Just Desserts

by Barbara Bretton

  “Hayley’s right. At that rate, forty-two minutes comes out to fifteen bucks.” He paused for effect. “If you round it up.”

  “What are you,” Lou demanded, “some kind of lawyer?”

  “He is,” Hayley said. “And a good one too.”

  Lou didn’t miss a beat. “Twenty-five. That’s with the professional discount.”

  “Twenty,” Rafferty countered, “and I’ll toss in an egg roll.” He grinned at the old con artist. “That’s a professional courtesy.”

  Rafferty pulled a soggy twenty from his back pocket and handed it to Lou. Lou held it up to the sun, inspected it front and back, then stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

  He pushed the bags toward Rafferty.

  “I already ate one of the egg rolls,” he admitted. “My blood sugar…”

  She met Finn’s eyes over the old man’s head and saw a mixture of compassion, amazement, and laughter ready to break free any second. The compassion alone was enough to do her in.

  Hayley led him around the side of the building to the back door. “You managed to ransom back our Chinese food with only minor financial damage and Lou still thinks he came out on top. Very impressive.”

  She wiped Rhoda’s massive paws with a rag dipped in the pail of water she kept near the door for that purpose.

  “He’s tough,” Finn said as he pulled off his muddy shoes and left them on the doormat. “I’d rather go up against a hungry divorce lawyer than that guy.”

  Rhoda shook herself then bounded up the back stairs.

  She kicked off her shoes on the mat beside his. “You didn’t have to give him anything.”

  “Tell that to Lou.”

  “You were kind to him. Not everybody is.”

  “Maybe I was trying to impress his neighbor.”

  “I don’t think that’s the only reason.”

  “What can I tell you?” he said as he followed her upstairs. “He reminds me of my uncle Paddy.”

  “Your uncle Paddy extorts neighbors for bingo money?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “He instituted a Christmas gift surcharge that put his two daughters through college.”

  “You lie!”

  “He died at ninety-three with six thousand dollars in singles under his mattress.”

  She laughed out loud. “He would’ve loved my aunt Fee. She works from home as a seamstress. I think she has every dollar she ever earned tucked away in her hall closets.”

  Two nosy cats scattered when she and Finn reached the second-floor landing.

  “Georgette and Phyllis,” he said.

  “Mary and Ted, but nice try.” Where was Murray? She started down the hall. “The washer and dryer are on this floor. Give me five minutes to grab the stuff I hid in the bathtub and hide it somewhere else, then it’s all yours.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Two huge armfuls of junk later she handed him a stack of brand-new bath towels and a fresh bar of Dial, and pointed him down the hallway.

  “Pink?” he said, staring at the fluffy pile of colorful terry cloth.

  “Hot pink,” she corrected him. “They were final sale at Target. We stocked up.”

  “Do you have something in white or a manly navy?”

  “Hot pink,” she repeated. “Good luck.”

  She told him to leave his dirty clothes outside the bathroom door and she would start a wash before she went upstairs.

  “Still think it’s a date?” she asked as he disappeared into the bathroom.

  Fortunately his answer was muffled by the sound of her phone ringing.

  “Is it the lawyer?” Aunt Fiona demanded the second Hayley said hello.

  “Lou outdid himself this time. I figured it would take him until after supper to cover your side of town.”

  “Not Lou. Mary Jane Esposito called to tell me she saw you rolling in the mud by the lake with some strange man.”

  “He’s not a strange man. Yes, he’s the lawyer who commissioned the cake I’m doing next week and no, we weren’t rolling in the mud. Rhoda ran away. He found her. She knocked him down. I slipped. We both ended up in the mud. And I thought I told you he was driving down when you called earlier.”

  “You did and I’m disappointed,” Aunt Fee said. “I was hoping for something a lot juicier.”

  “Go back to watching your Melrose Place reruns, Fee. I’ll call you later.”

