What I Love About You (Truly, Idaho)

by Rachel Gibson

  “—last night—”

  “He needs to get neutered.”

  He frowned. “You’re changing the subject.”

  She smiled. “No more balls.”

  Blake moved his hands like he was going to cover his crotch but thought better of it and crossed his arms over his chest instead. “He’s getting his nuts whacked?”

  She made a scissor motion with her fingers. “Snip. Snip.”

  “Jesus.” Then he did move a hand to shield his manhood. “I can fence my yard. He can’t walk around humiliated with an empty nut sack.”

  “He’s a dog. He’ll get out of your yard and make more puppy bombs just like him.”

  He looked like he might argue in favor of Sparky’s nuts, then he dropped his hand to his side. “Keep the receipts. I’ll pay for the poor guy’s castration.” He looked at his watch, then at her. “You’re avoiding the reason I came to talk to you.”

  She was, and she wasn’t all that surprised the he’d figured it out. Most of the time, Natalie just wasn’t very tricky.

  “If I’d known you were serious about a quickie and nothing else, I’d have done things a little different.” He dropped his gaze to her mouth. “I would have taken the time to make it better.”

  “It was exactly what I wanted you to do. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried. When I get back, we’re going to try that again and get it right.”

  It had felt right to her. “No.” She shook her head. “We can’t do that again. I was good with once.”

  He reached beneath his shemagh and unzipped his coat. “I knew you were going to say that and make me prove you wrong.”

  She held up one hand, palm out. “Wait.”

  “Scared?” He moved around the counter and smiled like a hunter stalking prey. “Scared I’ll make you feel so good you’ll demand more from my menu starting right now?”

  “I’m not scared.” She was terrified. “I’ve always told you that I can’t go around having sex just because it feels good.”

  He grabbed her hand in his strong grip. “I want to be with you more than just once. I want more from you.”

  For one awful beat of her heart, she looked up into his eyes that could go from cold to hot in an instant, and the warm bubble in her chest got painfully bigger. “What do you want?”

  “I want kisses that lead to long, lazy days in bed.”

  “I have a child.” Of course he hadn’t meant more than sex.

  He kissed the palm of her hand. “Nights that get so hot the sheets stick to your skin.”

  “I have a child,” she repeated.

  He slid his mouth to her pulse and sucked little tingles to the surface of her skin. “I know. A funny, sweet girl who loves dogs and thinks she’s a horse. Having a child doesn’t mean you can’t have sex.”

  “It means I have to be responsible.” She pulled her hand away from the temptation of letting him suck tingles in other places. “We didn’t use a condom last night.”

  “Yeah. I remembered when it was too late.”

  “I remembered this morning. It’s been a while since I had sex, but that’s no excuse not to be responsible about it.”

  “I’m clean,” he assured her. “I’m so clean I squeak. I routinely get tested for everything from typhoid to HIV. If you need proof, I have a copy of every test result for the past year. I’ll bring them by.”

  “Okay.” Typhoid?

  He took a step closer until she had to tip her head back to look up at him. “And you’re not sexually active, and from what you’ve said, I don’t have to worry about getting you pregnant.”

  It was the sad truth. She hadn’t had sex in a while and she couldn’t have a child. At least not without a lot of work. “You’re going to just take my word for it?” Shouldn’t he demand some sort of proof?

  “Yes. You’re one of the most honest people I’ve ever met.” He put his hand on the side of her neck. “That’s one of the things I like about you. That and your nice smile and great butt.” His thumb brushed her throat. “And when I get back, we’re going to hump and bump until neither of us can move.”

  “ ‘Hump and bump’?” She pulled the corners of her mouth downward.

  “You don’t like that expression? How about: knock boots, bang bellies, fuck like wild monkeys. Or your personal favorite, makin’ bacon. Pick one.”

  Makin’ bacon wasn’t her favorite. It was a T-shirt Lilah had given her. “Make love.” He’d probably never really made love. Just banged boots or whatever.

