Uncommon Pleasure (23 page)

“Go back to sleep,” came a morning-rough male voice.

No problem, except her brain wouldn’t let go of that niggling sense that something wasn’t right. She rolled over and sank back into the gray haze, now with a golden tinge around the edges.
Sunlight.
The sun was up, and she was still in bed. That’s what was wrong. She pushed up on one elbow and shoved her hair out of her face as she looked frantically around the strange bedroom
wherethefuckamI?
for the clock.

7:28. Sean’s borrowed bedroom.

“Oh my God! It’s seven thirty in the morning!”

Sean appeared in the doorway, a plate holding fried eggs and two pieces of toast in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s seven thirty, that’s what’s wrong! I’m late for my dad’s breathing treatments, I’m going to be late for class, I’m on the wrong side of town!” She scrambled out of bed and into her underwear, snagged her stockings from the foot of the bed, then looked around. “Where are the rest of my clothes?”

“Living room floor,” Sean said, and stepped back to let her fly past him, no doubt enjoying the view as she snagged her heels from the hall wearing nothing but her cheeky panties. Flashes of last night were coming back to her, and holy Mary, mother of God, what had she done, suggesting Sean Winthrop become her hookup? He was brilliant at it. Too good at it, and they had a scheduling issue. She’d fallen asleep with a man who didn’t have to be at work at six in the morning. Big mistake. One of several.

It wasn’t like that with Ben. Oh no, it wasn’t like that at all. It was hot as hell, fast, a little rough, and utterly emotionless. She felt nothing more than physical need before she went to him, then the absence of need. The perfect antidote, come to think of it, to what she’d felt a year ago with Sean.

Or last night with Sean.

She yanked her skirt up and fastened it, then hurried into her bra and blouse.
Okay. Shoes, skirt, underwear top and bottom, shirt. Purse.
She found that on the coffee table, dug her cell phone from the interior pocket, and checked it. Two messages from her dad. “Shit,” she said as she jammed her aching feet into the heels and bolted for the front door, searching her purse for her car keys as she moved.

Her mind registered the beautiful fall morning as she dashed down the driveway to the street, where her car was parked. Brilliant
sunlight, a nice cool tinge to the air, a gentle breeze in the yellow leaves just beginning to turn. That’s why her sleep haze was tinged with gold. The bedroom faced the backyard, and two enormous golden maples rose skyward behind the house. Regret stabbed her as last year’s daytime possibilities flashed into her mind. A late brunch, sharing the paper, a walk in the park, a picnic, a movie, all in this light, this amazing light.

She unlocked her car, tossed her purse on the passenger seat, jammed the key in the ignition, and turned it.

Nothing. Not even the horrible rough growl the car had made off and on for the past couple of weeks. She checked her headlights and the overhead light. Both were off. “Please,” she said to the car. “Please, please, please start. I don’t have time for you to act up today. Okay? Thanks.”

Another turn of the key generated the same single click. “Not today. Not here,” she said warningly, but the engine ignored her and the key.

A knock on the driver’s side window made her jump. It was Sean, dressed in last night’s cargo pants and a gray long-sleeved T-shirt that said
USMC
on it. “It’s the alternator or the battery,” he said without preamble. “Pop the hood release and come on out of there.”

She obediently pulled the lever that would release the hood and got out of the car. He’d sandwiched the fried eggs between the two slices of toast, and still held the glass of OJ. “Eat.”

She took the glass and the sandwich from him and bit into it while he reversed his car into the street and parked it nose to nose with hers. He extracted jumper cables from the trunk, popped his hood, and met her where the noses sat just inches apart.

“How old is this battery?” he asked with a nod at her car.

She shrugged. “Came with the car, I guess,” she said around a mouthful of egg sandwich. She should know that. A grown-up would know her car’s maintenance schedule, or at least have it
written down in the glove box. He’d peppered the hell out of the eggs, just the way she liked them, and the toast was saturated with butter.

He rubbed at the nodes on top of the battery. “The terminals are corroded. Whatever else is wrong with the car, you need a new battery.”

“Okay,” she said. She could use a second egg sandwich, too. One cheese stick at four p.m. didn’t get a woman through twelve hours of work and sex.

