Lowdown Dirty

by Holley Trent

“You’re assuming something happened,” she said with forced blitheness. “Maybe he blew out one of those excessively large truck tires and we had to wait for a wrecker.”

  “Yeah, I don’t buy it.” Carine darted around Valerie and put her back to the driver’s door before Valerie could snatch it open. “If Timmy’s paying attention to you, you’d better be careful.”

  “Why? Is he going to strap me to some unholy contraption and flay me until I bleed in Clay’s dungeon?”

  Clay sputtered his lips behind Valerie and then laughed that deep, troublesome chuckle again. “Last I knew, that wasn’t one of his kinks, but it’s good to know you’re amenable.”

  “I never said I was amenable.”

  “Pity. I could think of a couple of folks who’d like to have a little fun with you if Tim’s not gonna.”

  “He’s not gonna.”

  “So, you’ll be back in two weeks for the next event, then? I can put you on the list of regulars.”

  “No need.” Valerie turned to Carine. “What do you mean by be careful?” Realizing how desperate she sounded, she cleared her throat and pretended to be very interested in the state of her cuticles. “Just out of curiosity, I mean.”

  “Because you don’t care right? Sure.” Carine pushed her cat-eye sunglasses up her freckled nose and grinned. It wasn’t her trustworthy local real estate professional grin, either. It was her bless your heart, aren’t you a sucker? grin. “Tim doesn’t give anyone a chance. Did he tell you he wants to see you again?”

  “I’m going to give him a consultation about his house expansion.”

  “His idea or yours?” Clay asked.

  “I certainly didn’t volunteer, and I’d be in deep shit with my employer if they found out I was taking on freelance.”

  “So, you’re gonna meet him at some nice, busy coffee shop to discuss his options?”

  “No, I told him I’d stop by his house later.”

  Clay and Carine shared a look.

  Valerie rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth. “Get away from my car. Carine, you stay here and have fun with Mr. Innuendo. I swear you’re like a couple of teenagers blowing things out of proportion just because you’re nasty. He needs a competent architect’s opinion, and I happen to be a superb architect.”

  Clay snorted and pushed his rock star, morning-after hair out of his eyes. Apparently, he’d lost the elastic that had held his ponytail. “So, you’re just doin’ it ’cause you can’t back down from a challenge, huh?”

  “That sounds like a very male problem, and I don’t have it. I simply didn’t have anything else to do tonight, and I can be nice when I want to be.”

  And maybe a small part of her hoped that being nice, she could sample a few more of Tim’s no-strings-attached carnal favors. She was curious about his repertoire, made more so by her remembering what he’d said about how pantyhose impeded his easy access. She wasn’t quite sure what he meant. Pantyhose didn’t take that long to take off, and most men were fine with waiting the ten seconds—twenty seconds if she was concerned about runs.

  Carine gave her a sarcastic nod.

  “Find your own ride home. Move.” Valerie shooed her away from the door and plopped into her driver’s seat.

  Carine huffed. “I’m gonna wait for the wrecker, I guess. You gonna drive me home, Clay?”

  “Nope. Can’t. I’ve got a couple of holdovers in my house I need rouse and send on their way. I usually would have kicked them out hours ago, but…” He rocked back on the heels again and grinned. “They were fun to watch. So, so flexible. Mmm.”

  “No wonder you’re tired,” Valerie muttered. “Carine, call for the tow truck. I’ll follow you to the shop and drive you home.”

  “You’re my best friend. You know that?”

  “That’s not a good thing. I’ve only been here for six months. How did you survive until I came?”

  “I relied on the kindness of assholes like Clay.” Carine leered at him and put her cell phone to her ear. She walked away, explaining the situation to the roadside assistance dispatcher.

  Clay leaned into Valerie’s open window still wearing that troublesome grin.

  “Are you drunk or something?” she asked.

  “Nope. Just amused. It’s been a long damn time since I’ve been this amused.”

