Bad for Her

by Christi Barth

  As she served them, he said, “Hey, I’m Rafe. New in town.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered up, but she didn’t meet his gaze. “Me, too.”

  “Look at us, already having something in common. That’s Kellan, and I’m sure you already know Flynn. What’s your name?”

  “Sierra.”

  “Nice.”

  “It’s weird.” She crinkled her nose—cutely, Rafe had to admit. “Do you want to order some food?”

  “You bet. Just give us two minutes.” Then he shot her one of his guaranteed to make the bras unsnap themselves smiles. Only worked if she looked, though, and Sierra hurried away—if somebody could hurry and drift at the same time.

  Rafe didn’t feel any interest. Looking at Sierra just made him think about wanting to get back to Mollie. The taste of her in the hospital had only whetted his appetite. Revved his motor. No one else would do.

  Kellan nudged his elbow. “Look at that.”

  Huh. Flynn was still locked on the skinny girl. Even frowned a little when a guy by the bar tugged on her apron string.

  “Planning to make a move on Sierra? It’d make your shifts here more fun.”

  “No,” Flynn said flatly. “You don’t piss where you eat.”

  Kellan threw out his arms to the sides. “Ah, the great romantic. Shakespeare’s rolling over in his grave, wishing he could’ve come close to approaching your eloquence about the fairer sex.”

  Oh, yeah.

  This would be a Saturday night for the Maguire brothers’ record book.

  Definitely made the top five worst.

  Rafe knew a way to make it at least a little better, though. He pulled out his phone, swiping over Mollie’s number . . .

  Chapter 8

  RM: How’s girls’ night going? You having a pillow fight in your panties yet?

  Pervert. Or just a big male cliché. Or maybe yanking her chain to get a rise out of her. Mollie bit back a smile. Her thumbs raced across the screen of her phone. Are you really picturing my friends in their lingerie?

  RM: Nope. Only you. ’Cause if you are stripped down, I’ll come over, toss them out, and we can get down to business.

  This was fun. And a great way to soothe the itch of wanting that had chased across her brain since he’d left the hospital this morning. What about your brothers?

  RM: They’re not invited. I can get the job done all by myself. Halfway there myself just thinking about you. Your mossy eyes and breathtaking smile and breasts that fill my hands perfectly.

  I wouldn’t want you to embarrass yourself at the bar. Maybe we should go on radio silence. Even though she really hoped he wouldn’t agree to it . . .

  RM: Won’t stop me from thinking about you. Can’t stop thinking about you. You’re like a sexual earworm.

  Worse than “All About That Bass?”

  RM: Worse than “Can’t Stop The Feeling.” And if you tell anyone I know a song by JT, punishment will be swift and severe.

  “I thought you weren’t on call tonight?” Lily, one of her oldest friends, gave her a frown of concern. “Do you need to go talk to a patient?”

  Rats. They’d caught her. Not that she’d admit she was flirting with a sexy mechanic instead of listening to the conversation. Mollie dropped the phone onto the side of the chair. “All done.”

  “I think I should learn to play golf,” Elena Guerrero announced as she wiggled her butt deeper into the black leather club chair in the middle of the Saturday-night-full restaurant.

  Mollie didn’t want to kibosh her dream. She got accused all the time by her girls—her friends since childhood—of being too literal, too black and white. Her medical friends never said any such thing, because they all saw the world the same way. Life or death. Sick or healthy. No gray areas in between.

  Still, Elena had zero athletic ability. She’d worked the front desk at Lucien’s family golf resort since high school, and had never once, in all that time, expressed any interest in the sport.

  Trying to comment without being a complete buzzkill, Mollie said, “I thought you claimed your boobs got in the way of holding any sports equipment.”

  “True.” She pulled out the edge of her low-cut, stretchy red top and tucked the stem of her martini glass into her cleavage. Then let go. The glass didn’t even bobble. Twisting sideways over the arm of the chair, Elena then tipped backward enough to take a sip. Still without hands.

