The Good Guy on my Porch (Catalpa Creek #3)

by Katharine Sadler

  We watched the falls for another few minutes, until I noticed her lips were turning blue and she was being wracked by full-body shivers. Time to get back to shore and into the sunshine. Still, when I gestured toward the pond, she hesitated, reluctant to leave our insanely noisy spot. I let her swim out first, worried her shivering might make swimming difficult for her.

  I didn’t need to worry, she swam back to shore with no problem. “That was amazing,” she said, barely able to speak because her teeth were chattering so hard. “Thank you.”

  I pulled a towel from my bag. It was a small one, easy to pack, and wouldn’t do much to warm her, but she took it with a huge smile and wiped her face dry. “We can lay out in the sun to warm up,” I said, pointing to a large flat boulder just a few feet away.

  She was still shivering, but she handed the towel back to me and headed that way. I couldn’t keep my gaze from dropping to her small backside, perfect in its size and shape, luscious enough to bite. I pulled in a deep breath and pictured the un-sexiest thing I could think of, the phlegm and congested sinuses I’d studied when I was learning about the salt spa business, my latest profit and loss report from the accountant, the chicken dinner Molly had burned to a crisp the night before.

  “Are you going to stand over there all day?” Dilly called in her voice that seemed too big for her small body, that voice that never failed to make me smile and now ruined all my hard work at reminding my body I couldn’t have her. She was stretched out on the rock and she raised her arms above her head, putting every inch of her perfect body on full display. “It feels so good in the sun.”

  Well, that confirmed it, there was nothing to be done, I was just going to have live in a perpetual state of arousal until she put her clothes back on.

  I pulled in another deep breath and joined her on the rock. I sat while she laid back and stretched out like the boulder was a feather mattress. “What do you think?” I asked. “Maybe being out here isn’t so bad?”

  She said nothing. She’d fallen asleep, her lashes dark and long over her porcelain skin, her lips slightly parted.

  I watched her while she slept, her chest rising and falling with easy breaths, her face wiped clean of all worry and stress.

  I soaked in the warm sun and watched the way the sunlight sparked rainbows in the waterfall, feeling that peace wash over me that only comes from time spent in nature, and then I shook her gently. “Sweetheart,” I said. “It’s time to get up.”

  “I’m fine, Momma,” she said, her calm countenance twisting. “Everything’s okay.”

  Based on her expression, it was clear nothing was okay. I shook her again. “Dilly.” I wanted to wake her from whatever concern was twisting her face. “You need to get up or you’re going to burn.”

  Her eyes popped open, and then she squinted against the bright sun. She sat up slowly, her confusion clearing as she looked around. “I fell asleep?”

  “I guess the hike tired you out.”

  She stretched again, and I looked away. “Thanks for waking me. I burn crazy easy and I forgot to put on sunscreen this morning before we left.”

  “Do you feel dry enough to get dressed and head back down?”

  “I think so,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be dry by the time we get to the car, anyway.”

  I stood and offered her my hand. She accepted it, her small hand slipping into mine. I pulled her up, but she didn’t let go. She gave my hand a squeeze and looked up into my eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t say I’ll ever consider hiking my favorite thing to do, but today has been an amazing day.”

  She let go of my hand and walked over to get her clothes. I just stood there for a moment watching her and wondering how a woman who’d lived in the valley her entire life had never seen this waterfall, had never gone for a hike. I shook it off. She’d probably just never had anyone outdoorsy offer to take her.

  We dressed in silence and walked back down to the car at a quick pace. “I thought going down would be easier than going up, but my legs are shaking,” Dilly said once we were back in the parking lot.

  “Going down is less a lung workout and more a leg workout. It’s good for you, maybe you’ll grow some muscle.”

  She flicked me off with a good-natured smile and climbed into the car. “I don’t know about you,” I said, when I got behind the wheel. “But I’m starving. Want to get something to eat?”

  Her head was down, her gaze on her phone. I was sure she had plans with her possessive boyfriend, but she looked up and gave me a warm smile. “Sure. I get to pick, since I survived the hike.”

  “Sounds fair to me. Where do you want to go?”

  “Well, it’s too early for dinner, and too late for lunch, so ice cream is the only option.”

  “Webster’s?” I asked, naming a popular ice cream shop in town.

  “Nah,” she said. “I prefer the ice cream at Maxwell’s. Do you know it? The Italian Diner on Center street.”

  “I didn’t know they have ice cream.”

  She shook her head in dismay. “You’ve lived here a year and you don’t know about Maxwell’s ice cream? I’m getting the feeling you’re one of those guys to whom dessert is not such a big deal.”

  It was true, I rarely got dessert. I preferred real food to sugary fluff. “I guess you’ll have to teach me.”

  “Someone certainly needs to.”

  I started the car and drove us back down the mountain and into town. Dilly fiddled with the radio and found a pop station playing a song I know she liked, because she bounced in her seat and then sang along at the top of her lungs. When the chorus came around the second time, she smacked my shoulder and gestured for me to sing.

