Reckless (Blue Collar Boyfriends Book 1) (5 page)

She bristled. “Aren’t you going to ask what I do? It’s only polite.”

“I know what you do.”

She blinked, stunned. “You know me?” Hope propelled her forward. “What do I do? Who am I?” She stopped short of grabbing his shoulders and shaking him, but barely. Finally! She’d learn her name!

The man wasted no time wrapping an arm around her wai
st and pulling her down to lie beside him. She was so relieved, she let him. He wasn’t a stranger after all.

“You’re my dream girl. Your job is to make me happy. And you deserve a raise, ’cause
—” He lifted the blankets and pressed her hand down the line of his body, where she came into contact with the evidence of his arousal.

“
Ohmygosh!” She snatched her hand back and rocketed off the bed. Back pressed against the closet door, palm glued to her chest, she said, “You—I—what the heck?” Another brilliant bit of dialogue. Her brain had overloaded, plain and simple. She swallowed and composed herself.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out. I just hoped we knew each
oth—”

The man interrupted her with a curse directed at the ceiling. He fell back on his pillow and threw an arm over his face.
“Can’t even hang onto an imaginary woman. Too goddamned aggressive for my own dream girl.”

He cursed again, a long, drawn-out whisper. Then he lifted the covers and looked down at himself. “What am I going to do about you?” He glanced at the clock, which read 4:58. His whole face softened as he pressed a hand flat to the wall over his head. Haley slept on the other side.
“Nothing. That’s what.” He rolled over with a pained grunt and went back to sleep.

Her throat closed with longing. Longing to crawl back in bed and put his arousal to good use. Longing to tell him he hadn’t been too aggressive for her, that if she’d been scared of anything it had been the strength of desire his forwardness had kindled in her. Longing to show him she wasn’t imaginary.

For every impulse to indulge those longings, a little voice of caution presented a reason to hold back.
Don’t want to scare him. Don’t want to wake Haley up. Don’t want to come off as
desperate. Don’t want to get hurt.

She watched the clock change to 4:59. In the next second, she was sucked back to the fog, denied even the slightest glimpse of dawn, just like the morning before. Eerie silence replaced the sound of the man’s breathing. Empty air replaced the hardness of the floor beneath her feet and the closet door at her back. Regret drowned the voice of caution.

Don’t want to waste any more time.

Derek stared at the streak of morning sun on his bedroom ceiling. He really ought to get some blinds. The neighbors had a tall fence, which made privacy a nonissue, and he usually got up before sunrise for work, so the light didn’t bother him, but he’d been in this 1920s Craftsman for two years now. He ought to make it more of a home. Haley deserved it. Maybe he’d recruit her to help him pick out some curtains and area rugs today while shopping for back-to-school clothes.

Sleepy footsteps shuffled past his cracked-open door.
Haley, headed to the bathroom.

He should get up too. He usually looked forward to firing up the griddle for Sunday morning pancakes, but a rollercoaster night of strange dreams and unspent arousal had him wishing he could sleep in.

He’d had the nightmare where he was driving the Honda again, but he’d also had another.

The second dream had dumped him in a car wreck too
. Even though he’d witnessed the accident with the Honda in real life, the one on the rain-slicked roadside had felt much more personal. Hours after the dream, the weight of the girl’s loss pinned him to the mattress.

He refused to accept the added weight of her guilt, however. It hovered in his psyche, right there, ready to upset him if he chose to let it. But he ignored it. The girl might have been driving, and the accident might have even been her fault
—he didn’t know since he’d shown up after the wreck—but no way did she cause her father’s death. It didn’t matter she was a figment of his sleeping subconscious; knowing she believed that made him cringe.

Blowing out the useless emotional shit on a breath, he heaved himself out of bed.

After taking care of the necessities, he found Haley kneeling on a kitchen chair, using his laptop. “Whatcha doing, kiddo?” He ruffled her hair with manufactured cheer.

“Looking up ghosts.”

He blinked a few times. Of all the things he’d been expecting her to say, checking email, looking at Facebook,
playing games… “Ghosts? Why?”

“’
Cuz I think you have one.”

“Haley,
hon, there’s no such thing as ghosts.” He wanted to talk about Little League, about school, about Girl Scouts, frigging boys, anything but ghosts. What the hell was Deidre letting her get into that she was curious about ghosts?

“Uh, yeah there is, Dad. You know how I know?” She didn’t wait for him to answer.

“’Cuz I saw one. She woke you up Friday night. And then last night, I thought I heard you crying again, so I went in your room to check on you. She was sitting on your bed touching your hair like Mom does when I don’t feel good.”