  “That’s a good one, too. When I get back, we’re going to knock bellies and make wild monkey love.”

  She opened her mouth to object to monkey love but was saved a response by Lilah breezing in the front door, bringing in snow and two Styrofoam cups of coffee. She turned around to look at her friend, who wore a fur hat and coat like she was living in Imperial Russia instead of Truly, Idaho. “Oh hi, Blake,” Lilah said as she set the to-go cups on the counter. “If I’d known you were going to be here, I would have brought more coffee.”

  “Thanks, but I had about a pot already this morning.” He was so close, the front of his coat brushed Natalie’s back, and she had to fight the urge to lean back into the comfort of his hard chest.

  “What happened after I left last night?”

  “We chatted,” Natalie answered, and squinted her gaze across the distance at Lilah.

  “It was a quick chat,” Blake added, and zipped his coat. The backs of his knuckles brushed up her spine. “Next time we’ll chat longer.”

  “Long chats are always better.” Lilah took off her hat and picked up her coffee. “Nice looooong chats.” She took a sip and looked like she was going to behave. “On the bone phone,” she added behind the cup.

  “Lilah!” Natalie blinked several times, like Morse code for her friend to shut the hell up. “We’re not in sixth grade.”

  “In the sixth grade, I used to call it the blow horn.” Blake laughed and put his hand on Natalie’s shoulder. “My brother called it the meat mike.”

  His heavy hand brought warmth and felt oddly comfortable on her shoulder. Lilah had obviously found a comrade in sexual euphemisms, and Natalie looked up at him over her shoulder. “I thought you liked knock boots.”

  He gazed down into her eyes as if he was considering his words. Odd since he’d just said “meat mike.” “I believe we were talking specifically about oral sex. As opposed to sexual position.”

  “I’ve never heard ‘meat mike.’ ” Lilah laughed. “That’s a good one.”

  Natalie turned to scowl at her friend. Get Lilah in a room of adults and somehow the subject always turned to sex. Natalie wondered what she was going to come up with next or if she planned to behave now.

  Blake said next to her ear, “If you don’t understand the difference, we’ll have an in-depth lesson when I get home.”

  She didn’t need an in-depth lesson, and she didn’t know why they were talking about it at all. She could feel her cheeks get a little hot. She’d had a one-time quickie with Blake. That was it, and she didn’t feel comfortable enough with him to talk about sex, and that included an in-depth conversation about the bone phone, blow horn, or meat mike.

  “Don’t get mad,” Lilah told her from across the store.

  “I’m not mad. Just super uncomfortable and wondering what’s coming up next to make everything a little more awkward.”

  As if in answer to the question, the front door swung open and her ex-husband breezed in on a gust of frozen air and a flurry of snowflakes settling in his dark hair. He stomped his boots on the mat and looked up. His attention lit on Natalie, then Blake behind the counter. “Hello.”

  Great. Just great.

  “Hello, Michael Cooper,” Lilah said, and set down her coffee.

  A frown pulled his brows as he looked
at her amid all that fur. Then he smiled. “Delilah Markham.” He held his arms out. “Come give me a hug.”

  Lilah being Lilah said, “I don’t know. Are you going to steal my wallet?”

  Natalie’s eyes widened and she gasped a little. Behind her, Blake chuckled.

  Michael just shook his head and smiled. “My days of stealing are behind me.”

  “Your ex-husband?” Blake asked as Michael hugged as much of Lilah as he could get his arms around.

  “Yes,” she answered, then things got even weirder when the door opened again and Ted Porter blew in with his hairless cat. “Michael Cooper!” he said, all excited like it was high school reunion time at Glamour Snaps and Prints. Like it hadn’t been fifteen years and Michael hadn’t spent some of those years in prison. Like Ted wasn’t standing there holding a cat with enormous blue eyes staring out from beneath a pillbox hat and wearing a perfectly matched leopard-skin coat.

  “Hello, Ted.” Michael shook hands with the other man, then his gaze sought and found Natalie again. “How are you?” he asked Ted as he looked over the man’s balding head at her. “How’s your mother?”

