Finding Mr. Right Next Door

by Sarah Ballance

  “Not quite what I meant,” he said under his breath. Nevertheless, he stepped in alongside her, wincing when she hauled the bag up and it threatened to separate the twins. “I have never been happier to be taller than you,” he grumbled, taking in the seam of the bag where it rested between her legs. “But if you like the friction,” he said pointedly, “I’ll take my chances.”

  She looked down, apparently just then realizing she had the bag tugged up against a spot he suspected she liked to feel some pressure. “Seriously?”

  He looped an arm around her waist, mimicking the position many of the racers had adopted, but all he could think about was dragging her behind a tree and giving her something real to ride.

  They nearly fell over twice on the slow walk to the starting line. That didn’t exactly bode well. He was in the middle of second and third thoughts when the buzzer sounded, which he supposed was the more PC version of a starter’s pistol. All the kids leaped ahead, while the handful of adults didn’t fare so well.

  Then he heard Kemp calling Lexi’s name.

  “All right,” Matt said. “It’s on.”

  Lexi barely had a chance to look at him before he scooped her up against him, hip to hip, both of her feet off the ground. “Hold on,” he said, hoisting the bag with his free hand, running easily as he literally carried her across the field, besting all of the adults, holding back just enough not to beat any of the kids who were still in it. He caught himself against a tree at the far edge of the course, several feet from the finish line, momentum causing him to stumble, dragging Lexi in tighter.

  Her heartbeat thudded against his chest, and the moment bloomed between them. His gaze dropped to her lips, knowing the sweetness that awaited, but they weren’t exactly alone…or hidden.

  And he hadn’t exactly let her go, either. “You’re not even winded,” she whispered.

  “And yet you are.” He didn’t have to say the rest, because they both knew she hadn’t been running across that field. Her heart did that for another reason entirely.

  “I have to carry that department dummy up and down flights of stairs and over mountain terrain,” he reminded her. “No offense, but you don’t have anything on that dummy.”

  “Just this once,” she said with a laugh that biologically damned him, “I won’t be insulted.”

  Most of the audience and racers had already gravitated away from them, he noticed, toward the far end of the clearing where the food vendors and carnival games made a wide path riddled with kids running amok, parents angling strollers out of the sun, and a frenzy of colorful displays. Even Kemp and Camille had their attention turned elsewhere, with Camille speaking animatedly with a young family while Officer Do-Right knelt before a wide-eyed toddler, who touched his badge with chubby fingers.

  Lexi and he were a world away from everyone else—something she must have noticed, because she subtly angled her hand against him, grazing his erection. Clearly not an accident. A half dozen responses bounced brokenly through his mind, none of the pieces coming together to form sentences.

  “Um.” He gracelessly mumbled the scholarly response. Then he noticed the gleam in her eye and realized this was payback for the sofa thing, which he’d yet to quit thinking about. And which he’d also had the decency to perform privately. This… This was not a fair fight. And if he didn’t resist the urge to let her know what he thought of it, he’d probably get them both kicked off the grounds, traumatizing a bunch of kids in the process. Thank goodness for the slight camouflage of the tree and the stand of hibiscus separating the bulk of the largely vacated clearing from the rest of the event.

  Then she grazed him a bit more deliberately, her hand moving subtly against his shorts, directly along the shaft. “Want me to take care of this for you?”

  He glanced over his shoulder, glad his back was to everyone. What the hell was wrong with her? Was this payback for the sofa? Because she needn’t trouble herself. Unable to shake the image of her lowered eyelashes, to forget the speed of her pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips, he’d paid for that a thousand times over. “Here might not be the best place,” he said cautiously.

  She stepped out of the bag, and for one ridiculous moment he thought she was going to get on her knees. But instead she backed away and gave him the most devilish of grins. “No, not here.” She tilted her head. “Over there. Just you and me.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  She shrugged. “Well, you, me, and a few witnesses. You’re up at the dunking tank, Matt, and I call first dibs.”

