Natural Born Charmer

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  “Good to see you, Blue.” He reached into the refrigerator for a beer.

  “Uh…hi.” She knocked over the flour sack as she fumbled to pick up the spoon.

  Dean grabbed some paper towels. “We have unexpected company in the living room, Jack, so you’ll have to make yourself scarce.” He tilted his head toward Blue. “I’m sure your number one fan over there will save you some dinner.”

  Jack’s eyes followed April, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I can only hide out for so long,” he said. “Your farm’s private property. Even if people figure out I’m here, they won’t be able to get to me.”

  But Dean had spent twenty years avoiding anything that could connect him to Jack Patriot, and he didn’t want Nita Garrison blabbing to everybody that Jack was staying here.

  “Dad went into the beer store today,” Riley said from the doorway. “He was in his work clothes, and he wasn’t wearing any earrings, so nobody recognized him.”

  “Recognized who?” Nita appeared behind her. “That football player? Everybody knows he’s here.” She caught sight of Jack. “Who are you?”

  “That’s my dad,” Riley said quickly. “His name is…Mr. Weasley. Mr. Ron Weasley.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s…He’s April’s boyfriend.”

  April’s eyes snapped as she gestured toward the dining room. “I hope you’re joining us for dinner.”

  Blue snorted. “Like you could keep her away.”

  “I don’t mind if I do. Give me your arm, Riley, so I don’t fall again.”

  “Mrs. Garrison thinks Riley is stupid,” Riley announced to no one in particular.

  “I don’t think you’re stupid,” Nita said “Only your name, and that’s hardly your fault, now is it.” She aimed an accusatory look at Jack.

  “It was her mother’s idea,” he said. “I wanted to name her Rachel.”

  “Jennifer is better.” Nita pushed Riley ahead of her into the dining room.

  Jack turned to Blue. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Some call her Satan. Others Beelzebub. She goes by many names.”

  Dean smiled. “She’s Blue’s employer.”

  “She’s my employer.” Blue slapped a drumstick on the platter.

  “Lucky you,” Jack said.

  Blue pulled a pan of roasted asparagus from the oven. They all began carrying in the serving dishes. Blue’s eyes narrowed when she saw that Nita had positioned herself at the head of the table. Riley sat to her immediate left. Dean quickly set down the biscuit basket and grabbed a side chair at the opposite end, as far away from the old lady as he could get. Jack got rid of the bowl of warm potato salad nearly as quickly and hurried to sit next to Riley in the place across from Dean. April and Blue realized at the same time that only two empty chairs remained, one at the foot of the table and one directly to Nita’s right. They both made a dash for the foot of the table. April had a head start, but Blue played dirty and hip-bumped her. As April lost her rhythm, Blue threw herself into the chair. “Touchdown…”

  “You cheated,” April hissed under her breath.

  “Children…,” Jack said.

  April tossed her hair and marched to take her seat next to Nita, who was complaining to Riley about Blue’s bossiness and missed the whole thing. April now sat to Dean’s immediate left. They began to pass the food. After April filled her plate, Dean was surprised to see her bow her head over her meal for a few moments. When had that happened?

  “Only one biscuit,” Nita said to Riley, taking two herself. “Any more will make you fat again.”

  Blue opened her mouth to jump to Riley’s defense, but Riley handled it herself. “I know. I don’t get as hungry as I used to.”

  As Dean gazed around the table, he saw a travesty of the American family. It was like Norman Rockwell on crack. A grandma who wasn’t a grandma. Parents who weren’t parents. Blue, who didn’t fit into any definable role, except as Mad Jack’s suck-up. She made sure Jack got the biggest piece of chicken and ran to fetch him a clean fork when he accidentally dropped his. Dean remembered sitting around his friends’ dinner tables while he was growing up and longing for a family of his own. He should have been more careful what he wished for.

