Chapter Five
Charlene
I stared at the wall and wondered if I’d fallen into a rabbit hole and ended up in an alternative universe.
I was in a surprisingly large guestroom with two bunk beds.
On the first floor.
Of Gibson’s home.
I shook my head a little, trying to clear my befuddled mind but it did not help.
When Paddy shared how the whole roof needed to be replaced on the cabin, I’d simply started planning for an extended stay at the motel in town. The weird patches on the ceiling had been a firm indication there was something not quite kosher with the construction of my cabin, so the fact that the whole thing started to cave in when they began working on it hadn’t been surprising. I’d be okay for the two weeks they said it would take to get it done.
Jenny had immediately offered a bed in her small house, and Joke had murmured something about his couch, but before I could even react to either of their offers, Gibson muttered, “Pack your bags, babe.”
I blinked because of course, I’d have to pack my bags.
“We’re loading up some shit, be ready in fifteen?”
He’d put it as a question but had not waited for me to answer before walking off with his friends who both had been grinning like idiots. This was good seeing as I had no clue why I suddenly had a deadline. The office at the motel was open around the clock, so I could take my time, couldn’t I?
“He’s like a goddamned Mack-truck that one,” Jenny sighed. “Always were.”
“What?”
Her eyes were soft and kind when she gently told me, “You’ll be staying with Gib for a while, honey.”
That’s when I took the fall into the rabbit hole.
“What? Why?” I squealed.
“My advice?” she asked and proceeded to give it, “Don’t fight it because you won’t win. His house is great. Big guestroom, huge yard.”
“What?”
“My guestroom is marginally bigger than a closet. Joke’s couch is big, but God only knows what kind of bodily fluids it’s marinated in.”
“But… but?” I stuttered, collected myself and added, “Motel?”
“Gibson’s bedroom is upstairs. The guest room is downstairs. He works a lot, and you’ll be here or at the restaurant. It’ll be like the motel,” she said, but added with a wink, “More or less.”
Before I knew it, I was trailing Gibson’s big truck and trying to catch my breath. If I hadn’t been completely freaked out after announcing loudly that I used sex-toys, a lot, I might have managed to come up with a protest, although I doubted it. Since I’d still been reeling from having to face three men who were all grinning in a way that made my blush go from pink to what I was certain had been a stoplight red, I’d just walked inside to pack my bags.
After putting my things in the guestroom, Gibson murmured, “Unpack. Lunch in twenty,” and left.
Seventeen minutes had passed, and I wondered what the hell I should do. Then I cursed my stupid behavior. He’d simply offered the room because it was there, and I needed someplace to stay. It was kind of him, and it was good to not have to pay for the motel, although the rate probably wouldn’t have set me back much judging by the look of the place.
There wasn’t a mirror in the room and I wondered if I should dig my own out, and perhaps put some makeup on, but suspected he’d notice and since it would be vain to the point of being ridiculous, I decided he’d have to spend lunch looking at the clean-scrubbed version of me instead.
“Right,” I mumbled to myself, and walked out to the kitchen where Gibson was stirring something in a frying pan. It smelled of garlic, and I realized just how hungry I was.
“Can I help?” I offered.
“It’s done,” he answered. “Get something to drink, and I’ll bring the food.”
Something to drink? I had no clue what a badass preferred to drink with his lunch. Beer? A glass of barbed wire?
“Um,” I mumbled.
“Sparkling water or iced tea in the fridge. More water in the tap,” he elaborated.
I opened the fridge and saw a pitcher of something that looked like homemade ice tea.
“You -” I cut myself off, not sure if he’d get offended by my surprise regarding his domestic capabilities, and settled for, “Want water?”
“Sure,” he agreed and put two plates on the breakfast bar. “Okay to eat here?”
“Sure,” I echoed as I stared at the neatly piled pasta with what seemed like oil, garlic and something green.
And the prawns on top of each pile.
Yeah. Rabbit hole.
We didn’t talk much as we ate the pasta, which turned out to taste very good. I wanted more salt but didn’t want to be rude and ask for it, so I asked about the stitches in his brow instead, and it turned out he’d removed them himself. Of course. Why get someone trained and with experience when you could do it yourself? Although, when I thought about it, he likely had more experience with stitches than I did.
“Coffee on the back porch?” he asked, and I nodded.
There was a weird tension in the air, and I didn’t understand why. I wasn’t going to stay in his home for several weeks if this were the way it would be, though, so I leaned back and watched the yard.
“If you didn’t want me here, then you didn’t have to offer your guest room, you know. I could have stayed with Jenny. Joke offered his couch too.”
“You think I don’t want you here?
“It feels like it.”
“Babe.”
“Babe, what?”
“Babe you gotta be out of your mind. Do I look like the kind of man who offers to do shit I have no interest in doing?”
Oh. He had a point there because he did in no way strike me as someone who did anything he didn’t want.
