She went down the stairs ahead of me and I paused at the top, looking back over the attic. There was another reason I was reluctant to disturb everything up here. I kind of wanted Clark to see it, as is.
I flicked off the light and followed Jessica downstairs.
We kept at the cleaning every day. Even Jessica’s boyfriend, John, had been drafted when we realized how heavy the Legless Knight was. He and Clark lifted him, reunited his torso with his better half, and took him down to the antiques store that had taken some of the other things.
“Don’t you think he should stay in the house?” Clark had asked, patting the knight on the head.
“No, he’s too weird. And speaking of weird, the dolls are next on my hit list.”
I laughed as he tried to spook me with stories of how, if I got rid of them, they’d plot their revenge.
What did not need a ton of work—cue surprise face here—was the Bel Air. Clark found the car keys in a mayonnaise jar in the pantry with all kinds of odds and ends. Spying a Buffalo nickel at the bottom of the jar, he upended the entire thing all over the kitchen table. And as he combed through the stuff, I saw a key chain with two very bright and shiny keys. Biting back a squeal in case they turned out to be the wrong ones, I snatched them up, ran out to the garage, and slid behind the wheel before Clark even knew I was gone. I’d planned only to slip the keys into the ignition to see if they fit, but when they did, I couldn’t resist.
With a cough and a chortle, the engine purred to life. Clark ran outside, visions of a Bel Air–shaped hole in the garage no doubt in his head, and stood in front of the hood with a bemused expression on his face. I revved her up once, which made him sidle to the side a bit.
“It sounds pretty good!” I yelled over the engine, and he walked to the window.
“Let’s not tempt fate, shall we? I’ll have one of the guys from Brady’s Auto come over while you’re gone and make sure it’s drivable. How ’bout that?”
Eager as I was to tootle about town in it, I realized that it wouldn’t do me any good to get stranded on the side of the road. So I turned it off and reluctantly handed over the keys to Clark.
“Just so we’re clear, you don’t get to drive it first. Even if the guy says everything is great, you wait for me. Got it?” I said, poking him in the chest. He nodded, pocketing the keys. He’d better have listened to me . . .
Clark was around most days now. Cleaning and culling was uncovering some other necessary repairs to the house, which of course he needed to be consulted on. I didn’t mind. I’d gotten used to him being here. Now that the bandage was gone and the bruises had faded, I didn’t mind looking at him so much.
And when you got past the briefcase and the tie, the elbow patches and the dusty eyeglasses, he was a pretty funny guy. He made me laugh; he made me think. He also made me furious. But he was quickly becoming a good friend.
And I’d been right about letting him see the attic as is. He loved it. He went bananas over the old yearbooks, especially since most of them were from the local high school. As he pored over old letters and receipts from stores long since shuttered, I studied the light as it shone in. Where the shadows were, where the light was the strongest. I began to mentally carve out a space that was becoming my studio.
“Can I help you with that?” Clark asked as I struggled to pull a trunk away from the wall.
“No no, I’ve got it,” I insisted, pulling hard enough to make my eyes cross a bit. “What in the world is in here?” I mumbled, giving one more good tug and sending it, and me, sliding across the floor. I sat down hard, biting my tongue in the process. “Sonofa— Ow!”
“Impossible woman,” he muttered, but was at my side a moment later. “You need to let people help you.”
“What do you think I’m doing, with all this free labor cleaning out my house?” I said, wincing as I felt around the inside of my mouth. The piercing in my tongue clicked against the back of my teeth like it always did, and the sound made Clark look closer.
“You didn’t lose your piercing, did you?” he asked, crouching down next to me and offering me his handkerchief. God bless him, he carried a hankie.
“No, it’d take a lot for this sucker to come out,” I said, accepting what he offered and pressing it to the tip of my tongue where I’d bitten it.
“Did it hurt?” he asked.
“Well yeah, didn’t you hear me yell?”
“I meant the piercing. When you got it.”
“Why, you thinking about piercing something, Clark?” I asked with amusement.
“Good lord, no.”
I laughed out loud. He sat down next to me on the floor of the attic and looked carefully at me. “I just wondered how it felt.”
“It hurt, sure, but a good kind of hurt. And I was expecting it, unlike a moment ago. No biggie, I’m a tough girl. Five brothers, remember?”
He stared at me a moment, his eyes darting back down to my mouth. I poked the barbell out a little so he could see it, waggling my tongue at him. He breathed in hard. “Tough girl,” he echoed.
We sat in a patch of sunshine, staring at each other. Eventually I put his handkerchief back into my mouth, and his eyes blazed. And when finally a cloud passed overhead and interrupted the sunshine, we both sat back a bit, each looking away. Clark finally moved, standing and offering me his hand. He pulled me up harder than I expected and I overbalanced, knocking us into each other. We both laughed.
“Well, let’s see what’s so darn heavy in this trunk!” he exclaimed, and set about worrying the lock open. I sucked on his hankie while I watched him work.
There was dust in his hair, and I reached out without thinking and ran my fingers through it. His hands faltered. “Dust,” I murmured, stepping back and shaking my head.
