Maybe she was a freaking genius.
For a change, he drove to his condo without hitting any traffic. He’d hired an interior decorator to fix the place up for him when he’d bought it—what did he know about fabrics and colors and drapes? He’d asked her to make sure the sofas were comfortable, the chairs could accommodate his six-foot frame, the kitchen wouldn’t intimidate a guy with limited culinary skills, and the bed was king-size. She’d created a home for him that was about as personal as a furniture store show room, but it served his needs.
His mailbox contained nothing of interest, certainly nothing as intriguing as the news that his mother was hooked on piña coladas. She’d always been reserved and proper, and his mental image of her clad in a garish top and white shorts, her nose pink from the sun and her hand clutching a frosty glass with a paper umbrella and a skewered wedge of pineapple garnishing it, jarred him.
She was making friends, though, which was good. Whether they were single male friends, he had no idea, but who cared? All that mattered was that for the first time since his father had died, she was having fun. If he’d had to put up with Priscilla while his mother had a dreary time on her cruise, he’d be pissed.
He wasn’t putting up with Priscilla anymore, of course. Abbie was putting up with her for him.
He tapped open his email app on his phone and sent his mother a quick note: Glad you’re enjoying yourself. Priscilla is fine. At least that wasn’t a lie.
Restless, he changed his clothes from a casual work outfit to an even more casual pair of old jeans and a cozy wool sweater. His phone tempted him; it taunted him. He wanted to call Abbie.
Instead, he left his apartment, got back into his car, and drove downtown to the Faulk Street Tavern. Maybe he’d spot a new woman to distract him there.
The place wasn’t too crowded. He gazed around the room, saw no one he knew at any of the tables, and sauntered over to the jukebox. His memory of the song that had played the last time he was in the bar remained with him, haunting him. Why that song?
The jukebox offered no clues. It had a set of buttons on it, but none of them were labeled with song titles. He slid a quarter into the coin slot and pressed one of the unlabeled buttons. A song began to play—a slow, sweet song in which a man listed all the things he would do for someone he loved. Nice, but Hank hadn’t chosen it, because the jukebox provided no way to make a choice.
With a shrug, he crossed the room to the bar and settled on one of the empty stools. Unzipping his jacket, he shot a smile at Gus Naukonen, who was busy filling another order. As soon as she was done, she sidled over to him. “A Guinness?” she guessed.
How she could remember what her customers ordered from one day to the next was a mystery to him—but not as big a mystery as what was going on with that jukebox. “Thanks,” he said. “So, what’s the story with the jukebox?”
She smiled enigmatically. “Who says it has a story?”
“I put money in, and this song is playing. I never heard it before.”
“Rick Nelson,” she said. “He was a big star in the early ’Sixties.”
Hank grinned. “You weren’t even born in the early ’Sixties.”
She shrugged. “We won’t discuss my age. But I’ve gotten to know a lot of oldies. The jukebox only plays songs old enough to have been released on vinyl 45’s.”
“The last time I was here,” he said, “it played a song about taking care of business.”
A server approached the bar, slapped her empty tray down, and said, “Two Irish coffees.”
Gus raised her finger, a signal to Hank that she’d be back in a minute, and filled the order, pouring steaming coffee into two glass mugs, stirring in whiskey and brown sugar, and garnishing them with whipped cream. After placing them on the server’s tray, she returned to Hank. “Some folks think the jukebox is magic,” she told him. “It plays a song somebody in the room needs to hear. Or two somebodies in the room.”
“Why? I mean, how does it know what somebody needs to hear?”
“That’s the magic part,” she said with a smile.
“So…what? I need to hear this Rick Wilson?”
“Rick Nelson,” she corrected him. “And I don’t know if you need to hear him. Apparently you needed to hear ‘Taking Care of Business.’ You’re still hearing it, right? In your mind.”
True. He was still hearing it, and every time he heard it, he thought of Abbie. Had she been the other somebody in the room who needed to hear it? “What does that mean, that you need to hear it?”
