Tempting Mr. Perfect

by Rebecca Rose

  Kathy turned those chocolate eyes on his and Dave knew he’d be miserable for the rest of his life without her but if it meant her happiness, so be it. He wouldn’t push.

  “Dave, I’m leaving for the day. Is there anything else you need?” Kathy asked.

  Yeah. You. “No, I’m good.”

  Kathy took a ragged breath when her eyes fell on Owen. “Detective.”

  “Miss Smith.”

  Kathy looked over his shoulder. “Jake.”

  “Kathy.”

  “Louie,” Kathy remarked.

  “Kathy,” Louie saluted with his drink.

  “Dave,” Dave said, feeling a little left out.

  Jake’s lips twitched. “Owen.”

  “Sanders,” the detective answered.

  “Okay, so now that we’re all acquainted,” Dave smirked, “what’s next? How about a game of golf?”

  “Never was good at it,” Owen countered.

  “How about target shooting?” Jake suggested, with a wiggle of his brows.

  “Now that’s just asking for trouble. Go away, Jake.” The need to hit his brother came on sudden and strong.

  “I personally like something quieter like…” Kathy rolled her eyes to the ceiling in deep thought. “Fishing. Never know what you’ll find, or lose, in the water.” All three men stared at her. “What?”

  “Kathy.” Dave leaned over the bar, cupped her chin in his hand, and kissed her soundly. “What a great idea. The two of us on a boat… alone. Fishing and enjoying each other,” he added with a wink.

  She pulled back suddenly, red faced and flustered. “I… ah. See you tonight at dinner.” Then she sprinted out of the room.

  Dave watched her leave. Man, he loved the look in Kathy’s eyes when he flustered her. Sexy.

  Chapter Ten

  “Wait, wait, wait! Remember the time we filled my father’s car with pine air fresheners?” Mitch asked with bubbling enthusiasm.

  “You did not!” Simone, Mitch’s wife exclaimed.

  “We didn’t just fill it, Mitch. We rubbed those nasty things all over his cloth seats. I smelled like a pine tree for days!” Dave reminded him.

  Renee laughed loud and spoke louder. “As soon as that boy walked into my house, I knew he’d been up to something! Dad and I called your parents right away ’cause we’d known he’d been with you.”

  Mitch sat back in his dinner seat, threw an arm around the back of his wife’s chair, and tsk-tsked the past antic. “He was sooo pissed. That car smelled until the day he turned it in.”

  Dave chuckled. “I think it was after that he told you to stop hangin’ with me.”

  “No. That was after we disguised shaving cream as whipped cream and my mother put it on her ice cream.”

  “That’s just mean and disgusting.” Kathy tried to look disappointed in Dave but couldn’t quite pull it off. The chuckle rose in her throat until it finally released itself with a snort.

  Simone laughed as she fed their baby more food. “You won’t do nasty things like that will you, Emma?”

  Dave chuckled as he watched Simone kiss her daughter on the head making Emma giggle and then squeal. Mitch sure had done right by himself—a beautiful wife and daughter, a successful architecture firm. There wasn’t anything his friend had that Dave wouldn’t have given his left arm to have.

  When Mitch turned and kissed his wife, Dave thought. “Good for him. He deserves to be happy.”

  He and Mitch had met in between fourth and fifth grade while attending summer camp and soon became inseparable. Their antics had started there with cherry bombs in the outhouses. Of course they never got caught but Dave had a feeling his parents knew it was him and Mitch. Especially with all the things they did in the years following their buddying up.

  “You think that was bad,” Jake told Kathy. “You should have seen the look on our parents’ faces when these two changed the locks on the house doors. They bought the same handles and everything! Mom and Dad couldn’t get in.”

  “Mitch, remember that?” Dave said with nostalgia. Reminiscing on the harmless pranks he used to play on his and Mitch’s parents was always a fun time. Plus their parents had been easy targets and good sports.

  “I remember grounding you for a month.” Renee smiled at her son. “Course I blamed it on Mitch.”

