Me and Mr. Jones

by Christie Ridgway

  “Audra? Kane to Audra? Are you there?”

  She shook her head, blinking to orient herself in the here-and-now. “I’m really sorry. I got kind of lost for a minute.”

  He chuckled. “You and those grisly murders. I asked if you wanted to join me at the villa to test out the private hot tub.”

  Private hot tub. “Um…you said something about an item on my list?”

  “Skinny dipping,” he said.

  Naked, with Kane Hathaway. She bit her bottom lip to keep herself in the moment and recalled why it wasn’t a great idea to involve herself with him again. He wasn’t her type. He was too sexy for his own good and her own good as well.

  To be honest, she wanted it too damn much and given her wonky emotional state she couldn’t take the chance on falling for another guy who would break her heart all over again.

  “I really can’t,” she said.

  “No problem,” Kane said, and she could hear the shrug in his voice. “You’re welcome to keep your suit on. But think about the bubbles, the heated water surrounding all those sore muscles…”

  Oh, that did sound blissful. She closed her eyes, knowing how much better it would be than the soaker tub in her bathroom, because of the powerful jets that would ease her aches and pains. “But…”

  “You’ll be perfectly safe from me.”

  “Kane—”

  “Hey, we’re friends, right? That’s what you decided. That’s what you said.”

  And in the end it’s what got her out of her bungalow in her most modest bikini and one of the terry robes hanging on the back of her bathroom door, her hair piled on top of her head. Audra was good to her friends. Yeah. That’s why she’d caved to Kane’s request, not because she wanted to spend more time with him.

  He stood on the path, looking as urbane as always in black board shorts, boat shoes, and a black sweatshirt, unzipped to show a slice of his bare chest. Reaching out, he slipped the beach towel she clutched from between her fingers. “Maybe we can share,” he said. “I forgot mine.”

  “S-sure,” she said, and shoved her hands in the patch pockets of her robe as they set off down the winding path. Her gaze went to his lean hips and the cloth molded around his butt. God, he had a great body and she’d thrown away her chance to touch it again.

  “You okay?” he asked now, his head turning toward her.

  It forced her to jerk her gaze from him, but then it snagged on low movement in the foliage around them. “Look!” she said, softening her voice so not to startle the small creature peeking between two leaves. Its eyes were a matching green. She knelt and outstretched her hand. “A kitty.”

  “A black cat.”

  His grim tone had her glancing up at him. Kane frowned at the feline. “It’s more scared of you than you are of it,” she said.

  Instead of answering, he pulled his phone from the pocket of his sweatshirt. “I’ll get maintenance out here with a trap.”

  Alarmed, Audra shot to her feet. “Not a trap.”

  “Relax,” he said, not looking up while he texted. “It’s not a bear trap. We use it to catch the occasional stray. That’s not the first feral cat that’s shown up here.”

  “But…but…” She bit her lip, and surreptitiously shooed the little cat away by flicking her fingers.

  “I see what you’re doing,” Kane said. “Look Audra, it’s not safe to have untamed animals like this around the guests.”

  She supposed she could concede that. “But once you catch it—”

  “We donate generously to a local no-kill shelter and sponsor their monthly adoption events. It will go there and ultimately find a home.”

  “Oh.” He’d put his phone away and was already moving on. Audra trotted to catch up with him. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.”

  She grabbed the hem of his sweatshirt, tugged, then sent him a smile when he glanced back. “You looked like you were afraid of that little kitty,” she said, teasing.

  “Some people think black cats are bad luck.”

  Yeesh, so serious. Where had his sense of humor gone? She was totally rethinking gifting him with a Tickles.

  At the villa, he used a key card to let them through a gate in the fence that enclosed a space the size of a small backyard. Landscape lighting revealed a small deck and lounge chairs, fire pit, lap pool, and a glowing hot tub. Flames leapt in the pit and steam already rose from water.

  Audra looked at the bubbling liquid and her body wanted to weep with joy. “I love you, Kane Hathaway.”

