by Anne Calhoun
“Thank you,” she said. “You really didn’t have to do that.”
“No big deal,” he said. “I’ve cleaned up worse messes.”
“Latrine duty?” she guessed.
“Based on the smell, I was thinking of the last time my buddies got trashed at Hooters and puked up beer and wings all over the interior of my truck.”
Ouch. She changed the subject. “Mrs. Campbell across the street said her son needed service hours for his church youth group,” she said. “Maybe she can talk them into rebuilding the porch as their service project.”
Ty considered this as they turned the corner. “They have any building experience?”
“Two summers of service projects on a reservation in the Panhandle,” she said. “Their leader worked construction before he became a youth pastor.”
He nodded as if it was now his responsibility to make sure the job was done right, but when he caught her looking at him, his expression closed off again.
They strolled back down the street to Lauren’s house, Gretchen perfectly content to ride in her arms, her belly hot and silky soft against Lauren’s arm. Ty didn’t say much, kept his gaze resolutely forward. She glanced over at his face, saw shadows under his eyes as well as in them, and two deep grooves bracketing either side of his mouth before they stepped into the darkness between streetlights again. A wave of recrimination swept through her. He’d clearly needed something other than being drafted into a search for her escape artist dog, but there was no getting around the stench clinging to Gretchen, and by default, to her.
When they climbed the steps to her front door, she kept it light. “This isn’t how you planned to spend your evening.”
He lifted one shoulder. “Better than a sharp stick in the eye,” he said.
“Not by much,” Lauren said.
“You’ve never had a sharp stick in your eye,” he said.
“You’ve got me there. I need to bathe my dog, and myself, but you’re welcome to come in and wait.”
A quick shake of his head. “You have an early day tomorrow,” he said.
“Meetings with an alternate energy business partner,” she said. “How did you know?”
“Your car’s been in the parking garage at six every day this week.”
Her eyes widened, and she halted in the act of digging in her pocket for her keys. “Have you been keeping an eye on me?”
It was the wrong thing to say, because he stepped back again, just outside the glow of her porch light. “I’m keeping an eye on everything that goes on in that business park,” he said, widening the distance between them physically and emotionally.
“Right,” she said. “Come back anytime, Ty,” she said softly.
He looked at Gretchen, still snuggled in her arms, and for a moment even the darkness couldn’t hide the ache seething under his skin. She waited, holding her breath, knowing she couldn’t cajole him across the threshold into her home and have it mean anything at all, but all he said was, “I’m glad you got your dog back.”
Then he left.
* * *
Ty dug his keys out of his pocket and climbed into his truck. Lauren and the ridiculous little trash-smeared sausage dog watched from the front porch as he turned over the engine and backed out into the street. In the rearview mirror he saw the front door close and the porch light flick off. He felt a disquieting blend of relief for having escaped before he gave anything else away, and disappointment. He’d wanted a woman, wanted her. And he hadn’t had her. He’d have felt awkward waiting around while she gave Gretchen a bath, like she’d take care of the dog, then take care of him. The alternative, helping her bathe the dog like they were a couple laughing in a commercial, would have felt worse.
Neither option worked when his mission in life was to avoid feeling at all.
Coming over unannounced was a mistake. In the months he’d been working on the rigs, he’d made a point of not seeking out a woman for anything more than sex, and not seeking out the same woman during his next shore leave. The single night in his hotel should have been enough, but seeing her at the business park, not in a bar or in his bed, changed the game, made her real, unique, and against his better judgment, interesting.
He stopped for a red light and worked his shoulders to pop the kink in his neck. He didn’t want to know anything more about Lauren than where, when, and what turned her on, made her shudder and strain under him. Even seeing her as a professional in her tailored dresses and colorful accessories crossed that line between casual hookup and woman with feelings. When he could see her as a woman who wanted sex, nothing more, which was how he’d seen her in the Gulf Independent parking lot, he was fine. But then she joined him on the bench, invited him over because she was curious. And then, like an idiot, he went to her house and had sex with her again. Saw her home, her dog, the calm, knowing look in her eyes before he sought oblivion in her body.
