by Megan Hart
Eddie moved to the counter, which now boasted six high stools instead of the lonely one from times past. He’d set out two mugs and had a Thermos of coffee waiting.
“Are you sure your other son doesn’t need a job?” he asked as he poured.
Bess didn’t see the point in being coy. “Connor wants to make his own way, Eddie. I appreciate the offer, but he wanted to find a job on his own.”
Eddie nodded as he added cream and sugar to his mug. “I can understand that.”
“Conn’s got a stick up his…shirt,” Robbie said from the table behind them.
“Connor’s always been a little more stubborn,” Bess stated.
Eddie grinned. “Well, if he changes his mind, let me know.”
“I will. Thanks.”
Her friend leaned a little closer. “So, after Kara gets here and takes over, want to go grab some breakfast? We have a lot to talk about.”
Bess’s stomach rumbled at that moment. She’d be a liar if she said she wasn’t hungry, but she couldn’t exactly tell Eddie she was yearning to get home so she could have hot supernatural sex. Not to mention that Connor would most likely still be there, since his interviews weren’t scheduled until later in the day. “Sure.”
“Good.”
They chatted while Robbie filled out the paperwork. Bess wondered if Eddie had always had such a charming sense of humor, or if he’d grown into it the way he’d grown into his broad shoulders and long legs. She’d always known he was smart, but he was funny, too.
Leaving Robbie to Kara’s tender mercies, they headed down the street to the Frog House again, where another breakfast awaited. Eddie had done a lot of preliminary work regarding the mechanics of starting a new business, creating spreadsheets about what equipment they could keep and what they’d need to buy. He sifted through a sheaf of papers, explaining his thoughts, while Bess listened, blown away at his expertise.
“And we’ll have to get the paperwork for a partnership,” he said with a glance. “You’ll want a lawyer to look at it. What?”
She shook her head. “You’re sure you want to add me as a partner, Eddie? I’m not bringing much to this.”
He sat back in his seat. “Would you feel better if you were a silent partner? Not on paper? No risk?”
“Oh, it’s not that.” Bess touched the folder of documents. “It’s more your risk than mine. Do you really want to make me a partner? I mean—”
“I trust you.” Eddie smiled. “But if you don’t want to do it—”
“No. I do want to do it.” She meant it, too. She nodded and looked again at the papers. “I really do.”
“Well, then. I want you.”
Heat flushed her cheeks and throat, but the blush was welcome. So was the smile that followed. “It’s scary, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Eddie closed the folder. “I think it’s exciting.”
“It can be scary and exciting, too, can’t it?”
He looked thoughtful. “Sure.”
“It’s a big change for me,” Bess said. “I haven’t worked in years.”
The quaver in her voice embarrassed her, and she wished she hadn’t said anything. “I haven’t really done anything but be a wife and mother for years,” she blurted, making it worse.
Eddie smiled. “Then maybe it’s time for a change, huh?”
It wasn’t that simple or easy, but Bess smiled, too. “Yeah. Maybe it is.”
CHAPTER 30
Then
“I have to get back.” Nick gathered up the paper from the wrapped sandwiches he’d brought to share, and tossed it in the Dumpster. “Lou called in sick today so I only get half an hour.”
Bess sucked the last bit of soda through her straw and tossed the paper cup in the garbage. Nick wiped his hands on his jeans before putting them on her waist and pulling her close, a gesture that had her giggling even though she appreciated it.
“What? Those chips were greasy,” Nick said. “You’d rather I got your shirt dirty?”
Bess, allowing herself to be pulled against him, shook her head. “No. I was just thinking how I’m glad I don’t have to do your laundry.”
Nick snorted. “I wish I didn’t.”
She fit in his arms just right, her own arms around his neck. “We can do it later, when I get off work, okay?”
Nick, bending to nuzzle into her neck, murmured, “We could just go naked. Set a trend.”
She laughed breathily as his lips made a moist pattern on her skin. “Oh, sure. That would go over really well.”