  She heard the squeak as the bathroom door opened and then closed, followed by the sound of running water. One of the benefits to living above the shop was the fact that she had an industrial-strength water heater at the ready whenever they needed it. When you shared close quarters with a teenage girl this was no small thing.

  She grabbed his muddy jeans and T-shirt and tried not to dwell on the fact that there was no underwear in the mix. The Suit she met last week wouldn’t go commando but the man in the mud with her just might.

  Either way she wasn’t going to think about it. His underwear (or lack thereof ) wasn’t any of her business. It never would be her business.

  Even if she was doing his laundry.

  Finn was fiddling with the wonky shower nozzle when he saw the cat. The huge white feline was balanced precariously on the shower rod, watching him like he was an open can of Fancy Feast.

  “Hey, kitty,” he said in what he hoped was a neutral, non-threatening tone of voice. “How about you get down and sit over by the door.”

  It seemed like a perfectly reasonable request, but the cat arched its back like a circus high-wire walker and took a step closer to him.

  Naked in the shower with a pissed-off fifty-pound voyeuristic cat.

  Not good.

  “Okay, kitty, time to back off.”

  The cat laughed in his face, clear proof he wouldn’t be taking home a stray feline anytime soon. A cat would wipe the floor with him.

  “Didn’t anyone tell you cats hate water?” he said as he made another pass at turning off the faucet. A fine spray was shooting everywhere and the cat didn’t seem to notice.

  Old Fluffy made another Flying Wallenda move on the shower rod deeper into Finn’s naked comfort zone, close enough that he could smell the catnip on his breath.

  How the hell had the cat gotten in there in the first place? The room was small. There was no way he would have missed the king-sized furball, no matter how preoccupied he had been.

  He heard loud snuffling outside the door. Just what he needed. A giant cat on steroids on one side of the door and a dog the size of a runaway moose on the other.

  The cat watched as he stepped out of the tub and reached for the hot-pink towel. A layer of terry cloth wasn’t much in the way of protection but it was a step up from naked.

  The snuffling stopped, replaced by a quick double knock. Either Rhoda had shaved her knuckles or Hayley was on the other side.

  “Finn, is Murray in there with you?”

  Now there was a question he had never heard before.

  “If Murray is fat, white, and furry, the answer is yes.”

  “Thank God! I’ve been tearing the house apart looking for him.”

  “He’s balanced on top of the shower rod glaring down at me.”

  The silence went on longer than he liked.

  “I can handle it,” he said. “Is he homicidal?”

  “He’s not homicidal.” A long pause. “Finn, I don’t know how to tell you this, but he needs the litter box.”

  The door swung open before the words “litter box” faded and Hayley found herself staring straight into the sun.

  Okay, so maybe she wasn’t staring into the sun but it felt like it. She was staring at Finn Rafferty’s splendid, nearly naked body. The same body she had been happily sprawled across less than thirty minutes ago, the interesting contours of which were branded against her hip and thigh. The only thing keeping her from a full-on swoon was the hot pink towel wrapped around his midsection. If it slipped, she couldn’t be held accountable.

  During her marri
age to Michael Goldstein, she had perfected a cool seen-it-all expression that had served her well. Never let them see you sweat. How well that philosophy would hold up against this full frontal peep show had yet to be determined.

  “The litter box?” Rafferty didn’t look at all his cool and confident self.

  She really didn’t want to be having the litter box conversation.

  “His box is inside the vanity,” she explained. “He must have been in there when you closed the bathroom door.”

  “So he just popped out to say hello.”

  “He popped out to tell you he wants privacy.”

  Rafferty poked his head back into the bathroom. “Knock yourself out, Murray,” he said and closed the door.

  And things had been going so well up until then.

  Runaway dogs. Mud wrestling. Litter boxes. What on earth had she done wrong to piss off the fates?

  “At the risk of sounding like one of those cat ladies, Murray really doesn’t like having the door closed on him.”

