by Ren Benton
The decision made her sigh. “Do you know where Hillcrest is?”
Back when he worked in construction, he got sent to every development on the map. Hillcrest was an older neighborhood of single-family homes with a swing set in every yard. The kind of place one settled down with a Jared, a couple of kids, and a trendy dog.
And none of his business.
The street she specified was exactly what he’d expected from the area — hardly the realm of a young single woman. Maybe she shared the narrow brick house with her sister and the niece who needed a helmet until she grew a few inches.
Still none of his business.
The seatbelt hissed with disappointment as Ivy released it from her chest. “I’d invite you in, but this is already dangerously cozy for a hit-and-quit.”
She would hate to be told she was adorable when the lingo of degenerates passed through her good-girl lips. “Do you need a ride to the mortuary in the morning?”
“I can get a lift, Lancelot.”
He couldn’t tell if that was a nod at his grudging chivalry or a title awarded for the frequency with which his lance had risen to the occasion that evening — not that he’d dispute either.
She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Thank you.”
So polite about a couple of orgasms and a grilled cheese sandwich. He’d like to know how appreciative she would be if he really applied himself. “May I call you?”
“You may.” She got out of the car and bent down to look at him through the open door. “But I won’t hold my breath waiting for you.”
He let the car idle at the curb until she was safely inside the house.
She held her breath when she had those orgasms she was so thankful for.
He wouldn’t begrudge her respiration until they got around to the next one.
5
A few minutes before seven the next morning, Ivy trotted down the block to Jen and Roger’s house. If she caught him before he left for work, he could drop her downtown on his way to the office. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d carpooled, though I left my car at work to have hot sex with an adorable klutz was a new excuse for her.
She tapped on the side door.
Jen opened it, face bare, hair skinned back in a ponytail, swathed in a gray robe. She yawned, then tried a more traditional greeting. “What’s up, babe?”
“I need to bum a ride to work.”
Jen let her into the kitchen. “What’s wrong with your van?”
Other than the fact that she drove a minivan, nothing. “It’s fine. I left it at work yesterday.”
“How’d you get home?”
She wished she’d called a cab this morning and skipped the interrogation, but she was stuck now. It seemed rude to beg a favor of a man after telling his wife to mind her own business. “My date drove.”
“Ooh!” Jen brightened as if she’d mainlined six shots of espresso. “Hot night with Jared?”
“No.” Ivy went to the table and doled out kisses to three syrup-sticky kiddos.
Jen failed to perceive the underlying I don’t want to talk about it in the monosyllabic response. “You’re dating someone other than Jared?”
“I went on a date.” That wasn’t the same as dating, which suggested an ongoing activity. She knew better than to plan the rest of her life around the possibility Griff would ever call again.
“Who with?”
“Not Jared, as will be the case with all subsequent dates on which I go.”
Jen crossed her arms under her breasts. “Why are you being so secretive?”
Because she wanted to enjoy her night of escapism without disapproval of her behavior and her taste in men who weren’t Jared, which she knew would be on tap in this venue.
Jen wanted to be twinsies in suburban domestic bliss. Ivy couldn’t tell her she didn’t want the same thing without Jen taking it as a slight against her lifestyle, which Ivy thought was lovely — for Jen. She just wasn’t ready to forsake the possibility of an occasional enchilada dinner for the certainty of oatmeal at every meal, every day, for the rest of her life. “It was one date. You won’t have to wear an ugly bridesmaid’s dress on my account anytime soon.”
“That’s what friends do. I had one picked out already.”
No wonder Jen had pushed marriage to Jared so hard. She’d already planned the wedding.
Roger came into the kitchen and saved her from learning what Jen had named the kids she’d have with Jared — three of them, to match hers. He deftly avoided sticky fingers on his tie by squeezing each little head from arm’s length away, which beat the reach of their chubby little hands several times over. He squeezed Ivy’s head, too. “Mornin’, Ives.”
“Dear sir, would you be so kind as to drop me at the shop on your way to the office?”
He slid his arms into the blazer hanging on the back of the door. “I have to be in court first thing. I can drop you at the corner.”
“You take her to the door,” Jen snapped.
Mindful of the snarl of one-way streets and morning gridlock that made circling a block downtown nigh unto impossible, Ivy mouthed, The corner is fine.
Roger shot her a covert thumbs-up behind his travel mug. “Farewell, family. I’ll see you for dinner.”
“Don’t be late again. The kids can’t wait forever.”
“Then let them eat, Jen.” His exasperation came through in his voice. “We have to go.”
Jen kissed Ivy goodbye, but not her husband.
Ivy followed Roger out of the house and got into his car. “Is everything all right?”
His sigh spoke volumes. “My current caseload is heavy. I’m not helping out as much as I should. I keep meaning to call a maid service.”
Ivy was pretty sure sending a stranger to clean up after Jen wasn’t the way to smooth things over, but she didn’t know enough about the situation to make an informed suggestion.
“Is it all right if I turn on the news? I’ve been buried in files for weeks. I have no idea what’s going on in the outside world.”