  …

  Lexi wasn’t first. She’d been waylaid by Dave and Camille, each of whom offered an excessive amount of congratulations for what Lexi considered a minor feat. It hardly counted as teamwork when Matt had carried her across the field, especially when being able to do so effortlessly was in his job description. That he’d intentionally held back so the lead pack of kids would finish ahead of them only upped the ante.

  She wasn’t ready for that.

  Not when they teetered weirdly on the edge of whatever they were supposed to be. She thought of the small screen friends-with-benefits situation that he’d mocked and wondered how he’d really feel about it if she walked up to him, let something silky fall from her shoulders, and waited. The idea made her breath catch. Would his?

  She needed him too much to find out.

  Still gazing absently after him, she slipped back into her skirt and sandals and met back with Dave and Camille, wondering why they didn’t just couple up themselves. She liked Dave and she’d been happy to run into him here, but sparks still hadn’t flown. He’d likely recognized as much, not seeming to be in any rush to make a move on her.

  Glancing at Camille, she asked, “How long have you known Matt?”

  “I met him today,” the woman responded. “You?”

  “Too long,” Lexi muttered, not missing the look Camille and Dave exchanged. “Long enough to want to see him get wet.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Camille said, laughing.

  “Prepare to nurse his wounds,” Lexi said. She wished Caitlin could be there to see this, but she and Shane had another obligation, which at least spared Lexi the smug, knowing looks she knew would have come her way.

  Matt hadn’t been dunked yet, Lexi noted. By the time she made it to the line, there were only a couple of preschool age kids in front of her. Matt wasn’t in any danger, though he pretended he was about to go in despite the lobbed balls not getting anywhere near their target. The kids laughed at his antics.

  Lexi’s ovaries wept.

  She paid for two rounds of balls—six tries—and while she waited, found herself watching him. Staring at his hands, knowing how tender those rough palms could be against her skin. She shook her head, willing thoughts of him to vacate.

  A small crowd had gathered by the time the attendant handed her the first ball. Matt held out his hands in a classic whatever you got gesture…and she missed by two feet. She quickly threw another one, closer this time, but missing the target. “Come on, Lexi,” he called. “I know you can handle a pair of balls better than that.”

  “Wow,” Camille said. “Let’s just hope that goes over the head of just about everyone here.”

  “It sure as hell didn’t go over mine,” Dave remarked.

  Camille didn’t say a word in response.

  “Please,” Lexi retorted. “Like you’ve never struggled to find the right spot.”

  “Okay, wow,” Camille said. “I’m guessing these two are old…friends.”

  Dave cleared his throat. “Very.”

  Lexi heaved another ball, dinging the target but not hitting it squarely enough to dunk Matt. “Look who’s not finding the right spot,” he yelled back, dragging a series of cheers from the crowd. He raised his arms in victory, nearly inciting a riot from a chorus of predominately male voices.

  Lexi grinned,
guessing that in light of his celebration that Matt must not have realized she had three more tries. The ball retriever guy must have realized it, too, because he covertly handed her the next ball.

  And she nailed it.

  Matt went down with his arms still raised in victory, the surprise on his face not fully registering through the windowed tank until he hit the bottom and pushed up. By the time he broke the surface, fifty people stood around them, cheering. He shook his head, flinging off water, shoulder deep in what she’d been promised was an unpleasantly chilly bath. Camille shot Lexi a high five.

  Then Matt began to haul himself up the ladder, and both women froze. The soaked basketball shorts clung indecently to everything. Everything.

  “If that’s him cold…” Camille said.

  “Heaven help anyone who gets him hot,” Lexi muttered.

  Chapter Nine

  Matt woke the next morning to the sound of dishes clinking. Bleary-eyed, he checked his phone. After ten. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so late, but was tempted to fall back against his pillow…at least until a clink turned into a crash, which was quickly followed by the kind of curse that Lexi could have picked up only from a sixteenth century pirate ship. Or the fire house. When it came to profanity, there might not have been much of a difference.