His hands drifted from her waist to her ass, rubbing. “I’d like it. If you were naked all the time—”
“B-Bess?”
She looked over her shoulder. Eddie stood in the doorway, cheeks crimson and eyes averted. She stepped out of Nick’s arms and turned to the door. “Yes?”
“I n-need some help with the inventory.”
“Oh. Sure. I’ll be right in.”
Eddie didn’t go at once. His gaze rose to take in Nick, then Bess, before he ducked back inside the shop. Bess turned to face Nick, intending to get in one last kiss before he left her, but his scowl stopped her.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
Nick jerked his chin toward the doorway. “He’s in love with you.”
Bess laughed, self-conscious, because Nick wasn’t wrong. “Oh, he’s not.”
Nick’s lip curled. “He is. Little nerd’s got the hots for you. Big-time.”
“So?” Bess slipped her arms around Nick’s waist, but holding him was like holding wood. “Why does that worry you?”
His scowl didn’t soften when he looked at her. “I’m not worried. Why should I be worried? You have something going on with Eddie the dork?”
The vehemence in his voice stunned her, and she stepped back. “No. Of course not. God, Nick. What’s your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem,” he said. “I have to go.”
“I’ll see you tonight, right?” Their relationship seemed suddenly far more of a slippery slope than it had a few minutes before.
“Yeah,” Nick said as he threw a black look toward the doorway. He stalked away down the alley without kissing her. Without looking back, either.
With a sigh, Bess went inside. Eddie had piled a few boxes of paper cups on the floor and pulled out the packing slips. He was supposed to count the sleeves of cups and match them to the packing slips before putting the cups in the supply closet. A simple task he’d performed a hundred times already.
“What’s the problem?” She sounded grouchy, but didn’t care.
“These cups aren’t the ones we usually order,” Eddie explained. “And also, there aren’t enough in the boxes. I mean, there aren’t as m-many as there are listed on the sheet.”
Bess peeked into the box and checked the sheet. “Five sleeves in the box, five on the paper.”
“But there are supposed to be fifty cups in a sleeve,” Eddie told her. “There are only forty-seven in three of them.”
Bess looked again, half-torn between admiration at his attention to detail and still annoyed at how this stupid problem had caused, however indirectly, friction with Nick. “So…mark it down and I’ll leave a note for Ronnie. He can deal with the supplier.”
Eddie nodded and scribbled some numbers on his list. “Okay.”
“Is that it?”
He nodded again without looking at her. Bess heard the buzz and hum of conversation out front, and though she knew Brian and Tammy both needed supervision, she wasn’t quite ready to get back out there and deal with the public. She watched Eddie go through the remaining boxes. She knew she was making him nervous, because his fingers fumbled and his cheeks got redder and redder through the fringes of black hair hanging over them.
“He’s not good for you.”
For a second Bess wasn’t sure she’d heard Eddie say anything at all, much less those actual words. “Who?” was a stupid question to ask, because she knew exactly who Eddie mean
t, but the word rose to her lips anyway, as though she meant to pretend she didn’t.
Eddie straightened, giving her a rare look in the eye. “Nick. He’s not good for you.”
She crossed her arms. “Oh, really?”
Eddie shook his head but didn’t glance away even as his face flamed impossibly redder. “No.”
Bess felt the inexplicable hitch in her chest that meant she was moving toward tears. “It’s not any of your business, Eddie.”
“I’m just saying, that’s all. Maybe nobody else will, but I will.”
“Oh, really?” she repeated. “For your information, you’re not the only person to warn me away from him, okay? And it’s not any of their business, either. I don’t care about his reputation, Eddie. I don’t care what he’s done before. What Nick and I are…what we do, isn’t anyone’s business but ours.”
They’d both kept their voices pitched low, and Eddie didn’t raise his now. “I’m not talking about his reputation. Most of it’s just talk, anyway.”
