Screwball

by Linda Morris

  “Don’t mention it.”

  It was the polite thing to say, but she had a feeling there was more to the story. She doubted his father had given in without a fight, but who knew? With Paul, she always felt off balance. Uncertain. Unsure she could read him and not confident of his motives. Maybe he’d given up his room because he thought it would be the least he could do for a girl he’d once slept with.

  The thought was decidedly lowering.

  Alex looked back and forth between the two of them. “Uh-huh. You sure a lawsuit’s the only reason you don’t want me sharing her room, Paul?”

  Damn Alex. He was a little too smart for his own good.

  “Why else would I mind?” He quirked a brow.

  Why indeed? Another lowering thought.

  “Thanks again,” she said. As she walked away, she had a feeling he watched her all the way across the lobby. At the elevator, she shot a backward glance at him.

  Yes, as a matter of fact, he was checking her out. As the doors closed, she couldn’t keep from smiling.

  Chapter 4

  In her dreams at least, Willow held Jack every night. She snuggled his baby warmth in her arms, smelling his sweet scent and feeling the softness of his wispy hair against her lips when she bent to kiss his faintly furred scalp. In her dreams, she didn’t have to settle for his picture in a text or a few minutes of his unfocused gaze on a computer screen, blinking in confusion at the sound of his mother’s voice.

  Mid-dream, she stirred at some sound, restive at the disturbance of her dream world. An ache flared in her lower back, and she cursed the uncomfortable mattress. She shifted, knowing it was useless. No comfortable position existed on this mattress. She ought to know. She’d tried them all.

  Outside, loud footsteps and shouts rent the quiet night. Rolling over, she sighed into her paper-thin pillow. The worst thing about the end of the road trip was she was back to sleeping at the Painview. Must be another party by the meth dealers she suspected were living next door. Or maybe they were having a BOGO sale on meth. Whoever said small towns were idyllic had never been to Plainview. She picked up her cell phone and checked the time. After one. Damn. She had to get up in a few hours. If she didn’t get back to sleep soon, she’d be exhausted. She’d had trouble falling asleep in the first place.

  After checking back into the Plainview, exhausted after the road swing, she’d gotten an unexpected phone call with even more unexpected news.

  Kendra was coming for a visit later this spring, and she was bringing Jack. For a whole two weeks—maybe longer. Spring was the football off-season, and she’d been able to arrange a leave of absence from her PR job.

  Willow smiled in the darkness, still unable to believe her luck. She’d thought she’d be lucky to squeeze in day-long visits home here and there for the length of this project. She’d thought she could handle the separation, yet she’d only been here a little longer than two weeks, and some days she thought she’d go mad from missing Jack.

  Apparently she’d made one too many weepy phone calls to her friend, but Kendra understood and wanted to help. Willow had barely been able to voice a coherent thought through her squeals on the phone, she was so excited to get the news.

  “Son of a bitch!” The words sliced through the wall as if it didn’t exist. She yanked the pillow out from under her head and tossed it at the wall. No way was she going to pound on those guys’ door and tell them to shut up, though. She’d caught a few glimpses, and they looked suspiciously like guys passing through between stays at the penitentiary. Plus, they’d been very vocal about not wanting housekeeping in their rooms, a request the tired-looking maid had accepted with a shrug.

  She picked up her phone. She could at least anonymously call the cops to make a noise complaint. She’d dialed the first number when she heard another spate of cursing.

  “Shit! Where’s the fire extinguisher?”

  “Oh, that is it.” She rolled out of bed, flicked on the light, and grabbed her shoes and a hoodie from the chair near the door. Another moment to collect her keys, phone and purse, and she was out the door, meth dealers or no meth dealers.

  The acrid stench hit her as soon as she stepped onto the second-floor open-air hallway. Smoke seeped out from under the neighbor’s door. She hurried in the opposite direction, dialing 911 as she went. She reported the fire to the dispatcher while watching the culprits scurry into a pickup truck and drive away without pulling the fire alarm. Bastards.

