Cal guided me to the sofa. Spotting my wine on the coffee table, he asked “Got any beer, Mal?”
I sniffed. “Yuengling okay?”
“Nectar of the gods, sweets. I’ll get it.”
He returned to the couch with a bottle in hand. He sat in the corner of the couch opposite me with his legs spread wide. He was looking around at the living room, but he was looking beyond the wreckage, assessing the wall hangings, and looking at the family pictures that had luckily gone unscathed. He looked at the flat screen TV and cringed, “I’d say we could watch TV, but those fuckers got it pretty good.”
I looked at the TV and shook my head, “You don’t work with the guys, do you?”
He swallowed a swig of beer and said, “The opposite. The guys work for me.”
My eyebrows crinkled, “You’re a client?”
“The club, not me.”
“Why does a motorcycle-“
“Can’t tell you. Don’t bother to ask. Club business is off-limits to chicks.”
I drained the last of my wine. “Well. Good to know. I’m going to wash my face and get ready for bed. God, tomorrow is gonna suck ass.”
As I stood up, I felt a draft coming in from the busted door. After I rinsed out my glass, I checked my smart phone to find out how cold it would get tonight. Low forties. Being a Florida girl, that was cold enough. I went to the thermostat, but Cal was already setting it.
I gave him a sideways look. He saw it and said, “Hon, you don’t want to pay JEA a shit ton of money on top of replacing your shit. I’ve set it at 60. You happen to have a space heater or anything?”
I was on the verge of shaking my head no when I remembered that we actually‒ well, I actually‒ did have a space heater. A smile ghosted my lips, “Yeah. I do. We got one when Landon was almost a year old because the heat went out on New Year’s Eve and we had to wait until the day after New Year’s for someone to get here. It’s in the guest room.” I moved past him to go get it when he stopped me by placing his hand on my shoulder.
“I got it, Mal. Go do your thing.”
I stepped into my bedroom to get a nightshirt to sleep in, when it struck me. Cal could not sleep in the same bed as me. If I felt nothing but guilt after a kiss from Cal, I couldn’t imagine the amount of guilt I’d have from him sleeping next to me in our bed. Greg’s bed. My bed. No way. Plus, since the accident, I always slept in one of Greg’s old undershirts. They smelled of him, and they were soft from wear, which also made them nearly transparent. I was standing in front of the dresser in contemplation when Cal came in with the space heater.
“What’s the holdup woman?”
I watched him set up the heater, and said, “I don’t have anything to sleep in.”
Cal looked at the scattered clothes all over the bed, “Uh, sure as hell looks like you do.”
I took a deep breath so I could keep hold on my nerves, “I only sleep in Greg’s old undershirts since the accident. They’re practically see through, and you can’t sleep here with me in our bed anyway. It’s wrong.”
Cal walked up to me and put his hands on my shoulders, “Mallory, you got a rough couple of days ahead of you. I know you had some special shit with your family. If those pictures out there show me even a sliver of your life, then I can’t begin to imagine how hard it is to miss those two every day. I’m not here to get in your pants. Hell's bells, if you woulda cooperated with me an hour ago, we’d be at my place and you’d be sleeping in a separate bed. Wear a regular pair of pajamas; sleep naked, sleep in one of his old shirts. I don’t give a fuck. I’m gonna be right next to you in case something happens. Not because I want to do you. Get ready for bed; I’m gonna check your perimeter, and when I come back in you need to be under the covers. I won’t see what you’re wearing. Fair enough?”
A shy smile pulled at my lips, “Fair enough.”
I grabbed an old pajama set from Victoria’s Secret because before the accident, they were my go-to pajamas when things sucked. It was a loose boatneck t-shirt and shorts set and the shorts and shirt sleeves ended in a frilly lettuce-edged hem. If I was sick, they were soft and made me feel better. If I had a bad day, they were perfect for curling up in my armchair with a good book and some wine. I went in the bathroom and did my business. I quickly gathered all of the underwear and other clothing that was strewn about the bed, shoved it in an empty drawer on the floor. I tried to put the drawer back into the dresser, but the clothes were piled too high. The drawer could wait until tomorrow, so I left it next to the dresser. The house perimeter wasn't that big, and I knew Cal could be back any moment. I had just pulled the covers up to my chin when Cal came to the doorway.
He leaned against the door jamb. “Everything’s quiet. A patrol car rolled by while I was out there, so that’s good, but a cop in a car can’t see what’s going on in your back yard. You know how loose your fence is near the retention pond?”
I rubbed my temples, “Uh, no. I mean, I knew we had issues with it a few years back, but I haven’t been in the back yard in quite a while. What’s your point?”
He moved away from the door, and he was standing perpendicular to me giving me a nice view of his profile. His nose was angular, but not too pointy, and his lips were full. I thought about kissing them again, but shoved the thought aside when guilt plagued me. “You need better security. We’ll get on that tomorrow too,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head.
