What I Love About You (9 page)

And she did. She stepped around him and disappeared. Like a mirage, but unlike a mirage that wavered, then disappeared completely, she’d left behind the lingering scent of her perfume and the cape at his feet. The imprint of her shoulders on his window and the painful erection in his pants let him know that she wasn’t a flashback from the past.

Blake tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling. He was sick of temptation. He’d had a belly full of living with it. Of it riding him hard and him not giving in. Ever. Not to his desire for booze or the neighbor. He was tired of white-knuckling his way through life.

Natalie was gone. The temptation of her body, naked and pressed against him, was out of his reach, but Johnnie wasn’t. The number one temptation in his life sat in a dark wine cellar, chilled to a perfect fifty-five degrees. All he had to do was take a few straight shots, and his biggest temptation would take care of the second. It would dull the edge of addiction and the ache in his groin.

A win-fucking-win situation.

Instead he turned off the lights and headed upstairs. He took a shower and himself in hand. Beneath the warm flow of water, he gave himself relief. Relief from the desire pounding his groin, but it did not last long.

Twice he woke from dreams of Natalie. Dreams of her mouth and hands all over him and his mouth and hands all over her.
What do you need?
she asked. In his dreams he was free to show her. Free to touch her anywhere. To kiss her where he liked to kiss a woman. To part her thighs and shove himself into her soft body.

Each time he woke, frustration turned to anger, and by the time he got out of bed, he was in a foul mood. The kind that squeezed the back of his neck and burned a hole in his gut. The kind that loaded his addiction on a one-way train to relapse if he didn’t find a way to stop before he ran his life off the rails.

He pulled on his running shoes and jogged a five-mile trail into the mountains, but his mood didn’t improve. It didn’t improve much more when he busted out his camera and snapped shots of the lake. It certainly didn’t improve when he discovered Sparky had chewed a hole in his leather sofa or when he had to shovel the dog poop in his backyard.

Blake wheeled the big gray garbage can down his drive toward the curb. How had his life become this? How had he ended up an alcoholic, sexually frustrated, dog-poop scooper?

“What are you doing, Blake?”

Blake parked the gray garbage can at the curb, then turned his attention to Charlotte, standing by her mailbox in a puffy purple coat and a knit unicorn hat. “I just cleaned up about ten pounds of dog shit.”

Charlotte gasped. “That’s a bad word.”

“Did Sparky eat some of your hair ribbons?”

She nodded. “He ate my Hello Kitty bow.”

“Yeah. I found it.” He moved the few feet toward her. “It was in his crap.”

Her little nose wrinkled and she shook her head. “I don’t want it back.”

He tried not to smile. “Are you sure? You could probably dig it out of his poop and put it in your hair.”

“Gwoss!” She shook her head harder. “You can keep it for
your
hair.” Then she laughed like their conversation was hysterically funny. “You’re a poopy head!”

Christ. Poop talk with a five-year-old. “I like your hat.” He pointed to the gold horn and white ears on top of her head. “Nice horn.”

Her laughter died suddenly and she frowned. “It’s a corn.”

“Really?” He looked a little closer. “It looks like a horn to me.”

“It’s a corn.” She rolled her eyes. “Uni-
corn
.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s a bad word.”

“Yeah. I know.” Was this really his life? Picking up dog shit and arguing with a five-year-old? Lusting after her mother and masturbating like a teenager?

“Guess what?”

He looked at his watch. The Niners were playing the Packers at six-thirty. If he hurried, he could catch the last hour of the pregame show. “What?”

“I got a secret.” She looked behind her toward her house. “I can’t tell my mom.”

His hand dropped to his side. That wasn’t good. He’d never really been around kids but he knew keeping secrets from a mom didn’t sound good.

“My daddy is coming home from jail.”

“Yeah?” He looked down into Charlotte’s little face. Her cheeks were pink from the cold.

“I heard my nana talk to my papa.”

“I think your mom knows.”

“No. She didn’t tell me. She always tells me stuff.” She shook her head and her horn wobbled. “I have another secret.”

He glanced at the front door and back. “Yeah?”

“I have to tell it in your ear.” She motioned with her hand for him to bend down.

So he did. Way down.

“Don’t laugh,” she whispered, and her small breath tickled his ear. “I’m scared.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know him.” She placed her hand on his shoulder and leaned in a little closer. “Nana told Papa I can stay with Daddy sometimes. She said I can live with him, but I want to live with my mama. I’m never leaving my mama’s house.”

