Book Boyfriends Cafe Summer Lovin' Anthology 2015

by Melinda Curtis

  “Dad, what were you thinking?” Before he could answer, she said, “Why would this ever be okay with me? Greg and I are divorced. He doesn’t live here anymore. We’re living completely separate lives. We have been for over a year.”

  His hazel eyes went dark. “I know that, Lauren. The man is a little down on his luck at the moment. I was just trying to help him out. I was only trying to do something nice. You remember what that is, don’t you?”

  “Give me a break.” She dug her thumbnail into the orange and began peeling the skin from the flesh.

  Greg came into the room looking downright silly in her russet satin robe. The hem hit him mid thigh and the knot he’d tied in the sash rested several inches above his waist.

  Memories flooded her mind. Two years ago, Greg had donned her robe and served her breakfast in bed. French toast with butter and maple syrup, sliced strawberries dusted with powered sugar, coffee and juice. He’d placed a long-stemmed rose across the plate. She’d been dreading her birthday, dreading the idea of getting older. He’d shimmied around the room in that too-small robe while she ate, acting ridiculous to lift her spirits and make her laugh. And laugh is exactly what she had done.

  However, Lauren was too exasperated to even smile right now let alone laugh. And frustration had come along to fuel the fire. How could she be angry with Greg now that she knew he thought she was aware of what was going on? And what was going on, anyway?

  She set the half-peeled orange aside and went to the sink to rinse her fingers. Picking up the tea towel, she slowly and methodically dried her hands. “Greg, why are you showering in my house? Doing your laundry in my laundry room?”

  Having your laundry done for you, she wanted to correct, but didn’t.

  Then her father’s words reverberated in her mind.

  The man is a little down on his luck.

  She groaned. “Oh, please tell me you’re having plumbing problems at your apartment. Tell me a plumber’s there right now. Tell me that the water company is flushing the lines and you can’t use your shower today.”

  Greg just stood there looking at her.

  Lauren sighed. “You were evicted, weren’t you? When will you learn that you have to pay your bills on time? When you don’t pay your rent, you get tossed out on your butt.” Again she shook her head, this time with a little more fervor. “Well, you cannot stay here.”

  He continued to stare, not saying a word and looking as if he’d rather be anywhere in world but standing there wearing that robe.

  “Would you give the man a little credit,” her father grumbled. “He didn’t forget to pay his bills. His water wasn’t shut off, and he wasn’t evicted.”

  Her dad crossed the kitchen. “How ‘bout a cup of coffee, Greg? It’s fresh.” He picked up the carafe and filled his mug.

  “Thanks, Lew.” Greg kept his eyes leveled on Lauren. “But I think I should go gather up my things and go.”

  Lauren stared at him for a second or two, then she let go of the tension she was holding in her shoulders. Hadn’t she told herself she wasn’t going to let this man affect her any longer?

  “You may as well sit down and have some coffee,” she told him. She picked up the orange and began tugging at the peel again. “There’s no possible way you’re going to make a dignified exit looking like that.”

  He hesitated only a moment before nodding a response and reaching up to comb his fingers through his damp hair. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

  Her father took a clean cup from the dish drainer, poured coffee into it and set it on the table in front of Greg.

  “Thanks, Lew.”

  “Welcome.” Her dad filled his cup and sat down, too.

  Both men seemed content to sit and sip coffee in companionable silence.

  “Well, is someone going to explain what’s going on?” she blustered. “If you paid your bills on time, if your water hasn’t been cut off, why—”

  “I gave up the apartment back in the summer.”

  “I don’t understand.” The scent of orange essence hung in the air. “You gave it up?”

  He nodded and then lifted the ceramic mug to his mouth.

  “But why would you do something like that?” Then a large piece of orange skin hit the kitchen floor. “You’re living in that barn.”

  Greg studied his coffee mug, refusing to meet her gaze.

