by L. D. Davis
She’s still sexy in her own way, but nothing like Em.
Though Claire probably had not noticed, I froze at the thought that had just fallen into my mind. Lucas’s Mom was the last person I wanted to think about like that. I could not understand why my brain had gone to her. I wasn’t blind and I was still a man after all, so of course I had taken notice of her body over the weeks, but I would never think about her past the moment in which I was looking at her.
“Why did you come here?” Claire asked skeptically.
“I needed a break from the monotony that has become my life,” I sighed and then took a long pull on my beer. “Every night after Lucas goes to bed I sit in the living room and work or watch television. His mother stays in the other room, but it doesn’t really ease the obvious tension in the place. I started working late, but one thing I’m not is a workaholic, so I needed to find another way to pass my time.”
Claire quietly considered my words. I wasn’t sure what she was going to do with them. There was no doubt that I was basically using her—I had cut her off only a few short weeks before and I showed up basically because I needed to be somewhere that wasn’t home. I have asshole tendencies at times, I’ll admit that, but I try not to purposely hurt people. So, I stood up and walked my empty bottle into the kitchen to throw it in the recycling bin. When I returned to the living room, Claire’s face was no longer creased with deep thought, but I didn’t give her a chance to speak up.
“I’m going to go,” I said, nodding back towards the door. “I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t use you like that.”
Claire got to her feet, forgetting about her robe as it fell open all the way, leaving nothing to the imagination.
“You’re not using me,” she said hurriedly. “We grew up together, Luke. We are friends if nothing else. If you need to stop by so that you’re not suffocating in your own home, I’m okay with that.”
I ran a hand through my hair and let out a long breath.
“Claire, honestly, I am concerned that you may not be able to follow that permanent line between friendship and romance. I’m still not ready for a relationship, especially right now, and I don’t want to lead you to believe that if you just wait around that it will happen, because I cannot promise that.”
Her face fell a little, but then a corner of her mouth pulled up into a small smile and she shrugged one delicate shoulder.
“We’ll just have to be friends then.”
My eyes fell back to her naked body.
“With benefits,” she added nervously and swept the robe back to put a hand on her slender hip.
“Is that a good idea?” I questioned as I continued to stare at her body.
“I think we can have a mutual understanding here,” she said and shifted slightly under my gaze.
“This needs to be entirely stress free,” I warned as I moved towards her. “Friendship with benefits and nothing more.”
“Friendship with benefits and nothing more,” she parroted with a firm nod as she watched me advance.
“It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you,” I said gently and placed my hand on her waist. She inhaled sharply as I pulled her against my body. “But I can’t be anything more than your friend—with benefits. Do you understand?”
She nodded wordlessly. I pressed my lips against her jugular and inhaled the scent of her skin. She smelled like soap and something fruity. It wasn’t a bad smell, but it didn’t drive me nuts and perk up my cock as much as Lucas’s Mom’s scent. I tried not to notice, but it was impossible not to catch her lingering scent while living in the same small apartment with her. I hated what that scent did to me, making my physical response war against my mental and emotional responses.
I needed to get her out of my head. I hated her. I loved her, and I hated to all hell that I loved someone who had been so vile to me.
I stripped Claire out of her robe and swept her into my arms, making her yelp in surprise. I carried her into her room and kicked the door shut behind me, anxious to forget about the woman who had the ability to fester in my heart and soul and destroy both over and over without mercy.
Chapter Five
I walked into the hellhole that was my office and was greeted by the receptionist from hell. With her brightly colored hair in an updo that reminded me of both a beehive and a bird’s nest, pierced face and heavy makeup, she didn’t make the few clients that came through the door feel very confident in my abilities or the abilities of my partner and the other attorneys working for us.
“Hey,” Kacey said, chomping on a large wad of gum.
Kacey was the niece of my partner Steve Keane. She definitely wasn’t our first choice, but she was willing to accept the low pay that came with the job until we were able to take off, though I wasn’t sure when that was going to happen. Not much of the necessary equipment was hooked up and there didn’t seem to be any organization anywhere. Files sat in boxes and on desks and on the floor. The seating area for clients looked frightening and the whole place looked dingy and unclean. Hell, it was dingy and unclean.
“Hey,” I said to Kacey and walked past her to my office.
I found a space on my desk to put down my cup of coffee and sat down.
Starting my own firm was something I had wanted since before I even finished law school, but I knew I needed experience and had to build a name for myself first. My first job out of college was with a small, piece of shit law firm in a bad neighborhood in Chicago. We mostly worked for low-income families or petty crime criminals, and we got paid virtually nothing. The work was rewarding because I was helping people, but I had rent to pay so that I wouldn’t end up back at home, and I needed to be able to buy my own groceries so that I didn’t have to show up at my mom’s or one of my sisters’ for dinner every night. I took a position at a different firm after a year and a half. It had a steady flow of paying clients and I didn’t have to watch for flying bullets going in and out of work, but after two years there, I felt stagnant. I was ready to break away from my family, ready to get out of Chicago and do more with my life. So, I took a position with Sterling Corporation in Philly, where I was soon traveling around the country to put out legal fires. My pay had tripled, I had succeeded in breaking away from my family, and it was there in that building that I first met Lucas’s mother.
