Messy Perfect Love

by Claire Kingsley

  “Believe me, my wife won’t let me forget,” he says. “She’ll be after me for all the details. She would have come with me, but she had to work.”

  “I understand,” I say. “Lyle, we’re going to figure this out. I’ll do some research and see what else I can find while we wait for your blood work. Hang in there, okay?”

  “Will do, doc.”

  I send Maria in to take blood and go back to my office. I need a moment to collect myself before my next patient. The only thing worse than losing a patient is watching one suffer and not knowing how to help them. I already looked up a list of possibilities that could account for Lyle’s symptoms after his last visit. None of them are good news, and most of them are degenerative. That means he’ll keep getting worse if we can’t find out what it is, and he might keep deteriorating even if we can. I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath. I’ll do everything I can for him, but I have to put some distance between me and his case—keep my emotions out of it.

  The rest of my day goes smoothly. I have a one month well-baby visit, which are among my favorite appointments. The mom is doing wonderfully, and her son is thriving. I see several other children for checkups, as well as a couple sick visits, and one patient with a broken arm. All in all, a pretty typical day at my practice.

  I spend time after my last patient finishing up my charts and taking care of other business, including registering for a medical conference in Portland I’ve been wanting to attend.

  Then I look at the clock and realize it’s after seven. I’m starving. I didn’t take much time for lunch—just grabbed a quick sandwich from Old Town Café around two. I think about picking something up on my way home, but I’m so tired, I don’t want to deal with it. I have food left from my shopping trip, I’m sure I’ll find something—even if it’s just frozen waffles.

  I drive home, and when I open my front door the scent of food hits me. What is that? My mouth waters and my stomach rumbles. It smells amazing.

  I find Clover busy in the kitchen. The table is set for two and she’s already placed a couple serving dishes in the center, along with a bottle of wine.

  She looks up and smiles. Every time she does that, I melt a little.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Dinner,” she says with another grin.

  “Seriously?” I ask. “This smells unbelievable.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m famished,” I say.

  She claps her hands together. “Perfect. I’ve been trying to keep things warm because I wasn’t sure when you’d be home, but I’m pretty sure it’s all still good.”

  I stand motionless while she bustles around the kitchen, bringing the last of the things to the table. I’m stunned. Not only does it look and smell amazing, I can’t believe she went to all this trouble.

  “Okay, it’s ready,” she says, gesturing toward the table. “Come sit.” She pulls out the chair at the head of the table and takes her seat next to me. “We have sautéed asparagus with hollandaise, roasted garlic couscous, lemon grilled chicken, and bacon-wrapped scallops. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I probably made too much.”

  “This is…” I pause, staring at all the food. “This is incredible.”

  “Yeah?” she asks. “I wanted to do something nice to show you how grateful I am.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I hope she can hear in my voice how much I mean it. I’m so touched.

  “It is absolutely the least I can do,” she says. “You’ve done so much more for me than you should have. I’ll have to find more ways to make it up to you.”

  There’s a twinkle in her eye and one corner of her mouth turns up. I try to ignore the sudden tingle that runs from my chest straight to my swelling cock. Damn it.

  I clear my throat. “You don’t have to do anything.”

  She holds my gaze. “But I want to.”

  Oh my god.

  “Let’s eat,” she says.

  I’m starving, but her tongue darts across her lips and it’s all I can do not to reach over and grab her so I can devour that gorgeous mouth.

  “Do you eat seafood?” she asks, pushing the scallops toward me.

  “I love seafood,” I say, trying to focus on dinner. I take a few scallops and put them on my plate. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”

  She shrugs. “Rebellion, mostly. Although it didn’t work.”

  “Rebellion?”

  “Yeah, my parents raised me as a vegan,” she says. “When I was a teenager, I got a job working at this little lunch place up the road from where we lived. I’d never even touched meat before—I thought it was gross. But then I discovered bacon.”

  She smiles and pops a crumb of crisp bacon in her mouth.

  “Anyway, I felt like I’d been missing all this great food, so I bought a bunch of cookbooks and spent hours watching cooking shows. Looking back, I think I just wanted attention. I thought my parents would be pissed when I started cooking all this meat, but they didn’t care.”

  I put some asparagus and chicken on my plate. “They didn’t care? If they raised you eating vegan, I’m surprised they let you sully their kitchen like that.”

  “Yeah, you’d think,” she says. “But they just said I needed freedom to explore, so they stopped using the kitchen for themselves and let me do what I wanted.”

  “Wow, that’s … interesting.”

  “They weren’t exactly conventional parents,” she says. “I didn’t even call them Mom and Dad. They felt they weren’t respecting my energy as a human being if they lorded their position over me.”

  “Yeah, that’s unconventional,” I say. “Where do they live now? Do you see them much?”

  She puts the serving fork down on the dish of asparagus. “No. I haven’t seen them in a long time. They moved to Thailand the day after I turned eighteen.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says, her voice casual. “They said they’d taken me through to adulthood and now it was time for them to do what they’d been destined to do. Honestly, I think they joined some kind of spiritual group and wanted to devote their life to meditation or something.”

  “They just left you?”

