I get up and follow her, leaving the kid behind.
She turns to face me. “What are you doing?”
“Helping with dinner.”
“Dinner is in the oven,” she says, thumbing at it.
I lean down and look through the thick glass at the tray of On-Cor lasagna bubbling within.
“That’s not enough for three people.”
“No. It’s not. You’ll be able to leave soon.”
“Look,” I say. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” Something in my head snorts at me. Wrong foot, Alex? She almost tanked your career over a chicken shit parking ticket.
“Wrong foot?” she snaps, echoing that internal voice. “Mister Wright, you raced that stupid car past my daughter’s school at three times the normal speed limit. If a kid ran out in the road in front of you, do you think you’d have had any chance of stopping in time?”
“Yeah. I got lightning fast reflexes.”
She throws a dish towel onto her dryer rack and rounds on me, hands planted on her hips in a total mom pose. Her fury makes her seem twice as tall, like she’s my height.
“The wrong foot,” she says again. “You’re a fucking Neanderthal, do you know that? I walk up to your stupid car just trying to do my job, and what do you say to me? Not ‘good afternoon, Officer, is there a problem’ or ‘aw shucks, I’m sorry I was speeding’ or just the courtesy of keeping your mouth shut. Do you remember what you said?”
I shift on my feet. “I asked who sent me a stripper.”
“Yeah. You asked who sent you a stripper and why they couldn’t get one with bigger tits.”
“I’m sorry. I was…”
“You’re sorry. You’re sorry. My little girl was at that school. First I see that fucking car racing past, then I get the same bullshit line I’ve already heard five hundred times, then I have to deal with your attitude while I’m picturing my child smeared on the front end of a lime green Ferrari.”
“Look,” I try to tell her. “I’m sorry.”
“What? That just makes it go away?”
I grit my teeth. “No. I keep trying to tell you. I didn’t know there would be anyone there. It was Saturday afternoon. The road was deserted. I thought I was in the middle of nowhere. I just needed--”
“Needed what?”
“To get away,” I say.
She snorts. “From what, your mansion?”
“I have an apartment.”
“Oh, really. Penthouse?”
“No, loft. Just a one bedroom.”
She frowns a little. “Doesn’t matter. You broke the law, and if you were anyone else you’d be in county for six months.”
“I’m not anyone else. I get sick of being reminded I’m not anyone else.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “Yeah, but you sure like flaunting it with your fancy car.”
“I don’t drive that car to show off my money. I drive it because I like to drive. You should come with me sometime. I’d like to see you squirming in the passenger seat while I take you on some curves.”
She stares at me and her mouth parts a bit before closing into a sneer.
“N-no,” she says, a hint of confusion in her voice. “Once you get that thing out of impound, I never want to see it again.”
I can’t help but smirk. “You were thinking about it. I’m staying for dinner.”
“What? You can’t just--”
I step past her and throw open her fridge and freezer. God, it’s all packaged garbage. How does she stay in shape eating crap like this? That poor kid, she’s probably never seen real food in her life.
“You eat this?” I ask her, holding up a packaged dinner.
“Some of us have to work all day and try to raise a little girl on their own. I’m sorry, I don’t have time to cook a five star meal every day. I’m sure when you have a personal chef, it’s not that big a deal.”
“I don’t have a personal chef. I don’t have a maid or a housekeeper or any of that shit, so you can stop throwing it in my face like I do.”
“What are you doing?”
After fishing around, I find frozen chicken breasts in a pack. I step to the sink and start running warm water over them.
“What are you doing?” she hisses.
“Cooking.”
“I cook for my own family,” she says.
The way her voice cracks when she says it cuts something inside me. I look down at the chicken and frown.
“I’m not trying to take over. There isn’t enough for me and I’m not leaving until those blood suckers are off your porch.”
She looks genuinely confused. “Why?”
“I brought them here. They’re my responsibility.”
She chews her lip. There’s that one little snaggletooth like a fang that digs into her bottom lip.
For half a heartbeat, I forget I’m staring at the chip-on-her-shoulder little jerk that got me stuck here and probably ruined my career. That’s what she is, right? She’s not a harried single mom that’s all sweaty trying to cook up lasagna for her daughter while the fourth estate tries to batter down her door.
Her face is hard, but brittle.
“I’m trying to help.”
She sighs and turns away. “You can help by making dinner, then. Not like you have anything better to do. I’m going to sit on my couch with my kid and watch TV.”
“Mom! Look!”
I follow her to the living room doorway and my jaw drops.
We’re on TV. Live. The damn camera is pointed right at her door. I can see my silhouette through the curtains.
Phoebe looks at me and scowls.
I fall back into the kitchen as she sits. Peering through the glass, I watch the lasagna bubbling.
So I can’t use the oven.
The chicken is nearly thawed. I dig through her pots and pans and find what I need, then start rooting through her cupboards. Phoebe scowls at me from the couch when she hears me rifling through her things, but doesn’t say a word. She just huffs and goes back to flipping channels.
We’re on every news station, at least until the political crap starts. I never watch that, couldn’t care less. Just makes me angry.
