Out Bad (7 page)

The doorbell rang.

Joe set his beer on the counter and headed for the
door.  By the time Gwen was beside him, he'd already paid the delivery man
and had an armful of hot cardboard. 

"You didn't need to pay for those."  Gwen
closed the door behind him.

"Neither do you."  He walked back to the
kitchen with Gwen on his heels.

"I wasn't going to.  Gabbi and Heath were. 
They wanted to feed you.  It's the least they could do since you probably
sweated out half your body weight fixing their air.  Gabbi's going to be
pissed."

He set the boxes on the counter and gave Gwen a grin. 
"Gabbi can't tell me what to do."

"Isn't that the truth."  Heath walked through
the door with a little girl on each hip.

"Where'd you disappear to?"  Gwen handed him
a beer.

"I had to even up the odds.  Gabbi was chasing
naked wet girls across your bed upstairs."

Gabbi walked in the kitchen.  "I swear to God
Heath."  She looked at Gwen.  "He is kidding."

Gwen stepped to Heath just as he was trying to take the
first drink of the beer she'd given him and snatched it out of his hand. 
She held it out to Gabbi.  "Thirsty?"

Gabbi took it and swallowed a long gulp before giving her
husband a grin. 

Heath shook his head.  "Can't even make a damn
joke."

"That bed is no joke."  Gwen lined the pizza
boxes across the counter.  She looked at Gabbi as she flipped open the
lids.  "I changed my mind.  I'll leave it to you and he can't
sleep in it."

"I'll sneak in anyway."  Heath grabbed a
slice out of the box closest to him.

"I'll haunt you.  Scare the crap out of you while
you sleep."

"Who says you don't scare the crap out of me
already?"

Joe grabbed a piece of pepperoni and leaned against the
fridge, watching the banter between his friends and Gwen.  Heath was
right.  She wasn't what he'd been looking for.  But he was beginning
to wonder if maybe he'd been looking for the wrong thing.

Gwen stared at her cell phone, the screen lit up, her sister’s
number punched in but not yet called.  She had made it this far at least
four other times today, successfully talking herself out of making the call
each time. 

Until now. 

She touched the green call button and held the phone up to
her ear listening as the line began to ring. 

“Hey.” 

Gabbi's voice sounded a little strained and Gwen could hear
the girls chattering loudly in the background. 

“Girls quiet down.  I’m trying to talk to Auntie
Gwen.” 

She could picture her sister chugging coffee as she tried to
keep her head above water doing dishes and laundry and picking up piles of
various toys.

“Is Auntie Gwen coming over?”  Caroline’s sweet sing-
songy
three-year-old voice seemed much closer to the
phone. 

Gwen loved those little girls more than anything in the
whole world and hearing them excited to see her made her heart swell.

“Honey I don’t know.  Go play and I will find
out.”  There was rustling as Gabbi walked through the house, the sound of
the girls in the background fading away. 

“Okay.  I have five minutes before they find me. 
What's up?”

“I just had a couple minutes and thought I’d call and see if
you’d recovered from your heat stroke.”  Gwen tried to keep her voice
casual, but nonchalance was a skill she’d always struggled with.  Straight
forward she had down, but she'd never been good at working her way around
things.

“Oh my gosh it's so much better.  I didn't realize how
bad the other air conditioner was.  Now it's like a refrigerator in
here.  It's glorious. ” 

“Good.  Good.”  She used one hand to squeeze her
temples. 

Shit this was hard.  Why couldn’t she just be straight
up with Gabbi, tell her what she really wanted?  It wasn't that she was
being sneaky.  She simply needed this information to help put an end to
the unrest screwing with her life right now.

Gwen took a deep breath.  “I have an odd question for
you.”

“Okay.”  Gabbi sounded hesitant.

Odd questions weren’t something Gwen normally called her
sister about.  She was always the one with answers, not questions.

“I’ve been wracking my brain for the past few days and I
keep drawing a blank.”  She was sweating.  She flapped the front of
her top trying to cool herself down. 

“I feel like I know Joe from somewhere and for the life of
me I can’t figure out where that would be.”  She sank her teeth into her
bottom lip before she kept talking and raised her sister's suspicions.

“I can't imagine how you would know him.”

Damn it.  Gabbi was really going to make her work for
this today. 

“Me either.  What did you say his last name was?” 

That was all she needed.  Gwen held her breath praying
Gabbi would just give it to her without wondering too much about why.

“Parker.”  Gabbi sighed into the phone as little girl
voices once again surrounded her.  “Gwen, I
gotta
go. It looks like somebody is wearing chocolate milk.  I’ll call you
later.”

