Chapter Four
Charlene
I should have left Wilhelmine.
I didn’t even though I should have, and instead, I let myself get sucked into small-town life in a way that was achingly familiar. I’d grown up like this, I thought. I knew what it was to live in a town where people were nosy and never took no for an answer but doing it because they cared and wanted you to be part of who they were.
So, I should have left but how could I, when it felt so sweet to be included in a community again.
Maddie turned out to be the nurse at the local health care clinic, married to one of the police deputies, and mother to Maria-of-the-princessy-cake and baby-Eric. She introduced me to Doc Peters who immediately asked if I wanted a part-time job. Word about my emergency sutures had apparently spread fast and wide, and I got cheery greetings from people I met when I went into town. Those cheery greetings often included cheeky grins and comments about me being more of a badass than Gibson Ward, who according to local lore was the biggest badass ever to walk this earth.
I met the man himself several times in the first week. He seemed to spend a lot of time ambling around town, not doing much at all, so I bumped into him at Jenny’s or in the supermarket, or just walking down the street. We talked, and I tried to keep it brief and casual, but he always seemed to come up with things for me to explain, or things he needed to explain. Such as the best way to cook a steak, which was him asking me and also ridiculous because he totally looked like a man who had spent plenty of time next to his grill. Or where to go hiking, which was him telling me, and me trying not to look interested even though I was.
Or how to turn off the water when a faucet broke in my kitchen, and yeah, that was actually me asking him, but he’d been right there when I rushed into Lowe’s not knowing what to look for. And me not protesting when he followed me home to fix the stupid thing, which meant I’d had to make coffee and drink it with him. And also me having a good time while we drank that coffee.
Then he was suddenly gone. Poof. And it wasn’t that I missed him, but I wondered, and eventually, I swallowed my pride and asked Jenny.
“Hunting,” she said laconically, and I had absolutely no clue what that meant but also no desire to know, so I didn’t ask. “Finding the men who cut up his face,” she explained anyway.
He’d been away for more than a week by then, not that I cared. Much.
Then Maddie’s mother-in-law invited me to a family dinner. I accepted the invite happily, only to discover that to Mexican-Americans, when it came to dinner-parties the concept of family was wide and did not only include second and third cousins but also assorted neighbors and friends in general.
Jenny turned out to be a friend of the Alvarezes, and we were sipping frothy margaritas which had a surprising kick to them when one of the second cousins asked me to come to his place for a lesson in burrito-making. I was about to accept the sweet, and very handsome man’s offer when she snorted out laughter, leaned into him and murmured something that made his brows go way up on his forehead. I watched his back as he strolled off without another word and wondered what the hell she’d said.
“I’ve always wanted to learn how to make a mean burrito,” I complained.
She just grinned, and said, “He’s a Mexican-American man. Never cooked in his life, Lee.”
“What? But why –”
“He wanted to show you his burrito, honey.”
I blinked.
“I know. He told me so.”
“His burrito,” she repeated, and light dawned on me by the way she emphasized the word and wiggled her brows.
I leaned in closer and whispered, “He wanted to have sex with me?”
She started to laugh, and when I stared at her, she had to put her glass down to keep the contents from sloshing all over her pretty, blue dress.
“Share the joke, Sis?” a deep voice murmured.
Her whoops of laughter turned almost hysterical, but I straightened.
“She’s just being silly,” I said breezily, turning my face up to smile at the tall, blonde man.
His face softened, and the tips of his mouth twitched.
“Silly,” he repeated on a murmur.
“Hector Alvarez wanted to teach Lee how to make burritos,” Jenny choked out.
Joke’s face split up in a wide grin, and then he laughed too.
“Stop laughing,” I hissed because heads were turning our way. “How the heck was I supposed to know it was some kind of secret code?”
“God, this is beyond fucking awesome,” Joke choked out, but calmed down when he saw the look on my face. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. Just stay close to Jenny or me, yeah?”
I was a grown woman so I could take care of myself, except when it came to Hispanic code-talkers apparently, but I liked the Tucker-siblings so hanging out with them wasn’t exactly a chore.
The traces of a hangover the next morning wasn’t surprising, and I promised myself I’d never touch tequila ever again. We’d had a blast, though, and I grinned through my faint nausea when I remembered how Maria’s young cousins had tried to teach me how to dance salsa, holding my hips and shouting gleefully at me to stop moving like a white lady and start using my booty. Maria’s grandfather had hooted with laughter but also stepped in and showed me a more restrained version which I managed to pull off with my dignity intact. At least, that’s what he told me, although he’d been laughing again, so I wasn’t sure.
