by Carol Rose
“I’m going to slap you, if you don’t start acting normal,” she said tartly. “I was upset the other day after the Spider Man thing. It’s not something that happens often.”
“If that’s what it takes, I hope you get upset more.”
“Do you want to help with the gazebo or not?” She said flatly.
“Yes, please.”
“Then be there at ten o’clock.”
* * *
“Hand me that post.” Molly shifted on the ladder, turning toward Drake.
They’d started so early the sun was just rising over the tops of the trees, rustling with birds despite the crisp morning air. She could see why the Austin Women’s League liked keeping the private garden. Secluded off from the road, it was perfect for parties like the Easter Picnic and the League members could bring their families.
“This one?”
“Yes. That one.” She couldn’t help it. Every time she looked at him, she remembered his brand of comfort and felt itchy and unsettled. This gazebo-building had turned from a simple project to something much more involved. It didn’t help that he’d showed up this morning, cheerful and offering Starbucks.
“Here.” He stepped up on the ladder behind her, balancing the heavy post.
Molly closed her eyes, trying not to absorb his warmth, acutely aware of the length of his toned body pressed up against her backside. “Umm. I’ve got it now.”
For a moment, Molly wrestled with herself. The garden was private and only the sounds of nature intruded. She and Drake could do bad things here and no one would know.
Sanity returned and she turned her head to glance back at him. If he didn’t step back, she might just whip around and grab him right here on the damned ladder.
Not the best place for a raunchy tryst…particularly here in a semi-public garden.
Stepping back, he stared up with an expression of doubt at the two posts they’d already installed. “Are you sure this is going to be a gazebo?”
“Yes, I’m sure. After we install a floor this afternoon, get the roof supports in and start adding the lattice pieces on the sides, it’ll be great. We’ll let this set in a fast-setting concrete while we build the other pieces so we can put it together like a puzzle.”
Looking down at the ground, Molly thumped the post into the hole again. Who’d have thought Drake Compton would look so hot in workman attire? Since she’d first noticed him in high school, she’d known he was good looking, of course, but seeing him now in casual jeans and a work shirt left her swallowing hard. Damn him.
He kept smiling meaningfully at her, too. Probably that and the moments he was finding to get some full body contact were the results of that kiss they’d shared. Around them, the air warmed with the brisk day and she could hear squirrels scampering at the tops of the trees.
Molly felt her teeth clench and forced herself to take a deep breath. If she thought offering him sex would significantly further her chance of a relationship with Drake, she’d have eagerly done so. Shown up at his apartment, naked under a trench coat, as Abby suggested. Heck, she’d dreamed too damn often of their sharing intimate moments. But she’d been around him for the last ten years. Like most men, the sex thing didn’t equal a relationship thing for Drake.
“Here.” Still on the ladder, she handed him a level. “Level it, please.”
“Ummm.” He frowned at the level.
“There’s a bubble.” She pointed at the small window. “See? You want it between these two marks. That means the thing you’re pressing the level to is actually level.”
He glanced at her with a grin. “I think I can handle that.”
“I hope so.” She slipped into the sarcastic mode she often used with him. Self-protection, she knew, but she didn’t feel she had much else to keep her from jumping him.
“Okay. Yes, the bubble is between those two lines and the post appears straight to me.” He closed one eye, sizing it up with the other one.
“Now turn the water on and stick the hose into the hole.”
“Bet the hole will like that,” he said suggestively.
She rolled her eyes. “Really? This seems sexual to you?”
Drake just laughed, walking over to the faucet.
“That’s how we get the cement mixed? Put it into the hole dry and add water?” He said from the faucet in the flower bed. “Not mix it and then pour it in?”
“Nope. No need.” Keeping the pole balanced, she carefully descended the ladder. “Three more to go and we can start putting together some of the other pieces.”
Drake came over with the hose, already spewing water, and stuck it into the hole in the ground.
To her relief, he didn’t make a silly remark about them screwing together.
“The lag bolts are those things in the paper bag over there, right?” He gestured toward the pile of tools. “With the nuts on the end.”
“Yes.” She didn’t smile at his words, also aware of not descending to a middle school level, despite the fact that tension now hung between them. “Here, you hold this post upright while the cement hardens. I want to look at the plans again. We need to measure the position for the middle post.”
“The short one that will support the floor?” He came over, taking her spot.
“Uh huh. You’re getting it.” Molly smiled encouragingly at him. “While this sets, we’ll construct the sides, cut the boards for the flooring and the roof and get everything ready to put it all together.”
They worked together in the warming morning air, slowing constructing the gazebo. Molly had always known he was smart and that he would learn home repair skills quickly, if he applied himself. He’d just never had the chance to pick it up when he was younger.
Spring was dawning here in the heartland and birds could be heard singing their hearts out from the surrounding shrubs.
“You like doing this kind of thing, don’t you? Building things.” Drake and she had finished the posts and moved on to cutting the boards to go around the edges, tying the foundation together.
“Yes. It’s fun sometimes.”
He sidled around her, putting a plank across the flooring and brushing his hand against hers in the process.