The phone disconnected in her ear as she finished typing
'Joe Parker' into the search engine.  Her pinky clicked the enter button
and she put her phone down and waited, butterflies fluttering in her stomach.

The list of options found for the words Joe Parker filled
the screen in front of her.  The first option was a background
search. 

No way.  That was the kind of thing crazy women
did.  She was simply looking to see who he was.  Maybe discover
something that would bring an end to this crazy sort of crush she was
developing before it got out of hand and distracted her even more than it
already was. 

“Shit.”

She slumped back against her office chair.  It was
already out of hand.  She’d called her sister for Christ’s sake. 
About a man.  Now she was sitting at her work computer trying to seek him
out like… like a crazy woman. 

This situation was a firm reminder of why she tried to stay
away from the opposite sex.  Especially ones like Joe Parker.  Right
now, she was acting like a completely different person.  She was acting
crazy and distracted, taking her attention and time away from more important
things, like her work.

That was why she decided it needed to stop.

She leaned her elbows on her desk and dropped her forehead
to her hands.  What in the hell was she going to do?  How could she
just force a man out of her thoughts.  She lifted her head.

There was one way she'd discovered.

Holy shit.  What was she thinking?  That would be
the dumbest thing she could do.  Unless it worked.

A firm knock on her office door made her jump, her hand
immediately reaching out to slam her laptop closed. 

“Come in.”  Perfect timing.  She needed to just
focus on work.  Get her mind back together.

Her door opened slowly, Richard peeking his head through the
gap.  “Hey.  I’ve got some numbers to go over with you.  Got a
minute?”

Any other time, she would have said no and suggested he
shoot her an e-mail with whatever long winded conversation he wanted to have,
but today she was hoping Richard's intense love of his job would rub off on
her.  Get her priorities back in order.  “Yup.  Come in and sit
down.”

He almost skipped into the room.  Sitting down in the
chair across from her desk, he scooted it as close to the other side of the
table as he could, smiling at her the whole time.  She watched silently as
he laid out all his papers and went into an unhealthy level of detail
explaining what he worked out.  Fifteen minutes later he was only on the
third of eight pages of information and her hopes of enthusiasm transfer were
smothered out by frustration, definitely with Richard, but mostly
herself.  It was time to put a stop to this.  All of it.

“Richard.  I just need to know the basics.  I
don’t need a line by line recap.”

Disappointment flashed in his eyes.  "I just
wanted to be sure I was thorough."

She needed a drink and an Excedrin.  This week was
making her feel like she was losing her mind and right now Richard’s wounded
puppy dog eyes were about to push her over the edge. 

“Your job is to be meticulous with your analysis, however, I
do not need or want to hear every piece of information you have.  I want a
summary.  A very brief summary of your findings.”

Richard stood and collected his papers.  “I will go
work on that then.” 

“I would appreciate it.”  She waited as he left,
shutting the door quietly behind him, feeling a pang of guilt.  Richard
was a nice man and a good employee, even if he was a little much
sometimes. 

She needed to get out of here.  She pushed the home
button on her cell, the screen letting her know it was after six-thirty. 
When she opened her laptop to send one e-mail before she left for the night,
the results of her search were still displayed on the screen.  She hovered
the arrow of her mouse over the x in the upper corner, but curiosity kept her
from pulling the trigger.

The third entry down caught her eye.  It was a website
for Parker’s Plumbing, a local business owned by Josiah Parker.

****

 Joe had just packed up the last of his tools in the
back of his van when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket.  He fished
it out as he walked to the driver’s door, waving at the rest of the guys who
were also packing up and heading out for the night.  A number he didn’t
recognize displayed across the screen.  It was after seven on a Friday
evening, probably someone with an emergency repair.

“Parker’s Plumbing.”  He turned over the van and kicked
up the air, trying to get cool after a long day working in the heat.

“Is this Joe?”  The woman on the line sounded familiar
and he struggled to place the voice.

“It is.  Can I help you?”

“It's Gwen.  The drain on my bathtub seems to be
clogged.”  She spoke so quickly, almost blurting the words out, he worried
he didn’t understand her.

His hand froze on the vent he was shifting to direct cool
air at his sweaty face.  “Gabbi's Gwen?"

"Do you know more Gwen's?"  The almost
accusatory tone in her voice surprised him.  Made him wonder why she would
care how many Gwen's he knew.  There was only one reason he could think
of.

He grinned into the phone, suddenly feeling refreshed. 
"You say your tub drain is clogged?

