Blake straightened and she expected him to leave. To leave the part-time dog he’d conned on a little girl and run like hell. Instead he said, “I met a friend of yours a few weeks ago at the grocery store.”
Her list of friends was short. She grabbed a box of mac and cheese and looked over her shoulder at him. “Lilah?”
“Mabel.”
She set the box on the counter next to the stove. Maybe he was sticking around because he was lonely in that big empty house next door. That made her almost feel bad for him, but not quite. “Mabel Vaughn?”
“Yeah.”
“She was my grandmother’s good friend.” She added salt to the water. He didn’t seem to have a job or family. He didn’t seem to do anything but chop wood and shoot pictures. “I’ve known her all of my life.”
He leaned a hip into the counter and folded his arms over his chest like he was settling in for a chat. Like he wasn’t the rude neighbor who’d sworn at her child and questioned her motherhood. “She mentioned that.” He wore a gray Navy football sweatshirt and a pair of Levi’s worn in curious places. Curious places like the back pocket were he kept his wallet and his button fly where he kept something else. Not that she’d looked. Okay, she’d looked, but it wasn’t her fault she’d noticed his bulge, like he was packing serious heat behind that button fly. Having him here in her kitchen was really strange. His testosterone was throwing off the feminine balance in her house. Like a storm cloud in the middle of her calm blue feng shui.
“She also mentioned your husband.”
Natalie glanced toward the empty doorway of the living room and pushed her hair behind her ear. “Ex-husband.” She wasn’t surprised Mabel had gossiped about her. Annoyed, but not surprised. “No doubt she ‘mentioned’ he’s in prison.” She looked back at Blake watching her through those intense smoky eyes of his.
“When does he get out?”
Natalie rarely liked to talk about Michael, and this wasn’t one of those rare occasions. “Around Thanksgiving.” In the other room, Natalie listened to the sound of Charlotte’s laugher over the puppy’s barking and a My Little Pony cartoon. My Little Pony was okay, but ever since Lilah had rented I, Robot for them all to watch, anything with robots gave Charlotte nightmares.
“Is Charlotte excited?”
Natalie didn’t like to talk about Michael, but he wasn’t a secret. She learned years ago that secrets made a person sick. Sick like her former husband. She’d been in a really dark place during her divorce. She’d been pregnant and depressed and humiliated. Instead of medication, she’d been helped with cognitive therapy. She’d learned to disassemble overwhelming problems and break them into manageable parts.
“Charlotte doesn’t know yet.” Blake lifted a brow, and she explained as she put away groceries. “Michael’s parents thought he was getting out last year. They told Charlotte he was coming home and got her all excited.” Although why she felt compelled to explain anything to the neighbor was a mystery. “The state of Idaho had different plans, and I was the one who had to tell her that he wasn’t coming home. She cried for three days. After that, we all agreed not to say a word until it actually happens.” Which was coming up so soon it made Natalie’s stomach tight. “What else did Mabel mention?”
He didn’t answer and she turned from putting away a jar of peanut butter. His gaze was lowered like he’d been watching her butt. She supposed it was only fair that he look at her butt since she’d looked at his button fly.
“That you were a prom queen.” He lifted his gaze up her stomach and breasts to her face. The difference between the two of them was that he got caught and was unrepentant.
“That was a looooong time ago.” She picked up the box of mac and cheese and tore off the top. “I think the crown is still in a box somewhere.” She pulled out the powdered cheese packet, then dumped the pasta into the water.
“And you were a cheerleader.”
“Yeah.” She tossed the empty blue and yellow box in the recycling bin under the sink. It fell onto the floor and she pulled out the heaping bin. “That was a lifetime ago, too.” She obviously needed a container bigger than seven gallons. She pushed it down as much as possible, but it popped back up. Before she could try again, Blake was beside her. Towering over her as he put his big boot on top of the heap. He smashed it down like a trash compactor to half the size. Natalie was impressed. It had been a long time since she’d lived with a man and she had forgotten that they came in handy sometimes. Like for carrying in groceries and compacting trash. And for other things. Like for washing her back in the shower.