  “It was my idea, Mrs. Sanders,” Mitch confessed.

  George slapped him on the back. “And a good one at that.”

  “I miss your parents, Mitch,” Renee said with a sigh.

  “We all do. They were good people.” With a pensive smile he turned to Kathy. “They were in Tower One of the World Trade Center bombing.”

  “Oh, no! I’m so sorry, Mitch.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dave cleared his throat, “Remember when we tried to teach your mother how to snow ski?”

  Simone looked at her husband and pleaded, “Oh, Mitch, tell me you didn’t do to her what you did to me!”

  With the light restored in his eyes, Mitch replied, “No, we started her off on the bunny hill and she fell every five feet until she got to the bottom.”

  George and Jake’s laughter rang through the restaurant. “Dad and I stayed at the lodge. Warm and toasty,” Jake reminded them.

  “I told her not to trust those boys,” Renee said to Kathy and Simone. “I’m surprised they took it seriously and didn’t leave the poor girl at the top of the mountain.”

  “You’d’ve skinned us alive, Ma.”

  “Yes, I would have.”

  “Besides it was a hell of a lot of fun watching my mom fall and listening to her swear,” Mitch informed Renee.

  “Something she didn’t do often,” Dave added with a salute of his drink.

  “Jake, you never did anything wild and crazy?” Kathy inquired with her chin resting in her hand.

  “Not like these two.”

  “Jake was too busy being a Boy Scout, Muffin.” Dave liked seeing the way her eyes warmed when he called her that—like a sweet little nickname let her know she had his full attention even in a room full of people. “Here, let me hold her.” Dave took Emma in his arms when Simone took her out of her highchair. His leg instinctively started to bounce when he sat the cherub down on his lap.

  “I’ve seen pictures of Jake in that Boy Scout uniform,” Sophie announced. “Gosh, you were a looker even then.” She leaned into him and Jake kissed her gently on the lips.

  “Bet that fine ass I was. But Mitch is leaving out the fact that he’d been a Scout, too.”

  “Sure was.” Simone wrapped an arm through her husband’s and leaned into him.

  “Really?” Kathy’s eyes fell on Mitch, who’d been studying her with curiosity. “What?” she asked.

  “You must have some crazy stories, too. Come on, Kathy, we’ve been hogging the conversation all night.”

  “Some new stories would be nice,” George told her.

  “Come on,” Dave prompted. When she looked at him and her eyes fell on the baby remorse and yearning filled them.

  “Well… I used to sneak Sophie out of her bedroom window to go to late night movies. Did your parents ever find out about that?”

  “My dad did. But he never told my mother.” Sophie took a sip of her water then retorted, “Kathy’s parents are hippies.”

  “What?” the group queried in unison.

  “Thanks, Sophie.”

  “That’s what friends are for.”

  “What do you mean?” Renee added, leaning forward.

  “Genuine hippies. My parents went with their parents to Woodstock. We lived out of a trailer for the first six years of my life and then only tents in the summer. It was awful.”

  “Wow. I wouldn’t have thought that. You seem so…” Dave’s words trailed off.

  “Conservative?” she answered for him.

  “Yeah.” He looked down at Emma and kissed her fuzzy head. She was such a good baby. He hadn’t heard her once cry or fuss. Mitch and Simone were truly lucky people.
r />   “Well, you either embrace the life or go the opposite way of it.” Kathy lifted the dinner napkin off her lap and began to pick at the fabric.

  “She even changed her name,” Sophie announced.

  “Oh, God. Really? You had to bring that up?”

  “Now I see why my boy’s so fascinated with you. There’s a lot to know. Tell us more,” George urged.

  “There really isn’t any more.” Kathy cringed.

  In a friendly gesture, Mitch took her hand. “What was your birth name?”

  “Aaagggg. Karma Moonshine.” At the burst of laughter, Kathy covered her face. “I know. I know. That’s why I changed it.”

  “So,” Dave said while handing the baby back to Simone. “Guess I’m not the only one with a crazy history. When did you stop being Karma?”

