Quiet Man: A Dream Man Novella

by Kristen Ashley

  Now it was just Mo and his girl.

  “Gonna grab my laptop,” he said to Lottie, watching her stretch out on his couch, her eyes to his view. “Want a drink?”

  “No, Mo. I’m good.”

  He got his laptop from his room, brought it to the island and booted it up as he ripped open envelopes.

  “So, sisters, mom, registries, cake tastings, nieces and nephews,” she started, and Mo again looked at her to see her gaze still aimed at his view. “What about your dad?”

  Shit, fuck.

  He didn’t want to get into that now.

  Or ever.

  “Can we talk about him later?”

  She turned from the view to him. “We can talk about him whenever you want, honey. Though I have a feeling it won’t be any easier then.”

  She was probably right about that.

  “Think I mentioned he was a dick,” he noted.

  “You did,” she confirmed.

  “Those weddings my sisters had?”

  She nodded.

  “They part paid for them. Their future husbands pitched in. Mom pitched in and she did it a lot. Dad, not so much. That was his thing. Being around and being useless.”

  Also being a dick.

  “Was he invited?” she asked quietly.

  Mo nodded. “To one. Signe’s a good girl. Oldest. Responsible. Played a big part of takin’ care of us while Mom worked. She thought it was the right thing to do. Invited him. After that, no.”

  “Was he…did he behave—?”

  “Like a dick?” he cut her off to ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what dicks do, Lottie.”

  “Does he drink?” she asked cautiously.

  Mo shook his head and turned his attention back to dealing with his mail. “Teetotaler. Doesn’t touch the stuff. Thinks anyone who does is weak. Same about drugs, for certain. Detests smokers. Even has a few things to say about people who drink caffeine.” He looked back at her. “But didn’t have any problem telling his daughters they needed to lose weight. Sharing with his son he thinks he’s a piece of shit. Slapping his wife around until she got shot of him.”

  She pushed up to sitting on his couch, eyes locked on him, whispering, “Mo.”

  “Made Signe’s day when he joined her at the back of the church to walk her down the aisle. Caught his first sight of his beautiful daughter in her wedding gown, told her she looked plump and she should have gone on a diet before the big day. Added that her dress made her look like she was trying too hard. Standing up front as an usher, took one look at her walking down the aisle and knew he got his teeth into her.”

  “Oh my God, Mo,” she breathed.

  “Thought Paul, Signe’s man, was gonna march down that fucking aisle and rip his throat out. It ruined it. She was near tears the whole time they stood up there taking their vows, and not the good kind of tears. That’s what you see in the pictures. That and Paul looking like he wanted to murder somebody.”

  “Honey,” she whispered.

  Christ, he hadn’t talked about this in years.

  But now that he was, it seemed like he couldn’t stop.

  Which was why he didn’t.

  “For him, he has no clue. Says he thinks he’s bein’ helpful. What he’s being is controlling. He had no say in the wedding, even though he tried to horn in, about everything. And that flipped his switch. His choice, he would have planned the whole thing and it would have been an eighties throwback nightmare. But he didn’t pay for shit. Didn’t even offer. Even if he did, it wasn’t his ass getting married. That was his payback.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Lottie said.

  “I disinvited him before he walked into the reception.”

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “I beat the shit out of him in the parking lot.”

  Lottie sat on his couch, staring at him.

  Mo stood at his island, staring at her.

  Seconds ticked by and through them, he watched her face get hard.

  There it was.

  He was an asshole, just like his dad, except an out-of-control one, not a control-freak one.

  And now she knew it.

  “Good,” she bit.

  He felt his entire body jerk.

  “What?”

  “Good,” she snapped. Then she yelled, “What a dick!” She jumped to her feet just as Mo heard the door to the condo open. “Seriously! Total dick!”

  “Everything cool?”

  Mo twisted to see Mag standing there, looking alert while he glanced between Lottie and him.

  “No,” she clipped. “Mo’s dad’s a dick!”

  Mag turned his attention to Mo.

