Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch

by Victoria Pade

To the west of the bakery was the old family-owned Drug Emporium, which sold everything from foodstuffs to sundries to tennis shoes and sweat suits. There was also a large grocery store that hadn’t been around more than a dozen years, and a number of other businesses that served most every need that arose and left the small community fairly self sufficient.

  The weather was still springlike even though June had begun the week before. Since temperatures in the daytime were mild yet, and since the distance to the hardware store wasn’t all that great, Abby decided to leave her car at the bakery and walk, enjoying the sights as if she were a tourist.

  Clangton proper was a monument to making the best use of what had begun as the foundation of the town, of the buildings built to last and tended over the years so they could. There were no high-rises. The bank was the tallest building at three stories. The rest bobbed up and down from one to two. They were mostly brick of varying shades, mostly square and unadorned, but dignified looking, with an occasional quaint structure sprouting up here and there for flavor.

  The old boardwalks hadn’t been replaced until 1969 when the city council had voted to replace them with bricks for a cobbled effect, adding tall black Victorian streetlights to jazz things up.

  And jazz things up they had. Christmastime found the poles wrapped in boughs, red ribbons and tiny white lights. They were tied with pastel bows for Easter, wound with red, white and blue banners for the Fourth of July festivities and provided any number of other opportunities for decoration depending on the celebration or time of year. Now, for the onset of summer, the bases were planted with bright pink-and-purple pansies.

  Abby enjoyed her stroll, stopping to talk to several people she encountered here and there. Then she turned onto Racine Avenue—which ran north and south to First Street’s east and west.

  The business district was primarily on First Street but Racine was gaining ground, mainly with the addition of the new, big-city-size center for hardware, building supplies and decorating.

  The center had been built between the small shops that had taken over old houses there and the Clangton Saloon, which had previously been slightly disconnected from town.

  Abby headed for the hardware center, but even as she did, it wasn’t the sprawling new store and lumberyard that caught her eye.

  It was the Clangton Saloon just beyond.

  The facade was fashioned of rustic wood to look like an old-time saloon, with shutters on nonexistent windows to add effect,

  The parking lot was empty at that time of day, but she had a sudden flash of it from Saturday night. Of herself being carried out by Cal. Of her head on his shoulder. Of the feel of his muscular arms holding her as if she weighed nothing at all. Of that big body of his cupped around hers...

  She really did need to get back on the straight and narrow from which she’d veered with Saturday night’s wild-woman stunt, she told herself firmly as she yanked her wandering thoughts back to reality and tamped down on the tingling sensation that erupted all through her. She shouldn’t even be thinking about Cal, because even thinking about him was more of that distraction. The man was not her type. She was not his type. And that’s all there was to it.

  So with that admonishment under her belt, Abby went into the hardware center and decided to take a look around before buying the faucet she’d come for.

  Not much of what she found interested her—lumber, nuts and bolts, tools—until she came upon the remodeling displays where mock bathrooms and kitchens were set up. There was one bathtub in particular that caught her attention and lured her into the secluded alcove where it was displayed.

  The tub was a huge, shiny black oval set within three false walls on a pedestal of six tiled steps, with gold tap and handles coming out from the center of the back side rather than at either end, where inward slopes were made for lounging.

  Abby liked nothing better than a long soak in a hot bubble bath, but she’d never been in anything but a regulation tub before. She wondered if those sloping ends were as comfortable as they looked. But it was something she’d never know unless she got in and tried it out.

  The store wasn’t busy. In fact, the way that display was cloistered within the maze of other mock bathrooms and kitchens, she seemed to be all alone.

  So with a furtive glance around to make absolutely certain no one was watching, she climbed the tile stairs and stepped into the empty tub.

  It really was a decadent device. No one person needed a bathtub the size of a children’s wading pool, with whirlpool jets and a bottom so deep the top edges reached to her chin.

  But oh, it was nice!

  Abby wiggled around a little until she was sitting just right. Then she leaned back against one of the slanted ends and settled her head in the built-in dip designed for that purpose.

  Bliss. It really would be bliss to be soaking in steamy, sweet-scented bubbles like that. Maybe with the lights turned off and only candles burning all around.

  She closed her eyes and imagined it, reveling in the picture in her mind, in the feel of the tub cradling her, supporting her back, her head, nearly as comfortable as a bed. Warm water would be swirling over her skin as steam wafted in the air. There might be a little faint music—something slow and lilting. Every muscle would relax. Every nerve ending would slowly awaken to the sensations. The bathroom door would open. In would walk Cal. Naked...

  “I don’t know if you should be enjoyin’ yourself quite so much in public.”

  Abby’s eyes flew open at the sound of the deep male voice coming in low, intimate tones from so nearby she could feel his breath against her ear.

  Cal Ketchum had not only just walked into her fantasy. He was there in person.

  She didn’t know where he’d come from or how he’d managed to get that close without her hearing or even sensing his presence, but he was standing with one booted foot braced on the second step, leaning an arm along the tile that bordered the tub.