Every time he saw her he got what he wanted, and more than he bargained for in new facets of Lauren. There was the petroleum geologist, logging the well. There was the sexy woman in her slip of a dress, naked underneath, explosive chemistry. There was the homeowner. Now there was a caring, devoted dog owner, a woman who didn’t give up because things were hard.
Bad news for him.
The stomach-turning stench and mess on the driveway would have sent most women into hysterics, or at least unleash a steady stream of bitching and griping. Lauren didn’t flinch. That dog was hers, and if she had to get greasy, rotten meat on her hands to take care of Gretchen, she would. And she’d take care of the Lucases, too. He knew exactly how Lauren’s night would play out. Bath for Gretchen, shower for herself, and then, with her hair loose and damp over her shoulders, dressed in the T-shirt that was as soft as her skin and the tight cotton shorts, she’d pick up her phone and call the neighbor with the son who needed service hours. She’d gently suggest the son approach his church youth group about building a simple porch. It wouldn’t take long. A group of teenagers and a capable supervisor could do it in an afternoon, no problem. The neighborhood would be a slightly better place because Lauren lived there, cared, got involved. He used to do the same kind of thing.
This was getting worse, not better. She knew he’d gone over for a booty call; she was too smart not to know that. Instead of getting offended and telling him to fuck off, she enlisted him in a search for the dog, and instead of walking away, he helped. Idiot that he was, he helped look for the damn dog, and went above and beyond to stabilize the porch. She was pulling him back into the world he wanted to ignore, making him feel all the things that he didn’t want to feel.
He pulled into the parking lot of his hotel, cut the engine, and took the stairs to his room. Once inside he let the door close behind him, but just stood there, hands on hips, surveying the room. Even the light muted by the crooked lampshade didn’t hide the circular stain under the window, the scratched veneer on the dresser, the television secured to the wall with a cable, or the cigarette burns on the counter in the bathroom, but this was enough. He didn’t need anything more than fast food, a cheap place to sleep, whiskey, and sex. He didn’t need a house, or a dog, or a partnership with John, reminding him of who he used to be. He especially didn’t need a woman like Lauren liking him, beginning to depend on him, thinking about him as anything other than a great lay.
He tossed his keys on the tiny table. The momentum carried the keys to the floor between the chair and the dresser. “Fuck,” he muttered, but let them lie there as he twisted the cap off the bottle of Jim Beam and poured two inches of liquid into a thin paper cup. This should have been simple. Most guys seemed to alienate women with very little effort. A forgotten date, a missed birthday, the suggestion that Yes, your ass does look fat in those jeans and they were out. The divorce rate in the military was around 80 percent, and the breakup rate before the marriage happened even higher. Most posts had a wall of shame plastered with pictures of girls back home too weak to last the deployment.
T
hinking of deployments brought Sean to mind. As far as he knew, Sean didn’t have a girlfriend waiting for him, or maybe there was a girl, but it ended early in the deployment? Either way it was over. He could do something for him, something memorable. Take him to a strip club, get him drunk, get him laid. Women were easy to find, easy to fuck.
But while Lauren had practically fallen in his lap, she wasn’t easy to categorize. The sex…He couldn’t just close his eyes and get lost in the sensation until the itch was scratched. He’d been thinking, aware, into it on so many levels, and the aftermath genuinely sucked. She wasn’t forgettable. The way he missed her when he walked away, when his shift didn’t coincide with her lunch hour. He didn’t want to miss her. He didn’t want to feel anything for her other than the overwhelming desire to roll her onto her back and fuck her until her legs wound tight around his hips, until she was utterly helpless under him.
