by Lori Wilde
No, but Dirk might.
That thought had him gritting his teeth.
“Put your tongue back in your mouth, dummy!” His cousin Biff—Pru and Horace’s oldest son who ran a construction crew—came up behind him, swatted Tom’s arm with one hand, and gestured with a big chunk of Italian bread in the other. “Everyone will see how much you want her, and then they’ll start planning your wedding.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The happy day when you have to eat crow for all your footloose and fancy-free bachelor manifesto.” Biff guffawed like he’d told a hilarious joke.
“Haven’t you put on a few pounds?” Tom teased good-naturedly, attempting to change the subject. “Shouldn’t you be holed up somewhere making a baby with your new wife instead of chowing down with the relatives?”
“Deflection,” Biff announced. “Not gonna work with me.”
Tom looked around, realizing Biff backed him into the little alcove Horace—er, Bud—had built to display his first, and only, bowling trophy. Now it was a bower of shelves filled with glass baskets and his aunt’s collection of British royal family memorabilia, all lit by dazzling overhead lights.
“I’m only helping her out. Jude’s got self-esteem issues after her ex-fiancé dumped her at the altar.”
“So you’re like what? The rebound guy?”
“We’re not having sex.”
“Maybe not yet.” Biff waggled his eyebrows. “But it’s on the table. She was looking at you with as much sizzle as you were looking at her.”
Was she?
Tom felt proud…and worried. “I’d better go rescue Jude before Uncle Ray starts doing his ear-wiggling trick.”
Leaving his cousin behind, Tom practically sprinted to the kitchen where his aunts had absconded with Jude.
9
“My aunts are terrific cooks,” Tom whispered to Jude when they were seated side by side at the long dinner table. “Their menus can be a little strange—all three are uber-creative—but I promise everything tastes good.”
Jude didn’t mind. She found his boisterous family quite interesting, and she’d been enjoying their conversations where they talked over each other, interrupted often, and laughed with abandon. By comparison, her own family was much more placid.
Tom ladled some pickled beets and a big purple egg onto his plate beside the main dish of meatballs and spaghetti. Not a combo she would have served, but hey, she was open to new experiences.
He winked at her. Luckily, his family was deeply engaged in their reminiscing about past birthday celebrations that they didn’t notice what was going on at Tom and Jude’s end of the table.
Jude eyed Tom with a speculative smile. “Does your family have a lot of these kinds of celebrations?”
“Oh, yeah. At least once a month someone is having a birthday or getting promoted or having a baby or graduating. We keep the party supply store in business.”
“I think that’s sweet,” Jude said. “It’s nice having a big extended family close by. You’re lucky.”
“It can be annoying too,” he confessed. “When they decide to get all up in your business.”
“Oops,” Jude murmured. “I dropped my napkin.”
“I’ll get it,” he said, but playing Sir Galahad wasn’t as easy as he made it sound.
For one thing, Tom’s aunt had put extra leaves in her dining room table, and too many folding chairs were crowded around it, so he bumped into people as he maneuvered. For another thing, with a wall behind them, he could wiggle back only a couple of inches, and he had to bend his body at an odd angle to peek beneath the tablecloth for her errant napkin.
He ducked his head and reached down.
Jude felt fingers against her skin, and she jumped at his touch. Her pulse rate scooted upward, and she hissed softly, “That’s my shin.”
He rooted around, then came up for air, his face flushed and hair tousled. “Sorry. I couldn’t find it. You can have mine.”
“Let’s share. Your aunt’s napkins are as big as bedsheets.” Jude chuckled.
“Thank you for being so gracious and understanding,” he whispered close to her ear, although it was unlikely anyone could hear him. It took a top-of-the-lungs shout to be heard across the table in the din of several dozen people talking at once. “Would you like to leave as soon as we have cake and ice cream?”
“No, I’m having fun,” she said.
“Really?” Tom looked surprised.
Even as she said it, Jude realized it was true. Her family was smaller and widely scattered. Tom’s relatives talked too loudly, laughed a lot, and seemed genuinely fond of each other. They also made her, a stranger, feel welcome and liked.
But they kept talking about the happy marriages among their clan and eying Jude with curiosity. She could see their mental gears clicking—especially with Tom’s mother—wondering if Jude might be the one to tame him.
Ha! The last thing she wanted was a serious relationship. With Tom, all Jude wanted was fun, fun, fun, fun.
She liked him and enjoyed being around him, but that was the extent of it. She was glad she’d accepted Dirk’s invitation to go bowling tomorrow night, although she got the feeling Tom disapproved. She needed to play the field. Not that she was dating Tom or anything, but the more time she spent with him, the more she was getting attached to his quick smile and lively nature.
“A toast,” Uncle Horace/Bud proposed, lifting a precariously full goblet of red wine. “To my better half. I love you, Prudie!”
Horace was as verbose as he was jolly. He kept the toasts going, jumping in whenever there was a lull. Which granted, with this bunch, wasn’t often.