  “Oh,” Abby said, surprised, embarrassed, speechless and sitting up fast.

  “Testing out the equipment?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “What do you think?”

  “About the tub? It’s nice. Very nice.”

  “Good. Because I’m considerin’ buyin’ it.”

  Buying it. Filling it nearly to the rim. Getting into it stark, staring naked....

  The only thing that would be missing from what she’d just pictured in her mind was her.

  She felt her cheeks begin to burn.

  Why did this man have the power to make her blush like a schoolgirl over and over again?

  Wanting to put herself on a more equal footing, Abby started to stand. But Cal stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere. There isn’t anybody I can think of that I’d rather see in it.”

  She felt ridiculous, but between his hand on her shoulder and his blocking the only side without a wall, she’d have had to force her way out and that would have been even more awkward.

  Trying to make the best of the situation and not let him know how uncomfortable this made the prim, prudish part of her feel, she said, “It’s a nice tub. Where would you put it?”

  “The bathroom off my bedroom. In case you didn’t notice the other day, the tub in there is in bad shape.”

  Abby shot another glance around, afraid someone might have heard the reference to her being in the bathroom off his bedroom.

  No one was in sight, but somehow that didn’t help her uneasiness. “I just came in for a faucet for the bakery and—”

  “And couldn’t resist tryin’ out the tub.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And now that you’ve been caught in the act, you’d like to run like a rabbit,” he guessed with a slow smile.

  He was right, of course, but she didn’t want to admit it. So she lied instead. “I should get back.”

  “Humor me first,” he said, finally taking his hand off her shoulder in a slow movement that was more a caress
than anything.

  She didn’t know what he meant by humoring him. But she didn’t have long to wonder before he climbed into the tub with her.

  Abby’s legs had been stretched out straight, and she pulled them up in a hurry, looking around yet again. All it would take was one person to see this, and not a soul in Clangton would miss hearing about it.

  Again she started to rise. “Let me get out so you can try it yourself,” she offered.

  Yet not only did Cal not accommodate that idea, but he also motioned her down.

  “Come on, Abby, I need your help.” He made that sound partly playful, partly sensual.

  “I don’t know what kind of help you had in mind, but—”

  “I just wanted to see if it really is big enough for two,” he said, his tone laden with innuendo. “Relax. There isn’t a handful of people in this whole place. Nobody’ll see.”

  The thought of security cameras flashed through her mind, but Cal was positioned in such a way—with his back to the side rather than at the opposite end—that she would have had to high-step over his head to get out.

  So she had to content herself with hugging her knees to her chest to keep some distance between them.

  “You don’t look too comfortable,” he said with more amusement in his voice. “I don’t think this tub was meant for huddling in the corner. Could you ease up just a little?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Please?” he asked charmingly, pulling her arms from where they wrapped her shins.

  Then he grabbed on to her ankles and eased them under his tunneled legs to stretch out the way they’d been before.

  “Now lie back,” he instructed.

  “I think this is a test you ought to do yourself.”

  “That would depend on what I was testin’ for.”

  “Which would be...”

  “I just want the whole picture before I make up my mind. This is no cheap deal, you know. Now, lie back.”

  The man was incorrigible. And good-looking. And utterly appealing. And he seemed to be oblivious to so many things that had always been important to her—like the way things looked and what people might think. It all added up to an intriguing package and coaxed Abby out of herself the way a timid child might be tempted to join the fun of a mischievous child when the opportunity presented itself.

  She settled her back against the tub’s slanted end again.

  It made him grin with pleasure. And seeing it gave her a warm rush.

  “Rest your head the way you were doin’ before,” he ordered.

  She did that, too.

  He must have realized he’d won this round because he leaned back himself, spread his arms along the tub’s rim and stretched long legs to cross at the ankles on the opposite ledge.

  He looked so comfortable, he really could have been without the restraints of the tight blue jeans and bright yellow shirt he wore, lounging in the bathtub in the privacy of his own home.

  “Close your eyes,” he added then.

  She did, more to escape the all too arousing sight of him than to be accommodating.

  “Now tell me what you were thinkin’ about when I found you here with that sexy little smile on your face.”

  So he was teasing her again.

  But by then she was willing to play along.

  She described the scene she’d been imagining, omitting his nude entrance into the mental picture.

  “Are you tellin’ me you were all alone?” he asked when she’d finished, his tone suspicious.

  “All alone.”

  “Then you weren’t doin’ it right.”

  “Oh, no?” she said with a laugh, forcing the muscles in her face to relax in what she hoped looked like perfect serenity in her solitary imaginings.

  “You can’t have candlelight and a tub full of bubbles and be by yourself. There has to be a man, too.”

  “I don’t think there has to be.”

  “But it makes for a lot better fantasy.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You bet. A man who happens by and sees you all warm and wet and inviting.”

  If he could refer to the man in the third person and make this less personal, she could refer to the woman that way, too, and let herself off the hook. “Oh, now she’s inviting.”