He shouldn’t say anything. It wasn’t his business, but Charlotte’s small hand on his shoulder and her little voice in his ear made him feel strangely protective. Like he should do something even when he knew it wasn’t his place.

“What if I don’t like him?”

He doubted Charlotte would be living with her dad anytime soon. No, it wasn’t his place to say anything, but he pulled back and made the mistake of looking into her blue eyes, like she expected him to tell her something to make it better. Like she expected him to
do
something. Blake was a man of action. He made things better for a living, but this was above his pay grade. She kept looking at him like he had the answer so he said, “You’ll like him.”

“How do you know?”

Yeah. How did he know? He shouldn’t have said anything, but since he had, he was involved. “You didn’t like me when you first met me.”

She nodded. “You were mean.”

“And now we’re friends.” He straightened and shook his head. Friends with a five-year-old. A five-year-old who rolled her eyes at him and called him poopy head. His friends didn’t call him poopy head.

“Yeah.” She looked at him, and her hat shifted toward the back of her head. “And now we have Spa-ky.”

Recruit Sparky was currently in his crate, rethinking his behavior.

The front door swung open and Natalie stuck her head out. “Charlotte, come in and wash your hands for dinner.”

At the sight of her blond hair across the yard, Blake’s anger and frustration pinched his skull. He should tell her about his conversation with Charlotte, but with the previous night still very fresh in his head, it would be best to avoid Natalie for the next few days. Or months, when the taste and touch of her mouth beneath his was just a distant memory.

Chapter Seven

The whir and hum of the commercial printer filled Natalie’s ears with the sound of money. The photo printing side of her business had picked up so much lately, she’d hired a part-time employee just the day before. Brandy Finley was a senior at the local high school and the hours were perfect for her. Natalie needed help at the front counter when everyone in the county decided to pick up their prints at five o’clock. She especially needed someone to help package photos to mail.

“Sometimes people send inappropriate photos and we don’t know it until they are already printed,” she told Brandy as she showed her how to load the machine with new ink. She thought of Frankie and this young girl getting an eyeful of his junk. “If you come across naked pictures, or anything you find personally disturbing, set the order aside and I’ll take care of it.”

“People send in naked pictures?” Brandy looked at her through the lenses of her glasses. Even if Brandy hadn’t written on her application that she was a member of the science club and played clarinet in the marching band, the nerdy cat T-shirt she’d worn her first day would have given her away. Today she wore a Team Voldemort T-shirt with a wand on it, reminding Natalie that she needed to order Brandy several work shirts like Natalie wore. Crisp white blouse with the logo over the breast pocket. Khaki or black pants, but no jeans.

“Unfortunately, yes.” Natalie understood why a person would want to order twenty or more photos from her, but she didn’t understand why they wouldn’t keep their personal pictures personal and print them off at home.

She showed Brandy how to package the photos to be matted and mailed out. While the girl arranged mailers, Natalie took the opportunity to grab a stack of prints Blake had sent a few hours ago. It had been two days since she’d seen him standing by her mailbox when she’d sent Charlotte out to put away her bike. Three since she’d made out with him. She recalled little about that night. Just bits and pieces of his kiss and his hands on her waist. His hard chest against hers and his muscles beneath her palms. If her memory was right, and not just part of a drunken fantasy, Blake Junger knew how to kiss a woman. He didn’t ask and didn’t hesitate. He just lowered his handsome face and burned up any resistance with his hot, powerful mouth. Not that she remembered giving any resistance. Not even a token effort.

She also remembered something about him comparing marriage to a barbecue spit up his butt and asking her if she wanted to be his booty call. She remembered that she’d been tempted. So tempted to peel off her Robin costume and curl up on his naked chest.

She’d like to blame her lack of any sort of resistance on alcohol. She
had
been drunk that night. Irresponsible and drunk. She was the mother of a five-year-old and never drank like that. She certainly never mixed alcohol that was sure to give her a hangover, and she blamed her two-day headache on Michael. Obviously his impending return was getting to her more than she’d imagined. She’d expected to feel apprehension, but not the heaviness that grew with each day. She worried about Charlotte and how she would take the news that her father was really coming home this time. She worried that Michael would expect to breeze into their lives and play the long-lost daddy. Mostly, she worried that he would break Charlotte’s heart like he’d broken hers.

Natalie looked at the first photo Blake had shot of Lake Mary, through branches of ponderosa and yellow aspen. He’d obviously set the aperture at a higher value and increased his depth of field to kept the edges nice and sharp.