  Everyone complimented Blue on her cooking except Nita, who complained that the asparagus needed butter. The chicken was crispy and moist. A salty crunch of crumbled bacon topped the warm potato salad, which had a tangy dressing. Blue wasn’t happy with the biscuits, but the rest of them had several.

  “Mrs. Garrison used to teach ballroom dancing,” Riley announced.

  “We know,” Dean and Blue said in unison.

  Nita eyed Jack. “You look familiar.”

  “Do I?” Jack wiped his mouth with his napkin.

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Ron Weasley,” Riley said into her milk glass.

  She was developing some good street smarts, and Dean gave her a surreptitious wink. He just hoped Nita wasn’t too familiar with Harry Potter.

  He waited for Nita to resume her interrogation, but she didn’t. “Shoulders,” she said, and Riley immediately sat straighter in her chair. Nita shifted her eyes between April and Dean. “You two look alike.”

  “You think so?” April helped herself to another spear of roasted asparagus.

  “You’re related, aren’t you?”

  Dean felt himself tense, but his little sister had appointed herself the guardian of family secrets. “Mrs. Garrison’s been giving me posture lessons,” she said. “I’m getting real good at walking with a book.”

  Nita pointed her third biscuit at Blue. “Someone else could use posture lessons.”

  Blue glowered and plunked her elbows on the table.

  Nita gave a triumphant smirk. “See how childish she is.”

  Dean smiled. Blue was definitely being childish, but she looked so cute doing it—a smudge of flour on one cheek, a strand of inky hair trailing down her neck, a mulish expression. How could a woman who was such a mess be so appealing?

  Nita turned her attention to Dean. “Football players make a lot of money for doing nothing.”

  “Pretty much,” Dean said.

  Blue bristled. “Dean works very hard at what he does. Being a quarterback isn’t just physically demanding. It’s very challenging mentally.”

  Riley jumped in as Blue’s backup. “Dean’s played in the Pro Bowl three years straight.”

  “I’ll bet I’m richer than you are,” Nita said.

  “Could be.” Dean eyed her over a chicken wing. “How much you got?”

  Nita let out an indignant huff. “I’m not telling you that.”

  Dean smiled. “Then we’ll never know, will we?”

  Jack, who could buy and sell both of them, gave a snort of amusement. Mrs. Garrison sucked a food sliver from her front teeth and zeroed in on him. “And what do you do?”

  “Right now, I’m building Dean’s porch.”

  “Come look at my windowsills next week. The wood’s rotting.”

  “Sorry,” Jack deadpanned. “I don’t do windows.”

  April smiled at him, and Jack smiled back at her. An intimacy passed between them that shut everybody else out. It only lasted a moment, but no one at the table missed it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  After dinner, Nita announced that she’d wait in the living room until Blue had finished cleaning up and could drive her home. April immediately rose. “I’ll clean up. You go ahead, Blue.”

  But Dean wasn’t ready for Blue to leave. So far, all this little dinner party had accomplished was to remind him how much he missed having her to pal around with during the day and sink into at night. He needed to fix that. “I should burn the trash,” he said. “How about helping me carry it out first?”

  Riley did her best to upset his plan. “I’ll help.”

  “Not so fast.” April began gathering up the plates. “When I said I was cleaning up the kitchen, I meant everybody was helping except
Blue.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said. “We’ve been working on the porch all day. We deserve a little relaxation.”

  Suddenly he and Jack were a team? Not in a million years. Dean grabbed the empty chicken platter. “Sure.”

  Riley jumped up. “I can load the dishwasher.”

  “You’re picking the music,” April said. “And it had better rock.”

  Blue piped in. “I’m not missing out if there’s going to be music. I get to help, too.”

  Riley escorted Nita into the living room while the rest of them cleared the table. She came back with her iPod and plugged it into April’s docking station. “I’d better not hear bubblegum coming out of there,” Jack said. “Radiohead would be okay, or maybe Wilco.”

  April looked up from the sink. “Or Bon Jovi.” Jack stared at her. She shrugged. “One of my guilty pleasures, and I’m not apologizing.”