  “Impressive trick.” Lily flicked Elena’s long black hair over her shoulder. Smirked when the tip of it landed in the martini. “If we were guys and cared at all about your big boobs.” Which had been a bone of contention between the curvy Elena and Lily with the lean, swimmer’s build since puberty hit. Funny how it never got old watching the two of them zing each other. “Since we’re not? Let’s go back to the question at hand. Why on earth do you want to learn golf?”

  “Same reason I learned to ski two years ago.”

  Mollie remembered that trip. She hadn’t been on it, of course. She’d been deep in her trauma rotation, getting texts every half hour of bearded men in sweaters and designs in the cocoa. Texts that made her miss her friends like crazy and start the plan to come back to Bandon. “You spent one hour on skis, and the rest of the time in Mammoth at the lodge drinking spiked cocoa by the fire.”

  “Exactly. The amenities. Look at where we are. This amazing lounge in the golf club, and we’re the only women in it. We’ve got hot and cold running men, nineteen different flavors of martinis to try, a fireplace, and I heard a rumor there are duck nachos coming later.”

  Martini glass back in hand like a normal person—or a person without D cups and a push-up bra—Elena sighed. “If I golfed, I’d have a reason to hang out here all the time.”

  “You work here. All the time.” Karen didn’t roll her brown eyes, but her voice sure did the equivalent.

  “I work at the front desk. That’s vastly different. Especially the whole having people wait on me deliciousness. And I’m not stuffed into a uniform tonight. It’s very freeing.”

  “Your breasts certainly seem to think so.”

  Mollie almost did a spit take with her martini. Lily and Elena were in fighting form tonight. She loved it. She loved them. Beneath all the sniping, she knew they loved each other, too.

  Her friends were all smart enough to have been successful at lives outside Bandon. Elena could be working at a swanky resort in a town with actual nightclubs. Karen could be managing payroll at a Fortune 500 company instead of the very small empire Lucien’s family ran along the shore. And Lily was a firm but fair teacher who cared immensely about her kids. They’d all chosen to stay. They’d chosen each other, the town.

  Just like Mollie had.

  It melted her heart a little.

  After another long sip, Elena said, “The point is, I’m very glad you had Lucien sneak us in for our girls’ night, Mollie.”

  “Why are we here?” Karen gestured at the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that, in daylight, overlooked the dunes of the twelfth hole. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m a huge fan of this strawberry lemon drop martini. But girls’ night at the Gorse is our tradition. What’s with the relocate?”

  Because it was hard to spill sex details with the sex-ee within hearing distance. Or worse yet, his brothers within hearing distance. As soon as Rafe had mentioned his intent to live it up at the Gorse with his brothers? That place became automatically off-limits for Mollie’s Saturday night.

  “I have something big to share. The Plover Lounge, as Elena pointed out, has all the amenities to give us a stellar girls’ night.”

  “I like one particular amenity.” Elena twisted around so far that it looked like she was posing for a yoga video. Then she tossed her hair and gave a little half wave toward the long mahogany bar before turning back. “That waiter, Victor. Six feet of dark hair and lean muscle?” Mollie shook her head. All that brought to mind were the six-plus feet of muscles who’d brought her to orgasm in the hospital laundry. Elena clarified further. “
He brought us that bowl of mixed nuts without being asked. I’d like to mix it up with his nuts.”

  Karen’s mouth dropped open with an audible click of her jawbones. Mollie would have to remember to ask her tomorrow if she’d been checked for TMJ. “Elena. It is girls’ night. That means no hookups.”

  “I can still flirt, though, right? Flirt enough that he’ll ask me out for another night?”

  Karen pressed her fingertips to her forehead right below her straight brown bangs as though she had brain freeze. It was the same pained look she got the third week in January when she was responsible for getting the W-2s out for all the employees of the resort and the golf clubs. “I repeat, you work here. Every damn day. Can’t you get your flirt on with a fellow employee at a more mutually agreeable time?”