When I heard the cars outside, I jumped out of bed with a squeal. I’d talked to Paddy about repairing the roof on the cabin, and after looking it over with Jonah, they’d decided that at least part of it had to be replaced. Today was the day they’d start working on it, and I was in my undies with makeup running down my cheeks because I’d fallen face first into my bed and had been asleep before I got to removing it.
Five minutes later, I was outside in a pair of very short, black tights, an equally black and tight racer-back top and with a face cleanly scrubbed and moisturized. So what if I looked like I was ninety years old, I thought. It would be Paddy and a few of his men. Joke might be there too, but Gibson was still gone.
Paddy snorted something when he saw me but didn’t comment further on my appearance.
“You don’t need me, do you?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“I’ll do some yoga on the back porch if that’s okay?”
“You do yoga?” he asked.
“Yes,” I confirmed what I’d already told him.
“Shout if you want me to spot you,” he grinned. “I’ve been doing it for years.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. When I looked at his arms and shoulders in the tight tee I could see that he indeed had the body of someone who exercised regularly, but yoga? A manly man like him with his butt in the air? It was a fine, fine ass, something I’d noticed immediately when he led the way into his office at Callaghan constructions, but like his friends, he was all man. All caveman, beat your chest, grunt out the f-bomb, calm and confident man. It should be unattractive, I thought. Wasn’t this the age of equal opportunities? Wasn’t I supposed to want men to be kind and gentle, sensitive to my feelings and all about helping out with the laundry?
An image of Bob suddenly popped into my mind. He’d been far from the kind of men who seemed to be the norm in Wilhelmine. I’d take a little bit of machismo over snoring on the couch any day, I thought.
“Seriously?” I asked when Paddy didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched into the uncomfortable zone.
“Yup.”
“Okay,” I said, and blurted out, “I’m trying to do the scorpion.”
“Really?”
“I’m afraid to fall when I try it in a handstand.”
I thought this was a pretty valid fear because tilting your legs backward to touch your head with your feet whilst being in a handstand was not easy, or perhaps even a clever thing to do. It looked cool, though, and I wanted to see if I could do it.
“You okay doing it on your elbows?”
I nodded because I had managed that. Kind of.
“Warm up, give me a shout, and I’ll keep you from falling.”
Then he ambled off to direct the men where to start with my roof, and I went around the house, wondering if doing complicated yoga poses when nursing a hangover was wise. Oh well. It would make my muscles looser, I decided, and besides, Paddy was skinny, but he looked wicked strong so what harm could there be in trying?
***
Gibson
“Careful,” he grunted as he and Joke lifted the wooden headboard out of the back of his truck.
“Fuck it,” Joke grunted in return. “Fucking tequila. Fucking Alvarezes.”
Jenny snorted out laughter and moved around them.
“I do not have a hangover,” she chirped.
“You’re a freak,” Joke muttered, and Gibson nodded.
She was a freak of nature that one, he thought. For some reason, Jenny Tucker didn’t get hangovers like every-fucking-body else. He’d seen her puking her guts out from way too much cheap wine as a teenager, and she’d still been at the restaurant early the morning after, clear-eyed and happily cooking something or other with her grandmother.
“Let’s get this inside,” he muttered.
“Shouldn’t you ask her if she wants it?”
He turned to look at Jenny and shook his head mutely. If he asked her, she might say no, so why the hell would he do something like that?
“You should.”
“Nuh-uh. You said she doesn’t have a headboard. She’ll have one now.”
One that he’d made. A sturdy, wooden headboard with slats that would hold the weight of a giant. Or perhaps –
“Spread your legs a little for me, baby,” Paddy grunted from the back porch.
“Down,” Gibson barked and let go of the headboard before Joke had time to react, so it landed on the floor with a thump.
“What the –”
Joke was interrupted by another grunt from Paddy.
“Tighten your ass.”
Gibson started walking.
“More, babe.”
What the hell?
“That’s perfect, you’re doing so good.”
Paddy sounded strained, and he was fucking going to kill him, Gibson thought. Leaving for more than a week and hunting two idiots who had disappeared in the wind had not improved his mood and hearing his buddy poaching in on –
He came to a full stop and just stared at Lee.
