Naked

I picked up a gingerbread man with a huge erect cock. “Hmm. Normally I bite the heads off first, but…”

Alex snorted and picked up one for himself. “Now there’s a dilemma.”

We were still laughing when Patrick came down the back stairs. He wore a silk kimono and a bleary expression. His blond hair stuck up in corkscrews all over the place. He gave us both an imperious look from his spot on the last step.

“We can hear you all the way upstairs.”

“Sorry.” Alex sounded contrite.

I didn’t bother. “Oh, Patrick. C’mon. It’s, like, noon already. Get your lazy ass up and about.”

Patrick yawned broadly and swept past me, then turned to give me a real glare. “You didn’t even make coffee?”

“Your fucking machine is too complicated,” I told him fondly, though of course he knew that, and of course he was still miffed that I hadn’t started it brewing for him.

“I’ll do it,” Alex said, and was up and around the table before either Patrick or I could do more than blink at each other in surprise. “I should’ve thought of it, man. I’m sorry.”

I raised a brow at this sudden leap to obsequiousness, but hell. I didn’t know the guy beyond what? A warning, a karaoke serenade and a drunken blow job in a dark room. He hadn’t quite seemed the servile type to me, but then I was forever being surprised by what I didn’t expect.

“Thank you,” Patrick said a little stiffly. “Alex, this is Olivia Mackey. Olivia, Alex Kennedy. Olivia is an independent contractor with her own graphic design company, and Alex does consulting for several international corporations.”

Coffeepot carafe filled with water in his hand, Alex turned while Patrick made the cocktail party introductions. He and I shared a look past Patrick’s kimono. I gave Alex a tiny shrug. I didn’t get it, either.

“We met,” I told Patrick. “What is up with you?”

“I’m just being a good host.”

“Thanks, Patrick,” Alex said, and set about making the coffee.

He figured out his way around Patrick’s kitchen, faltering only once, when he opened the wrong cupboard to pull out the coffee pods, and found the spice jars, instead. I turned in my chair to watch him. He was no casual houseguest. He knew how to make himself at home.

Patrick and I could hold entire conversations without words, but this morning he was deliberately not giving me the right signals. Or he was misreading mine. He could be selective that way. Before I could get him to tell me what the hell was going on, Alex turned from the coffeemaker.

“Anyone hungry for pancakes?”

“I couldn’t,” I exclaimed.

Just as Patrick said, “Alex, you’re a darling.”

Patrick looked at Alex. Alex looked at me. I looked at Patrick.

“Actually,” I said, “I should get going. I’ve got some work to do—”

“On Sunday?” Patrick asked incredulously. “What’s the point of working for yourself if you can’t take the weekend off?”

I stood and stretched. “The point of working for myself is that I can work whenever I want.”

“Yeah, and work whenever you have to.” Alex leaned against the counter, one long leg crossed over the other at the ankles.

I nodded. He understood. Patrick, who worked eighty-hour weeks but also took a month’s vacation every year, understood the importance of hard work, but would probably never comprehend why I’d quit a stable salary to go out on my own.

I hugged my former boyfriend and kissed his cheek. Patrick softened, finally, his embrace unwilling but inevitable. He held my face still and looked into my eyes.

“Don’t work too much, Livvy. It’s the holidays.”

I put my hands over his on my cheeks and carefully peeled away his fingers to release his grip. “You want me to take back all the presents I bought you?”

He laughed the first real Patrick laugh I’d heard in a few days, and squeezed me close. He whispered in my ear, “Remember what I said.”

Most of the time when Patrick hugged me I could take it for what it was—a physical expression of the affection and love between two friends. Platonic friends. And then there were the times when I breathed in the scent of him, the cologne I bought for him so many years ago and which he’d never switched from, even though he could afford something trendier and more expensive. When I felt the press of his body along mine and I had to close my eyes and remind myself to let him go, and when I found it almost impossible to do so.

Still locked in Patrick’s arms, I forced myself to open my eyes. Alex’s gaze found mine over Patrick’s shoulder. With that scrutiny as motivation, I patted Patrick’s back quickly and stepped away, hoping my nipples weren’t hard through my T-shirt or that my cheeks weren’t as flushed as they felt.