She does have some sense of how to cook. I can see that from her pantry, she just doesn’t bother.
No, you jackass, she doesn’t have time. She’s exhausted. I can tell because after a few minutes, her kid Carrie takes the remote from her. She’s snoring, out like a light.
The kid puts on a cartoon but doesn’t watch it. Instead she joins me in the kitchen.
“What are you doing?”
“Making real food,” I tell her, as I pour a bit of avocado oil into a frying pan.
“Can I help?”
“Yeah, sure. Do what I tell you.”
She’s a good assistant. Does what she’s told without asking questions. I rub the chicken breasts with spices, and grab bags of frozen vegetables. Most of them steam right in the bag, so that’ll be easy.
“Eww,” the kid says, poking a bag of frozen broccoli.
“It’s good for you. Lots of iron.”
“I don’t need iron.”
I can’t believe I’m saying this to a girl, but I flex my arm and watch her eyes widen. “You wanna be like me? You gotta get some iron.”
“Okay,” she says. Her enthusiasm sounds tempered, but whatever.
I end up ripping the bags open and steaming the veggies myself. Once the oil is hot and the meat is thawed enough to cook, I lay the pieces of chicken in the oil and jerk my hand back.
“Sizzle, sizzle,” the kid says. “Smells good.”
“Yeah.”
We stand together watching the oil bubble and steam around the meat. The kid is barely taller than the stove itself. She’ll be short like her mom, I think.
She keeps looking at me.
“Why are you looking at me?”
She pokes my arm. “It’s weird seeing you. I see you on TV all the time.”
“Oh. Well,
here I am. I’m real.”
“Cool.”
“Right.”
She keeps standing there as I cook, watching me intently.
“Your mom doesn’t cook much?”
“On weekends.”
“Where’s your dad?”
She gives me a curious look. “He’s dead.”
I flinch. “Jesus, kid, I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know him. He died when I was really little.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“A bad man shot him.”
I almost drop the spatula. “What?”
The kid’s eyes lock on the frying pan. “She didn’t know she had me in her belly yet. My dad went out to the store to get something and he got robbed and shot.”
“Christ,” I mutter. “Okay, um.” Fuck, what do I say? Let’s talk about something else? Sorry about your dad, kid?
I glance at Phoebe. Or try to. Her head is gone. I take a few steps into the living room and see her. She flopped over on the couch and she’s sound asleep, curled up in a ball, snoring softly.
Is that why she became a cop? Somebody shot her husband? Jesus, they must have married young. She’s younger than I am. Married right out of high school, probably. Was the kid planned? Was she going to surprise the father with the good news?
Jesus, I’m going to be sick. He just goes out and never comes back. What if he was running an errand for her?
She looks completely different asleep. The harsh glare she usually has is gone. When she’s not scowling, she’s actually really pretty. She doesn’t look like a hardass cop at all.
Christ, she lost her husband young and she’s alone with this kid. No wonder she was freaked out by me flying past her kid’s school. Carrie is all she’s got.
I know what it feels like to lose everything.
Now, I feel like a complete shit heel.
“Broadside?”
“My name is Alex,” I tell the kid, as warmly as I can. “I hate when people call me that.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s fine. I’d rather you call me by my name is all.”
“Okay.”
Back in the kitchen, I flip the meat a few more times and make sure the other dishes are ready. The veggies are tender, the gravy is hot, the instant potatoes are ready (Phoebe doesn’t stock real ones) and dinner is about to be served.
Carrie pushes a stool to the counter, climbs up, and pulls out plates for three people. “Are we still having the lasagna?” she asks me.
“Sure.”
I take that out and let it rest on the table while I plate up the rest. When it’s done, I send the kid to get her mom. She’d probably punch me in the throat if I roused her from sleep.
Doesn’t stop me from watching. She sits up, groggy and yawning, and pulls the tie out of her hair. It spills over her shoulders in soft, frizzy curls that cry out for someone to knot their fingers in them. When she’s between sleep and scowling, she has that kind of easy, casual beauty that people strive for but never find. She looks a lot younger after some rest.
Until she remembers I’m in her house and glares at me.
Her phone rings and she steps into the kitchen to take it while I sit at her dining room table.
The kid reaches for a fork.
“Wait for your mom.”
She frowns a little. “Okay.”
Phoebe walks in, looking tired again already. “That was my boss. They’ve cleared the reporters. You can leave now.”
“Eat first,” I grunt.
She sits and looks over the plate I made up for her. Carrie happily spoons up her lasagna. Kids can eat anything as long it has calories.
“What is all this?” Phoebe says.
“Food.”
“This is enough for ten people.”
“Nah, it’s enough for two of you and one of me. Eat.”
She sticks a slice of chicken in her mouth and her face lights up as she chews. “Carrie,” she says after she swallows, “try this.”
The kid has the same look on her face.
“How do you have time to cook for yourself like this? Don’t you lift weights all day or something?” Phoebe says.
“I also do a lot of grunting and sullen scowling.”
