by Zoe York
“Listen—” From her back pocket, her phone rang, cutting him off. She gave him an apologetic squeeze before answering it.
From Karen’s one-sided conversation, it sounded like she had a potential tenant coming to see the house the next day. As she chatted about references and deposits, he eased his way around her body until her back was pressed against his front, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, burying his face in her hair.
He’d gotten used to having her next door. It would be strange not being able to look out the window and know if she was around. It would make it that much more complicated to spend time together when she came home from school. He wouldn’t be able to steal five minutes like this while Megan got ready for bed. She’d stay at her parents’ place on the outskirts of town, and he’d have no idea if she was up late, or early. Would anyone notice when she got stressed out?
Maybe she could stay with him.
God, he was going about this all the wrong ways. That would just scare her off, make her think he ran hot and cold and didn’t know what he really wanted.
He might be scared shitless at the thought of messing this up, but there was no doubt in his mind what he wanted. Karen, in his life, as much as her life allowed.
She ended the call and tipped her head sideways so he could see her profile. “Do you know the Wagners?”
He shook his head, enjoying the rub of her skin under his nose. She hadn’t used her regular shampoo, this was something generic, the hotel shampoo probably. A pleasant, mildly citrus, clean smell, but not Karen. But her skin smelled just right, and if he nibbled…yeah, it tasted perfect, too.
“Paul! Focus.” She twisted in his arms and grinned. “One of the Wagner kids works for me at the grocery store. He’s the youngest of five, and one of his older brothers is looking to rent a house with his girlfriend. I’ll still need to meet them to make it official, but I think I’ve found a tenant!”
“That’s great.” He tipped her head back and feathered kisses down her neck, bending his knees as he reached her collarbone. “Want to meet back here after our housemates fall asleep, and we can celebrate properly?”
“Mmmm.” She half-groaned, half-sighed under his mouth, and he was tempted to push her into the shadows, but she stepped back. His dick ached hot and heavy, more so again when she dropped her eyes to take in his obvious want of her. A wicked smile, pure pleasure, curled up her face, and he leaned in for one final taste.
“Two hours?” She nodded. “Okay, see you then. Wear a skirt.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“How’s Karen’s brother?” Megan sat cross-legged on her bed.
“I didn’t ask. Her sister is visiting for the night, and they were about to watch a movie, so I just said hi.” Paul relaxed against the doorframe. “And she said to say hi to you, as well. Maybe we can do something, the three of us, tomorrow or the next day.”
“Did you ask her out yet?”
He chuckled. “No, not yet.”
“You can’t take her for granted, Dad. What if someone else asks her out first?”
Then he’d find himself on the wrong side of the law, most likely. “I don’t think that’s a concern, sweetheart.”
“Uh, really? Have you seen Karen? She’s hot. And nice. And she likes books. I’m pretty sure a lot of guys ask her out.”
He would’ve thought so, too, but it didn’t seem to be the case. That was a puzzle that he’d like to figure out. Maybe after he’d secured the title of exclusive boyfriend, though. He wasn’t a martyr.
“I’m going to ask her out on a real date, real soon. For now, we’re just going to play it cool and hang out with her as friends, okay?”
“Please, I saw you kiss her.”
Shit. What had he been thinking? Of course Megan would be nosy. No, not nosy. Normally curious. Shit, fuck, damn…
“Stop swearing in your head.” His ten-year-old was too clever by half.
“Don’t use my mind reading tricks against me.”
“It’s not mind-reading, just basic psychology.” Meg parroted back his oft-quoted line at him, and they both laughed, but Paul quickly sobered up and moved to join his daughter on her bed.
“Hey, seriously. I’m sorry that you saw me kiss Karen.”
“Why?”
An excellent question.
“Because I want to do this right. Like I told you the other night, I’m serious about wanting to see her more, be her boyfriend, go on dates. Because she deserves that kind of respect. And you do, too.”
“It’s just a bit of kissing, Dad. I mean, I think it’s pretty gross, but I know that when I’m grown up a bit more, I’ll want to kiss people.”
“Oh god, you’re going to give me a heart attack.” He laid his hands over his chest in mock horror. “You talk to your mom about stuff like this?”
“Yep. She’s the one who told me that kissing is okay. I mean, more okay than other stuff.”
“What do you mean?” Paul willed himself the courage to be brave and answer appropriately, no matter where this conversation went.
“You know, other stuff. Mom said that if anyone talks to me about sex, that I should tell her, or you, or someone safe like Karen. But if a boy wanted to kiss me, and I wanted him to kiss me, then that was okay, because it’s normal and healthy.”
“Your mom is pretty smart.”
“I know. She takes after me.” Megan snorted as she crawled under her covers, pushing him off her bed in the process. “I’m going to read for a bit, okay?”
“Sure. Nighty night.”
“Daaa-ad!”
“Whatever, kiddo. You’re still my little girl.” He patted her foot and headed for the door.
Audrey fell asleep before Jake got to the church, but roused in time to mouth the final few lines of dialogue with Karen. Then she stumbled to the spare room and fell asleep again, still in her clothes. There were worse things.
