Carpenter: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 16)

by Flora Ferrari

“What are you up to, my man?”

  “Talking to these two about their spa and resort.”

  “These two? You’re in cahoots with these two jokers?”

  Double Down has always had the biggest personality in the room, and being that we’re outside his voice seems to carry even more. I’m not about to acknowledge these two as jokers, especially considering how I’m feeling about Avery right now.

  “We just had some preliminary discussions about a few things. That’s all.”

  “Tough negotiator, isn’t she?”

  “She definitely isn’t one to back down.”

  “Got that from her old man.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Who’s…” Double Down leans back and sticks out his arms, his palms facing up. He tilts his head to the side.

  “In the flesh.”

  My stomach drops and I feel all the weight in my body go towards my feet. I’m deflated. “You don’t have any kids?”

  “None that I knew about…until last year.”

  “You’re joking me?”

  “Nope! Best Christmas surprise I ever got.”

  “Come on, man. You’re pulling my leg.”

  “Show him your mole pattern, honey,” Double Down says, turning towards Avery, as he pulls the collar of his white V-neck to the side and reveals something that looks like Orion’s Belt on his collarbone.

  “Dad, please,” Avery says.

  “Dad?” I say, looking at her.

  “Yes, Mister Carpenter. As he told you, he’s my father.”

  “Mister Carpenter!” Double Down bursts out. “You’ve got to be shitting me! Call him Chiseled, or maybe better to just go with Christian, although I don’t recall ever remembering him going to church.”

  “I think that’s why they gave me the name, to offset all the crazy things I did as a kid.”

  “Kid. Come on, man. We’re not even forty yet.”

  “Six months is close enough.”

  “Hog wash. You’re only as old as you feel.”

  As much as I’m enjoying seeing Double Down again, I still can’t believe Avery is his daughter. He must sense my mind is spinning.

  “Come on. Let’s all head down to the diner in town and catch up over fried eggs and bacon.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Don’t tell me you got some celebrity lining up to discuss furniture with you this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Hot date down there in Laguna Beach?”

  I see Avery’s ears perk up out of the corner of my eye.

  “Not that either.”

  I see her shoulders fall, as she exhales a sigh of relief at my answer.

  “Well, that’s a first. So no excuses then. Let’s go!”

  CHAPTER 6

  Christian

  I walk into my room at the spa and fall face first onto the bed. What a day. I was lucky they could accommodate me another night, but I know tonight won’t be about sleeping. I’ve got work to do.

  I roll over onto my back and take three deep breaths in and out and then spring to my feet. I pull the piece of teak and my tools from my bag and sit down at the desk in my room and get to work.

  I’m determined to show Avery just how much care and attention to detail I put into everything I do. I noticed that she had one of those super simple key chains. While I like the idea of simplicity, I know it could be much more elegant. It needs to match the kind of girl she is.

  I run back out to my car and get my table lamp and get back to work inside.

  Three hours later and I’m halfway though. Luckily I had been able to only have a single drink all day, much to the dismay of her father, Doug. He was in full catch up mode, but I couldn’t let my excitement to see him again override my growing fascination with his daughter.

  Three more hours and I’m done. It’s five a.m. and I can get some sleep before my eight a.m. with Avery. Her dad had eased some of the tension between us, but inserted a new kind of tension in doing so. The good news was I had another shot to sit down with her, and suggest my entire plan. The bad news was she was my best friend from childhood’s daughter.

  I strip down and pull the comforter off the bed. I lie on my back and take a few deep breaths to put my body into sleep mode.

  Who am I fooling? There’s no way this is going to work.

  I should be dead tired, but I can’t sleep. I can feel the need to rest in my body, but my mind is focused on her.

  I reach my hand over and put it on my chest. My heart rate’s elevated. Damn, what was this girl doing to me?

  I put my palms flat on the bed and slid them under my legs. Not more than a minute later and they were wandering.

  My palm grazes my groin before wrapping around my shaft. I’m already hard, and know this isn’t going to take long.

  I slowly begin stroking my shaft as I move my hips up and back. I close my eyes and picture that beautiful woman I’d seen in the steam room the night before. Avery. I imagined slapping her ass again and watching the force from my hand cause her ass to ripple. How those moans escaped her.

  I take a deep breath in as I continue stroking, beginning to feel lightheaded. My focus switches to my meeting with her…how incredible she looked in her outfit, and how I knew exactly how she looked underneath. How her calves flexed as she walked on those high heels across the gravel. How her ass looked like the juiciest apple in the world underneath that skirt. How I wanted to grab her and take her on the hood of my car right then and there. How we could fuck, getting off from the excitement of the quick thrill just as much as the idea of possibly getting caught by a passing motorist.

