Chapter Seven—Linc
I hadn’t seen that coming. Sure, I’d noticed how hot she was; it was hard not to. But suddenly I really got it. Even an hour after she left, I couldn’t get my mind off of how she’d looked, in that itty-bitty dress, with more of her on display than covered up. I could think of a dozen things I’d like to do to her—and none of them involved fixing the pipes in an old apartment unit. But as I tried to make myself focus on the plumbing for the old bathtub, an idea flashed into my hot brain like phosphorous dropping into water—just as sudden, just as improbable, as that demonstration had been during my early Navy training in aquatic incendiary devices.
I needed a wife for court, and all things considered, I had a feeling that I would be more than happy to wake up to a woman like Sky every day. I needed a fake wife, but why did that mean that I couldn’t like her as well? Did that mean that we couldn’t be together in a way that felt right? I desperately wanted to get my hands on her all of a sudden, and the fake marriage part was only half of it.
I took one last look around her place before I left for the night. I didn’t go through drawers or anything like that, but I was really looking for an excuse to come back. There was always something to fix in these old apartments if a person was so inclined. Right now I was, and although I didn’t find anything for a while, I knew it was only because I was so eager.
Finally I got to the kitchen, and found the jackpot; the old water heater looked like it was about to rust out at the bottom. I’d thought it was good enough before I’d leased the apartment out, but it was obviously going to have to be replaced completely. Then too, I told myself as I tested the cabinets and drawers, the knobs on them needed tightening, and there seemed to be a little bit of a leak at the faucet for the sink. Most of the things were easy fixes—but they would give me plenty of opportunities to talk to Sky, to feel her out. Especially the heater.
*****
The next morning couldn’t come soon enough as far as I was concerned. I tossed and turned all night, wondering if Sky was going to hold onto her resolution not to leave her friend alone, picturing all the good things that could come from getting on her good side. I couldn’t even make myself wait more than ten minutes after my alarm went off, after the coffee was made, to fill a mug up for her—I was pretty sure I’d caught a glimpse of how she liked it, milk and sugar—and get my ass over to her unit.
It took several minutes for her to answer, but when she finally did the view made the wait worth it. She was gorgeous even when she first woke up in the morning, and even when, by the looks of it, she’d been drinking all night and hadn’t had any sleep at all. Her mussed hair tumbled around her shoulders didn’t look dirty or gross, but just made me want to tell her to go back to bed and take me with her. It looked like she’d only barely managed to take off her makeup, and she’d traded in her skimpy dress in favor of an oversized tee shirt that I was pretty sure had nothing underneath it.
“Morning, Sky,” I said when she blinked at me sleepily. “I wanted to come by and make sure that everything was okay. There wasn’t any leaking or anything, was there? The fix should be fine. I just like to make sure.”
She kind of shrugged like she had no idea what I was talking about, but she opened the door to let me in. I hadn’t expected to get in so easily, but when her hand went automatically for the coffee I’d brought with me, I grinned to myself a bit at the success of my gambit. I hadn’t known she would be hung over, but it was obviously one of my better ideas of the past few days.
How had I not seen her for what she was—or at least, what she could be—before? Not just a hot girl I could enjoy, but the prospect of a ticket to the end of all of Lisa’s petty little courtroom dramas. All I had to do was convince her and show her how great we could be together. I was going to make Sky scream out my name until her voice was hoarse, and even then I didn’t think it was going to be enough. I felt like how some of my teammates who’d gotten Purple Hearts and medical discharges—and then gotten addicted to Vicodin—described their addictions. I didn’t think I could ever possibly get enough of Sky, unless she turned out to be all smoke and no fire; and I didn’t think for a second that that would be the case.
“How are you feeling?” Sky sank into a chair at her kitchen table, and I leaned against the counter, pleased for the moment just to have a few minutes to enjoy the sight of her. God, imagine what it would be like to just slither right up under that shirt, spread her legs good and wide, and make her forget ‘headache’ is even a word that exists...
“Not bad, I just drank too much last night, I think. Can you tell?” Sky gave me a weak, rueful smile, and I laughed as quietly as I could.
“I’ve seen worse, Sky.” In the mirror, I didn’t add. “I think you just need a little coffee and you’ll start feeling better. I’m going to go check out the bathroom to make sure it’s dry. Don’t mind me.”
She waved me on without even seeming to consider it, and that was another sign that her hangover was hung over for sure. I was just glad she’d made it home—and apparently alone. I would’ve hated to find her room empty because she’d spent the night with some guy. With the combination of the booze and her beauty it had probably been a near thing.
“It looks pretty good in here,” I called from the bathroom. “I don’t see any water on the floor or anything. Have you used the tub or shower yet today?”
“I wouldn’t even be awake if you hadn’t knocked,” she said from the kitchen. I left the bathroom and leaned against the pass-through to the living room.
“I saw a few other things that needed fixing when I was here doing the pipes. Do you want me to do it today, or is there another day that works for you?” Say today. Say it; what else do you have going on? “One of them is that water heater—it really needs to be replaced, and that’s going to take some time,” I added. I felt like I was a teenager again, trying to ask out the head cheerleader; I was actually nervous for once. Sky wasn’t like the girls I’d been meeting recently—and that was a good thing, even if it threw me through a loop.
“Um... if you think it needs to be done. I really don’t keep up on anything like that. I’ll tell you when something breaks if I notice it, but that’s about as far as it goes. What are you doing up so early?”
“I always get up this early,” I told her, shrugging the question off.
“Oh. I try not to, but my new job is going to make me soon enough, so I guess I’ll have to get used to it. I just want to go lie back down. My head is killing me.”
I chuckled. “I have had my fair share of those mornings,” I told her. I didn’t add that the most recent one had been the day she’d arrived in the city.
