Eventually, I had my clothing set aside and the water running hot—it took quite a few rounds of scrubbing and rinsing with soap and washcloth, but I got the paint off my skin—getting it out of my hair took a bit more work, and without my organic, hand-crafted shampoo and conditioner my hair felt like straw, but at least it was clean.
Problem was, I couldn’t abide dressing in a steam-clouded bathroom—my clothes would stick to my skin and be all damp and gross. God, no.
Which meant wrapping around myself in the too-small, threadbare towel that was all he had clean under the vanity, opening the bathroom door, and carrying my clothes out of the bathroom.
And enduring both his gaze and my own crazily pounding heart as I paused in the hallway, clad in nothing but a towel.
God, what was this life I’m suddenly living?
And why, oh why was it so damned impossible to stop myself from liking this complicated mess of a man?
5
Lucas
Holy fucking shit on a cracker.
I wasn’t sure my ol’ ticker could take the sight of Olivia Goode in nothing but a damn towel. Her raven’s wing black hair was wet and slicked back away from her beautiful, angular face, leaving her wide dark eyes to pierce and mesmerize me.
The only towel I had clean was a tiny little old thing I couldn’t even get around my waist—on her, it just barely wrapped around her torso under her armpits, and only just barely hung to mid-thigh. Even then, there were teasing, tantalizing gaps between the edges of the towel. She, smartly, had wrapped it around herself so those gaps were at her side rather than in front. But god, lord, help me Jesus—she was so fuckin’ gorgeous. Long, strong, tanned legs, shapely and curvy and toned and damn near endless. Just the teeniest hint of cleavage under the top edge of the towel. Just enough to make me look twice and wish I could see more, and then curse myself for an asshole for wishing it.
She was my friend, and she was helping me. She was a widow, and fairly recently, too. This wasn’t a thing. I wasn’t gettin’ nothing outta this except some company…and a nicely decorated condo—I kept calling it an apartment, but it was actually a condo; I had purchased it once I’d decided I really did have no choice but to move back to Ketchikan after all these years, and my retirement from the manufacturing plant in Oklahoma where I’d worked for forty years was paying for it. The job at the hardware store was just for extra spending cash, to stretch the retirement package out a bit further.
I couldn’t stop looking at Liv, and she seemed frozen, rooted to the floor in the middle of the hallway, her eyes on me. I couldn’t read her expression.
“Don’t look at me like that, Lucas,” she murmured.
“Like what, Liv?”
“Like…” She swallowed hard. “Like I’m something you…”
“Like I can’t take my eyes off you?” I suggested.
She nodded. “Like you’re thinking things I’m not sure I should know about.”
My feet carried me across the living room, into the hallway. I stared down at her, meeting her large, expressive eyes—this close, I could see flecks of gold and streaks and gray and even hints of forest green. She wiped her palms on the front of the towel, licked her lips.
“Sweetheart, you’re standin’ in my hallway, wearing nothin’ but a tiny little towel, dripping wet, lookin’ like temptation on two sexy legs.” I felt a streak of boldness rifle through my veins, and my hand lifted, seemingly by itself, to brush a thick lock of inky black hair behind her ear. “If you can’t imagine what I might be thinkin’, then I ain’t quite sure how you managed to have five kids.”
She bit her lip, tensing all over. “Lucas, I…”
“You what, babe?”
She lifted a shoulder in a tiny, demure, unsure gesture. “I said shouldn’t, not…can’t.”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
I saw her swallow. “Lots of reasons.”
I wasn’t sure why I was pressing this, but I couldn’t stop. “Like what? List one or two.”
She stared up at me, eyes wide and unreadable, chest swelling with slow, deep breaths. “I…” She shook her head, and turned away. “I’m going to dress in your room, okay?
I nodded. “Sure thing.”
I watched her go into my bedroom and toss her pile of clothes onto my bed—which was unmade as usual. She glanced at me through the still-open door, and then smiled small and quick before closing it.