  “You can’t live out there. That place is filthy.” Once again, she set the orange on the counter. “It’s a barn, Greg. It was not meant for human habitation.”

  That little colloquy sounded too much like concern for her comfort.

  “Besides that,” she quickly added, “it’s my barn.”

  “Well, crap,” her father muttered. “Here we go.”

  “What?” She eyed her dad. “It is my barn.”

  “No one is disputing that, Lauren.” Greg’s tone was mollifying.

  But she didn’t want to be mollified. “You lied to me again. I caught you in that barn and you never said you were living there. You never said that.”

  His chin tipped up a fraction. “I said I was working late. Which I was. I said I fell asleep there. Which I did. I spoke nothing but the truth.”

  “It was a half-truth,” she pointed out. “Half-truths, omissions, evasions. That’s all I ever get from you, Greg.” Her father’s disapproving expression was like sandpaper on rash-ridden skin. “And what are you looking at? You’re no better. Inviting people in to my home without telling me—”

  “He’d been showering at my place. And this is my place now, too, right?”

  A small gasp escaped from her throat. “He’s been using my hot water since you moved in?”

  “You wouldn’t even know about it if you’d leave for work on time.”

  “Please, please, stop,” Greg said. “I feel bad enough already. I don’t want the two of you fighting because of me.”

  She clamped her mouth shut. As much as she hated to admit it, Greg was right. She shouldn’t fight with her father. Arguing with him would do no good. It never had. He was going to do what he wanted. Befriend whom he wanted. Invite over whomever he wanted. Offer laundry services to the whole neighborhood. Her opinion didn’t matter a wit.

  Lauren went to the table, pulled out a chair and sat. “Is business that bad, Greg?” A silent groan rose up inside her at her next thought. She tried for the span of several heartbeats to hold her tongue, to keep her curiosity at bay, but in the end she just let it rip. “Do you need some money?”

  She tried to make the offer sound gracious, but she missed the mark by a very wide margin. In reality, voicing the question about killed her. Giving Greg any more of her hard-earned cash was the last thing she wanted to do. But she wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt of not asking. Why was it her responsibility to take care of everyone? Solve everyone’s problems?

  Her ex-husband reached out and covered her hand with his. “I’m okay, Lauren. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  She pulled her arm back as if his touch burned. “I’m not worried.” She stood then, and retreated to her spot near the counter.

  Her father expressed his disbelief with a small tick of his tongue; Lauren turned a deaf ear. She rested the small of her back against the edge of the counter and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Look, Lauren,” Greg said. “I’m looking for another place, okay? If you’ll just let me stay out there for a—”

  “No, Greg.”

  “Lau-ren.” Disgust and disappointment weighed down the two syllables when her father spoke them. “The man isn’t asking for the world.”

  “It’s a barn, Dad,” she reminded him.

  Greg smiled. “Actually, it’s not all that bad. I slapped up some dry wall in the back room, and I have a space heater. And there’s a well. I’ve been carrying water in from the hand pump out back.”

  The primitiveness of it sent a shiver up her spine. “But there’s no, you know...plumbing.”

  H
er dad must have sensed that she was softening to the idea of Greg staying at the barn because he chuckled. “Haven’t you heard, Lauren? Real men pee in the woods.”

  Lauren just closed her eyes.

  With his I’m okay line, Greg intimated that he was earning an adequate living. But who knew how much or how little truth his veiled intimations held? He’d lied to her before. Man, oh, man, had he ever. And she couldn’t fathom any other reason for him to live in that dusty, drafty old building out on swampy Skeeter Neck Road unless he had no money.

  The idea that Greg needed some income forced her thoughts to make a sharp turn.

  The whimsical treasure housed in that barn would be worth a small fortune, but it wasn’t worth squat in its current condition. Greg was an expert carpenter; he could build just about anything. Her father once commented that Greg had ‘hands.’ The meaning behind the observation had become clear any time Greg had taken on a project in the house during their marriage. He could fix almost anything and he had, too, from a hole in the wall, to leaky plumbing, to a short in the electrical system. He was a true and talented Jack-of-all-trades.

