In Bed with the Wild One & In Bed with the Pirate

by Julie Kistler

  Kate swore the multitude of pink rollers, more neatly arranged on her mother’s head then pecans on a pie, quivered as Melanie stared accusingly at her. The tang of mint mingling with her mother’s White Shoulders perfume could have made a marble statue cringe.

  Kate slouched against the handrail. “I don’t always traipse,” she said. “Sometimes I skip.”

  Melanie sucked in such a big breath, Kate swore she’d created a vacuum. “Kath-e-rine Corr-i-gan.” Her mother crossed her arms under her breasts. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Ma’am, this isn’t what it looks like.” He started to gesture, but stopped when Melanie’s wide-eyed gaze dropped to his underwear.

  She quickly looked up, her eyes and mouth open so wide, some of the green face mask cracked. “I wasn’t born yesterday, young man,” she said hoarsely before shutting her door with a crisp click.

  The landing was submerged in shadows again. In the following silence, Toby whispered irritably, “It’s bad enough I flashed her, but did you have to tell her we were ‘skipping’?”

  “Sorry,” Kate murmured, straightening. “Pushing my mother’s buttons is a lifelong habit. My only defense against perfect tassels and award-winning brownies.” And her only defense against feeling as though she’d never be competent or capable compared to Melanie. “Let me find the key to your room.”

  She felt along the cool metal ring, knowing each attached key by its feel. The Pollyanna key, for the room in which her mother was staying, had a smooth bump along the edge. The Wild One had a scratch along its base. The Pirate had a serrated edge that was unmistakable. That left Kismet, the key with the slight twist of metal on its top. Kate had always thought that twist was fitting because in Arabic, Kismet meant fate. And wasn’t fate like that—twists and turns you didn’t expect?

  “Follow me,” Kate said, heading to the left. They walked down a short passage, passing a door with a saber. At the end of the passage was a door with a gold-mesh veil tacked to its outside.

  “This is Kismet,” Kate whispered, keeping her voice low so as to not bother the inhabitants of The Pirate, the door with the miniature saber. Inside that room were a young couple from Milwaukee who had kept kissing the entire time they checked in. Kate had had to wait for them to break for air to ask for their credit card. Fortunately, she had a lot of experience timing her questions to lip-lockers. Honeymooners often returned to Beau’s B and B—especially the ones where she’d played matchmaker—a talent for which she was almost famous.

  She opened Kismet and flicked the light switch.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Toby murmured. He scanned the red rug, red curtains, red chair. “Does red have some esoteric connection to fate?”

  Ohh! Her pulse throbbed at his perceptiveness. She typically had to explain that Kismet meant fate in Arabic—maybe elaborate that Kismet was evocative of the dance of the seven veils and all that—but Toby Mancini didn’t need those definitions. One look at the room and he’d been in sync with her imagination.

  He made the connection between passion and destiny.

  Toby looked around. “Couldn’t you find anything else red for this room?”

  “I did,” she murmured under her breath. “You in those undies.” She slid him a glance.

  “Is that a bed?” he asked incredulously.

  The oversize round bed, covered in a plump red-and-gold-stitched satin comforter, sat smack in the center of the room. “Yes, that’s the bed,” she answered, feeling a smattering of gilt-edged joy at his reaction. Her yearning for romance and passion, which always seemed buried deep within her like a sunken treasure, was revealed by touches like this fabulous bed.

  He looked around. “Where’s the head?”

  “To the bed?”

  “No, I meant—”

  “Oh, right.” She had to get her mind off passion and beds and focus on life’s practicalities. “In the conical tower—that rounded corner over there—is the toilet, behind the paneled divider.”

  “That wooden thing draped with red scarves?”

  “Yes.” She gestured toward an alcove on the other side of the room where a curtain, tied back with braided gold rope, offered a teasing view of a claw-footed bathtub big enough for two. Behind the tub was a faux marble sink, over which hung a gilded mirror. “There’s soap and extra towels in the cabinet below the sink.” She turned to Toby. “Breakfast is served from seven to nine every morning. We typically ask guests if they’d like to eat in the dining room or have the meal delivered to their room, but considering your circumstances—” it took tremendous willpower, but she kept her eyes focused on his “—I’ll bring breakfast to your room. What time?”