So he’d gotten in his truck with the intention of making it as clear as possible that he saw her as a sex partner, nothing else. Giving her a good reason to dismiss him, ignore him, avoid him. Thanks to the most useless, troublesome dog he’d ever know, the plan backfired.
Sure. Blame the dog.
He swallowed the rest of the whiskey, refilled the cup, and thought about the two people he spent the most time with these days. Sean, too reserved to hit the bar scene and find a girl for the night, and Lauren, with her storm-blue, all-seeing eyes, the bold, twenty-first-century woman so thoroughly engaged with her life.
He could do this. He could make her walk away. She was a woman, emotional, getting attached, half blind because she kept seeing a man who didn’t exist anymore, and she was curious. That was the key, her stubborn curiosity. The next time they met on the bench, he’d turn that inquisitive curiosity against her, so she’d get gone and leave him alone. He looked around the room, at the jeans and T-shirts stuffed haphazardly in his duffel, at the travel toiletries in the bathroom, at the bottle of whiskey, and in that moment, he knew how to make her walk.
Chapter Eight
Lauren knew an hour-long search for Gretchen hadn’t satisfied whatever need, physical or emotional, that drove Ty to her house. He’d come looking for her, for whatever reason he admitted to himself, and ended up elbow deep in garbage while he looked for her dog. She couldn’t have come up with a better way to rub his nose in what he went to great lengths to avoid.
But he’d pay a price for a need suppressed. Ty was edgy, restless, and his hold on the facade he used like a shield was fragile and easy to disrupt. His pain was so vivid to her, shifting under the surface of his skin in waves of anguish and shock, and the emotions only grew with each encounter. Sex seemed to provide a release he could accept, but he hadn’t gotten sex the last time he saw her. He’d gotten Gretchen, and a neighborhood, and an elderly couple with a rickety, rotted porch.
Yet he’d agreed to help a woman in distress, and she couldn’t help but think that was the real Ty under the sharp, spiny attitude he so frequently projected. A walking, talking contradiction.
Something was going to blow. Soon.
These thoughts occupied her mind while she sat in interminable meetings for the second straight week, this time with a different prospective business partner. The conference room windows looked out over the lake, and during dull spots in the week of strategic planning meetings she’d watched the surveillance operation taking place on the business park’s campus. At least three men were involved, including Ty, and they seemed to rotate shifts and spots but always watched the main exits and entrances between about seven a.m. and five p.m. It was likely that they arrived based on when their targets left home, and left when the person or people they were watching left. The duration of Ty’s stay was unpredictable, a tactic that made sense. Sometimes he stayed for an hour, and if he arrived earlier in the day he stayed longer, opening a laptop to make it look like he was working outside in the sun and breeze. Maybe regular meetings with a woman who worked at the business park would help with his cover.
Today the senior executives were at an off-site team-building exercise with the leaders of the newly acquired company, and Ty was on the bench at lunchtime. He lifted the ball cap, smoothed back his long blond hair, and something about his solitary position, the slant of his shoulders tilted her heart. She collected her sunglasses, phone, and lunch. “I’m going to lunch,” she called to Danelle.
“So early?”
It was odd. She usually ate around one, but there was no telling if Ty would be sitting outside at one. “I want to sit outside before it gets too hot.”
She hurried down to the nearly empty cafeteria and bought two bottles of water from the lone cashier. The smell of tuna casserole hung in the air as she walked through the seating area and out to the lake. When the door opened Ty looked up from the folder open on the seat beside him. He had one elbow propped on the back of the bench, fingers tapping a rhythm against the middle slat.
The fingers stopped midtap when she walked down the path. His face, what she could see of it, was expressionless, but after a moment he shuffled the papers together and closed the folder, making room for her. She held out the bottle of water and when he took it, sat down, crossed her legs at the ankle, and tucked them under the bench.
“Hey,” she said as she unzipped the cooler.
He got out his phone. Thanks.