  “You work here, too. Why didn’t you tell me about Victor?” An accusatory frown drew a straight line between her impeccably shaped brows. “Trying to keep him for yourself?”

  Mollie’s phone vibrated against the back of her hand. She tuned out her squabbling friends.

  RM: My brother’s a pain in the ass.

  Which one?

  RM: Grammar stickler, huh? My BROTHERS are a pain in the ass.

  It wasn’t just that he used all caps. Mollie could hear the frustration in Rafe’s words. Not having a good night? She shifted the napkin over her jeans to better hide her surreptitious texting.

  RM: There are times I feel like this family is like a rusted-out tailpipe. All it would take to make us fall apart is one good bump in the road.

  Mollie wished she could race over there, pull him into a hug, and stroke his hair. It meant a lot that he was opening up to her. Now that he was, she couldn’t give him a pat response. He deserved an equal measure of honesty. I’m sorry. Family can be a real challenge. My cousin and your brothers are poster children for the word “difficult.”

  RM: I’d add a few other choice words to that poster.

  I wouldn’t stop you. We’re frustrated because you and I are the ones absorbing the hits. If you can hang in there, it’s usually worth it in the end, though.

  RM: You always see the best in people?

  I try. You’re a strong guy. I’ll bet you can hold them together.

  RM: You sure you should have that much faith in me already?

  I don’t know anywhere close to everything about you. But I can already swear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you’d move mountains to keep your brothers happy. Think of whatever you’re going through tonight as warming up the bulldozer.

  RM: Thanks. You helped. Nothing like a good farm implement metaphor to lift a guy’s spirits.

  Mollie lifted a hand to cover her mouth—and her smile. Then she lifted her martini glass high in the air to mask the gesture. “Let’s circle back to my big thing I want to share.” Big didn’t begin to describe what she’d felt Rafe press against her in the laundry room at the hospital. Mollie almost giggled. But her days of giggling over anything remotely anatomical pretty much ended the first time she dissected a cadaver in med school.

  Strawberry blonde wisps of hair fluttered against Lily’s chin as she leaned forward. “You won a trip to Paris and you’re taking all of us with you.”

  “No. And that’s a very random guess.” Mollie didn’t even have a passport.

  Suddenly, though, the thought of getting a passport appealed to her. Because then she and Rafe could have hot, dirty, filthy beach sex in Tulum. At night, they’d sit in the sultry air of the town square drinking margaritas and eating shrimp as big as her fist. They’d be the only two who spoke English, so they wouldn’t have to whisper when they talked about all the borderline unspeakable things they planned to do to each other.

  Between the fog and the rain and her family and work, that fantasy couldn’t come true here in Oregon.

  How long did it take to get a passport, anyway?

  “You go to work.” Lily thrust up her index finger, tipped in hot pink gels. “Then you hang out with your grandmother, your cousin, or your outrageously hot BFF.” Three more fingers popped up in quick succession. Then Lily took her other hand and covered the fingers like a wet blanket. “There isn’t anything big that could happen in your life. So I took a wild shot in the dark.”

  Med school, residency, and then trying to establish herself as a doctor people wanted to see didn’t leave time for spontaneity. No blips. No excitement.

  Which is why she was dancing on the inside with glee right now. Smugly, Mollie said, “That’s how much you know.”

  The leather of Karen’s chair made a squelching noise as she wriggled to the edge of the seat. “You have a secret? You actually did something big?”

  “You didn’t have to bail Jesse out of jail, did you?” Elena asked in a half-jaded, half-resigned tone.

  “No. Not . . . yet.” Although Mollie wouldn’t bet against it happening. The poor kid was so bored, lonely, and angry. That trifecta usually added up to trouble sooner rather than later. Hopefully Rafe’s letting him work at the garage would make a difference.

  Karen threw her hands in the air and a bejeweled charm bracelet slid down her arm. She claimed that since she could see her wrists all day long at her keyboard, she wanted something pretty to look at. The woman had more bracelets than Mollie had pairs of yoga pants. Which was saying a lot. “I give up.”

