Unexpected Family

by Molly O'Keefe

  “What?” He glanced up at the clock. “We have twenty more minutes.”

  “Right, but you know what you need more than me, right now? A beer. At a bar. With other adults. Perhaps you could call Lucy.”

  “But the boys—”

  “Are safe at home with their grandparents.”

  “You trying to skip out on our appointment?”

  “No. I’m trying to get you to see that your life isn’t over. It’s just different.”

  She stood and reluctantly, slightly belligerently, he stood, too. “I better not get charged for this,” he grumbled, grabbing his hat from the rack.

  “I’ll see to it myself,” she said, and slowly walked him to the door. Crazily, he wanted to ask her how. How was he supposed to go to a bar? Alone? What was he supposed to say? The King of Small Talk had a case of the nerves.

  “It’ll come to you,” she said, as if she could read his mind. “It’s like riding a bike.” She patted his shoulder, all but pushing him out the door.

  An hour later he stepped into the Sunset Bar, took one look at all the backs and hats and the people in conversation and realized this was no longer his scene.

  He used to pride himself on the fact that there wasn’t a bar in the world he couldn’t call home. And now the first bar he ever drank in was totally foreign to him.

  I should go, he thought. Head on home and maybe spend some time with Ben and Cynthia. See why no one ever picked flowers for him. He had one foot back out the door, when the bartender spotted him over some guy’s hat.

  “Jeremiah!” Joey cried, lifting a hand. “We haven’t seen you around here in a long time.”

  Two men turned toward him and with a huge sigh of relief he recognized both of them.

  “Hey there, Joey,” he said, walking into the bar and picking a stool next to the men he knew.

  “What can I get you?” Joey asked.

  “A Bud.”

  “How you been keeping?” Joey asked, popping the top off a bottle and sliding it across the wood toward him. Jeremiah caught it like the beer-catching pro he used to be.

  “Busy,” Jeremiah answered, “you know.”

  “Three kids will do that to you,” the quiet man next to him said.

  “Phil, good to see you,” Jeremiah said. Phil ran the feed shop, and twice a week they talked about weather. It wasn’t much of a relationship, but right now Jeremiah clung to it like a lifeboat. Shaking hands like they were old friends.

  “Our youngest just started sleeping through the night,” Phil said, “and Mary’s talking about having another one… .”

  Jeremiah shuddered but the man on the other side of Phil smiled, splitting his wild Grizzly Adam’s beard.

  “Dr. Puese,” Jeremiah said, leaning forward to shake the big-animal vet’s hand. “What’s got you out at a bar on a Saturday night?”

  “Susan’s got book club. I learned it’s best to skedaddle or I get an earful about things I got no business hearing about. Those girls don’t talk about books.” He arched a bushy eyebrow before taking a sip from his bottle. “Worse than a locker room, I swear.”

  Jeremiah laughed and eased back on his stool. His shoulders adopting the international beer-drinking posture. His elbows finding that sweet spot at the edge of the bar, where the wood had been worn into divots by a hundred other elbows.

  “Aren’t you going to say hello to me, Jeremiah Stone?” At the far end of the bar, the person reading the newspaper lowered the paper. And sitting there, like a teenage dream in a clingy black shirt with red lipstick and glittering eyes, was Lucy Alatore.

  And suddenly this night was looking a whole lot better.

  * * *

  JEREMIAH SPUN TOWARD HER, his back to the men he sat beside.

  “Well, well, well,” he said.

  She tried to breathe normally, but it was as if her skin got tighter just by his attention.

  Everything just seemed sharper with him around. As if there was an edge of excitement to the mundane. As if there was a chance that this could be the most thrilling night of her life.

  She’d always sensed this about him, but tonight it was turned way up. No wonder Reese came up here to spend his money; Lucy would do the same thing if she had any money.

  Such was the power of Jeremiah Stone.

