by Ev Bishop
“Hey there, gramps,” she whispered, her voice craggy with disuse. Ice tinkled in a glass. When he pulled off his shoes and walked closer, he smelled hard alcohol. “Quite the day, hey?” She wasn’t quite slurring, but it was accurate to say her words had no sharp edges.
He sank onto the small couch beside her and felt heat coming off her body, a direct contrast to the chill he still carried from outdoors.
She looked at him. He looked at her. “Drinking alone?” he asked.
“Not anymore,” she quipped, then winked. “How do you like your bourbon?”
“I’m not sure, uh—”
“A bourbon virgin? How sweet!” Sam popped up and practically skipped to the fridge, her drink not so much as sloshing. For crying out loud, even tanked she moved with an agility and grace that made most people seem clumsy.
More ice clanked, liquid poured, something fizzed—but whatever bottles she was planning to poison him with were hidden from view by the fridge. She was back a second later, handing him a glass. He looked at the light golden beverage then up at her.
“It’s good. You’ll like it.”
He sipped tentatively. Then took a larger, more appreciative drink. “It is good. I do like it.”
“Told you,” she said, looking down at him with lowered lashes. She swayed side to side, not drunkenly, but like she was considering something.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She plunked back down and he noticed her own drink had been topped up. “Cheers,” she said and raised a toast. “It’s not every day you get a new granddaughter.”
“Cheers,” he replied and clinked his glass to hers. The heavy cut crystal made a pretty sound.
“Are you totally exhausted?” she asked.
“Er . . . not totally.”
“Good, let’s celebrate till the sun comes up—which might be a long time in this godforsaken hellhole they call a valley.”
Charles laughed—but for some reason he couldn’t explain even to himself, he felt a little weepy. He clutched his glass in both hands. “Sounds good.” His crazy jag of emotions must’ve left a tear in his voice or something because Samantha turned to him and her gorgeous eyes narrowed.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing, it’s nothing—” but wouldn’t you know it, his stupid voice kind of broke.
She set her glass on the coffee table, then did the weirdest thing. She wrapped her hands around his, which still encircled his drink. “It’s okay. Like I said, we had a big day. There was a lot to process.”
Tears came. Big ones. They seeped from the corners of his eyes and tracked down his face—and her hands were still pressed to his. He couldn’t yank away, blot them out, deny them.
“I . . . ” He shook his head. “I . . . can’t go the hospital without thinking about death. Maureen and I lost so many babies and then she died—and then Aisha had such a hard time . . . I was sure, I was sure she was . . .”
“Shhh,” Samantha said, sounding almost angry. She squeezed her eyes shut for a second and when she opened them, they were different: softer, almost glistening. “I know what it’s like to experience bad things and to expect the worst, but it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Charlie didn’t have time to think about what she meant because she rushed on. “Aisha didn’t die—and it sounds like you and I were the only ones who were even worried she would. She’s strong, physically and emotionally, and that’s thanks to you and Maureen.” Sam’s voice lowered. “And Charlie—you didn’t die either.”
She dropped his hands, turned away and picked up her beverage. Took a big drink. “And the kid—little Mo, I mean. She seems pretty durable too.”
Charlie sipped the amber concoction in his glass and when he spoke next, his voice was rough even to his own ears. “And what about you, Samantha Kendall? Is that what you are? Durable?”
Samantha’s answer, a whisper though it was, pierced him like blade. “I think the word you’re looking for is hard, Charlie. Hard.” She grinned then, like she was trying to pass the comment off as a joke, but he wasn’t fooled.
He wanted to deny it, to say something to encourage her the way she had him, but Samantha settled deeper into the couch and rested her head against his shoulder. Charlie’s brain—and all thoughts—stuttered to a stop.
He breathed in the scent of her hair and the boozy, fading fragrance of her perfume—of her. The slight weight of her body against his felt like it was imprinting on him for life. He let out a deep exhale. What had she said? He wasn’t dead yet.