  “What’s so amusing? That Carine would be so attached to a little wind-up car that should have been taken out of commission five years ago, or that you’ll be going back into your den of depravity to gaze upon the splendor of a couple of naked people in your bed?”

  “For a chick who wears nude pantyhose with squishy shoes, you sure pegged me right.”

  “The hose are a habit you can thank my grandmother for. They conceal my panty lines, should I happen to be wearing panties.”

  He pushed up an eyebrow.

  “And I wear those shoes on boggy job sites because I learned very early on that stiletto heels sink into the ground, and that I looked really unintelligent trying to walk in them atop sod. It’s either the Crocs, fancy sneakers, or steel-toed boots. They’d all look equally bad, so I always choose the least of the evils. I’m practical that way.”

  She lifted her left leg, propped her flip-flop-clad foot atop the windowsill, and pointed to her shoe. “Don’t judge me by my footwear. You don’t know what’s in my closet.” She let her gaze track down to his bare feet. “Just like I don’t know what’s in yours.”

  “Touché on my ass, then. Remind me not to pick an argument with you.”

  She shrugged and put down her foot. “I generally know what I’m doing.”

  “That applies to whatever you’ve got going on with Tim, too, right?”

  “Are we back to that again? What is it that you and Carine are beating the bush about? Spit it out.”

  “Fine. I don’t reckon Tim will get too pissed if I tell you. Everyone knows half his business, anyway.” Clay leaned his forearms onto the windowsill and ground his molars for a few beats. “Look. He doesn’t really date anymore for a bunch of different reasons.”

  “And that’s why he comes here?”

  “Tim likes to play. That’s why folks come here. They’re not looking to get attached, but if it happens, so be it.”

  “Well, good. I’m not looking for anything long-term, Clay. I’m not looking to get attached, either. I’m moving on to a bigger job after this one, and it’s not going to be nearby. So, if he wants to play, discreetly, I’ll roll with it. I’m pretty sure I can handle anything he dishes out.”

  “I don’t think you have any idea how much trouble you’re talking about.”

  She dug her tube of lip balm out of the center console and smoothed it over her mouth.

  Clay watched with a lascivious glint in his eyes.

  “Perv.”

  “Yep. That’s what folks pay me for.”

  “Well, you can keep thinking what you want about me but know you’re probably wrong. You think I was appalled by what was happening here last night?”

  “You sure looked like it.”

  “You misjudged my motivations. You should know better than to make assumptions about people you don’t know. I fled because I didn’t want to be here, that’s true, but it wasn’t because I was disgusted. It was because I’ve been there and done that and wanted to be done with that part of my life. It’s not that I’m not into kink. I just don’t practice it anymore.”

  “Oh, ho ho!” That glint in Clay’s eyes turned positively jubilant. “Well, you and Tim are perfect for each other, then. Apparently, you both seem to think you can just turn that shit off and go vanilla. And what’s your flavor, anyway, honey? What do you like? Bondage? Pain? Exhibitionism? D and s? I don’t imagine you’re much of a sadist, but if you sent Tim home with blue balls last night, maybe you are.”

  She rubbed her lips together, capped the balm, and shrugged. “You’ll never find out. And I think you should leave Tim to his own business and you mind yours.”

  Clay put up his hands and backed
away from the window. “I’m just trying to put a damper on the frustration all the way around. I’ve been matchmaking for a lot of years. I never thought I’d be sticking my nose into my brother’s business, but Lord knows, somebody should.”

  Carine returned, red-cheeked from the oppressive heat and flapping her loose shirt. “The truck should be here in about ten minutes. I hope to get this taken care of quickly. I need to show a house at two o’clock. It’s the last one on my list that isn’t part of Shora, and I need to offload that money pit as soon as possible. It’s been tying up way too many of my work hours, and Lipton is getting pissy about it. They’re making some noise about me transferring the listing to another agent.”

