What I Love About You (6 page)

The chilly October breeze rustled the leaves and branches of pine and brought with it the taste and feel of autumn. Blake hadn’t felt a real autumn season in a long time. He’d always been stationed where it was warm and sunny or deployed to the desert or Afghan mountains. He liked the change of season. He liked the sharp contrasting color and the smell of leaves and earth on the crisp autumn air.

For the first time in his life, he didn’t have to report to anyone or pack up his gear and hop a cargo plane destined for the latest hot spot. He was on self-imposed leave. He’d invested his bonuses over the years and could chop wood for the rest of his life if he chose. He could walk through the forest with nothing more than a camera. He didn’t have to kit up or pack up an MK12. He didn’t have to eat dust or crouch in a swamp. He didn’t have to do anything.

But for the last twenty-one years, he’d lived on high octane. He was hardwired to go and do and conquer. To have a goal and achieve it. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could run on a slower fuel before he got restless.

Probably two more weeks. Two more weeks to conquer this alcoholism. A month at the most, and then he’d review his options. Several private military contractors had contacted him recently. He was Blake Junger. His name alone cut through red tape and bullshit. His name gave him options. He could work six months on a cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden or on the Somali coast, then return to his Batcave here in Truly. Or he could hire on with crisis contractors to manage kidnaps around the world. Kidnap resolution was a specialized job for which he was uniquely qualified.

He glanced at the dog and set the CamelBak on the stump. Recruit Sparky was all tangled up again, and Blake scowled as he walked toward the furry black puppy. Three of his legs were trussed together and he shook with happiness when Blake knelt and untangled the stupid mutt.

He had eighty-three days of sobriety under his belt. He still wrestled with Johnnie, but today wasn’t a white-knuckle day. Today his head was clear and filled with clean mountain air.

To his left, the distant crack of rifle power stopped his hands. His head jerked up. His senses instantly alert and heightened, he calculated the shot had been fired from 3.2 kilometers behind him. He heard a second shot, and even as he reminded himself that it was hunting season in Idaho, the green and yellow leaves in front of his eyes wavered like a heat mirage. Instead of rich earth and pine, the smell of rotting garbage, molding concrete, and baharat rose up to fill his lungs. His ears rang and the shifting ripples between what was real and what was not spun his head. He knew he was in the Idaho wilderness, yet his visceral memory had him crouched on a rooftop in Ramadi, sucking the smell of the Middle East into his lungs.

It wasn’t real. One second. Two seconds trapped in visceral hell. He closed his eyes against the shimmering mirage. It would stop soon. It always did. Three seconds . . . Something wet slid across his cheek. Warm and sloppy. Something real, and he opened his eyes to a beady black gaze staring back at him. His tilted world righted, he took a deep breath of rich earth and dry leaves. Recruit Sparky barked and licked his mouth, and he was so relieved he almost kissed the dog back.

Almost. The stupid puppy tried to climb up his chest and nearly knocked him on his ass. Blake’s ears still rang, and as always, he felt disoriented, confused, and foolish, but unlike the other times, he was distracted by a dog. A dog so happy he practically shook apart while his tongue assaulted Blake’s face in a dervish of enthusiasm.

“Stand down,” he ordered, but of course the dog ignored him. He untied the mutt and shut him in the cab of his truck, the bed loaded with firewood and few interesting logs he’d found. He loaded his chain saw and ax and shut the tailgate. He tried to ignore the pressure squeezing the back of his neck as he stowed the rest of his gear in his tactical rucksack.

His flashbacks had started several months ago. Before today, the last one had happened while he was staring out at Lake Mary when he’d first moved to Truly. The one before that in rehab. The first in his brother’s Escalade in Nevada. Beau had taken him to his home in Henderson to sober him up before the trip to California. They’d been driving through the desert town, arguing over who was the biggest badass superhero, Batman or Superman, when he glanced in his side mirror. Within the reflective glass, a confusing image of a white Toyota filled with Iraqis sped toward them. They wore ski masks and keffiyeh, and dust rose from the truck’s bald tires. The image wavered like smoke, and adrenaline shot through Blake’s veins as he reached for a grenade in his chest gear and his SIG Sauer on his hip. Innocent men did not wear ski masks in a hundred and thirty degrees.

“What are you doing?” Beau asked.

He looked at his brother looking back at him from the driver’s side of the SUV. It was like staring at his own reflection. “Bad guys on your five.”

Beau glanced into his rearview. “What’s going on Blake?”