“Is there any kind of remedy that you’ve found to work?”
“Not really, but coffee and not too many people around always seems to help.”
She grinned and took another sip of her coffee. “How did you know that I would have a hangover?”
“I didn’t, but with that dress you had on last night, I was just playing the odds.” I’d said too much. Sky just sort of stared at me for a long moment, and I actually felt the blood rising into my face—at least that was a good alternative to the way it kept seeming to pool in my groin every time I was around her. “Looking like that, you must have had more than your fair share of free drinks.” Sky half-laughed and then winced; I knew that look well. Her head had to be killing her.
“Thanks for checking on everything for me, Linc. When I first met you, I thought this was going to be a disaster, but you’ve really made me feel at home. It’s almost like I already have friends here besides Cassie. I appreciate that more than you know.”
Maybe we were both saying more than was necessary. Her words came out of the blue, but I liked that she didn’t have trouble showing appreciation. She’s not the only one. If I can get her to do me one—big—favor, she’ll be up to her elbows in appreciation.
“No problem, Sky,” I said, giving her another smile. I wanted her to think I was a much better guy than her first impression told her. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“I feel like I should pay you back. I think this coffee may have saved me.”
Come over here and I’ll show you a few ways you could pay me back, I thought. But I knew that wouldn’t fly—not with her. She wasn’t as naive or finicky as I’d first thought, but she was definitely innocent, and my usual moves with the girls from the bars wouldn’t work on someone like her: feisty and fiery one moment and sweetly polite the next. I couldn’t count on my usual bag of tricks to get me what I wanted. I was going to have to go slow.
“Just being neighborly,” I said. “I figured you’d probably need the boost, and I needed to come over and check the repair anyway.” Sky looked up at me again and I could see she was starting to get a little more alert in the eyes; the coffee was helping.
“I could make you dinner,” she said after a moment.
“That would be great,” I told her; anything to have an excuse to get close to her. “I could come by tonight and take care of the few things that don’t need a whole lot of work, too.”
“That’d be great,” Sky said. “What should I cook? I don’t know what Denver folks eat.” I laughed at that.
“I was in the Navy long enough to be able to eat anything that won’t eat me first,” I told her. “Surprise me.” I didn’t want to leave, but I knew that if I wanted to make things move along smoothly, giving Sky some space at the right moments would be just as important as being in her presence.
I excused myself, telling Sky to take an aspirin and get some sleep, and went back to my own apartment. I ended up working on my own apartment for a while, fixing odds and ends, wasting time until I could go to the hardware store to pick up what I would need—and to put in the order for the replacement water heater.
I managed to get through the morning and most of the afternoon before I decided I just couldn’t put off seeing Sky again; besides, I thought—I had a valid reason to go to her apartment. She wouldn’t want me underfoot while she was cooking for me, and I could take care of the faucet and the cabinets before she got down to her own business. I was only a few feet away from her door when my phone rang. It was Lisa. “Fuck.” I couldn’t not answer it—even if, as seemed likely, she was calling just to wind me up.
“What’s up, Lisa?”
“Took you long enough to answer. Where are you?”
“At a friend’s house. Why?” I looked around, expecting her to be spying on me, though God knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“Because you need to watch your daughter. It’s your weekend, after all.” That stunned the hell out of me, even though it shouldn’t have.
“I thought you said that I couldn’t see her until after court?”
“Well, things come up. Do you want me to drop her with you or pay a babysitter? I don’t care either way, but she’s asking for you, Linc, God only knows why.”
“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes,” I said, kissing any chance of seeing Sky that night good-bye.
“Figured you were close. We’re waiting outside your door.” She would have had to have arrived literally the moment I was heading up to Sky’s apartment, barely out of sight. She can’t have planned it—nobody knows what I’m going to ask Sky to do for me. I was letting her get me paranoid.
But I would have to cancel with Sky, and I knew that was probably going to screw things up with my plans; even if Lisa hadn’t done it on purpose, she had managed to throw a wrench into my scheme. I took a deep breath and dialed Sky’s number, stepping away from her door so she wouldn’t hear me on the other side of it. She picked up after the first ring, sounding much more chipper than she had that morning.
“I took a nap, and ran by the market my friend Cassie told me about, so if you want to swing by, we can get down to business,” she said. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. I wanted to ‘get down to business’ with her more than anything. But I couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, Sky. You don’t know how bad I feel about this, but I have to cancel for tonight.”
“What? What do you mean you have to cancel?” She sounded more upset than I would have thought—maybe she was actually looking forward to spending time with me?
“Something came up, and I have to go home and take care of it,” I said. “Is there any way we can do a rain check?”
The long silence on the other end of the line told me she was not happy at all. “Can you come later tonight?”
I shook my head, even though I knew she couldn’t see it. “I wish I could—I actually have to be going right now to take care of this. Please, please let me make it up to you.”
“I see. Um, sure, yeah... We can do this another time.” Sky didn’t sound all that enthusiastic about the idea, and I couldn’t blame her.
“I really am going to make it up to you, I swear,” I told her. I ended the call quickly; if I didn’t go meet up with Lisa and Jazmin she was as apt as not to just leave anyway.
I am going to have to do some serious damage control the next time I come see her, I thought. I couldn’t help it, though. If I went through with my plans with Sky, Lisa would drop Jazmin off with someone else and then she would use it in court to argue that I was the one constantly breaking the agreement. It didn’t matter that she was a day late, if I didn’t see my daughter, that’s how it would look. There was also the fact that I hadn’t talked to or seen Jazmin in over a week, and I wanted to. Everything else had to go on the back burner, compared to her. Even the hot, surprising woman who might be my ticket to keeping my daughter close to me.
All that aside, I still left Sky’s door with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to leave her that way, not when it had all been going so well and was poised to end even better.