It didn’t do any good to make herself crazy and drink like a sailor on leave. Michael had either changed or he hadn’t. There was nothing she could do about it today. She slid the photo to the bottom of the stack and looked at the second. Blake had taken advantage of natural light filtering through variegated shade to snap a picture of a squirrel perched on a stump. He had snapped a series of Sparky playing in leaves, chewing a stick, and partially lifting his leg on a pinecone. It was such a guy photo that she chuckled.

There was nothing she could do about the other night in Blake’s living room, either, but the more she thought about it, the more bits and pieces she recalled. She remembered him pushing her against the window and pulling the back of her hair, and she remembered that she’d liked it. She liked the hot little shivers of pleasure up and down her spine as he took charge and the choice from her. She remembered that he’d pulled away and sent her home because she was drunk. Maybe beneath all that testosterone and badass aura, he was actually a good man.

The bell over the door rang, and she looked up as the source of all those hot shivers strolled in wearing a gray and white flannel shirt tucked into those jeans with the interesting button fly. The door swung shut behind him, and he pulled a pair of dark sunglasses from his face. His gray gaze met hers, and all the bits and pieces of her memory flooded in on her at once. The memory of his lips on hers and his long, deep kiss made her cheeks flush like a girl’s. Embarrassed, she broke eye contact. She lowered her gaze to his squirrel picture, and . . . Crap! She’d been caught snooping through Blake’s pictures, and he was too close not to notice. “Are you here for your prints?” she asked the obvious, trying to act all natural like snooping was a service she provided for her customers.

“Yeah.” He stopped on the other side of the counter as she scooped up his prints. “You about done being nosy?”

“I was just checking to make sure the printer stayed on line. It’s called quality assurance.”

“Uh-huh.” He pointed at the photos with his glasses, then shoved them on top of his head. “More like you’re checking for dick pictures.”

Her mouth fell open. That had not occurred to her. Now it did though. Had he sent in a penis pic? Was it beneath his Sparky and squirrel photos?

“No,” he answered as if he’d read her mind, and planted his hands on the counter. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up his thick forearms. “I don’t need to take a shot of my package to get a woman’s attention.”

A piece of her memory fell into place like a missing shard and was embedded with the recollection of his “package” pressed against her. She shoved the prints into a photo envelope and wished she could shove aside the memory of his big erection shoved up against her crotch. “Charlotte told me Sparky chewed up your leather sofa,” she said, changing the subject.

Blake frowned. “Down to the wood.” He reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “His chew toy was on top of the stuffing like a cherry on a cake.”

“He got one of my blue suede pumps.” She rang up his photos and he swiped his American Express black card. She thought only rappers and rock stars had black cards, which made her again wonder what the man did for a living.

“I finished the mailers, Natalie,” Brandy said behind her. Natalie turned and introduced her new employee to Blake. Brandy blushed and stared at a spot on the counter. Natalie knew how she felt. Blake Junger was the biggest and best-looking thing to hit this town in years.

“How many Horcruxes have you created?” Blake asked as he put his card back in his wallet.

Horcruxes? Natalie looked from one to the other. What was a Horcrux?

“One,” Brandy answered.

“Let me guess. Your cat.”

“No!” She glanced up. “I would never hurt Pixel.” A shy smile tilted her lips. “My car.”

“You have an evil car?” Blake chuckled.

Brandy nodded, and Natalie had to ask, “What is a Horcrux?”

Her employee looked at her through her glasses like she was surprised Natalie didn’t know. “An object where a witch or wizard hides a part of their soul so they can live forever. It’s evil.”

What?

“It’s from Harry Potter,” she explained further, and Natalie felt like she had a big arrow above her head, pointing to the only person on the planet who hadn’t read the books. But evidently Blake had read Harry Potter and knew about Horcruxes. He was just full of surprises.

He shoved his wallet into his back pocket, then turned his gaze to Natalie. “Do you have a few minutes? We need to talk.”

No doubt he wanted to talk about Saturday night, and that was the last thing she wanted to discuss with him. She just didn’t want any more of the blanks filled in. “I’m kind of busy.”

“It’s about Charlotte.”

“Oh.” That threw her a bit, and she turned to Brandy. “Do you think you’ll be okay if a customer comes in?”

Brandy nodded and looked so earnest, Natalie felt comfortable leaving her for a few moments. She led Blake to her office and left the door open just a crack. “Did Charlotte do something?”

“No.”

Charlotte was usually such a good girl, it was hard for Natalie to imagine that she’d done something so horrible it warranted a conversation behind closed doors. She sat on the edge of her desk stacked with stray photo paper and invoices, and she folded her arms under her breasts.

“She knows her dad is getting out of prison.”