  Pressing her lips together, Kathy looked to Sophie for an out and when she didn’t get one she replied, “Sophie brought me. I did it when I was nineteen. I figured no one would take me seriously with a name like that.”

  Dave took a sip of his beer while eyeing Kathy. “Humph.”

  Mitch, who still held her hand, asked, “Brothers? Sisters?”

  She took a deep breath. “I have one brother, Zen, who’s eleven months younger than me.”

  “Kathy comes from a very eccentric family,” Sophie stated.

  “That’s a sweet way to put it, Soph. My parents and their friends are nudists—on top of being tree huggers.”

  Dave nearly choked on his beer as he looked at her with wide eyes. “Nudists. As in no clothes?”

  “Not a stitch to sleep, swim, or make breakfast in. It wasn’t easy growing up… and kinda creepy. Sleepovers were out of the question because my friends’ parents didn’t want their children subjected to our way of life. Can’t really blame them. On top of that, my ‘family,’ or our colony of naked hippies, thought I was weird because I wore a bathing suit and pajamas by the time I was nine. I refused to see anyone in the buff or them see me. I pretty much isolated myself.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Simone announced with disgust.

  “It was terrible. My parents’ friends would come and hug you and stuff.” Kathy acknowledged the horror of it with a fake gag noise.

  Dave leaned in and kissed her cheek as his heart ached for the little girl she used to be. “How did they feel about you being different?”

  “It’s their way of life along with their friends and my grandparents. I don’t tell them it’s wrong, so they don’t tell me mine is.”

  “George dear, can you imagine us skinny-dipping with youngsters at our age?”

  “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t want to subject anyone to this body but my lovely wife.”

  “Thank you, Dad, we appreciate that. Right, Jake?” Dave slapped his brother on the shoulder.

  “More than you can possibly understand.”

  “There is very little in this world that can shock me. Well… at least in the unconservative way.” Kathy gave Dave a rueful smile. “Though your tattoos did surprise me.”

  He leaned into her—wanting to be close and smell her perfume. “I do my best to look the part of outstanding citizen.”

  “You do it well.”

  Was she flirting with him in front of his parents? Dave felt pride in knowing she was comfortable enough to let down her guard. He watched his parents, a couple for over thirty years, joke with and kiss each other with unwavering love. Did Kathy’s parents love their children and each other like that? Glancing at her and having their eyes meet and hold, Dave’s life path suddenly became clear—he was supposed to be in this very spot, at this very moment. Everything he’d been through and had worked toward led up to the realization that loving Kathy was his reward.

  When Dave winked at her, heat rose to her ears.

  “Why do you do that to me?” she whispered in his ear. “It’s so unfair. You know how easy I blush.”

  “Oh, I haven’t made you blush yet,” Dave teased.

  “Let’s not go there, bro,” Jake warned, loud and robust.

  Sophie leaned over to her man. “Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s cute. Puppy love. Remember when we talked all mushy to each other.”

  “I distinctly remember us yelling at each other and—”

  “—you running away from me?”

  “I never ran from anything.”

  Dave snorted. “Right. Mitch, what do you think?”

  “I remember him running to get your parents when we set the woods on fire.… By accident,” he assured Kathy.

  “I’m sure,” Simone retorted.

  A dessert of chocolate mousse and strawberries was brought in and everyone gave Sophie an odd look when she refused.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Kathy asked her friend, whose hand was resting on her stomach.

  “Just the flu. Figures that I’d make it through the winter but not the spring without being sick.”

  “Are you sure, dear?” Renee leaned over and placed her hand on Sophie’s forehead. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  Ghost white and with his mouth gapping open, Jake looked at Sophie with horror. “What? No. Absolutely not.”

  “Thanks, honey, glad to know you’d be supportive.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant.” Mild irritation oozed from Sophie’s words. “I’m sure I’m not expecting any surprises. The doctor said it’s a case of the flu and some low iron.”

  “That’s what happened to me when I was first pregnant.” Terror streaked across Jake’s face when he looked at Simone. “I’m just saying,” she told him.