“Mm-hmm,” he replied, and sprang the lock. Taking a step back, he opened the trunk and we peered inside. “Well would you look at that,” he said, admiring. I looked, and had no idea what I was seeing. Bronze, curved, looked like a . . . cornucopia?
“Is that a horn of plenty? Like people put on the table at Thanksgiving?”
“Oh no. That’s a speaker, Vivian,” he said, lifting it carefully from the trunk. The delight on his face was evident; it was like he’d found treasure. “It’s a gramophone. And in almost mint condition.”
“Very cool,” I breathed, looking past him into the trunk and seeing the base there, complete with needle.
“We should bring this downstairs, set it up in your living room.”
“Good idea. You never know when there might be a Johnny Mathis emergency,” I said.
His answering grin lit up the entire attic, even though the sun was still behind the clouds.
The gramophone was moved to the living room, and though Clark didn’t have time to tinker with it for too long, we did bust out a Mathis album to make sure it worked. Scratchy and tinny, not at all the sound quality this century was used to, it was a great addition to the room.
The house was definitely taking shape.
What was not falling into place was the cowboy. Hank continued to make me hot, but good God almighty, he was proving to be a tougher nut to crack than I’d anticipated. Every day he came to feed the animals. Every day he stood in the driveway next to his truck, peeling off his shirt like he was posing for a calendar. Every day he worked in the barn, pitching hay, feeding the chickens, caring for the horses. Every other day he rode one of them instead of just turning them out in the adjacent pasture, and I’d stop box sorting or pile sweeping to stand in the window watching him.
Watching him saddle up, drawing the leather tight and checking the straps. Watching him swing himself up with only his own strength. Watching him shake out his hair like he was on the cover of Two Scoops of Passion or Catalonian Sex Gods (now in paperback!) and literally ride off into the sunset.
And how many times did I get my
self off while thinking of the cowboy? I’d lost count. The absolutely erotic and detailed dreams I’d been having about my lover, whose face was still hidden to me but was of course my cowboy’s, made me hornier than ever.
I’d awaken most nights, strung tighter than a bow, images of naked, sweaty, sexy times imprinted across the inside of my eyelids, and my hand would snake down down down to finish myself off, gasping and panting and coming so hard I’d see spots.
The onion peeling was slow going. God knows I tried, but Hank was not giving anything up. I thought back to all my favorite romance novels, where the hero was tough and unflinching in his beliefs. Where he guarded his dark secrets with the strength of a warrior and the stubbornness of a mule. But that was part of the journey, right? That was part of what the heroine had to push through and forward against all odds. She must never take no for an answer, she must fight back and use every feminine wile in her arsenal.
I wanted wild and wanton, but my arsenal was waning, whimpering, and wandering in the wah-wahs.
I tried every trick in the book. I waited until I knew Hank was heading toward his truck and could see me, then I walked past the windows in just my artfully draped towel. Once. Twice. Three times a weirdo.
I went out one morning still in my nightgown, a wispy cottony little bit of a thing, with a jar of peanut butter, saying that I simply couldn’t get the top off and could he please help me? He opened the jar, told me that Peter Pan was gross and that he preferred Jif, then went back to mucking the stalls.
I sunned myself one afternoon on the back porch, all greased up and shiny in my bikini. When he finally appeared, he took no notice of me—until I gave up and tried to get out of the vinyl lawn chair. I was so slippery I slid right through the strapping. He came out of the barn and found me a tangle of slick arms and legs poking out though the vinyl strips, my actual bottom on the porch floor. He’d had to hold the chair down so I could get out. Even then, he just shook his head and went and rode Paula. Stupid lucky horse.
I boob propped, I booty shook, I cheek pinched and hair tossed. I was turning into the kind of girl I couldn’t stand. I sucked lollipops, moaned in ecstasy when biting into a donut, and simpered like a fool while holding two avocados in the same hand while caressing an eggplant with the other. He’d asked if I was making a salad.
Not all still waters ran deep. Thank God these particular still waters ran gorgeous.
And while all this was going on, I was also getting ready to fly back to Philadelphia to pack up my things and officially move out to Mendocino.
The day before I left dawned clear and bright. I woke horny and frustrated. I’d spent another night being tortured/delighted by my faceless dark lover. The lover with the hands of a god and the mouth of a poet. With his mouth he told me the words I’d always longed to hear, but had never been told. He loved me, cherished me, would go to the ends of the earth to protect me, and would spend the rest of his life caring for me.
With his hands? He worked my body expertly, arousing me with wild abandon. The dirtiest, sexiest hands imaginable.
This dreamy dark lover was exactly the kind of man I wanted in real life. He was the blend of loving and lascivious that I’d been searching for since I’d first picked up a paperback and realized that dirty books could be a woman’s best friend.
And when I woke from this last round of dreams, pulse racing and skin flushed I brought myself to yet another solitary but somewhat satisfying orgasm.
I needed more. I deserved more. But what I was taking? Right now? Was a cold shower. I had stuff to do.
I had breakfast in town since I wanted to catch up with Jessica before I left.
“Hey, girl, you’re coming back, right?” she asked when I hopped up onto the stool at the end of the counter. She poured my coffee without asking and looked at me concernedly.
