Operation Sizzle

by Darcy Lundeen

  “Well, on the phone, you sounded a little, uh, down.”

  Down, ha! What polite Mister Whoever-he-was really meant was drunk. Which made perfect sense. Her mouth tasted like raw sewage, and her temples throbbed as if they had been blasted by nonstop gunfire—all sure signs she’d gone well past her usual two drink maximum and ended up on a stupid bender. She sighed as that part of the “day from hell” also began to fall into place. “I was down.”

  He nodded. “Knew you were, so I got your address and came by to make sure you were all right. We talked for a while and then you began to feel, uh, not good.”

  Not good. Betsy’s stomach went into free-fall at that. The phrase “not good” was not good, and in this case, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know how not good it was. Probably she didn’t want to know at all, but like the idiot she was, she persisted. “How not good?”

  “Pretty not good.”

  “Bathroom, not good?”

  He nodded. “Big time.”

  Betsy closed her eyes and pressed her head back against the pillow, promising herself she’d toss out every bottle of hard liquor in the apartment—all two of them—as soon as her head stopped clanging.

  “Hey, it’s okay. You look really nice, even with your head half in the toilet.” His voice was calm and soothing. Betsy frowned. Obviously the man was trying hard to win the Mr. Nice Guy award.

  Her eyes shot open, and she glared at him. He was touching her hair—a really gentle, it’ll-be-all-right touch—and he looked sort of sweet trying to comfort her. None of which she wanted. The only thing she craved now was amnesia—a good conk on the head or whatever it took to permanently wipe out the last few days.

  “Fine, wonderful, thank you for your help.” She tried not to sound ungrateful, but wasn’t quite succeeding. Rolling away from him, she sat up, fighting off a wave of dizziness as she pushed the covers back. The covers he must have tucked around her. She frowned as the rest of the scenario came to her…the covers he obviously tucked around himself, too, when he crawled in beside her.

  She turned back to confront him with that all-important question. “Hey, if nothing happened between us, exactly how and why did you end up sleeping next to me?”

  He gave her a strange look and cleared his throat.

  Betsy stared at him. This was not a good way to start an explanation. “Well?”

  It was probably a stupid prompt to give, since the more hesitant he was, the more certain she became that nope, she definitely didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Undoubtedly, it was the age-old story of a horny guy trying to put some really inappropriate moves on a defenseless, half-smashed woman.

  He went through another bout of nervous throat clearing, then shrugged as if finally willing to answer. “Uh, after the bathroom, you were a little shaky, so I helped you into bed.”

  She nodded, eagerly pouncing on his admission. “Then you helped yourself in, too, right?”

  “Uh, not exactly. Then I took off your shoes.”

  Betsy rolled her eyes. God, this was like pulling teeth without the benefit of Novocain. “And?”

  He sighed. “And then you grabbed my sweater.”

  She stared at the dark blue, cable-knit pullover he was wearing. “I grabbed your sweater?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She took a breath, her gut and a flash of disturbing memory already telling her what came next, but she asked anyway. “And then?”

  “And then you pulled me in with you and immediately fell asleep.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I tried to get away, but you held on to me and wouldn’t let go.”

  Betsy winced. Oh God, worse than she thought. She was the aggressor. How humiliating. “Look, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, it hadn’t been a good day and I was—”

  “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t apologize. I didn’t mind. Besides, I was tired myself and needed the sleep.”

  Right. A guy who came banging at someone’s door on the basis of a ten-second phone call didn’t need sleep; he needed a keeper to prevent him from acting on his impulses. But he looked sincere. Not that that meant anything. When she first met Tyler, he’d looked sincere, too. Until he’d wanted things she couldn’t give him. Then he happily let his inner rat come out to play with her meager self-confidence and shred it into tiny, bite-sized pieces.

