A Basic Renovation

by Sandra Antonelli

  He came up with never.

  In all his adult life, he’d never just wanted to stand with his arms around a girl and not have it lead to something else – not that he didn’t want this to lead to something else. It would, by God it would, and soon, but for the moment, this was exactly what he wanted. It seemed Lesley did too.

  Kyle’s twangy singing got louder as he approached the kitchen, ‘Oh mah darlin’, oh mah darlin’, oh mah darrrrlin’ Clementine…’

  Sighing, Lesley pulled from the effortless comfort of Dominic’s arms to tend to the cooking on the stove.

  ‘Ah-ah,’ Dominic traded her hair clip for the spoon in her hand and shook his head, ‘I invited you for dinner. When I come to eat at your place, you can stir your own stew. At my house, you just get to watch.’

  ‘Are we having stew?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was Kyle’s turn to cook tonight.’ Dominic leaned over the range and lifted the lid from the bubbling pot. The mouth-watering fragrance of basil, garlic and tomatoes wafted upwards with a puff of steam. ‘Hm, I think we’re having Spaghetti Bolognese.’

  Lesley’s empty stomach clenched. Oh, no, I don’t want to think about Enzo! You’re popcorn, not pasta! A split second passed before another revolting thought struck her. Please don’t be the type. Oh, please don’t be the type.

  Kyle shuffled into the kitchen and pulled open a drawer full of utensils. ‘You are lost and gone forever…’

  ‘Dreadful sorry, Clementine,’ Dominic finished the last part and caught the troubled expression on Lesley’s face as she watched him. ‘Don’t you like meat sauce, Lesley?’

  She pinned her hair back into a twist and crossed the small space between them until she was beside his elbow. ‘Can I ask you something really weird?’ she said, careful to keep her voice low so Kyle wouldn’t hear.

  ‘OK,’ Dominic nodded, tasting the simmering sauce.

  ‘You aren’t one of those guys who has a name for your penis, are you?’ she whispered.

  Dominic tapped the wooden implement on the edge of the saucepan. He grabbed a tall pepper grinder from the counter beside the stove and looked at Lesley sideways. ‘Like The Howitzer?’

  Lesley felt her mouth go slack. ‘The Howitzer?’

  Kyle dumped a handful of silverware on the table with a noisy jangle, ‘Are you talking about the—hey! What are you doing there, Dad? Get the pepper away from that pot!’

  ‘It needs something else.’

  ‘It does not.’

  ‘Yes it does. It doesn’t taste like spaghetti sauce.’

  ‘That’s because it’s chilli con carne.’

  A man’s need to name his penis was something she’d just have to deal with as a freakish male quirk, but hearing pasta was not on the dinner menu filled Lesley with a slice of relief. ‘Well thank God for that!’ she uttered, not quite realising her mutter was more of a cry until father and son both glanced at each other before looking at her with raised eyebrows. ‘I really love chilli con carne,’ she said, smiling a little too brightly.

  ‘Well, you might change your mind after you try Kyle’s.’ Dominic grinned and tucked the pepper grinder back into place. ‘Where’s the dog?’

  ‘In her kennel. With your stupid shoe,’ Kyle huffed. ‘It’s not fair she has to be in there when we eat.’

  ‘Once you learn not to feed her from the table, she can wander around all she wants.’

  ‘Come on. I’ve seen you tossing her bits of toast and egg in the morning. You feed her stuff way more than I do. It’s not fair.’

  ‘My house. My rules.’

  ‘Well, your rules suck ass.’

  ‘And you’re about to join Clementine in her kennel.’

  Kyle’s mouth pursed for a second. ‘Excuse me, father, I find your regulations most unsatisfactory. Lesley, may I get you a glass of wine?’ Kyle turned and gave her smile.

  Dominic snickered and opened a cupboard to pull out dishes. ‘If you want to play host, Flash, I’ll have a beer.’

  ‘Can I have one too?’

  ‘Sure,’ Dominic set bowls on the table, ‘When you’re twenty-one.’

  While she was still uneasy about the whole Howitzer factor, Lesley enjoyed the interchange between Kyle and Dominic. It was amusing and affectionate. They were obviously close; they shared an easy bond she hoped would carry on throughout their lives.