  “Whatever Murray wants.” He opened the door an inch. “Maybe he—” The dazed and confused expression he had been sporting suddenly morphed into something a little wicked and a whole lot warmer.

  “What’s your problem?” she asked. “Animals have preferences same as we do. I have to tell you, Rafferty, I don’t think you’re ready to—”

  She followed his gaze and looked down at herself. Skin, skin, and more skin. Not to mention a small puddle of water at her feet. Rafferty wasn’t the only one clad in nothing but a towel. Wet, pin-straight, truly bad hair spilled over her naked shoulders. Naked arms. Naked legs. Naked thighs complete with cellulite and three nasty little spider veins. She took small comfort in the fact that she had shaved her legs last night. Except for the stretch marks she now officially had no secrets.

  Where was the earth-destroying meteor when you needed it?

  “Your clothes should be dry in fifteen,” she told him as casually as she could manage given the circumstances. “We have some T-shirts and yoga pants downstairs in the pantry if you don’t want to wait.” And a hypnotist who’ll erase my thighs from your memory banks. She started backing down the hallway, praying for dim lighting and poor eyesight.

  Murray stood in the doorway looking up at Finn.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, bending down to scratch the woolly mammoth behind the ear. “You’re wondering why I didn’t make a move.”

  Murray purred and leaned into his hand.

  “It’s complicated, Murr. Be glad you’re a cat.”

  Sometimes being a red-blooded male of the human species wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The heat between them had been palpable. The chemistry had been there from the first moment they met.

  So would somebody please explain what he was doing standing there talking to a cat?

  14

  “What’s the point?” Hayley asked her mirror as she tugged on a pair of jeans. Once a man saw your cellulite and spider veins, it was all over. She could go downstairs in a giant one-sie and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. The chemistry was dead. Their fantasy romance was over before it even began.

  The crackling jolt of pure electricity she had felt lying in the mud with Finn Rafferty had been fleeting and very much one-sided. Whatever she thought he had felt had been a product of her overheated imagination.

  And even if there had been the slightest flicker of interest on his part, it was gone now. The sad truth of the matter was that not every adult looked great wrapped in a towel. Finn might have been camera ready in his mucho macho hot-pink bath sheet, but the sight of a grown woman (who had borne a child, thank you very much) in a Scooby-Doo towel wasn’t likely to inspire romantic fantasies.

  And clearly it hadn’t. When two healthy, unattached adults found themselves in an enclosed and private space with only a few layers of terry cloth between them, it was reasonable to think that one or both of them might seize the moment. Not that she had been seizing any moments lately, but still it hurt to bump up against the fact that she wasn’t young enough, blond enough, sexy enough, fill-in-the-blank enough for him to consider making a move.

  She knew what she must seem like to him. A single mother from South Jersey who smelled of flour and vanilla instead of perfume. A woman whose puff pastry had more cleavage than she did. A woman whose thighs alone were enough to guarantee her celibacy until the next millennium.

  She got it. She really did. She wouldn’t have made a move either.

  But she couldn’t help wishing he had tried.

  “What’re you looking at?” Finn asked Murray, Ted, Mary, and Rhoda as they watched him pace the kitchen. Hadn’t they ever seen a man plan his escape before?

  He had made a mistake. A big one. One of those colossal, could-have-been-fatal mistakes a man made once or twice in his life and, if he was lucky, lived to tell the tale. He could handle his emotions from a distance but here, in her house, he was veering out of control.

  This time last week he hadn’t known Hayley Maitland Goldstein existed. Now she was all he could think about.

  Maybe it was loneliness that had propelled him. Maybe it was the sound of her voice or her unguarded laughter. Maybe it was the fact that he never knew what she was going to say or how she would say it or when. Maybe it was the strange sensation of having come home to a place he had never been before.

  Whatever it was, it was wrong. The timing. The cast of characters. The inevitable not-very-happy ending.