  Well, one thing was clear at any rate. It was a cinch this guy wasn’t cruising along on Tyler’s sincerity hit-and-run bandwagon. No rat-like confidence-shredding for him, not if she was the one who dragged him into the sack, and Mr. White Knight over there hadn’t made any moves on her in the eight hours they’d been horizontally squashed together in her narrow bed.

  She nodded to him. “Good. Glad I could help you get some rest.” Now if only she could also get him out of her home. But from the looks of it, he didn’t seem on the verge of leaving her bed, let alone finding his way to her front door and using it.

  With a sigh, she stood. Maybe just a little too quickly. A surge of lightheadedness engulfed her, and she swayed. “Crap,” she muttered before dropping down on the sheets again.

  Dragging a stranger into bed with her was bad. Acting like an unsteady drunk when she tried to get out of bed the following morning was worse. But worst of all was this guy’s reaction.

  He immediately scrambled across the bed and took her arm, holding on gently to offer support. “You all right?”

  God, no.

  “Yes, fine” Betsy nodded to emphasize the lie. “It’s just that I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon when—”

  She broke off, and he leaned closer, his dark eyes widening with interest. A lock of hair fell over his brow, and he jerked his head to force it into place. But his questioning gaze never left her face. “When what?”

  Betsy bit her lip to keep from blurting out the truth. When a certain S.O.B. dumped me because I am a dud in bed. And not too great out of it, either. “Nothing.” Pulling away from his grasp, she pushed to her feet again, this time without nearly falling over. Thank God.

  She strode to the door. Drat. The man deserved at least a little sustenance for coming by to make sure she was all right, didn’t he? She turned to him. “I need coffee. Want some, Mr. uh…”

  “Matt Pollard.” He gave her a nice, big, I-am-not-Tyler-Matheson smile. “Sure, I’d love some.”

  Betsy studied his smile, and in the process, couldn’t help studying the face that went with it. He was just a touch too outdoorsman hunky for her taste. Then again, most of the previous men in her life hadn’t been the hunky, outdoor type; more the classical, über-handsome brand. And look where that had gotten her.

  “Maybe a little breakfast, too?” she added before she could stop herself. Yes, all right, it was her mother kicking in at this point, or as Mom always loved to say, Even if you can’t wait to get a pain-in-the-ass out of your house, always feed him first. It’s the neighborly thing to do.

  He swung his long legs over the side of the bed, and his outdoorsman smile grew even wider. “Sure. Breakfast would be good.”

  Betsy nodded and turned away, grateful that her post-bender legs were in strong enough condition to carry her out of the bedroom without collapsing beneath her.

  A moment later, his footsteps fell in line right behind hers as they walked through the living room. As a sudden afterthought she pointed to her left, desperately trying to forget that he had already seen her in that room with her head half in the toilet. “If you need the bathroom, it’s over there. After you finish, it’ll be my turn.”

  “Great idea. Thanks.”

  As his footsteps veered left, Betsy sighed with resignation and entered the kitchen. Fine. So she’d feed him. Which meant she wouldn’t be getting rid of him for a while. As she pulled cups and dishes from the kitchen cabinet, she tried to think of something positive to counteract the prospect of his prolonged presence. But there was only one small consolation she could come up with, and she supposed that it would have to do. On the bright side, at least t
he guy wasn’t Tyler Matheson, and that in itself made him vaguely bearable. For a man.

  Chapter Three

  Matt stood in the kitchen doorway watching Betsy scramble eggs. She was beating the hell out of them. But she looked sort of cute doing it. Vicious, but cute. And she did have nice boobs. He should know. He’d woken this morning squeezing one. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smirking at the memory. It was definitely one of the more enjoyable wakeup calls he’d ever had.

  Arms folded across his chest, he leaned his hip against the wall and studied her movements. She was totally pissed. Of course that was balanced by the rest of it—even grumpy and disheveled, she was a fox.

  He unfolded his arms and gestured to the frying pan. “I assume the eggs are a stand-in for something else. Or for someone else. So who exactly are you pulverizing?”

  It was probably a stupid question. More than likely, the eggs were a stand-in for this Tyler dude.

