Like Coffee and Doughnuts

by Ellle Parker

“It’s probably nothing,” I said, pushing her outside. “If it turns into something, I’ll let you know.”

  “You’d better,” she said as she went down the stairs. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  I went back in to find Seth crouched on the floor carefully lining up engine parts on the coffee table. He looked up me with a smug expression, which I took great delight in squashing with the words, “Darryl Serrano.”

  “What?” he asked, screwing up his face.

  “Darryl Serrano. That’s who was in here, I’d bet you a hundred bucks.”

  “What the hell are you—” Seth stopped as understanding dawned on his face. “The shit from the ’Vette. You mean fuckin’ Ernie ratted us out?”

  “No, no, remember how tired he was? He was havin’ a bad day because the alarm went off the night before. We thought it was Serrano then too, but I never figured he’d go any farther. Ed’s Garage is listed all over the paperwork as the repo agent.”

  Seth stood up and rubbed his hands on the front of his jeans. “Then he’s got your name too.”

  “But no address. I never gave Ernie the new address, and it’s too early for anyone to be able to trace where I’m at. It’s not like he can just look me up in the phone book right now.”

  “Well, I guess that weird-ass little notebook is worth something after all,” Seth said.

  “Yeah, and I bet he wants his car keys too. You and I both know he didn’t find what he was looking for.”

  Seth looked around at the trashed apartment. “That is very true. I think for my own personal safety, and yours, I’m going to have to sleep at your place again tonight.”

  “Yeah, but who’s gonna keep me safe from you?”

  He flashed a wicked grin, which was pretty convincing in spite of the bruises on his face.

  “I’m serious, Seth, we need to talk.”

  “Hey, if I can walk and chew gum at the same, I sure as hell can talk and fu—”

  “All right, all right!” I said, cutting him off. “Just go downstairs and get to work. I’ll start in on this mess, see how far I can get.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay,” he said, clearly relieved to be getting out of cleaning duty.

  “Seth,” I said, catching him on the threshold. He turned to look. “You’re buyin’ the beer this time.”

  He gave me a thumbs up and was gone.

  Chapter 10

  I spent most of the day cleaning Seth’s apartment, and although I’d made pretty good headway, the place was still a wreck. That meant it was more or less back to normal, but I figured since he’d helped me move, I could probably put in some extra time and get the place really fixed up. That wasn’t going to happen in a day, though.

  The problem with working there alone was it gave me too much time to think, and I wound up more confused than ever. When Seth hollered up to say he was going to work through lunch, I was relieved, but at the same time, it was driving me nuts to keep putting off the talk we needed to have. I wanted to know what in the hell was going on in his head.

  I certainly wasn’t having much luck figuring out what was going on in my own head. I knew damn well the whole thing was a very, very bad idea, and I was reasonably certain it was mostly Seth’s own impulsive nature at work, rather than anything serious. But I couldn’t deny that in some small way he’d gotten to me. If I tried, I could almost feel his mouth, and his body under my hands. Part of me wanted to feel that again. If nothing else, I was curious to see if I responded to him the same way.

  Sometime in the early evening, someone knocked at the door, and I went through the living room to answer it. To my surprise, there stood Seth. He was wearing his sunglasses and leaning against the door frame with a pizza in one hand and a six-pack of Coke dangling from the other. “You ever played that game with the pizza delivery boy and the lonely housewife?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact I have, and I left both of them begging for more.”

  “Oh, big talker.” He came in and put everything on the kitchen counter.

  I shut the door and followed him, pulling out some plates and napkins and putting them next to the box. It was from Spinelli’s, my favorite pizza place, and I wondered if that was an intentional gesture on his part. I went to the fridge and took out a beer, twisting the cap off and tossing it at the garbage can. It hit the wall and bounced in.

  “You want a beer?” I asked, taking a sip.

  “Nope, I’m good.” He snapped a can of Coke out of the six-pack and held it up.