Karen rinsed their mugs and left them in the sink to wash properly the next day. She was itching to see Paul. She was about to head upstairs to put on a sundress when he knocked at the door for the second time that night.
“Hey, that was sooner than I expected.”
“I came over as soon as Meg fell asleep.”
She laced her arms around his shoulders. “Book on her face?”
“You know it. I just turned out her light.”
“She’s such a good kid.”
He nodded. “But growing up way too fast. She saw us kissing tonight, and that led to a sex talk, and oh my god, I’m so not ready for that.”
“Crap. It’s always out of the blue, isn’t it?” She tipped her forehead into his neck and laughed softly. “I guess that puts a damper on your libido for the night, huh?”
He groaned and pulled her tight against his body. “Just about the only thing that could, darlin’.”
“It’s okay, I’m tired.”
“I wish you could come over and sleep in my bed.”
“You are a very nice body pillow, I must admit.”
“Want a neck rub? Come sit on the deck with me for a few minutes before you turn in.”
She couldn’t think of anything better.
The next morning, Audrey drove the RV to their parent’s place, and Karen followed her. After parking it on the concrete pad behind the loft, they headed for the city.
Davis called with an update that wasn’t much of an update, but at least the holding pattern was better than full-out crisis. It was hard to leave Audrey after that call, it seemed like they should stick together longer, but Audrey had class and Karen had potential tenants to meet. A quick glance at the clock told her she had time to hit the Victoria’s Secret outlet shop, though, and so she did. Given that Megan was staying with Paul for almost a week, due to summer holidays, she wasn’t sure when she’d get a chance to share her new finds, but the thought of his fingers slipping inside her waistband and brushing over new lace gave her a thrill all by itself.
And this was what life would be,
dating a single dad. And it didn’t matter if something else would be different, more time or less, because this was all she wanted. Paul, however she could get him.
She thought about grabbing a Starbucks for the drive, but she owed Carrie a visit, and two back-to-back lattes would have her up all night. Not getting one at Bun was out of the question, of course. She shifted into sixth gear, thankful that Paul wasn’t working today. It would be awkward to get a speeding ticket from a potential boyfriend.
The shop smelled like lemon glaze, and Carrie reached for the milk pitcher as soon as she stepped in the door. She knew the drill. “Welcome home, Hulkster!”
“Thank you muchly. And thanks for the muffins, Audrey stayed over last night and we devoured them all.”
“It was the least I could do. Can I ask how Chase is? I saw a bit of a press conference this morning, but they didn’t say much.”
Karen shrugged. “Yep, that’s about the sum of it. I think we’ll know more at the end of the week, he’ll have another round of x-rays then.”
“Tell your mom I’m thinking of her.”
Carrie had two little kids, and her five year old son was itching to play hockey, just like Chase Miller. Carrie could probably very well imagine what Karen’s mom was going through.
Karen sank onto one of the barstools and gratefully accepted the latte her friend slid across the counter. Would she have greater insight into her mother’s situation if she had kids herself? Having kids had always seemed a useless academic question in the past—one would need a serious boyfriend first—but now she was looking, for the first time, at that possibility, but with someone who’d already been there, done that. Falling in love with Paul might be sealing her future of never having kids.
That was an unexpectedly heavy place for her thoughts to turn. Karen sighed and rubbed her brow.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
“Too many thoughts, not enough pennies. Not the right place for it, either,” Karen whispered the last bit as a customer came in.
Carrie boxed up their requested dozen muffins, made change quickly and with an inordinate amount of cheer, then was back before Karen had any further chance to self-analyze.
“I think we need another girls’ night to properly debrief. I have to go meet one of the Wagner kids, he might rent my house while I’m gone. Then I have to do the bookmobile rounds.”
“Oh honey, of course. Laney’s in town for a couple more days, could we invite her, too?” Carrie waved her hands in the air. “Never mind, I’m sure Evie won’t mind keeping it small.”
“No, it’s okay. Actually, since I missed their engagement party, it would be good to catch up. And I have some questions for her about Chase’s recovery.” Karen picked up her coffee and pushed away from the counter. “Mmmm. And you know, maybe we should invite Mari. She’s always good for a chat, and might make Laney feel a little less like a fourth wheel.”
“If Mari comes, she’ll probably want to invite Stella. The poor girl never gets away from the farm.”
A big, joyous estrogen fest sounded like just the ticket. “The more the merrier.”
As she headed home, she noticed a missed text message from Paul, inviting her over for dinner, then a second message rolled in, identifying the texter as Megan using her dad’s phone. When the phone rang a minute later, she answered with a laugh. “She stole your technology, eh?”
“Yep.” Desire and confusion warred inside her at the sound of his voice, rich and calm. Could it really be this simple? Surely not. And her fleeting thought about the future, and what may or may not be, would that snowball into a problem before they ever got off the ground as a couple? And yet his voice… “So, we’ve invited you over for dinner. Do you like chicken?”
“I like everything. Except capers.”