Molly took a deep breath to calm her jittery insides, unintentionally sucking in a breath of man smell. Unlike a lot of guys on a job site, he smelled really good.
Together, they cut the pieces while the concrete set up, eventually erecting the gazebo frame. They worked with a steady rhythm that confirmed everything she believed about him. He knew more than he gave himself credit for.
Raising the roof beams to a pitch later in the day, they each perched on separate ladders. Molly watched Drake stretching out, his strong arm hammering in the spike to hold the truss upright.
“Great. That’ll keep it strong and stable while we put the sheathing on the roof. We’ll put decking, felt over that and then those cute shingles I found.”
He climbed down, watching as she hammered her roof support on to the hub he’d just installed.
“Here, let me help.” Drake climbed up her ladder, reaching to steady the beam.
She could have told him she didn’t need him to help in that way, but Molly said nothing as he leaned into her again. God help her, she was loving it. She needed to get a grip.
“There.”
Feeling the rumble of his voice with his chest up against her back, Molly just finished nailing in the spike and waited for him to step off the ladder. When Drake did, she started stepping down the rungs, not realizing until both feet were on the ground, that he’d kept his hold on the ladder. Turning slightly, she found herself face to face with the one guy she needed to keep at a distance.
“You do this good,” he said softly, his arms bracketing her where she stood with her back to the ladder. “Of course, you do this better.”
Molly started to ask him tartly to get out of her way. But he leaned in suddenly, kissing her parted lips, his mouth against hers…and then after several secon
ds of his hard body pressed to hers and his mouth hot on hers….she lost her mind and kissed him back.
All day she’d told herself to be strong, not to think that the man pressing against her and looking at her with hot eyes was the wrong man to kiss. She didn’t just want a few minutes of naked fun on the front seat of a pickup. She wanted more—all of him or none of him. At least, that’s what she’d been telling herself for the last year and a half.
But she couldn’t stop kissing him, drowning in the heat of his mouth on hers, lost in the sensation of him pulling her against him. He felt good everywhere—his broad shoulders, his pelvis pressed against hers. Oh, God, his pelvis pressed right there!
Molly flashed to what she wanted—a tangle of clothes and skin and thrusting hunger.
“No!” She wrenched herself out of his arms. Her chest rising and falling in gasping breaths, she pushed back. Clearing her throat, she took a breath and said again, “No. Drake, no. We can’t do this.”
His chest rising and falling, too, he looked at her with dark eyes. “Why not? I thought we were doing a really great job of it, just now.”
“You’re…my friend,” she struggled to get the words out. “Not just some guy I get naked with.”
* * *
“You’re drunk!” Molly hissed a week later, acutely aware of the women congregated at the tables on the green lawn. The Women’s League Spring Tea was the start of the events leading up to the Easter Picnic.
This was the first real event that mattered in her bid to wow the League members with her skill and convince them that they hadn’t been wrong in accepting Cheryl’s recommendation of her. Looking at her red-faced, wobbly employee in the bunny suit, she wondered if maybe they could have done better.
“I-I’m fine, jush fine,” Ty Michaels stumbled as he stood facing her on the green lawn off to the side.
“No! You’re not!” Molly grabbed him by his fur-covered arm and pulled him toward the garden party tent she’d been using as her headquarters.
“Jush give me a few minutes and I’ll be—I’ll be fine.” Ty let her pull him into the tent. “Do you have a bathroom here? I need a bathroom.”
“Good grief!” Taking him by the paw, she hurried into the small kiosk that housed the garden’s bathrooms. When she’d opened the door to the men’s bathroom and shoved Ty in, she held her hand to her thundering heart and tried to think.
This was a disaster! There was no way she could put a drunk Easter Bunny out there to interact with the Women’s League members and the various underprivileged children invited to this shindig.
Pacing back and forth in the kiosk’s small hallway outside the bathrooms, she furiously considered her options. None of the other bunnies she’d interviewed was likely to be free at a moment’s notice, but she scrolled through the recent calls on her phone and tried.
She got voicemails at the first three, an out-right refusal on the fourth and spoke to a man with a bad case of the flu when she tried the fifth number. Putting on the suit herself wasn’t an option because she had to direct the rest of the tea party, otherwise, Molly would have gotten into the furry get-up in a second.
Ty still hadn’t come out of the bathroom. He’d probably passed out in there and she’d have to drag his comatose body out before the underprivileged kids arrived.
In desperation—not knowing who else to call—Molly pressed on Drake’s number. They hadn’t talked in the week since he kissed her in front of the skeletal gazebo. Having swung between conviction that she’d done the right thing and a deep, aching regret that she hadn’t kept kissing him back, Molly had barely been able to get the garden party arranged. She hadn’t talked with him because she just hadn’t known what to say.
“Hello?”
She’d never heard such a comforting sound as him saying that one word.
“Drake?” Her voice wobbled on the one word.
“Molly?” When she didn’t respond immediately, he said again, “Molly?”
“Yes.” She tried not to burst into tears.
“What’s the matter? Molly?”