  His startled expression made her laugh. “That came from my quads, my triceps, and just about every other muscle I own.”

  Grinning now, he shrugged out of his sweatshirt. “Get in then, girl.”

  She tried not to stare at his body as he climbed into the hot tub. So she forced her gaze away and noted a small cooler was set on the ledge. “What’s in there?” she asked, nodding to it.

  “Beverages for your pleasure, ma’am.” He dug a mini bottle of white wine out of the ice and held up a plastic glass. “Can I tempt you?”

  Hadn’t he always? And was that…flirtation she heard in the question? But his expression was perfectly bland so she played along, smiling and nodding as she slipped out of her robe and slid into the heated liquid. It frothed at her shoulders, and even though the underwater lights were on, the bubbles added modesty to her not-so-skimpy two-piece. The temperature was perfect and her sigh of pleasure was audible in the quiet.

  Kane chuckled. “I should have told you not to start with one of Kipenzi’s classes. She’s a martinet.”

  “A martinet who loves planks.” Audra said, closing her eyes. “No one’s supposed to love planks.”

  He laughed again and handed her the glass of wine and they sat and soaked in companionable silence. After a while, Kane dove into the pool and she watched him swim laps without the slightest compunction to do the same. Feeling lazy, her eyes half-closed as he returned to the hot tub, his big body making waves.

  “You swim like you’re part fish,” she said.

  “Maybe because I half-drowned once,” Kane replied.

  “Really?”

  “We had a pool at home and the house had steps down from the bluff to the ocean. But I wasn’t taught to swim until I was eleven.”

  Surprised, she stared. Every coastal California kid, she would think, would learn as a matter of survival. Too many neighborhood pools and beach access points not to take make those lessons practically mandatory.

  “I’d been invited to a pool party—Holly Burton’s pool party—so I decided to take it upon myself.”

  “Of course you would,” Audra murmured. Take-charge, confident Kane would ever and always be a problem-solver. And with a Holly Burton’s—whoever that little strumpet was— party as the carrot…

  “But it didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped.”

  Audra tensed, not liking the offhand tone of his voice.

  “Our handyman had to pull me off the bottom of the deep end.”

  Her hands jumped to the place where her heartbeat suddenly double-timed. When he’d said he’d “half-drowned” she hadn’t painted any visual in her head, but there was one now, the boy’s limbs splayed, unmoving. “You’re okay, though?” Her voice sounded thin to her own ears.

  He smiled. “Some would argue not. But I’m here, right?”

  She swallowed, reached for her wine on the tub’s ledge, took a large swallow from it. Calm, she told herself, Kane’s fine. “Thanks to the handyman.”

  “Val Soros. He taught me the most important things I know—how to swim, how to fix plumbing and small appliances, and even make minor car repairs.”

  Breathing came easier now and she felt a little silly for the scare but also a lot compassionate for the boy who’d had to go looking outside of his parents for important skills. “Val was a handy man to know.”

  “I see what you did there.” Kane laughed, then he reached over to top off her wine with the rest of the small
bottle. “He advised me as well—to be wary of black cats and not to be obvious about ogling women with wet, beautiful breasts.”

  Wait…what? Before she could react to his comment, the lights went out, plunging them in darkness.

  She might have squeaked.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Kane assured her. “I have the remote that controls all the lighting.”

  “Why’d you turn it off?” He advised me not to be obvious about ogling women with wet, beautiful breasts. Simple answers to simple questions.

  “Take off your swimsuit, Audra,” the devil in the hot tub said, his voice whispering to her in the night.

  “Um…”

  “You can put a line through skinny dipping, right?”

  “Um…”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  Not ever finding someone waiting at the end of the altar who made heated desire course through her body like Kane did. It was more fiery than the water in the hot tub and made her feel edgy and alive and…unsatisfied.

  Last week, she’d been having nightly dreams of traipsing down the aisle to find only emptiness, but that had been chased away by a series of spicy dreams starring a man with wide shoulders and confident hands.