  His eyes touched Lucy’s face, the lipstick she’d put on because she thought she looked so tired and worn without it. The black shirt that her mother said was going to give men the wrong impression, and from the look in Jeremiah’s eye as he traced the neckline with his gaze, she’d have to give the point to her mother.

  Jeremiah was getting an impression all right, but Lucy couldn’t say if it was wrong.

  “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked, and she laughed, because he’d meant her to, because he was so charming that such a cheesy line got new life coming from his mouth.

  “Waiting for you to get so drunk you pay me money to drive you home.” She lifted the cup of coffee she’d been nursing all night to her lips and took a sip. Terrible. Really, really awful coffee. If this taxi thing was going to work out, Joey was going to have to invest in some decent coffee. Maybe clean the machine out for the first time this decade.

  “You’re still doing this?”

  “A woman’s got to work.” She tried to sound as if she believed in this taxi thing. But she knew it was ridiculous. She knew it was a bizarre downward turn for her. It was one thing to run Patty and the girls to the Snip and Curl for their hair appointments, but hanging out here waiting for drunk cowboys was a new low.

  But she could not sit at that ranch tonight, doing nothing. Counting the money she owed people, praying the condo sold well enough to clear her out of half her debt.

  Watching her mother knit.

  It was insane. And this…this ridiculous taxi business was her only alternative.

  “You’re going to drive drunk cowboys home wearing that?”

  “You sound like my mother.” She leaned back, confident in not only what she’d worn, but in the fact that she could handle a drunk cowboy. She’d been doing it for a number of years. Drunk men were sort of a specialty of hers. A product of Walter.

  “Well, your mother is a smart woman.” He stood up from his seat, all smooth charm gone as he towered over her. “You want to drive people around, fine—you can drive my boys all you like. I’ll pay you. But this…” He jerked his thumb behind him at the crowd of men and women behind him. “This is asking for trouble.”

  “You know, Jeremiah,” she said, her temper pricked by his high-handedness. “I am a grown woman.”

  “Yeah, a beautiful, sexy grown woman who shouldn’t be alone in a car with half the men in here, even when they’re sober.”

  The beautiful sexy thing she’d seen in his eyes when he looked at her, in his lips when they’d kissed. But it was sort of shocking to hear him say it. An electric current charged through her, waking her body up in a painful rush.

  “You sure you want to talk about this?” she deflected. “I’d hate for it to get too deep and you break into hives.”

  “If I do just tell me what color your underwear is.”

  It was the devil, the devil in her, the devil in his eyes, the devil that didn’t understand what she was doing wasting her time with a taxi service. The devil made her lean forward, close enough to smell him, spicy and manly and clean. “What underwear?” she whispered.

  His laughter boomed through the bar, turning everyone’s head. “You are a wicked, wicked woman, Lucy Alatore.”

  She leaned back, satisfied and giddy with the power of the attraction between them. It was dangerous, she knew that, but…well, it was fun.

  “So, this taxi business?”

  “You won’t let go of this, will you?”

  His grin was pure sex. Knowledgeable, wild sex. This was going to be fun.

  “I’m working on some commitment issues.”

  “Really? Me, too.”

  “I knew
we were alike.”

  “I think I have the opposite commitment issue as you.” She folded the paper with a sharp crack.

  “What exactly are you saying?” he asked, pretending to be wounded.

  “I’ve done one job and one job only my entire life. It’s been jewelry and design since I was a teenager—over twenty years, Jeremiah.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing, most people would love to have a calling. Hell, if I could still ride I’d be in the rodeo.”

  “But I failed at that calling. Or it failed me, I don’t know. I just know it’s time for me to do something different.”

  “What does that have to do with commitment? Or us?”

  She leaned forward, resting her chin in her hand, looking him square in his beautiful eyes. “How many woman have you slept with?”

  “No way.” He shook his head. “I will never tell you.”

  “Because you’re embarrassed?”