She could hear the concern in his voice and moisture leaked out of one eye, despite her determination. “He came drunk, Drake. My Easter Bunny is drunk out of his mind. I just shoved him into the men’s bathroom.”
“Geez! You’re kidding. This tea party is the lead-up to the big day. What are you going to do? Is it too late to get another person to play the bunny?”
She sucked in a sobbing breath. “No, but I tried and I can’t get any of them to pinch hit?”
“None of them? How many did you call?”
“Five. I called five people who contacted me about the job—some of them were pretty bad,but I have to have someone. I can’t get any of them and I don’t have any other cartoon character people to call!”
“Okay.” His tone was bracing. “Don’t freak out. Who else could you get to fill in? Just for today?”
“Okay, okay. Let me think.” She took a couple of stabilizing breaths. “It has to be someone who can get here right away. And someone who’s good with kids….”
A sudden thought occurred to her in a blinding moment. Drake. He could do it.
In a rush, she blurted out, “You. You’re the only one I know who could do it.”
“Are you crazy?” He was clearly irritated. “I don’t know kids or stuffed animals or any of that crap.”
“Drake,” she said, staring blindly out the kiosk door. “One out of two isn’t bad. You can get here. You’re my only hope.”
“Then you need to get another hope, honey, because this guy isn’t an Easter Bunny.”
* * * * * * * * *
CHAPTER FIVE
Drake shoved at the bunny head he wore, trying to get the eyeholes aligned where he could actually see the garden in front of him.
“It’s the Easter Bunny! The Easter Bunny!”
A bunch of kids across the chilly garden spotted him and began running toward Drake.
Austin was suffering from one of its occasional “cold fronts”, but it was just his luck that the League members didn’t think it was necessary to cancel for the weather.
Just his luck—it wasn’t raining.
As children surrounded him, he caught fragments of phrases through their screams of delight.
“Look it’s a big rabbit!”
“He has an Easter Basket!!”
Bracing himself for what looked like an onslaught of miniature munchkins, Drake reflected again why he’d never particularly liked kids—or thought they liked him. When he was suiting up in the furry outfit, Molly had reminded him that bunnies didn’t talk, so he had to keep his mouth shut. Since words had always been his talent, he was left feeling somewhat unprotected—despite the bunny suit, the huge feet and the head with the monstrous ears—and unsure what the hell to do.
Clomping forward in the gigantic bunny feet, he felt the first running child thump into him.
“The Easter rabbit!” The small boy clutched at him, clinging to his leg and making forward progress difficult.
Aware of the other twenty kids running his way, Drake wished he’d gotten a few more tips on what exactly he was to do. Molly stood a little to his side, but since he couldn’t talk, asking her now what to do wasn’t an option.
Damn friendship or whatever the hell this was now. When she’d made her plea for help, he couldn’t really say no. Letting Molly down wasn’t even a choice he considered—even if that meant wearing huge furry feet and letting himself be mobbed by a bunch of insane midgets.
Even if she had ended their kiss by pushing him away.
He needed to have his head examined. It hadn’t occurred to him not to respond when she’d called in desperation.
What was the matter with him?
Sure, she’d have been in a fix unless he helped her out, but things between them had shifted since those kisses. He knew more than anyone how important this gig was to her, though. And what was important to Molly was important to him.
Soon Drake was surrounded by a gaggle of children, all clutching at his arms and trying to hug his waist. He could even feel several kids, pulling at his big, fluffy bunny tail. Weird.
Through his mesh “eyes”, he saw that they ranged from about ten to twelve to some really small ones he guessed were only three or four. Since the little ones seemed to want to cluster around his legs like chicks under their mother—and he didn’t want to step on them—Drake finally knelt down. His huge head made it difficult to bend over to see where they were, but he tried.
Kneeling with one fur-covered knee on the damp spring grass, he was suddenly hugged by a half a dozen small bodies and he shifted in an attempt to balance their weight.
“Did you brwing eggs, mister bunny? Chocowat eggs?” A small boy with dark hair and eyes had acquired a limpet-grip on his leg. “Do you have them in your basket?”
The older kids stood around him in a ring while Drake tried to keep from tumbling over from the force of little kids clinging to him.
“He has ears! Look at his big ears.”
“And this funny, furry tail.” A mid-sized girl giggled as she tugged at the rear of his costume.
“Back off, Kesha,” an older girl told a small one authoritatively, pulling her off his knee. “Give the bunny some room to breathe.”
She took Kesha by the arm and picked her up. He couldn’t help being relieved, even as he noted she seemed accustomed to the role, almost like a mini-adult.
“He has a basket! An Easter basket.” A young boy clutched at the wicker handle and tugged. “Look, there are eggs in here. And candy!”
Soon the adult child-handlers—he couldn’t think what else to call them—soon ringed him also, the adults calling to the kids to mind their manners and not grab candy from his basket, much as the older girl had.
Bent down as he was, Drake saw the smaller children up close. They were still hugging him—even his back—and he could see their faces which were all different colors; black and brown and beige. There was even one really white kid with flaming red hair. Their expressions were filled with earnest—he didn’t know what else to call it—love. They seemed to love the bunny.