by Nikki Ashton
Katie
When I got inside Dex’s car, I was faced with another woman staring at me over her shoulder.
Shit, he was on a bloody date.
“This really is nice of you,” I said. “But I can call Carl, it’s no problem.”
Trouble was, I knew Carl and Sophie usually went out on Saturday night, leaving Jessie with Sophie’s parents. I really had no one else to call, not anyone that wouldn’t cost me a fortune anyway. There was always Jim, Mandy’s husband, I knew he’d come, but I hated having to ask. I had this feeling that as the only single woman in my group of friends, it wasn’t right for me to keep asking their husbands for help. I wouldn’t cope without my friends and I really didn’t want to wind them up the wrong way by pestering their other halves at every opportunity. Jim and Dave, Trisha’s husband, had helped enough when Carl first left. Charlie played up because he was missing having his dad around, so being his football coach, Jim took Charlie under his wing and helped him through it, as only a man could do. As for Dave, he came and finished off the decorating that Carl had started in the lounge, as well as fixing the garden fence that had three loose panels.
It wasn’t that I was a quivering mess, or that Carl wouldn’t do it if I’d asked, but my friends were bloody awesome and sent their men in to help me out so that I wouldn’t have to ask my ex-husband. That was why I couldn’t say no to Dex, although the way the woman in the front seat was eyeing me suspiciously, I kind of wish I had.
“My momma would tan my hide if she thought I’d left you there,” Dex said, fastening his seat belt.
“I just hope I haven’t messed up your plans.”
“No, not at all. We can have dinner any time, can’t we?”
He turned to the woman, who gave him a tight smile and nodded.
“I don’t live far, so you’ll be able to carry on with your evening pretty quickly.” I smiled at them both, hoping they could see how much I hated being such a pain in the arse.
“Well, I think maybe we should take a rain check.” Dex turned to the woman. “I need to get Katie home and try and sort out something for her car.”
“Honestly, Dex,” I protested. “I can sort it in the morning. Really, you’ve done enough.”
“You know each other?”
Dex looked at me and then back to his girlfriend. “Sorry, Debbie. Yeah, this is Katie.”
I thought he was going to expand and tell her how we knew each other, but saying we met yesterday in a pizza place probably wasn’t the best way to ‘mug her off’ as Isaac would say.
“Please, no.” I cried, leaning in between the two seats. “Don’t change your plans on my account. Just drop me off and get back to your dinner.”
“It’s still quite early, Dex,” Debbie said, giving him a smile and a wink.
Ooh, that made me feel a bit funny, thinking what that wink meant. Shit they were probably going to have sex later.
Dex, evidently wasn’t up with the program, because he took her hand and looked her in the eye.
“I’m real sorry, Debbie, but I really wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t get this sorted.”
God, I felt so bad for her. If that had been me, I’d have been in tears. What sort of boyfriend does that to his girlfriend? Dex seemed such a good guy too. I inched back in the seat, trying to give them as much privacy as I could from the back seat of a car.
“Okay, no problem.” Debbie smiled and sat back. “In fact, if you drop me off at Ziggy’s, I can meet up with my friends.”
I looked at Dex, wondering whether this was when he changed his mind. Whether he’d say, he’d drop me off and they could go together, but he didn’t.
“No problem. You want to call them, make sure they’re still there?”
“I’ll text on the way,” Deb said and pulled her mobile from her bag.
What was really weird was that their conversation on the way to Ziggy’s, the local nightclub, was perfectly amicable. They laughed and joked and there was no sign whatsoever that Debbie was annoyed at being dumped for the evening. When we finally pulled up to Ziggy’s, she leaned over, kissed his cheek, threw a quick goodbye to me, and got out of the car.
“You want to sit up front?” Dex asked, turning in his seat to talk to me.
“Yeah, okay.”
“I look like a cab driver otherwise.” He laughed and turned to watch Debbie disappear inside the club.