Gus shrugged again. “I’m not saying I believe the jukebox is magic. And I don’t know what it means. All I know is, some people hear a song and it changes them, makes them see things a new way.”
“I couldn’t select a song when I put in a quarter,” he said. The Rick Nelson song had ended and a new one began, about people living in little pink houses. The tune was catchy and the lyrics were clearly sarcastic. Hank liked the song, but he certainly didn’t need to hear it.
“The jukebox plays what it plays,” Gus said. “But thanks for putting in the quarter. I empty the coin box every month and donate whatever’s in there to charity—the food pantry, a homeless shelter, the American Cancer Society. It doesn’t amount to much, but every little bit helps.”
He nodded vaguely. If his quarter helped to cure cancer, wonderful—but he was still puzzling over why the jukebox had thought he needed to hear a song about taking care of business. As if a jukebox could even think.
He always took care of business. He took care of everything. He had taken care of his father in the dark days of his terminal illness, and he’d taken care of his mother, helping her through the paperwork after his father had died, investing the life insurance payout for her, transferring the utilities to her name. And dog-sitting while she went on a cruise.
Which he wasn’t doing himself, but he’d taken care of it by hiring Abbie.
And now he was taking care of business by trying to raise the funds for Abbie’s doggie school. And he was taking care of business by keeping his distance from her, not pursuing her, not pulling her into his arms and kissing her again.
He drank his beer, mulling over what Gus had told him, trying without success to make sense of it. The song about the little pink houses ended and a third song spilled out of the jukebox.
“Taking Care of Business.” Again.
He recognized it now, from the very first note, the very first chord. It was his song. His and Abbie’s.
Did the jukebox think he needed to hear it again? If so, why?
Because he was sitting here alone, instead of being where he wanted to be, with the woman he wanted to be with.
Abbie.
♥ ♥ ♥
Priscilla was misbehaving. She was on a mission to conquer every damned squirrel in Brogan’s Point, and even though she was failing miserably, she refused to surrender. Abbie would give Priscilla points for perseverance, but she had to deduct points for disobedience. The little pooch was definitely in the minus range.
Usually, Abbie had more patience with dogs, even small, scrappy dogs pulling so hard on their leashes that they risked spraining Abbie’s wrist. Abbie pulled back—she outweighed Priscilla by a good hundred pounds, so she won that tug-of-war every time—but Priscilla refused to give up. Spotting another squirrel, she shot ahead again, barking and howling and yanking on the leash.
Abbie’s foul mood had little to do with Priscilla’s rambunctiousness, she admitted. She was upset because Hank hadn’t been at his mother’s house when she’d arrived to walk Priscilla at six. And here she was, walking Priscilla again at nine o’clock, because she foolishly thought that if she spent more than a few minutes with the dog by walking her instead of letting her out into the back yard for her final pee of the night, Hank might show up. If he showed up while she was walking Priscilla around the block, he’d see Abbie’s car parked in his mother’s driveway and know she was around, and…
And he wasn’t going to come
. He’d kissed her, he’d decided that was a mistake, and she wasn’t going to see him again. Or if she did see him, it would only be because he was paying her. Which was exactly why he wasn’t going to kiss her any more.
Why was she so stuck on him? That he was hot wasn’t reason enough. Eric had been hot, and he’d also been a jerk. She appreciated that Hank took her ambitions seriously enough to seek financing for her from his firm, just as she appreciated that he’d hired her to take care of Priscilla.
Whom he didn’t like.
At the moment, Abbie wasn’t sure she liked Priscilla herself. But then…she suddenly felt flooded with love, love for Priscilla, love for the entire universe. Because there, parked in front of Hank’s mother’s house, was Hank’s car.
Seeing him swing open the driver’s side door, she had to restrain herself to keep from running down the street to him. For all she knew, he’d come only to check up on her, or to pass along bad news about his company, or his mother, or himself. Or her. Maybe he’d heard from his mother, experienced a spasm of guilt, and decided to fire Abbie and take care of Priscilla himself.