  “Good.” While Ted and Lilah oohed and aahed over Diva the cat’s nifty outfit, Michael continued to look across at Natalie as if he was trying to figure something out.

  She turned and tipped her face up to Blake. “I have to get Ted’s shadow boxes for him.” Really, she just wanted to escape for a few moments and catch her breath. This morning reminded her of Charlotte’s favorite book, Wacky Wednesday. With each turn of the page, something even more wacky happened until pigs were flying and alligators were driving cars. She wouldn’t be surprised if Mabel rolled in on a pink scooter with purple grips and streamers.

  Blake wrapped one arm around her waist and kept her from escaping anywhere. “Remember what I said.” He pulled her against the front of his coat and up on the balls of her feet. “When I get back”—he lowered his face to whisper against her lips—“hot, sticky nights.” Then he placed his palm on the side of her face and pressed a soft kiss on her lips. “Wild monkey love.” He deepened the kiss a few seconds past appropriate for the workplace. A few seconds past hot enough to blot out all the wackiness before he raised his face. “It’s going to be a long week.” He lightly tapped her chin with his finger, then dropped his hand. “Behave while I’m gone.”

  Shock kept Natalie frozen in place as she watched him move from behind the counter. The sound of Blake’s boots filled the sudden silence, but he didn’t seem to notice as his long legs carried him out the door, leaving a whirl of snow and silence in his wake.

  “Well.” Lilah was the first to speak. “I think someone just marked his territory.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I don’t like bacon,” Charlotte said as she stabbed a bite of pancake. “I tried it once and it’s salty.”

  “That’s why I love it.” Michael held up a piece of crispy bacon and took a bite. “Yum.”

  Natalie leaned back in the booth at the Shore View Diner as Meg Castle refilled her coffee cup. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Can I bring anything else?”

  “I think we’re good.” Among the smells of coffee and grease, the chatter of diners mixed with the sounds of plates and coffee mugs. Saturday mornings were always busy at the Shore View, and Natalie wished that Michael had chosen someplace less busy for his second meeting with Charlotte. Someplace where they weren’t the subject of open stares and covert whispers.

  Natalie took a bite of her English muffin as Michael engaged Charlotte in conversation. She didn’t have to hear the whispers to know the other customers were gossiping about her and Michael’s past and speculating about their future. She didn’t have to hear with her own ears how they were talking about Michael and her and the big fella living in the old Allegrezza house.

  Apparently Ted had taken his cat and his shadow boxes home and told his mother what he’d seen at Glamour Snaps and Prints four days ago. His mother had blabbed to her friends, and by the next day, she, Michael, and the big fella were the topic of conversation around town, everywhere from Grace Episcopal on Pine to Hennessey’s Saloon around the corner.

  Natalie blew into her coffee cup, then took a sip. She’d managed to live gossip-free for several years now. She’d lived down Michael’s scandal and their divorce. She’d lived down speculation over her involvement in his legal problems and proved she was an honest businesswoman, a good citizen, and a single mother trying hard to raise her child. She hadn’t given the gossips of Truly anything to talk about. Not until that day the big guy kissed her in front of her ex-husband, her best friend, Ted Porter, and his hairless cat. Now she was supposedly involved in a love triangle thanks to Blake, who was conveniently out of town.

  “I can write my whole name.” Charlotte pushed her plate to one side and made room for her kid’s menu. She dug around for the eight-pack of crayons that Natalie carried around in her purse, and she wrote on her paper menu. It took her a few minutes but she did it, sort of. Some of the letters were higher than the rest and, when she ran out of room, she wrote the last half of her last name at the top of the paper. “There.” With a smile she turned the menu and handed it across the table to Michael. “Charlotte Elizabeth Cooper.”

  “Wow.” He studied it as he ate his hash browns. “That’s really good.” He looked up at Natalie. “Are other kids at her school writing their whole names?”