Sean leaned over her car, a red claw-shaped thing in each hand. “Wait a minute,” she said, and inelegantly wiped the sandwich grease on her bare thigh. “Don’t just do it for me. Show me how.”

Eyebrows up, he handed her the red claws. “Red is positive on most cables and batteries, but always check to be sure. Positive to positive on the dead car.” He pointed at the post with the + sign on her car, and she awkwardly attached the red claw to it. Then he turned to his car. “Positive to positive on the live car,” he said, and watched while she did it. “Good. The other color is negative. Negative to negative on the good car.” She attached that claw more competently. “The second negative goes to clean, unpainted metal on the dead car. Never to the battery, or it might explode when you start the car.” She looked over her engine block, which was pretty grungy, but eventually found a shiny bolt toward the windshield and clamped the last claw down.

“Positive to positive on the dead car, then on the live car. Negative to negative on the live car, then to bare metal on the dead car,” she recited.

He nodded.

“Then what?”

“Then I start my car.” He leaned through the passenger window and turned the key. The car started immediately. “Give it a minute to charge,” he said when she turned for her car.

She looked at her cell phone. Dad hadn’t called back yet, so he’d gone back to bed or he was struggling with the breathing treatment machine himself. Either way, he’d be in a bad mood when she got home.

“What class do you have today?” Sean asked neutrally.

“Microbiology,” she said, but offered nothing else. She planned to enter the accelerated degree program at the University of Texas Medical Branch’s nursing school, but she needed a year’s worth of prerequisites, including statistics, developmental psychology, an ethics course, and three kinds of chemistry, all with labs. She was trying for a scholarship because she was up to her cheeky-pantied ass in student loan debt already. She couldn’t afford to miss one class.

“When are you supposed to be there?”

“Ten minutes from now,” she said.

He looked at his watch. “Give it a try.”

She slid into the Celica and turned the key. A whir, then the engine turned over. “Yes,” she breathed, and got back out of the car.

“Reverse the order to disconnect the cables,” Sean said.

She gingerly reached out and disconnected the ground, then negative live, positive live, then positive dead-now-live. Sean closed each hood with a sharp clang. “It could be your alternator. I assume that’s original to the car, too, but based on the corrosion, you need a new battery. Get one, and see if that fixes the problem.”

“Today,” she said. “Right after class.”

There were wants, and then there were needs. Sean was a want. A new battery was a need, and she and her dad still had money for bare-bones needs. Her problem was the time necessary to get the battery installed. She was behind on her reading, and she needed extra sessions in the lab. She was a B+/A− student if she worked really, really hard, and it had taken every single second of her spare time to earn a B in a blitzkrieg course of Organic Chemistry over the summer.

She looked up at the man who graduated first in his class from the Naval Academy, then spent two years in England at Oxford University. “Do you know where to go to get a battery?” he asked gently.

“Sears,” she said firmly, and offered him the jumper cables. “Thank you.”

“Keep them,” he said. “If it’s the alternator you’re going to need them again, maybe later today, maybe in a couple of days.”

“I don’t even know what the alternator does, and I don’t have time to find out,” she said, but she wasn’t too proud to refuse the jumper cables. “I’ll get these back to you.”

“I assumed I’d see you again tonight.”

Longing shimmered inside her. It should be easier than this, blowing him off, using him for physical release, nothing more, but after last night, her body remembered exactly why she fell under Sean Winthrop’s spell at the snap of his fingers. It was better, even. Before he deployed he could have passed for a desk jockey with a crew cut, but a year of leading men in combat polished off the academic gloss and unearthed the air of command and masculine confidence she’d seen flashing under his surface, like a fish in the depths of a lake, steel glinting in the right light. Now masculine confidence draped over him with the ease of finely made chain mail armor. She remembered the rough texture in his voice when he told her to strip for him, and lightning splintered deep between her thighs.

“I’ll let you know,” she said as she got in her car and shut the door.

He bent down and folded his arms on her open window. “My work wasn’t up to your standards?” he asked. The words were mild, if she ignored the edge to his tone. “I can do better. I’m a quick learner.”