Before this conversation began, Bess would have said Eddie didn’t know anything about the local singles-scene gossip. The way he spoke now told her that, though he might not be in the party crowd, he knew everything about them all. The look in his eyes told her he wasn’t much impressed, either.
Bess set her jaw. “Then why’s he so bad for me, if his reputation’s a bunch of crap?”
“Because,” Eddie said quietly, “he makes you doubt yourself.”
Bess couldn’t speak. Her lips parted, but her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth and her throat closed as tight as a fist. She drew in one gulp of air that stuck, burning, before she managed to swallow it back.
“He does,” Eddie said.
Then he went back to his counting, and Bess, still left with nothing to say, went to the front of the shop to get back to work.
CHAPTER 31
Now
“Connor?” Bess called as she climbed the stairs. “I’m home!”
Connor was just coming out of his bedroom when she got to the living room. Wearing a clean blue polo shirt and khaki cargo pants, his hair still wet around his collar, he headed for the kitchen, where he pulled open the cupboards to take down a box of cereal and a bowl. He glanced at Bess but didn’t do much more than that.
“You look nice,” she said anyway. “Why don’t you have a sandwich? I bought turkey and coleslaw. It’s lunchtime.”
Connor looked up from the bowl of fruity colored rings now floating in milk. “I want cereal.”
“Right.” Bess gnawed the inside of her cheek for a moment. “Of course you do.”
Because if she’d said, “Why not have a bowl of cereal, Conn?” he’d have gone at once for the bread and mustard. She watched her older son consume the cereal with the efficiency of a high-powered vacuum, then get up and put the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher. He left the cereal and milk on the table, but Bess didn’t point that out.
She recognized the signs. He was looking for a reason to argue with her. Andy was the same way, and she wondered if the trait was inherited or learned.
“Where’s your interview?” she asked.
“Office Outlet.”
“The office supplies store?” Bess couldn’t hide her surprise.
Connor’s jaw set, and she recognized that, too, though this time it came from her. “Yeah. What’s the problem?”
Her own pet phrase, echoing back at her. “No problem. I just thought you’d get a beach job.”
“It is a beach job, Mom,” Connor said in a voice pretending to be patient. “We’re at the beach. It’s in the outlet mall.”
“But that means you’re going to have to use my car,” Bess said.
Connor gave her a look. “Yeah.”
Bess sighed, seeing where this was going and not looking forward to it, at all. “Connor, I thought you’d get a job in town here, so you could walk or ride your bike.”
“I don’t want to scoop ice cream or wait tables or sell souvenirs.” His voice rose the tiniest bit. He was getting ready to defend himself with righteous indignation, and Bess didn’t feel ready for it. “Office Outlet pays a dollar above minimum and will give me a bonus if I stay until the end of the summer. Then I’m out of here, anyway. It’s only a couple months.”
“It’s going to be a very long couple of months,” Bess said without thinking about it.
Connor’s face darkened. “Maybe I should’ve stayed with Dad. He said he’d buy me a car to use.”
“Did he?” Bess faced her son, though now that he towered over her by five or so inches it was more difficult for her to seem intimidating. “Did your dad say you could stay there?”
The look on Connor’s face was answer enough. Bess sighed. Connor scowled.
“Honey, I’m not pretending this is going to be easy for any of us,” she began.
“So make it easy for me,” Connor retorted. “Let me use your car, Mom! Just let me use the goddamn car, okay? Let me take this frigging job!”
Bess’s silence, for once, was not because she couldn’t think of what to say. Plenty of retorts arose, but she held them back as she gazed steadily at her son. Connor, to give him credit, looked guilty, though he clenched his jaw and didn’t say anything more.
“We’ll work this out,” she said finally. She meant more than the car or the job, and she was pretty sure Connor knew it.
He nodded, looking so much like Andy in his sullenness Bess had to glance away. “Okay. Can I take it now?”