  And he would be the perfect person to restore those carrousel animals for her.

  She looked at her ex. “You need a job?”

  His dark eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction before he shook his head. “I’ve got plenty of work.”

  Lauren couldn’t tell if he was being honest or if his male pride was talking.

  “Okay,” she said, “let me rephrase that. Would you like a job?”

  “I don’t know. What do you have in mind?” His question and his expression reeked of suspicion.

  She reached for the orange and began removing the last bit of skin. “I’d like the merry-go-round cleaned up.”

  “Wow.” The tension on his face relaxed and he sat back, genuinely astonished. “I have to admit, I’m surprised. I thought you’d take one look at her, have her dismantled and carted to the land fill.”

  “I’ll pay you an hourly wage,” she offered. Then she shrugged. “And if you’re staying at the barn, you can work off the rent.”

  “Rent?” He laughed outright at the idea. “You said the place isn’t fit for human habitation, and now you want to charge me rent?”

  She set the orange down. “You said you fixed it up. That it was nice.”

  “I said it wasn’t bad.”

  That was what he said. And the man did have to relieve himself in the woods. Thinking about his living conditions made her want to cringe all over again.

  “All right. All right. No rent.” She picked her keys up from where she’d tossed them on the counter. “So you’ll get those animals cleaned up and painted?”

  Greg nodded. “It’ll take some time, though. And I’m still surprised you want it done.”

  She shrugged and offered him a smile. “I can be surprising.” Uncomfortable with the way he was looking at her, she turned away from him and walked out of the kitchen. “I have to go to the office. I’ve got clients coming.”

  “Just so you know,” her father called after her, “I’m letting him shower here.”

  “Whatever, Dad. As long as he’s not here when I’m here.”

  “And he can do his laundry.”

  Unwilling to concede the last word, she shouted, “There better be hot water left for me at the end of the day!”

  The situation was completely absurd. And to think she’d been certain that divorcing Greg would calm the wild roller coaster life she’d been living. Lauren just shook her head. Well, she was divorced all right. But now she had her father under her roof as well as under her skin, and her ex was still in her hair, too close for comfort.

  Those two men seemed bent on keeping her frazzled.

  She closed the front door and reached to smooth her hair. The scent of citrus wafted from her fingertips, forcing a frustrated sigh to issue from between her lips.

  They were keeping her so frazzled that she couldn’t remember something as simple as an orange.

  Chapter 7

  Sex is like air, it’s not important unless you’re not getting any.

  ~Unknown

  Lauren’s arms ached. She stepped back and lowered them to her sides, stretching her neck muscles to the left and then to the right. This kind of strenuous labor wasn’t something she was used to. Her job entailed the flexing of her brain, not her biceps, triceps and deltoids.

  She hadn’t intended to get this involved in the project. In fact, after hiring Greg to do the dirty work two weeks ago, she’d intended to stay away from the barn altogether. But every evening after she locked the office doors, something pulled at her and she found herself driving to the swampy side of town.

  Massaging one biceps and shoulder, then the other, she wrinkled her nose at the oily odor of metal polish that seemed to permeate her fingers and palms. This contraption had more brass on it than she’d realized.

  After a couple of days standing around watching Greg work, she’d had to laugh when he’d pointed out her idleness.

  “The job would go quicker,” he’d told her, “if you picked up a cloth and started scrubbing.”

  Because she hadn’t clarified her plans to sell off the animals piecemeal, Greg was cleaning the entire carnival ride—the roof, the animals, the platform. The whole shebang. She hadn’t said a word to stop him.