  “Yeah, they don’t like me freelancing, either,” Valerie said. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  “I’m sure Timmy appreciates all the rules you’re breakin’ for him, and the ones you’ll be breakin’ soon enough, too.” Clay bobbed his eyebrows and started toward his house before Valerie could fix her patented malevolent squint at him.

  Carine got into Valerie’s car and let the passenger window down. “You know, I’m really thinking about letting him do a surprise match-up for me. I mean, shit, my batting average isn’t so great as of late, and with the luck I’ve been having, I’d probably be better off at a bar.”

  “You trust him like that?”

  “Yeah. He’s good. Letting him do what he does is a leap of faith, for sure, but I can’t think of a single time he’s been wrong about a pairing.”

  “Interesting.” Valerie picked at one particularly ragged cuticle and stared unseeing at the tall grass at the side of Clay’s house.

  Did Clay think she was suitable for Tim?

  Get off that subject ASAP, lady. Suitability doesn’t matter.

  She wasn’t interested in permanent connections, though Tim was interesting for sure. He was gorgeous, intelligent, and confidently sensual in a way that had her craving more of him. But that was just about getting needs met—scratching an itch. She wanted to learn more about him, be swept up in his skillful attention to her body again, but be able to leave when all was said and done with no strings attached.

  She couldn’t afford to have any strikes against her, not if she wanted to advance in her field. She had to achieve the next thing before she even considered anything permanent. That meant a partner, a mortgage. Kids.

  She refused to be like her mother—a woman with so much potential whose trajectory was knocked off course by some guy who didn’t stick around, one daughter, and then another.

  All of that could wait. Getting distracted for more than a night or two was out of the question.

  She hoped Tim wouldn’t be a distraction.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At the sound of the doorbell, Tim hurried to the door, put his hand on the knob, and then paused when he noticed the coat of dust on the console table in front of him.

  “Fuck.”

  He’d left the windows open to ventilate the house the day before, and in that time, his furniture had apparently managed to gather an unwanted yellow sheen from pollen. “Maybe she won’t notice.” He wasn’t usually so sensitive about that sort of thing, but he cared what she thought.

  Tim had given his cleaning lady the week off, so him not being home much in the past month was working in his favor. He’d been spending so much time at the factory trying to get productivity up to meet the summer boat delivery deadlines, and when he wasn’t there, he was on one of his own boats. He’d developed a habit of sailing out into the Atlantic with no destination in mind and just floating. He’d sit on the deck and ponder his lot in life as he watched the waves crash or do some fishing.

  He had a freezer full of fish already, and he also had a pretty good idea of what his lot in life was. Single, when he didn’t necessarily want to be. Empty nest, except for the one kid who seemed to get a perverse sort of pleasure out of mortifying his parents at every possible turn.

  He opened the door right as Valerie put up a fist to knock.

  She dropped her hand and grinned at him. “Tim, you’re gonna have to back my SUV out for me. Your driveway is steep, and I suck at reversing. You should have told me you lived on the side of a cliff. I might have said no thank you and spared myself the embarrassment.”

  He chuckled at the “cliff” hyperbole, leaned out the door, and spotted her SUV parked nose-to-tail with his truck. “I’ll eventually get the driveway situation straightened out. I was going to reshape it into a U so no one has to turn around. I know the lack of visibility is an issue. My ex-wife had more than her fair share of near-collisions when backing out.”

  “Are you sure that’s not the reason she divorced you?”

  “Woman, that mouth of yours…”

  She shrugged and kept on grinning. “Do something about it.”

  “Keep pushing me, and I will. And regarding the driveway—one thing at a time.”

  “Fix it when you fix the house, right? I’m sure there are…” Her gaze tracked up the side of the doorframe and her brow furrowed. She put a hand against the weather-worn wood and paint flaked off. “…Um, a lot of things to fix.”

  “Hey, I made no promises. All I said was that it’d be clear why I didn’t tear it down when you stepped inside. So, come on in.” He got out of her way and watched her walk past him, using the opportunity of her back being turned to him to admire her long, shapely legs in khaki shorts that did nothing to distract from the luscious ass he’d enjoyed kneading so much on his boat. He’d dreamed about laying her across his lap and teasing her naked ass relentlessly as she begged him to do something.