Jude nursed one glass of wine last through ten rounds of toasting and glass-clinking, but the bright lights from the chandelier and the close-packed bodies were making a steam room of the dining area.
When the meal was over and the birthday cake eaten, a few people drifted away from the table, and Tom was quick to lead her away from the dining room hullabaloo. Jude followed, squeezing behind the chairs hemming them in.
When he put his hand on her upper arm, she pulled away. They were surrounded by a hoard of his relatives, including his mother, and she was literally vibrating with—
Call it what it is, she chided.
Desire.
Somehow, they ended up in the kitchen alone. The counter was crowded with more small electrical kitchen aids than she’d ever seen outside of a store.
Tom read her mind. “Uncle Horace is big on mechanical gadgets. If Aunt Pru got anything else for Christmas or her birthday, she’d probably faint.”
Jude stared at the collection of dicers, slicers, cookers, toasters, beaters, heaters, and others with mysterious purposes.
“Why three microwaves?”
“In case two malfunction.” He grinned. “Aunt Pru is serious about cuisine.”
“No kidding.”
“Let’s see if we can find a quiet corner somewhere in the house.”
“To talk.” She was telling herself, not him.
He led the way down red-tiled steps to the basement, but here, too, every inch seemed to be living space. The rec room had a bar and a ping-pong table, both already in use. Tom led her through a second boxy room, a sewing niche it appeared, and opened a closed door, only to find two carrot-headed cousins playing a video game in another paneled, carpeted room.
Tom bribed them to leave with two ten-dollar bills.
“My,” she said as the boys darted for the door. “You do have a way with kids.”
“Money talks.” He laughed.
“You have an entertaining family.”
“Please...” He rolled his eyes.
“No, I mean it.” She sat on a threadbare couch, pretending to study the old neon signs hanging on knotty-pine walls.
“They’re wacky.”
“They seem completely normal to me.”
“Oh, just wait, you haven’t heard all the stories yet.”
He said it as if she’d be sticking around, and that pulled her in two different directions. The Jude that wanted to hang out with Tom and his family and the Jude who knew it was better for her personal development to play the field right now. Which was why she’d said yes when Dirk asked her to go bowling, but she was already wishing she hadn’t committed.
“Somehow I get the impression there’s not many skeletons in your family’s closet,” she said.
“We do tend to let it all hang out.”
“My kind of folk.”
Their eyes met and her heart did a swoony little dance that left her thinking, Good thing I said yes to Dirk. Gotta do something to break Tom’s spell.
That said, once she’d played the field awhile, she wouldn’t mind finding someone to settle down with—eventually. Especially if he was as cute as Tom. Although, eventually Mr. Right didn’t have to have unruly dark hair that invited finger-combing or brown eyes that turned her knees to water, but she did love Brunswick’s legs.
She could see the swell of muscle in his calf when he rested one ankle on his other knee, and his thighs looked strong and firm in jeans that fit like a second skin. And when he reached over to touch her knee, she melted like chocolate in the sun.
“Listen,” he said. “I should warn you about Dirk.”
Hmm, was that jealousy she heard in his voice? “Warn? He’s not a good guy? I thought he was your friend.”
“He is, but you gotta accept people as they are, right?”
“What are you trying to say?” she mumbled, her gaze fixed on his broad fingers resting on her knee. Underneath her leggings, little flames spread heat up her thigh.
“I don’t want you to go out with Dirk.”
“Because he’s a bad person?”
“No,” Tom said. “Because…”
Jude ticked the lock on their fused gazes, drilling down to the core of the man through his pupils. “Because what?”
He gulped.
Was Tom about to say he didn’t want her to date his buddy because he wanted to date her? Jude held her breath, crossed her fingers, and waited. Hoped.
He squirmed.
“Well?”
“Dirk’s a player. That doesn’t make him a bad guy; it’s just who he is.”
“And you’re not a player?” She wrinkled her forehead.
“No.”
“You’re thirty and have never been married.”
“So?”
“Some people might say that’s an indication that you can’t commit.”
“What people?” He narrowed his eyes and lowered his grin, but she could see amusement dancing at the corners of his mouth.
“Your aunts and your mother. You forget, you left me alone with them for all of ten minutes. Now I know everything about you.”
He looked unnerved by that comment. “I’m just saying, around Dirk, guard your heart.”
“Maybe he should guard his.” Jude tossed her head. “I’m getting in touch with my wild side, remember?”
Tom’s mouth completely flattened, and his pupils rounded in what looked a lot like dismay. He was sooo jealous of Dirk, but she had a feeling the jealousy went beyond Dirk’s interest in her. Hmm. What was that all about?
“Maybe he should,” Tom said.
Maybe I should guard my heart, Jude thought. With you. “Tell me what’s going on between you and Dirk?”
Tom took his hand back and settled deeper into his seat. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m beginning to feel like a yo-yo between you two. As if I’m being used to settle some old score.”
His eyelids flew all the way open. “Um…”
“Your reaction says it all. So what’s the deal? I don’t mind if you’re using me to work something out with your buddy; I just need to know that.”