  When he’d suggested she shine up the brass railings and posts, she hadn’t complained. The poles that secured the animals to the frame would go with each tiger, giraffe and horse she eventually sold, so she wasn’t wasting her time there. Then the idea had come to her that some salvaging company might be interested in purchasing the railings, and shiny brass might sell for a higher price than if it was dull with tarnish.

  “You’re making great progress,” Greg said, entering the barn. The brown bag he carried made a crisp, crinkling sound as he switched it from one arm to the next. “Sorry I’m late. I stopped to buy some paint and brushes.”

  He set the supplies on the workbench and slipped out of his jacket. While working on the merry-go-round each evening, they moved Greg’s space heater into the main area of the barn. The small heater was no match for the vast space, but it did a fine job of taking the chill out of the air. As long as they wore sweaters or flannel shirts, they were warm enough.

  “What colors did you buy?” For some odd reason, the idea of holding a paint brush in her hand made her suddenly giddy.

  “Just red. For the roof,” he told her.

  Disappointment must have registered on her face because he quickly added, “I have to start at the top and work my way down.”

  Lauren nodded. “Of course.” What she’d love, though, was to see one of those prancing Arabian horses come to life with a bright, fresh coat of glossy paint. The animals actually didn’t look bad at all, now that all those years of dust and grime had been washed away.

  He reached into the bag and pulled out several rolls of tape, two one-gallon buckets of paint and a packet of brushes. Then he handed her the receipt which she promptly stuffed into the rear pocket of her jeans without looking at it.

  “Quit eyeing those animals,” he told her. “I won’t be painting those.”

  “What do you mean? Why not?”

  One corner of Greg’s mouth turned up. “You wouldn’t let me paint your car with a brush, would you? I can paint a house. I can paint a fence or a piece of furniture. But I can’t paint those.” He indicated the merry-go-round menagerie with a small jerk of his head. “They need an airbrush and a talented hand.”

  Automatically, her gaze lowered to his hands, and she went still. It seemed that every molecule of air in the barn disappeared. Heat spread through her body as she remembered a time when he’d touched her with those talented hands, had slid them over her body until she’d... Her breath caught and held, and she battled the sudden, steamy thought by inhaling slowly, deeply.

  She hooked her thumbs into her back pockets. “Well—”

  “Don’t worry. I�
�ve got it covered. I know a guy.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” she said softly. Lauren doubted there was a single soul in Sterling he didn’t know.

  “Don’t worry,” he repeated, grinning. “He owes me.”

  Half the people in town owed Greg money. And a lot of them weren’t able to afford, or had never intended, to pay up. That’s why he’d lost the hardware store. That’s why their marriage had crumbled. Well, that was one reason, anyway.

  Greg sighed. “A favor, Lauren. He owes me a favor.”

  There had been a time when his bartering skills had impressed and fascinated her. He once installed a countertop at Rapunzel’s, the local beauty salon, and in exchange for the job he’d brought home a year’s supply of coupons for hair cuts and manicures for her. He’d once brought home a bicycle for their neighbor’s son that he’d swapped for a small home repair. Several summers running, he’d traded his work for a season of grass cutting and landscaping services.

  Those who participated in bartering had developed a complicated third and fourth party system where work or products or services might be provided to someone the supplier had never even met in order to pay back a debt owed to another. As long as everyone kept up their end of the deals, the system worked. But over the years she’d seen that Greg’s soft-hearted nature all too often left him holding the short end of the bargaining stick. Lauren preferred a ‘you bill me, I’ll bill you’ business system which ensured that everyone involved was fairly compensated—with cold, hard currency.

  “Okay,” she told him. “No insult intended, Greg.”

  “None taken.” He stripped the cardboard protectors off the paint brushes. “He won’t airbrush all those animals for free. The job’s too big. But he’ll give you a good discount, I’m sure.”

  She reached out and picked up a colorful piece of cardboard. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable with you using one of your favors for this job. I don’t mind paying full price. I’ve taken on some new clients. Business is pretty good.”