“You have a very relaxed relationship,” I said as I pulled the passenger door closed once I was sitting in the front. “I’m not sure I’d be so easy going if my boyfriend had picked up some random woman and told me he was taking me home to help the random.”
Dex scoffed. “One, she’s not my girlfriend, and two, you’re not some random woman.”
I knew it didn’t mean much, but the fact that he didn’t see me as a random woman made me a little giddy. Added to that the fact Debbie wasn’t his girlfriend and I was positively high.
“I am really,” I replied. “You only met me once before.”
“Like I said before, from the contents of your bag, I feel I know you real well.” He grinned and manoeuvred out onto the main road.
“I still wouldn’t be happy,” I said with a sigh and a shake of my head.
“Well it’s not like that between me and Debbie.”
“What is it like then? Because it looked to me like she thinks it is.”
Looking at his profile, I would see that he was smirking.
“Debbie and I,” he said, glancing at me. “Are fuck buddies and nothing more. Now, you wanna tell me where you live.”
“This is it,” I said, pointing to my driveway.
When Dex parked on it, I was a little surprised, expecting him to drop me off at the pavement and then shoot off, but instead he turned off the engine and looked at me.
“Right, you can make coffee for me while I make a few calls for you.”
His smile was dazzling, and not just because his teeth were so white and perfect. His whole face lit up, and his hotness made me want to sigh all over. It was a stupid thought, but that was how I felt. My whole body, my mind, my fanny, was just simply content to look at him. It was getting into a warm bath and lying in the most comfy bed ever, all rolled into one big, mushy, happy feeling.
“Okay,” I replied, probably a little too breathily. “But you really don’t need to.”
“Yeah, I know - you can get your ex to help, well now it won’t be necessary.”
As we got out of the car, I saw the curtains twitching and a distinct flash of orange.
“Oh shit,” I muttered.
“What’s wrong?” Dex looked a little worried as I stopped walking.
“My mother is here.”
He looked at the house and then back to me. “Is me coming in a problem?”
“Not as such,” I groaned, screwing up my face in exasperation. “She’s lovely, but extremely nosey and interfering, so please don’t be surprised if she asks you more questions than Andrew Marr on speed.”
Dex laughed. “The political journalist, right?”
“Yep, so try not to make eye contact with her. She’ll see your weakness and seize on it.”
“Okay,” he replied sounding a little cautious. “I’ll make sure I don’t.”
“Honestly, Dex. It would be the worst thing you could do. Don’t say anything and she may just go home without saying a word. I’m not even sure what she’s doing here.”
With another twitch of the curtains, I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns, so I let myself into the house. Kicking aside a couple of pairs of shoes and one sports bag, I stood to one side to allow Dex to enter.
“I’ll apologise now about the mess,” I said, throwing a quick glance up the hall and into the kitchen, looking at dirty dishes piled up on the draining board. “I’ve been out and I live with three children who think the damn fairies clean up after them.”
“No problem,” Dex drawled from behind me, sending a shiver down my spine. “I ain’t
the tidiest, believe me.”
The thought of Dex being untidy spun images of his ripping his clothes off and abandoning them on the floor, which in turn had me then imaging him doing the same to me and then all I could see was…shit, you get the picture. The main thing was, I didn’t turn around and climb and grind him like I really wanted to do.
“Nice house though.”
“Thanks,” I replied with pride. “I bought it after the divorce. Anyway, come through, but remember, don’t give her eye contact.”
Dex chuckled and I pushed open the lounge door. My mum, in all her ‘titian but it went orange in the sun’ glory, was sitting in an armchair, nonchalantly reading a magazine. If I hadn’t seen her peering through the window, or the fact that the magazine was upside down, I’d have thought she really wasn’t interested in the tall, hot, silver fox that I’d brought home with me.
“Hi, Mum,” I said brightly. “What’re you doing here?”
She looked up and feigned surprise. “Oh hello, you’re back.”
“Yeah, I’m back.” I rolled my eyes. “Where’s Isaac?”
