by Cara McKenna
Convenient Strangers
Cara McKenna
After three weeks of post-breakup wallowing, Adam’s in dire need of a cold drink and a cure for his romantic hangover. At his favorite bar, he spots that cure in the form of a six-foot-something muscular man, custom built to Adam’s fantasy-rebound specifications. But his hopes for a therapeutic one-night stand are dashed the second he approaches the decidedly surly English stranger.
Stephen’s nursing romantic wounds of his own—fresh ones. He cut his closet-case lover loose just hours earlier, and now, heartbroken and homeless, he wants to be left alone to drown his sorrows in peace. But that’s no excuse for snapping at the friendly, handsome guy who only wanted to flirt. Plus, if anyone needs to be reminded how good a bad idea can feel, it’s Stephen.
Both men could use a reckless rebound to cleanse their palates. The sexy, dirty solace of drowning in a stranger’s hands, mouth and body. But when something deeper sparks, strings-free one-nighters never look so simple in the morning light.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Convenient Strangers
ISBN 9781419938634
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Convenient Strangers Copyright © 2012 Cara McKenna
Edited by Kelli Collins
Cover design by Caitlin Fry & Syneca
Photography: Vishstudios/Shutterstock.com
Electronic book publication January 2012
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
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Convenient Strangers
Cara McKenna
Acknowledgements
Thanks as always to my editor, Kelli. She culls my ellipses with a specially forged editorial scythe…though she’ll never slay them all.
Chapter One
Stephen stole a glance at the microwave clock. Quarter to seven? And they’d started at, what? Four?
Fucking hell, this had to be the longest breakup in history.
“It’s not something you can just bully me into,” Ethan said. “You’re asking me to turn my whole life inside out for you.”
“Yeah. Because I wouldn’t have any clue what that feels like.”
Ethan stirred his tea. He’d been stirring that same cup of tea for at least twenty minutes, its steam long since gone, dissipated along with Stephen’s will to live. The spoon kept tinkling against the ceramic and he wanted to…something. Knock it from Ethan’s hand, grab his wrist and force him to stay still.
Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, like a bell announcing Stephen’s official arrival at the end of his rope.
“Stephen?”
“Could you stop stirring that fucking tea, please?”
Oh shit, that look. Saint Ethan let the spoon go and crossed his arms over his chest, eyes wide and hurt.
“How’s telling you I’m fed up and insulted count as bullying?” Stephen asked.
“It’s the way you say it.”
“Well, fucking forgive me, I’m bloody fed up and insulted. I’m sick of holding your hand and telling you I don’t mind and I totally understand the pressure you’re under. I’ve done that for ten months.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his face. “I moved my entire life to this shithole city for you. I bloody emigrated for you. Have the fucking decency to at least introduce me to your mother. Your sister. The bloody postman—”
“You don’t know how my family is about—”
“Of course I don’t! I’ve never been deemed worthy of meeting them. Oh, except that cousin of yours. Ryan, was it? The guy who came by with the chair this spring? And you waved your hand toward me and mumbled, ‘And that’s my roommate, Stephen.’ You know, you don’t even know how your family is about you or anyone else being gay, because it’s not like you ever bloody told them!”
“I just know. I hear how my dad talks about it. We’re not in London anymore—”
“Fucking wish we were,” Stephen said with a mighty eye roll.
“This is pickup truck country. Southern Baptist country.”
“And this,” Stephen said, waving his arms to encompass the apartment and the two of them. “This is my life. This is what I moved here for, to be with you, and see where this was going. And it’s going absolutely nowhere except in circles. Like this bloody conversation—”
A fresh thump on the wall admonished their volume. Ethan gestured as if to say, Look what you’ve done.
Stephen smirked. “What’ll you tell the neighbors, if they ask? You and your roommate just having a row over the utilities?”
“Fuck you.”
The words stung but Stephen covered his hurt. He’d never driven Ethan to a fuck-you before, but he also hadn’t driven him any closer to the closet door. He took another deep, ragged breath. “You know what? Fuck you too. I’m done with this. With you.”
“Fine by me.” Oh, that prissy, put-upon, holy-ass expression.
Stephen shook his head, willed himself to be cool, to speak slowly and clearly. Act rationally, no matter how pissed he was. “Waste of my bloody time and life,” he muttered, walking to the bedroom.
“Where are you going?”
“To get a change of clothes.” He turned in the threshold. “See how reasonable and accommodating I am, letting you keep the flat?” Was that what he was doing? Sure, why not? Small price to pay. Good riddance to these walls and all the memories they held.
“Whatever.”
Stephen sighed, utterly unamused. “‘Whatever.’ That’s just perfect. Exactly what a bloody teenager would say.” He headed for his dresser.