  “Seven’s fine.” He stared at the thick crimson carpet that lay on the hardwood floor. When he lifted his head, she again caught that look she’d seen earlier. Although he was more expressive than most guys, she couldn’t decipher if those creases in his forehead and the slant of his mouth signaled pain or anger.

  “I’ve never had to ask for…” He paused, as though debating how much to say. “Thanks for helping me out,” he finished quickly.

  She had the urge to hug him, assure him things would be okay. But hugging a nearly naked man in Kismet? A nearly naked man who, if the lighting was just right, looked like a swarthy, sexy, hunky pirate from one of her Captain Blood fantasies?

  “Hungry?” she asked on a rush of breath. “Now? Something? Sandwich?” Jeez. She sounded like Kate, the one-word question girl. Not trusting herself to speak further, she nodded a bit too vigorously as though that adequately finished her question.

  He stared at her for a long moment.

  Realizing she hadn’t stopping nodding, she jerked her head to a stop. “I’ll make you a sandwich,” she said quickly, “if you’d like.” If he didn’t like sandwiches, he was out of luck because, unlike Melanie, Kate’s only culinary specialty was turkey and cheese on rye with mustard. Sometimes, if she was feeling a little wild, she’d add a splash of horseradish or a few jalapeños.

  “Sure,” he answered, watching her as though another part of her body might start gyrating any moment.

  “Turkey and cheese?”

  “Sure.”

  “Rye?”

  He nodded.

  “Horseradish? Jalapeños?”

  He grimaced.

  “I’ll be right back.” Kate scooted out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

  Toby stared at the closed door. What was that bobbing thing she did with her head? Maybe it would help if she wore tamer colors. Yellow drawstring pants, a red blouse and purple slippers. Add those big blue eyes and you didn’t have a person—you had a color wheel. The only thing that toned it all down was her dark brown hair.

  No wonder she blew up my car. Any woman who wore such no-holds-barred colors obviously had zero self-control.

  Toby looked around. He hadn’t seen this much red since his kid brother Marco cut his head with the can opener and gushed blood all over their mother’s white living-room carpet. To this day, no one in the family fully understood why Marco was using a can opener on his head in the first place. Or why he then proceeded to run in circles on the living-room rug when he could have run in circles on the kitchen linoleum floor.

  Toby’s main memory of that event—besides all the red—was his being the ever-responsible big brother as he rushed thirteen-year-old Marco to Emergency. Fortunately, the cut only required a few stitches. Afterward, Mrs. Mancini had smothered Marco with motherly concern before grounding him for a month.

  Kate’s mother, Mrs.—what was Kate’s last name anyway?—seemed to have a different kind of motherly concern. A standoffish motherly concern. And why did Kate call her “Melanie” and not simply “Ma” or “Mom” like other people?

  But then Kate didn’t exactly fit the mold of other people. First of all, she could be the poster girl for Crayola. And second, she seemed more like a grown-up tomboy than a grown woman. He’d never seen her in anything but pants, or sometimes
shorts. It surprised him that tomboyish Kate Corrigan, proprietor of Beau’s Bed-and-Breakfast, had decorated rooms to look so…He scanned the gauzy red curtains and shiny red satin bedspread. What had she called this room? Exotic. Lush.

  Obviously Kate had a wilder inner life than her outer life revealed and he was fairly intrigued. As a corporate raider, he’d learned to look for hidden assets, secret objectives…

  From across the room, he caught his reflection in the large oval mirror behind the bathtub. There he stood, naked except for a pair of red underwear. With his rumpled hair and glasses, he could pass for an Austin Powers look-alike.

  And he’d just imagined Kate to have a wilder inner life than her outer one?

  He groaned, remembering how he’d ended up this way. His stomach twisted into angry knots with the rush of recent memory. Free knew I was coming home tonight. Yet she let me find her in the kitchen…. His insides rocked and rolled—like the music Free loved to play.

