Something About You (Just Me & You) (17 page)

The dynamic between them would have been different had she
not let him kiss her. Repeatedly. Incessantly. Urgently. He probably thought
she was nothing more than an arrogant tease. One of those frivolous,
self-centered women she’d always despised who sautéed the steak to an exact
medium rare without actually putting the meat on the table.

Standing under the tingling spray of the shower was not
helpful either. While the water pounded her breasts and belly, she closed her
eyes and thought of the freckles on his shoulders, grouped together in clusters
like hundreds of galaxies. And his large hands, constructed in capable squares
and rectangles, prominently knuckled like a professional boxer’s.

Sabrina put the soap down.

She had to shut off the mental imagery before audacious,
auburn-haired men with linebacker shoulders infected the feral parts of her
imagination like a pestilence. It would be easy to do, really; all she had to
do was disregard all of their polite pleasantries and recall his more egregious
put-downs and parting shots, which were now legion.

She heard the squeal of the distant pipes, and then the
fluctuation upset the warm-but-not-scalding temperature she worked tenuously to
obtain as the hot water was re-routed to the guest room shower.

“Damn it, Fitzgerald!” she wailed as the cold spray beat
down on her soapy head. She quickly rinsed out the rest of the shampoo and
jumped out of the tub, shivering.

Gage had managed to get the final word yet again without
even saying a thing. 

Maid March had some of the earmarks of a typical female,
Gage thought as he carried two bags of garbage to the curb. She wasn’t above
letting him know that she depended on him to pick up chores around the house
that were quick and dirty.

Like this one.

He sorted out their communal debris, dropping glass and
plastic containers into their respective recycling bins. The lion’s share of
the trash consisted of takeout containers and spent coffee filters — yet
more testaments to Sabrina’s frenetic lifestyle. The woman needed to go
somewhere other than the office and the gym and put that busy brain of hers
into park. She’d zoned out so much that she had driven her car into his
woodworking materials totally unawares, for god’s sake. She could cross her
fingers, screw her eyes shut tight and wish that Mr. All Three Criteria would
appear, but it wasn’t going to happen.

Because Sabrina March, with her pointless, steadfast
devotion to a charlatan politician who won re-elections with bumper sticker
campaigns, had no real personal life to speak of.

No hobbies. No passions. No dates.

That meant
no sex
.

No wonder she was so perpetually wound, Gage thought. The
expectant look on her face when he’d pretended to seduce her in the garage had
indeed been priceless. He didn’t regret getting her all hot and bothered.
Somebody needed to remind her what she was missing. 

There was one thing that he had come to understand about
Sabrina. He understood why she wanted to stay put in Cadence Corners. It wasn’t
the average Austin neighborhood. Gage turned his gaze to the eastern skyline,
where tall buildings scraped up against ether, glass and metal gleaming bronze
under the cast of the morning sun. In contrast to the flagrant modernity of the
busy city center, the old neighborhood seemed to have been tucked away in a
quiet, somnolent place where time stood still. The people there were friendly
but not nosy. Neighbors greeted each other by name at the neighborhood’s mom
’n’ pop shops. Women chatted over white picket fences, and children walked home
together from the nearby elementary school. The turn-of-the-century homes and
decades-old family-owned businesses added to the neighborhood’s air of
permanence.

The Corners also had its share of resident “characters,” as
his grandfather would have called them. Gage had discovered that much when he
ventured out to purchase allergy pills at Newton’s Drugstore, where an aging
hippie pharmacist wearing a T. Rex T-shirt nattered on to him about homeopathic
remedies.

Gage was sure there was a story behind that one.

Most divorced women would have sold their homes and taken up
apartment living, using “I don’t need all of that space for just myself” as a
reason. Most women weren’t Sabrina March, though. She’d staked a claim to her
turf, and she was going to fight to keep it. Sometimes he saw her sitting on
the patio, hands wrapped around her teacup. The tension in her face was gone,
and her body was relaxed. Her mouth curled into a breezy smile as she watched
passersby stroll down the sidewalk. She looked totally at peace.

Happily married to her own solitude.

He went back inside and washed his hands in the kitchen
sink, which immediately began to fill up ominously with dark brown water. He
flipped the switch to the disposal, but the motor only made a muted gnawing
sound. A small fountain of coffee grounds shot up from the drain. No surprise
there. Sabrina guzzled enough of the brew to subsidize a small java republic.