“That may be a blessing, but knock yourself out.”
The miles passed with twenty minutes of shootings, political sleaze, and pseudo-celebrity antics. The what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-this-world reporting was alleviated by a brief local segment about the return of billionaire octogenarian Mitch Rafferty to his hometown.
“Is that relic still alive?”
Ivy had watched an interview with him last month, conducted during a tour of the drugstore that launched his multinational empire. “He’s still sharper than you are before coffee.”
“If you want me to slow down at this corner you’re getting out at, you’ll take that back.”
For a lawyer, he gave terrible ultimatums. “The light’s red, Codger.”
“Dammit.” He thoroughly spoiled the attempt at menace by adding, “Do you need round-trip transpo?”
“No. You go straight home. Do not stop for anything.”
He rolled his shoulders under the weight of his wife’s wrath. “Won’t help if it’s another twelve-hour day.”
She stepped out onto the curb. “Then call and let Jen know you’ll be late the second you know you’ll be late.”
His head bob was noncommittal and devoid of enthusiasm. “Be careful, Ives. No running with scissors or talking to strangers before you get to the store, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
She slammed the door and let him go without promising to be sensible, responsible, and inoffensive. Of course she would be.
She almost always was.
Griff tapped the front door of his brother’s house with the second knuckle of his index finger in fair imitation of the bug-pecking sparrow that had flown away at his approach. He skipped ringing the doorbell because he didn’t want to wake his nephew if it was naptime. The courteous little bird hadn’t caused infant wailing.
The bird hadn’t summoned anyone to the door, either, which was also fine with him. If no one answered, no one could fault him for
leaving.
Sarah’s dire expression when she snatched open the door suggested she would fault him as much as she damn well pleased. “Well, if it isn’t Griffin Dunleavy, forty minutes ahead of schedule and in stealth mode.”
“Am I early?” He glanced at his watch without noting the time, of which he was well aware. “Must still be set to island time.”
“Only if you were an hour late for that wedding and your flight home. Lie better.” She peered around him. “What did you do, park down the street so we wouldn’t see your car if we happened to look out the window?”
He had never been able to figure out how she could be so perceptive and marry his brother anyway. “I didn’t want the slamming door to wake the baby.”
“You’re so full of shit, I smelled you coming. Get in here.”
Griff obeyed, hunching his shoulders as the door closed against the sunlight. The gloomy foyer contributed to his feeling of being summoned to the principal’s office every time he came to this house.
At least he got to leave. His poor nephew had to grow up here. “Can I put in a door with a window? Sidelights, a transom, anything to get some light in here?”
She turned on the overhead fixture, casting artificial light in a feeble attempt to persuade him the walls weren’t closing in. “You’re a little nuts about this, but if you take me shopping, I’ll pick out something I like and talk Dan into the change.”
He breathed a little easier. Dan would argue about the money, the disruption, the inevitable glass breakage, and the dreaded change, but Sarah’s superpower was overcoming her husband’s endless flood of objections. She wouldn’t make their kid live in the Halls of Discipline.
The last time Griff saw his sister-in-law, she’d been extremely pregnant. Her belly bump appeared to have split in two and migrated upward in the interim. “You look great.”
She plucked at the blouse stretched over her chest. “I need to pump before I explode.”
He had no idea what that arrangement of words meant, but it sounded urgent. “I should leave you to it.”
“I haven’t seen you in two months. You’re not leaving my sight until I say so.”
He rubbed the top of his head. His perfectly valid reasons for staying away deserted him when face to face with her neglect. He owed her some of his time. “Where’s my nephew?”
“Sleeping in the crib you made for him.”
His timing had been perfect, then.
Sarah obviously didn’t see it the same way. “It’s a shame that crib is all he knows of you.”
The crib was the best Griff had to offer. “He’s a baby. He’s not interested in my hopes and dreams.”
“I am. And don’t pretend you know anything about babies.”
Dan came down the hall from the kitchen, the dishtowel in his hands concealing what he held. “His knowing nothing is why I wanted a crib from the store.”
Griff might know nothing about babies, but he knew furniture. He’d researched the safety regulations for cribs, which sounded lax to him. Goblin wasn’t going to become wedged or entrapped, posing a risk of strangulation or suffocation in anything built by Uncle Griff.
Sarah defended the crib she’d asked him to build. “You’d feel better about a crib mass produced in Thailand that you assembled as masterfully as the Leaning Bookcase of My Office?”
Dan’s expression turned wounded at the slight to his handiwork. “It looks straight to me.”
Her chin jutted forward. “I tilted the pictures on the wall to match.”
She had asked Griff to fix the bookcase before it collapsed like a house of cards, but they agreed to keep that secret to spare Dan’s fragile ego. The only thing his brother hated more than making a mistake was having his mistake fixed by the family fuckup.
Sarah continued to defend him. “Griff’s crib is an heirloom. It will be in the family for generations.”
Dan unfolded the towel and handed her an empty bottle. “Go take some pressure off, babe. You’re getting grouchy.”