  “Audie,” he said, using the name only those who were closest to her used, “what are you afraid of?”

  Instead of answering, she made a statement, wiggling out of her bathing suit, then dropping both pieces to the hot tub’s ledge. They plopped wetly.

  Kane groaned. “Jesus Christ. Do you find that sound as sexy as me?”

  Oh, God. The silence as she didn’t answer filled with all things she should not say. The bubbles tickled her sensitized skin and she felt a different wetness between her thighs. She wanted to know if he’d get naked for her because she wanted to touch him. But she also wanted to see him, to see that hard body and the hard erection and feel that she was a woman again.

  Sexual.

  Desirable.

  Healed.

  The night seemed to pulse around them and her breathing quickened as the tension inside her wound tighter and tighter. “Kane,” she said, her voice thick. “I—”

  “Let me tell you about Tracy Smith.”

  The words popped the bubble of intimacy surrounding them.

  Of course Audra knew why he’d said it. To warn her, just like last night she’d used the name as a warning to him.

  The ensuing story was something she could have guessed. The name belonged to a woman he’d dated for a time. He called himself “careless” with her because though he’d given her his standard disclaimer about an avowed disinterest in anything long-term, she’d gone along for a while, all smiles and few demands, until she’d wanted him to escort her to her sister’s wedding, then to her father’s birthday dinner, then to the big family reunion in Texas where she planned to show him off to all her big-haired, too-much-made-up cousins.

  “She said that?” Audra asked, aghast.

  And she’d showed him photos. And when he’d told her he thought attending events like that with her would send the wrong message, she’d gone from a sweet, considerate woman to a swearing, screaming termagant. She’d said he’d never given any woman he was with what they wanted.

  He’d replied that was the whole point of being clear he chose to remain relationship-free.

  Then this Tracy person had gone so far to curse him. Actually curse him, telling him she came from a long line of bayou witches and that he was now destined to remain alone for the rest of his life.

  Goggle-eyed, Audra tried to make out his expression in the darkness. “Kane, are you superstitious?” She remembered his remark about toasting with water, about the mirrors facing each other, about the black cat. “You believe she actually, uh, jinxed you?”

  “Val Soros warned me about things,” he said, non-committal. “But I know that curse didn’t doom me. It’s my essential nature. I’m no long-term bet.”

  Audra got back into her swimsuit after that. Kane flipped the lights back on and she tried to be graceful as she crawled out of the hot tub, but one glance told her he was avoiding looking at her.

  Steam waved off her skin as she stood in the evening chill and reached for her towel. “I turned prune-y,” she complained, and then he glanced around and their eyes met.

  His dropped to take in her damp, pink-tinged skin.

  Embarrassed to imagine he thought she was tempting him after yet the latest back-off signal, she hastily wrapped the terry robe around herself.

  Though she was now covered, everything between them remained stilted and uncomfortable as he walked her back to her bungalow. She stole small looks at his handsome profile, and sighed silently over his confident male stride.

  Understanding his wariness around women didn’t make her want him any less, damn it. They might be “friends” now, but that didn’t stop him from also being the most attractive man she’d ever met.

  How was she going to say good night to him, let alone goodbye in a few days?

  She ran a few practice phrases through her head, staring at her toes, when Kane nudged her with an elbow. “Audra.”

  She glanced up at him, saw him focused ahead. Approaching her bungalow from the opposite direction was a familiar couple…a familiar couple who shouldn’t be here.

  Audra gasped. “Mom? Dad?”

  “This is delicious,” Polly Montgomery said, her smile so bright it rivaled the sunshine pouring down on the resort’s patio. “There were so many great choices at the breakfast buffet.”

  Audra pulled her sunglasses out of her tote and perched them on her nose before she was blinded by the dazzle. Her mom used sparkle to distract a person from discerning her true agenda.

  “I’m so glad your dad and I had a chance to see the resort before we all go home together. Later today.”