  “But you didn’t even guess!”

  “Didn’t need to. Lily’s right. Nothing big happens to you. Especially not here in Bandon.”

  Challenge . . . accepted. Mollie pushed to her feet. Put her arms out to the sides, and spun in a slow circle like she was the prize on a game show. Except without any bling, since she was just in jeans and a gray hemp sweater. Gran had insisted she try it out before it got ordered for an expansion into clothing at her increasingly marijuana-based coffee shop. “I’m having a fling.”

  “With what? Internet gambling?” Karen drawled.

  “Seriously, you people are horrible guessers. And you ought to have more faith in me.” That echo of Rafe’s question made her breath catch in her throat. Because it wasn’t logical that she’d feel such a strong connection with him after only a few days.

  On the other hand, she’d known men for months, tried dating, and felt zero connection. Maybe she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and just take the sexy gift that Fate had handed her on the side of the road.

  “You really mean it?” Lily pushed her hot-pink cat eye glasses to the tip of her nose to eagle-eye Mollie over the rims. “You’re having an actual, sexual fling? Hairy chest, bulging muscles, penis of steel, sexcapades fling?”

  “Yes.” To all of it. A thousandfold. Rafe Maguire was one of the most masculine, primal specimens of man she’d ever met. Let alone one with which she was well on the way to seeing naked. Mollie dropped back into the chair. Because it was comfortable. Not at all because her phone was there and she didn’t want to miss a text.

  Oh, who was she kidding?

  “Victor!” Elena’s arm shot up in the air as she yelled for the waiter. “We’re going to need another round of martinis. Immediately.” Then she tapped the tips of her fingers together. “This has to be one heck of an amazing stud to get you out of your rut.”

  “I wasn’t in a rut. I dated in Chicago.”

  Karen drained her glass and set it down with a faint tinkle from her bracelet. “Did you? Or did you occasionally relieve stress with a quickie in a supply closet?”

  Clearly everyone and their dog watched medical dramas and bought in to the fantasy of doctors hooking up in weird places. They also—clearly—overlooked the fact that working a thirty-six-hour shift was draining and left no energy for quickies.

  Most of the time.

  Casual dating at least got you sex—in a bedroom—every couple of months, albeit in a crowded triplex with too many roommates who could easily overhear.

  But Mollie had no intention of defending or explaining her lack of relationship status over the past six years. So she shrugged and sai
d, “There are no locks on the inside of a supply closet. That’d just be stupid and risky.”

  “You’re avoiding the question. Which means you didn’t really date. And God knows you haven’t seen any action since moving back home.”

  That accusation she could easily rebut. “My rule makes that difficult.”

  “Your rule makes you difficult,” Lily shot back. “There’s nowhere in the Hippocratic Oath that says you can’t date someone that maybe, if there’s a catastrophic accident, you might have to slap some stitches into someday. A relationship is for every day. Whoever you end up with can hit the highway once a year to see a different doctor.”

  Well. That was a rant and a half. It dumped ice water all over her big reveal. Lily must’ve had it primed and loaded to go for a while. Probably waiting for a night when Mollie’s defenses were down. It seemed like she wouldn’t be able to get on with raving about Rafe’s muscles and the way he oh-so-sexily took charge until she cleared the air.

  And if she had to do that, the duck nachos were definitely not happening. A girl could only force herself to do so many unpleasant things in one night.

  Calling on the same patience she used when insisting that antibiotics were useless against the common cold, Mollie said calmly, “You know my rule isn’t solely about not wanting to date a potential patient. That’s just the fast-and-easy line I toss out to keep from being pestered—or worse, set up.”

  All four women gave a full body shudder at the mention of a setup. The track record on setups in Bandon—no matter how well-intentioned, was at a whopping 0.01% success rate. The only known success had come in passing off Mrs. Herbert’s Labrador to Oswald Sturfins when she died.