He looked back into the mirror and the image of the truck shimmered and disappeared. It had seemed so real. So real it spun his head and he grabbed the door handle. “Not sure.”

“Do you have PTSD?”

“No.” Jungers did not have PTSD.

“No shame in it.”

“I don’t have PTSD. Let it go.”

A few silent moments passed as they sped across the Nevada desert. “One punch from Superman’s powerful fists, Batman’s head rolls like a gutter ball.”

Blake had tried to laugh. Thinking back on it now brought a smile to his lips. “One punch from Batman’s kryptonite boxing gloves,” he’d said, “and Superman crumples like a pussy.”

Blake missed his brother, but he wasn’t going to call. Beau would want to talk about Blake’s sobriety, and Blake didn’t want to talk about it right now. Not when it tugged at his gut and whispered in his ear.

The drive home took ten minutes because of the rough terrain. Ten minutes of puppy barking, tail wagging, and window licking. To anyone else, this might seem normal, a man and his dog, but this wasn’t normal. Not for him.

His head ached from the flashback. His hands griped the steering wheel a little too tight. He needed a drink. A couple of shots of Johnnie to blunt the sharp edges. The bottle was in the wine cellar. It would be so easy to pour it back.

No one will know
, his addiction whispered.

Giving in would be so much easier than white-knuckling his way through it.

One drink. You can stop after one drink
.

He’d never stopped after one drink. One drink led to two. Two to three. Three to a bottle and a shitload of beer. A bottle and a shitload of beer led to waking up with raw knuckles, a split lip, and a killer hangover. At the moment, a good old-fashioned bar brawl sounded like a good time.

Charlotte ran across her front yard as he pulled into his garage.

“Blake!”

He left the garage door up and climbed out of the truck.

“Blake!” She stopped at the rear of the truck, breathing hard. “It’s my night for Spa-ky.”

“I know.” The dog jumped across the console and Blake lifted him from the driver’s seat. He set Sparky on the ground and the dog barked wildly, then shot across the floor toward the little girl. He tripped on the leash and slid on his belly.

Charlotte laughed and picked up her part-time mutt. “We got Spa-ky a name tag,” she said as the dog licked her face. He wiggled and squirmed and slipped out of her grasp. “It’s purple. My favorite color.” She tried to pick up the mutt up again, but he jumped and barked and bit the hem of her coat. “Stop, Spa-ky.” She reached for him but he jumped back and barked.

Blake watched the dog’s shenanigans for several more moments before he shut the truck door and picked up the mutt. At this rate, she was never going to get the dog home. “I’ll carry him to your house.” He subdued the recruit in a compression hold. “Settle your ass down before you piss yourself.”

“You said a bad word.”

“Are you going to tell your mom on me?”

She thought a moment as they moved down the driveway. “No.” She shook her head. “I won’t tell. We’re friends.”

Friends?
He wouldn’t go that far. His friends were considerably older, male, and said as many bad words as they could fit into one sentence.

Sparky wiggled as Blake looked up the neighboring driveway and at Sweet Cheeks leaning into the open hatchback of her Subaru. His male friends would pause to appreciate her ass in those jeans.

“Mama, I got Spa-ky.”

Natalie pulled out several bags of groceries and her blond hair swung across one shoulder. “Oh joy.”

Blake set the dog on the ground and moved toward her. She straightened and he reached for the groceries in her hands. “I’ll get those.”

Her sunglasses slid down her nose and her blue eyes stared at him above the brown frames. “I’ve got these, but you can get the last few.”

There was something about the eyes the color of the deep ocean, the aviator glasses, and her pink mouth that licked at the sharp edges of craving. Something white hot, and turned it into a different kind of craving altogether.

Blake grabbed the four remaining bags of groceries and shut the hatchback. He followed her and Charlotte in through the garage door and set the bags on the kitchen counter. The house smelled like a woman lived in it. Like fresh baked cake and flowers and clean laundry soap. The house looked like a woman lived in it, too. A white tablecloth. A pink smiley cup sitting in the sink, and lacy curtains. Photographs of Charlotte all over the place.

“Do you need any more help?” he asked as he took in the sights and smells of the girly home. It was about half the square footage of his house and was semi-custom. Built from a builder’s blueprint with some nice woodwork, stone, and tile. The back faced the lake, like his.

“No thank you.” She shucked off her jacket and tossed it on a kitchen chair. “Can you hang around for a minute?” His gaze slid to the front of her thin white T-shirt.

The warm parts in his belly got hotter with the promise of a full-blown erection, and one thing was for certain, white-hot lust sure beat the hell out of white-knuckling it. “Sure.”