  As soon as she got off of the phone, she went to the front office to tell the clerk. The teenager appeared to be on the verge of nodding off, but he woke up fast enough when she told him about the fire. He disappeared, and a moment later the fire alarm shrieked through the building. She went outside to take a safe position on a sidewalk across the parking lot from the building. She shivered as puzzled families and yawning singles made their way out of their rooms. The motel was lightly occupied, fortunately, and easily evacuated before the fire department arrived.

  When they arrived, they put the fire out quickly enough and then began asking questions of bystanders. When a Plainview PD car arrived, she told a young officer everything she’d seen and heard and gave them her name and cell number.

  After an hour of waiting, watching, and asking questions, they allowed her back to her room to salvage what she could. The room next door was charred, but she could make out a cluster of jars, tubes and a ruined electric skillet. The jumbled mess didn’t bode well for the legality of whatever had been going on in there. Yellow police tape bisected the doorway. The damage was more minor in her room, thank God.

  The shared wall between her room and the Walter White wannabes’ was soaked. Wallpaper had peeled and blistered and sagged away from the wall. One blackened hole in the wall showed where the fire had started to penetrate her room.

  The pimpled teenage desk clerk spoke from the doorway. “We can reassign you to a new room if you want.” He held up his phone. “My manager has authorized me to give you ten percent off.”

  She looked at him and back through the hole to the charred debris that used to be room 212. “Tempting as that awesome deal sounds, I’m going to have to pass.”

  Time to accept the inevitable. She couldn’t bring her son into this environment. She was going to have to ask Paul Dudley for help, and it was going to hurt.

  *

  Paul tried not to feel glad she’d called him in the middle of the night. He tried to think of reasons she’d be calling him so late, and none of them were good.

  The word “fire” had set his heart racing, but thank God she’d escaped without injury. Nobody else had been hurt either. It didn’t sound like much of a fire, and at least now she’d finally had the sense to take him up on his offer of renting the duplex.

  “I can be at the motel in twenty minutes.”

  “That’s not necessary. We can meet at the duplex if you give me directions.”

  “You’ll need help with your stuff. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  There was a long silence, and then a sigh. “Thank you.”

  He smiled. Rarely had he heard a more begrudging thank-you. Willow Bourne had pride to spare.

  Accepting help didn’t come easily to her, yet she’d called him.

  For the first time since she’d brushed him off in the Thrashers’ parking lot, hope stirred. Maybe they weren’t a lost cause after all. There was no reason they couldn’t have a good time and enjoy each other. Willow wanted a story out of her stay in Plainview, but he had nothing to hide. Not personally, anyway. He’d been dealing with media all his life, hiding his father’s embarrassments from the public eye and protecting the rep of the Thrashers organization. He could handle one sexy blogger.

  “No problem.”

  “Oh, and Paul?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for not saying ‘I told you so.’”

  “You’re welcome. You know I was thinking it, right?”

  “Of course I do.”

  He pul
led into the motel parking lot eighteen minutes later, having taken just enough time to throw on a pair of jeans and a Thrashers hoodie over a T-shirt.

  On his way across the parking lot, he passed a sleepy-looking young family being unceremoniously relocated to the other end of the motel by a clerk. “Everybody okay?” He’d directed his question at the desk clerk, but he was too harried to respond.

  “I think so, yeah,” the father replied, hugging his young son a little tighter.

  Paul smiled slightly. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to wake up in the middle of the night and pull your small kids out of a burning building. Parenthood must be freaking terrifying.

  At this rate, though, he’d never find out. That thought left him curiously flat. He’d always thought having kids was something he’d get around to. His dad’s indifference to his own kids had the curious effect of making Paul want to prove he could do better.

  He made his way up to the upper deck where Willow’s room was, but his jaw dropped when he saw the burned-out room right next door.