He removed his big foot and said, “She mentioned you still wear your little outfit sometimes.”
She looked up so fast a few strands of hair swung from behind her ear and got stuck to her lip gloss. He stood close; a hand’s breadth separated the front of his sweatshirt from her breasts. She looked into his eyes and the air between them changed. It got hot, charged with sexual awareness. “Mabel said that?”
He shook his head without taking his gaze from hers. “No. That’s just my dirty mind.”
Was he coming on to her? If he was, what should she do? God, it had been so long that she didn’t know anymore.
He lifted a hand and brushed her hair from her lip. The tips of his fingers touched the corner of her mouth and cheek, and she couldn’t breathe. Literally, her breath was caught in her chest. She tried to think of something to say. Something flippant, like his touch didn’t affect her. Like hot little tingles weren’t spreading across her skin.
His hand slid to the side of her throat, and he lightly pressed his thumb into her chin, tipping her face up. “Do you have a man in your life, Sweet Cheeks?”
A man? She shook her head and swallowed hard, past the clog in her chest. She fought an urge to turn her face into his hand and kiss his warm palm. “I don’t date,” she managed.
“That’s what I thought.”
He smelled good. Like the last time she’d been this close. Like mountain air and man. Whoa. Wait. What? How did he know she didn’t date? Did she look like a loner?
He dropped his hand and moved closer. Closer until the tips of her breasts touched the front of his shirt. “You look like a woman who needs to date.” What did that look like? She stood completely still as he told her, “You look like a woman who needs to date and with a man who knows how.” He lowered his gaze to her mouth. He wasn’t touching her, but it felt like it. “You look like you need a man to date you all night long.”
She sucked the warm, tingly scent of pheromones into her lungs. She couldn’t help it. They surrounded her like a sexually charged fog. “Are we talking about dating?” It felt like he was talking about something else. Something that made the clog in her chest get all hot and heavy and fall to the pit of her stomach.
He nodded. “No.”
Was it yes or no? With him staring at her mouth, she couldn’t think. At least not beyond the urge to slide her hand up his chest and curl into him. “How can you tell I don’t date?” she asked as if she wasn’t getting bombarded with impulses and urges and dark cravings. “Do I have a sign above my head or something?”
He slowly raised his gaze to hers. “Your eyes.”
“My eyes?” Her brows lowered. “You can see I want a date from my eyes?” Again, she didn’t think they were really talking about dating.
“There’s a difference between want and need.” His eyes were sending her a message, too. Beneath lowered lids, he sent a message so hot it made the knot in her stomach tighten and threaten to burn up her thighs. “You need a man to get you in his bed and keep you there all night. You need it bad. Real bad.”
She did. She hadn’t realized how much she needed it until that day in his wine cellar. But it wasn’t going to happen here. In her kitchen. Not now, with her daughter in the next room and her dinner boiling on the stove. And not with this man. This hot, sexy man
who was rude and overbearing, and she was sure wasn’t interested in any sort of relationship beyond sex.
On a purely physical level, she might like to have sex and forget about it the next morning. She wouldn’t mind just using a man for his body. For just one night she’d like to use men like Lilah did, but she was a single mother and a small-business owner. She had more respect for herself than to be any man’s one-night stand. “I don’t need anything that bad,” she said, and stepped around him. “I’m a busy woman.” She moved to the stove and took the boiling pot off the heat. “Believe me, I am not the kind of woman to answer a booty call. I have more respect for myself.” She poured the hot water and pasta into a strainer in the sink.
“Uh-huh.” She heard him move to the back door and open it as a cloud of steam rose to her face. “More respect for yourself than to stare at pictures of Frankie Cornell’s monster junk?”
She turned, and her flushing face had nothing to do with the steam. He had heard her and Lilah that day in the store.
He smiled. “If you want to see a monster dick, you know where I live.”
Then he was gone and she was left standing in her kitchen with an empty pot in her hand and a steam cloud around her head. Good Lord, she couldn’t recall exactly what she’d said about Frankie. Other than his mutant penis, of course.
