One Hit Wonderful (13 page)

She heard him groan, saw him throw his head back through the haze of her own orgasm as his hips hammered her into the mattress once, twice, before he followed her into oblivion.

Chapter Eight

Nate lay with his head in the curve of Lily’s shoulder and waited for his heart rate to return to normal. He figured it might take a year or two, and he was perfectly content to lie there until it did. “Lily?”

“Hmmm…”

He felt more than heard her, and with what he considered to be heroic effort, lifted his head. “Who was king of England when the Magna Carta was drafted?”

Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t bother to open them at his rumbled question. But her lips did curve into a smile of pure female satisfaction. “I don’t care.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, smug with satisfaction, and dropped his head back down to her shoulder.

She chuckled weakly. “You’re not going to go to sleep on me, are you?” she asked, her words slightly slurred, as though she could barely find the energy to string them together coherently.

“No,” he lied, and closed his eyes.

“Good,” she murmured. Her hands were on his back, drifting in lazy circles that made him want to sink into her and never get up. “Because you promised to clean my bathroom.”

He frowned. “I made that promise under duress. You can’t hold me to it.” His head shot up. “Hey!”

She patted his ass where she’d just pinched it. “I guess you’re right. You don’t have to clean the bathroom.”

Her face had lost the dreamy serenity of post-coital bliss and held a definite hint of cunning. “Really?” he asked warily.

“Sure. Instead, you can do one of your Boys Will Be Boys dance routines for me.”

“What.”

She smiled. “Naked.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve got a mean streak.”

She reached her arms over her head in a long, toe-curling stretch then linked her arms behind his neck. “A clean bathroom is very important to me,” she told him, the somber tone completely spoiled by the twinkle in her eye.

“Apparently,” he muttered, and sighed heavily as he levered himself off her. He dealt with the condom and pulled on his jeans while she watched him from the bed.

He leaned down to press a kiss to her smirking mouth. “You’re not going to help me, are you?”

A giggle slipped out as she shook her head. “No. But I’ll make dinner while you’re slaving away.”

He grinned at her, oddly cheered for a guy who had to clean the bathroom. “I’ll take what I can get.” He pressed another kiss to her lips, lingering until he felt her go soft and pliant under him. He nipped her lower lip before lifting his head. “Save my place,” he whispered then strolled out.

His good mood lasted until he got to the bathroom door and saw Beau, lying on his back with all four feet in the air, snoring with his head in the pan of purple paint.

* * * * *

Lily let the laugh bubble out as she heard Nate’s exclaimed curse, and the scramble of doggie toenails on the tile floor. She heard footsteps coming back down the hall, and looked up to see Nate’s head pop in the bedroom door.

“Um…do you have any old towels?” he asked.

She grinned and pointed toward the closet. “On the back shelf. Thanks for not using my new pretty fluffy ones.”

“You’re welcome.” He disappeared into the closet.

Lily stretched, enjoying the lengthening of sore muscles as she listened to him rummage around. More giggles bubbled up when he walked out of the closet with a resigned expression on his face and his arms piled high with her old towels. Feeling energized, she sat up and slid off the bed, snagging her robe from where it had gotten kicked to the floor. She started to pull it on then realized her tube top was still bunched around her waist. Chuckling, she shimmied out of it, tossing it into the laundry basket in the closet before bundling herself up. The air had taken on a chill from the rainstorm, so she crossed to the window to close it partway.

She poked her head into the bathroom. “How about a beer?”

He looked up from his cross-legged position on the floor, struggling to hold on to a wriggling, wet, paint-spattered Beau. “Yes,” he said with fervent need then cursed, sputtering as Beau’s frantic licking of his face resulted in a mouthful of dog slobber.

Lily managed to get halfway down the hall before the laughter bubbled out, and she only laughed harder when she heard his indignant, “I heard that!”

She padded into the kitchen and, feeling more relaxed then she could remember feeling in weeks, opened the refrigerator to contemplate its contents.

“Pasta,” she decided, thinking that if the gleam in Nate’s eye was anything to go by, they were both going to need some energy later. Listening to the splashes and curses drifting down the hall from the bathroom, she pulled out half a bottle of chardonnay and a lemon for the sauce then grabbed the shrimp and bay scallops she’d bought just that morning. She’d intended them for the grill but decided they’d be wonderful sautéed in a little garlic and olive oil, and tossed with the pasta.

She set water to boil then got out a skillet and a clove of garlic. She had the shrimp peeled and deveined and garlic browning in olive when she heard footsteps—canine and human—coming down the hall.

She grinned at the two of them as they emerged into the kitchen. Beau pranced up to rub his now paint-free head against her knee. Charmed, she bent to scratch behind his ears. “Did you get a bath, Beau?” she asked, and looked up with dancing eyes at Nate, who looked every bit as damp as the dog.

“Yes, he did,” he told her, his words muffled as he vigorously rubbed his hair dry with a towel.

“You could’ve used one of the good towels,” she told him, wincing when she saw he was using a souvenir beach towel of Fort Lauderdale left over from her college days that she’d kept purely out of sentiment, and to occasionally mop up plumbing mishaps.

“I smell more like dog than he does,” he told her, and draped the towel around his shoulders. “This works fine.”

“Did you get a bath too?” she asked, noticing the water still clinging to his chest. She sternly reminded herself that if she started licking it off, they probably wouldn’t get to eat.

“Just about,” he admitted as he patted his chest dry and made her mouth water.

To give herself something to do, Lily picked up the plate with the scallops and shrimp on it and slid them into the sizzling oil. “Well, your pants look only a little damp,” she commented, and nodded toward his jeans. “Except at the cuff. How’d you manage that?”