  “Thanks for coming. You didn’t have to.” Her door was open, and she came to meet him, without makeup and wearing a T-shirt and baggy lounge pants. Her vulnerability next to the utter destruction yards away made his heart clench.

  “What is this?” He gestured to the police tape.

  She stared at him, and then looked at the burned room. “That’s the room where the fire was.” She implied, but did not actually state, he was an idiot for asking.

  “No kidding. You could have died, for God’s sake. On the phone, you made it sound like no big deal. It was right next door. This was a big fire.” He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled and kiss her senseless all at once. What was the matter with her? More importantly, what was the matter with him?

  “It was a minor incident.” She crossed her arms, probably in an attempt to look fierce, but with her petite build and red locks trailing down unbrushed over her shoulders, she only looked like an angry, disheveled elf. “I got out before it got bad. I called 911 and notified the front desk clerk. I spent most of the fire safe and sound out here on the sidewalk.”

  “If you’d listened to my advice in the first place, you never would have even been in any danger. Dammit, I told you this place was a death trap.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You told me it was a dive, and it is, but nobody ever died of a lumpy mattress, okay?”

  “I told you there were meth heads here.”

  “I’m from Florida. We have meth heads every other block! They don’t scare me. I didn’t expect them to burn the place down. You’re making a big stink out of nothing. I got out fine, okay?” She threw her arms wide.

  “Fine.” He took a deep breath.

  He’d gotten his way. She was moving out of this dump and into his duplex. No need to drive the point home.

  “Have you had a chance to pack your stuff?”

  “Most of it.” Her eyes softened some but still held wariness.

  Dammit. This wasn’t what he wanted, for her to be either yelling at him or eyeing him suspiciously every time they met. He wanted—well, he didn’t know what he wanted, exactly, but, for starters, he wanted her to look at him with gladness. To be happy he was there, to greet him with a smile in her eyes.

  He nodded to a suitcase near the door. “That one ready to go?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll start loading my truck. You finish packing.”

  She nodded, and he picked up the suitcase.

  “Paul?” He barely heard her voice, she spoke so softly as he walked away.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.” Her voice fell so quietly in the night air he had to lean forward to catch it. She shrugged, her brown eyes as dark as cocoa in the fluorescent glare. “I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I want you to know, I really appreciate this.”

  “We didn’t get off on the wrong foot. Seems to me, we got it very right. It’s since then that things have gone wrong.”

  Her gaze wavered and dropped. “You know what I mean. Not many guys would get out of bed to help a woman they barely knew in the middle of the night.”

  That’s how she thought of them? As two people who barely knew each other? He couldn’t believe it. His radar wasn’t that far off. The tension that hummed in the air every time they met didn’t come from indifference.

  Someday, she’d admit that.

  “You’re more than welcome. You can call on me for whatever you need. Anytime, anyplace. Remember that.”

  She nodded jerkily, and he headed down the stairs.

  He’d change her attitude. She made him want to throttle her sometimes, but Willow Bourne made him feel more alive than anything or anyone else he could remember. His feeling of connection to her wasn’t unrequited. He knew that for certain.

  They could have a good time together—maybe more—and it didn’t have to interfere with their jobs.

  Now he had to make sure Willow saw that too.

  *

  A half hour later, Willow had moved her meager possessions into the duplex. When Paul’s truck had pulled up to the lovely yellow Victorian on the tree-lined street, she’d had to suppress a sheepish sigh. Why the hell had she stayed in that dump when a place like this was available?

  Unfortunately, she knew the reason, and he sat in the driver’s seat, six feet two inches of muscle and lean strength, his beat-up jeans pulling taut against a well-muscled leg.

  “Which side of the duplex do you want? They’re both available.”

  “I don’t care. Surprise me.”

  Paul unlocked the left-side apartment and returned to lower the tailgate. She joined him. She’d been very careful in what she allowed him to carry out of the motel. This time, before she could stop him, he grabbed the first thing he found. Unfortunately, that was the breast pump. It was sealed in its plastic hood with a handle on top, so it didn’t give her secret away, but it still looked weird.