Surely there were tools around the house. He opened a
utility drawer and found only a bottle opener and a box of birthday candles.
Another drawer was a repository for packaged plastic takeout utensils and
packets of mustard, soy sauce and ketchup. It reminded him of any of the
kitchen utility drawers of the many apartments he’d shared with grad school
roommates. Gage hadn’t seen the practicality in owning wrenches, pliers and
screwdrivers in a variety of sizes until he’d exited the gentle halls of
academia and struck out on his own. Of course, he didn’t expect a woman like
Maid March to own these things.

But what woman didn’t have a hammer, for god’s sake?

He retrieved his toolbox from the trunk of the GTO and
searched around for a pair of pliers. He opened the cabinet, slid underneath
the sink and began to loosen the bolts on the trap.

“A-
hem
!”

The sound of Sabrina clearing her throat startled him. His
forehead made contact with the pipe with a resounding
ping!
Stifling a
curse, he slid out of the alcove and peered through the cabinet opening to see
the toe of one of her running shoes tapping impatiently. His eyes followed the
shoes up a stretch of toned calves and thighs up to the point where her smooth
skin met the soft material of her short gray gym shorts. The sight was almost
worth it until he saw the look of pure distress on her face.

“Yes?” Gage asked cautiously.

“Don’t …
do
that,” she said plaintively.

“Do what?” He was nonplussed. What the hell had he managed
to do to get on her bad side now?

“That.” She jerked her head at the wrench that he still
clutched in his hand. “Don’t fix stuff.”

“You don’t have any problem putting me on garbage duty,” he
pointed out.

“That’s totally different.”

“How?” Gage wanted to know.

“That’s a chore. Repairing things around the house that are
broken is what a — a—” She bit her lip. Her eyes darted nervously. “—
boyfriend
would do. Or a fiancé. You are neither.”

“Of course not; I only live here,” Gage reminded her dryly.
“I have a vested interest in making sure everything is in working order.”

“So do I. But you don’t see me crawling into small, dark
spaces, do you?” She blew her bangs out of her eyes.

“The sink’s not going to unclog itself, darlin’.” He tried
to reason with her. “What do you propose we do?”

“Let me take care of it after I get home.” She sounded
self-assured as she peeled the wrapper from an energy bar. “You may find this
impossible to believe, but I’m not completely domestically challenged. I know
exactly what to do in these situations.”

“You.” He looked at her in disbelief.

“Mm-hmm,” Sabrina mumbled around a bite of the chewy bar. “I
have the name of an excellent plumber. Theo uses him all the time.”

Gage stared at her to make sure she was serious. “You mean
to tell me that you’re going to call in a professional who’ll probably charge
per hour more than you and I make in one day to get coffee grounds out of the
sink?”

Sabrina tapped the tip of her nose with a forefinger
excitedly.

“During off-hours,” he went on. “On a
holiday
?”

“You guessed it, Fitzgerald.”

She had to know her reasoning was absurd, Gage thought. But
the look on her face told him that even if she did, she wasn’t kidding around.
She took another bite of the energy bar and chewed and swallowed it earnestly.

“You playing handyman wasn’t part of our arrangement,” she
went on. “If anything needs repair, we’ll have the work done by a third party
and split the bill. That way everyone’s happy.”

Speak for yourself
, Gage thought, contemplating the
extra expenses that would be tacked onto his monthly rent. He didn’t need that.
Especially now, when he was trying to sock away money. He slid back under the
sink with the pliers.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll send you my bill.”

“Gage Fitzgerald, would you please stop—” Sabrina began to
argue.

But after only a small struggle, the waste arm was free. He
scooted back out of the alcove and tapped it against the garbage bin briskly
until a dark sludge of coffee grounds came out.

“Done,” he said. “How simple was that?”

Sabrina looked at him for several seconds with an annoyed
expression on her face. Then she announced, “I’m going to work out, and then
I’m going to work.”

“It’s Thanksgiving Day,” Gage reminded her. “It’s not too
late to change your mind about lunch at Molly and Sebastian’s house.”

“Pass,” Sabrina said immediately, scooping up a gym bag that
sat beside the couch. “Don’t get me wrong; I love them both to bits. But
holiday dinners with Cybil and Shuck are like a runaway train. First, Cybil
makes small talk — usually about the food. Then she brings up one of
Sebastian’s long-lost relatives who’s either expecting a baby or planning for
one. Sebastian makes an ambiguous reply. Molly says nothing. Then Cybil needles
some more. Shuck jumps into the fray sideways. Sebastian finally pulls the emergency
brake, and everyone jumps the car before it collides. I frankly can’t bear to
watch.”

“Sounds grim,” Gage said.

“Don’t worry,” she told him as she slung the bag her
shoulder. “It’s usually all over in a couple of hours. My advice? To paraphrase
Bette Davis, ‘Fasten your seatbelts, because you’re in for a bumpy ride’.”