A couple drinks later, conversation and the mood had swung full circle, maybe become a bit manic. They talked about music. She had terrible taste, was totally stuck in the eighties and it made him howl.
“Well, at least my playlist doesn’t look like it belongs to a thirteen-year-old girl,” she said with feigned indignation.
“That’d be insulting—except it was probably created by a thirteen-year-old girl. Aisha used to be obsessed with fooling around with my phone and I haven’t updated either, the music or the device, for almost five years.”
“And you say I’m stuck in some outdated generation.”
They both laughed.
They talked about food.
“Dinner with you the other night—that’s the first meal I’ve cooked that hasn’t come out of a box in . . . years,” he admitted. He’d been about to say since his wife died, but for once he didn’t want to bring Maureen into the conversation.
“And that’s the first time I’ve eaten that many carbs in one sitting in years and years.”
Ah, so that’s what lay behind her initial hesitation to eat that night. Silliness. “You don’t need to watch what you eat. You look amazing.”
Sam’s eyebrow quirked and her lips twitched. “Yes—because I don’t eat carbs. With great legs comes great responsibility.”
“What—no! Tell me you did not just completely butcher a Spiderman quote and make it about your body?”
Samantha stretched and Charlie was all the more conscious of the body about which they spoke.
“My great body you mean? And sure, why not? Poetic license—that’s a thing right?”
“Well, I’m going to feed you nothing but carbs.”
Sam laughed. “No way. It’s my turn to cook next. Canned soup it is.”
And they started to discuss work. Samantha wanted to dig into his writing process in great detail and was dissatisfied by his comment, “The biggest part of my process is that I rarely speak of my process.”
“That’s a cop-out.”
He shrugged.
“No, seriously. There’s got to be something you can tell me. How did you get into writing romance anyway? I know you’re not the only guy who does, but it’s not the most common thing either.”
His pause gave her all the encouragement she needed to push harder. She squealed a little. “Wait, wait—this is going to be good. I know it. Let me get another drink.” She refilled both their cups generously, then sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of him and looked up expectantly. She was just so damn cute.
He shook his head again. “Fine, but it’ll sound dumb.”
“Perfect. I’m all ears.”
“No, no, you’re all something, but it’s definitely not ears.”
“Heh,” she said. “Don’t change the subject.”
Charles swirled the contents of his glass, creating a little whirlpool of ice, ginger ale and bourbon. “I used to tell Maureen . . . stories.”
“You used to tell your wife stories . . .” Sam repeated—then squealed, “Ah! You mean like foreplay stories?”
Heat flooded every one of Charlie’s limbs. “Oh, yes,” he said thickly, assuming his heaviest fake accent. “Very hot, very sexy, I assure you.”
Sam arched a perfect brow and with just as much exaggeration, licked her lower lip. “Ooh la la—that hot, that sexy, you say.”
Somehow when she said it, equally cheesy or not, it was also . . . crazily, well, exactl
y those two things: hot and sexy. His pulse pounded.
“And then a little of this led to a little of that?” she asked, placing a finger on his knee and trailing it up the inside seam of his jeans about six inches. His whole body—yep, he was that transparent—stiffened like he was a horny kid. Then again, on some level, maybe everyone was a horny kid forever.
She grinned knowingly. “I mean story-wise, of course.”
“Yeah,” he croaked. “Of course.”
Her grin broadened and his hormones surged.
The room around them was slowly lightening as dawn developed into full-fledged morning, but he wasn’t tired at all. He wanted the strange evening-slash-day to last and last. Yep, he was enjoying himself all right—maybe too much. He didn’t feel like he had a lick of restraint left, but still managed to redirect. “But what about you?” He waved ambiguously toward the world outside the window. “It’s obvious you make decent money—or have decent money. What do you do for a living?”
Samantha sipped her drink and he marveled how despite the hour and the drinks that he could no longer count, she didn’t seem any more or less tipsy than when he’d arrived. “Boring,” she said.