But as she neared him, she could see he was smiling. Not a big, booming smile, not a smile that could light up the night sky, but definitely more of a smile than she’d expect from someone about to deliver bad news.
“Hi,” he said as she approached.
“Hi.” Why did she suddenly feel shy around him? Over dinner last night, she’d had no trouble talking to him, sharing personal information with him. But that was before he’d kissed her. Before she’d realized how much she wanted him to kiss her again.
“Everything go okay today?” he asked. She heard a faint hesitancy in his voice, as if he was trying hard to sound like he wasn’t trying hard.
“Everything went fine.”
Priscilla squinted at Hank and emitted a growl. Abbie gave the leash a sharp tug. “Come on, Priscilla. It’s bedtime.”
Priscilla was not happy to hear this. She growled some more, at Hank, at Abbie, at Hank again. Evidently, she assumed it was his fault that she had to go to bed.
Not knowing why Hank had come to his mother’s house, Abbie walked Priscilla around the side of the house to the mudroom door in back. She unlocked it, much too aware of Hank close behind her. He stood quietly, watching as she dried Priscilla’s paws, topped off her water bowl, and turned off a couple of lights. He said nothing, but she grew comfortable with the silence. When he was ready to tell her why he was there, he would. In the meantime, he still had that sweet, tentative smile.
Not until they’d locked up the house and made their way to the front walk did Hank speak. “I heard the song again,” he said.
She didn’t have to ask him what song he was referring to. “Were you at the Faulk Street Tavern?”
“Yeah.” They strolled slowly through the frosty February night, close enough to hold hands if they wanted to. But he made no move to touch her. “I put a quarter into the jukebox, and it played some other songs, and then it played that song. As if it thought I needed to hear it again.”
She laughed. “That’s ridiculous.” But maybe it wasn’t ridiculous at all. Bits and pieces of that one song’s lyrics came back to her. She recited a few, unsure if she had them quite right. “Going to the city, wishing you were a musician so you wouldn’t have to work?”
“I’m not a musician,” he said. “When I was about ten, I asked my parents if I could study the drums. They said no. That was the end of my musical ambitions.”
“I’m not sure playing the drums counts as being a musician,” she joked.
He halted on the sidewalk beside their cars. “It’s just…something about that song, it makes me feel…I don’t know. Different. Like I need to know what my business is, and then I need to take care of it.”
She nodded. The song had made her feel the same way the night she and Hank had first heard it in the tavern. But more—it had made her feel he was her business. As it turned out, he was. Or, more accurately, his mother’s dog was.
“I wasn’t going to see you today,” he told her, touching her arm, turning her to face him. “I pitched your dog school at work today, and I wanted to make sure my interest in it was nothing personal. I wanted the pitch to be pure business. But then I heard the song, and I had to see you.”
That hearing the song would compel him to see her made no sense…yet it made perfect sense. That song, and Hank, and the way his dark eyes gazed down at her, the way his smile spoke of longing, the way the light pressure of his hand on her arm spread warmth through her whole body…
This was their business. They had to take care of it.
His kiss was firm, deep, devouring. It felt real. It felt right. It was the only business that mattered.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and she wrapped hers around his waist, feeling the sleek, supple muscles of his back through his jacket. Was it February in New England? Were they standing outdoors on a moonlit night? She felt as if she were melting in the heat he radiated, like a snowman beneath a summer sun.
“Come home with me,” he murmured.
Of course, she thought, pulling back far enough to gaze at him. She didn’t have to speak the words. Her smile was all the answer he needed.
♥ ♥ ♥
He lived in a townhouse in Brogan Heights, a condominium community not far from his mother’s house. His unit was relatively tidy. A pair of battered duck boots stood on a mat in the entry, and a laptop sat open on a coffee table in the main room, which was decorated in appropriately manly style, much like the den where Priscilla slept, her fluffy pink bed the only spot of frivolous color in the otherwise macho room. Abbie wondered if Hank took after his father. She wished she could have met the man. She bet she would have liked him—and she’d be willing to bet he would never have tied a ribbon into his dog’s hair.