  A few moments later, when they sat down to eat, an image formed in her mind. She pictured the two Brennan men at the table, fifteen, maybe twenty years down the road. They were eating, laughing, trading good-natured insults, and chile recipes. Then she noticed something odd in her little vision.

  She was sitting at that futuristic dinner table with them.

  Startled, Lesley dropped her spoon before it even made it to her mouth. It clattered against the edge of her green-rimmed bowl then fell into her lap. Red-orange tomato sauce, two kidney beans, and a chunk of ground beef missed the napkin and plopped right onto her smoky-blue voile skirt.

  ‘You’re not having much luck with keeping your clothes clean today, are you?’ Dominic got up and grabbed a damp cloth. He knelt down and began to press it against the stained fabric stretched across Lesley’s thighs. High voltage ribbons shot up his hands, interrupting the beat of his heart so that he stopped breathing mid-inhale. His fingers tingled, itched to crawl under the thin material covering.

  And Lesley knew it.

  ‘Maybe I should do that myself,’ she said as she took the washcloth from him.

  There was a splotch of tomato on the back of her hand. He wiped away the smudge and sucked the sauce from his thumb, eyes fixed on hers. A faintly wicked smile stayed on his lips as he took his seat.

  ‘Um, Dad, are you going to watch Machines tonight? It’ll be on in a few minutes.’

  Dominic glanced at Lesley. ‘Would you please record it for me? Lesley and I have some things to talk about.’

  ‘What, like why she shouldn’t sue Grandma?’

  ‘No one is suing anyone.’

  Lesley tried to ignore the slow smoulder behind the blue gaze focused on her and dabbed at the mess on her clothes. She was over forty and it had taken this long to discover a man who could stoke coals of desire she’d always thought were simply lukewarm. Something else burned there too, despite their freakish past. It was frightening and so wonderful she didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to crawl across the table, drag that stone jaw between her hands and lick the smirk off that cartoon hero face. There wasn’t anything she could do to neutralise the sun rays shooting from his eyes or the solar heat that had seeped clear to her bones, but she could soak the skirt in cold water later, and start a new discussion now. She plastered a smile on her face and levelled it at Kyle. ‘Do you two watch a lot of TV?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Kyle snickered, ‘Dad’s addicted to the History Channel. The whole month of May was Hitler’s Henchmen. Before that, it was The War Files and Battle Plan, and last night some new series about The Machines of War started.’

  ‘And Flash is right there watching those programs with me.’

  ‘What’s The Machines of War about?’ Lesley grinned at the boy, ‘Robotic stuff like in The Terminator?’

  Kyle shook his head, ‘Nah. It’s all tanks, flame-throwers, and big guns like the one you were talking about before, you know, the Howitzer.’

  Lesley’s attention snapped to Dominic. She squinted.

  His face was a mask of solid, flat granite. Then his mouth split apart as a huge chortle launched from his chest like a rocket-propelled grenade. ‘So does that,’ he gurgled and snorted, ‘answer your question?’

  An insult sprang to the tip of her tongue, but laughter took over and shook her insides until she grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. Tears of mirth ran down her face.

  Kyle regarded them both as if they were certifiable and shook his head. ‘What the hell is so funny about Howitzers?’

  Dominic watched Lesley’s side-splitting and wondered how h
e’d ever thought she was unremarkable. She was utterly captivating, vibrant, sensual, intelligent – and he’d discovered this without having had her in his bed.

  Well, that was going to change.

  Their embrace, while oddly satisfying at the time, had left Dominic frustrated during dinner. The longer he sat there with Lesley at arm’s reach, the worse it got. His simmering desire was beginning to bubble. Shortly it would roil and foam over the edge and the plans he had for a slow seduction would evaporate. There was another problem to consider.

  The kid.

  The kid had to go.

  Soon.

  There was a tinge of guilt in Dominic’s mind about booting out the boy, but now and again in a man’s life his children had to come second. Sixteen was old enough to understand – or at least deal with – facts once his old man explained a few things. But explanations would come later.

  Why hadn’t he kissed her when he’d had the chance? He’d come damn close when she’d dropped that spoon in her lap. The same idea was in her eyes. The thought was still there behind her laughter. When their gaze met again, they agreed about something else as well.

  Getting rid of Kyle.