  Her face falls. “Sure. But I was an adult. They didn’t owe me anything.”

  “Yeah, but they were your family.”

  “We were a weird family,” she says. “They loved me in their own way, but they didn’t expect to have kids. I think a doctor told my mom once that she couldn’t. She was almost forty when I was born. I was really unexpected. So they kind of did what they had to do, and then went on with their lives.”

  I stare at her. How could her parents walk out on this beautiful, vibrant woman?

  “I’m sorry, Clover,” I say. “That’s fucked up.”

  “It’s not that big of a deal,” she says, a smile brightening her face again. “If the universe was telling them to go to Thailand, who am I to argue? I do all right on my own. And honestly, if they hadn’t left, my life would be so different. I’ve met so many interesting people over the years, and I would have missed out on all those experiences.”

  But you’d have a family. My heart wants to burst for her. How much sadness is she hiding behind that brilliant smile?

  “This is silly,” she says, picking up the couscous. “We don’t have to keep talking about me. Our food is getting cold.”

  My stomach growls, as if answering her, and I dig in. I take a bite of a scallop. Flavor bursts through my mouth. It’s warm and tender, and savory from the bacon. “Holy shit, Clover, this is the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

  She positively glows. “Is it?”

  I take another bite, closing my eyes. It’s so fucking good. I’m not lying to her. “Oh my god, yes. You taught yourself to cook like this?”

  “Yeah,” she says. She takes a bite and looks thoughtful as she chews. “Not bad.”

  “Not bad? Are you kiddin
g me? This is unreal.”

  I taste the other dishes, and they’re just as good. The chicken is juicy, the couscous is full of flavor, and the hollandaise-drenched asparagus is amazing. I keep eating long after I’m full. I can’t get enough.

  While we eat, we drink wine and Clover asks about my family. I tell her about my parents, and my brothers—both my younger brother Ryan, and Hunter, who my parents essentially adopted when we were all kids. She asks about Nicole, and I tell her about Ryan’s proposal at the art festival. She seems intrigued by the fact that I grew up in one little town, and returned after medical school.

  Clover says she’s lived all over, moving around with her parents in their RV as a kid, and then on her own as an adult. She absolutely fascinates me. Her life is like nothing I’ve ever heard of before—all spontaneity and whim. It doesn’t seem like she plans much of anything. I have no idea what that would be like.

  After dinner, we sit on the couch, finishing the bottle of wine. I love her stories about the people she’s met in all the towns she’s lived in. I love watching her lips while she talks. I love her smile, and her scent. The big meal and the wine leave me relaxed, and I gradually lean closer to her, almost without realizing. Her shorts leave her legs bare and her V-neck shirt shows the tops of her breasts. Her curls brush her neck. I want to taste that sweet skin, explore that curvaceous body, feel her breath against me. My cock is so hard it’s getting difficult to concentrate on what she’s saying. Then the word apartment catches my attention.

  “What was that?” I ask, suddenly feeling guilty. I was so caught up in fantasizing about her, I missed what she said.

  “Oh, nothing, I just found a couple apartments that I’ll call about tomorrow,” she says, winding a curl around one finger. Her wineglass is perched on her bent knee. “Now that I have a job, I can focus on finding a place to live and get out of your way.”

  I lean back, giving her a smile I don’t feel. Of course she should be apartment hunting. She’s been here nearly a week, and her head is healing well. It isn’t like she can stay with me forever.

  “That’s great,” I say. “But don’t feel like you need to rush. You’re not in my way. Especially if you keep cooking meals like that one.”

  She takes a sip of wine. “Well, I figured you’re newly single, right? Maybe you miss having a woman cook for you once in a while.”

  I laugh. “No, Jennifer didn’t cook.”

  “Really? Never?”

  “She knew how,” I say. “But she never cooked for me. Especially out of the blue like this. And if she had, she would have just bitched about it getting cold when I came home late.”

  Clover scowls. “It’s none of my business, but she doesn’t sound very nice.”

  “You know what?” I say. “She wasn’t.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Two years,” I say.

  “Why?”

  The bluntness of her question makes me laugh.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that,” she says.

  “No, it’s a valid question,” I say. “Honestly, I don’t know. When we started dating, it was a relief that she didn’t care that I was a doctor. I dated a few women before her, just casually, and they only wanted me because they figured if I was a doctor, I must have a lot of money. Jennifer makes plenty of money on her own, so that had a certain appeal. But I stayed with her way too long.”

  “Again, why?”

  I take a deep breath. “I ignored the problems. When I’m at work, I’m focused on what I’m doing, so I don’t think about what’s going on with my personal life. And I work a lot, so ignoring the fact that I wasn’t happy with her was pretty easy. We’d fight and break up, and then she’d come back and want to work it out. Staying with her seemed easier than breaking it off.”

  “That’s no way to live,” she says.

  “No, it isn’t,” I say. “But that’s over now. And just in time too. She’d be livid if she knew you’d been staying here. I ran into her at the store last weekend and she instantly thought I was sleeping with someone.”

  Clover grins. “Did she? As if that’s any of her business.”

  “That’s what I told her.”

