Bedding Mr. Birdsong

by Deborah Camp

  Frito snuffled loudly and climbed into her lap. He circled twice and then curled into a ball with a loud sigh. Matthew chuckled.

  “I don’t blame you, Frito. I wouldn’t mind resting my head there, either.” His eyes sparkled in the grayish light.

  Zaney shook her head at his teasing. “Drive, Matthew. We’re able to move a foot or two.”

  He let the car creep forward. “As soon as we get on 95, we’ll move right along. It’s just getting there that’s going to be a bitch.”

  “Patience.”

  “Something I lack,” he noted, “but you appear to have in abundance.”

  “Sometimes. Not all the time. Depends on what I’m waiting for.” She stroked Frito’s little head and tried not to think about who lived in Darien. She simply wouldn’t let him ruin her time there! A rumble sounded overhead and Zaney looked up through the windshield at swirling gray. “And now it’s going to rain.”

  “Yeah, it’s been threatening to all afternoon.” He switched on the wipers as the heavens opened and rain pounded the car. People scrambled, some laughing, some shrieking. More car horns blared. “Why do people do that? Lean on their horns? What’s the purpose?”

  “It’s the equivalent of shooting your rifle. Men do it just to make noise and let everyone know they’re there.”

  “Men, huh? Women don’t honk horns?”

  “Not like this.” She gestured at the traffic ahead. “This is definitely a man thing.”

  His chuckle was dry. “You think you have men all figured out, don’t you?”

  “No, but I know quite a bit about what makes them tick.”

  “Well, hell, that’s easy. What makes them tick is sex and sports.”

  She eyed him, checking to see if he was serious. He was. “Sex, yes, but I know men who give bupkis about sports.”

  “Gay men.”

  “Straight men, too,” she corrected. “Have you heard about those studies that claim that, on average, a man thinks about sex every seven seconds? Do you believe that’s true?”

  “It’s not. There was no actual research to back that up. More recent studies claim that men think about sex nineteen times a day and women think about it ten times a day.”

  “Ten!” She scoffed. “No way.”

  “More than ten?”

  “No!” She glared at him, then saw that he was kidding. “Not even ten. Maybe two.”

  “You’re way off base, babe. Women think about it more than twice a day.”

  “How can you possibly think about sex nineteen or twenty times a day? It would be exhausting.” She pointed a finger at him. “That’s why you’re so tired this afternoon! You’ve been thinking about boobs and butts too much.”

  “I admit, it’s possible. I look at a woman walking down the street and I think that she’s got a great rack.”

  Zaney scowled at him. “That is so wrong.”

  “Why? You’re telling me that when you see a man with muscled arms and washboard abs, you don’t have some kind of sexual thought about him?”

  She paused, mulling that over. “Well, yes, I would.”

  “Of course, you would.”

  “But not ten times a day!”

  “Men are more visual. When I see a woman, I naturally gravitate to what’s attractive about her—.”

  “Her boobs.”

  “—her eyes, her voice, maybe even how she dresses.” He sent her an arched look.

  “How does that equate with sex?”

  “Ummm . . . then I might wonder how she looks without her dress or with her hair down. Hey, don’t roll your eyes at that. It’s not as if I’m acting on any of these thoughts. They flicker through my mind and then they’re gone.”

  “Amazing,” Zaney said with a slow shake of her head. “What body part did you focus on when we met?” She glanced down at herself and Frito opened one eye to peer at her.

  “Your personality.”

  She pantomimed choking herself. “That’s the kiss of death!”

  He laughed at her. “No, it isn’t.”

  “When a guy asks, ‘Is she pretty?’ and a guy answers, ‘She has a great personality,’ that is code for ‘She’s a dog.’ Everyone knows that, Matthew.” She kissed Frito’s pug nose. “No offense, sweet pup.”

  Matthew brought his chuckles under control. “I don’t mean it like that. There’s nothing fake about you. Everything you feel is on your face. That’s one of your best assets, Zaney.”

  Dumbfounded, she petted Frito and tried not to grin from ear to ear. “In other words, I’ll never be a good poker player.”