The first time I saw her was on my very first day at work. I immediately took stock of her curves wrapped in her designer business suit, the soft shades of reds and blondes in her dark brown hair, and brown and green eyes that shined with amusement and mischief. She was beautiful, but it was those damn eyes that got me, that made me choose to stand beside her opposed to standing beside the pretty red head on the other side of the crowded elevator. She smelled good, like cherries, vanilla, and fresh air. I remember taking deep breaths as quietly as possible so that no one would know that I was on the verge of grabbing her and running my nose all over her body until I got my fill of that scent that was making me uncomfortably aroused.
Before the elevator could begin its ascent, too many people pushed their way in until we were literally wedged into the corner together. I kept my briefcase in front of me so that she wouldn’t feel my erection pressing against her thigh.
“Every morning I feel like I’m getting to third base with entirely too many of you,” she announced loudly to the crowded elevator. It was funny, though she wore an all business expression on her face—except for her eyes of course.
I stared down at her, amused by her completely inappropriate declaration. A few people chuckled and agreed with her, while a couple of people up front apologized.
“Hello, I’m Luke,” I said to her a moment later.
One eyebrow shot up as she openly assessed me.
“I just thought you should at least know my name if we’re already at third base,” I whispered in her ear.
I didn’t know how she was going to react. I didn’t know if she was going to tell me to fuck off or slap me across the face, or even ac
knowledge me any further than the eyeballing I was getting from her.
Without wiping away her all business face, she opened her pretty mouth and said, “Well, Luke, you just took the fun out of being at third base anonymously.”
I chuckled. “Well, since I still don’t know your name, there is still some anonymity.”
“Oh, so I have all of the power,” she said with a small trace of a smile.
“I didn’t say that,” I said quickly. “But I’m okay with allowing you to believe that.”
The elevator stopped on my floor. A few people spilled out and I followed after them after winking at the nameless beauty at the back of the elevator.
I had no idea then who she was, and if it weren’t for her smartass comment to everyone on the elevator, I may have just pegged her for a pretty face and kept it moving. The fact that she didn’t hit me after I introduced myself, but made another wisecracking statement left me thinking about her for the rest of the day. I didn’t see her again that day or the next day, but that Wednesday I settled down for lunch with a coworker in the small café next to the Sterling building and before I could even dig my fork into my salad, a tray clunked down on the end of the table. I looked up and found Miss Smartass herself standing there, looking from me to Ted.
“Are one of you guys going to move over or were you hoping for some lap action?” she asked, turning to me with a challenging gleam in her eyes.
Before Ted could react, I quickly moved my tray over and moved my ass to the seat by the window. She sat down and smiled at me.
“I thought for sure you would have preferred for me to sit in your lap, Luke. We get to third base together on our first meeting and not even so much as a phone call from you afterward.”
I laughed. I liked this woman more and more—every damn time she opened her pretty mouth.
“I apologize, but you see it is hard to call you if I don’t even have a name in which to stalk you by.”
“Her name is written in men’s bathrooms across the city,” Ted said casually.
“Right next to your mother’s,” she said sweetly before snatching a French fry off his plate. She turned those sexy, mischievous eyes on me. “I thought we agreed there is more excitement in at least partial anonymity.”
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t complain when I don’t call.”
“A good stalker would go out of his way to find out who I am,” she replied and then had the nerve to put her fingers in my salad and pluck out a slice of cucumber. She pushed it into her mouth and gave me a look that dared me to say anything about her food-stealing fingers.
“Or I could just go into the men’s room and check out the walls and take a few guesses,” I rallied
Any other woman would have slapped me or chewed me out. This woman however, grinned and said, “Now I’m curious. I wonder if there really is shit written about me on the bathroom wall.”
“I wrote some of it myself,” Ted said with a shrug.
“Ted and I went out on a date once,” she said to me though she was looking across the table at Ted. “I wouldn’t give him head, so now he is a little bitter.”
“When you take a woman out to the most expensive steak house in the city, the least a guy can get is some head,” he said with a shrug.
She smiled widely at him before looking back at me. “I ordered the most expensive meal on the menu and the most expensive wine. After dinner I got him all revved up, you know. I had my fingers in his hair…” she put her fingers in my hair to demonstrate as she looked into my eyes. “I ran my hands over his strong jawline and down to his tight chest muscles…” Her hands traveled over my jawline and down to my chest where I was sure she could feel my heart trying to break free under her touch. I sat there kind of mesmerized as she took my tie into her hand and tugged lightly until our faces were only a few inches apart. “And I got this close to him and licked my lips and ran my hand up his thigh.” When her hand traveled up my thigh, I prayed she wouldn’t go any further and realize how hard she had made me. At the same time, I prayed that she would go further and realize how hard she had made me.
“And then she told me to fuck off,” Ted said sourly, breaking the spell this woman had over me.
Her lips curled into a naughty smile, but she didn’t immediately release me.