She set the pot on one side of the sink. Blake had a monster penis, too? She looked across her shoulder and out the kitchen window. Trees blocked the view of his house. She wondered if he was telling the truth about that. Her brain conjured the image of his button fly. No, he probably wasn’t lying.
She moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a gallon of whole milk and some butter. Michael had always said he had a big penis. She’d been a virgin and a faithful wife, and hadn’t had any personal experience when it came to size. She didn’t have a lot now, but she was older and wiser and had enough to know that Michael was average. Nothing to lie about, but that was Michael. No way would he ever let himself be average at anything.
She looked at the clock on the stove. She had an hour before homework and bath time. Half an hour before she and Charlotte sat down to eat. She pulled out a casserole dish and reached for the phone. Everyone knew that Natalie couldn’t keep anything to herself, and Lilah was going to love this.
How was she possibly going to look at her neighbor now? she asked herself as she dialed. How was she ever going to look at him as just the jerk who’d stuck her with a part-time dog?
Of course Blake had sleazed out on the dog agreement. The day after he’d stood in her kitchen and told her he had a monster penis, he’d stopped by Glamour Snaps and Prints to tell her that he was going out of town for a while. He didn’t know how long he’d be. That had been two weeks ago. Two weeks of full-time care of the part-time dog.
Natalie lifted her camera and took several shots of the newborn asleep in her daddy’s hunting beanie. The camouflage hat was tucked around the tiny girl’s shoulders and she wore a stretchy camo band around her small head. Behind Natalie the young mother wept with pride.
Natalie paused to move a few of the autumn leaves scattered on the table the baby lay on. Then she took several steps back and adjusted the focus of her Canon EOS. Personally, she was not a fan of the camo. She got down on one knee and took a few more shots before the mother carefully put the sleeping baby in a blue egg and laid her in a bird nest. Natalie changed the backdrop and moved the white reflective bounce card. The egg and nest were lined with lambskin and Natalie tucked the infant’s hands beneath her chin. Much better than camo.
It was November first. Except for archers and muzzleloaders, hunting season was over. Natalie was happy the men in town had packed away their hunters’ camo for another year. And it just went without saying that she could stand looking out the window of Glamour Snaps and Prints and not see an elk head riding down Main Street strapped to a car. Or pulling into the grocery store and not seeing deer legs sticking up from the bed of a truck. Or not hearing her child cry about poor dead animals.
As she snapped pictures of the baby girl, she remembered when Charlotte had been a baby. She felt a little nostalgic, and she might have been struck with a raging case of baby fever if she thought there was a possibility that she could have another child without going through infertility treatments again.
She paused to look at the pictures through the display screen before she showed them to the mother. Of course, before she even thought of IVF, she’d have to find a husband. A good man who’d be around to help raise his child. A good law-abiding man who’d love her and Charlotte. A man who wasn’t a colossal liar.
“Turn the egg a little to the right,” she told the young mother, and snapped several more photos.
Since Michael’s release day was looming, she’d actually taken his call the other day. She wished she hadn’t. He’d told her that he planned to spend a lot of time with Charlotte and acted like she should just want that to happen. He’d been real pushy. Pushy like he’d always been when she’d been young and naive and allowed it. She was no longer that person. She was a grown-up. A big girl. A woman and mother. She wasn’t intimidated by Michael, but the closer it came to his release, the more she felt anxiety.
While the young mother changed the baby into a christening gown, Natalie staged the next composition. She changed the backdrop to a gray damask and pushed her great-grandmother’s red velvet settee in front. The Victorian couch was bare in a few places but gave a photograph character and balance.
One of the last people she’d photographed had been Mabel and her smoky eyes. Thinking of Mabel made her think of Blake. Thinking of Blake made her think of his hand brushing her cheek that night in her kitchen. Maybe he was right. If the touch of a man’s hand on her face made her go all tingly, maybe she did need to date. But not the kind of date he’d been talking about.