  The thing to do was get up, say good-bye, and walk out the door before he did something he would regret. His car was parked out front. His keys jangled in his pocket. She was upstairs getting dressed. He would leave a note, phone her from the car. Things happen. He didn’t live an ordinary life. She would understand.

  “Finn?”

  He turned to see her standing in the entrance to the kitchen.

  “Is something wrong?” Her voice was light, her tone a little uncertain.

  Her wet hair was scraped back into a sleek ponytail. She had replaced the muddy T-shirt and jeans with clean clothes. Her feet were bare. Her toenails were painted a pale icy pink. Her only jewelry was a pair of gold hoop earrings that danced with every step she took.

  Sunlight streamed through the open window, igniting gold and red flames in her light brown hair. An aura of something so wonderful it didn’t even have a name.

  And that was when everything suddenly spun out of focus like a kaleidoscope. Colors brightened. Shapes shifted then rearranged themselves into brand-new patterns, each one more beautiful, more amazing than the one before.

  Sound flew at him from all around the room, random words thrown his way in random combinations, Scrabble letters forming Scrabble words that made no sense at all. His heart made a quarter turn inside his chest and the sound of its rapid beating drowned out everything else.

  The world around him snapped back into focus and all he saw was Hayley.

  She was a grown woman. She knew how these things worked. She should have seen the kiss coming but it surprised her just the same. He had been looking at her with a crazy kind of unfocused intensity and she had been about to ask him if he was having a stroke or something when she suddenly realized she was about to be kissed by a man she actually wanted to kiss back.

  Every now and then life handed you a perfect moment and this was one of them.

  The knowing was almost enough.

  That one perfect moment of certainty, of sweet anticipation—a woman could live off that memory for a very long time.

  She hadn’t known how much she wanted to feel his mouth on hers until it happened, how she wanted that kiss more than she wanted her next breath of air.

  He kissed her mouth, her chin, the tip of her nose, her lower lip, her upper lip, her right temple, her left, her mouth again…oh God, her mouth. Long, hot, slow, deep, luscious kisses that made her feel like a candle with a quick-burning flame.

  “Is this why you drove down here?” she whispered against his
lips.

  He kissed her again. Deeper, hotter, slower. A sigh of almost unbearable pleasure escaped her lips.

  “You ask too many questions,” he said and then he kissed her again.

  “You’re right.” She sighed. “I do.”

  Her back was against the fridge. She could feel the handle pressing against her spine. Nothing mattered but the heat from his body, the moist warmth of his mouth, the insistent pressure against her hip. She was burning with hunger, melting. If he let go of her, she would sink into a puddle right there at his feet.

  “Rhoda,” she said when she could catch her breath.

  He looked at her like she had started reciting the Gettysburg Address from memory. “You’re thinking about the dog?”

  “She’s never seen me with a man before. I don’t think she’s enjoying it.”

  He looked across the room to where Rhoda guarded the doorway.

  “Is her fur supposed to stand straight up like that?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Maybe we—”

  Seconds later they closed the bedroom door behind them.

  Jeans, sweaters, bras, panties, shoes, clean sheets, paperback books, and a major assortment of blow dryers were scattered from one end of the room to the other.

  “Oh God,” she said, pressing her face against his shoulder. “That’s the stuff I hid behind the shower curtain.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  He brushed her hair off the right side of her neck and pressed his mouth against her skin.

  Pleasure ran straight from his lips to the molten center of her body.

  She moved against him and laughed softly at his unmistakable response.

  His mouth moved down the length of her throat. He pushed the neckline of her sweater aside and trailed his tongue along her collarbone.

  It had been a long time…a very long time…so long that she couldn’t remember exactly when she had felt this open and deliciously exposed…He was gorgeous…he liked Chinese food…he knew how to kiss…A fling…Why not…One juicy secret…Don’t stop…don’t stop…

  “You stopped,” she said. “Why did you stop?” She could have kissed him for at least another week or two before she even considered stopping.