“It feels weird,” I mumbled.
“Why?”
“I don’t know you.”
“Not hard to get past, babe. I’m easy.”
I actually chuckled when he said that because he’d surely be well aware of the fact that he was the epitome of complicated.
“I am,” he insisted.
“Okay,” I grinned.
“Ask me whatever you want, and you’ll see,” he prompted.
A million questions flew through my mind, but since they ranged from nosy to offensive, I settled for simple.
“What do you do in the evenings? Watch TV?”
“Rarely watch TV, babe. Bores me to death.” He thought about my question for a while, and said, “Guess I play with Boo. Hang out with my buds. Often both at the same time. Read a book sometimes when I’m in the mood for it. And work.”
“Work?”
I knew he’d left the police force, but I had no clue what he did now. Probably something dangerous. A bounty hunter maybe? Private Investigator?
***
Gibson
“Mostly carpenter, but also part-time whatever comes up,” Gib told her, wondering why she looked so apprehensive. “Help Paddy out when he needs it. Same for Joke and Day.”
“Oh,” she said, and added, “Not… Mac?”
He could tell by the look on her face that she already knew he’d been on the force and opened his mouth to give the reply he gave everyone who asked about it. Then for reasons he didn’t want to dig into, he closed it again and turned forward.
There was something about this woman that pulled at him, and it suddenly felt wrong to give her the cleaned-up version. He took a deep breath and kept his gaze on the yard as he told her.
“It isn’t common knowledge in town, honey, but I broke.”
She was silent for a beat before she asked in a small voice, “What does that mean?”
“I was a cop for years, and I was good at what I did. Damned good. So damned good I got the worst cases, solved them and moved on to the next. They kept coming, one after the other, and they just piled up. There was too much death, too much pain. I spent too many nights in the human sewers.”
He turned to look into her soft brown eyes.
“I lived in Chicago back then. Ended up on my couch one night, staring at the skyline.” He paused before telling her the rest. Before laying himself bare in a way he’d only ever done with his friends.
“Paddy kicked the door in a few days later and found me, still on that couch, staring at that skyline. He brought me home. I’d been shot a while before, so they said it was to recover from my wounds, told my captain and everyone else back at the department that there were complications. Day faked my signature on all papers, got me retired, so when I felt better, I just stayed here.”
He couldn’t interpret the look in her eyes and wondered if he’d made a huge mistake, sharing himself that way.
“I worked in the ER,” she said quietly.
“What?”
She smiled softly and went on, “One day it felt as if something was squeezing my chest so hard I had trouble breathing. I thought I had a heart attack and didn’t want to tell anyone.” She sighed and shrugged her slim shoulders. “Out of pride? Idiocy maybe? I don’t know. Told them I had the flu, went home and slept for three days. I felt better after that, but it scared the shit out of me, so I asked for an admin position and got lucky. A spot had just opened up, so I’ve spent the past ten years shuffling papers in an office.”
She reached out to put her hand on his arm, squeezing it gently.
“I guess what I’m saying is that I understand.”
“You got out before it crushed you,” he murmured.
“So did you.”
“Babe.”
“You did. It cut you up some, but you’re still walking. And I get that it feels like you weren’t enough, but you’ve done your part. You paid your dues. I did my part too. Now someone else can hold the torch up and do theirs because we’ve given all we can and that was a hell of a lot more than what most others give.”
Jesus, she really did understand. The guilt for not being enough, but also the pride in what he’d achieved.
“Who took care of you?” he asked.
“What?”
“Paddy and the boys brought me back. I spent weeks, months curled up in my bed, and they kept everyone away. Didn’t tell a soul about the state I was in. They let me keep my pride, and it’s ridiculous in so many ways, but it was all I had left.”
“Oh,” she breathed.
“So, who held you up?”
“No one.”
“You lived alone?”
“No, I was married… He had an office job and didn’t understand.” She paused and sighed. “No, that’s not entirely fair. I didn’t make him understand, and I should have.”
“He’s a dick, babe. He should have pushed you to explain.”
She smiled a smile that was so sad he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her until she looked her usual happy self again. He didn’t because she was right, they didn’t know each other, so he didn’t have the right to do that. But he wanted to.
“Yeah, he should have,” she said after a while.
“When did you leave him?”
“Five, no, almost six months ago.”
“You have kids?”
“No.”
He wanted to know why someone like her never had kids, but her face had closed down, so he didn’t ask.
“What made you leave?”
“He cheated on me.”
“Really?”
She laughed then, and so happily he raised his brows in surprise.
“It shocked the shit out of me. Didn’t think Bob had it in him to eschew his downtime on the couch long enough to get himself off.”
Gib almost grinned at what she innocently revealed with that comment at the same time as he wanted to punch the idiot ex of hers for ignoring her.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, I didn’t love him. Hadn’t loved him for years, and he didn’t love me. We just got… stuck. It’s good to be unstuck.”