Tonight Charlotte was staying with the Coopers and Natalie was going on a date with Lilah. It was the Saturday after Halloween, and Natalie was hitting the town in her Robin costume. Mort’s Bar was having its annual costume contest, and the winner would receive a jackalope trophy made by a local taxidermist. Natalie didn’t plan to enter as she’d rather not win a stuffed jackrabbit with deer antlers.
The mother sat with the sleeping baby in her lap, and Natalie clicked photos from different angles and light settings. The problem with dating anyone but Lilah was that she lived in Truly, Idaho, population ten thousand—in the summer. Once the snowbirds left in September, the population dropped to about twenty-five hundred. She knew most of the men in town, knew them and knew their wives.
After several more shots, Natalie and the young mother moved behind the customer counter and plugged the photo card into the commercial printer. The woman looked at all the pictures, chose the ones she wanted, and ordered different sizes. The shop wasn’t busy and Natalie printed the pictures before the woman left.
At five o’clock, she drove home to feed Sparky and let him out to do his business. He was house-trained now, and she’d even managed to get him to do his business in one area. The puppy took off for Blake’s yard and took a dump on his lawn. Natalie smiled. He’d left town and left training the dog to her. It just seemed right that Blake had to pick up poop. She glanced up at all the dark windows in the big house.
He already had a two-week crap collection, if he didn’t get home soon, he’d have to use a backhoe. There was neon pink in some of it, but Natalie wasn’t about to investigate.
The puppy sniffed around and searched for another spot. Last night, she and Charlotte had taken Sparky with them while they’d trick-or-treated in their small subdivision. Charlotte had dressed up all nice and warm in a horse costume of brown corduroy. Her cute little face stuck out of a horse’s head, and the costume had a long yellow mane and tail. Natalie had sewed a bow tie on the neck and Charlotte had pranced the neighborhood, neighing and stomping her foot. She’d been in full Bow Tie mode. Na
talie loved when Charlotte was Bow Tie. She loved to make jumps and announce races, and last night Charlotte had added a new animal to her barnyard. Sparky the sheep. While Natalie had dressed as a cowgirl, they’d put a sheep costume on the puppy. Too bad the dog had spent most of the night trying to bite it off.
Sparky finished his business in Blake’s yard like a good dog, and after Natalie put the dog back in her house, she grabbed her purse and garment bag and drove all the way back into town. Lilah lived in the apartment above the salon where she worked, and Natalie parked in the little lot behind the Cutting Edge and Allegrezza Construction. A freezing breeze practically blew her up the wooden stairs to the green door at the top.
“Get in here,” Lilah yelled, and shut out the cold wind behind them.
The one-bedroom apartment was about as old as the town itself. The appliances had been replaced recently, but a few throw rugs covered the thin linoleum in the kitchen. Still, the big window seat that overlooked Main Street, and the old claw-foot tub in the bathroom, almost made up for the size of the apartment.
“Let me see your costume.” Lilah grabbed the garment bag and moved into her bedroom. “Not slutty enough,” she determined as she held up the shiny green and red costume.
“I wasn’t going for slutty.” The two of them got ready to go out for Halloween together as they had all through school. The difference was that now they drank wine and ate real fruit instead of Kool-Aid and fruit snacks. They laughed and joked about things that only the two of them would laugh and joke about. Like the time they’d taken Mildred Van Damme’s obese goat for a power walk or lost their gloves hooky bobbing on Sid Grime’s bumper.
At nine, they walked down the wood steps, Natalie in her shiny green shorts and a shiny red bustier. A yellow R on her right breast matched her yellow utility belt. The yellow satin cape tied at her throat and fell to her knees. Shiny green gauntlets covered her forearms, and she wore her black boots. Her costume was so tight she wasn’t wearing underwear, but she wouldn’t call it risqué. Her boobs weren’t popping out—well maybe they were a little, but her butt wasn’t hanging out. Not like Lilah, who’d tarted herself up like a dominatrix. She wore black leather and carried a whip, and Natalie was fairly certain it wasn’t a Halloween costume.
What I Love About You (Truly, Idaho) Page 7