“I want to show you something.”

He wanted to see it. And when she was done showing what she had, he had something to show her, too. The way she’d looked at him the other day in the wine cellar was the way a woman looked at a man when she needed to get laid. He’d been with enough women to recognize that look. It wasn’t teasing. It wasn’t coy. It wasn’t manufactured. It was a dark yearning in the depths of a woman’s eyes. It was the drop of a full-bottom lip and a sweet inhalation.

She walked across the wood floor to the refrigerator, and the puppy barked as Charlotte giggled in the living room.

Standing there was a distraction. He didn’t plan to have sex with Natalie. She was the kind of woman who wanted sex to
mean
something. She wasn’t the kind to just get naked and have fun. She’d want some sort of commitment, but thinking about her thighs around his waist and bouncy breasts in his hands got him hard as a steel hooley.

Blake pushed his sweatshirt sleeves up his forearms. He could control his hard-ons. There were those who thought he was like his dad, a guy who jumped from woman to woman, and that was partly true, he guessed. But unlike his dad, he’d always been in control of his dick. Unlike his brother, he’d never believed he had to be celibate to do it.

Chapter Five

Natalie grabbed a drawing stuck to the refrigerator with a cupcake magnet and set it on the counter. “Charlotte made this last night.” She pointed to a round figure with long dangly arms and legs. Charlotte had carefully drawn ten fingers and toes, and a big head topped with three strands of blond hair.

“What’s that?”

Natalie pointed to the gray eyes and the straight red line for a mouth. “This is you.” She slid her finger to the black furry circle with paws and tail. The puppy had a head with a red tongue and floppy ears. “This is Sparky. I’ve noticed that Charlotte’s artwork has improved in the last few months. Everything used to be stick figures.”

His brow furrowed and he leaned in for a closer look. “Is that supposed to be my hair?”

Natalie smiled. “Charlotte doesn’t have very much experience drawing hair on men. Her grandfather is bald.” And her father has a prison cut.

“Is that a pot gut?”

He sounded so insulted her smile turned to soft laughter. Blake Junger had a full head of hair and his gut was definitely flat. “Your eyes are the right color.” She moved to a lower cupboard and pulled out a pan. “And your smile.”

“This thing isn’t smiling.”

“Exactly.” She filled the pan with hot water and set it on the stove to boil. It was mac and cheese night at the Coopers. Living with a five-year-old, she’d learned it was easier just to keep the menu simple and hide veggies in things her daughter liked to eat. She’d learned to pick her battles. Over the sound of cartoons in the living room, Sparky barked, proving that she’d lost that one.

Blake straightened and she expected him to leave. To leave the part-time dog he’d conned on a little girl and run like hell. Instead he said, “I met a friend of yours a few weeks ago at the grocery store.”

Her list of friends was short. She grabbed a box of mac and cheese and looked over her shoulder at him. “Lilah?”

“Mabel.”

She set the box on the counter next to the stove. Maybe he was sticking around because he was lonely in that big empty house next door. That made her almost feel bad for him, but not quite. “Mabel Vaughn?”

“Yeah.”

“She was my grandmother’s good friend.” She added salt to the water. He didn’t seem to have a job or family. He didn’t seem to do anything but chop wood and shoot pictures. “I’ve known her all of my life.”

He leaned a hip into the counter and folded his arms over his chest like he was settling in for a chat. Like he wasn’t the rude neighbor who’d sworn at her child and questioned her motherhood. “She mentioned that.” He wore a gray Navy football sweatshirt and a pair of Levi’s worn in curious places. Curious places like the back pocket were he kept his wallet and his button fly where he kept something else. Not that she’d looked. Okay, she’d looked, but it wasn’t her fault she’d noticed his bulge, like he was packing serious heat behind that button fly. Having him here in her kitchen was really strange. His testosterone was throwing off the feminine balance in her house. Like a storm cloud in the middle of her calm blue feng shui.

“She also mentioned your husband.”

Natalie glanced toward the empty doorway of the living room and pushed her hair behind her ear. “Ex-husband.” She wasn’t surprised Mabel had gossiped about her. Annoyed, but not surprised. “No doubt she ‘mentioned’ he’s in prison.” She looked back at Blake watching her through those intense smoky eyes of his.

“When does he get out?”

Natalie rarely liked to talk about Michael, and this wasn’t one of those rare occasions. “Around Thanksgiving.” In the other room, Natalie listened to the sound of Charlotte’s laugher over the puppy’s barking and a
My Little Pony
cartoon.
My Little Pony
was okay, but ever since Lilah had rented
I, Robot
for them all to watch, anything with robots gave Charlotte nightmares.