She was in a hand-stand and had twisted her slim body around in an impossible position, touching the top of her head with her friggin’ feet. Paddy was standing next to her with one hand on her belly and the other on her back. His head came up, and a knowing grin spread on his face when he saw the look on Gibson’s face.
“Go back down, sweetie,” Paddy murmured. “Slowly.”
She did what he asked and then she turned to Paddy, squealing loudly.
“I did it!”
With no hesitation, she jumped, and Paddy caught her I his arms, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her to him in a way that Gibson knew was partially just to fuck with him.
“You sure did, Lee,” Paddy murmured softly.
She slid out of his arms and turned when he nodded toward the door. Gibson took one look at her and had to fight back a groan.
“What the fuck are you wearing?” he said.
“Clothes appropriate for doing yoga?” she asked back with surprise in her voice.
“Huh,” he said, and slowly pulled the shirt out of his jeans to let it hang loosely around his hips.
Paddy and Joke started laughing but Jenny pushed through the door, and Jonah’s two dogs who had been resting in the shade of the house got up to greet her. A loud crash suddenly echoed from the front of the house, and someone shouted for Paddy to come.
“Crap,” Paddy said, twitched his head to indicate that his friends were to join him.
Gibson didn’t want to leave the porch. Not when he’d laid eyes on Lee for the first time in days. Not when she had nothing on. Or, almost nothing which looked good on her in a way that made him want to stand and stare at her like a fucking moron for the next couple of hours.
“Get,” Joke grunted and pushed him backward.
The sounds from the construction work had stopped and they walked around the house to find a pile of planks, a hole in the roof and the three men on Paddy’s crew staring at it.
“Shit,” Paddy said.
He was right about that, Gibson thought and pulled his hand through his hair. Then a thought hit him, and he had to turn away to stop the others from seeing his grin.
“The entire roof will have to come off,” Joke said and sighed. “Jonah should just demo the whole fucking thing.”
“Tried to convince him,” Paddy said. “He won’t. Says he and Caroline did the deed the first time in this cabin, so it’s gonna stay even if it has to be replaced piece by piece.”
A thick silence ensued, and Joke winced.
“Didn’t need to know that, Pad.”
Paddy grinned because he’d known that sharing what had gone down in the cabin would put the looks of part horror, part amusement he saw on his friends’ faces. The information had been too funny to keep to himself, though.
“Wonder if they still do it?” Joke suddenly murmured. “Two-hundred years old, each of them, so maybe they don’t.”
“Maybe they do,” Paddy said.
“Let’s get the headboard back to the truck,” Gibson said, not wanting to think about anyone having sex. Not when he still had the image of Lee in her black little… whatever the hell she’d been wearing. “Someone needs to call Jonah.”
They were about to pick up the heavy piece when giggles from outside came through the screen door leading to the back porch.
“You’re such a good boy,” Lee crooned. “Of course you can lick me all over. Yes, you can. Yes indeed.”
Gibson raised his eyes to the ceiling and wondered how long karma would punish him for the stupid comments he’d made. Paddy and Joke tried to contain their snickers, but he heard and was about to start pushing them around for it when Jenny spoke.
“Of course the boys would be sniffing around you.”
“They’re sweet,” Lee said. “I’ve been thinking about getting a dog of my own.”
Gibson chuckled quietly. That had not been what Jenny meant.
“I meant the human boys,” Jenny clarified, as expected.
“What?”
“The men, Lee.”
There was a short silence, and then Lee murmured, “I’m not interested in getting into a relationship with anyone right now, Jenny. You know that.”
The crew was back to tearing off the roof and had apparently brought out the chainsaws, so the conversation on the porch became difficult to hear. Gibson swore under his breath, but since it wasn’t exactly okay to listen in on what the women thought was a private conversation, he bent forward to pick up the headboard.
“Don’t you get horny?” Jenny whispered suddenly.
All air left Gib’s lungs in a swoosh, and he let his head fall forward.
“Of course I do, but…” Lee said, only to get drowned out by the chainsaws.
“What did you say?” Jenny asked.
The sounds from the saw made it impossible to hear the first part of Lee’s answer, but it stopped abruptly, and they all heard the end.
“… I have a couple of fantastic toys and believe me, I use them. A lot.”
Gibson felt his knees buckle and crouched down to rub his hands over his neck, not in the mood at all to look at his friends who were now laughing openly.
Okay. Karma was clearly not in any way done punishing him for what he’d said.