Her arms fell to her sides and her heart skipped a painful beat. “How?”

“She told me she overheard her grandparents talking about it.”

She’d told
him
? “When did she tell you all this?”

“Sunday. By your mailbox.”

Natalie lowered her gaze to the buttons closing the flannel shirt over his big chest. A myriad of emotions tumbled and twisted in her stomach. Among them anger that the Coopers hadn’t been more careful, and Natalie wasn’t so sure Charlotte hadn’t been meant to overhear them. The Coopers were good to her and Charlotte, but sometimes they did an end-run around her. “What else did she say?”

“That you don’t know he’s getting out because you would have told her.”

“Crap.” She raised her gaze to his eyes. “I didn’t tell because the last time he said he was getting out, he didn’t.” How was she going to tell her child that she’d known about her father but hadn’t told her? What could she say? God, she hated Michael. “I try really hard to never lie to that child. I sometimes might leave things out that might scare her, but I don’t lie. Never. And now she’ll think she can’t trust me to tell her the truth.”

“Everyone lies just a little.”

She shook her head and looked into his face. “I don’t lie, Blake. I hate lies and liars. Lies ruin lives.” She rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes. “Did she say anything else?”

“She’s scared that she won’t like him.”

“She doesn’t know enough about him not to like him.” She stood and turned to her desk. “She talks to him sometimes on the phone when she visits the Coopers, but she’s never met him in person.” Her hands shook as she reached for the invoices on her desk. “Maybe she’s overheard me and Lilah talk about him.” She spoke her thoughts out loud. “Or maybe me and my mom. God knows what I might have said throughout the years.”

“I think she’s afraid she might have to live with him.”

Natalie spun around and dropped the papers at her feet. “That will
never
happen.” It was just like Michael to think the world still revolved around him. “He didn’t want Charlotte.” She felt her temper rise, and she didn’t bother to contain it. “I tried for five years to conceive that child. Five
years
, and the day after I told him I was finally pregnant, he skipped town with his twenty-year-old girlfriend and several million dollars of investors’ money. He was planning to start a new life in Sweden or Switzerland . . . or wherever!” She raised a hand and dropped it to her side. “If he hadn’t gotten caught, I never would have known if he was dead or alive. His own parents wouldn’t have known!” She let out a breath and shook her head. “I wish he hadn’t gotten caught. I wish he’d gotten away. I wish he’d frozen to death in the Alps. I wish his prison bus had caught on fire on the way to the big house. I wish he’d gotten shanked!” She covered her mouth with her hands. Okay, she shouldn’t have let that last wish out for anyone but Lilah to hear. Lilah understood. She dropped her hands to her side and glanced up at him. He looked more amused than horrified by her bloodthirsty outburst. “Sorry to vent. I’m done. It’s just that I hate him for what he did.” She swallowed past the dry rage clogging her throat. “The last time I talked to him on the phone, he said he wants to see a lot of Charlotte and me.” She guessed she wasn’t quite done venting yet and felt it pressing in on her like a black fog. “He asked me to think about working on our relationship.” She held up quote fingers. “ ‘For Charlotte’s sake.’ ”

She didn’t love Michael anymore, and she certainly didn’t trust anything that came out of his lying mouth. “That will
never
happen, either. He doesn’t really want to be a family. It’s just a con. Plain and simple. That’s all there is to it.”

“Probably not all.”

God, was Blake like everyone else and thought Michael deserved a second chance?

“I imagine he wants to get laid.”

She stared at him without saying anything, but her eyes spoke for her.

“Hey.” He held up both hands. “The guy’s just getting out of prison. It’s a given he wants to get laid.”

She frowned. “Then he should probably hire a hooker. I’m not the young girl he dated in high school or the naive wife he married and dumped.” She took a few short breaths and stared at the bump of his Adam’s apple above his plaid collar. “It’s not like he went to war for the past five years or got stranded on a desert island. He’s been in prison for stealing retirement money from old people, but everyone around this town is acting like they can’t wait to welcome him back. Michael Cooper, star quarterback and all-around good guy. I can understand why his parents forgive him. But everyone else?”

His touch under her chin brought her attention back to his cool gaze. “Breathe or you’re going to pass out.”

She shook her head, and the tips of his fingers brushed her skin. “I never passed out.”

He tapped a finger on the tip of her chin, then dropped his hand. “Humor me and take a few deep breaths.”

She did and felt the fog clear a bit.

“Are you afraid of your ex?”

She was afraid he’d charm her daughter’s susceptible heart. “I’m afraid he’ll try and take Charlotte from me.”