  “I mean, he ruined his sister’s wedding day!” Lottie shouted, so in her snit, it was like she hadn’t really registered Mag had entered, even if she was responding to him, which was something since not many women missed Mag doing anything. “Who does that?”

  “I see your relationship has moved to Tales from the Darkside,” Mag remarked.

  “It happens,” Mo replied.

  “Warp speed, brother,” Mag returned. “Heard you two didn’t make it ‘official,’” he did the air quotation marks just to be an asshole, “until yesterday morning.”

  “We didn’t,” Lottie butted in.

  Mag looked back to her, fighting a grin and murmuring, “Mm-hmm.”

  “We didn’t,” Lottie repeated.

  “All right, darlin’. I totally believe you,” Mag said.

  Lottie gave up on that (wisely) and turned to Mo, throwing an arm out at Mag. “So, he’s not the one who’s a god?”

  Mag also turned back to Mo, brows raised, no longer fighting anything. Smiling flat-out.

  “I told her about Auggie,” he shared.

  “Right,” Mag murmured. He went back to Lottie. “Mo’s the only real god among us. He put up with Tammy for two years before she did him the colossal favor of breaking up with him.”

  Mo looked to the ceiling.

  Terrific.

  He had no clue she’d already met Tammy.

  Mag was in Test the New Woman mode.

  Fuck.

  “I hear that,” Lottie returned. “Met her at King Soopers. Real peach.”

  “You ran into Tammy with her?” he asked Mo, jerking his head Lottie’s way.

  “Her name is Lottie,” Mo replied.

  “You ran into Tammy with Lottie Mac, Queen of the Corvette calendar and every other man on the planet’s wet dream?” Mag amended.

  Mo wasn’t finding this even remotely acceptable anymore.

  And damn sure not funny.

  “Though I’m the other man,” Mag stated, again grinning because he read Mo’s face. “Seeing as she’s dating my roommate.”

  “We did,” Lottie affirmed, and regained Mag’s eyes. “And her new man, Peacock Pete who wears a two-hundred-dollar shirt to go grocery shopping.”

  “Her new meat was there too?” Mag asked Lottie.

  Lottie nodded her head, the bunch of her hair swept up at her back crown bouncing around. “Unh-hunh. When he stopped checking out my tits and figured out who Mo was, I’m pretty sure he pissed his two-twenty-five rag and bone chinos.”

  Mag burst out laughing.

  Lottie smiled at him.

  “Holy fuck,” Mag pushed out through his hilarity. “That I would have paid to see.”

  “Tammy was the star of the show,” Lottie shared. “I thought I’d have to scratch her eyes out before she begged Mo, right in front of Peacock Pete, to let her go down on him in the alley.”

  Mag busted out laughing again but he did it turning his attention back to Mo.

  “Told you she was gagging for it. You totally should have tagged her convenient and left the scraps to Peacock Pete.” He went back to Lottie. “Sorry, darlin’. No offense to women on the whole. Just referring to women like Tammy.”

  “She’s not a woman,” Lottie returned. “She just has the equipment.”r />
  Looking at Mo, Mag indicated Lottie with a thumb. “I like her.”

  “Take a number,” Mo muttered.

  “You want a beer?” Mag asked Lottie.

  “It’s barely eleven o’clock, Mag,” Mo informed his bud.

  “I’m feelin’ like a play by play of the Tammy Incident and anything involving Tammy is better consumed with alcohol,” Mag replied, then he returned to Lottie. “What’d she do when she got a load of you?”

  “Nonverbal throwdown. Immediate,” Lottie told him.

  “I’ll bet. Pea green. Fuck, wish I’d been there to see that,” Mag replied.

  Lottie then looked at Mo and declared, “I think I like him.”

  “He’s an asshole, baby,” Mo shared.

  “The fun-loving kind who’s only inappropriate when discussing women who are bitches and on occasion waxing poetic about a spectacular blowjob,” Mag put in.

  Lottie watched him say this and again looked at Mo. “I’ve decided I totally like him.”

  Mag chuckled and moved to the fridge.