“Aw, are you afraid you’re going to miss me?” I teased, wrapping my hands around the warm mug. It was chilly this morning and I wondered what the change of seasons would be like out here. I’d been raised on the beautiful explosion of color of the East Coast in the fall. The woods around our home were a riot of oranges and golds, fiery reds and deep yellows. You think California, you think sand and beach and sun. But this far north, it got cold. Would the leaves change?
“Miss you? Hell, no. I love going through shit from your basement.” She laughed.
“You asked for it, sister. You’re the one that wanted to help.”
“Yeah, I know. Thank God I finally got to get into your attic.”
“Why does that sound so dirty?”
“Because you ain’t got a man?”
“Ain’t got a man?” I snorted, rolling my eyes at her.
“It sounded funnier in my head. But the statement stands,” she said, putting my order in. “How’s it going with Hank?”
I put my head down on the counter and sighed into the Formica. “I got nothing. He barely looks at me.”
“I told you, you’re not his type. You’re hot, sure, but way too short, way too brunette, and way too smart for him,” she said, shaking her finger at me.
One day I’d finally confessed my crush (which she’d already guessed weeks ago) when she caught me staring out the window at him, biting down on a broom handle.
“He likes a very specific type of girl, Viv. I’ve known him a long time and he’s always gone for a Barbie doll. There’s been a Missy, a Cheyenne, a Dakota, and several Sharons when he was in his cougar phase. Never anything as cool as a Viv,” she’d said, patting me on the arm.
I’d gone along with it, nodded when she railed against stupid women guys like Hank always go for.
In my head, though? It all fit the romance novel model. Gorgeous man with a taste for gorgeous woman, the same type over and over again. Trying to right a wrong? Chase a ghost? Punish himself with what he can never have? He needed a ravishing petite brunette with a back full of ink, a brain full of math, and a fistful of dick. His dick, because that brunette will be the one to break him of his punishing streak of one-night stands, hers will be the body he will feast from, her cries of passion will be the ones to erase a thousand nights of empty love and unfilled promises . . .
I mean, dur. It’s practically textbook. So everything Jessica was telling me? Just furthered the cause, made him that much more tantalizing, made the potential thrill all the more powerful when I finally cracked the nut that was Hank.
“God, I need to get laid.”
“Um, right now?” Jessica asked, blinking at me.
“I mean it—I’m dying over here. Sorry, Mr. Martin,” I said when he shot me a look.
“Maybe if you stopped reading so many of those sexy books, you wouldn’t be so wound up.” When color immediately flooded my cheeks she said, “I knew it! I knew those were yours! I thought you’d try and blame poor old Maude.” She cackled, setting down my breakfast in front of me.
“Okay, some of those books? Are in fact Aunt Maude’s. I found an entire Harlequin library in an upstairs closet, so apparently it runs in the family. And yes, I do enjoy a good steamy novel. Now gimme the hot sauce.”
“Pretty sure that was one of the titles I saw on your nightstand the other day.”
“No no, that was Hot Saucy Women and the Men Who Love Them. You’re thinking of Gimme the Good Stuff. Subtitle, Now.”
“Wow.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, and beckoned her closer. “Want to know a secret?”
“Always.” She leaned closer.
“I think I might be living in a romance novel.”
She looked confused. “What?”
“Yeah—like things are happening around me and to me, just like in a romance novel.”
“Uh-huh. And do you see any of these things happening right now, Viv?”
“No no, not like that. I’m not delusional. But think about it. Put yourself in a romance no
vel head for a moment.”
“I don’t have a bodice.”
“Neither do I, but I’m thinking about getting one. But seriously, think about it. I live on the other side of the country, and I get this mysterious phone call in the middle of the night. I inherit a house from someone I barely know, no strings attached. An opportunity to start fresh, start a new life—and then there’s a cowboy?”
“And Hank’s the cowboy, right?”
“Of course he’s the cowboy! He wears a hat and rides a horse!”
“Okaaaay. What else?”
“What do you mean, what else? That’s the beginning of a classic romance novel!” I said, thumping my fist on the counter.
“But the cowboy isn’t interested in you.”
“I know, so far. But that’s all part of it, right?”
“And there’s no one else in this equation?”
“Huh?”
“What if there’s a dark horse in this romance novel?”
“You mean Paula?” I asked, confused.
“Oh forget it. But here’s what I want to know. Where’s the happy ending?”
“Mmm, the happy ending.” I sighed, licking my fork.
“You’re disgusting.”
“Horny. There’s a difference. Sorry, Mr. Martin.” I nodded to my right.
“No, seriously. How can this have a happy ending, with Hank cast as the hero?”
I thought for a moment, temporarily puzzled. Truth be told, I’d thought something would have happened by now. I’d been here for weeks. A long time to wait for some touch.
A lightbulb went off. “A heroine can never know the outcome, otherwise why would she bother with the journey? The story would be boring if she just showed up with a mattress strapped to her back in the first chapter, right?”
“I don’t know, there’s something to be said for a quickie. Sorry, Mr. Martin. More coffee?”
“You girls are nutty,” he said, extending his mug.
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