I turned away, rubbing the back of my neck, wondering how I was going to dry off, seeing as Liv had my only clean towel. I had one I’d used for my last shower in the hamper in my room, I remembered, and turned back to my bedroom door, intending to ask if I could grab it before she started dressing.
I’d forgotten one small detail: my bedroom door didn’t latch quite properly unless you pushed on it, and it had a tendency to slip open a few inches on quiet hinges.
When I turned to the door, it had swung open a few inches. And, in that moment, I caught an accidental, forbidden glimpse of Heaven.
Liv, caught in the act of having just dropped the towel, facing the cracked-open door. The towel was still settling on the floor, and her eyes flew open. It was a split second only, but it was enough. She gasped, one hand moving to cover her sex, the other arm crossing over her chest.
An instant, a split-second. I didn’t hesitate, didn’t take a moment to appreciate what I was seeing—I ain’t that much of a bastard. I turned around, saw her through the crack, and turned right back around.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I snapped. “Sorry—I’m sorry. Forgot to tell you that you have to push to get the door to latch. I live alone and don’t usually bother, so I forgot.”
I heard the door click closed, latching. “It’s fine,” she said, her voice oddly flat. “It was an accident.”
“Liv, I only—”
She cut in. “Don’t, Lucas. We both know you got an eyeful.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “It wasn’t on purpose, Liv. I hope you know that.”
“I know.”
My brain was spinning, the image of her as I’d seen her emblazoned onto my mind. I went into the bathroom, closed the door, stripped out of my paint-covered coveralls and the clothing beneath it, and got into the shower.
I did my best to make quick work of getting clean, and to keep my thoughts away from Liv, but it was a losing battle.
God, she was fit. So sleek, slender. Like a gazelle, all long slender limbs, and a tiny torso. Her breasts were, as I’d surmised when I first saw her, small but plump, firm and round and perky despite being nearly fifty and having had five children.
“Goddammit,” I growled, trying desperately to keep that vision of her out of my head—to keep my libido from taking over.
It was difficult enough telling myself we were just friends, were never going to be anything but just friends—the last thing I needed was to let my stupid lonely horny male brain sexualize a perfectly good friendship.
I’d scrubbed my hair, face, and beard as clean as they could get and got out before I gave in to the temptation to fix my situation myself.
The only towel left in the bathroom was a hand towel, so that’s what I used to dry myself as well as possible, and then peeked my head out the door. “Liv?”
She was dressed and wandering around, using the towel to rub her hair dry. “Yeah?”
“Gotta run across to my room,” I said.
She gestured with the towel in her hand. “Was this your only towel?”
I grinned at her, just my head sticking out of the door. “Only one clean, yeah. Ain’t done laundry yet.”
She grimaced. “So you don’t have a towel.
“Well, I dried off with the hand towel.” I laughed. “Hell of a lot of real estate for that little thing, but it worked all right. I just need to pop across to my room and get some clothes on.” I couldn’t help teasing her, just to try to lighten the tension I felt between us. “Unless you’re interested in trading a peek for a peek.”
Sh
e blushed furiously, mouth opening and closing as if trying to come up with a response to that, and couldn’t. After a moment, she just turned away and headed into the kitchen, still dabbing and squeezing sections of hair in the towel.
Once she was out of sight, I bolted across the hallway and into my room—and remembered to make sure the door latched. Dressed, I reemerged from my room and found Liv at my kitchen table, reading something on her smartphone, a pinched expression on her face.
“What’s up?” I asked. “You look like you bit into a lemon.”
She lifted her phone in gesture. “Email from my youngest daughter, Poppy.”
“Not a good one?”
She tipped her head side to side. “Well, it’s tricky with her. She’s not sure what she wants, or that she’s happy where she is, but she’s not sure what to do about it.”
I sighed. “That is tricky. I never had to worry about that—my boys were laser-focused on graduating high school and getting to California to work for the forest service. I think they wanted to get out of Oklahoma so bad that it actually kept ’em out of any real trouble.”