“Is Charlotte excited?”

Natalie didn’t like to talk about Michael, but he wasn’t a secret. She learned years ago that secrets made a person sick. Sick like her former husband. She’d been in a really dark place during her divorce. She’d been pregnant and depressed and humiliated. Instead of medication, she’d been helped with cognitive therapy. She’d learned to disassemble overwhelming problems and break them into manageable parts.

“Charlotte doesn’t know yet.” Blake lifted a brow, and she explained as she put away groceries. “Michael’s parents thought he was getting out last year. They told Charlotte he was coming home and got her all excited.” Although why she felt compelled to explain anything to the neighbor was a mystery. “The state of Idaho had different plans, and I was the one who had to tell her that he wasn’t coming home. She cried for three days. After that, we all agreed not to say a word until it actually happens.” Which was coming up so soon it made Natalie’s stomach tight. “What else did Mabel mention?”

He didn’t answer and she turned from putting away a jar of peanut butter. His gaze was lowered like he’d been watching her butt. She supposed it was only fair that he look at her butt since she’d looked at his button fly.

“That you were a prom queen.” He lifted his gaze up her stomach and breasts to her face. The difference between the two of them was that he got caught and was unrepentant.

“That was a looooong time ago.” She picked up the box of mac and cheese and tore off the top. “I think the crown is still in a box somewhere.” She pulled out the powdered cheese packet, then dumped the pasta into the water.

“And you were a cheerleader.”

“Yeah.” She tossed the empty blue and yellow box in the recycling bin under the sink. It fell onto the floor and she pulled out the heaping bin. “That was a lifetime ago, too.” She obviously needed a container bigger than seven gallons. She pushed it down as much as possible, but it popped back up. Before she could try again, Blake was beside her. Towering over her as he put his big boot on top of the heap. He smashed it down like a trash compactor to half the size. Natalie was impressed. It had been a long time since she’d lived with a man and she had forgotten that they came in handy sometimes. Like for carrying in groceries and compacting trash. And for other things. Like for washing her back in the shower.

He removed his big foot and said, “She mentioned you still wear your little outfit sometimes.”

She looked up so fast a few strands of hair swung from behind her ear and got stuck to her lip gloss. He stood close; a hand’s breadth separated the front of his sweatshirt from her breasts. She looked into his eyes and the air between them changed. It got hot, charged with sexual awareness. “Mabel said
that
?”

He shook his head without taking his gaze from hers. “No. That’s just my dirty mind.”

Was he coming on to her? If he was, what should she do? God, it had been so long that she didn’t know anymore.

He lifted a hand and brushed her hair from her lip. The tips of his fingers touched the corner of her mouth and cheek, and she couldn’t breathe. Literally, her breath was caught in her chest. She tried to think of something to say. Something flippant, like his touch didn’t affect her. Like hot little tingles weren’t spreading across her skin.

His hand slid to the side of her throat, and he lightly pressed his thumb into her chin, tipping her face up. “Do you have a man in your life, Sweet Cheeks?”

A man? She shook her head and swallowed hard, past the clog in her chest. She fought an urge to turn her face into his hand and kiss his warm palm. “I don’t date,” she managed.

“That’s what I thought.”

He smelled good. Like the last time she’d been this close. Like mountain air and man. Whoa. Wait. What? How did he know she didn’t date? Did she look like a loner?

He dropped his hand and moved closer. Closer until the tips of her breasts touched the front of his shirt. “You look like a woman who needs to date.” What did that look like? She stood completely still as he told her, “You look like a woman who needs to date and with a man who knows how.” He lowered his gaze to her mouth. He wasn’t touching her, but it felt like it. “You look like you need a man to date you all night long.”

She sucked the warm, tingly scent of pheromones into her lungs. She couldn’t help it. They surrounded her like a sexually charged fog. “Are we talking about dating?” It felt like he was talking about something else. Something that made the clog in her chest get all hot and heavy and fall to the pit of her stomach.

He nodded. “No.”

Was it yes or no? With him staring at her mouth, she couldn’t think. At least not beyond the urge to slide her hand up his chest and curl into him. “How can you tell I don’t date?” she asked as if she wasn’t getting bombarded with impulses and urges and dark cravings. “Do I have a sign above my head or something?”

He slowly raised his gaze to hers. “Your eyes.”

“My eyes?” Her brows lowered. “You can see I want a
date
from my eyes?” Again, she didn’t think they were really talking about dating.