Ethan framed himself in the doorway, watching Stephen tossing clothes on the bed. “You’re running away and I’m the teenager?”
“No, I’m escaping. And you’re thirty-one, and still too chickenshit to tell your mum you’re fucking gay. Socially, you’re a fourteen-year-old. That’s what it feels like, trying to be with you. Like I’m holding the hand of a fourteen-year-old bloody boy, and I moved here expecting to be with a man.” He glared at Ethan over the jeans he folded.
“It’s different around here. You met me in London.”
“And I was your dirty little secret there, too.”
Ethan ignored the comment. “Being gay’s different here.”
“I grew up in Manchester. You know what it’s like, growing up there queer? You may as well walk around with a bloody crossbow target pa
inted on your back. You may as well hand lads a brick and invite them to bash your skull in for you. There’s no worse thing you can possibly be there besides gay.”
Ethan sighed and threw his hands up. “Fine. You win. You win the worst childhood trophy, if it makes you so fucking happy.”
“I’d be happy if my boyfriend—who I moved to another hemisphere for—could find the knackers to acknowledge my existence.”
“I’ve explained about my family.”
“Fine. Not your family. How about a single mate of yours? A coworker? A fucking barista from two towns over?”
Nothing, just a wounded, martyred look that told Stephen this man he’d rearranged his entire life for didn’t get it. Not that he didn’t care, but he didn’t care enough to upend his own comfortable, cowardly existence to make a real place for Stephen in it. Fuck this. Fuck the bloody change of clothes, even. He shoved everything he’d gathered back into a drawer and slammed it shut.
He brushed past Ethan to the kitchen. Heading for the door, he grabbed his wallet from the table by the coatrack. “I’m going out. Going out alone.”
“Yeah, I caught that.”
“Single.”
“Whatever. Fine, I get it.”
“I’ll be by for my stuff tomorrow,” Stephen said, flipping the deadbolt and pulling the door open, praying there’d be a neighbor in the hall. A witness. “I’m going out,” he reiterated loudly, “and I’m going to snog the holy hell out of some gorgeous man with the balls to admit who the fuck he is.”
Ethan’s darting eyes and rigid posture said he was dying of embarrassment, but he kept his face straight, voice blasé. “Great. Good for you.”
Stephen turned, leaning in the open doorframe. “Some bloke whose closet door’s flung so wide open, the knob punched a bloody hole in the plaster, all right?”
“Have a blast.”
“Don’t think I won’t.” He yanked the door shut behind him, not quite a slam, and jammed his hands in his pockets as he stalked down the hall to the stairs. Every step felt like a sock in the gut, in the heart, but fine. Whatever.
Ten months was plenty to waste, holding someone’s hand. Ten months was too long.
He had some goddamn catching up to do.
Chapter Two
Adam pushed in the door to Hadley’s, his hands shaking, breath short.
It was so stupid, feeling this nervous.
He used to look forward to this moment, excited to have the whole night spread out before him, full of possibilities. But this was his first evening out since he’d been dumped, his first time back at Hadley’s for a drink as a single guy since… Shit, since last November. Since the night he’d met David at this very bar and they’d gotten attached at the hip in hours flat. Then attached at the mouth and the crotch, and soon enough the heart. Thankfully never by a lease or by joint pet ownership, but still. Very, very attached. More attached than Adam knew you could get this quickly, but here he was, finally understanding why people got so mopey and annoying after breakups.
Screw it, though. Three weeks should be ample time to mourn a relationship of eight months. Long enough for the scab to form, even if the ache might stick around a while longer. It was time to get it together, remember how to flirt. Remind himself he still liked flirting, or at the very least still liked beer. And it was fast approaching July. No such thing as summer in Tennessee without beer.
It seemed quiet for a Saturday, or maybe the place just felt quiet without David beside him. Lonely and intimidating. Still, both the guys working were familiar faces, and that was enough to draw Adam across the scuffed hardwood to the bar. He could do this.
He took a seat and smiled a greeting at the nearest preoccupied barman, waiting patiently until he came over.
“Hey, stranger. Solo tonight?”
The guy was cute, but Adam wasn’t quite ready to flirt. Too rusty, for one thing. Too sober, for another. “Solo for the foreseeable future,” he said with a dopey smile.
“Oh, sorry man.”
“It happens.”
“That it does. And that’s why I’m here. What I can do to help?”
Adam scanned the bottles and taps. “Shot of Jack and whatever seasonal summer you’ve got.”
“As you wish.”
“It’s quiet tonight.”
The bartender laughed as he turned to pour the beer. “Lady Gaga concert.”
Adam shook his head. “We’re that predictable, are we?”