  I shook my head. I didn’t sing. Ever. My singing had been known to scare small children and baby animals.

  She turned the volume down and twisted in her seat to face me. “Sing with me,” she said. “If you’re singing, you can’t hear how bad I sound.”

  “I like how you sound,” I said, completely serious.

  I glanced over to see her face scrunched in annoyance. “Trust me, no one likes how I sing. And if I can sing, with my terrible voice, you can, too. It’s the least you can do for me since I went on your hike.”

  “How long are you going to milk that?”

  She shrugged and spun to face forward again. “As long as humanly possible. Now. Sing.”

  She turned the volume back up, and a new song was playing. She gave me time to learn the chorus, which wasn’t hard since the entire song seemed to consist of the same three words repeated over and over. I mouthed the words, pretending to sing, but she slapped my shoulder again and glared and I sang for real.

  I wasn’t a fan of pop music, but I had to admit it was kind of fun, singing along to the radio with Dilly, laughing at her silly hand motions and the exaggerated expressions she pulled whenever I looked her way.

  By the time we arrived at Maxwell’s we were both laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.

  “You really do have a terrible singing voice,” she said, once I’d parked and turned off the radio.

  “I warned you.”

  She grinned. “It’s okay. I like it. I mean it’s truly terribly, but that deep voice singing along to pop music is…” She shook her head like she couldn’t figure it out. “I just like it. I’m making a rule that whenever we ride together, we must always sing together.”

  She spit on her palm and stuck her hand out. I just stared at it, confused. She rolled her eyes. “All new rules must be agreed upon with a spit shake.”

  Dilly seemed lighter, happier and, as much as I’d liked her before, I knew I could fall for this Dilly before I even realized what was happening. I spit on my palm and shook her hand.

  She grinned and wiped her hand on her shorts. “The new rule is official and unbreakable.”

  Her phone buzzed and her smile cracked when she looked at it. “I’ve got to take this. I’ll meet you inside?”

  I wanted to argue, hating whoever was o
n the other end of that call for making her sad, but her phone was still ringing and it wasn’t really my business. I got out of the car as she put the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The movie was longer than I’d expected.”

  I shut the door and my hands curled into fists. There was something wrong with a man who needed to know where his girlfriend was every second of every day, something wrong when a woman who had to lie to her boyfriend about where she was.

  I also knew, from growing up with four older sisters, that straight-out telling her the guy was acting like a jerk would get me nowhere. Probably less than nowhere because she wasn’t my sister and could just avoid me if she didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I stalked into Maxwell’s and got us a table near the window.

  “Didn’t you order?” she asked when she came in fifteen minutes later, her earlier happiness and calm gone, replaced by sadness and a crinkle of worry between her brows.

  “You’re the expert here.” I forced a smile. “I was hoping for some advice about what to order.”

  Her smile grew and appeared more genuine. “What do you like?”

  You. I really, really like you. “I don’t know,” I said, just to make her smile. “I’ve heard vanilla is a good flavor.”

  She mock gasped and slapped a hand to her chest. “Bless your cotton-pickin’ heart. You are in serious need of help. You just stay right there, and I’ll bring you something delicious.”

  She paused before heading to the counter. “Do you have any allergies?”

  “None.”

  Her smile widened. “Perfect.”

  She returned five minutes later, her hands full of two of the largest waffle cones I’d ever seen, with about five scoops of ice cream in each cone. And it looked like each scoop was a different flavor, all crazy neon colors. I stood and took my cone and she sat with hers. It was bigger than her head.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “The reason I love Maxwell’s. They’ve got all the crazy weird ice cream flavors kids love, superman, birthday cake, cotton candy, pop tart.” She bounced a bit in her seat. “So much fun.”

  “I’m concerned I’ll be glowing if I eat all this.”

  “Nah. You’ll just poop funny colors for a while.”

  She attacked her ice cream with an impressive hunger. I took a cautious taste of the neon blue, yellow, and red top scoop, the superman flavor, I assumed. It tasted like sugar and my stomach growled with hunger. I might try to eat healthy, but my body appreciated quick and easy calories as much as the next body.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. I was dying to ask about her phone call, to warn her away from any guy that controlling and possessive, but I didn’t want the sadness to return to her face. “There’s no way you’re going to eat all that ice cream,” I said instead.

  She paused in her sugar consumption and looked at me, then back to the ice cream. “It is kind of a lot, isn’t it?” She batted her eyelashes and pitched her voice higher. “Maybe my eyes were bigger than my stomach.”

  “I don’t know about your eyes, but that cone is definitely bigger than your stomach.”

  She took a long lick that had me forgetting what we’d been talking about. “Do you think so?”

  I chuckled. “Yep.”

  “Want to make a bet?”

  “A bet?” I was so surprised, I forgot to eat and a drop of ice cream landed on my hand. I licked it off and took a big swipe of my cone before I faced her again. Her expression had gone a bit glazed. Clearly, she was already in a sugar coma. No way would she finish that cone. “What did you have in mind?”