**

Molly and Sebastian’s house was redolent with the smells of
simmering fruit and roasting fowl. Gage already felt at home there. He
especially liked that the place looked as though the couple had lived in it for
longer than mere weeks. A coatrack was laden with sweaters, scarves and caps
that Molly and Sebastian shared whenever they did yard work, and, inexplicably,
a bright purple feather boa. Molly’s quilting magazines were comingled with
Sebastian’s literary journals on a nearby coffee table. Even the dust bunnies
that went tumbling across the hardwood floor whenever a door opened held a
certain charm.

Unlike Sabrina’s Corners Keep, Molly and Sebastian’s house
actually felt like it had been lived in for years.

Man the battle stations
, Gage thought as he heard
Shuck’s Lexus pull into the drive. Cybil Cole came through the front door
looking a storm cloud in a charcoal dress that was far too formal for the
occasion, her gunmetal gray hair teased into starchy whorls. Her husband was
dressed more casually, in slacks and a tweed jacket. He handed Sebastian a
bottle of Beaujolais nouveau.

“This might taste like vinegar for all I know,” Shuck said
with a doubtful snort. Then, leveling a suspicious look at Gage, he made the
point of adding, “I can’t seem to find those two bottles of Dow’s from your
wedding reception, Sebastian.”

“Really, Shuck, you shouldn’t have,” Molly murmured as she
escaped an air kiss from her mother-in-law. “Do have a seat, everyone. The food
will be out in a jiff.”

As Gage pulled himself up to the table, he was reminded of
the sounds and smells of his grandmother’s kitchen. He could hear Molly in the
other room opening and shutting the oven door while she and Sebastian discussed
whether to open the wine before lunch or during. Then the couple brought out
the food, and soon the table was covered with platters steaming up a
stomach-rumbling aroma of turkey, oyster dressing, scalloped sweet potatoes and
cranberry sauce.

Molly had done her best to arrange full place settings in
front of each seat, but the small maple table wasn’t large enough to
accommodate five people plus all of the holiday fixin’s. Shuck and Cybil were
seated across from Molly and Sebastian, leaving Gage at the head with all the
elbow room and a referee’s view of whatever familial rumbles Sabrina predicted
were to come.

“Gage,” Cybil acknowledged him. “How pleasant to see you
again.”

“Likewise, Mrs. C.,” Gage lied back, matching her chilly
smile with a bright one of his own.

“I trust you and Sabrina enjoyed my husband’s vintage port,”
she added under her breath.

“They were both very good years,” Gage told her, broadening
his grin. Cybil made a point to look unamused as she shook out her paper napkin
and placed it in her lap.

“There’s not much room at the table. I must have
accidentally donated the extra leaf to the Salvation Army when I did spring
cleaning this year,” Molly said apologetically as she edged a casserole dish
piled with broccoli casserole next to the platter of carved breast meat.
“Everyone, please dig in.”

“Portion control,” Cybil said in a chiding voice as she took
the dressing dish and serving spoon from her husband’s hand. Then she explained
to Sebastian, “Your father is trying to avoid gaining his ‘holiday five’ this
year.”

“All those fives just keep adding up to tens over the years,
don’t they, Cybil?” Shuck asked with a jovial grin as he patted his round
belly.

“Schulster Cole,” his wife reprimanded him.

The three men ate in silence while Molly and her
mother-in-law engaged in nonthreatening banter about the merits of bread
dressing over cornbread. Then the table went quiet as the pressure mounted to
initiate a general topic of conversation. Gage suddenly felt as though he were
inside a Tupperware container. Maybe Sabrina had the right idea, he thought as
he watched Shuck pick dried cranberries from his teeth. She knew better than to
play Pilgrims and Indians with the Coles. Watching Cybil mete out a second
dollop of dressing the size of a golf ball on her husband’s plate, Gage
couldn’t help but to think that they made marriage look as fun as doing tax
returns.

“You remember Richard, your second cousin, don’t you?” Cybil
addressed Sebastian. “He and his wife flew in from Greenwich for your wedding.”

“Yes, though I doubt he remembers me,” Sebastian replied as
he reached for the gravy boat. “The first and only time we met, he was only
two.”

“He and his wife are expecting their first in January,”
Cybil went on smoothly but pointedly. “They’ve only been married for six months
but didn’t see any reason to wait.”

“You don’t say,” Sebastian said distractedly.

Gage chewed his food slowly.
Here we go …

“Do you want seconds, Gage?” Molly’s voice held a note of
subtle desperation. “You’ve barely eaten a thing.”