  Having pizza without beer is damn near a crime in our book, and I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “You’re not going to have to wonder if anything I say or do tonight is the result of impaired judgment,” he explained.

  “Yeah, all right, I guess that’s fair.” I felt a little clammy because this was it, and I wasn’t sure I was ready.

  Seth sat down across from me, piled several slices of pizza on his plate, and opened his Coke. “So what’s it gonna be, Dino? You think you can handle me?”

  “You think you can be serious for ten minutes?”

  He blinked at me, mouth stuffed full of cheese and pepperoni, and nodded. His eyes met mine and held my gaze as if he could prove it to me. It had the effect of making him look extremely earnest, even with tomato sauce on his lip.

  “So, you want to tell me where in the hell this came from?” I asked. “We’ve been hanging out for a lot of years and never once have I gotten the idea that you were actually interested in me. It was all just kidding around.”

  He swallowed. “Yeah, well, it’s not like you’d notice, man.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Seth wiped his mouth and took a drink of Coke. “You’re not really the most…romantically attuned person I’ve ever met.”

  I frowned. “I can be very romantic when I want to be, what the hell would you know about it?”

  “That’s just it—when you want to be, which as far as I can tell is pretty few and far between. I don’t know how the fuck you maintain sanity. You get laid like, what? Twice a year?”

  “So what am I, a charity case for you?”

  “No. You wanted to know why you had no clue that I’ve checked you out from time to time, and I’m just saying it’s because you’re never looking for that.”

  “Then why, what is this?”

  He finished gnawing on a pizza crust and dropped it on his plate. He wiped off his hands and said, “I don’t know, Dino, I really don’t. I’ve always thought you were hot, and you’re great to hang out with. This past week has been kind of cool. And when you tried to beat a guy to death for me last night, I got to thinkin’ maybe you’d go for it.”

  “You know I’ve never dated a guy,” I said, drinking beer.

  Seth coughed into his fist and smirked at me. “Right, you’re the poster boy for Straight America.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry, you just don’t scream hetero he-man, dude. I wouldn’t call you flaming or anything, but let’s just say your toes are singed. Hell, I read straighter than you do.”

  “You know, having a little class and style doesn’t have anything to do with—”

  “That’s not my point, Dino,” Seth said, cutting me off. “Look, I may never have seen you date a guy, but I sure as hell have caught you checking them out, and as far as I’m concerned everyone is at least a little bit bi given the right circumstances. I just thought I might have found yours.”

  Yeah, well, given my reaction, maybe he had. I could see that. But I could also see where this was a dicey proposition for what was currently a great friendship. “So what does all that mean?” I asked. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Are you always this uptight about relationships?”

  “Yeah. Yes, I am. That’s me in a nutshell, right there,” I said, challenging him. “That’s why we’re sitting here having this discussion. It’s also why you think I only get laid twice a year.”

  Seth leaned across the table with a
hopeful expression. “Oh, please tell me it’s more than that?”

  I rolled my eyes and got up from the table, collecting the plates and putting them in the sink. I dropped the napkins in the garbage, then closed up the pizza box and shoved it in the fridge.

  Seth was right behind me when I turned around, giving me a very calculating look. He pushed me gently back against the fridge and leaned into me. My brain simultaneously spit out the fact that he felt pretty good, and a reminder of everything I knew about his dating habits.

  “I don’t do flings, Seth,” I blurted out. “I don’t mess around much at all, and I’m really not sure I’m your type. Or speed.”

  “You need to relax,” he said evenly.

  “That’s easy for you to say, you do this kind of thing all the time.”

  He smirked. “Then you know you’re in expert hands.”

  “I’m tryin’ to be serious, here,” I said, pushing him a few steps back.

  “Dude, I know that, I’m being serious when I say you have to relax, at least a little. Get messy, go with the flow. Ease up, man.”

  “You sound like a hippie.”