  He chuckled again. “Right. You’d walk away wearing a barrel and not having a dime to your name.”

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out. “Oh, it’s Mom. I bet she’s worried about me stumbling around in the dark. Hello?”

  “Zaney, are you okay? I saw on the news that parts of the city have lost power.”

  She sighed, hearing the worry in her mother’s voice. “Calm down. I’m fine, but you’re right. There is no electricity in my apartment, which is why I am in a convertible with a hot guy headed out of town for a scandalous and well-lit weekend.” She slanted a glance at Matthew and caught the uplift of his brows.

  “Well, well! This sounds promising,” her mother retorted. “Anyone I know? Please don’t say that you’re with Gary. He’s hot, but not for you. I don’t think he has a convertible either.”

  “Nope. Gary has a motorcycle. I’m with Matthew Birdsong. The guy across the hall from me.” She grinned at Matthew’s look of confusion, so she put the call on speaker.

  “Oh, the gorgeous landlord with the ocean blue eyes.”

  “He can hear us now, Mom, so try to sound motherly.”

  “Ooops. Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Don’t let him take advantage of you, sweetheart. Even if he offers to cut your rent – unless he agrees to cut it by half. That might be worth a one-nighter.”

  Matthew tipped back his head and guffawed, making Zaney and her mother join in. Wiping tears from the corners of her eyes, she spied a line of cars veering right ahead of them. She waved frantically. “The ramp! There it is!”

  “I see it.” He maneuvered the car into the exit lane and off the city streets.

  “Where are you two headed?”

  Zaney drew in a deep breath. “Connecticut.”

  Silence for several heartbeats, then, “Oh. Dear. Not there.”

  “Yes. Darien.”

  “Oh. On purpose?”

  Zaney gave a little snort. “Hardly. One of those crazy, sick coincidences life throws at me.” She sensed Matthew’s keen regard, but chose to focus on the red taillights ahead of them. “Anyway, Matthew has a house there and that house will, allegedly, have electricity. I’m taking a few days off anyway, so why not go somewhere besides my apartment.”

  “It will be fun,” her mother insisted. “Like you said, you’re with your smoking hot landlord and he has a lot of experience pleasing the ladies.”

  “I don’t remember describing him as smoking hot, Mom.” Zaney shook her head at Matthew’s big grin.

  “No? Well, if he has that many women parading through his bedroom, he must be packing, Zaney.”

  “Remember how you’re on speaker, Mom?”

  “I forgot.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow after I’m settled in, okay?”

  “I’ve embarrassed you enough for one night?”

  “Right. Thanks for calling! Good night, Mom.”

  “Good night, Zaney. Good night, hot landlord!”

  “Good night, Zaney’s mother,” Matthew answered.

  “Wear a condom, just to be extra safe!” her mother said before Zaney ended the call.

  Zaney shook her head, smiling. “She’s like a roller coaster. You hang on and try not to scream.”

  He laughed under his breath. “I like her. Gives me insight on how you became who you are.”

  “Oh? What’s that mean?”

  “Your mothe
r isn’t conventional and neither are you. She and your father divorced when you were how old?”

  “Two. He stopped coming around when I was about five.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did he stop visiting?”

  She shrugged, reaching for nonchalance but failing. “He remarried and moved away.”

  “I don’t know how people can do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Forget they have children in the world.”

  Touched, she examined him in the eerie light cast by the dashboard. Shadows of raindrops slid down his cheeks and chin. “I don’t either, but they do. Out of sight, out of mind. I guess it’s easier that way for them.” She steeled herself against personal memories and plucked an example from someone else’s life. “I have a divorced friend who keeps saying, ‘I can’t go to the game this week because I have to babysit my kid. It’s my weekend.’ And I always remind him that you don’t babysit your own children. But it’s revealing, right? Obviously, he isn’t an involved parent.”

  “He’s a babysitter,” Matt said. “A reluctant and resentful one.”