His heart stopped while he processed what she’d said
. He hadn’t realized Haley had looked in on him last night. A flush crept up his neck as he remembered the erection he’d had before dawn. He hoped to God she hadn’t come in then. Thankfully, her words reminded him of the gentle caresses that had taken the edge off the car-wreck dreams, which had happened earlier.

But that comfort had been in his dreams. How had Haley seen?

“She had pretty red hair,” she said, oblivious to his confusion. “But not red like Rebecca’s. It was darker. And she looked worried about you. Don’t you know who she is? Was it someone who died a long time ago?” She tapped the computer screen. “It says here sometimes deceased loved ones from your past hang around and look out for you, like watch over you. I think she was watching over you. I like her. She seems nice.”

Dark red hair, as in rich auburn waves.
His legs felt weak. He gripped the back of a chair as he moved around the table. Crouching, he wiggled the griddle from amidst the pots and pans in the cupboard.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts, honey.” He clunked the griddle onto the counter and flipped the laptop closed. “It’s pancake time.”

* * * *

Derek cleaned up after dinner to the sound of crinkling plastic and excited feminine
chatter. Haley sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor de-tagging half of Target’s stock of curtains, pillows and rugs. The kid seemed more excited about helping him spiff up his house than about the two bags of school clothes languishing by the front door, where he’d dropped them before grilling up kebobs. Apparently, she’d inherited the decorating gene from Deidre.

He turned from the sink to face a kitchen that looked like a landfill for the mounds of shopping
bags, crumpled packaging material and random piles of colorful fabric—holy hell, was that pink leopard print?

“That better be for your room,” he said, indicating the fuzzy pink pillows and glittery fabric occupying one of the kitchen chairs.

“Duh, dad.”

Guess he ought to think about getting rid of all the stuffed animals in there. She was growing up so fast. Maybe it seemed faster since he only saw her on the weekends.

“And these are going to look awesome in your room,” she said, holding up a wad of sheer blue fabric he guessed to be curtains. They matched the blue whorls and arcs in the silver-gray king-size comforter she’d picked out for his bed. “Just imagine waking up to this color every morning!”

In Target, he’d found Haley’s selections for his room on the feminine side, but here in his house, he liked the colors, especially the blue. There was something familiar about it. The doorbell gonged in the living room, derailing his train of thought.

Over the last two years, he’d learned to dread the sound of his doorbell. No one ever rang it but Deidre. Always at eight sharp on Sunday night. Always reminding him he wasn’t like other dads. He had to squish in his time with his kid between Friday’s five-o’clock news and Sunday-night’s
SportsCenter
. He’d lost the freedom to enjoy Haley week round when he’d failed in his marriage.

“Is that Mom?” Haley knelt on the linoleum with a gold-and-rust striped pillow in one hand and a brass curtain rod in the other. Her eyebrows slanted with disappointment, probably because she didn’t want to stop in the middle of her project.

“’Fraid so, kiddo. Time flies when you’re having fun.” He offered a hand to help her step out of the quagmire of crinkly plastic, but she ignored it, bounding into the living room and throwing open the door.

“Hi, Mom!”

“Hi, babe!
” Deidre strode in wearing a stylish denim jacket over a lacy top that looked more like lingerie than a shirt, and wrapped Haley in a long hug. “Missed you.” Her eyes darted to the two overflowing bags of school clothes on the floor. “This looks like a lot, Derek. Are you sure you can afford all this?”

How many times did he have to tell her he was doing
okay? He never missed a child support check, and he pitched in with expenses like clothes and school supplies all the time. He was sick of her treating him like he was one step away from collecting food stamps. She might make more than him, but he lived a hell of a lot more modestly than she did.

“Mm-hmm.”
Probably best to keep his mouth shut. She couldn’t pick apart mumbled responses, could she?

She shot him a warning with her eyes. “I’m not judging you,” the look said, but
it was a lie. Deidre ran on judging him. It was her fuel. She didn’t know how else to be. She’d lose animation if she ever stopped pointing out the thousand-and-one ways he was an inferior parent.

“Dad also let me pick out curtains and throw pillows and rugs and a ton of stuff to make his house way better.”

The tension sailed over Haley’s head. Thank God.

He
and Deidre would never be more than passably cordial to each other, but he’d be damned if he’d let Haley grow up refereeing fights between them. He didn’t want her to fear his moods. Kids deserved to run carefree, not walk on eggshells.

Deidre’s perfectly-lined eyes bugged out. “I hope you didn’t bully him into buying too much.” She raised her voice at the end to compensate for the distance as Haley ran back to her booty in the kitchen. “You didn’t let her talk you into spending too much, did you?”

