The Troublemaker Next Door

by Marie Harte

  “Nah. We discovered a few more leaks than we’d thought we’d have to handle. Then Brody had a problem holding on to the hot water heater, which he wouldn’t have if he’d waited—like I told him to—until after I called you.” He grabbed their dishes and started cleaning up, to her amazement. “I would have called you sooner, but I didn’t want to bug you. I’m not clingy, I swear. But I had to know how it went with Aunt Linda. She’s a real pistol.”

  She didn’t know how she felt about him trying to put her at ease. A part of her wanted to thank him for sticking to their agreement. No strings, a casual relationship. Sex on the side. But another part of her wanted to ask what the hell was wrong with him, that he’d let a woman like her run free without even trying to start a relationship.

  The poor guy couldn’t win either way, and the rational part of her brain forced her to accept and stick by the rules she’d first dictated. Besides, Flynn had agreed with her. He didn’t want a girlfriend right now. Who was she to assume otherwise?

  Trying to play it cool, Maddie shrugged. “I like your aunt. She’s a savvy businesswoman. And she offered me some help. Told me her son would move any… What?”

  He frowned. “She promised Theo to me first. My nephew is built like a linebacker, but he’s young. He needs direction, so Aunt Linda asked me to try interning him as another plumber on the team. I figured to start him with us next week.”

  “Want to flip for him?”

  He grinned. “I don’t know. He’ll take one look at you and leave me in the dust. You’ll need to watch yourself. The little jerk thinks he’s the reincarnation of Romeo.”

  “Little? I thought you said he was six-two. That’s bigger than you, right?”

  He took a hand out of the dishwater and pointed a soapy finger at her. “I’m six-two and a half, little lady. Theo’s a teenager and not nearly as buff.” He flexed, showing off muscles and shooting bubbles across the floor. “The kid will be lucky to one day have guns this big.”

  She batted her lashes. “Why Flynn, are you jealous of your much younger cousin?”

  He snorted. “Keep it up, sexy. Hell yeah, I’m jealous. While I’m laying pipe next week, and I don’t mean laying pipe the way I did this morning,” he laughed at her blush, “I’ll be arms deep in mucky water, and that kid will be tripping all over himself looking at your ass while he tries to follow orders.”

  She giggled and wanted to smack herself. Maddie didn’t giggle. Ever. Clearing her throat, she conceded victory to Flynn. “Well, if you can’t do without him, I’ll find another strong, strapping man to watch my ass and move furniture.”

  Flynn narrowed his eyes. “Nah, take the kid. He won’t give you any problems. If he even hints at being lippy, threaten him with me or my aunt. Or Mike. The cousins are all afraid of him.”

  “Of your teddy bear of a brother? Why?”

  He grinned. “Never mind.” He continued to wash the dishes while she wiped down the counters and the center island where they’d eaten. The domesticity of the arrangement oddly pleased her. Flynn didn’t ask her to help; she wanted to. Not like at home where Vanessa, an autocrat even in the kitchen, would have ordered her to clean up.

  “So you staying or what?”

  She raised a brow. “You asking or what?”

  “Oh, so it’s in my court? Sure. I want you to stay. Take off all your clothes and sit up on the island. Then spread your legs and—”

  “Flynn.” She felt her cheeks heat.

  “Or we could go walk around town. I could get you flowers to celebrate your victory over my aunt.”

  “It’s not a victory. And I don’t need flowers.” Oh man, she was a sucker for flowers.

  “Well, if I did get you some, not that I will, we’d be talking about a friendly bunch of flowers. Nothing serious.” Did he continually mention their casual arrangement to remind not just her, but himself as well? She admitted she liked the idea he might have to keep reminding himself to keep it light. That meant he wanted their relationship to go deeper, even though they wouldn’t. Unless, of course, she’d created all his feelings out of thin air, because she couldn’t help her own deepening attraction. I’m such a neurotic, needy woman. Ugh.

  She cleared her throat. “Right. Casual friends. Who have sex sometimes.”

  “Not just sex. Orgasmic, screaming, begging, wet, messy sex. Between friends.”