  My focus moves to her face…how she was stone cold in those negotiations. How she kept her ground and stayed firm. She was unlike any woman I had ever negotiated with before. She didn’t come across as a hard ass, and it wasn’t for show. There was no boardroom to impress. She was firm, but feminine at the same time. It wasn’t a game of cat and mouse. It was two giant cheetahs hissing back and forth, as they do before they mate.

  All I could think about was that ruby red lipstick and how her mouth moved when she spoke. I wanted to slide my dick in and feel those lips wrapped around my shaft. To hear the popping sound as the head of my prick pulled out of her mouth like a giant lollipop. How she would hunger for me. How she would stroke me as she sucked me right then and there in the hot morning sun. The cool desert breeze on my skin and the wetness of her mouth on my cock.

  How she would look up at me with those same bedroom eyes she negotiates with. How she looks so powerful and so seductive at the same time.

  How I would cum so hard in her mouth and how she wouldn’t spill a drop.

  I felt my body lurch forward and I sat up in bed as I shot a load clear off the bed and onto the carpet. A second blast came just as powerful as the first, followed by a third and a fourth. A few more shots and I was beat. I fell back onto the sheets and closed my eyes.

  If just fantasizing about her felt this good I could only imagine how the real thing was going to feel.

  I needed her and I was going to have her, no matter what.

  CHAPTER 7

  Christian

  I hear a noise, but it doesn’t register.

  “You in there buddy? Let’s get a run in before your meeting.”

  Shit! It’s Doug.

  I look at the alarm clock, which reads 7:30. Either the wake-up call hadn’t come or I had slept right through it.

  I get out of bed and bounce from one wall to the other as I try to clear the cobwebs from my head.

  I grab the first towel I can find in the bathroom and wrap myself in it.

  I open the door, and there stands Doug. He’s way too happy and way too excited for 7:30 in the morning.

  “Come on, man! We can get in a mile or two before the day begins. Before the temps soar. What do you say?”

  My eyes are barely open, but I can still see the guy jogging in place in the hallway.

  “Just about to take
a shower. Can I get a rain check?”

  “Did you lose a step while I was in New York?”

  “Maybe two,” I say.

  “Tomorrow, then. No excuses.”

  I nod and slide the door shut.

  The cold water from the shower does as best as it can to wake me, but it’s not helping.

  I finish up and walk back into the living room. I notice something on the carpet and remember what happened before I fell asleep. I survey the room and wonder how I was able to release such a load. There’s only one answer. Avery.

  By eight o’clock I’m down by the pool ready for our meeting. Doug suggested we meet somewhere more relaxing, where we could sit side-by-side and not the standard across the table business position, where conflict more easily arises.

  I sit in my trunks, and stare out across the water. The sparkle is too bright and I slide on my sunglasses. My timing couldn’t be better as I see her coming out of the passageway.

  She’s wearing a one-piece red swimsuit, covered with a white linen cover-up. She’s got on oversized dark sunglasses, which match her hair and features perfectly. She may be wearing flip-flops but she moves just as elegantly as she did the day before in those heels.

  I stand to greet her, keeping the magazine I was pretending to read strategically placed over my junk, which is already firming with a quickness.

  Damn, this girl affects me like no other.

  “Good morning, Miss Anderson,” I say.

  “Good morning, Christian. And if you don’t mind, let’s go with first names today. It feels more…personal. Less…combative.”

  “I like that idea,” I say, confirming her idea and all the ideas in my head that are swirling around in regards to the things I want to do to that body of hers.

  I motion to the small table in the shade and she shakes her head.

  We settle in and order a light breakfast.

  “No Chris today?”

  “I asked him to work on some other things. I wanted our time to be…our time. So we could start over fresh, eye to eye.”

  “I like your plan, so much so that I brought a small gift, as I should have done yesterday.”

  I reach into my pocket and remove the keychain. I keep it in my palm, face down.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  I motion with my other hand for her to give me her hand. Her hand comes up from her lap and extends to the middle of the table.

  I place my left hand under hers, turning her wrist over so her palm is facing up. I feel a coolness shoot across the top of my skin when her skin touches mine. The coolness quickly turns to heat, and I feel a bead of sweat forming at my temple. Stay cool, Christian.

  I gently place the keychain in her palm and pull my hands away.