She set the phone down and glanced up at me. “Lucas, I…”
I held up a hand. “I’m sorry, Liv. It was an accident. I forgot that door doesn’t latch. I should’a told you. I may not be the most chivalrous or sophisticated fella in the world, but I’d never do anything like that on purpose.” I shrugged. “If a woman wants me to see her naked, I won’t have to manufacture an accident.”
She smiled faintly. “That is true.”
I tried to stop the next words from tumbling out of my mouth, but couldn’t. “It was an accident, but I ain’t gonna pretend I didn’t see nothin’…and that I didn’t appreciate what I saw.”
Her blush deepened, and she shifted in her chair. “Lucas, I…I honestly don’t know how to respond to that.”
“Don’t need to.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, taking me in as if for the first time. “Do you happen to have a brush? Or even a comb?”
I nodded. “I think I have a comb somewhere. No brush, though.”
She smiled—that sweet, innocent, unassuming smile that shot straight to my gut every single time. “I just need to get the worst of the tangles out of my hair.” Her smile turned teasing. “You could probably stand to use it yourself.”
When I went into the steamy bathroom to get the comb, I glanced in the mirror and chuckled—my hair was a wild mess, sticking up in every direction, shaggy and unkempt at best, and my beard wasn’t any better. In fact, this was one of the few times I’ve even looked at myself in the mirror in recent memory, I realized I didn’t like what I saw…at all.
Probably why I avoided the mirror, because I knew I wouldn’t, but now, with Liv out there, I suddenly gave a shit about how I appeared…and I knew I was long, long past having let myself go.
I ran the comb through my hair and beard, slicking back the bushy mess of thick gray-brown as well as was possible. Didn’t make much difference, though—I was still a fat, unkempt, gimp-legged old alcoholic with a bad heart and a worse past.
I growled to myself and hobbled out of the bathroom, bringing the comb to Liv. She drew the comb slowly through her glossy, short black hair—not a trace of gray anywhere; she did so absentmindedly, rereading the email from her daughter.
“What would you do, Lucas?” she asked.
I scoffed. “You’re askin’ me?” I shook my head slowly. “I sure as hell ain’t one to be givin’ no parenting advice, Olivia. The fact that none of my sons are drug addicts, criminals, in jail, or dead don’t have a single goddamn thing to do with me. They made good in spite of me, not because of me.”
Her expression reflected sadness. “You are far too hard on yourself.”
I snarled. “Ain’t hard enough, babe. You don’t know the half of it.”
“Did you beat them?” she asked, her gaze frank, her tone unapologetic.
“No. God, no.” I paused. “They got brought into this world and then were abandoned by their mother. Even at my worst, I knew they didn’t deserve the life they had…” I swallowed hard. “I didn’t do right by them, I neglected ’em, didn’t know how to…how to love ’em, how to show ’em I loved ’em. But I never hit ’em. Not once.”
“Then you can’t—”
“Being able to say I didn’t beat my boys ain’t exactly an absolution for my sins as a father, Liv. It just means I wasn’t a total monster.”
“You’re not a monster, Lucas,” she whispered.
I gazed at her levelly. “I just wish I was the man you seem to think you see when you look at me.”
“How do you know what I see when I look at you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t. But the fact that you can look at me at all tells me it’s probably best I ain’t shared some of the shit I done.”
“We are all flawed, Lucas. I am far, far from perfect—as a wife, as a mother, as a woman.”
I laughed. “Good thing I ain’t about to tell you about the worst moments of our lives. You’d run screaming for the hills, sweetheart, and that’s a fact.”
“You don’t know what would send me running,” she said, lifting her chin. “Perhaps I’m neither as weak-minded nor judgmental as you seem to think.”
“Now hold on a goddamn second. I don’t think you’re either of those.”
“Then quit trying to hide your past from me.”
“Why? You really want to know?”
“Answer me a couple questions, and then we’ll see.”