  She huffed with laughter, and Flynn winked. “Now how about you find me some quality chocolate, lady? After all, I need to keep up with my sweets. If you’re not going to give me any of that sugar between your legs, I might as well have some that’ll rot my teeth.”

  “Fine. Let’s go.” She tried to stop smiling and glare at him. “But no hand holding.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Chapter 11

  So far so good. Maddie glanced at Flynn out of the corner of her eye as they strolled through Pike’s Place Market. He hadn’t tried to do more than walk with her as they looked over the assorted crafts on the tables. At the far end of the market, tie-dye shirts, Seattle prints, and beaded jewelry occupied table after table with a few children’s toys and crafts interspersed here and there.

  Flynn paused, and she stopped with him.

  “A googley-eyed frog?” The small fuzzy stuffed animal had eyeballs that jiggled when he shook it.

  He turned to her and grinned. “Colin would like this.” He withdrew a few bills from his wallet.

  “Yeah right. Admit it; you’re buying it so you can play with it.”

  He gave her a sly wink. “You think?” He picked up another one. “Green or blue?”

  “Why not one of each? That way you’ll have yours when Colin keeps his.”

  With a chuckle, he purchased both. The salesman handed him a bag and they continued walking through the crowd.

  “See anything you like?” he asked when she skirted another table of silk tees.

  “I’m a window shopper. I buy only after I’ve looked at everything.”

  He groaned. “I know your type only too well. When I was little, my mom used to drag us around with her when she went shopping. She’d spend all day looking for clothes, then she’d go back and buy the first thing she’d tried on. Used to drive me nuts. Hours of torturous trolling for jeans and shirts—not a toy in sight—that could have been prevented. I should be in therapy.”

  “That’s called doing it right.” She dodged a small child barreling through the crowd, his mother hard on his heels. “We didn’t have much money growing up, so it was easier to pretend I could afford something but didn’t want to buy it. I liked to think I was choosey, when in reality I was just poor.”

  “Church mouse poor? Or middle-class, too-many-kids poor?”

  “Church mouse.”

  “Bummer.” He reached for the rose a vendor held out to him and handed the saleswoman a buck. Then he turned and presented it to Maddie. “Here you go, mouse. I choose to buy this for you.”

  “Thanks, Flynn.” Oddly touched, she accepted the smooth-stemmed rose and tried to distance herself. She nodded at him, queen to peasant, and continued browsing. “You may continue, sirrah.”

  “Come on, princess.” They walked more before he continued. “You said something before, how it was just you and your mom. No brothers or sisters?”

  He didn’t sound as if he could imagine such an existence. Then again, with his family, he probably couldn’t. “Nope. Just me and my mom. We’d visit Vanessa and her family most summers. Her mom and my mom are sisters. But we never stayed long. My grandmother would spend our vacations harassing my mother. We visited mostly so I could see what few relatives I had.”

  “Why’d your grandmother screw with your mom?”

  “Well, my mom got pregnant at sixteen. My father didn’t stick around, and she ended up having me with another year left of high school.” Maddie sighed. Sad, familiar story. “She spent her growing-up years raising me, all by herself. She lived with my grandparents only long enough to get a GED, a job, and enough to affor
d a sitter.”

  “She sounds hard-core.” Flynn rested his hand on her lower back and nudged her toward the outside of the aisle when a group of pushy tourists bustled by with cameras in hand. “Must be why you work so hard. Apple falling from the tree, and all that crap.”

  She laughed. “And all that crap. That about sums it up.”

  They stopped to watch the guys at the fish market hawking salmon and perch while they threw the fish around.

  “This is such a fun place.” Maddie didn’t often come down here, not crazy at the idea of managing the market crowds. Many in the city viewed the marketplace as touristy, and she’d never been one to waste her time with sightseeing.

  Flynn drew her closer to be heard over the burst of laughter and commotion around them. “I have a confession to make. Once, when I was six or seven, I came down here with my folks. When they weren’t looking, I snuck over here and bought a tiny fish with my allowance. I hid the thing in Mike’s room, and the stench got so bad my mom had to fumigate the house.”