  “You were into it, Dino. You wanted me last night.” He leaned back against the counter and slouched into a pose he had to have perfected years ago, given how naturally he slipped into it. “Tell me you don’t like what you see.”

  I took a drink of beer and considered him. He’s very good looking when it comes down to it, minus the bruising and black eye. He’d raked his thick hair in place with his fingers, and it curled up at the back of his neck. He had a day’s worth of razor stubble, and I realized he had the damnedest bedroom eyes. I’m pretty sure I was meant to notice, and it made me want to touch him again, which unnerved me and excited me at the same time.

  I moved closer, trying to negotiate the strange tension between us that was half flirtation and half challenge. I licked my lips and nodded. “Yeah, I like what I see.”

  “You’re pretty good lookin’ yourself, you know.” His eyes gleamed, and he reached out to pluck at my shirt. “Come on, take a chance. Please?”

  I did want him. I couldn’t deny that after the way I’d reacted. I had a lot of reservations about it, but I still wanted him. So, I tried kissing him. Yeah, I know I’d kissed him a few times in the last twenty-four hours, but those were all him hitting on me. This time, I was the one doing the kissing and I meant to take my time about it, find out if this was something I really wanted to jump into.

  I kissed him softly a couple of times, brushing over his lips. Getting acquainted, so to speak. Then I pressed my mouth to his, kissing deeper and longer, learning the taste and the feel of him. He moaned and melted against me, clutching at my waist. It was good. My pulse raced, and I felt drunk. Before I knew it, I was holding him back against the counter, pressed hip to hip, while I completely dominated a kiss I wasn’t willing to end.

  After a few minutes, Seth’s hands clamped over my wrists, and he broke away to take a deep breath and pant, “Jesus…you are fucking intense when you finally figure out what you want.”

  “I don’t have anything figured out,” I said. “But once a thing like this is out of the bag, you can’t stuff it back in and pretend it never happened.”

  For better or worse, it was out there, and the fact remained that he was right, for whatever reason, he’d gotten to me.

  “Not too easily,” he said. He kissed me again, nipping at my lip and mouthing a hot trail down the side of my neck. Then he slipped out from between me and the counter and started walking backward toward his bedroom, eyeing me with a shit-eating grin.

  My heart was pounding and my breathing heavy. I could feel an electric buzz on my skin everywhere we’d touched. I watched him in the dim light, and his grin widened.

  When I didn’t follow, he peeled his T-shirt off and dropped it to the floor. I know he was trying to be sexy and maybe tempt me to do the same, but I didn’t miss the fact that it hurt him, and my eye was instinctively drawn to the dark, menacing bruise stretching across his ribs. A flash of anger shot through me, and I went over to him, kneeling to check the damage.

  Seth gave an exasperated sigh. “For fuck’s sake, Dino, I’m fine already. If you’re so concerned about my health, let’s talk about the monumental case of blue balls I’m gonna have when I finally get you into bed.”

  I smirked, but couldn’t help running a hand down his side, feeling for anything that seemed out of place. He was right, of course, there was nothing wrong that time wouldn’t fix. Although, I did think a couple of Ace bandages might help.

  “If you want to have the serious talks,” he said, “how ’bout you tell me where this came from. When did you develop such a mother hen complex?”

  I stood up and sighed. “I don’t know, I just don’t like seeing you hurt, especially when I was sitting right there. I do care what happens to you, you know. Friends care about each other.”

  “Well, Mom, you can relax. Now do me.”

  He started to flick open the buttons of my shirt with surprising dexterity, and I watched with impressed interest for a moment before I caught his hands. “Seth…you’re still not in any shape to be doing this.”

  “I can personally guarantee that getting a blow job will not in any way affect the healing of my ribs.”

  I grinned, but said, “Well, I’m still getting used to this idea. I told you I wasn’t your speed.”

  He scrunched his fingers in my shirt slowly. “This isn’t as completely out of the blue as you think it is, Dino.”