What was she supposed to say?
Make it less hot? Make it less
emotional?
“It’s not about standards. I’m busy,” she said. “Some nights I want an extra hour of sleep more than I want sex. Are you working that odd-hours job when I get off work?”

“I’m home by then.”

“Then I’ll come by if I feel like it.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw, and his eyes were flat, assessing. Then he leaned in and gave her a quick kiss, nothing sexy or erotic to it, just the kind of quick, possessive good-bye kiss a man gave the woman in his life when they parted ways.

“Bye, Abby.”

She shifted into drive and pulled away from his house. She didn’t regret the sex, but she really regretted that kiss.

Forget about him. Take care of Dad, then get to class late. Better late than never. She pulled into the driveway and hurried up the steps into the house. “Hello?” she called.

The sound of a morning talk show, the kind of
superficial crap
her father had once despised, led her to him. He was in the kitchen, seated at the table, the nebulizer that delivered his medication in front of him. He didn’t look up as she set her purse on the table. “Let me do that, Dad,” she said quietly.

He wheezed through a couple of breaths while she connected the tubing to the nebulizer and the compressor. “Where were you?”

“I went out with a friend after work,” she extemporized.

“The same
friend
you were with last week?” he said.

She measured out each medication, carefully studying the prescription information from the pharmacy, and used concentrating to avoid answering his question. Because that answer was no.

“You’re going to be late for class.” Now the words were accusatory.

She offered him the breath mask. “I know.” She eyed the nebulizer but couldn’t take the time to clean it now. She’d do it when she got home, right before his night treatment. She ran upstairs for a
two-minute shower, then clipped her hair back in a barrette at the nape of her neck. Cool air against her skin triggered the memory of Sean’s hot, sure mouth working over the same spot. She brushed it aside and hurried back downstairs.

“The lawn’s looking ragged,” her father said.

“It will have to wait until the weekend,” she said. “I’m working every night this week.”

“It’ll be too long by Saturday. You’ll have to bag it.”

She shoved her books in her backpack with a little more force than necessary. The lawn was her father’s pride and joy, meticulously seeded, fertilized, weeded, mowed, and edged. She could not possibly care less about the lawn, especially when prioritized with school, work, cleaning, and cooking. “I know, Dad,” she said, then bent over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you this afternoon. Go for a walk, okay?”

He grunted in response, and she took the sunny-side up view that maybe he would go for a walk. His breathing was a little easier, a little less congested today. At least he’d answered. Her car started with only the slightest hesitation. As long as it got her to class, she’d deal with it later. It was much the same strategy she was using with Sean…take advantage of him now, deal with the emotional consequences later.

Except it never worked.

Sean pulled into Langley Security’s parking lot shortly after
ten a.m. and parked the Mustang next to Ty’s big red pickup truck. He strode through the unoccupied reception area, into John’s generously sized two-room office. Ty leaned against a credenza at the back of the room. While John maintained the grooming standards, with his hair cropped close to his head and his jaw cleanly shaven, Ty’s blond hair hung nearly to his jaw.

“Get a haircut, hippie,” Sean tossed at him as he strode into the room. He’d thought about how to act around Ty, and the obvious answer was to pretend nothing happened and continue with the lame jokes about his hair. Ignore the ménage, Ty’s emotional meltdown afterward, all of it.

“Fuck you.” Ty threw back as he skimmed both hands over his hair to get it out of his face.

“Halloween’s over. You don’t have to pretend to be that pretty boy from
Lost
anymore.”

That got an amused grunt from John as he looked from Sean to
Ty and back again, assessing the mood, the temperature in the room. Sean poured himself a cup of coffee, as much to have something to do with his hands as the need for caffeine, and said in a quieter voice, “Did you talk to her yet?”

Without looking at him, Ty gave him a single head shake, the movement discouraging further inquiry. Sean left it at that. Just because he’d gotten up Sunday morning with the gut-certainty that he wanted Abby back and developed a plan that would deploy every resource at his disposal to get her before he reported for duty didn’t mean Ty would take the same approach. Ty worked out of Galveston, the same city where Lauren lived and worked. He didn’t face the same pressures Sean did. Sean had less than a month to get back in Abby’s good graces, and he knew what he wanted. Ty needed time and space to think things through.