  “My guilty pleasure is Ricky Martin,” Blue said.

  They looked at Dean, but he refused to participate in this cozy family confessional, so Blue decided to pipe up for him. “Clay Aiken, right?”

  Nita didn’t like being left out, and she shuffled in from the living room. “I always liked Bobby Vinton. And Fabian. He was hot.” She settled at the kitchen table.

  Riley moved toward the open dishwasher. “I sort of like Patsy Cline—Mom had all her stuff—but the kids make fun of me because they don’t know who she is.”

  “Good taste on your part,” Jack said.

  “So what about you?” April asked Jack. “Who’s your guilty pleasure?”

  “That’s easy,” Dean heard himself say. “You’re his guilty pleasure, April. Right, Jack?”

  The uneasy silence that fell over the kitchen made Dean feel churlish. He was used to being the life of the party, not the end of it.

  “Excuse us,” Blue said. “Dean and I have some trash to burn.”

  “Before you go anywhere, Mr. Football Player,” Nita said, “I want to know exactly what your intentions are toward my Blue.”

  Blue groaned. “Somebody please shoot me.”

  “My relationship with Blue is private, Mrs. Garrison.” He pulled the trash from under the sink.

  “I’m sure you’d like to think so,” she retorted.

  April and Jack stopped to watch, more than happy to let Nita do their dirty work. Dean nudged Blue toward the side door. “Excuse us.”

  But Nita wouldn’t let it go that easily. “I know you’re not still engaged. I don’t think you ever had any intention of marrying her. You just want to take what you can get. That’s the way men are, Riley. Every one of them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’s not the way all men are,” Jack said to his daughter. “But Mrs. Garrison has a point.”

  Dean curled his free hand around Blue’s arm. “Blue can take care of herself.”

  “The girl is a walking disaster,” Nita retorted. “Someone has to look out for her.”

  That was too much for Blue. “You don’t care one thing about looking out for me. You just want to make trouble.”

  “Listen to that fresh mouth.”

  “Our engagement is still on, Mrs. Garrison,” he said. “Let’s go, Blue.”

  Riley jumped forward. “Could I like maybe be a bridesmaid or something?”

  “We’re not really engaged,” Blue felt duty bound to inform her. “Dean is amusing himself.”

  Their fake engagement was too convenient to let her spoil it. “We’re engaged,” he said. “Blue is just sulking.”

  Nita rapped her cane on the floor. “Come into the living room with me, Riley. Away from certain people. I’ll show you some exercises to strengthen your leg muscles so you can take ballet again.”

  “I don’t want to take ballet,” Riley muttered. “I want to take guitar lessons.”

  Jack set down the pan he was drying. “You do?”

  “Mom always said she’d teach me, but she never did.”

  “But she showed you some basic chords, right?”

  “No. She didn’t like me touching her guitars.”

  Jack’s expression grew grim. “My acoustic’s at the cottage. Let’s go get it.”

  “Really? You’ll let me play your guitar?”

  “I’ll give you the damned thing.”

  Riley looked as though he’d dropped a diamond tiara on her head. Jack tossed aside the dish towel. Dean pulled Blue outside, not feeling at all guilty about leaving April to Nita’s mercies.

  “I don’t sulk,” Blue said as they stepped off the side porch. “You shouldn’t have said that. And it’s not fair to raise Riley’s hopes about being a bridesmaid.”

  “She’ll survive just fine.” He stalked toward the oil drum where they burned trash. It was full. He struck a match from the box April kept in a Ziploc bag and tossed it in. “Why won’t they all go away? Jack’s still around. April’s not going until Riley does. That old witch is the last straw. I want all of them out of here! Everybody but you.”

  “Except it’s not that easy, is it?”

  No, it wasn’t that easy. As the fire caught, he moved back to sit in the grass and watch the flames. This past week, he’d seen Riley’s confidence grow. Her indoor pallor had faded, and the new clothes April had bought her were already getting loose. He liked working on the porch, too, even if he had to do it with Jack. Every time he drove a nail he felt as though he was putting his own mark on this old farm. Then there was Blue.