“Don’t worry, we’re a caper-free house.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Six?”
“Can it be a bit later? I’ve got books to deliver to people.”
“Seven.”
“Meg won’t mind?” She was almost home. It was silly, having this conversation on the phone, really.
“Not a bit.”
He waved through his front window as she hung up, but her potential tenants were waiting on her porch, so she just nodded and turned her attention to Mitchell’s older brother Gavin and his girlfriend Stacey, who were pleased as punch at her asking price for rent, but had some trouble with moving at the start of September. Stacey was currently in a studio apartment, with furniture, and needed to be out by the end of July, just three weeks away. They could stay with Gavin’s parents for a bit, but…
“Say no more, I get it. At the very least, you can put your furniture in my garage, or the spare room. That’s what I was going to do, to make room for your stuff. We’ll sort it out.”
“Thank you, Karen.” The look shared between the young, eager lovers at the prospect of being mere weeks away from living together sent a pang of longing through her gut. At the bare minimum, if everything went well, she was a year away from being free and clear to hope for the same thing.
Baby steps. First, dinner with his daughter, who saw them kissing last night, and still wanted to spend them with her. Panic about a potential future could wait until some point after that.
After Gavin and Stacey took off, probably to go screw like bunnies from the way they were groping each other on the way out, Karen turned her attention to the bags of large print and audio books, as well as regular paperbacks, that she’d take around to the two retirement homes and a number of Wardham residents who still lived on their own but had trouble getting to the library on a regular basis.
For a while, she and Mildred had tried using the library resources for this project, but the logistics got a bit difficult as the list of readers grew. Waiving late fees, keeping track of library cards…a few sheets of paperwork turned into a heavy binder, and that wasn’t in the spirit of fun reading. Karen called it a bookmobile, but it was really just a few bags of books in her trunk. A lean, mean, lending machine. And after word got out that she was looking for books to share with community members with accessibility issues, donations piled in, and continued to show up on her doorstep from time to time. Most of the time, she didn’t even bother signing books out for people, just left something they might like and took back what she recognized as having been borrowed before. Each one had a large sticker on the back with her address and phone number, and every few months she added another tote bag to her collection, so from an inventory management perspective, she was quite content with the laissez-faire approach.
So why couldn’t she let go and just let whatever would be with Paul…just be? See what would happen over time, organically? Something was happening, that was for sure. Something that would have to end, or be put on hold, by the end of the summer. And the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach told her it might not be exactly what she wanted.
Too bad she couldn’t change that without sacrificing her second chance at her dream career.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dinner had been nice. Really nice, but it would have been better if Karen hadn’t headed to bed—at her house, alone—at the same time Megan did.
Paul didn’t know what to make of that. He’d been so worried about sending mixed messages himself that he was just catching on to the fact that Karen might not be on totally sure footing with regard to their relationship, either. The night before, they’d been a few seconds away from ripping each other’s clothes off. That passion, even if tempered by real life, meant something. The lift in her voice when he called her. That meant something, too. Throughout dinner, he’d look up and catch her watching him, her gaze hot and full of feeling.
Yeah, there were an abundance of feelings between them. But they weren’t talking about them.
They still hadn’t been on a formal date. He needed to get on that. He did his best thinking while pounding out a few miles on a run. He didn’t have a treadmill, and didn’t want to leave Meg
an alone in the house, so a hard workout would have to be an acceptable substitute.
He tossed his portable pull-up bar into the doorway between the living room and the hallway, and stripped off his shirt.
One. Two. Three.
With each lift, he considered and rejected date options. This wasn’t about determining compatibility. There was no measure of their chemistry required. This was a date they’d tell their grandchildren about. It needed to be special.
Four. Five. Six.
Not dinner, or a movie. Maybe a baseball game? Close, but something was missing. He could picture them at a game, pressing their heads together, making silly faces for a double self-portrait. One arm wrapped around Karen, pulling her in tight to his side, the other outstretched, holding the camera at an angle to secretly make sure to include her cleavage in the shot.
He laughed to himself and lost count, which seemed like a good point to switch to crunches. He dropped to the floor and started in on his abdominal muscles. Crunches first, then oblique side lifts. He grabbed a dumbbell from under the couch to ramp up the intensity, pinning it between his ankles for the second round.
Good, hard sweat started to roll down his back as he went back to the pull up bar for another set of reps, and as his muscles burned, clarity dawned. He pulled his boxing bag from the hall closet and took down the pull up bar, hanging the bag from the eye-hook in the middle of the doorway. It wasn’t pretty, but it kept him in shape, and from time to time, got him very much on the right track with a hard-to-fix problem.
Not that Karen was a problem. Jab. Jab. Punch.
Except for the part where she didn’t want to hang around after Megan went to bed. That was—
“Do you always workout half-naked?”
He spun around, fists at his side. He’d been so inside his head he hadn’t heard the back door open. “You came back.”
She moved closer, pausing to pick up his water bottle. She passed it over, and he took a big sip. “I did. I thought I was tired, but I couldn’t settle.”