He pulled at his hair, something he only seemed to do around his ex. “Jesus, we went to Target, not some frou-frou shop where a lamp shade costs five hundred dollars.”

Deidre held up her hands.
“Fine, fine. Sorry. It’s your money.” She looked around the living room as though seeing it for the first time. It stretched the whole front of the house and had built-in bookcases along one wall. He had a few books scattered here and there, including a collection of
Hardy Boys
books he’d read as a kid, but for the most part, the shelves were bare. A black leather couch and recliner set with glass end tables faced the forty-two-inch plasma TV hanging above a fireplace he’d never used. He’d hung blinds for privacy on the huge front window, but he hadn’t bothered with curtains. The only color in the room was the green of field turf or the brilliant HD pop of numbered uniforms when he had a game on TV.

“Hmm.
I guess the place could use some personality,” Deidre said. “It still looks like it did when you moved in. If you were selling, I’d have a list of recommendations a mile long.”

If he were selling, she’d be the last realtor he’d choose. Okay, that wasn’t true. She was good at her job. But the idea of spending a single minute longer with her than absolutely necessary was only slightly more attractive than the idea of shooting himself in the foot with a nail gun.

From the kitchen, Haley called out, “Hey, what if Mom stays and we have a curtain hanging party?”

He and Deidre spoke at the same time. “Your mom does
n’t want to stay.” “I could do that. Sounds like fun.”

Haley appeared in the doorway, a smile as big as the California sun on her face.

Everyone looked at each other.

Deidre smirked. “You really want to hang curtains by yourself?”

Kind of. He was running on fumes after a full-steam, non-stop day with Haley, and he desperately wanted a good night’s sleep after two nights of weird nightmares. “No, it’s just getting late. I thought you’d want to get Haley home.”

“It’s only eight. And it’s still summer vacation for another week and a half. She doesn’t have to go to bed ’til ten. What do you say, babe, want to help your dad out for an hour or so?”

“Yay!” Haley disappeared into the kitchen. “I want to do the living room first,” she shouted over the crinkling of shopping bags. “That’s the first thing people see when they come in.”

“That’s my girl. High-impact areas need high-impact ideas.” Deidre sauntered into the kitchen, dropping her jacket over the back of a chair.
“Whoa, what a disaster! Let’s get organized, bug. Living room stuff on the table. Bedroom stuff on the floor—oh, never mind. The floor is filthy. Counter—oh, for the love of—” She unleashed a sigh of unbridled annoyance, and he heard her run the sink and wring out a sponge.

He stood in his living room pulling at his hair. His lungs felt like they wanted to explode.

Only Deidre could send him from breathing easy to ready to blow in the blink of an eye. He swallowed the urge to yell and headed into the fray.

“I was in the middle of cleaning up after dinner when you showed up,” he said.

“You had dinner late, huh?” She ripped the tag off a forest green bath mat with her teeth.

“It wasn’t that late. We had a busy day, didn’t we, kiddo?”

Haley saved him from having to interact with Her Royal Highness of Parenthood by telling her mom all about their weekend. The pair moved out of the kitchen and began swathing his living room in bright yellows and oranges. “An autumn palate” Deidre called it, praising Haley’s taste. He left them to it and finished cleaning up from dinner.

After a while, Deidre came into the kitchen. “Some coffee would be nice.”

Busy emptying the dishwasher, he nodded at the coffee maker. “Help yourself. Ground beans in the fridge.”

“How hospitable of you,” she muttered on her way to the fridge. “It’s a wonder you don’t have company banging on your door every night with those manners.”

He clenched his jaw to keep from pointing out it was a wonder she didn’t have wings with that holier-than-thou attitude.

“Nice to see some color in your house,” she said conversationally, looking in a drawer for a measuring scoop.

Really? She wanted to have a conversation? Deidre opened her mouth; passive aggressive criticism came out. He never heard anything else from her.
Some coffee would be nice
equaled
you’re a terrible host. Nice to see some color in your house
equaled
took you long enough to
decorate like a civilized person.

H
e’d never been one to ignore a jab. He didn’t have it in his DNA. But he couldn’t unleash on her with Haley in the house.

He blew out a breath, trying to ignore the tightening between his ribs. “Yup,” he agreed, but the word popped with pent-up frustration. He winced, knowing he was in for it.

“Christ, Derek.” She kept her voice low. “You don’t have to be an ass. I’m trying to help you out, here.”

He shut the cupboard so hard the glasses inside rattled. “I didn’t ask for your help.”