  She shot him a look that told him he was right. The question was just as dumb as he knew it was.

  “I don’t want to discuss it.”

  Matt nodded obediently. “Right. None of my business.” Then he flashed his most ingratiating smile, the one that said, I’m a harmless weenie…don’t beat me the way you’re beating my breakfast.

  She ignored his smile and turned back to the eggs, smacking them around the pan as if they were criminals and she were an avenging angel sent to mete out divine punishment.

  He felt sorry for the poor things and even sorrier for their human counterpart, if she ever got her egg-scrambling hands on him. Matt opened his mouth, then closed it again as he desperately tried to figure out something—anything—to say to keep up some communication between them.

  She might be in a crappy mood, but he still wanted to have a friendly relationship with her for Rob’s sake, even though at the moment she obviously wanted to whack all things male—definitely this Tyler guy, and for some unfathomable reason, probably poor Rob too—the way she was whacking those eggs. Besides, for all he knew, part of her anger could be hormonal. He had three sisters, and he knew firsthand about hormonal.

  He exhaled a silent sigh and finally said the first thing he could think of. “Um…so…”

  She spared him a cursory glance as she paused in her scrambling. “Uh-huh. So…what?”

  Matt took a breath and thought about that. Good question. At this point, exactly what subject did you bring up to connect with a woman who was so sloshed when you met her that she dragged you into bed and immediately fell asleep?

  He finally went with the idea of how they met. It might not have been the most romantic meeting, but at least it ended with them hitting the sheets together. “The liquor you were drinking last night—you watered it down, didn’t you?”

  She turned back to the eggs, her body visibly stiffening.

  Matt liked the stiffening. It brought her breasts up even higher, thrusting them in his direction for a split second before she hid all that delicious bouncy flesh by turning her shoulder to him.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I took a taste.”

  She picked up a salt shaker and began to nervously douse the eggs. “All right, yes, I did. A little.” Putting the salt down, she repeated her nervous dousing with a pepper shaker.

  “How little? Half and half?”

  She thumped the pepper onto the counter and turned her back more completely to him, ducking her head low as if she wanted to get a closer look at the eggs. “Maybe eighty-five, fifteen.”

  “Eighty-five-percent alcohol?”

  She cleared her throat. “Fifteen-percent alcohol.” This time, her voice was closer to a whisper—a really soft, almost inaudible whisper.

  But Matt still caught the words and stared at her, astounded. God, the lady really couldn’t hold her liquor. Even his eighteen-year-old cousin could down some pretty high-octane alcohol without losing it all a few hours later. “And you still got drunk?”

  In answer, she groaned and exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “Look, I’m not really a drinker, okay?”

  Even though she was busy studying her battered eggs and barely acknowledging his existence, Matt still nodded, flashing a polite smile in case she happened to look around to make sure he wasn’t gloating at her expense. “Sure, okay.” He sighed. Well, this topic was going over just as well as the last one did…namely, like the proverbial lead balloon. But being nothing if not persistent, he tried again. Pushing away from the wall, he nodded over his shoulder at the living room.

  Her cell phone was out there, lying on the coffee table apparently forgotten.

  He’d noticed it a few minutes ago as he walked across the room. A quick glance at the screen also told him someone had called, maybe even left a message. Of course he couldn’t tell who the “someone” was. But he strongly suspected it was Rob checking in to find out why she was pissed off with him. But, hell, it could possibly even be this Tyler. And if his message was of the apologetic, I’m-sorry-for-being-a-jerk, please-forgive-me variety, it might convince her to stop beating up his breakfast. “You left your phone on the coffee table. Looks like you had a call.”

  When she didn’t answer, he tried again, raising his voice a little to emphasize how vital it was to stay on top of your communications. “Aren’t you going to check it out?”

  Her head lifted, and her hand eased up on the egg beating. “I deleted all the calls you made from Rob’s phone, except for the voicemail you left at the end, and I never bothered listening to it.”