  The traffic had thinned enough that cars were moving almost at the posted speed limit. Quiet settled in the car with the hum of the traffic bleeding in. Zaney started to turn on the radio, but stopped herself. With a quick intake of breath, she said what had been heavy on her tongue for the past hour.

  “My father lives in Darien.”

  Matthew jerked and glanced at her. “He does? Oh, shit, Zaney. Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “It’s not likely I’ll see him there. If I did, so what? I wouldn’t make a scene and neither would he.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and looked completely rattled. “I can’t believe it. You’ve been to his house there?”

  “I drove by it once. Passing through,” she said, repeating her earlier comment. “I’d heard that he lived there, so I looked him up on the internet, got his address, and decided to drive there to see his home. It’s a big, sprawling Tudor style house with an expansive front lawn that slants gently down to the shore. He has his own boat dock there with a sporty cabin cruiser.” She shrugged and angled her face into shadow. “Nice digs.”

  “Has your mother remarried?”

  She nodded. “She and Steve have been married three years. They’re a great couple. His four grown kids live in Buffalo and he’s a granddad to two toddlers, so he and Mom moved there two years ago after Mom retired. Steve does light construction work. He used to work on sets and that’s how he met Mom.”

  “Was your dad in theater?”

  “No. They met at a poetry reading at the library.” She smiled, remembering the story her mother had told her. “He was teaching high school English and he took a class there to listen to the amateur poetry. Mom had a friend who was reading her poetry that day. They chatted afterward and he asked for her number.” She bobbed her shoulders. “They started dating and got married six months later. He had ambitions to be a university professor and he’d just earned his master’s degree. He earned his doctorate after I was born. By then, he was an adjunct professor at NYU.”

  “He and your mother grew apart?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “Their work schedules meant that they hardly ever saw each other, except on Sundays. Mom offered to quit and find something else to do, but she said that he didn’t encourage that. I think she realized then that he was checking out. She said that he wasn’t ever very hands-on as a father. She took me to work with her because a lot of nights he stayed late at the university or he went to some function or other. When he got an offer to teach at Southern Connecticut State in New Haven, he accepted and filed for divorce.” She ran her hands over Frito and he grumbled in his sleep. “Mom said she didn’t know what caused her to fall in love with him. They had very little in common. Best she could recall was that she was lonely and so was he and they met at the wrong time.” She looked at him, startled by his deep laugh. “What’s funny?”

  “They met at the wrong time,” he said, still chuckling. “That’s a good way to put it. That probably happens more than people think.” He was quiet for a few minutes, then he asked, “Your mother raised you by herself?”

  “Yes. Like I said, he stopped being in my life by the time I was five. Even before then, I only saw him a few times a year. Christmas, Easter, my birthday, whenever he could spare a day to visit. Honestly, I don’t remember much about him. My childhood memories are all about my mother. She’s the best. She made my life interesting and fun. I always felt loved. Cherished.” She swung her gaze to his finely cut profile. “Is your mother like that? Did she make you feel cherished?”

  He nodded, smiling. “In her way, yes. My parents aren’t demonstrative. A quick hug and maybe a peck on the cheek is what you get from them. The affection they give each other is more about companionship. They like the same things, have the same values, but they’ve always slept in separate beds.” He glanced at her open-mouthed surprise and nodded. “Twin beds all the time I lived with them, but now they’ve graduated to separate rooms.”

  “I like sleeping with someone.” She giggled when he wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Well, I do.” She patted Frito’s head. “Right, boy?” She giggled again when Matthew lowered his brows in rebuke. “Seriously, that is one of the things I missed when my last relationship went kaput. I missed sleeping beside Barry. I’m a snuggler.”

  “You just missed sleeping with him? Nothing physical? Didn’t miss that?”

  “I did,” she confessed, then threw it back at him. “Didn’t you? Oh, wait. You probably didn’t give yourself much time to miss having a warm body next to you. After you and Carin split up, how soon did you have a sleep-over, Matthew? Did you have time to change the linens? Hey!” She gasped when his hand shot out to tickle her side and she squirmed away from him. Frito Pie growled and showed his tiny teeth.