  “Well, sure. He wouldn’t come in if she didn’t want him to.”

  “I don’t know about that. He seems to have a mind of his own.”

  “True enough. But she’s still glad to see him,” Cal insisted.

  Abby just smiled.

  “He’d have to strip down, of course,” Cal continued as if they were collaborating on the scenario of a novel. “So he could get into the water with her.”

  “And where would he sit when he did? At her end or at the other one?”

  “I think he’d be on his knees to her,” Cal said in a voice that was more quiet, more intimate than before. “Straddling her hips so he could bend over and kiss her while he ran his hands along her shoulders. Down her arms.”

  “Ah. A bath massage,” she said, not intending for her own voice to come out almost as a sigh.

  “To start with anyway,” he said with a devilishly intimate chuckle.

  “It would feel great,” she said as if she were experiencing it, free to be lost in the vivid scene in her mind because her eyes were still closed against reality.

  “Warm. Slippery. Great,” he agreed. “So great he’d have to give her the full-body massage.”

  “The full-body massage?”

  “Every inch of her body.”

  “While he was kissing her?”

  “Or watching to see how much she liked it.”

  “Would she like it?” Abby asked, taunting slightly even though her tone was barely more than a whisper as she drifted deeper and deeper into the images they were conjuring together.

  “Oh, yeah, she’d like it, all right. No doubt about that. He’d make sure of it.”

  “And would he like it, too?”

  “So much he’d have a hard time holdin’ back.”

  “And when he couldn’t anymore?”

  “He wouldn’t. He’d start kissin’ her again and he’d stop the full-body massage to hone in on a few areas that’d drive her crazy. A few that’d drive him crazy....”

  What was she doing? that little voice of caution in the back of Abby’s mind shouted at her. This was no way to spend an afternoon. In a public place. With a man she hardly knew. Making up a fantasy that was getting her more turned on by the minute.

  Too turned on to stop even though she knew this had gotten way out of hand.

  “Then what?” she heard herself say in a bedroom voice that wasn’t quite as raspy as his had grown.

  “Then he’d point the whirlpool jets at just the right spots and let ‘em pulse water while some other pulsin’ went on. Long, slow, wet, slippery pulsin’...”

  Okay, maybe this had gone far enough.

  Abby opened her eyes and fought her way out of the imaginary scene before she embarrassed herself with more than a verbal climax.

  “Water would splash all over,” she decreed practically.

  Cal was watching her with warm aquamarine eyes. He laughed. “Who cares if water splashes all over?”

  “They’d care when wood rot ate right through the floor.”

  He leaned over and spoke directly into her ear again. “It would be worth it.”

  “You’re a wicked man,” she said, trying not to smile at the delight that made those turquoise eyes sparkle.

  “Who, me? I thought we were talkin’ about two other people. Made-up ones.”

  “Well, those two other, made-up people would have one big mess to clean.”

  Enunciating each word for emphasis, he repeated, “It would be worth it.”

  A man dressed in the store’s uniform walked by the opening to that section just then, frowning at them but not venturing inside.

  Abby knew him. He went to her church. And from the disa
pproving, impatient expression on his face, it wasn’t the first time he’d walked by.

  “Oh, boy,” she muttered, disregarding awkwardness now to scramble to her feet and out of the tub in a hurry.

  Cal glanced over his shoulder in the salesman’s direction as if he knew perfectly well that the other man had been periodically looking in on them. Cal didn’t move, though. He stayed just the way he was, lounging in the tub.

  “So what’s the verdict?” he asked her.

  “About what?”

  “Do I invest in this thing or not?”

  There was something in his tone that said he wasn’t actually referring to the bathtub.

  But if not that, then what?

  Abby shot another look at the mock room’s opening, finding the salesman no longer in sight. Then she gazed back at Cal. “Are you talking about the tub?”

  He just shrugged, and she decided to take that as an affirmative answer because exploring anything else seemed even more dangerous, and certainly more complex.

  “If I could afford this bathtub and had the space to put it in, I would,” she confided.

  “And if I do, will you come over and use it?” he asked with that bad-boy grin.

  “I better buy my faucet and get going,” was the only answer she could think to give.

  “I’ll supply the candles,” he tempted.

  “Really, I have to go now,” she insisted, keeping one eye on the room’s entrance for her fellow church member.

  “You know what I’d like as much as you comin’ over to use my tub, if it becomes my tub?”

  “What?” she asked, still on the lookout for the salesman.

  “I’d like it if you’d stop tryin’ so hard to run from me, little rabbit.”

  “I’m not running. I really have to go,” she lied for the third time.

  He just stared at her as if he knew it. For a moment, anyway. Then he said, “Okay. Go.”

  So why wouldn’t her feet move?

  She stood rooted to the spot, watching him, struck by how terrifically handsome he was, how terrifically appealing, how terrifically sexy, wanting to climb back in the bathtub with him. Fellow church member or no fellow church member lurking just outside.

  But in the end she couldn’t do it.

  “See you around,” she said lamely instead.