  He’d gone to his bedroom to change, then hearing noises, had found his girlfriend in the arms of another man. He’d hardly digested that image before a couple of snarling, hair-raising Dobermans had chased him down the hall and outside.

  He had to figure out how to get back by Monday evening—two nights from tonight—when he was supposed to cook a dinner for his potential boss and his wife. If that dinner went smoothly, Toby knew he’d be offered the position of Director of Software Development. He needed this job, a regular job where he could flex his creative side. A chance to be the good guy, not the Darth Vadar of the business world.

  Toby swiped his hand across his eyes, as though the action could wipe out the image of Free and some guy kissing and writhing against the antique stove that cost him more than several mortgage payments. “You knew I’d find you,” he grumbled. “Why’d you do it, Free? Living up to your promise to get even for all the nights I left you alone?” He shook his head. “But even I heard the rumors. You were rarely alone.”

  Argh. Toby punched the air so hard, his wild swing threw him off balance. He stumbled toward a walnut dresser—vaguely aware it wasn’t red—and slammed into it. As the heavy piece of furniture crashed against the wall, an oversize porcelain pitcher sitting inside a humongous porcelain bowl slid toward the edge of the dresser.

  Toby lunged. His body twisted midair, and he caught the handle of the pitcher. Thunk. His body hit the hardwood floor. Whomp! Air gushed painfully from his lungs as the bottom of the pitcher wedged into his solar plexus. Wheezing for air, he watched the bowl hit the floor next to him, bounce, then twirl upward like some kind of rotund ceramic ballerina.

  Clutching the pitcher with one hand, he reached for the airborne bowl with the other. Desperately sucking a thin stream of air into his lungs, he stretched…and reached…

  Smash!

  Ceramic splinters shot through the air.

  In the numbing silence that followed, he realized why he’d never been the kind of guy who resorted to his fists. With one swing, he might demolish a city, start an avalanche. Break a china set.

  Knock-knock.

  Toby lay still and listened. Was Kate back already? How would he explain the mess on the floor? If only he was bleeding, he might evoke sympathy. Maybe she’d coddle him, then ground him for a month. That’d work for him. He’d have a place to stay.

  “Are you all right?” asked an older female voice, her Southern accent elongating the word right so it sounded like a long, breathless vowel surrounded with consonants.

  Kate’s mother, who wasn’t born yesterday. What was her name? Mel-something. “I’m fine, Melody,” he croaked.

  “Melanie.”

  “Melanie. Sorry if I was…loud.” Loud? Hell, after all that thumping, smashing and crashing, they probably thought they’d let in a madman. His only hope was that people from the South deemed such behavior as normal. After all, his great-aunt from Mississippi often talked to her husband, who everyone in the family knew had been dead for over twenty years.

  “I have a son,” Melanie said from the other side of the door. “I know how boys are. You need some ice?”

  How boys are? Toby was thirty. “Ice? Uh, no.”

  “How about your…friend?”

  Friend? He frowned. Then it dawned on him. She thought he’d been duking it out with someone. If only he had earlier! A roaring indignation filled his veins as he wished he’d pummeled that oven-writhing scumbag when he’d had the chance. “He’s no friend,” Toby growled, fiercely clutching the pitcher. “He’s a dirt-licking, scum-digging dog.”

  He heard a soft “Heavens!” from the other side of the door.

  “But he’s gone now,” Toby lied, realizing Melanie might call the cops. With an important career change ahead, the last thing he needed was bad publicity. He imagined the newspaper photo—Toby in his underwear, his hands cuffed. Maybe they’d let him carry the pitcher in front of him as they carted him to the police car. The image flashed in his mind. If he held the pitcher lengthwise, everyone would wonder why Free had ever fooled around on him.