  “It is for me,” I said. “You’re gonna have to give me a little more time.”

  He relented, and managed not to look terribly put out. “Yeah, all right, I hear ya. But you can’t expect me to like it.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “And you said I should stay at your place tonight.” He licked his lips and glanced up at me from under his eyelashes.

  “I still think you should. But I do expect you to behave yourself.”

  He nodded and turned to head toward the bedroom. “I’ll be ready to go in about ten minutes. I’m just gonna go take a cold shower and stab myself in the heart with my toothbrush a few times.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You need me to lock up downstairs?”

  Half an hour later, I parked Matilda outside my apartment building. Seth’s caffeine had worn off, and his injuries were taking their toll. He was exhausted and had fallen asleep in the seat on the way over. I nudged him until he sat up with a startled expression.

  I smirked. “Yeah, and you thought you were gonna make time with me like some big shot Casanova…”

  “Shh,” he said, putting a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell anybody, I have a reputation to maintain.”

  Chapter 11

  Seth had managed to flip my world right on its ear, and I don’t think he even knew it.

  I tried to spend the next afternoon skip tracing for a bond agent who’s a regular client of mine, but I couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept drifting back to Seth. His sudden interest had me at a total loss. I had no frame of reference for turning a friend into a lover, male or female, and I didn’t know what the rules were. I wasn’t even sure it was such a hot idea.

  But, I couldn’t deny I wanted him, and I’d made the choice to kiss him. Right or wrong, I was knee deep in it, and I had to figure out where I stood. The best solution I could see was to approach the situation the only way I knew how.

  At two o’clock, I gave him a call.

  “Hey,” he said, sounding pleased to hear from me. He managed to put one hell of a seductive lilt into that single word.

  “Listen,” I said, “how’d you like to have dinner at my place? I’ll cook.”

  “You wanna cook dinner for me? You mean like a date?” He sounded dubious.

  “Yes, like a date. You know, it’s that thing people do when they’re into each other and want to spend time together. If you had a normal love life, you would know this.”

  Seth m
ade a rude noise. “I know what dating is, asshole.”

  “Really? Tell me about your last date.”

  “You met her,” he said, “you tell me.”

  “The girl in the garage?” I rolled my eyes. “That wasn’t a date, that was combat.” His response to me was pointed silence. “Did you buy her dinner first? Talk to her? Do you even know her last name?”

  “Yes, I know her last name.”

  “Well, that’s a start. See, the thing is…I date. I’m an old fashioned kind of guy and there’s just a certain order things are supposed to happen in. This is how it’s done where I come from.”

  “Ah, I got news for you, Dino,” he said with a chuckle. “New York is hooker central. Fifty bucks gets it done where you come from.”

  I sighed. “First of all, I was referring to the way I was raised, and second, New York is a very romantic city.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad, I’m in, I would love to have dinner with you. Should I bring the beer?”

  “Yeah. Come early, you can help me cook.”

  “Shit, you’re gonna make for work for everything, aren’t you?” he groused, and hung up.

  I put the phone away feeling a kind of anticipation I hadn’t felt for a while. I was also nervous as hell, because this was still Seth I was thinking about, and part of my brain kept telling me it was flat-out wrong. Seth was for football games and fist fights, not dating and sex.

  I was committed to my plan, though. I wanted to find out if my reaction to Seth was real, and if there was anything behind it. There was no question that I cared about him, but I was curious to see how far that went.

  I walked to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for Cioppino—fish stew my mother used to cook. It’s easy to make, but you look impressive as hell when you’re chopping fresh herbs, slinging around white wine, and have six different kinds of seafood sitting on the counter.

  While I was out shopping, I began to get into the spirit of getting ready for a date. I was planning to wine and dine Seth whether he liked it or not. He would just have to deal with me. If it felt right, that would be a sign we were headed in the right direction. If it didn’t, well…it was still food and beer.