“He’s upstairs helping Charlie with some project work or something. It appears neither of them wanted to spend time with their grandmother.”
I grinned, imagining exactly what the boys said when they saw her walking up the drive – ‘quick, it’s Nan. Let’s hide’. It wasn’t that they didn’t love my mum, we all did, but she was a bit too much at times. As I’d told Dex, she was nosey and interfering, but she also loved herself – Isaac coming in a close second – and thought that she was the most beautiful woman on the planet. The old Carly Simon song, ‘You’re so Vain’, was definitely not written about Warren Beatty, it was written about my mother.
“But less about them,” she said, standing up and smoothing down the tight skirt she was wearing. “Who’s this? Who are you?”
She eyed Dex up and down, taking every inch of him in, and when she patted her ginger French twist, I knew she approved.
“This is Dex,” I said, presenting him like a prize on a quiz show. “I broke down and he helped me.”
The handsome stranger suddenly forgotten, she turned on me, her eyes raging.
“I’ve told you to make that idiot buy you a new car. Doesn’t he care you’re carrying his children in there?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, dreading the full blown rant that was coming on. My mother wasn’t Carl’s biggest fan and never had been. She’d tolerated him because I loved him and he was my husband, but she always thought he was a ‘big, blond, idiot with trifle for a brain’, according to Eric, my dear deceased step-dad.
“I have to be honest, ma’am,” Dex said, with a shake of his head. “That was my thought exactly.”
My mum’s face lit up as she turned to Dex. “Well finally, someone who agrees with me in this family. Although, you’re not officially in the family, but even so.”
Ignoring her ramblings, I swivelled to look at my visitor. “To be fair, you don’t really know the situation.”
“You’re right, I don’t, but I do know no woman of mine would be driving an unreliable vehicle.” Dex’s voice was strong and commanding and sent a little thrill through my body. I mentally shook myself, remembering I wasn’t supposed to be drooling over him.
“I’m not his woman to worry about any more.” I didn’t mean to sound sulky about it, but I obviously did, particularly as my mum rounded on me.
“Please don’t tell me you’re pining for that big, blond idiot.”
“God no,” I snapped. “I’m just stating a fact.”
Which I was, it was just sometimes I got a little bit pissed that he’d moved on and I hadn’t. I didn’t want him back specifically, it was having someone and living a life with them that I missed.
“You’re right,” Dex said, holding his hands up. “My bad. It’s none of my business.”
“It is your business…Dex, is it?” My mum held out her hand. “D’reen Turner, Katie’s mum.”
“It’s actually Doreen,” I said to Dex, who grinned. “She’s trying to be posh.”
“Lovely to meet you, ma’am. Dex Michaels, Katie’s friend.”
“Well, Katie’s friend, ignore her catty remarks, and just so you know, I like your thinking. In fact, I’ve always liked Americans, haven’t I always said that, Katie?”
“Yes, Mum, you’ve always said that.”
And to be fair to her, she had.
“Well that’s good to know. But, I am sorry, Katie. It really isn’t any of my business.”
I sighed and let my shoulders sag. “No, you’re both right. Knowing it was going to have his kids in it, Carl should have let me keep the car and bought himself one.”
I’d never said anything at the time, because we just wanted to get things sorted as quickly as possible. We’d drifted along in our marriage for so long that by the time we realised it was over, we were desperate to move on and start afresh. Carl seemed to love the damn car so much, I let him keep it as long as he agreed to get me something. It wasn’t that I was useless, I simply didn’t have the time or want to listen to some condescending prick talk down to me about horse power and break speed. All I wanted was a car with a large boot and enough room for me and three growing kids. And Carl kept me at my word – my ‘new’ car was like a tank, with room for a couple of dead bodies in the boot, was ten years old and the colour of shit. But hey, at least he still had his gleaming black, BMW to impress his twenty-two-year-old girlfriend with.
“Finally,” my mum muttered. “You agree he was wrong to buy it.”