“You two are making me grouchy. But not enough to let the dam burst and drown both of you. Yet.” She punched Griff in the arm. “Talk to your brother.”
About what? Talking back to the principal would get Griff expelled, which was fine by him — he didn’t want to be here anyway — but Sarah would take it upon herself to get him reinstated, and she had more important things to worry about now. “Go do what you need to do, little mama.”
She took the bottle and headed up the stairs. “I’ll let you borrow the crib when you have a baby.”
When she was out of earshot, Dan found something to say to him. “I’ll buy the condoms if it will keep you from breeding with one of your women.”
Griff’s repentance didn’t extend to picking sexual partners based on whether his family would approve, and that shortcoming particularly stuck in Dan’s craw, to be regurgitated at every opportunity. “That charity will bankrupt you. Takes a lot of latex to service the legions of unsuitable women that pass under me — and over me — on a monthly basis.”
Dan gave him the basilisk stare, gray eyes like dirty ice. “Someday you’re going to find a decent woman and want to settle down, and she’s not going to think that shit’s cute.”
Griff knew one decent woman who seemed appreciative of the type of service he provided, and she thought he was adorable.
Much as Griff would love to tell his brother he was wrong about something, the Ivy he knew was anything but decent. Dan would pitch a fit over the lack of propriety in skipping out on a wedding reception, let alone defiling every ear in a six-foot radius with public lewdness.
He retreated to silence once more to protect Ivy from his brother’s censure. Enough ridiculous standards inhibited her without adding Dan’s.
“You used to have the ability to be serious about a woman for more than five minutes.”
Once, he’d been serious for a whole year. Dan had never met Faye, but he approved on principle because she crushed Griff’s heart and sent him running home to lick his wounds.
“Your problem is, to get a woman worth committing to, you have to be a man worth committing to.”
Griff had tried to commit to Faye. That’s when she told him about her husband. “And your problem is, you assume I want to be committed.” The dark, forbidding door beckoned with the promise of freedom. “Well, this has been a delight, per usual. Tell Sarah I’m sorry.”
“Care to be more specific?”
For disappointing her. Again. “If she doesn’t know why, I’m sure you can give her a list of my transgressions from which to choose.”
He left more quietly than he’d arrived.
Sarah would be angry. There would be voice messages, texts, and at least one email in all caps. She would cool down in a couple of days, though — the better to coax him back into the fold. She didn’t hold grudges. He’d bring her a doughnut and a bottle of chocolate milk, apologize, replace a washer in a leaky faucet or some other minor home maintenance, wave at her baby from a safe distance, and all would be forgiven.
No lifelong sentence required in Sarah’s court.
The walk to his car under a clear blue sky didn’t dispel the feeling of being smothered. The burden of not being good enough was ever present, but soaking in his brother’s contempt made it weightier for hours afterward.
What he needed to help shake it off was someone who didn’t just expect him to be bad — she sank her claws into him to drag his badness out.
Ivy leaned against kitchen cabinets that had never been in any kind of showplace, needing their support because her knees turned gelatinous at the rumble of Griff’s voice against her ear.
Because she had never had sex outside the security of a relationship, she’d done what all modern women did when an important question arose.
She consulted Google.
According the sages of the internet, if a man didn’t call a woman the day after sex to discuss a repeat engagement, he either wasn’t going to call or was p
laying a stupid macho game to destroy her self-esteem so that when he condescended to get in touch, she’d be so grateful any man wanted her, she’d run right over to do his laundry and agree to a threesome.
Griff didn’t call the day after.
He obviously didn’t have to play games to get women to throw themselves at him, and although she hadn’t seen his entire house, he hadn’t appeared to be in need of maid service once she got past the garage. She could safely assume his silence meant he had no further interest in her, as she had anticipated before she met him for dinner and again when they parted ways.
He had given her a wonderful adventure. Another one would have been nice, but she wouldn’t let the end of her fun steal the joy from the rest of the experience. For a few hours, she had lived a life that belonged to someone else, and it was glorious. That was enough.
Real life went on. She went to work for the rest of the week, as usual. She took Holly’s kids for the weekend, as usual. She answered the phone when it rang, as usual.
He called, and she got breathless and fluttery at the sound of his voice, as usual.
“I want to see you.”
If not for the four children eating dinner a few feet away, she’d ask him to be more specific about what parts of her he wanted to see and what he wanted to see them do.
Acutely conscious of her audience, she restrained her unsavory side. “I’d like that.”
Cole expressed his frustration about new teeth making eating a misery by flinging a plastic plate across the room like a spaghetti-covered discus.
She closed her eyes to block the sight of noodles sliding down the front of the refrigerator. Such was the life of a sex goddess. “But now is not a good time.”
“When will be?”
There was no chance of Holly reclaiming her children midweekend. Ivy would have them until she dropped them off at school and daycare Monday morning. With no hope Griff would wait so long for her, she said, “After work Monday.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
Her heart skipped sideways. She hadn’t counted on acceptance. Her house looked more like a daycare center than a vixen’s lair, and he couldn’t pick her up at the mortuary where she didn’t work. “I’ll meet you.”