She glares at me.
“If you want something done right, you do it yourself,” I tell her with a shrug.
“Yeah.”
Carrie looks back and forth between us, expectantly.
I eat fast, trying not to overstay my welcome. Phoebe doesn’t have much to say. She finishes hers and watches me eat four more plate loads of food.
“You eat like this every day?”
I shrug. “Gotta feed the beast.”
Carrie snorts.
Her mom appears utterly shocked to see her eating broccoli florets. She pops them in her mouth and chews them with grim determination, eventually clearing her plate of a good handful.
“Desert, scout?” Phoebe offers, cheerfully.
Carrie rubs her stomach. “I can’t. I’m too full. Can I go…”
“Do your homework? Yes,” Phoebe says, smiling.
Carrie moans theatrically and drags herself out of the room.
“She got out of doing the dishes,” I observe.
Phoebe looks at me blankly and then scowls. “You’re a bad influence on her.”
“Am I now?”
“You can leave any time.”
“Not until I help with the dishes.” Before she can say anything, I get up and load up, carrying the plates and pans into the kitchen. Phoebe follows me with the rest and drops it all on the counter.
“What are you up to?”
“The dishes.” I start filling the sink with hot water. “Wash or dry?”
“Excuse me.”
“I wash, you dry.” I sigh. “You didn’t call it.”
She takes up position next to me, and glares at me. I squirt soap into the sink, stop the faucet, and start washing.
“Why are you washing my dishes?”
“You’re tired. You had a long day and it’s my fault those vultures mobbed you. It’s the least I can do.”
“The least you can do is leave.”
I smirk.
“Just can’t let me be nice, can you?”
“You must want something. You’re too much of a dick to act like this for its own sake.”
“You wound me.”
“Right, like you care what I think. Your agent tell you to do this? I’m sure the league will love you taking the time to atone for your sins by helping out the harried single mom.”
I look around, theatrically. “You see anybody else here? It’s just us. No witnesses. I may be an asshole, but I’m not a complete asshole, okay? I’m really sorry for what I did and I’m trying to make up for it.”
“Try harder.”
I turn to face her. “Is that an invitation?”
“Pig,” she says, plucking the wet saucer from my hand to dry it.
I hand her another. “You seem kind of lonely. You could use a night out on the town.”
She freezes and looks at me in utter astonishment. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
“Sure, why not.”
“I…” Her jaw sets. “No. Absolutely not. I’d appreciate if you didn’t come back to my home.”
“Why not?”
She rounds on me. “Because you are an arrogant, self-centered, grandstanding jock and you have nothing but contempt for me. I know exactly how you see me. Poor little thing, she must be going through such a dry spell, right? News flash, Broadside. I don’t need a man, and I don’t especially need a gigolo that throws his dick in a different movie starlet every week. If you think you’re going to make me forget what an asshole you’ve been because you have a big cock, you’re wrong. I’m not that easy.”
“So you’re saying I have a big cock.”
She snarls in frustration, half yell and half growl. “Watch your damn mouth. My kid might overh
ear you.”
“You said it first.”
“I said no, first. No date, no socializing, no more awkward dinners where you eat out half my fridge.”
“That’s not the only thing I’d like to eat out.”
She turns beet red, I mean so red I think all the blood in her body just flowed to her cheeks. The look on her face is half rage and half…
She’s totally thinking about it. Hard. Visualizing it in exquisite detail. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be staring at my mouth.
“You jerk” is all she can manage. “Just leave.”
“I’m finishing the dishes.”
“I said leave.”
“There’s only a couple pots.”
“I can scrub my own pot.”
“I’d rather scrub your pot for you.”
“Get. Out.”
“Fine, fine, I’m leaving. Dinner was great. So about that date, pick you up at five on Friday?”
“Are you completely out of your mind?”
“What, you have something better to do?”
“Yes, spend some of my rare free time with my child.”
“So, that’s a no.”
“Yes.”
“So, that’s a yes?”
“Out!” she yells.
“Okay, fine, fine, I’m going.”
I strut to the front door and stand in the open doorway staring back at her. Her tank top is wet from drying dishes and clinging to her body. Her nipples are very hard, and her legs are shaking. She gives me a look that could melt steel, her lips parted a little like she’s thinking about hopping on my cock right now.
I give her a wave and pull the door shut, and strut back to my rental. I lock the front door behind me and stand there panting. My chin drops and I look down, staring at my own hard on tenting my shorts like it’s taunting me.
Fuck, that was hot. She’s got a mouth on her, that one. The bubbleheads Lou sets me up with just stare at me blankly half the time. I got sick of dealing with them after the fourth girlfriend who just lays there like a starfish while I do all the work, and started just taking them to dinner for appearance’s sake. Lou insists I look like the big stud, pulling down all the top class trim.
Whatever. He’d tell me to stay away from Phoebe. He tells me lots of things.
I need to take care of this. I trudge upstairs, shove my clothes off, and fall back against the wall, roughly jerking my cock as if I’m angry at it for getting me into this.
Man of the House Page 24