I shrugged. “Okay, shoot.”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
I sighed, sort of laughing but not quite. “No. Thinkin’ back on some of the bar fights I was in back in my younger days, it’s a wonder I can say that. But no.”
“Have you ever raped a woman, or done anything without express consent?” Her gaze was razor sharp, watching for the least sign of evasion or untruth.
“Fuck no. I want a woman to want me her own self. I sure as fuck ain’t some knight in shining armor, but I can say I taught my sons the value of a woman. Mainly ’cause they never had one in their lives that was worth a damn, but I did teach ’em to get the yes instead’a taking what they want.”
“You already said you never beat them,” she continued. “So that answers the big questions.”
I cackled bitterly. “Liv, if your standards are so low that having never killed anyone, raped anyone, or beaten children is all it takes, then you need new fuckin’ standards.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she snapped. “Those aren’t my standards—not in the way you mean. I only asked that much because if you were able to say yes to any of them, I would say perhaps we shouldn’t be friends. You seem to think the worst of yourself, which is an odd juxtaposition for a man with as much bluster and brawn as you have.” Her eyes and her voice both softened. “But I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit.” Her phone buzzed, and she glanced at it. “I have to go. My daughter wants to talk.”
“Listen, I appreciate you helpin’ me paint.” I glanced around the room, now brightened and softened, soothing yet still somehow masculine. “I really did have a good time today.”
“You never answered my question.”
“Which one?”
“What would you do? About Poppy.”
“I don’t know the situation.”
“Well, the short version is that she is an artist, living in New York attending Columbia, studying for a degree in art history. But she’s coming to realize she hates the city, hates the degree she’s studying for, but she’s too stubborn to give up. She got an amazing scholarship to one of the best universities in the world, and she’s spent over a year working toward the degree. But she says her circle of friends are…well, not very good friends, and she has no time to do the one thing she really loves, which is make art. And she wants me to tell her what to do so she doesn’t have to make the decision, but…as her mother, I’m just torn. If I tell her what to d
o, I’m worried she won’t learn anything from the experience and will rely on me, or maybe even blame me if she ends up doing the wrong thing. But I don’t want her to suffer or to waste precious time chasing something she doesn’t want and won’t use in life.” She sighed, rubbing her cheeks with both hands. “Plus, I’m worried if she leaves Columbia, she’ll move back in with me and never leave. Not that I don’t love my daughter and want to spend as much time with her as possible, but…she has to make it on her own. And I’m just torn.” Her eyes searched my face. “So. What would you do?”
I mulled it over a moment or two. “I’d tell her a degree, even from someplace like Columbia, is only worth what you make it worth. If you’re doin’ somethin’ you hate, that degree ain’t nothin’ but toilet paper, and you may as well wipe your ass with it. If she decides to leave, and needs to get back on her feet, give her a few months to figure her shit out. I’d let her come home, but only temporarily. Don’t let her get too comfortable. You’re her mama, not her best friend, so in the end you gotta give her the straight hard truth—that sometimes, you gotta waste time in order to realize that’s what you’re doin’, that there’s somethin’ else you want more. And then you gotta want it bad enough to do what it takes to go get it.”
“Wise words.” She smiled at me. “Thank you.”
I waved a hand. “You’d have done that regardless. You love your girl, and you’re a good mama.”
“I feel like a bad mama for thinking how I just really hope she doesn’t end up living with me again. I mean, if she needs to, I’ll let her, but after twenty-odd years of raising the five of them and taking care of my husband and all that, I must say, it has been rather nice only having myself to care for.” Her expression darkened. “I don’t mean that.”
“Hey, it’s okay to mean it.”
“They weren’t a burden, and that’s how I made it sound.”
“No, you didn’t. You dedicated your life to caring for your family. Now you have yourself to take care of. Don’t mean you didn’t care about them, love them, and do what you did happily.”
Badd Daddy (The Badd Brothers Book 12) Page 6