I looked at his arms as he folded his thermal. There was a tattoo of two red dice on the top of his right arm and somehow it accentuated the curve of his bicep. It also made me want to drool. I needed to not focus on him, so I tried locking on what he said, “What’s this ‘we’ business? There is no ‘we’ here. Whatever it is, I’ll get to it.”
He turned to me as I pulled all of my light-brown hair out from under my neck and shoulders, trying to get comfortable. “You never asked me why I called you earlier, sweet cheeks. But, I called to ask you to dinner. Only, because of you sounding freaked-out and then hanging up on me, which is rude by the way, did I call Gavin and find out you already had dinner with your girl Natasha. I insisted on your address to make sure things were okay, because you sounded tripped-out. I plan to get to know you. Seeing your place ripped to shreds and you thinking you’re perfectly fine to stay here alone pisses me off to no damn end. Nobody, and I mean nobody, argues with me the way you do. You’re a royal pain in the ass that way, but for some fucked-up reason I like it. So you’re wrong. There is a ‘we’ here. You and me.”
While his tirade was enough to leave me speechless, I was tongue-tied by him pulling off his jeans. With him standing facing me in boxer briefs, I could fully appreciate Cal’s physique. Magic Mike can take a damn hike. Cal was as ripped as a man could be without screaming ‘roid rage’. His torso was tan and his abdomen was rippled like a model from a Men’s Health cover. His thighs had blond fuzzy hairs resting over his tightly-muscled quads.
I forced myself to look at my stationary ceiling fan, “This sounds like the opposite of what you said earlier, that you didn’t want to get in my pants.”
Cal ran a hand through his sandy-blond hair, “I don’t want to get in your pants. For now.”
I glared at him, partly because I didn’t like the turnabout on what he said before, but mainly because he was reminding me of Greg. Again. He smirked at me then said, “What? At least I’m telling you the truth. Men always want pussy, but I’m realistic enough to know you aren’t gonna put out on the first date. Rome wasn’t built in a day, sweet cheeks, but I gotta start somewhere. You’re the only chick who’s graced the back of my bike, and I never thought I’d let a woman on my bike. Definitely not some pain-in-the-ass I just met. Damn sure didn’t see that shit coming. Now give me some covers, it is gettin’ cold in here damn quick and that space heater hasn’t warmed up enough yet.”
I lifted the covers in a higher arc than I would have liked in order to spread some extra sheets over to Cal’s side of the bed. He might have glimpsed my frilly white Victoria’s Secret pajama set before he turned off the light. I hoped he hadn’t, but as he settled into the bed he rumbled, “Couldn’t convince you to go to bed naked, I see. But your PJs are almost as cute as you are.”
* * * * *
Since the accident, not only had I been sleeping in Greg’s old t-shirts, but I had a habit of snuggling with an extremely large, super-soft green chenille-covered body pillow. I bought it shortly after Greg and I were married, and we named it the Green Giant. Sadly, the assholes who broke into my house took it upon themselves to slash the Green Giant into three pieces. I woke up thinking I was snuggling with the Green Giant, but on opening my eyes, I saw tanned skin with a large pink scar running in an arc across it. The break-in, Cal’s overbearing nature and insistence to stay with me came flooding back to me. Shit! I was snuggled up to Cal’s chest and had a thigh draped over his right leg. Even before Landon was born, Greg and I never slept this close together. Between his tossing and turning and my sleep-like-the-dead tendencies it just wasn’t feasible. I had to extricate myself from this precarious position before Cal awoke.
As I tried to put an inch of distance between us, Cal’s arm on my waist tightened. “You been snuggled up against me like this since one a.m. Been fighting the urge to share some skin with you all night because of it. Only thing holding me back is that I know you aren’t some run-of-the-mill sweet butt.”
Part of my mind wanted to dwell on his “share some skin” comment, but instead I lifted my head and asked, “What do you mean, sweet butt? That sounds like a cut of pork”
Cal giggled, actually giggled, “Now that’s fuckin’ funny, and appropriate, since the brothers take a sweet butt and pork her!” He guffawed at his own joke.
I pushed up on my right arm that was on his chest to say, “I don’t think I’ve heard sex referred to as porking since I was twelve, so thanks for that. Wait just a minute! This is an even better reason for you to stop calling me ‘sweet cheeks,’ because God knows that must be a step away from being a damn ‘sweet butt’. I totally should be comin’ at you, bro!”
“You come at me,” a salacious grin split his lips, “Hell, I would love it if you’d come at me, darlin’.” And I suddenly knew we were no longer talking about simple acts of vocal aggression.
I had no retort to that.
“You want me, woman,” Cal said moving his hand from my waist up to the nape of my neck.