  “What are you doin’ here anyway?” Mo asked his roommate. “Aren’t you on mission?”

  “Nope, it’s done. Finished the debrief and now I’m gonna shotgun a beer then haul my ass to Coors Field for a day game. Meeting Boone there,” Mag stated, tagging a beer from the fridge and turning to them. “You guys wanna come?”

  Hell no.

  “Mo has to pay his bills online and then I have to do a deep dive into his psyche as to why he put up with women like Tammy before he met me and after that we’re gonna have a fuck-a-thon. I don’t think we can fit it in our schedule. But thanks,” Lottie answered for them.

  Mag held his beer in hand and stared at her through all this.

  Then he shot a shit-eating grin at Mo and announced, “I fucking hate you. You got the only good one left.”

  He might be right about that.

  And Mo was down for the fuck-a-thon.

  The rest?

  “You want Lottie doing a deep dive in your psyche?” Mo asked.

  “If I didn’t think you’d pull my balls out through my throat, I’d share I would give it up about Nikki if I got all the rest.”

  “Nikki?” Lottie asked.

  “You shouldn’t have gone there, brother,” Mo muttered.

  Mag looked to Lottie. “How’s this? You don’t treat him like a piece of shit,” he tilted his head to Mo, “I’ll bust out my good Scotch and drown my sorrows while crying on your shoulder and laying my broken heart at your feet. You do end up treating him like shit, Axl, Aug, Boone and me will build an effigy of you and burn it, like we did Tammy, because apparently that works.”

  “I’ll take that deal,” Lottie immediately replied.

  “Well, all right,” Mag said quietly, eyeing Mo’s woman up now with open approval.

  They shared a moment of solidarity and Mo let them do that before he reminded his friend, “Weren’t you gonna shotgun that beer and then get the fuck outta here?”

  “Right, I have plans.”

  He then took out his army knife, set the beer on its side on the counter, slipped out the blade, shoved it in the bottom side of the can and put the hole to his mouth before pulling the cap, downing the brew like he was eighteen years old and standing in the living room of a frat house.

  Mag gave out a big, “Ah,” when he was done, crunched the can and tossed it in the recycling before he strolled to his bedroom, saying, “If you’re behind closed doors, I’ll lock up when I go out and catch you two on the flipside.”

  And then he shut his door behind him.

  Mo looked from Mag’s door to Lottie.

  “Nikki?” she asked.

  He knew she wouldn’t let that go.

  “I’ll explain later.”

  “Scale of one to ten with Tammy being a five, what’s my challenge?” she asked.

  “Eighty-two. He was gone for her. Lost. Couldn’t find his own ass if she was in the same room. And she was for him too, if he’d give up his job and go work at a bank or something.”

  “Oh boy,” she muttered.

  “Yeah,” Mo agreed.

  She wandered to him, saying, “I’ll get on that later.”

  He bet she would.

  Mo went back to his laptop to log in to his bank.

  Lottie stopped at his side.

  “Mo?” she called.

  He lifted his eyes to her.

  “I will never, not ever, treat you like shit,” she whispered.

  “I know, sweetheart,” he whispered back.

  They shared their own moment of solidarity.

  “Pay your bills, honey,” she urged. “We need to go get some lunch and carb up for our fuck-a-thon.”

  Mo decided right then they were having Italian for lunch.

  He did this grinning at her.

  Then he paid his bills.

  * * * *

  They were necking, Lottie sitting on his dick in his lap.

  Mo was sitting up, his arms curled around her, his legs straight, her legs curled around his hips, her fingers trailing over the skin on his skull.

  When his cock lost it, and her, they kept necking.

  It was a while after that when he lifted her up and set her on her side on the bed, bent in and kissed her chest, then threw the covers over her and left her there to go deal with the condom.

  They’d carbed up on pasta with the addition of a salad (Lottie eating a lot of the last, a little of the first) at a restaurant down the street from his house.

  And since Lottie didn’t want to waste time commencing their fuck-a-thon (and Mo didn’t either), they’d walked back to his place and spent the rest of the afternoon doing that.