  “No. I mean, it’s not that many. Everyone thinks because a man knows how to talk to a woman he’s slept with half the population.”

  “And you haven’t?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “I’ve slept with three men.”

  He gaped at her. Shook his head as if he’d been punched in the ear. “Now, I’ve had a lot of sex with those men, but it’s only been three. I’m thirty-six years old.”

  “You want to cat around a little? Sow some wild oats? Because if you’re taking applications—”

  “Cat around? Who says that?”

  He shrugged. “Desperate men.”

  She stared at him, close enough to see the flecks of black in his brilliant blue eyes. Close enough to smell him, to taste him if she was bold enough to lean forward to press her lips to his. And she was plenty bold, but she wasn’t ready for that. She wanted more of this delicious possibility that seemed to surround Jeremiah Stone. She wanted more of the buildup, the ecstatic expectation. “When have you ever been desperate, Jeremiah?”

  He touched her arm, just the tips of his fingers against the fragile skin at her wrist, and the night detonated around her; lust and excitement laced the air she breathed, filtered through her clothes to touch her skin with sparks.

  “I have never been as desperate as I am right now.”

  Enough, she thought, and leaned forward to kiss him.

  Lucy was situated right beside the hallway leading back to the bathrooms and one of the last standing pay phones in the world. A cowboy stepped out of the hallway into the bar, adjusting his zipper and belt buckle, shattering their little bubble of intimacy.

  Jeremiah dropped her wrist just as the cowboy weaved toward them and Lucy had the suspicion she was looking at her first customer for the night.

  “Hey.” Drunk Cowboy smiled lewdly. “You that woman giving guys a ride home?”

  The way he said it was slightly skeevy, a little too close to ugly innuendo, but before she could say anything, Jeremiah was up and off his stool.

  “Walk on by.” Jeremiah stepped close to the man in a way that was only aggressive.

  “Just asking the woman a question about her business practices.” The guy laughed and she quickly leaned between the two men, smiling at the drunk cowboy.

  “If Joey says you’ve had too much to drink to drive home, I can give you a ride. My rates double, though, if you’re an asshole.”

  Drunk Cowboy was offended. “Are you calling me an asshole?”

  “Not at all. But my friend might, so I’d keep going, just to be safe.”

  Drunk Cowboy scowled at her and at Jeremiah, who bristled. The former rodeo champ saddled with his dead sister’s three children was a bad kind of powder keg and he didn’t need this kind of drama.

  The man walked by and Jeremiah gaped at her. “You’re kidding with this, right?”

  “I’m not talking about this with you.” She sat back down and picked up her coffee, ignoring the look he was giving her.

  Finally he returned to his stool and finished his beer in one long swallow. Catching Joey’s eye he lifted his hand for another.

  “Is it your intention to get drunk so I have to drive you home?” she asked.

  “No, but it’s a good idea, if it keeps you away from guys like him.”

  “It’s not, and you know it. You’d have to pay me to take you back to your truck tomorrow morning and miss half a morning of work.”

  Joey slid him another beer and he took a quick sip.

  “What are you even doing here, Jeremiah? Where are the boys?” she asked, peeved with him. All that quiet heat between them earlier was raging into a different fire and she found herself itching for a fight.

  “With their grandparents.” He stared up at the ceiling, stretching his long neck so much that she saw the white skin under the edge of his shirt.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  His laugh was bitter and dark, like the bad coffee in her cup.

  “I do not want to talk about whether or not I am all right. I don’t want to talk. I am so done with talking about myself.”

  Okay, she thought, leaning away. There was a dangerous sparkle around him, something manic in his eyes.

  “You want to get out of here?” he asked, and her stomach twisted, torn between desire and better sense.

  “And do what?”

  His eyes sparkled. “Minigolf. What do you think?”

  She laughed, low in her chest, more turned on just sitting here than she’d been in years. Just the prospect of walking out that door with him, the half-formed imaginings of what they would do to each other, made her fingers shake. Her breathing speed up.