  She moved behind him. He picked up a cellophane wrapper that had fallen into the grass and tossed it toward the fire.

  Blue watched as the wadded cellophane landed at the base of the drum, but Dean didn’t seem to care that he’d missed the shot. His brooding profile stood in perfect silhouette against the twilight. She walked over to sit in the grass next to him. Another bandage had appeared on his hand, this one across his knuckles. She touched it. “Construction accident?”

  He propped his elbow on his knee. “I’ve got a fair-size lump on my head, too.”

  “How are you getting along with your coworker?”

  “He doesn’t talk to me, and I don’t talk to him.”

  She crossed her legs and gazed at the fire. “He should at least acknowledge what he did to you.”

  “He has.” He turned his head toward her. “So have you had that particular conversation with your own mother?”

  She plucked a blade of grass. “It’s different with her.” The fire popped. “She’s sort of like Jesus. Would Jesus’s daughter have the right to complain that he’d ruined her childhood because he was always running off saving people’s souls?”

  “Your mother isn’t Jesus, and if people have kids, they should either stick around to raise them or put them up for adoption.”

  She wondered if he intended to be around to raise his kids, but the idea of him at home with his family while she was off globe-trotting depressed her.

  He slipped his arm around her shoulders, and she didn’t say a thing about it. The flames leaped higher. Her blood hummed. She was sick of settling for second best. Just once in her life, she wanted to indulge in a dangerous extravagance. The night wind caught her hair. She rose up to her knees and kissed him. Later, she’d put him in his place. For now, she wanted to live in the moment.

  He didn’t need any encouragement to kiss her back, and before long, they were stumbling behind the barn into the tall grass out of sight of the house.

  Dean didn’t know why Blue had changed her mind, but since she had her fingers inside his waistband, he wasn’t going to ask.

  “I do not want to do this,” she said as she pulled open the fastener of his jeans.

  “Sometimes you have to take one for the team.” He whipped her shorts and panties to her ankles, went to his knees, and nuzzled her. She was sweet, spicy, a heady potion to his senses. Long before he’d had enough of her, she fell apart. He caught her and drew her down, keeping her on top to protect her from the weeds that were jabbing him in the butt. It was a sm
all sacrifice for the reward of finally sinking into that warm, writhing body.

  She grabbed his head between her hands, clenched her teeth, and said fiercely, “Don’t you dare rush me!”

  He understood her point of view, but she was so tight, so wet, and he’d been pushed too far…He sank his fingers into her hips, pulled her down hard, and let himself go.

  Afterward, he was afraid she’d take a swing at him, so he drew her flat on top of him and hooked one of her legs over his hip. Kissing her deeply, he reached between their bodies. She arched and trembled. A surge of protectiveness came over him. He moved his hand and set her free.

  When they were done, he stroked her hair, which had come out of its ratty ponytail. “Just to refresh your memory…” He traced the small of her back under her T-shirt. “You said I didn’t turn you on.”

  She sank her teeth into his collarbone. “You don’t turn me on—not the rational part of me anyway. Unfortunately, I also have slutty parts. Those you definitely turn on.”

  He wasn’t nearly done with her, and he started to touch those slutty parts all over again, but she rolled off him into the weeds. “We can’t stay out here fornicating all night.”

  He grinned. Fornicating, indeed.

  She still wore her T-shirt, but the rest of her was naked. She reached around for her panties, which gave him an outstanding view of her bottom as she spoke. “Riley is the only person who won’t have figured out what we’re doing.” She located the panties, stood up to pull them on, and had the gall to sneer at him. “Here’s the way it’s going to be, Boo. I’ve decided you and I are going to have an affair—short and nasty. I’ll be using you, pure and simple, so don’t go all touchy-feely on me. I don’t care what you’re thinking. I don’t care about your feelings. All I care about is your body. Now are you okay with that or not?”