  “Flynn.” She couldn’t help laughing. “Why would you do that?”

  “He stole one of my baseball cards. Guys can get territorial about stuff like that.”

  She shook her head. “The highlight of my youth was spent working alongside my mom. We’d clean houses during the summers, when I wasn’t in school. All money under the table, of course. The closest I got to your kind of trouble was when I stole the head off a Barbie from this girl I hated. She used to bully me at school. We had to clean her house, and I was so embarrassed that my mother had to pick up the little snot’s socks. So when I saw Malibu Barbie, so helpless, so alone, just sitting there…”

  “Nice.” He nuzzled her cheek with his. He pulled away, but before he moved back, she swore he kissed the top of her head. “I knew we had more in common than you liking me. You have a mean streak, Maddie. I dig that.”

  He tugged her with him past the fish guys outside onto Pike Street.

  “Wait a minute. What did you mean about us both liking you?”

  He gripped his bag in one hand and grabbed her hand in the other.

  “Hey, no hand holding.”

  “Come on, slowpoke. Consider my hand a leash. And about us both liking me, what’s the problem here? I like me. Do you like me?”

  “Not at the moment,” she grumbled and fought a smile. For some reason, whenever he started to get on her nerves, he’d turn around and make her laugh. “But I think you have it backward. We both like me.”

  “Now that I can’t argue.” He cast a lingering glance over her body. “In fact, I’d like to like you again right now. How about that alley? It’s not too crowded…”

  She socked him in the arm, taking care not to damage the sweet-smelling rose in her hand. “Is sex all you ever think about?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You’re such a guy.” But she couldn’t complain. He really knew what to do between the sheets.

  He stopped with her in front of a confectioner’s shop and murmured in her ear, “If it were up to me, you’d be up against that brick wall around the corner.” His voice lowered. “Your legs around my waist, my cock inside that hot pussy.”

  “Flynn.” She blushed, turned on yet embarrassed someone might overhear him. Fortunately, people continued to breeze by. No one gave them a second glance.

  “It’s your fault. You bring out the bad boy in me. But that’s actually a good thing, according to the magazines out there.” He pulled her with him into the candy shop. “Eighty-five percent of women polled prefer the bad boy.”

  The pretty young woman behind the counter grinned.

  To her, he asked, “Am I right?”

  “Depends on where you got your stats.”

  “Cosmo.”

  The girl nodded. “They never lie.”

  “For God’s sake.” Maddie yanked her hand from the man and stalked to the decadent truffles on display behind glass. “Wait a minute. Why are you reading Cosmo?”

  “I found it at Cam’s place the last time I was over. The hotshot thinks by reading what the opposite sex reads, he’ll have insights the rest of his ‘idiot’ brothers don’t.”

  “Well, he got the idiot part right.”

  Flynn scowled at her and bumped her aside.

  “Watch it.”

  “What are you looking at? Oh, truffles. Yum.”

  “You like chocolate?”

  The girl behind the case beamed at them through the glass. “We offer the finest hand-crafted chocolates in Seattle.”

  Flynn smiled at the girl and asked, “Which are your favorites?”

  He should have been asking Maddie. What the hell did he care what some young flirt with a bad sense of style—hello, too much eyeliner—thought?

  “Hmm. I like the mocha dreams. But the vanilla bourbon swirls are popular too.”

  “Maddie? What about you?” Finally, he asked her.

  “What about me?” She hadn’t meant to snap, but she didn’t like him chatting up the girl, who was definitely old enough to appreciate a man like Flynn.

  He smothered the smile but not fast enough to hide it from her.

  “Something funny?” she asked, ice in her voice.

  “Nope. What kind do you want, baby? My treat.”

  Calling her baby like that. What an ass. Yet her ire faded as the girl seemed to understand they weren’t just palling around. About time. “Strawberry, the vanilla bourbon, and a lime twist. That one, in the white chocolate. ”

  “Those are good too,” Miss Perky offered.