  Her eyes are still on me, and an inquisitive smile overtakes her lips and the corners of her eyes. In American culture emojis focus on the mouth. In Asian culture they focus on the eyes. You can fake a smile with your mouth, but you can’t with your eyes, and her eyes are telling me her smile is genuine.

  I like knowing that I’m making her happy. I watch her as her eyes drift down to her hands.

  “It’s beautiful,” she says.

  “Thank you. It’s your name, in Balinese script.”

  “It’s incredible. You made this…last night?”

  “I did.”

  “This must have taken a lot of time. The attention to detail is incredible. How long did this take?”

  “I didn’t even notice the time,” I say, which is true. I only recognized how much time went by when I stopped midway and saw the clock out of the corner of my eye. “And I don’t measure things in time, or in dollars and cents.”

  “I can see that,” she says. Then it hits me how my words might be misconstrued. “Is there an additional meaning behind that?”

  “Not at all, but I see how it could sound that way. I’m an artist, but to be a successful artist, you have to be a businessman. But for me the art always comes first and the money follows. If you turn it around it doesn’t work, not that I’d try or that I’d ever want to.”

  “That sounds all well and good, but you also have to make a living, right? And I know your work doesn’t come cheap.”

  “I live a low burn lifestyle. If I can swim in the ocean, eat a burrito from the shop close to my modest atelier, and surf and travel a little then I’m pretty much good to go.”

  “Pretty much?”

  Until now I was always good to go with just that, but now I’m not so sure. I can easily picture standing in my bedroom as the morning sun creeps in. She rolls over in bed to awake to me painting a portrait of her sleeping. After a morning romp in the sheets to get the day started, we head down to the beach to longboard. Where I live the waves are mellow. She’ll pick up surfing in these conditions in a week…two weeks top. After an hour of surfing and playfully splashing water on each other, we head up the hill, just in time to catch a school of dolphins from our vantage point. We grab lunch and head back to the atelier where I do some woodwork and she runs her spa remotely with her assistant being the man on the scene. If there’s a more perfect way to live, then I haven’t heard of it.

  “I’ve recently…very recently…wondered if there is a missing piece.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re another one of those people who’s always looking to ‘upgrade.’ The latest car, the bigger house, the newest phone…and of course a new love interest…or more appropriately a lust interest.”

  “If that were how I went about my life would I put so much time into everything I do? I don’t measure it in time, but of course it shows. I do it once, and I do it right. Once it’s done I stand by it forever.”

  “Are you talking about your work, or something else?” She takes a sip of her orange juice as our croissants sit untouched.

  “Everything.”

  “And because you’re such a perfectionist, if I can say it like that, that explains why you haven’t been able to settle down with the right woman.”

  “I don’t believe in settling down. I hate that word. Everything about it sounds like a compromise to both people’s happiness. The life we dream about as children. If you find the right person, there is no compromise. There is no settling. Everything just flows, like the ocean over the sand.”

  “Where do you come up with these lines?”

  “They’re not lines. I’m dead serious. I can understand how they might sound that way, but when you’re in touch with nature as deeply as I am you notice these things. You feel these things.”

  “And what do you feel right now?”

  “I feel you.”

  Her body pulls back. “You feel me?”

  “Yes.”

  A small laugh escapes her. She reaches down and takes a bite of her croissant, buying time to think what she will say next. “And how exactly do you feel me?”

  “I feel your energy. I felt it yesterday, and I felt it the first night we met.”

  “This I have to hear,” she says, putting her croissant down and leaning back into the conversation.

  “Yesterday you were all about power and class. You were professional, unwavering, but fair throughout. You knew what you had in mind and you weren’t about to let anyone get in your way. I admire that, and I find that trait very hard to come by. And I find it incredibly sexy watching you when you are in this mode.”

  “Mode?”

  “Yes, because the night before you were in a very different mode. You were submissive. You were exploring. You were living in the moment, unplanned and unprepared. The yin to the yang of yesterday. And then your logic and reason kicked in and you…shall we say…remembered who you are.”

  “Remembered who I am? Like I ever forgot.”

  “Not that you forgot, but you tried something different and you liked it. I know you did. I felt it.”

  “Let me guess. You felt my energy?”

  “I felt our energy together. The way you moved. The way you breathed. The way you responded to my
touch.”

  No reply. She reaches for her cappuccino and takes a sip. “So you know everything about me then?”

  “I know nothing, and that’s what fascinates me. As large as an iceberg is, the large majority of it is undiscovered…hidden under the depths of the water line. That’s the part I want to know. That’s what I need to know about you.”