“It’s hot out today.” A hint of a smile, no more, as she opened her Tupperware container filled with leftover Chinese. She got a forkful of rice into her mouth without spilling it on her dress and chewed while she considered her next move. “How’s the operation going?”
Can’t talk about it.
“What happens when you go back out on a rig? Someone else steps in for you?”
He nodded.
“Does that disrupt the team’s cohesiveness?” At his lifted eyebrow, she added, “Daughter of career Army intelligence officer, remember? It matters. People aren’t interchangeable engine parts. Teams develop a rhythm together.”
Another moment when he just looked at her, then down at his phone.
A text appeared on hers. They make it work. Why do you care?
She filled in the rest of that sentence in her head…when I so clearly don’t want you to care about anything related to me. “I’m curious,” she said quietly. “About you.”
I told you not to be.
“My dad will tell you I’m not very good at following orders,” she said. That got her an arched brow, but nothing else. She ate another bite of rice. “Once I figured out dating troublemakers got under his skin, that was the only kind I liked. Dad says it wasn’t age but my teens that turned him gray. In college he was stationed in Virginia, so I had a steady stream of NCOs and junior commissioned officers escorting me to sorority functions.” She finished a mouthful and added, “You probably already know this, but if you want to turn a sorority upside down, bring a man in uniform to a function.”
That got a laugh. A real laugh, and she wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the rough, rusty sound, him or her. Then his attention turned inward, and he spoke quietly. “Nothing. I’m going quiet for a couple of minutes.”
He pushed a button on his cell phone, looked at her with those dark, dangerous eyes, and spoke. “My partner can’t hear us now.”
She made a vague gesture near her ear. “You running all that through your cell phones?”
“With a few upgrades,” he said ambiguously. “Not worried about what happens to curious cats?”
“I think that phrase is more about alliteration than truth. My roommate in college had a cat that was fascinated by candles. She’d burn her whiskers, but she never died from investigating the flame. I’d rather get burned living my life than calcify living someone else’s,” she said.
She snapped the lid back on the empty container and reflected on him, their almost-conversations, the way he melted in bed with her only to harden right back up afterward. A classic wounded warrior. She knew that type, watched women wait for the ma
n they loved to physically come home from the war, then mentally. Most did, eventually. Some of them never made it, living in a hellish stasis between who they’d been and who they were. She didn’t want Ty to disappear into that run-down hotel room, to keep turning his back on life, on who he was and what he could be. He had to be about her age, thirty or a little older. Too young to have those grooves carved on either side of his mouth, too young for those dark, weary eyes, too young for all work and no play.
Too young, too smart, too full of potential to give up on, as much as he wanted the rest of the world to do exactly that.
When he spoke next it was with a studied casualness that set her radar quivering, and she steeled herself for whatever might come next. “I’ve been meaning to ask you…how about helping out a friend of mine?”
“Sure,” she said, secretly pleased he’d asked. “With what?”
“Sean’s just back from Afghanistan, and I mean just back. As in his leave started a couple of days ago. He’s kind of an academic type. Very smart. Very focused. Not easily distracted. And not the kind of guy to pick up a girl in a bar for a one-night stand. So…”
The words hung in the air, and between his studiously cocky body language and the brazen insinuation, Lauren almost laughed. “Are you suggesting I fuck your friend to get him back in the saddle after his deployment?”
Ty’s mirrored sunglasses never wavered from her face, but the lines around his mouth deepened, and she wondered if he had any idea at all how much he gave away. “Yeah. That’s what I’m asking.”
“Not much to be curious about there. We already know I’ll fuck near-strangers,” she said blandly, and based on the way his jaw dropped she’d actually managed to shock the world-weary Ty. “What’s in it for me? Where’s the uncharted territory?”
All the muscles in his face went still, and she didn’t need to see his eyes to feel the intense focus on her. Did he think she’d run screaming in horror? When he didn’t say anything, she added, “I’ll do it. Or him, as the case may be, but on one condition.”