I scrambled away to my side of the bed and sat up. “I do not! I was cold and I expected to be curled up with the Green Giant. My big green body pillow that those bastards shredded yesterday. Everything was fine; you should have left me here alone.”
He rolled to his side, and propped his head up on his hand. His biceps were bulging. I forced myself to focus on his hazel eyes, “Ever occur to you that everything was ‘fine’ because I was here and only because I was here?”
On an eyebrow arch I asked, “Inflated ego, much?”
“Nope. I’m a one-percenter; if ‒and I believe that’s a big if‒ it was teens who broke in, they’d get one look at my Harley and know not to fuck around here again. That’s why all was quiet last night. Now, we got something here, you and I. Tension or chemistry, maybe both. I wanna find out more about it, and I think you do too. Get dressed. We’re goin’ to Grumpy’s.”
I flopped on my back and ran my hands through my hair. Grumpy’s was a local diner open for breakfast and lunch only. They had really good food, and heaven knew I was a bonafide stress-eater. Their spinach quiche was the best, but with my current problems I’d have to chase it with one of their oversized cinnamon buns. I looked at Cal, “No. You are going to Grumpy’s. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate your concern and your help last night. Checking things out before bed and stuff, it was very nice of you. But I’m staying here to sort this mess out, hit Home Depot for plywood to patch the door, and then I have to find decent door companies and research the best security systems.”
Suddenly, Cal was on top of me and had each of my wrists pinned next to my ears. His hazel eyes glittering at me in the dim sunlight coming through the blinds, he demanded, “You gonna contradict everything I say to you?”
I couldn’t help but smirk, “Probably, since I do have a mind of my own. Not sure what kind of women you’re used to, but I’m pretty damn independent and I’ve been told I’m headstrong. You wanna go to Grumpy’s, have at it.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re a royal pain in the ass. Do you know that?”
I shook my head, “I’m not a pain in the ass. I just like to do my own thing. You go do yours.”
“What if I want you to be the thing I do?”
I glowered, “It would make you a liar.”
That got me a head tilt from Cal, “How so, sweet cheeks?”
I rolled my eyes at the so-called endearment that was becoming a pet peeve. “Because you told me last night you didn’t want in my pants. Now you’re on top of me, restraining me and telling me you want to do me.”
Cal slowly slid his hands from my wrists to twine his fingers in between mine. “If you’ll recall, I also said I didn’t want to get your pants last night. I want to get to know you, Mallory. I was hoping to take you dinner last night. That didn’t pan out, it’s morning, and Grumpy’s has some of the best damn pancakes this side of the St. John’s River. I’m takin’ you to breakfast and we’re gonna get to know each other. You need to shower before we go?”
“It might be nice to shower while you’re around, since I don’t know when the hole in my door will get fixed.”
Cal snorted and kissed my forehead. “Oh, it’s gettin’ fixed before one o’clock today, Mal. You can count on that shit bein’ done right quick.”
“You don’t know that. I have to call at least two or three door companies, and then figure out which company I should go with based on price and overall quality-”
For the second time, Cal shut me up by kissing me. If he weren’t such a damn good kisser, I’d think he was a total asshole for it. I turned my head away as best I could before things could get too heated.
He pulled back from me, “You over-analyze everything, Mal?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m a business analyst. Price comparisons and making sure I get the best deal possible is just what I do.”
His lips tightened. “Is free a good deal to you?”
My eyebrows furrowed. “Free is my friend. But free isn’t an option when an entire glass-paned door needs replacing.”
“It’s free today, dammit. It’s gonna take time for Patch and Vamp to get what they need, haul it over here and install it. I gotta call them and Volt before we can make any headway.” Cal rolled off of me and sat at the edge of the bed. He was rolling his shoulders as if he was tense. “You take a shower and I’ll make the calls,” Cal looked over his shoulder at me, “And then we’re goin’ to Grumpy’s. I want a good meal before my brothers come traipsing through here.”
I laid there giving Cal’s back the fish-eye. Patch, Vamp and Volt? Who the hell went by names like that? The name Patch made me think of a restaurant my parents frequented down in southwest Florida called Patch’s. It was a greasy spoon with a Greek flair, not too different from Grumpy’s, now that I thought about it, but Patch’s was decorated entirely with clowns and clown motifs. I knew better than to think a man associated with Cal could be a clown of any sort. As I was contemplating, Cal stood up and almost glared at me, “What’s the problem woman? Get to it. I don’t want to have to wait for a damn table. Chop-chop.”
With a roll of my eyes, I got out of bed, “Do. Not. Say. Chop-chop. To. Me. Again. Capisce?”
When I walked past Cal, he reached out and smacked my bottom, “Capisce. And, sweet cheeks, did I tell you I like your frilly-ass pajamas?”
I growled at him and shut the bathroom door. It was going to be a long day.