  Still half asleep, he dragged on a pair of sweat pants and walked shirtless to the kitchen, hoping for coffee. Immediately he noticed the orange juice again on the counter, this time surrounded by a pile of dishes. He rubbed his eyes but the view didn’t change. “Please tell me you’re not cooking anything,” he grumbled.

  “You’re hilarious,” she said, though her dry tone suggested her feelings were more aligned in the opposite direction. “I’m cleaning.”

  Unless she’d thrown a party since he’d last passed through the kitchen, he could only assume the dishes were already clean. But he was tired and very much in favor of choosing his battles, so rather than question her, he reached blindly for the coffeemaker. And missed. Where his finger should have jabbed the start button, he found dead air. His machine was gone, replaced by a Keurig. “Where is my coffeemaker?”

  Lexi pointed to a top cabinet. “It’s up there. I brought mine over.”

  His mouth opened, then closed again. He thought twice about telling her the dangers of coming between a man and his preferred choice of caffeine, but then he actually saw the scope of the situation with the dishes. And then the cabinets. The latter were empty. The former were everywhere. “Lexi?”

  She didn’t look up. “Yep?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Well, I couldn’t reach the top cabinets,” she explained, “and, since I have been doing the dishes, I thought I’d rearrange things. Really, Matt. You have the plates on the top shelf. Who does that?”

  “I don’t have to see them,” he said slowly. “I just grab one. Whereas when I need a bowl or something, I have to see to figure out which…one…” He trailed off, watching her grab a casserole dish and, with a look of determination he knew too well, eye a high shelf. Resigned, he stretched just past her and grabbed a stool, setting it solidly in front of the cabinet she hadn’t a prayer of reaching.

  “Thanks,” she told him brightly.

  “You can use that to put everything back,” he said, but she’d already climbed the two vertical steps, hoisting the ceramic dish to the top shelf where it absolutely did not belong. Only then did he realize his mistake. She wore the tiniest pair of shorts, and he wasn’t sure why that fact had initially escaped him. Add to that, with her on the stool and her arms extended over her head, her shirt edged upward, baring her midriff inches from his face. He felt the heat from her skin, smelled the soap from her shower. Visually traced one curve after another, twisting and turning into a bigger mess than she could ever make of his kitchen.

  He swallowed hard, managing to turn away to plunk one of those little plastic cups into the slot in her coffee machine and close the lid. At least that was how he thought the thing worked. Caitlin had one in her bookstore so he was remotely familiar, but the fire station thus far kicked it old school, which was the way Matt liked it. He didn’t think much could beat a hot pot of coffee waiting.

  At least not until that moment.

  He hadn’t gained enough distance from Lexi, and when she turned to step off the stool, he was looking directly up at her, like he’d hoisted her skyward for some dramatic moment from one of her movies, where all she had to do was slide down the length of his arms to land in the kind of embrace that made the credits roll. His breath caught, and he’d have sworn time stood still. The only sound was the gurgle from the coffee he’d brewed, and he was hit with one single thought.

  He wanted nothing more than to knock every dish he owned out of the way, bend her over the counter, and sink so deep into her that he’d forget his own name until he heard it on her lips.

  Fuck. The word, an admonishment, one hell of a mistake he couldn’t afford, rolled around, the mother of all bad ideas, throwing sparks and ash, tinder to flame and destruction. And wasn’t that it in a nutshell? How else could it possibly end?

  She was his best friend. Everything in the world that mattered to him hinged around her somehow. Every bit of family he had left in this world. His job. His house. His dog.

  He ached to reach for her, but he knew he’d never be able to let go of everything holding him back.