The bartender turned back with Adam’s order but kept his hands wrapped firmly around the glasses. He squinted warmly at Adam. “You get your heart broken, or break somebody else’s?”
“Mine, sadly.”
“Well, misery’s first round is on the house.” He slid the glasses across the wood.
Adam mustered a grin. “Thanks.”
The bartender turned away to fill another order and Adam killed his shot in a gulp, liking the warm sting that trailed down his throat. He folded a five and set the spent glass on top of it, and carried his pint to a table near the windows. If the folks inside didn’t prove exciting enough to distract him, he could always space out to the lazy human traffic streaming past on the sidewalk.
He was out. That was all that mattered. He’d shaved, ironed a shirt, left the house and not looked back.
But it turned out there was at least one guy in the bar intriguing enough to snag Adam’s attention. A guy in the corner he’d never seen here before. A guy who, frankly, looked as if he just might not realize he was in one of Nashville’s more understated gay hangouts. Six-one, maybe, and big. Muscular-big. Thirty-five or forty or somewhere in between, with a shaved head, strong features, snug tee shirt.
And hallelujah, just like that, Adam had managed to forget about David for a whole twenty seconds!
He settled into that familiar, contented barroom boredom, laced with the heady spice of romantic possibility—or at least the possibility that he might one day be in the mood for romance again—more intoxicating than the shot. Felt like being twenty-five again, the night new, slate clean.
Adam wasn’t particularly looking for romance or sex, merely a little proof he could feel that spark for someone who wasn’t David, maybe give someone else a little spark. He stole another glance at the corner, finding that proof, feeling that crackle.
The guy was playing pool, ostensibly by himself, though the look of deep concentration on his stern face made it seem as though he were matched against some invisible adversary, and a tough one at that. He cued up and the balls scattered with a sharp snick, colors bouncing and rolling and settling. The guy seemed to pick solids for himself, sinking the three then stalking the five.
Adam drank half his beer without tasting it, caught up in the man’s intensity. The most magnetic, dangerous charisma he’d encountered in a long time. He was Adam’s type to a tee. A type that hadn’t really ever given him much, aside from grief. Oh and incredibly hot one-night stands, back when he’d been into those.
David hadn’t been Adam’s type, and possibly because of that reason, they’d lasted eight entire months. But when the giddy momentum of the honeymoon phase had waned, wasn’t that maybe, just maybe, because Adam’s interest had waned? He sure as hell hadn’t looked at his ex and felt this electric jolt. Not in ages, maybe not ever.
Then again, a shot of bourbon and three weeks’ heartache could very easily be blowing things out of reasonable proportion. And into large, muscular proportion.
Now Adam was in danger of staring, or drooling, and over the guy in the bar who looked least likely to invite a casual chat. He took a cooling drink of his beer and gave the rest of the room a scan.
Some cute guys, but none who struck him as both approachable and worth approaching. Too boyish, most of them. Too cute, too like David. He was well over his lusting-after-college-guys phase, his libido matured, and he wanted men now, real men. He’d caught himself cataloguing such specimens in the street and on TV and at the gym, the final month or two of his relat
ionship. A guilty pang came with knowing David’s feelings would be hurt if he could have heard those thoughts. Adam shook it away. He’d been a good partner, through the fun times and the boring ones. He’d had wandering eyes by the end of it all, but never wandering hands or heart or intentions.
But now. Now he was free to wander with any body part he felt like.
Damn, the liquor was working.
As the beer too began to loosen him up, he decided, what the fuck did he have to lose, chatting up the scary, sexy guy? A no-thanks, that was all. And he’d just gotten through a hard breakup; a no-thanks to end all others. His ego wasn’t crazy fragile. He could handle a snub from a hot stranger. And who knew? Maybe it’d go better than expected and he’d wind up handling something far nicer. He drained his beer and headed for the bar, fishing a few bills from his wallet.
“Another summer?”
“Please. And two bucks in quarters?”
The bartender poured the drink and opened the register, and his gaze jumped to the pool table. “Good luck,” he said, slapping the coins on the wood.
Adam meandered to the table, setting the change on the rail. The guy gave him a cold glance then lined up a shot. Adam backed off a few paces to watch from a casual distance, sipping his beer.
It became apparent after a minute that the guy was indeed playing against himself, taking turns, following protocol, methodical. Not just killing time and waiting for a challenger.
“You looking for a game?” Adam asked.
“Already got one, mate.”
Oh fuck, British. Might as well tug a shirt over Adam’s head emblazoned with, Will Pay Cash $$$ Now to Blow You.
No, bad. No blowing strangers of any nationality, not the first night Adam met them. Flirting, kissing, the exchanging of numbers perhaps, but not the more personal bodily fluids.