  “Well, that’s too bad,” George said. “We’ve been waiting for grandchildren for a while now and only Mitch has had the decency to procreate.”

  “And then we don’t get to see him but once every couple years,” Renee finished.

  “I’m not going to be rushed into anything.” Jake defended himself.

  “Who said anything about you?” Renee joked. “If the girl’s pregnant and you don’t like it, then get the hell out.”

  “Yeah,” George agreed. “We like her better, anyway.”

  “Obviously,” Jake grumbled.

  “And how about you, Kathy?”

  “Dad,” Dave warned.

  “What? I just want to know how she’s feelin’ about kids.”

  The truth was Dave did too, especially with the way she’d been looking at Emma.

  Wouldn’t they make some nice-looking babies together?

  * * *

  “I like them,” Kathy admitted while smiling at Emma. “And I think having a few would be a ton of fun—and trouble.”

  “You’re not kidding,” Renee agreed. “Our David took on all the trouble our neighbors kids, his cousins, and all his friends would have been in. Bless him for taking that challenge on in the name of fun.” She smiled at her son with such love Kathy’s eyes began to sting with tears. How she wished her parents looked at her like that.

  “Thanks, Ma.”

  “You did good, boy,” George told his son. “Not many people can come back from the dead.”

  “The dead?” Kathy asked.

  The table became very quiet. Mitch shifted in his seat, Sophie excused herself to go the ladies’ room with Simone, who needed to change the baby, and Jake grabbed his, his father’s, and Mitch’s glasses then headed to the bar for refills. Kathy wasn’t sure what would be coming next but it felt serious by the thick, nervous air swirling around them.

  Renee spoke first as Dave continued to stare at his father with scorn. “Dave had an accident and left us for a short time.”

  With concern Kathy laid a hand on Dave’s shoulder. “What kind of accident?” The shock of his answer rendered her speechless for what seemed to be an eternity but in reality was a half a second.

  “It was an overdose on drugs and I spent some time in a coma,” he explained.

  Dave’s eyes bore into hers, daring Kathy to walk. But she wasn’t that kind of person. Trus
t was as important to her as it was to Dave and he needed to know that.

  “Dave, my parents are hippies. You think I haven’t been around that kind of stuff. Seen something like that happen before? Don’t be mad at your father.”

  “I’m more embarrassed than pissed. I wasn’t a drug addict, Kathy.”

  “I will back you up there, Dave,” Mitch assured his friend. “He just got his hands on stuff that was laced with something else.”

  “Scary,” Renee added, then downed the rest of her martini.

  “I’m sure. I was twelve when I got my first marijuana contact high. My parents thought it was hilarious. My father’s best friend said I was officially a grown-up.”

  Mitch winced. “Creepy. Your parents didn’t protect you much.”

  “No… they didn’t.” She felt her eyes blink rapidly while her mind scrambled to find something else to say.

  “If I’d listened to my parents, it wouldn’t have happened.” The disdain with himself was evident, and so was the love all the people at the table had for him.

  “Hey, big brother, don’t be so hard on yourself.” Jake gave Dave a good slap on the back after passing the fresh drinks out to everyone. “My brother here was a real good dancer at one time, too.”

  Dave buried his head in his hands. “I’m in hell.”

  “Really?” Kathy’s imagination took flight as the thought of Dave stripping down to nothing became an alluring image.

  “No!” Dave insisted. “I worked at a strip club not—”

  “Oh yes!” Renee confirmed. “Our David can really—”

  “Pleasssse, Ma. I’ve been embarrassed enough tonight.” His eyes pleaded with his mother who then reached across the table and gave his face a couple good-natured taps.

  “I don’t know, Dave, maybe you haven’t.” Kathy turned to his mother. “What kind of dancing?” she asked with a wink.

  George looked uncomfortable. “Can we find something else to talk about?”

  “Thank you, Dad.”

  “You’re welcome, Dave. And I’m very happy you don’t sell your body for money anymore.” There was a slight twitch to the sides of George’s mouth as he struggled to keep a straight face.