“Maybe it was a vendetta,” I replied with a little laugh.
“I thought it was a Vauxhall Astra,” my mum scoffed. “But whatever, it’s still crap.”
Dex coughed to hide a laugh, while I looked at her in amazement.
“No, I meant maybe he bought it as a ven-, actually, you know what, it doesn’t matter.” I could see by the glazed look on her face she had no idea what the joke had been. “So, what are you doing here?” I asked instead.
“Oh, I came to borrow Isaac’s old badminton racquet. I’m joining a club.”
“What a sex club?” I laughed. “You need the racquet for a bit of spanking?”
Dex snorted and my mum gasped.
“No, don’t be so disgusting,” she said, pouting her enhanced lips. “A badminton club. I need to keep this in trim.”
She waved a hand down her slim body and preened, giving her little ginger head a wobble.
“This doesn’t come easily, Dex,” she added.
Dex cleared his throat and nodded. “I’m sure.”
Rolling my eyes, I pulled off my jacket and threw it over the back of the sofa. “So you’ve got it, the racquet?”
“No, he couldn’t find it. He said he’ll look in the loft tomorrow and pop it around.”
I nodded, knowing full well who would be looking in the loft and popping the racquet around to her house, and it certainly wouldn’t be her adored grandson.
“Okay.”
“I suppose I should go,” Mum said, eyeing Dex furtively. “You want to see me to the door, Katie?”
“What, going so soon. You don’t want the chair and ropes brought in, or the lamp to shine in his face?”
“You know you’re not funny at all,” she huffed. “Now, are you going to see me out?”
“No, not really. You know where it is.”
She stared at me, her eyes wide.
“Oh,” I exclaimed. “You want to ask me about Dex instead of questioning him. You should have said and then I could have told you it’s none of your business, but I told you, he’s only here to help with my car.”
“God, you are so like your father.”
With a huff and a little grumbling, she picked up her bag and coat, called up to the boys, received a grunting ‘bye’, and slammed the front door behind her.
“And that was my mum,” I said to Dex.
“She seems real nice. I liked her.”
> “Oh and she really liked you.” I chuckled to myself. “Would you like that coffee now?”
Dex nodded. “That’d be great, thanks.”
“Let me guess, black, no sugar.”
“Damn right.”
Dex gave me another of his wonderful smiles and I was grinning like a loon, when the lounge door burst open.
“Has Nan gone, because-?”
Isaac pulled to a stop, causing Charlie to bundle against his back.
“No way,” he said, his eyes pinned to Dex. “You’re Dex Michaels.”
I looked to Dex, who appeared to look a little red cheeked.
“Hey there.”
Charlie peered around his brother. “Who are you?”
Without taking his eyes off Dex, Isaac said. “He’s Dex Michaels, only the best tattooist in the United States.”
“Woah,” Charlie said, gawping at our guest. “Cool.”
And that was when my boys fell in love with the hot, silver fox in my living room.
Dex
The two kids staring at me were the mirror image of each other, one more boyish in his looks, but both looked like their mom, but with brown eyes instead of the light blue that had started to enthral me.
“You know who Dex is?” Katie asked, looking at her boys in astonishment.
“Anyone who’s into tattoos knows who Dex is. He’s awesome.”
I winced. “Well thanks, erm Isaac is it?” He nodded. “But I’m not sure I’m the best in the states. There are plenty more guys who do some pretty epic designs.”
“No way,” Isaac said, shaking a finger at me. “That series of tats you did for that band were amazing.”
“You mean the gargoyles that I did for Rabid Spectre?”
“Yeah those,” he replied excitedly. “Mum, you should have seen them, they looked so real.”
“Right, okay.” Katie said, looking at me with narrowed eyes. “So, you’re some big, hot shot tattooist?”
“I don’t know whether you’d say I was a big, hot shot.” I shrugged. “But I’m definitely a tattooist.”
“Have you got tattoos? Can we see them?” The youngest kid asked.