Thank fuck.
“Is he with her now?”
“Yes,” she said with a small sigh. “She’s such a skank,” she added but went on almost guiltily, “Pretty if you like her kind, and she’s younger and skinnier.”
“Really?”
“Well, not anymore,” she said and winced.
He knew she remembered what he’d said about her, and knew every goddamned syllable by heart. Joke had relished in telling him word for word what he’d said.
Fuck it, he thought. He’d need to get that out of the way.
“Babe, we both know what I said in that bar,” he murmured gently.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said immediately.
“Don’t care.”
“What?”
“I want to talk about it, and I was the one acting like an asshole, so I get to call the shots on that.”
“What?”
He took hold of her hand and tightened the grip when she tried to pull away, needing the physical contact. What he’d tell her would be the truth, but it’d make him sound like a juvenile ass.
“I didn’t even look at you, babe. Glanced over, saw you briefly. I was just yanking Joke’s leg. He wanted to do you, so I was pushing him around a little. We do it all the time.” He squeezed her hand until she looked at him again. “I didn’t mean anything by it, and I’m sorry. I was on my way over to explain and apologize, but you left.”
“Oh.”
That was all he got? Oh? Then her face softened, and he exhaled, knowing his brief stupidity wouldn’t be a deal-breaker for her.
He grinned with relief and muttered, “And when I think about it, you’re the one who should apologize.”
“I -”
“You left me with a battery of barracudas, babe. What the hell were you doing with them?”
“One of them is my former sister-in-law, the others are her friends.”
“Jesus.”
“You can say that again,” she murmured primly, and he chuckled.
“We good?”
“Yeah, Gibson. We’re good.”
The way she said his name shot straight to his dick and he tried to will it to behave. Then he raised one leg to put the boot on his knee, hoping this would hide the fact that his will had no power over his crotch.
“So, you do know my name,” he said.
“Of course.”
“It’s the first time you used it, babe.”
“It’s not like you’ve used my name, babe.”
He’d grunted it more than once in the past week, jacking off in hotel rooms all the fuck over the state, but he certainly wasn’t going to share that.
“Jenny said your name is Charlene.”
“Yes.”
“I like Lee better.”
“So do I.”
It looked like she wanted to say something else, and he waited.
She blushed a little suddenly and glanced over at him.
“Did Joke really want to, um…?”
He almost started laughing when he saw her pink cheeks and couldn’t help himself.
“Wanted to do what, babe?”
She turned to him, raised her chin defiantly when she saw through his innocent face, and said, “Ask me to dance.”
“Dance?” he asked wondering about the sudden humor in her eyes, but also thinking that surely she couldn’t be that naïve.
“The mattress-mambo,” she deadpanned.
He started laughing, and after a second, he heard her giggle.
“Still does,” Gibson said.
“What?”
“Not happening.”
“But -”
“Get it out of your head, Lee. It’s not happening.”
She watched him with wide eyes that suddenly held a small smirk, and murmured, “Okay.”
He grinned back at her.
“So, do you want to take a look at what I work with these days?”
***
Gibson couldn’t fall asleep, mostly because there was a very attractive woman in his downstairs guestroom, and his dick was hard.
She wasn’t at all like his usual hook-ups, though. They all knew what to expect and were absolutely never, ever staying in his goddamned house. He also liked Lee, more than he’d expected. They had spent that first afternoon looking at his workshop and then walking Boo, and in the following days they settled into a routine which he liked a fuckova lot because it wasn’t a routine at all.
They usually kicked off the day together having breakfast after his workout and her yoga, and then they did whatever was on the plate for the day which could be plenty in which case they saw each other for dinner again. Or nothing, which meant they were lounging around in his backyard with Boo or meeting up with whomever of the others who happened to be free for a while. He liked the nothing-days better.
That evening she’d cooked dinner all the while gabbing on the phone with Jenny, giggling about God only knew what. He’d sipped on a beer and listened to the sound of her in his home without really registering what she was saying, but liking how her voice got bright and happy while she talked.
Fuck.
He couldn’t just walk downstairs and climb into bed with her. He’d have to take it slow. He’d have to be patient. He’d get fucking calluses on his hands from jerking off.
One last round of the house, to make sure it was all locked up tight, he decided.
He wasn’t used to tip-toeing around his own home, but he didn’t want her to wake up and wonder what was going on, so he did. Everything was as it should, which he’d known it would be. Then he heard a soft sound. And another one.
It was just a low mewling sound, but he knew what it was.
She was getting herself off. Did she use her fingers or any of those toys she’d been talking about? When she moaned softly, he almost groaned out loud and backed away from the corridor leading to her room.
The hell with slow, he decided as he walked up the stairs.
Tomorrow, he vowed. He’d make his move then.