“Yes. But call if you get the job. I need to know when you’ll be home. And,” Bess added, cutting him off when he tried to answer. “You’re not always just going to be allowed to take the car. I may have to drop you off and pick you up. I can’t be without my car all the time, Connor.”
“Yeah, I know.” He moved a half step toward the stairs. “Can I go, now?”
“Yes.”
Bess moved aside to let him pass. She didn’t watch him go. When she heard the door slam downstairs and the car rev up and drive away, she sat at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands.
“Hey.” Nick’s soft voice prompted her to look up.
She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting that way. “Hey.”
He rubbed her shoulders, his fingers working at knots of tension she didn’t even realize were there until his touch started to melt them. “C’mere.”
She let him take her hand and lead her to the bedroom, where he pulled the shades and locked the door. In the dim coolness, Nick undressed her slowly, his hands rubbing over her goose-pimpled skin. He moved her to the bed, where he stripped back the comforter and pushed her to her stomach on sheets that quickly warmed beneath her.
“Close your eyes,” he said, and she obeyed.
She waited, listening, the small ease in her tension rebuilding at the small noises magnified by her darkened vision. The subtle shush of material moving over skin, the rasp of a zipper. The soft pad of bare feet on the carpet and the small whine of the springs as he got on the bed next to her.
When he touched her, Bess sighed. Nick’s hands, as warm and smooth as heated oil, slid over her shoulder blades and down her spine, all the way to the curve of her ass. Again and again he stroked, stopping sometimes to knead the tightness in places she didn’t know could get tight. He used his knuckles, fingers, thumbs and palms. He swept her hair to the side and found the trigger spots at the base of her skull, manipulating them until she whimpered with the exquisite, painful pleasure.
It took her a few minutes to notice when he’d stopped massaging and merely stroked her skin, over and over. Hypnotically. Bess opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him. Nick stopped stroking, his hand resting at the base of her spine.
“Thank you,” she whispered in a voice hoarser than she’d expected.
Nick slid down next to her and took her into his arms. Hugging him was like bringing in an armful of sun-warmed sheets. Soft, hot, smooth. Bess leaned forward to breathe him in. Fresh.
>
“You always smell so good,” she murmured, tucking one leg between his thighs. Her cheek rested on his chest.
Nick pressed her head beneath his chin and anchored her against him with a hand on her waist. “That’s better than smelling bad, huh?”
“Much better.”
Content for the moment, Bess closed her eyes again. She’d never been one for napping, but now she couldn’t help the drowsiness stealing over her. Tucked up against Nick this way, her muscles looser than they’d been in months, and nothing but the purr of the air-conditioning to distract them, Bess thought a nap seemed like the best of ideas.
“We don’t do much of this,” she murmured.
“Much of what?”
“Just…being.” That’s what she meant to say, anyway, though she wasn’t sure if that’s what came out.
Nick’s soft chuckle let her know he’d heard her. His arms tightened around her slightly. “You mean, we’re usually screwing our brains out.”
Bess yawned and blinked, then pushed away enough to look up into his face. “Yes. I guess so.”
He shifted to look at her. “I’m happy to oblige, ma’am. If that’s what you want.”
Bess couldn’t deny the tingle zapping through her body, her instant reaction to Nick’s innuendo. She smiled slowly. “I’m not saying I don’t love that, too….”
Nick kissed her mouth, then said against her lips, “I know. I know what you mean.”
“How?” she asked seriously, pushing away just a bit more to see straight into his eyes. “How do you know?”
“I just do.” He shrugged. His toe stroked along the back of her calf.
Bess ran a hand down his chest and tucked it against his hip. “It’s just different, that’s all. Everything is with us this time, isn’t it?”
Nick rolled onto his back, an arm cradling his head, but his other hand was still close enough to hold hers. He squeezed her fingers gently and rubbed his thumb along the back of her hand. But he didn’t answer her.
Bess stayed on her side, studying him. “It’s not a bad thing.”
He turned his head to face her. “I didn’t say it was.”