“I took them off,” he admitted, and she laughed.

“You gave the dog a bath naked?”

“It was easier,” he said, and she shook her head.

“I’m sorry I missed that.”

“Well, maybe later I’ll give you a bath naked,” he murmured, coming up behind her to circle her waist with one strong arm and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck.

She tilted her head back to smile into his eyes. “I’ll look forward to that,” she purred.

He dropped a kiss on her upturned mouth, lingering for a brief moment before moving to the fridge to get his beer. “I owe you a tarp,” he told her as he twisted the cap off the bottle.

She frowned as she shook the pan to stir the seafood. “Did it rip or something?”

“No,” he said. He leaned on the counter next to the stove to watch her cook. “But it was covered with paint and dog hair, so I figured it was a goner.”

“Ah.” She slid the cooked shrimp and scallops to a plate, covering them with the skillet lid to keep warm while she made the sauce. She added a little more oil and more minced garlic to sizzle and checked the water. It was just about boiling, so she pulled a package of angel hair pasta from the cabinet.

“Will you grab that bottle of wine for me?” she asked, and he reached back for the chardonnay she’d gotten out of the fridge.

“Thanks.” She uncorked it and splashed a little into the skillet with the olive oil. Snagging a knife from the block on the counter, she sliced the lemon in half and squeezed the juice into the skillet to mix with the wine and garlic.

“How do you know how to do that?” he asked.

She turned the heat down to a simmer. “What?”

He gestured with his beer bottle to the pan. “Just…toss the ingredients in like that, without measuring or anything.”

“Well, I’d like to be able to say because I’m a secret gourmet and a fantastic cook, but that’d be a big fat lie, which you will eventually discover.” She moved to the fridge and pulled out her own beer, along with a bunch of fresh basil. “The truth is I know how to cook two things—this pasta and meatloaf, and I’ve been doing both the same way since college. If I tried to change anything about either dish, I’d completely screw it up.”

“I can make macaroni and cheese,” he told her, and she grinned as she got out a cutting board and chopped the herb.

“So between us we have three dishes.”

“Four!” He held up a triumphant finger. “I can do omelets.”

She laughed, delighted with him. “Oh good, we needed a breakfast food.”

“The lack of dessert is troubling.”

She carried the cutting board with the chopped basil over to the stove and set it on the counter before tearing open the package of pasta. “That’s why God invented bakeries,” she told him.

He watched her slide the pasta into the water. “Is there anything I can do?”

“You can set the table,” she said. “Plates in that cabinet, forks to the right of the dishwasher.

While he laid out plates and forks, she got out a serving bowl. The delicate angel hair pasta cooked quickly, so in no time she was scooping it out of the pot with a pair of tongs and putting it into the skillet with the wine and lemon juice sauce. She stirred it around, tossing it with the tongs and sliding the shrimp and scallops in with it before pouring the mixture into the serving bowl. She scraped in the chopped basil, gave the whole thing one more toss and carried it to the table.

“This is great,” he decided after one bite. “You probably could’ve gotten away with the gourmet cook story for a while.”

“Thank you,” she mumbled around a mouthful of pasta.

“So, I have a question for you,” he said when he came up for air long enough to take a sip of beer.

Suddenly remembering that she had half a loaf of French bread in the cupboard, she sprang up to fetch it. “What’s that?” she called back over her shoulder.

“Why is there a wedding dress in your closet?”

She laughed as she carried the bread and a dish of butter back to the table, stepping over Beau, who had planted himself by her chair in hopes of dropped food. “Worried I might try to drag you to the altar?”

“My evasive skills are well honed,” he assured her with a wink.

“I bet.” She settled back into her seat, tearing off a hunk of bread and slathering it with butter. “You can relax though, it’s not my dress. It belongs to my best friend.”

“Your old roommate who left town?” He frowned when she nodded. “Did I hear something about this?”

“Probably,” she muttered. “It’s a big town, but you’d never know it the way gossip flies around.”

He forked up more pasta. “So what happened?”

She shrugged. “Bridget—that’s my friend—called off her wedding at the last minute because the groom is a total asshole.”

“Good reason to call off a wedding,” he said. “What happened?”

She tore off another hunk of bread. “I caught her fiancé having sex with the wedding planner.”

“Ouch.”

“In the church rectory, twenty minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start.”

Nate’s hand went slack and his fork clattered to the table as he stared at her in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

She shook her head. “I wish I was.”

“Unbelievable.” He shook his head in disgust, reaching across the table for the bread and butter. “You told her, of course.”

“Oh yeah, I told her.”

“What’d she do?”

“I thought she was going to go through with it.” She sat back and sipped her beer. “I mean, I told her moments before I was supposed to go down the aisle, so we had no time to talk. And then the music was starting and they were shoving me down the aisle. So I’m up there thinking Bridget’s on her way out the back of the church, but she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, right on cue.”

She shook her head, a smile tickling the corners of her lips as she remembered. “She let him hand her off to Max, let the priest do his thing, and just before they got to the vows—you know they do that bit about if anyone has any reason why they shouldn’t be married, speak now or forever hold your peace?” He nodded. “Well, she waited ’til they got to that part then she tossed back the veil and said, loud as life, ‘I object because the groom is a lying, cheating, scum-sucking asshole,’ and punched him in the face.”

Nate was grinning now. “Nice.”

“It really was,” Lily said, satisfaction rich in her tone. “She busted his nose, so blood went flying everywhere, all over the front of his tux—which I loved, because it was Armani and not rented, so I’m sure that pissed him off. But it got on her dress too. She wanted to throw it away, but I wouldn’t let her.”