  She hadn’t done a deep dive into his psyche about why he put up with the likes of Tammy.

  Then again, he suspected she knew she’d already handled that.

  He rejoined her in his bed, pulled the covers over them, curled her in his arms and started making out with her again.

  His bed had definitely been broken in.

  And there’d been some action, if not the full go, in her shower that morning.

  So that left her couch in front of her TV and finishing up what they started in the shower and he could dream up new places to have her.

  His couch was going to be one.

  The island too.

  And her kitchen counter.

  And the couch he’d slept on without her for a week.

  These thoughts on his mind, Lottie’s taste in his mouth, Mo broke the kiss, trailed his lips to her ear and asked, “You good?”

  “Tremendous,” she replied, pressing into him. “Though, hungry.”

  Yeah, he was too.

  “And Mag got home a while ago,” she went on. “We should probably come up for air and go see if the Rockies won.”

  This meant, go out and start laying the groundwork to find out what kind of guy Mag was so she could set him up with the right woman.

  Mo grinned at her.

  Lottie knew he knew what was on her mind and she grinned back.

  He touched his mouth to that grin, pulled away and muttered, “Gotta do one thing first.”

  “Okay, baby,” she replied.

  He kept her close and reached an arm beyond her to his nightstand, tagging his phone.

  He brought it back, engaging the screen, letting it see his face then he rolled to his back, taking Lottie with him so she was draped down his side.

  She rested her cheek on his shoulder and commenced drawing random patterns on his chest.

  Mo suddenly wasn’t all that hungry.

  He hit the phone button on his screen and made his call.

  “Well, hello, Mo, so glad you called. This means I can talk Trine down from sending out a search party.”

  Mo smiled at the ceiling.

  “Hey, Ma.”

  He felt Lottie tip her head to look up at him.

  He kept his eyes on his ceiling.

  “How are things?”
his mother asked.

  “Things are great,” he replied.

  “Great?”

  Her tone was a mix of surprised, dubious and concerned.

  To say his mother was not in the dark about some, if not all, of his issues was an understatement.

  “Yeah, Ma, just got off a job.”

  “Hawk giving you some downtime?”

  “Yeah. But back tomorrow,” he told her. “Though after check in and debrief, hopin’ he’ll give me the weekend.” He paused before he shared, “Listen, I met somebody.”

  Lottie tensed in his hold.

  Complete silence from his mother.

  To say Tammy and the others weren’t beloved by the other women in his life was another understatement.

  “And I want you and the girls to meet her,” he finished.

  “You…I…uh,” his mother stammered.

  Mo pulled Lottie further up on his chest and tipped his eyes down to her stunned face.

  “You’re gonna love her, Ma.”

  Lottie’s face lost the stunned as it got soft and she slid her hand from his chest to the side of his neck.

  “She’s terrific,” he continued.

  At that, his girl’s face got even softer.

  He’d give her the hazy-eyed look of eating her out and making her come, and he’d love doing that as often as he could manage.

  But that look right there he’d kill and die for.

  “Well I’m not sure you’ve ever quite described one of your women as terrific, Mo.”

  Even his mother called him Mo, something he’d demanded around the age of six.

  She’d saddled him with the name of Kim, Seamus was of his father, and even at six, he wanted nothing to do with that, so she’d relented without a fight.

  Even his credit cards said Mo Morrison on them. Only his license shared that his mother had every faith upon his birth that he could handle bullies and douchebags without coming out scarred.

  “That’s because I’m seein’ that they weren’t,” Mo replied.

  “Well…my,” his mom whispered.

  “Can’t do it this Sunday. Next Sunday?” he asked.

  “I’d love to, but I think Marte’s schedule has her on shift at the hospital.”

  “Sunday after that,” Mo suggested.

  “That’d work. I’ll have dinner here,” his mother answered.

  “We can hit a restaurant.”

  “I’m not going to meet a woman you describe as ‘terrific’ in some stuffy place like a restaurant, Mo. I’ll make my crab cakes.”