  Luckily, Dominic didn’t get a PhD at twenty-two just because he was pretty. The wine bottle sat on the counter, right next to the corkscrew. He got up to get it. On his way back to the table he snagged Clementine’s red figure-of-eight harness from a hook near the kitchen entry. When he sat, he looked at it, pretending to be absolutely perplexed. ‘How do you put this thing on the dog, Flash?’

  ‘It ain’t quantum physics, Dad.’ His son grabbed the harness. ‘You snap it here,’ he indicated with is finger, ‘and here.’

  ‘I see that. How do you get it on her? Where do her legs go?’

  ‘Why do you care how this thing goes on? You’re not the one who walks her.’

  ‘Because after you finish the dishes, you’re taking your dog for a walk.’

  ‘What? It’s your dishes day! I cooked tonight!’

  ‘Yes, and I’ll owe you one, but,’ Dominic’s eyes cut to Lesley clearing the dinner dishes, ‘I’m playing the I’ve got company card.’

  ‘How I never get to play the company card?’

  ‘Because I hold all the cards.’

  Leaning back in his chair, Kyle squinted, arms crossed. ‘Cheater.’

  Dominic tried not to smile when his son rose from the table, plate in hand, pouting like he had when he was five. ‘Thank you, Flash,’ he said. ‘Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.’ He moved to pour Lesley a little more wine.

  She waved a hand near the rim of the glass and said, ‘No more. I’m drowsy enough and I want to keep a clear head around you.’

  Kyle pulled the pot of leftover chilli from the stove top and set it on the countertop with an irritated bang. Dominic gave him a momentary stare of death. ‘You’re drowsy?’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘You’d be too after a day like mine. Look how uncoordinated I’ve been.’

  ‘OK. Are you going to bite me if I ask you for your side of the story?’

  Lesley made a snorting noise.

  ‘If I hadn’t left when I did, none of it would have happened.’

  Plainly interested in hearing details of what happened, Kyle quietly rummaged around the cupboard for a storage container.

  ‘Part of it would have. Your mother would have abused me the same way.’ Lesley exhaled, ‘She just might not have gotten into a shoving match with a wo—’

  The phone rang with an electronic burble. Dominic tipped his seat back and grabbed the receiver off the wall. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Yeah. One second.’ The chair came forward and his father held the curved handset over his head. ‘Kyle, it’s for you.’

  Kyle shoved a Tupperware lid under one arm and snatched at the phone. ‘Yeah, hello?’ came out in an impatient rush. ‘Mm-hm…’

  ‘John Tilbrook’s aunt looks harmless enough,’ Lesley sighed, ‘but I swear she would have gutted your mother with that broken bottle. The cut on her arm…’

  ‘Was just a scratch,’ Dominic’s tone was reassuring. ‘A simple scr—’

  ‘What?’ Kyle shouted into the receiver, ‘Melody’s coming here? Holy shit!’ he hung up the phone. ‘Dad, Um, is it OK if I…I’m gonna go out with uh, Sunny and uh, Melody for ice-cream.’

  Dominic ignored the kid’s ‘shit’, strangling the smile that twisted his mouth and threatened to give away how fortunate he thought he was that a solution, one that would last longer than a dog walk, had fallen into his lap. ‘Great,’ he said evenly. ‘Finish the dishes and be home by midnight.’

  ‘Aw, come on, Dad!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Melody’s on her way!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’ve got to change and brush my teeth and all before she gets here! Melody is coming here!’

  Dominic couldn’t believe his luck. ‘All right,’ he said trying to stay in official Dad mode. ‘Go. Be home by midnight.’

  Lesley chuckled as Kyle shot from the kitchen. ‘Well, if you wash, I’ll dry.’

  ‘I have a dishwasher,’ he said, rising out of his chair, collecting dirty bowls and setting them in the sink.

  ‘I’ll clear and you load the dishwasher.’ Lesley slid back from the table and reached for the glasses just as Dominic reached for her.

  His arm slipped around her waist. Warm and solid, his chest pressed into her back. ‘Leave it,’ he muttered, his mouth beside her ear, ‘just leave it.’

  Lesley turned her head and found him, just out of reach. On her toes, she stretched up and strained to taste his lips. His chin was as close as she got. A soft laugh puffed over her cheek. Something landed on the table with a plastic clatter then his fingers were stroking through her hair.