“Yes.”  She sounded tense making him think it was more
serious than a simple clog.  Maybe it overflowed and she was standing in a
pool.

“Did it overflow?”

“No.  It’s just not draining.” 

He tipped his rear view mirror and took a good look at
himself, wincing at his reflection.  “Do you have another bathroom? 
I could come out early next week.” 

He was filthy and exhausted.  He’d been up late every
night this week trying to get his own bathroom in working order on top of an
over-packed schedule at work.  Not that he would ever complain about
that.  He spent a few lean years trying to get to this point, taking every
job that came his way.  It was turning out to be a hard habit to break.

“Oh.”  The disappointment was evident in her
voice.  “I was really hoping to get this taken care of sooner.”

“I could come by and check it out really quick
tonight.  If it’s an easy fix, I could have you up and running this
evening.”  The words kept coming out of his mouth even as he smacked his
forehead into his hand.  Gwen was way out of his league and he only wanted
to be at the top of his game around her.  The guy staring back at him in
the mirror was dirt covered, sweaty and probably stank.  He dared a sniff
in the direction of his underarm.

There was no probably about it.

“Okay.”  Oddly, his offer didn't make her sound any
happier than it was making him.

He hung up and headed her way, regretting the decision more
and more with each mile.  He really just wanted to go home and sand down
what would hopefully be the last coat of mud he threw on his bathroom walls
while he worked out a plan of attack for the first time he would be alone with
Gwen.

Instead he would be flying by the seat of his very dirty
pants with a woman he was already unsure how to handle.  A woman he very
much wanted to learn how to handle.  Hopefully a few years of watching
Heath navigate her sister's spit-fire ways would serve him well.

The homes in Gwen's neighborhood were huge with meticulously
kept lawns and expensive cars in the driveways.  Each one he passed made
him even more sure he was making a mistake by coming here tonight.  He
should have at least gone home showered and gotten a good night's sleep. 
By tomorrow morning he would have been more prepared.  More Ready.

He came to a stop in front of the brick and stone two story,
parking against the curb before heading to the back of the van and grabbing his
basic kit with everything he would need to clear an easy blockage.  He
rang the bell, hearing the gentle chiming through the cut glass and mahogany
door. 

The door slowly opened and he quickly decided he might never
be ready.

“Hi.”  Gwen stood before him wrapped in a silky brown
robe, her bare feet and slim calves peeking out from the hem.  More of her
body was covered than any other time he'd seen her before, but something about
not knowing what she was wearing under that robe had him swallowing hard.

Joe was dumbstruck.  What in the hell was he supposed
to do now?  He was at a complete loss for words, eventually managing a
very lame sounding, “Hey.”

“Thank you for coming tonight.  I think it might have
something to do with the little girls who spent an evening splashing around
with every bath toy they could pack.”

She stepped to the side, letting him come in.

“It’s upstairs.”  She closed the door behind him and
headed up the pristine almost white carpet of the stairs.

He snagged a couple boot covers out of his pack and slipped
them over his dusty work boots before following her up the open staircase to
the second floor.  He continued to follow her through the huge master
bedroom.  Even with a giant bed in the middle of the room and two dressers
and nightstands it looked big. 

She walked through a set of double doors into a bathroom
large enough to hold three of his bathrooms and then some.  A soaking tub
sat in the middle of the room, a large shuttered window behind it.

“This is it.”

He knelt down beside the tub and started fishing through his
kit doing his best not to wonder about anything hiding under that robe.

He leaned against the tub.  "Um.  What is all
that?"

"That is how I figured out the tub was clogged.  I
was trying to scrub it off."

Gwen's pristine tub was covered with rudimentary drawings of
all kinds in bright, bold colors. 

"They packed their bath crayons.  I didn't realize
you were supposed to scrub them off right away." 

He rubbed at what appeared to be a castle with his
finger.  The lines didn't even budge.  "Bleach might help. 
Otherwise you'll have to re-glaze the whole thing."

"Good thing I know a plumber."

"Unfortunately that won't help you too much with
that.  I can do a lot of things, but glazing tubs isn't one of
them."  He gave her a wink.  "Luckily, I know a guy who
can."

Joe leaned in, reaching for the stopper.  It came out
easily.  That was a bad sign.  He flashed his light down the hole and
chuckled.

He turned to grab a wire from his bag and found Gwen sitting
on the side of the tub very close to him.  She leaned forward to watch
him, the robe she was wearing gapping at her chest. 

He tried his best not to notice and kept moving, trying to
work quickly, but her nearness and potential nakedness was making what should
be an easy task, infinitely more difficult.