  “Good for you,” she says. She holds my gaze, her lips turned up in a seductive grin.

  Shit.

  She finishes her wine and puts her glass on the coffee table. “I kind of don’t want to tell you this, but my head hurts pretty bad.”

  That isn’t good. Concern cuts through my arousal. “You definitely overdid it today,” I say. “Time to lie down.”

  “Yeah, I’m not even going to argue with you this time,” she says. “Even though it’s still early.”

  “No arguing,” I say.

  She gets up and straightens her clothes.

  I stand, putting my wine glass down. “Thanks for dinner,” I say.

  “You bet,” she says. “It was my pleasure.”

  She walks toward the stairs and I wait, rooted to the spot. Shit, I want to go up there with her. My dick is hard as fuck. But she’s hurt and needs rest.

  She pauses at the bottom of the stairs. “Good night, Cody.”

  “Good night, Clover.”

  I watch until she disappears up the stairs, then flop down on the couch and put a pillow over my head. I am not going to be able to sleep.

  11

  Clover

  I listen to Cody shower, imagining water running down that hot body. Ever since I came downstairs that first morning, finding him in nothing but an open shirt and underwear, I can’t stop thinking about it. Of course, his mother being there made things awkward, but it doesn’t change the fact that he looks like a Greek god. Strong chest, muscular shoulders, washboard abs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man with such a delicious set of abs in person. I want to run my tongue down them, pull out his cock, and do a better job thanking him for everything he’s done for me.

  Last night, I was sure things were finally going somewhere. He loved my cooking, and every girl knows the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. We sat on the couch, drinking wine, talking. I felt him moving closer to me, but then my stupid head started to hurt. A lot. Like, seeing spots in my vision, making my stomach hurt. I’m still pissed at myself for not holding out longer. I’m pretty sure he was minutes from kissing me, and that would have gone a long way toward making my head feel better.

  I paused at the bottom of the staircase to say goodnight, like I have every night since I started staying with him. I desperately wanted him to follow me up. Even though my head was killing me, I wanted him close.

  Why didn’t I just ask? I’ve never been shy about sex. My parents raised me to be free and open with my sexuality. I was taught it was normal to explore and want to experience new things. So I did. When I want sex with a man, I’m always blunt about it. I rarely wait for him to make the first move.

  But Cody is different. He’s so gentle and protective, but there’s such a fire behind his eyes. I’m not sure what it means. He hasn’t actually tried to kiss or touch me. It seems like he wants to, especially last night—but if he isn’t acting on it, maybe I’m wrong. He did just get out of a relationship. Or maybe he just isn’t attracted to me. It seems like he is, but considering I’ve been sleeping in his bed for almost a week and he hasn’t made a move on me, I could be seeing something that isn’t there.

  And the truth of it is, I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I’m wrong.

  Being openly rejected by him is terrifying. So I hold back. I try to give him all the signs I possibly can to let him know I’m interested, but men aren’t always good at picking up on those sorts of things. And if he has noticed, and isn’t responding, that tells me what I need to know. I’d rather have nothing happen between us than have him tell me no.

  The why of that is a mystery to me. I’ve never felt this way about a man. I’ve never been so torn between wanting someone and being scared of being rejected by him. I usually throw caution to the wind a
nd go after what I want. I just can’t with Cody, no matter how my body responds when he’s near. He makes me hot and wet and almost crazy with desire. But if he didn’t want me back, it would crush me.

  The water turns off and I grip the covers. Maybe this will be the morning he comes in. I imagine him opening the door, peeking in to see if I’m awake. His hair would be wet and he’d be wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. I’d sit up a little and smile, nodding my head toward the bed. He’d be cautious, but I would throw off the covers, and he’d let his towel drop. His cock would be hard for me, and I wouldn’t even bother undressing. I’d slide my fingers between my legs, push my panties aside and then…

  Fuck. I’m breathing hard and my pussy is hot. I need to stop doing that. He isn’t coming in, and I’m only making it worse for myself.

  I must have dozed off again because when I look at the clock it’s almost nine. I’m not supposed to go to Old Town Café until tomorrow, so my day is wide open. What I need to do is find an apartment.

  I go downstairs, dressed only in panties and one of Cody’s t-shirts. They’re so comfortable and they smell like him, so I wear them to bed every night. He hasn’t said anything about it, but I’m not sure if he’s noticed.

  I put on hot water for coffee, grab my laptop, a jar of peanut butter, and a spoon. I’m hungry, but don’t feel like making a real breakfast. I sit on the couch, and fire up my laptop.

  There are already two rentals I want to call about, but I need to find more options. My credit is pretty bad, and it might be tough to convince someone to take me as a renter. I’m new in town, without a solid job history.

  I dig out a spoonful of peanut butter and lick the top while I scroll through rental listings. There’s a cottage that looks promising. I don’t know the streets well enough to be sure of where it is. I wonder how close it is to Cody’s house. It looks tiny, but the rent isn’t bad.

  I sigh. Usually apartment hunting is a lot of fun. New places are always so filled with possibility. But this time, they all seem drab and boring. I know it isn’t the pictures. They’re perfectly decent places to live. The problem is, I hate the thought of leaving.