  “What is this thing, anyway?” He eyed it as he grabbed an overnight bag with his free hand.

  “Ah—” Her brain froze. Big device with a cord coiled on one end, with a plastic case with a handle over the top. What the hell could it be? “Sewing machine?” she blurted, her voice rising at the end like she was asking him instead of telling him.

  “You brought a sewing machine to Plainview?” He tilted his head, his gaze a question.

  “Sure. I like to sew.” She scarcely knew one end of a needle from the other, but he didn’t need to know that. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice the “My Earliest Years” logo on the side of the “sewing machine.” She’d have a hard time explaining that one.

  He shrugged and headed for the duplex. She released the breath she’d been holding and picked up the mini-freezer. She’d need to hide it away before he spotted it and asked more uncomfortable questions.

  In the front foyer, she stuffed the mini-freezer behind the first door she found, which turned out to be a coat closet, and then straightened to peruse her new temporary home.

  It was adorable. The front parlor had a white brick fireplace surrounded by comfy furniture in shades of blue and green. Beyond that were a small dining room with a walnut table and a bright, modern kitchen with a nook off to one side. In the daytime, sunlight would probably pour through these windows, lighting up the white cabinets and playful retro checked tile countertops. The floors gleamed with hardwood parquet, and a wool runner splashed red down the hallway.

  This would be perfect now that Jack was coming to stay with her.

  “How many bedrooms?”

  “Two, both upstairs. Why? You thinking you’ll need an office?” Paul lowered the pump and bag to the ground.

  “No, I’ve got a friend coming to stay for a visit later this spring.”

  “Oh? A friend, huh?”

  My, what studied nonchalance. If she’d ever seen anyone dying to pry, it was Paul in this moment. Was he concerned that maybe the “someone special” she’d been flying home to visit w
as coming to stay with her? Well, he was, but not in the way Paul feared. He’d seemed awfully sad and mopey after she’d given the impression she had a boyfriend, which ought to be a good thing. For her to hang on to not only her job but also her remaining shreds of journalistic credibility, they needed to stay well apart from each other.

  That was what she wanted, right? For him to realize they had no future and stay far, far away from her. That would let her tell him about Jack on her terms, at the right time, keeping her source of income safe, when it was too late for the revelation to wreck her career.

  “My friend Kendra is coming for a visit. She works in the marketing department of the St. Pete Invaders. She’s coming to hang with me for a while since it’s their off-season.”

  “Oh. Sounds good.” His face cleared so rapidly she nearly laughed, despite herself. “Feel free to bring her to a Thrashers game. She can sit in the box with us.”

  “We’ll see.” Damn. This was turning out to be more complicated than she’d thought. Full of excitement at seeing her son again, she hadn’t thought about how she’d explain his presence to Paul. “Kendra’s bringing her baby with her.”

  Thud. That had sort of fallen out of her mouth with no advance planning. Well, hell. She had to explain Jack somehow, and she couldn’t tell him the truth. She’d have to let Kendra know that, as far as Paul Dudley was concerned, she’d just become a single mother.

  “She has a baby?”

  “Yeah.” Was it her imagination, or did he look a little confused? “What of it?”

  He looked at her and shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re young and single, so I thought your friends would be too.”

  She crossed her arms. “She’s young and single. She also has a baby. Is that a problem for you?”

  His brows lifted. “Why would it be a problem?”

  “A lot of people look down on single mothers.” She’d learned that the hard way, unfortunately.

  “So? I’m not one of them. I was raised by a single father after my mom died. It’s not easy.” He disappeared out the door, no doubt to get the rest of her stuff, and she took a deep breath. She really, really had to get hold of her emotions or she was going to blurt out the truth to Paul one of these days. She would tell him eventually, but not yet.