  He wanted to do something about that mouth of hers and make her beg. At the moment, though, it was him who felt like the one who needed to be begging. He wasn’t used to that.

  She spun on the heels of her flip-flops and shifted her laptop bag to her other shoulder. “So, where should we start?”

  “What’s the hurry?” He closed the door and locked it. He considered engaging the deadbolt just in case Kevin had a backup key Tim hadn’t thought to collect from him but didn’t want Valerie to feel like he was locking her in or that he was some kind of predator. “I told you I’d feed you. I even cooked.”

  Evidently incredulous, she pushed up an eyebrow. “Really?”

  He grimaced. “Well, I heated it, anyway. I’m competent when it comes to defrosting and warming. My housekeeper makes a mean veggie lasagna. All that’s left to do is pour the wine.”

  “You really know how to tempt a girl.” She turned her wrist over and studied her watch. “You win this round. My stomach is bossier than my brain right now. That said, I do need to take some measurements outside before dark, so don’t try to distract me at the table.”

  “You don’t trust my architect’s measurements?”

  She scoffed and took ground-eating strides toward the kitchen.

  Of course she’d know where it was. He figured she could probably memorize a floor plan upside-down and backward.

  “How’d you find the guy, anyway?” She paused in the kitchen doorway and he caught up with her in time to see the cringe.

  “It’s not that small,” he balked. “Compared to my boat galleys, anyway.”

  “Tim…” she warned.

  He didn’t want to argue. “Okay, maybe it is.”

  “No, it’s not that. The measurements were way off. It’s smaller than indicated.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Standing so close to her, with her smelling so good—like coconut and some other fruity essence he didn’t know the word for—he couldn’t resist touching her, so he did. Just a gentle skimming of his fingers down her graceful neck that ignited an immediate shudder.

  She sucked in some air and took a step away from him. “Don’t start that.”

  “You don’t like my touch?” He leaned against the doorframe and watched her take in the narrow space from baseboards up to the water-stained white ceiling. There’d been a leak in the roof during a hurricane, and he had
n’t had a chance to repaint. He hadn’t seen the point of he was going to end up hiring out for construction, anyway.

  “It’s not an issue of like or dislike. I don’t want to get distracted.”

  “Sometimes distraction is good for us. I think you’re like me and you work too hard. There’s nothing wrong with doing what you can to get a little relief.”

  She let out a soft, forceful exhalation and set her laptop bag on top of a small sliver of counter. It took some effort to fit it there. She had to move the coffeemaker and pull the bag’s straps up so they didn’t dangle into the sink. “If you want things, you have to work for them, right?”

  “What are you working for? What’s distracting you so much from enjoying simple pleasures?”

  “There’s nothing simple about pleasure, Tim.” She hooked her thumbs into her empty belt loops and shifted her weight. “So. What do you want me to do? I could set the table.”

  He didn’t even call her out on the abrupt subject change. She was probably used to doing that at work when the contractors weren’t staying on task. He certainly did the same whenever the crew started getting too personal and they had quotas to meet. He couldn’t fault her for her brusqueness, but he’d definitely have to think differently about how he interacted with her. If he wanted to get her to do anything, he’d have to go about encouraging it in a roundabout way.

  Or…he could let his inner dom out and steamroll her, but the evening was early yet, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go there.

  Tim pushed off the doorway, pressed his hand to the small of her back, and guided her toward the table in the sunroom. There’d never been enough room in the kitchen for a table, and he and Heidi had both agreed that eating in the dining room felt pretentious. They’d turned it into an office and did most of their eating out on the glassed-in porch.

  “Have a seat. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Hmm. It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard that come out of a man’s mouth. I like it.”

  He pulled out a chair for her and bade her to sit. “Well, if you like that, you’ll have a lot more of it coming to you.”