He moistened his lips, chuffed out a breath, and said, “Dirk stole my first real girlfriend during our sophomore year of college.”
“A decade ago?”
He dipped his head and when he spoke, he sounded chagrinned. “We were roommates. He knew I was head over heels for Amanda.”
“And you’ve never forgiven him?”
“We’re very competitive with each other.”
“I’m listening.”
“Some people might say our competitiveness borders on a sickness.”
“What people?”
“My aunts and mother.” He grinned.
“You do understand by warning me off Dirk and his competitiveness that you’re warning me off you as well.”
Tom sighed. “Yeah, I get that.”
“But you’d rather Dirk not have me, than for you to have me.”
“No, wait. What?” He scratched his head and looked totally confused.
“Look,” she said. “If you want me to help you get back at Dirk so you can move on from your heartbreak, I will.”
“You will?”
She shrugged. “It’s time you let go of ancient history, Tom. You’re stuck in the past. You’ve got to move on. Believe me, that’s why I wanted you to help me not be so nice. I don’t want to end up like you.”
“Wh-what?” Tom stammered.
“Jaxon might have broken my heart, but I don’t want to spend the next decade resenting him the way you resent Dirk. It’s time you let Amanda go.”
“I’ve let her go.”
“No, you haven’t. If you had, you wouldn’t be so obsessed with your buddy.”
“Maybe.”
“What happened to Amanda?” she asked, honestly curious.
“Dirk dumped her like a hot potato as soon as he’d won her away from me. She’s married now to a good guy who treats her right. They live in Colorado and have three boys. We exchange Christmas cards. I’m happy for her.”
He didn’t seem to be pining for his lost love at all and that was encouraging. He’d managed to act like a mature adult with Amanda, even if he hadn’t gotten there with Dirk. The issue did seem to be his rivalry with his friend.
“Why are you still friends with him?” she asked. “After the way he treated you?”
Tom shrugged. “He’s fun. He has good taste in microbreweries, and I can beat him at basketball.”
“You have a pretty low bar for friendships.”
“What can I say?” Tom chuckled. “I’m easygoing.”
“An easygoing competitive person?” She shook her head. “Not buying it.”
“It’s true.”
“Well, since most of your family seems to be here, maybe I should ask go them what they think?”
He measured off an inch with his finger and thumb. “Maybe I do have a little bit of an issue with competition.”
“Do you want to know what I think?”
Tom moved closer. “I’m listening.”
“You stay friends with Dirk because you enjoy the conflict.”
Tom shook his head. “No.”
“Yes.” Jude nodded. “You do.”
“Do I?”
“You’re not very self-aware, are you?”
“Hey!” he exclaimed, but he was smiling. She hadn’t offended him. “I resemble that remark.”
She laughed.
He sobered. “Look, there’s something I need to come clean about.”
“Oh?”
“It’s the real reason Dirk asked you out.”
“You mean his invitation to go bowling has more to do with him trying to steal away the woman he thinks you’re interested in rather than in my beauty and charm?”
“You,” he said, “are sharp as a tack.”
His compliment lit her up inside. Don’t let flattery go to your head.
“Thank you,” she said. “Part of being nice comes from being observant and trying to understand what makes other people tick.”
“So now that you know Dirk’s interest in you isn’t serious, you’ll cancel the date?” He sounded optimistic.
“No way.”
Tom blinked. “No? Why not?”
“Beca
use I don’t want to date someone who wants to get serious. I just want to have a good time.”
“I can show you a good time,” he offered, sliding even closer to her on the couch and slipping his arm around her shoulders.
“What are you doing?” she asked, equal parts charmed and alarmed. Suddenly her pulse was galloping like a Thoroughbred racehorse.
The overhead lights flickered once, then again. “Horace needs to rewire the basement,” Tom muttered. “I’ll bet—”
This time the lights flickered and went out. The windowless room was doused in darkness. They heard a few muted sounds in the space beyond, but the door shut them off from the people in the rec room.
“Where’s the switch box?” she asked, instinctively standing even though it didn’t seem wise to stumble around in an unfamiliar dark basement.
“Probably in the furnace area. Someone will take care of it.”
She hadn’t realized how close he was, and she found his nearness exciting.
“A bold woman would know what to do now,” he said in a husky voice she hadn’t heard before.
“Turn on the flashlight feature on her phone?”
“I was thinking along the lines of something wilder.”
She reached out and let her hand rest on his chest, hearing and feeling his sharp intake of breath and the steady lub-dub of his heart. “You’re saying that in a blackout a bold woman would take advantage of the situation to indulge her romantic needs?”
“That’s one option,” he whispered.
She could feel his breath on her forehead, and then his lips were there, kissing her dead center between the eyebrows.
“Why are you kissing my forehead?” she challenged brazenly. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, then leaned toward him just as his arms circled her, his fingers caressing her back, inching up her sweater.
“Oh...”
His mouth covered hers. She parted her lips, ignoring all the reasons why this was a bad idea, but he tasted so darn good, she thought, screw it and drew him down on top of her.
10