  “I’ll have you know that I was distraught following the breakup of my marriage,” he said in a comically haughty way. “I didn’t take a woman to bed for a good . . . oh, I’d say, month.”

  She gasped in mock horror. “A month! God, your hand must have been so tired!”

  He barked out a laugh. “It was,” he confessed through his chuckles.

  They settled into a companionable silence. After a while, Zaney flipped on the radio and tuned it to a station that played current hits mixed with past ones.

  “You ever go to concerts?” Matthew asked after a commercial for a rock band appearing soon at Madison Square Garden.

  “Not much anymore. What about you?”

  “I went to a couple when I was in Las Vegas last year, but I haven’t been to a concert at the Garden in years.”

  “It’s a hassle.”

  He nodded. “And you can spend a couple of thou easy if you take a date and spring for dinner and drinks.”

  “So what?” She inched her chin back, giving him a narrow-eyed glare. “You’re loaded. You can afford to drop a couple of thou, especially if you’re planning to drop trou later.”

  “Jesus, you’re full of it tonight, aren’t you?” He grinned at her. “Drop trou. The last time someone dropped trou around you was . . .” He gulped and bugged out his eyes. “Your hand must be about ready to drop off!”

  She popped him one in the shoulder and he laughed and shied away from her. “You’re mean.”

  “Hey, maybe you’ll get lucky this weekend.” His eyes sparkled. “You never know.”

  “Oh yeah? You know some cute bachelors in Darien you could fix me up with? Being from there, they’re probably rolling in dough, too. Sweet!” She was teasing him, and he knew she was teasing him, so it surprised her when he sobered quickly. He stared morosely out the rain-slick windshield for a few moments and then turned up the volume on the radio.

  “This is a good song,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah, I like it, too.” But she wasn’t focused on the song. His mood had darkened so rapidly that she felt di
zzy like she’d just stepped off the Kingda Ka roller coaster in New Jersey. Reeling a little, she stared numbly out the window, unsure of what to say to lighten the tension. Was he pissed that she suggested he hook her up with someone, even in jest? As the miles slipped past, she realized that she might have hurt his feelings or even poked at a tender spot. Had he been thinking they’d share a bed and her comment had dashed that hope? From the corner of her eye, she tried to discern something from his taciturn expression. Her mother’s talk about him being smokin’ hot and to have fun sizzled through her brain and she squirmed a little in the car seat.

  If Matthew did make a move, what would she do?

  Wait. If he didn’t make a move on her, what would she do? Besides feel like a girl with a great personality? She shouldn’t leave this all up to him. She knew where he stood. Time for her to woman up.

  Chapter 14

  Seeing Stars

  By the time they reached Matthew’s house in Darien, the storm had blown over. Puffs of gray clouds scudded across the midnight blue sky, allowing stars to twinkle.

  His house was a modest white clapboard with a wraparound porch and side steps that led to a sandy walkway meandering to the water’s edge. Grander houses had been built all around him, making his place stand out. In a good way. It had charm, much like its present owner. Unassuming, it didn’t have to try hard to get attention. It sat handsomely near the lapping water, offering stunning views of all kinds of boats bobbing in slips. Harbor lights provided enough illumination for her to see the night birds swooping around the boats and jetty.

  Zaney stood at the rail and breathed in the zesty scent of saltwater. “Matthew, it’s perfect.”

  “Come inside and I’ll give you the grand tour,” he said, toting the last of their luggage into the front room. He held open the screen door and switched on a lamp as she entered the white-washed room with its multi-colored, oval, woven rug, Adirondack styled chairs with deep cushions, and a leather sofa. “The living room and there’s the kitchen,” he said, motioning to the left at the U-shaped area. “Breakfast room right off the kitchen and there’s a table and chairs out on the porch, too.” He grabbed the handle of her rolling suitcase and motioned her to follow him down a hallway. “That’s a half-bath,” he said, nodding at a partly shut door. “And there are two bedrooms. The guest room,” he indicated the door next to the bathroom. “It’s not much, really. Bunk beds, a dresser, nightstand, small closet.”