“Like lifting heavy objects and opening pickle jars.”
Pickle jars? That’s why she wanted a man around?
“The problem with living in Truly,” she continued, “is that I went to school with most of the men in town, and none of them are the right one, either.” The corners of her lips turned down as her brows pulled together. “If one more person asks if Michael’s living with me when he’s getting out, I’m going to go all flying snooker crazy.”
He’d been trained and tested in hand-to-hand combat. He knew where to hit a man to take him out for a while or for good. “What the hell is ‘flying snooker crazy’?”
“I don’t know. It sounded lethal when I thought it up in my head, but I’m kind of drunk.” Her hand slipped from behind her cape and she twisted the cord around her finger. “I think it’s a combination between a flying kick and a snooker punch.”
“I guess I won’t ask about your ex and risk a flying-snooker butt kicking.” He watched her long fingers and short pink nails work the cord and felt it twist his nuts. He wanted her. He wanted to feel her fingers sliding down his chest and diving beneath his pants. She’d told him she wasn’t a booty call kind of woman. He bet he could get her to change her mind.
After a few seconds of twisting she asked, “If you aren’t anti-marriage, and you’ve never been married, why do you think it’s not for you?”
He raised his gaze from her hand to her red mouth. The lipstick smear tempted him to smear her up a bit more. “I don’t have to get hog-tied and barbecued to know getting a spit shoved up my ass isn’t for me.”
“Ouch.” The corners of her mouth turned up. “Have you ever lived with a woman?”
“Yeah.” He took the cord from her finger. “My mother.” She looked down at his hand as he slowly pulled. “She used to pack my lunches for school. Peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches. I liked the crusts cut off.” The bow slipped free. “But I don’t need a mother now.”
She lifted her gaze and looked at him like she had in his wine cellar. Like she had a few weeks ago in her kitchen when he’d been so tempted to smash her against him and stick his tongue down her throat. “What do you need?” she asked just above a whisper.
To get laid, temptation answered. Her question hung in the air as he pulled the cord until her cape opened like a shiny present all wrapped up just for him. “What are you wearing, Ms. Cooper?”
“I’m Robin.”
Seemed only fitting. “Batman’s sidekick.” The cape slid from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. Blake’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as his gaze landed on a red bustier pushing her plump breasts together. Red-hot lust landed a flying snooker punch to his groin.
She raised a hand over her cleavage. “My costume is kind of tight and slutty.”
He reached for her wrist and pinned her hand to the window next to her head. “Tight and slutty is my favorite.” He slid his free palm along the side of her warm throat to the back of her neck. “I love tight and slutty.” He needed tight and slutty.
“You’re one of those guys.”
He tangled his finger in her hair and pulled her head back. “What guys?”
“The kind who pick up women in bars but never call again.”
“I don’t go to bars.” Not anymore.
“Why?”
“I’m into clean living,” he answered. Rehab had pounded the importance of honesty into his head. They’d also pounded the importance of AA, but Natalie didn’t need to know about his addiction anymore than he had to attend a meeting to control it. “I’d call a woman again if the sex was good and she wasn’t crazy.” He lifted his gaze to the lust shining back at him through her blue eyes. “I might even call a crazy girl again if the sex is crazy good.” He pushed her back against the window. She gasped, and he took advantage of her parted lips. He kissed her soft mouth, and she tasted like sweet wine and intoxicating pleasure. He had tasted neither in a long time.
It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a booty call woman. It didn’t matter that he was a booty call man. It didn’t matter that she was drunk. All that mattered was the hot, moist pull of her feeding mouth. Her slick tongue and the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest. Her hands slid up his ribs, and her touch made him want more. A lot more. A lot more of her hands and mouth. A lot more of her hungry mouth sliding south, down his hot flesh. It had been a long time since he’d kissed and touched a woman. A long time since a woman had taken him into her hot, wet mouth.
Instead of sliding south, Natalie curled into his chest and pressed her soft parts into his hard places. He groaned deep in his throat, and slid his hands to the sides of her bustier. He hooked his thumbs beneath the satin top, and all he had to do was yank it down.
Her head tilted to one side and the kiss got deeper. Deeper and hotter and tempting him to pull the bustier down until her breasts popped out and her hard nipples poked his chest through the thin cotton of his shirt.
As if she read his thoughts, she moaned into his mouth and he had to lock his knees to keep from falling. Through his denim button fly, he rocked his hard penis into her. Into her little shorts and crotch. All he had to do was push aside her shorts and drop his pants. Then he’d be in. Inside where she was hot and wet and her orgasm would grab his erection and pull him deeper.
The tips of his fingers dug into the satin covering her ribs, and he hung on as if she was a mirage. A shiny illusion that would shift and disappear.
He was a man. He needed to get laid. She was in his house and hands and it would be easy to get her into his bed and make everything real.
He was a man living in temptation hell. From Johnnie and Natalie, and it would feel so good to give in to one of them. To drown in it for just one night.
He was a man, but he wasn’t that man. He pulled back and looked into her blue eyes sleepy with lust and her mouth wet and swollen from his kiss. “You need to go.”
“What?” Her voice was a husky whisper.
“You need to go or you’re going to end up my booty call.”
She blinked as if his words made no sense.
“Do you want to be my booty call?”
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and broke his heart. “No,” she said.
He let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. He was a man with more honor than to take advantage of Natalie. “I don’t take advantage of drunk women. I want you fully aware when I take advantage of you. So you need to go.”
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 to
uch 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 al
so 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.
What I Love About You (Truly, Idaho) Page 9