  “Some.” He didn’t know anything about a five-year-old’s development and milestones, and his question just illustrated his absence in his child’s life. “Charlotte and I worked on it over the summer.”

  He lowered his gaze to his daughter. “What else can you write?”

  She shrugged and took a bite of her pancake. “I can draw weally good pictures.” She took a drink of milk, then sucked the mustache from her top lip. “Do you have paper, Mom?”

  Natalie fished around in her purse and pulled out a power bill envelope. “Draw on the back.”

  “Okay.” Charlotte chose a blue crayon and got busy.

  “What are you two girls doing for Thanksgiving?” Michael asked.

  “Probably just staying home. My mother is living with my aunt Gloria now.”

  “I heard that. How’s your mother?”

  Her mother hated Michael, and she was fairly certain the feeling was mutual and had been since long before Michael’s arrest. Her mother blamed Michael for Natalie never going to college. For everything that she could blame on him, that one was not his fault. “Mom’s good. She sold her house after she retired and bought a fifth wheel.” Sitting here, in the diner where they’d eaten as teens, was just bizarre and uncomfortable. She knew the man across the table from her. Knew he had a birthmark on his shoulder and a triangle of freckles on his knee. Yet she didn’t know him at all. “They hook it to Uncle Jed’s truck and the three of them travel a lot.” She hadn’t known the Michael who’d run out on her, and she didn’t know this Michael, either. “They’ll probably still be in Arizona this Thanksgiving.” Her mom loved that camper. Charlotte, too, but Natalie couldn’t think of a worse way to spend the holiday.

  “Then you two should come to my mom and dad’s for Thanksgiving.”

  Except with the Coopers. “No.” Natalie shook her head.

  He flashed a cajoling smile that used to melt her heart. It didn’t anymore. “It’s my first real holiday in a long time and I’d love to spend it with you girls.”

  And she’d love to spend it in pajama pants and a T-shirt. All day. She always closed the photo store the few days after Thanksgiving and just wanted to veg. “Charlotte doesn’t even like turkey.” They were going to have junk day and eat Tater Tots and Pizza Rolls. “We just want to stay home.”

  “Are you spending the day with your boyfriend?” His smile disappeared.

  She didn’t bother to tell him that Blake wasn’t her boyfriend.
If it helped to keep Michael from trying to charm his way into her life, that was fine with her. “He’s not your business.”

  “If he’s around my child he is.” He sat back and reached for his mug.

  Suddenly he was a concerned father? “Don’t.” She pushed her plate aside and leaned forward. “You don’t get to say who’s in . . .” She paused, aware of little ears and bigger ears of diners around her. “ . . . you know who’s life. You haven’t been around for five years.”

  “I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.”

  Right. “You don’t have any credibility with me.” She sat back. “I have raised . . . you know who . . . by myself, and you can’t come back in our lives and start ordering me around.” She cast a glance at Charlotte, who was busy drawing. “If you’re here this time next year, then we’ll talk.”

  “I said I’ll be here.”

  “I heard you.” Natalie tossed her napkin on the table and glanced about to make sure no one in the diner was eavesdropping before she continued. “You may have forgotten the past, but I haven’t.”

  “I haven’t forgotten. I live with it every day.” Sorrow creased his brow. “I live with regret and shame and things I can’t change. I can only make amends and show people I’ve changed.”

  That might take a while, she thought. Then she felt bad because he seemed sincere. Then again, Michael was a good liar and had tricked her in the past.

  “I’m done.” Charlotte turned the envelope around. She’d drawn a sun, three spindly stick figures, and a ball of black fur with short legs. “That’s Mama and me.” She pointed to the two stick figures with yellow hair, one longer than the other. “That’s Spa-ky my dog.” Then she pointed to the other figure. “And that’s Blake.”

  Michael lifted his gaze to Natalie as Charlotte chattered on.

  “Blake’s my best friend. He picks up Spa-ky’s poop,” she said, picking up speed before her mother could stop her. “One time Spa-ky ate my Hello Kitty bow and it was in his poop. Blake saw it and said a weally bad word!”