“There’s a difference between want and need.”
His
eyes were sending her a message, too. Beneath lowered lids, he sent a message so hot it made the knot in her stomach tighten and threaten to burn up her thighs. “You need a man to get you in his bed and keep you there all night. You need it bad. Real bad.”

She did. She hadn’t realized how much she needed it until that day in his wine cellar. But it wasn’t going to happen here. In her kitchen. Not now, with her daughter in the next room and her dinner boiling on the stove. And not with this man. This hot, sexy man who was rude and overbearing, and she was sure wasn’t interested in any sort of relationship beyond sex.

On a purely physical level, she might like to have sex and forget about it the next morning. She wouldn’t mind just using a man for his body. For just one night she’d like to use men like Lilah did, but she was a single mother and a small-business owner. She had more respect for herself than to be any man’s one-night stand. “I don’t need anything that bad,” she said, and stepped around him. “I’m a busy woman.” She moved to the stove and took the boiling pot off the heat. “Believe me, I am not the kind of woman to answer a booty call. I have more respect for myself.” She poured the hot water and pasta into a strainer in the sink.

“Uh-huh.” She heard him move to the back door and open it as a cloud of steam rose to her face. “More respect for yourself than to stare at pictures of Frankie Cornell’s monster junk?”

She turned, and her flushing face had nothing to do with the steam. He
had
heard her and Lilah that day in the store.

He smiled. “If you want to see a monster dick, you know where I live.”

Then he was gone and she was left standing in her kitchen with an empty pot in her hand and a steam cloud around her head. Good Lord, she couldn’t recall exactly what she’d said about Frankie. Other than his mutant penis, of course.

She set the pot on one side of the sink. Blake had a monster penis, too? She looked across her shoulder and out the kitchen window. Trees blocked the view of his house. She wondered if he was telling the truth about that. Her brain conjured the image of his button fly. No, he probably wasn’t lying.

She moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a gallon of whole milk and some butter. Michael had always said he had a big penis. She’d been a virgin and a faithful wife, and hadn’t had any personal experience when it came to size. She didn’t have a lot now, but she was older and wiser and had enough to know that Michael was average. Nothing to lie about, but that was Michael. No way would he ever let himself be average at anything.

She looked at the clock on the stove. She had an hour before homework and bath time. Half an hour before she and Charlotte sat down to eat. She pulled out a casserole dish and reached for the phone. Everyone knew that Natalie couldn’t keep anything to herself, and Lilah was going to love this.

How was she possibly going to look at her neighbor now? she asked herself as she dialed. How was she ever going to look at him as just the jerk who’d stuck her with a part-time dog?

Of course Blake had sleazed out on the dog agreement. The day after he’d stood in her kitchen and told her he had a monster penis, he’d stopped by Glamour Snaps and Prints to tell her that he was going out of town for a while. He didn’t know how long he’d be. That had been two weeks ago. Two weeks of full-time care of the part-time dog.

Natalie lifted her camera and took several shots of the newborn asleep in her daddy’s hunting beanie. The camouflage hat was tucked around the tiny girl’s shoulders and she wore a stretchy camo band around her small head. Behind Natalie the young mother wept with pride.

Natalie paused to move a few of the autumn leaves scattered on the table the baby lay on. Then she took several steps back and adjusted the focus of her Canon EOS. Personally, she was not a fan of the camo. She got down on one knee and took a few more shots before the mother carefully put the sleeping baby in a blue egg and laid her in a bird nest. Natalie changed the backdrop and moved the white reflective bounce card. The egg and nest were lined with lambskin and Natalie tucked the infant’s hands beneath her chin. Much better than camo.

It was November first. Except for archers and muzzleloaders, hunting season was over. Natalie was happy the men in town had packed away their hunters’ camo for another year. And it just went without saying that she could stand looking out the window of Glamour Snaps and Prints and not see an elk head riding down Main Street strapped to a car. Or pulling into the grocery store and not seeing deer legs sticking up from the bed of a truck. Or not hearing her child cry about poor dead animals.

As she snapped pictures of the baby girl, she remembered when Charlotte had been a baby. She felt a little nostalgic, and she might have been struck with a raging case of baby fever if she thought there was a possibility that she could have another child without going through infertility treatments again.

She paused to look at the pictures through the display screen before she showed them to the mother. Of course, before she even thought of IVF, she’d have to find a husband. A good man who’d be around to help raise his child. A good
law-abiding
man who’d love her and Charlotte. A man who wasn’t a colossal liar.