“He’s right. I told him to fuck off. Ted has been running the steak and BJ game on women for too long. When he did that shit with my cousin Mayson and she didn’t go for the blowjob, he said some very awful things to her and about her. He didn’t know she was my cousin when he was telling the story in the elevator one morning. The best part is…” she laughed, a genuine amused laugh.
“She recorded the whole damn thing,” Ted said with a growl. “It was like an episode of fucking Cheaters. She invited half the women in the building to watch it.”
She released my tie, sat back in her chair, and looked at Ted with a big grin of satisfaction. He didn’t look as angry as a guy in his position should have looked. He looked back at her with something like respect.
“Wow,” I breathed when I realized that was what my lungs were for. Breathing. “Remind me to never cross you…err…whatever your name is.”
She picked up her cheeseburger that was almost as big as her head and winked at me.
“Emmy,” she said.
Emmy. It was a name that would change my life.
***
I sat in my office chair, daydreaming about the past instead of focusing on the tangled web of shit on my desk. I don’t know why my mind took me back to those first days when I met Lucas’s Mom. Those days didn’t mean anything to me anymore, but the dull ache in my chest begged to differ.
Ignoring the aching in my chest, I let out a long sigh and threw myself into my work. I had to be in court right after lunch. I didn’t have time to focus on my personal problems. I moved a few things around on my desk so I’d have some space to work and tried not to lose my temper at the mess. Granted, most of the mess was my own, but it was only because the office was in such piss poor shape. No one seemed to have the time to make it all come together in the beginning, and now we had more clients than we did time or resources. I knew I’d have to crack down on Kacey and our paralegal Craig to start actually doing their jobs, but Kacey was kind of scary and I was worried she’d have a temper tantrum and leave, which would not help matters. Craig was the only paralegal we had and he was already being stretched in too many directions in my firm, getting paid much less than he deserved or what he could make in another firm. It was important that I appreciated that they both showed up to work every day and not push them, but something had to give.
After a stressful afternoon of court, I couldn’t wait to get home and unwind with Lucas. No matter how busy my schedule was and no matter how many nights I needed to work late, I always went home to see Lucas first. I never missed a bedtime even if it meant that I had to work later into the night. I never could have imagined the attachment I have with my son. In those first few moments of meeting him I was unable to fathom how much his existence meant to me. My history with his mother was heartbreaking and there was a time in my life that I wished I had never known her, but then I wouldn’t have Lucas. Lucas was the only reason I had to be thankful for ever knowing that woman.
Usually when I walked in the door in the evening after work, a homely scent wafted out from the kitchen where Lucas’s Mom was usually elbow deep in cooking a good meal. There were some things I could give her credit for, like being an excellent mother. The first thing I wanted to do when she moved in was find fault in her parenting skills, but even matched up against my own mother and my sisters, Lucas’s Mom was a phenomenal mother. Some of the other things I gave her credit for will sound sexist, but it isn’t my fault she rocked at these things. She could iron the hell out of a pair of slacks and my dress shirts were always wrinkle free, clean, and smelled great. The apartment was never more than a few minutes from clean and always smelled the way I imagined the clean homes smell in t
hose commercials for cleaning supplies. And this woman had cooking skills that could bring a man to his knees. It almost did the first few nights, but stubbornly, I didn’t want to give her that pleasure of knowing that she had done something well. Yeah, I’m an asshole sometimes, like I’ve told you before.
After my rough day, I was secretly looking forward to coming home to a home cooked meal and spending time with the best kid in the world, but there were no homely smells coming from the kitchen. There was nothing coming from the kitchen but silence and I immediately figured out why when I saw the pair dozing on the couch. I put my briefcase down by the door and shrugged out of my coat before walking into the small living area. Lucas’s Mom was lying on her back, knocked the hell out with Lucas sleeping on her chest. Even sleeping she looked like she was sick. Her nose was red and her cheeks were rosy and she sounded congested as she lightly snored. There was a box of tissues on the floor beside the couch and several discarded tissues nearby.
Careful not to touch her too much, I took Lucas from his mother’s arms so I could put him to bed. She sat up, startled at the loss. When she saw me, she looked relieved and fell back on the couch with exhaustion. I carried Lucas into the bedroom and put him in his bed. I stayed with him for a few minutes, just enjoying watching him sleep. When I came out of the room, his mom was picking up her dirty tissues.
“I'm sorry I didn't cook dinner tonight,” she said through an obviously stuffed nose.
“It's okay. Don't worry about it,” I said as I loosened my tie. I collapsed on the now vacant couch.
“I can make you something,” she said, picking up Lucas’s toys.
“I'm fine, thank you.”
I just wanted her to leave me the hell alone. It wasn’t a requirement for her to make my meals. The fact that she did was appreciated, but I didn’t want her under the impression that this was some kind of amicable arrangement. I was tired and grumpy and I wanted her to just go in the bedroom like she always did when Lucas was in bed, even if it was a little earlier than usual. For a few damn minutes, I just wanted my own apartment back, but since I couldn’t have that I had to settle for her slithering into the other room.