  Flynn nodded. “We’ll take two of each.” He made more small talk with the girl while Maddie looked around. When younger, she never would have imagined dragging her mother into a place like this. Four dollars a truffle? For one piece of candy? Yet here she was, twenty-seven years old and waiting for someone to buy her not just one piece but three.

  She smiled, a sense of accomplishment just there within reach. Sure, Flynn was buying the candy, but if Maddie had wanted, she could have bought them. Window shopping with the added benefit of getting the prize.

  Flynn had the girl add the box of chocolates to the bag holding the frogs he’d purchased. He said good-bye before latching on to Maddie’s hand again.

  “Bye,” Maddie said over her shoulder before Flynn dragged her outside. She didn’t protest his hold until they were out of sight of the store. Then she tried to pull free. “Didn’t I say no hand holding?”

  He immediately let go, which should have made her happy. Instead, she missed his warmth. “Sorry. I was just trying to make you feel better. You seemed a little jealous inside the store.” The twinkle of mischief in his eyes annoyed her.

  “Screw you, McCauley. I wasn’t jealous.”

  He fell into step beside her as she walked down the street and turned onto First. “Of course not.”

  “I wasn’t.” She felt like a fool. She had been jealous, and after spouting all those rules about them keeping their distance from each other and remaining just friends. “It just seems to me that if we’re together, even as friends, it probably looks like we’re dating or something. And it’s rude to come on to someone else’s boyfriend, right there in front of a person.”

  She knew she wasn’t making sense.

  Flynn shifted his hold on his bag. “Sure, Maddie. You weren’t jealous. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”

  “Oh, shut up. Come on, let’s go to lunch.” This time she dragged him down the street.

  Twenty minutes later, they sat on the balcony of The Pink Door and watched the calm waters of Elliott Bay while a few boats drifted by. The day couldn’t have been more perfect. Overhead, a scatter of cottony clouds stood out against the baby-blue sky. The sun shone in bands of orange, red, and pink behind a few puffs of white, lending the water a sparkle that rippled as watercraft slid through the calm waters. A light breeze wafted past them, bringing the scent of garlic and basil on the salt air.

  She closed her eyes, awash in the moment, and s
tarted when warm lips covered hers.

  The kiss lasted a second, and she opened her eyes to see Flynn staring at her in bemusement.

  “What was that for?”

  “Because I can,” he said with familiar arrogance, but the smile curling his lips gentled his words. His eyes seemed darker, more mysterious as he watched her, and she surprised herself to realize she’d actually enjoyed her day with him.

  “This still doesn’t mean we’re dating,” she blurted, panicked and not sure why.

  “Sure thing.” He didn’t react other than to drink the beer he’d ordered and stare at her.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I was wondering something.”

  Aha. The third degree. She’d been waiting for it. “Go ahead. Say whatever’s on your tiny little mind.”

  He chuckled. “You’re sexy when you’re mean, did you know that?” He pulled a lock of her hair.

  “Ow.”

  “I can be mean too. Now shut up and listen.”

  He obviously wasn’t trying to charm her anymore. She relaxed, knowing they’d achieved balance. Just sex, a casual companionship, friends. No more deeper feelings—so she kept telling herself.

  “Listening.” She took a sip of her wine, letting it linger on her tongue while the breeze pushed the scent of stuffed mushrooms nearer. Which reminded her, they still hadn’t delved into that box of chocolates yet…

  “You and your mom are close, right?”

  She answered warily. “Yeah.”

  “So why did you move so far away from home? To get away from the area you grew up in? From her? And before you tell me it’s none of my business, I did confess that deep dark secret of the hidden fish to you. To this day my mother still thinks Brody did it.”

  She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. “Brody? You knew him back when you were six?”

  “We think of him as the blond McCauley. He grew up with us and shared a room with me until we hit high school. But that’s another story. Stop stalling and answer the question.”

  Curious about him all over again, she decided to answer. She didn’t exactly have secrets she needed to hide. “I love my mom to death. Hell, I’ve spent the last three years trying to get her to move in with me, back in Philly and now here. But she loves home and won’t move. I wanted to get away from the area. Not that it’s bad, it’s just so…so…” She couldn’t think of a word to describe it.