  She’d remained uncharacteristically quiet, and the moment hung around them like a warm blanket on a cold night. Then she wavered, and instinctively he reached for her, his fingers just grazing the bare skin of her abdomen. She jumped at the contact, and he wondered if the same jolt that had set fire to his blood was to blame. He met her gaze. Flattened his palm against the curve of her waist. She sucked in a quiet breath and still hadn’t let it out when his second hand joined the first. Firmly, gently, he lifted her from the stool, moving her to solid ground. In his mind, he was supposed to have said something then about putting back his dishes and his coffeemaker, but restoring that little bit of order wouldn’t have done anything. Not now.

  Her shirt had fallen when she’d lowered her arms, leaving his hands between the fabric and her skin. Her pulse beat through him, setting his own erratic heart rate. In his lust-clouded thoughts, it wouldn’t take anything to kiss her. And his lips were millimeters from doing just that when he realized it wouldn’t take anything.

  It would take everything.

  He dropped his hands and turned away, the rush of cold air in her absence nearly taking his breath. He didn’t say anything—just headed for the shower, grabbing his coffee as he went.

  He’d lost his damn mind.

  He cranked the water as cold as it would spray, like that would do any good. He’d need ice cubes to pelt him from the fixture if he had a prayer of forgetting where his thoughts had just gone. He stripped out of his sweat pants, wondering belatedly if Lexi had noticed through the baggy fabric that he was harder than he’d ever been in his life.

  It wasn’t until he’d stepped under the cold spray that he realized his second mistake. Everything in the shower reminded him of Lexi. He kicked himself for not going straight to the one in the master bedroom, but he seldom used it. He had no desire to clean the giant tub or enormous glass-walled shower, and until this moment, the hall bathroom had suited him just fine. But all he could smell was Lexi’s shampoo. Lexi’s body wash. He didn’t even see his damned Irish Spring.

  He’d never made a sound more feral than the growl that escaped his throat.

  That was it. He’d reached his breaking point over a bar of soap. Not once in his twenty-nine years had he ever felt so helpless, and if he didn’t take the edge off, he had a bad feeling he’d do something stupid. Something he couldn’t take back.

  Like make love to her.

  The errant thought filled him with a whole new kind of ache. It had nothing to
do with the blistering cold water or the lingering melon scent or the fact that he felt like he held a steel pipe in his hand. He could think only of sinking into soft, hot velvet, her heels hooking around his thighs, opening to him, urging him closer, deeper. He could already feel her body tight and soaked, his own tense with the need to thrust frantically in a rhythm that already drummed in his chest. He felt the heat, the sensation of losing his grip on her sweat-slicked skin, of fingernails tearing at his flesh.

  He felt every bit of it, and then he felt nothing but hot bliss. He looked down in shock.

  He’d exploded. Thinking about his best friend. And in the throes of the coldest shower he’d ever taken in his life.

  And it felt better than any actual sex he’d ever had.

  Defeated, he rested his forehead against the wall and kicked up the water temp. Nothing about this was okay. He couldn’t blow up their friendship. Even if they wanted the same things, he couldn’t risk that it wouldn’t work out. But they didn’t want the same things. He’d never been in a real relationship in his life. He’d never wanted one, much less know if he could stick one out.

  His only concession was that he was getting way ahead of himself. He thought she was hot. In the state of Colorado, that did not require a marriage license. He just needed to breathe. Easier said than done when he was left to shampoo and bathe with her body wash, but he literally ran into burning buildings for a living. He wasn’t going to let a melon berry, whatever that was, bring him down.

  He finished his shower, made sure it was clean, and only then realized he hadn’t grabbed anything to change into. Aggravated with himself, he pulled on the same sweat pants, grabbed his coffee, and headed to his room.

  He took his first sip before he’d made it out of the bathroom and almost choked. It tasted like syrup. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where the dishes still clinked under the ministrations of what Matt already knew to be the softest hands that had ever touched, tickled, or wrecked him, and immediately changed his mind.