  Ah-hah. That’s what she wanted, the chick back in the nest as soon as possible.

  “I’m not quite ready to be back in LA, Mom.” Lilly was there, and Audra missed her best friend, but here she didn’t have to face the endless questions and looks of pity. Then there was the birthday celebration she’d been invited to. She’d practically promised Kane’s sisters she would be on hand for that.

  While her mother was distracted by the waiter refilling her coffee, Audra glanced at her father, who was frowning over some headlines on his phone. “Dad.”

  He grunted.

  “Dad.”

  “Sorry, hon.” He looked up and tucked his phone in his breast pocket. “What is it?”

  “You and Mom should take a few days and explore the wine country around here.”

  “That sounds nice,” he said. “Semi-retirement has its perks.”

  “We just got back from London,” Polly protested, her now-full cup in hand.

  “Semi. Retired,” Lee said, smiling so wrinkles fanned the outer edges of his eyes, as blue as Audra’s own. His crewcut was a mix of pale blond and silver and he was her first hero and at the rate things were going, would be her last as well. “Do you want to come with us?” he asked now.

  Groan. Her point was to divert her mother from her tendency to helicopter-parent and get her at least two-dozen miles distant. Lilly had done Audra a huge favor by convincing the elder Montgomerys to go ahead with their European travel plans even though the wedding had been cancelled. But now Polly was back and in fighting form. While it was great to see her mom had recovered from the initial upset over the wedding-that-wasn’t, Audra wasn’t ready for the kind of managing her mother lived for.

  If she didn’t have a big event like getting her daughter to the altar to organize, then no doubt she’d just try to get her daughter organized instead.

  “We’re going to need to unpack your boxes and resettle everything in your condo,” Polly said now. “It’s a good thing you didn’t sell the place already.”

  Yep, she was going to organize her daughter. “Maybe I’m going to move,” Audra said, the idea just coming to her. Restarting her life back in the same place did
n’t seem right. The Audra Montgomery that had lived there was gone, left on the beach waiting for a man who would never come. “Maybe I need a change.”

  Her mom’s gaze snapped to her dad’s. “Didn’t I just say that, Lee?”

  “Uh…yes?” Her dad had the guilty look on his face that said he hadn’t been following the conversation.

  “Lee,” her mom chided. “Pay attention. Audra just mentioned she’s wanting a change. Why don’t you tell her about what you’ve been thinking?”

  Lee Montgomery wasn’t hen-pecked but he definitely caught on when it was time to follow his wife’s guidance. “Actually, Audie, I do have an idea for you.”

  He proceeded to share it with her.

  Their energy company had recently acquired a small turbine manufacturer in Wyoming, one that specialized in making devices for inshore water areas like lakes and fjords. He wanted to send someone there for a short while to get a better read on the organization of the business and how the employees felt about the new ownership. “It’s a bit outside of your PR purview,” he said, “but you might enjoy doing something different.”

  “And I could come out for a while,” her mom put in, all dazzle and sparkle. “You and I could visit a dude ranch together!”

  A dude ranch. With her mother. Audra glanced up at the sky, looking for a friendly bolt of lightning to bring her down.

  “Oh, there’s that young man you introduced us to last night.”

  Audra straightened, and saw Kane in the distance, pointing something out to a skinny busboy who nodded like a bobblehead doll.

  “He’s very good-looking,” her mom murmured. “And he was so polite to Dad and me. And to you, of course.”

  “Mom, that’s his job. He’s the hotelier—”

  “Whom you were apparently hot-tubbing with last night.”

  There was that. It did seem to go beyond the confines of professional cordiality. “Fine, he’s a friend.” With one benefit that she’d allowed herself to experience one single time.

  And it might have ruined her, she thought on a sigh.

  Her mother sent her a sharp glance. “Audie, this isn’t the time for you to be looking for another man. You know that, right? You’re not in a good place to make a sound emotional judgement, not so soon after being…”