  “We could bet money, but that’s boring. I think we should wager favors.” She ate some more ice cream and then a smile spread slowly over her face. “How about this? If I finish this cone, you cook me dinner for a week. If I don’t, I’ll do your laundry for a month.”

  “You don’t want to cook me dinner for a week?” I wasn’t sure I wanted her washing my boxers and sweaty socks. She’d hardly think I was sexy after that.

  She scrunched her nose. “I’m a terrible cook, sorry.”

  I nodded and considered. “How about if you don’t finish it, you’ll wash my dinner dishes for a month?” That way she’d be in my house every night for a month and I might just find my way to having her eat dinner with me every night, too.

  She spit on her hand and extended it across the table. “Deal.”

  We spit-shook on it and went back to eating our ice cream. I managed about five more bites of my cone before I admitted defeat. I wasn’t worried that Dilly would finish.

  I threw out the rest of my cone and watched with increasing surprise and a bit of nausea as she ate her way through every last bite of her dessert. When she was done, she threw her arms in the air and did a little victory dance in her seat.

  “How did you fit that in your belly?” I asked. She slid out of her seat and stood. She lifted her shirt, poking her slightly rounded stomach out.

  “I’ve got an ice cream baby. And it feels so good.”

  I shook my head. “You have untold depths.”

  She grinned. “You have no idea. Get over here. I want to show you something.”

  She led me to the front of the restaurant and a line of framed photographs on the wall I’d walked right by on the way in. She pointed to the first one, of a little girl with thick hair and big brown eyes, grinning in front of an empty glass bowl. “I won for the first time when I was ten.”

  “Won?” I leaned in and looked closer. Yep, it was a mini-Dilly. The wall was covered with framed photographs and, as I looked them over, I saw that most of them were pictures of Dilly.

  “If you finish the biggest ice cream options on the menu,” she said. “Max gives you a coupon for a free ice cream. I’ve won every year since I was ten. Now, I get free ice cream here for life.”

  “No wonder it’s your favorite place.”

  She spun toward the take-out window. “I finished it,” she hollered. A cheer went up from the back, followed by a chant of Dilly, Dilly, Dilly. Dilly danced to the chant, then grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the restaurant, laughing all the way.

  ***

  Molly was sitting on the porch, staring despondently at her phone, when Dilly and I started up the walk. I had every intention of introducing Dilly to my sister, but a ringing from Dilly’s place had her rushing inside with mumbled thanks.

  Molly looked up at me, her eyes damp and red-rimmed. “Hey, brother,” she said, forcing a smile. “How was the hike?”

  “It was great. What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

  She shrugged, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “Just having a rough day. I’ll be fine.”

  I sat on the steps next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in for a side-hug. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on. I can’t help unless you talk to me.”

  “I know. I just…I just need some time.”

  “Is this about Daniel? Did you two break up?”

  Her expression hardened, the sadness chased by anger. “No, we’re okay.”

  “Is there something going on with Mom and Dad that no one wants to tell me about?” I was really stretching there. Our parents had been together since college and were still more in love than any two people I’d ever known.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it, Oscar. I have a couple weeks free and I just want to get away from it all, to remember who I am and to figure out what to do next.”

  I squeezed her against my chest, hating that she was this upset and wishing there was something I could do to help her, someone I could beat up or chase away, some way to fix this. “I’ll give you as much space as you can stand, but when you’re ready to talk, I’m here.”

  “I know you are. Thank you.”

  She slipped out from under my arm and went inside, sniffling as she went. “Want to watch a movie?” I called after her. “I’ll make popcorn.”

  “I’m just going to bed. I�
��ll see you in the morning.”

  I stayed on the porch, watching the sun slip behind the mountains, waiting for Dilly to come out and join me, but she didn’t show. Her half of the duplex was dark and quiet, like she wasn’t home at all. Maybe she’d slipped out the back and joined her boyfriend for a date, or maybe he’d slipped in and they were tangled up in one another. The thought made my stomach turn and my jaw clench, but it was good to remind myself she wasn’t mine.

  I wondered if her stomach ached after all that ice cream she’d eaten, wondered if she was hurting and alone. I was on my feet, my hand raised to knock on her door, before I realized I was just looking for any excuse to talk to her again, to see her big eyes and her warm smile. I stepped back from the door and went into my own half of the duplex.

  I needed to accept Dilly and I were friends, would only ever be just friends, but I wasn’t going to be able to do that if I sat on my own front porch watching the sunset and waiting for her, thinking of her. I needed a distraction, I needed to get my own social life.

  I sent Aubrey a quick text, That set-up you mentioned? Set it up.

  She didn’t respond, and I figured she was sleeping or putting babies to bed. I don’t know how she’d found the time to meet the woman she claimed was ‘perfect’ for me, but Aubrey was one of the smartest and most capable people I knew.