  “You’re all right?” Melanie’s voice sounded closer, as though she were pressed against the door. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Maybe she was standoffish with her daughter, but right now he heard something different in Melanie’s tone—a mother who needed to be needed. The macho pitcher image was replaced by one of Kate’s mother’s green-caked face, etched with concern. It reminded him of his own mom and how she’d fret over her six children. “I’m okay.” But I’ll be better when I get Free out of my house. Until this moment, he hadn’t realized how much—or how long—he’d wanted that. He’d put up with her two-timing because he was always on the road, too busy to deal with the realities back home. Unfortunately, he’d already told his potential employer that he lived with his fiancé, Free. Toby frowned. He couldn’t suddenly say his engagement was broken. Somehow, some way, he’d have to pretend his home life was stable, at least for the duration of dinner on Monday.

  A rustling sound reminded him that Kate’s mother was hovering on the other side of the door. “Good night, Mrs.—” What was their last name? Beau? Best to stick with what was certain. “Good night, Melanie.”

  “Good night, son,” she said softly. Footsteps padded back down the hallway.

  A wave of melancholy washed over him as he recalled the many nights his mother had systematically gone to each of her children’s doors to bid them good-night. Despite working out of the home at a job and raising six kids single-handedly, she was never too tired to insure each day ended on a note of love.

  He looked at the shattered pieces of ceramic. If the banging, clattering and crashing had been heard by Kate’s mother all the way down the hallway, the people in the next room had to be wide-awake, fearful of their neighbor. This was a nice place. Kate’s business, as her mother had indignantly said earlier. Even if Kate had a bizarre color sense and a head-bobbing problem, this inn was her bread and butter. And he, of all people, could appreciate a woman working hard to earn a living.

  I have to get a grip.

  He stared at the pitcher in his arms. “And not just on you.” He looked around at the splintered mess on the floor. “After I clean up this mess, I’ll figure out how to clean up my life.”

  With some effort, he stood, returned the pitcher to the dresser, then walked over to the window and sat on an overstuffed loungelike chair. Red, of course. He looked out the window at the moon. Was he getting paranoid or did the man in the moon look at him with a pitying expression?

  Toby jabbed a finger at the moon. “Wipe that look off your face, ol’ man, ’cause I’m going to turn this sorry state of affairs around. Fast.”

  He suddenly felt tired, exhausted. He pulled off his glasses and set them aside. Rubbing his eyes, he let his anger subside as he pondered his options. Although another man—even one wearing only briefs—might storm over and confront Free and her boyfriend of the moment, Toby had never been one to resort to violence. Backed against a wall, he typ
ically resorted to a burst of Italian emotion followed by a rush of logic, a side effect of being an engineer.

  Plus, being the eldest son in a large Italian family, and with his dad gone most of the time, Toby had learned to set priorities rather than indulge his moods or innermost desires. Which meant rather than hang out with his pals after school, he’d helped his mom prepare dinner. Toby smiled to himself. Once he’d almost gotten into a brawl with another kid who’d tried to steal Toby’s jacket, but there was no time to vent because Toby had had to race home to fix dinner. Thanks to those experiences, he knew more about cooking than fighting. Hell, the most he’d ever punched was the air in Kismet.

  Knock-knock.

  He got up, sidestepped pieces of former bowl and headed to the door. Pressing his forehead against the smooth wood, he said, “I’m okay. You can go to bed.”

  “Don’t you want your food?”

  Kate. Food. He’d almost forgotten. He toyed with saying he wasn’t hungry, but she’d gone out of her way to fix him something. Damn. If his mother had taught him anything, it was not to be rude. Even if Kate had blown up his car five years ago on that fateful Fourth of July. Although she never took full blame, claiming something about a kid’s sparkler…

  Still, he could use her guilt about that incident when he confessed he’d broken her big porcelain bowl.

  He edged behind the door and opened it a crack. Kate, offering a small smile, held out a plate. It looked like his insides felt. A mishmash of feelings that he didn’t know how to put back together again. Except the mishmash on the plate also had bits of lettuce sticking out.

  “I have a confession,” Toby said, keeping his voice low.

  Kate’s blue eyes widened. “You’re not wearing your underwear?”

  Was she blushing? Or maybe all the red in the room was reflecting off her face. “No,” he said slowly, “I broke your bowl.”

  She craned her neck and peered past him. “Oh!”