And then Hank kissed her again, and she stopped thinking about his father, about ribbons, about décor…about everything. She gave herself over to feeling, to the sensation of Hank’s hands opening her jacket and sliding it down her arms and off, then caressing her shoulders through her sweater. His mouth fell hard on hers, then gentled, sipping, tasting, devouring. Just as she began to imagine what her life would be like if his kisses went on forever, he broke from her, folded his hand around hers, and led her up the stairs.
His bedroom was a little less neat than the main room on the first floor, the bed’s comforter wrinkled, the closet door a couple of inches open, the top of the oak dresser littered with pocket change, a comb, and a few credit card receipts. The mess pleased her. It implied that he hadn’t planned to bring her here, hadn’t plotted an elaborate seduction. Like her, he was just following his instincts. He was just taking care of business.
He turned her to face him and resumed kissing her. She’d kissed her share of men, but no one had ever turned her on with his kisses the way Hank did. His lips were magic.
His hands were magic, too, gliding over her shoulders and down her arms, then moving to her waist, to the ribbed edge of her sweater. He lifted it off her, a move which briefly ended their kiss, and then his mouth took hers again. His fingers traced the straps of her bra to her back and plucked the clasp. Her hands were nowhere near as nimble as they tugged at the buttons of his shirt. But somehow, she managed to open it.
And somehow, the rest of their clothing managed to drop to the floor, forgotten as they tumbled onto the bed and explored each other’s bodies. His was glorious, lean and strong, his shoulders broad, his abdomen taut and flat, his chest covered with a sparse dusting of hair. His legs were long, but she’d already known that. He was tall—she’d known that, too. He was already fully aroused, but she traced a teasing line the length of him, just because she wanted to hear him groan.
He obliged, a low, rough sound. Then he shifted, urging her onto her back. He kissed her throat, her breasts, flicked his tongue over her navel, flicked it over her crotch.
Their movements became more eager, more desperate
. She was vaguely aware of him reaching past her to a drawer in his night table, pulling out a condom, rolling it onto himself. She opened for him and he filled her, and this time their groans were shared, their sighs and gasps mingling as their bodies found a sweet, steady rhythm.
She came first, but he was right behind her, his body shuddering in release as hers convulsed around him. They went still, fell silent, simply clung to each other as their heartbeats slowed and their breathing grew steady. After a long moment, Hank eased off her, settling on his side and turning her to face him. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Other than feeling utterly drained and lethargic and rumpled, she was fine. But Hank didn’t look okay. He looked gorgeous and sated, his eyes smoky with passion, his lips curved in a sexy smile…but he also looked worried. “I’ve never been better,” she said. “Are you okay?”
He ran his hand tenderly through her hair, brushing it back from her cheek. “You’re amazing,” he said. “But Abbie…you’re working for me. I’m paying you. Is this right? Are we crossing a line here?”
She almost burst into laughter. But he was so solemn, she did her best to take his concerns seriously. “You’re working for me, too,” she reminded him. “At your venture capital company. You’re representing my dog obedience school.”
“So we’re crossing a lot of lines,” he said, although he seemed to relax slightly. He leaned forward and brushed a light kiss on the tip of her nose. “You blind me, and I can’t see the lines.” He shifted again, rolling onto his back and drawing her into his arms. She rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
Maybe they had crossed lines. Maybe mixing business with pleasure was a bad idea. Maybe the fact that Hank didn’t love dogs as much as she did was a red flag, and she should run the other way.
But she couldn’t have run from him. Not after he’d kissed her. Not after she’d felt him warming beneath her fingertips when she’d rubbed the back of his neck. Not after she’d seen him at the Faulk Street Tavern that first night, when that lively, funny rock song had cast a spell on them both.
Cupid to the Rescue: A Tail-Wagging Valentine's Day Anthology Page 23