“Not to me. I want to know.”
She considered that and nodded slowly. “I’m an investor of sorts. I’ll tell you more eventually—and you’ll be bored as promised—but let’s not change the other subject just yet.”
She was still sitting on the floor, but had moved even closer to the couch. Given his position, legs apart, feet planted, she was practically framed by his knees. And she was definitely leaning in and even more definitely flirting. A rush of giddiness made him chuckle. Maureen used to always accuse him of being dense—said women flirted with him constantly at conventions and the like but that he never noticed, that it was part of his “charm.” She wasn’t the jealous type though—or maybe she was, but she just knew he had eyes only for her. Now he felt a bit proud as he formed the thought. She’s flirting with me, Maureen. She definitely is. I can tell.
Well, holy cow and cue the orchestra. She sure is, stud. Go for it, came back Maureen’s voice in his head, followed by her musical laugh. For the second time that night, he felt a little teary. Maureen was gone and he’d mourned her a long time. She was okay with him moving on. Maybe. Holy shit—the thought slammed through him—he was hammered.
He lost himself in Sam’s eyes and cleavage again. Wondered if she knew he could see right down her shirt from his vantage point—then felt sure, yes, she absolutely knew—and he liked that about her. Her mixture of coquettish games and bluntness. (Not a bad title for a romance short, actually . . . Coquettish Games and Bluntness.)
All he wanted to do was pull her up to standing and—
“Now, Mr. Bailey, whatever are you thinking?” she asked, but the little glint in her eyes and the way her tongue touched her lower lip for just a second told him she knew exactly what. She stood, topped their glasses once more with a bottle that had made its way to the floor beside her—but then placed both drinks just out of reach on the coffee table and stepped close, straddling one of his outstretched legs.
He contained a moan, but barely. She really was so hot. And it had been such an amazing day. He wasn’t himself, or the self he tried to be anyway, when he reached up and gripped her hips, then guided her onto his lap.
“Oh,” she purred, placing her hands on his shoulders. They considered each other for what seemed a long time. Out the window, just beyond Samantha, the sun was making an appearance now, peeking through the charcoal clouds, rendering them gold and silver. A surreal light spilled through the window in visual rays and gave Samantha’s hair a glowing halo-like effect.
Charlie stroked one finger down her velvet-soft skin from temple to cheek.
She smiled down at him and leaned in. Her breath tickled his face and sometime recently she’d partaken of a breath mint or something because an intoxicating scent of spearmint mingled with the sweetness of bourbon. He wanted to taste her.
“Here’s what I propose,” she said.
“Propose? But lady, I hardly know you.”
“Ha ha, funny man.” But the skin around her eyes crinkled into those lines he’d already learned to watch for—the true cue to her mood despite her signature dry tone. All he wanted to do was make her eyes laugh all the time.
She bent in so close her lips were almost touching his. His clamp on her hips tightened. “As I was saying,” she whispered, her voice mostly air. “I propose we stop pretending we don’t both want the same thing. Let’s have our fling, make it really good, and get it out of our systems.”
If she’d literally thrown a bucket of ice water over him, Charlie’s libido—or his mental libido anyway—couldn’t have been more instantly or thoroughly extinguished.
“What?” He could hardly formulate words. His body still wanted what it wanted, but his mind reeled.
“Oh, come on . . .” Her voice was still sultry and seductive and her hand teased along his jaw and down his chest. “The kids are away, the adults can play.”
He wanted to play. He really did. But dammit, he already felt his desire wilting. He knew himself too well. He’d never been the guy for light games. And Sam . . . He stared at her hard and she flinched and straightened, though remained on his lap.
He recalled her earlier comment about being “hard.”
“Such bullshit,” he muttered sadly.
“What?” Her posture went even more rigid. “What is it?”
His head was a muddle of regret and he hadn’t even squeezed the words out. “I’m sorry, Sam—and so lame, but this, I mean, you, me . . . I want to, but—”
“But what?” She was half standing now, perched for flight.