  Part of her wanted to play a game with him, drag this out. The anticipation was so delicious. And part of her was scared. Scared silly to leave with him. To embark on some affair when she was such a mess. When she liked him so much.

  “You want to leave?”

  “That is just the beginning of what I want.” He tilted his head, watching her, studying her, his eyes hot with appreciation. “I’m tired of being in my own head, Lucy. Worrying constantly if I’m doing the right thing. And I think…maybe you’re tired of that, too.”

  It was as if he’d read her mind.

  “I want to feel something.”

  This was her time to back out, to put the right kind of distance between them, but then he leaned in, his breath smelling like beer and gum.

  “I dare you,” he whispered.

  In the blink of an eye she was on fire for him. The wildness surrounding him—the excitement that crackled in his eyes. It was contagious, that excitement, and she wanted more.

  She felt alive. For the first time in a very long time, she felt utterly alive.

  Attraction and intent sizzled and burned in the air around them. The bar, the twenty people milling around, all of it vanished and it was just them. In the whole wide world it was just them.

  Normally she didn’t think about how long it had been since she’d had sex. Because sex in her relationships was only part of the equation. When lust attacked she could handle it on her own, but the burn in her body was specific to this man.

  She wanted him. Needed him. And only Jeremiah Stone would do.

  And he was looking at her like he felt the same way.

  “Joey,” she said without looking away from Jeremiah, “don’t call me. I’m busy.”

  She reached back, grabbed her purse and followed him out the door into the night.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE CHILL IN THE EVENING air did nothing to cool her down—if anything she stepped closer to Jeremiah, longing for his skin against hers, his heat through the thin fabric of his shirt.

  She had no idea where they were going—a car, probably. A bed, hopefully.

  But once they were in the shadows on the far side of the bar, he turned and jerked her into his arms, rough and wild, and she met him halfway, leaning back, her hips against his, her arms around his neck.

  She found his lips in the darkness and the night exploded.r />
  Kiss after kiss, a hundred of them, a thousand spilling into one another. She opened her mouth, let in his tongue and he groaned, pulling her against him until she could feel the hard ridge of his erection beneath his zipper.

  Yes, she thought, yes, and more please, more.

  He sucked on her tongue and she gasped, pulling herself into him with her arms, unable to get close enough. She could crawl into his skin and it wouldn’t be enough.

  Porn star words were coming to her lips; she wanted to ask him to do things to her they had no business doing against a building.

  As if he realized that, too, he broke away, his face tight in the shadows, his lips wet. Her breath shuddered in her body and she honestly didn’t know what to say or do. She slid her fingers up under his shirt, feeling the situation gaining a dizzying momentum.

  “You’re so beautiful. So alive,” he breathed, pushing her hair back off her cheek, his thumb touching the corner of her mouth and she licked it as it went by. He groaned and brought his thumb back to her lips, tracing the edges with rough calluses.

  Frustrated, and so very turned on, she put her teeth to his skin, raking them across his thumb, and he smiled, wicked and dirty.

  “That’s how I feel, too. Come on.”

  He grabbed her hand, putting distance between them, but then stopped. “My house is too crowded,” he said. “Yours is, too.”

  Some of the glitter drained off him, real life returning drip by drip to destroy the excitement, the life in his face.

  “Oh, man,” he muttered, his shoulders slumping.

  She had no idea why she was doing this, except that she knew her excitement was tied to his, and if his died, hers would and she wasn’t ready for that. She wanted to see where this kind of desire led.

  And she wanted to see him animated. Not worn down. Jeremiah as he used to be, as he could be again, with her.

  She tugged his hand, pulling him into the shadows behind the bar, glad the garbage Dumpster was on the other side, until she felt the roughness of the brick against her back. They bumped into something in the dark and he fell against her, kicking whatever was at their feet aside.

  It was nothing but darkness back here, bushes along one side—honeysuckle by the smell of things.