  ‘I’ve wanted to do this since the day you walked into my store and dumped those paint booklets all over the floor.’ Dominic let his nose skate up the nape of her neck, across her hairline to her earlobe. Prickles rose on her skin, he felt them stand up beneath his lips.

  Kyle’s hurried and pounding footsteps came from someplace in the house. He sounded like he was swearing. Water ran through pipes.

  Shivering, Lesley twisted around and slid her hands up to Dominic’s face to drag his head down. Her chin tilted up to his, her lips parted. A second later, he was seated on the edge of the table and she was between his knees. He was a solar pillar and she was pliable, warm wax reshaping to fit snuggly to his chest, to fill the contours of his long fingers and the hard ridge of his erection. She watched him through half-lowered lashes and waited for a kiss that didn’t come.

  The slight rasp of his jaw, one hand in her hair, Dominic brushed his mouth over hers with a feather weight, once. Then again, barely skimming, teasing, hovering with a breath shared between them. When she got a little closer, her lips scarcely skating across the surface of his, Dominic held her at bay and himself in check. He was going to draw this out as long as he could, to stretch anticipation until it became a taut, nearly transparent strand he could break with a single flick of his tongue.

  His breath quickened when she made a little noise of impatience. As her breasts flattened to his chest it was damned hard not to reach up under her skirt and fuse his hands onto the soft flesh of her buttocks, to lift her into his lap, slide aside a scrap of cotton that covered a private little feminine world, and make a cast of himself deep inside her. ‘There’s no rush,’ he murmured, reminding himself, ‘take your time, kid.’

  ‘I thought he was in a hurry? Why won’t he hurry?’ Lesley whispered a hair’s breadth from the mouth Dominic refused to give completely. ‘He’s taking his sweet time, so kiss me already!’

  ‘If we start now we’ll be interrupted. Wait.’ His fingertip touched her chin.

  ‘I’ve been waiting since I got here.’

  A door slammed. Clementine barked and Kyle’s voice hummed to her in a sing-song manner. A tennis ball bounced down the hallway. Paws scampered after.

  ‘Just a
little while longer.’

  Itty-bitty claws tip-tapped across the kitchen tiles. Clementine trotted over to a rug in front of the stove and plopped down.

  Two feet plodded across wood floor then carpet at the edge of the living room. ‘Dad,’ the boy called out on his approach, ‘have you seen my alien t-shirt?’

  Air hissed though Lesley’s teeth.

  ‘Patience,’ Dominic murmured.

  The tip of her tongue flicked over his bottom lip, her hips grazed against him. Her hand followed, gliding over his erection. With heavy-lidded smile, she pulled from his arms, sat down, and said in a low voice, ‘My undies are soaking wet.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, when is that kid leaving?’ Dominic growled as he turned around to tend to his child.

  A few seconds later, when Kyle was out the front door wearing his glowing alien t-shirt, Dominic let his breath out in strangled, frustrated huff. During the last three endless minutes that stretched to eons, fumbling cash from his wallet, dispensing a parental reminder of curfew time, the erection confined in his shorts had never subsided. It shocked him a little. What the hell was he, forty-six or nineteen?

  He stalked back to the kitchen, jerked Lesley out of her seat and pinned her against the wall beside the telephone. Greedy and breathing like an obscene phone caller, his mouth bonded with hers. A sound came from deep in her throat when his tongue slid across the seam of her lips to open them. ‘I’m sorry,’ his words were thick with desire, ‘I was trying to take my time, to go slow and be gentle, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

  Lesley fed at his lips. Having been denied, some primal urge to consume him took over. Frantic hands scrambled down to his belt and button on his shorts, and then tore at his t-shirt, shoving it high up his torso. ‘Screw slow and gentle! The second time can be slow and gentle!’

  ‘The second time?’ Fingernails raked across Dominic’s nipples in a mix of pleasure–pain that made him even harder than he already was.

  ‘Don’t you think there’ll be a second time?’

  ‘Glory days, I think we might be so scorching hot there’ll be nothing left of us but an imprint on the sheets.’ He’d tugged at the zipper of her skirt and jerked it down until it spilled onto his feet. Both hands dug into the back of her underpants to cup the swell of her buttocks as he ground his hips into her.