“Just we’re both so drunk and we had such an intense day. I really . . . like you—and I’d like to . . . just not like this.”
Her green eyes speared him. “Oh my God,” she said. “You’re serious? So what, you thought we’d make love-sweet-love and last forever?”
“No . . . ” He shook his head but wondered if maybe that wasn’t exactly what he’d been thinking.
Samantha bolted to her feet, but remained so close he could still feel heat emanating from her. “Last chance, Bailey.”
“Sam . . .”
She grimaced in disgust. “Oh, fuck you. Forget it.”
She was halfway to her room when she stormed back, grabbed her still-full glass and the almost empty bottle and raised them both in another toasting gesture. “To romance and real life working out great.” And then she was gone.
Charles lifted his own lonely drink and raised it to the empty room. Its melting ice cubes slinked around the brim, too far gone to make a cheery clink. “Hear, hear,” he said.
A moment later he got up and dumped the untouched beverage down the kitchen sink.
Chapter 17
Sam slept restlessly and had half-dozing dreams that replayed bad memories over and over again. It was an irony she often faced when she drank too much: she drank to forget, but then it wrecked her ability to sleep deeply—the only time she truly did forget.
“So why do you drink so much then, you fucking drunk?” she muttered at one point, flipping her pillow. Unfortunately she couldn’t let herself off the hook so easily. Addictions were compulsive, uncontrollable. Her drinking was neither of those things, not really. She wasn’t an alcoholic. She was all too aware when she was going to hit it hard—and knew all the reasons she chose to, too. Go her! Sometimes it was to give her the excuse to do things she wouldn’t while sober. Liquid nerve, right? Sometimes it was because it was easier to be alone with herself while drunk than sober. Sometimes it was just because she got so damned sad. . . . And tonight’s fiasco with Charlie? Well, it was probably all three things working together in a lovely head-fucked trio. Would she ever stop being so pathetic? Maybe after she turned forty—which left her a few good years to imbibe. Heh.
She rubbed herself lightly, but it didn’t do the trick. She wanted
a man. No, she was in her own head so she might as well be truthful. She wanted Charlie—though who knew why. Self-righteous-smug-asshole-jerk. Even in the cool bedroom, her face ignited thinking of her needy come-on and his quick, decisive rejection.
Her hand rested on her freshly groomed mons—what a waste!—and she sighed. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew herself and she knew men. Charlie found her attractive, maybe at least as attractive as she found him, so what was his problem? Since when did being drunk rule out a good roll in the hay? If anything, it was the other way around.
At some sleepless midmorning point she was aware of slight noises outside her room and in the hallway—the kind of sounds people make when they’re trying too hard to be quiet. Then the outside door opened and shut. Charlie was gone. No doubt off to see Aisha and little Mo. That made her sad.
She lay on her back, tucked the sheet and duvet around herself as tightly as she could, and managed to sleep and stave off thought for a while at least.
The sky was a dull, heavy gray and the clock read 4:04 p.m. when she next opened her eyes. Her mouth felt like something had died in it and her body was leaden.
She listened. Not a sound from any other part of the house. She decided to risk getting up and bee-lined for the washroom.
She peed, slugged down a glass of water and two ibuprofen, and headed toward her room—just as a surprised voice made her jump.
“Oh, you’re awake.”
Charlie appeared out of nowhere, awkwardly blocking her way in the hall. She was suddenly all too aware of what she was wearing. Not very fricken much.
“Er, yeah,” she said.
His eyes did a quick, involuntary scan of her body, and she watched his expression change and him grow agitated as he realized what he’d just done. She fought the urge to cross her arms over her chest and consciously shifted instead, so her pajama shirt stretched open just that little bit further.
“I visited Aisha and the baby again after I napped,” he said.
“I figured.”
“It’s snowing really hard.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care. I’m going back to bed.”