  “Can’t be mine. I called a few times, but I never left a message.”

  Abandoning the eggs, she turned to him. There was a frown on her face, but at least she was finally acknowledging his existence by actually looking at him for more than a grudging few seconds. “A few times? That’s all you called? Just a few times? Try more than a dozen times. And after more than a dozen times, you didn’t even take the trouble to finally leave a message?”

  Matt sighed. Okay, maybe he should have left well enough alone. Now that she was paying attention to him again, the thought of being ignored by the lady suddenly seemed like a much better alternative. “Hey, you obviously didn’t want to talk to me, so I didn’t want to bother you.”

  She shook her head with disgust. “You thought leaving a phone message would bother me, but coming over here and worming your way into my apartment was all right?”

  “First of all, I didn’t worm my way in. You dragged me through the front door when your nosy neighbor showed up.” He jabbed a finger toward the living room. “And second, let’s stick to the subject, which happens to be your damn phone message. It’s probably from Rob. Before I left his apartment to come here, I know he was planning to call you. Since you weren’t answering your calls, he could have left a voicemail. It could even be important.”

  “Important? From Rob? Not likely.” She made a dismissive sound, obviously still on poor Rob’s case, and went back into egg-beating mode.

  Matt rolled his eyes, wondering how good-natured Rob could have hooked up with such a moody, contrary creature. “Then maybe it’s not from Rob. Maybe somebody else called. I mean, you know other people, right? Maybe it’s from one of them.”

  Exhaling a long-suffering sigh, she put her fork down and glared at him. “All right, if it’s that important to you, I’ll listen to it.”

  Before he could tell her he didn’t give a bucket of warm spit whether she listened to her messages or not, she pushed past him and marched out of the kitchen. Probably to get away from his incessant yammering. Not that he cared. With her in the next room, at least peace would reign supreme for a while.

  Walking to the stove, he picked up the fork and carefully moved the eggs around the pan. “Don’t worry, guys,” he said in a consoling whisper. “Now that she’s gone, you’re safe.”

  ****

  Betsy slumped down on the sofa, grabbed the phone, and stared at the screen, frowning as she tapped the icon that showed she had a call. Proba
bly the last one she’d received the night before—the voicemail she’d assumed was from Rob’s friend but obviously wasn’t. And as the icon opened, there it was—the voicemail notification from Rob that she’d refused to listen to.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and let out a weary groan. As much as she usually loved the man, a message from Rob was still the last thing she needed in her headachy, post-bender condition. But she took a breath and clicked it on anyway, grimacing when his all-too-familiar voice bubbled in her ear like the human equivalent of the music in a kiddies’ animated film—all bouncy good humor, and so sugary sweet it could give you diabetes if you listened to it too long.

  But at least Matt Pollard had nailed the caller’s identity.

  “Hey, Bets, it’s Rob,” her high-spirited BFF burbled. “I heard you were upset with me.” He gave a chuckle, not sounding as if he was too bothered by news of her annoyance. “What’s up? Call me. Oh, and if a tall guy named Matt comes to your door, don’t let him in.” More gleeful chuckling from the man she still seriously considered smacking senseless. “He’s a maniac. He’s also my—”

  “I have a pretty good idea who he is,” Betsy muttered, not wanting to hear what a glowing same-sex relationship Rob was enjoying, while her own most recent opposite-sex relationship involved breathing in diesel fumes as a man informed her she was a less-than-inspiring playmate.

  Punching the delete key to send Rob’s message into well-deserved oblivion, she tossed the phone onto the coffee table and stormed back into the kitchen, where Matt stood at the stove, working on the eggs. “It was Rob. He said you were coming over.”

  Matt nodded and smiled a complacent smile. “Told you that’s who it would probably be.”

  Betsy frowned at him. He looked entirely too self-satisfied for her taste, so she couldn’t help adding a sweetly sarcastic postscript. “He also said I should be careful. Because you’re a maniac.”