s license. She pulled it out and started to dial.

A pair of headlights turned in her direction and started to drive away. Probably for the best, she didn’t like attracting strangers while standing alone in a parking lot.

“Triple A roadside assistance. How can I help you?”

“I think my battery is dead.”

The car in the lot slowed to a stop behind her car.

“Where is your location?”

Mary rattled off the address, kept her eye on the car behind her.

“Do you need help?” The voice from the driver asked through a rolled down passenger window.

Mary leaned down to see the person. “I’m calling Triple A.”

“Okay . . . wait, Mary?”

Mary peered closer. “Kent?”

“Ma’am?”

“I’m sorry, just a minute,” she told the woman on the phone.