Patrick caught my wrist before I could get entirely away. “Stay for a while. It’s Sunday.”

“Patrick…”

He didn’t let go. “Alex, tell Liv she should stay.”

“Olivia. You should stay.” Alex, still leaning, smiled.

I smiled, too, even as I turned and gave Patrick a good, hard poke. “I have a life, Patrick.”

He scoffed. “What are you going to do today? Hang around that cold apartment and fiddle with your pictures? She’s a photographer,” he added for Alex’s benefit, and jabbed at my ribs.

“Cool. What do you take pictures of?”

“Everything!” I said over my shoulder as I tried to dance out of the way of Patrick’s poking fingers.

I looked at him, hard. Last night he’d warned me off Alex as though my mortal soul depended on it, and now he was begging me to hang around for the day. Of course, he often persuaded me to stay longer than I’d intended, and often I let him. But I did have work to do in my studio, which wouldn’t paint or clean itself, and which had been sadly neglected since I’d bought it six months before.

“Patrick…”

Knowing he was manipulating me didn’t make it any easier to resist him. When he flashed me the familiar pout, the one that had always swayed me, I sighed. I glanced at Alex, who was watching us both with an expression I could only describe as intrigued.

“Alex is making pancakes,” Patrick said.

I looked at Patrick. Patrick looked at Alex. And Alex…Alex looked at me.

“I am,” he said. “And I’m really good at it.”

I knew enough to admit defeat.

“Fine, but I’m taking the first shower, and I don’t care if you run out of hot water,” I told Patrick, who smirked how he always did when he got his way.

Upstairs I bumped into Teddy coming out of his bedroom.

“You’re staying?”

Another man might have hated the fact I was still so much a part of Patrick’s life, but not Teddy. But then I’d never seen him hate anything. Teddy fully believed in that crap about lemons and life.

“Yeah. Just for a little while. I do have to get home tonight.”

He laughed. “You should move back up here, Liv. It wouldn’t be such a long drive then.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re as bad as he is. Annville’s only half an hour away, for crying out loud.”

Teddy had spent his entire life in Central Pennsylvania, a place where crossing the Susquehanna River could be considered entering a whole new world. He grinned. “But it’s Annville.”

“Pfft.” I waved a hand. “I’m taking a shower. I hear there are pancakes in the making.”

Teddy rubbed his stomach. “Yum. Our guest, I assume, not our beloved Patrick.”

Patrick never cooked. “Yeah. Hey, Teddy…” I paused and leaned against the doorjamb to my room. “What’s the story with him, anyway?”

“Alex?”

“Yeah.”

Teddy shrugged and his smile became a tiny bit strained. “He’s a friend of Patrick’s. He needed a place to crash. He’s only going to be here for a few more days. Nice guy.”

That answer floated between us, a bit of fluff on a current of not-going-to-bring-up-certain-topics. The topic in question being why Patrick felt he had any right or interest in my love life, or lack thereof. I shrugged, finally, because sometimes you simply have to put aside things that have no answer.

“Taking a shower,” I said, and Teddy left me so I could.

Forty-five minutes later, my stomach full of pancakes and turkey bacon and good, strong coffee, I was attempting to kick Alex’s ass at Dance Dance Revolution and failing pretty miserably. I had Teddy beat, and was pretty well matched with Patrick, but Alex…he was a superstar.

“My feet keep slipping on the dance pad,” I complained, out of breath.

“I’ll set myself to advanced,” Alex offered with a wicked gleam in his eye. He was practically rubbing his hands together and twirling an imaginary mustache. “You can stay at basic.”

I wasn’t going to turn down that offer. “You’re on.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you start playing,” Patrick said from his place on the couch, where he was reading a thick paperback novel.

At the sound of affectionate amusement in his tone, I looked at him while Alex used the Wii remote to switch the settings. Patrick, bundled under a heavy quilt, had gone back to his book. Teddy’d disappeared, probably to play The Sims on his computer upstairs. And Alex and I were playing DDR. It was a picture of lazy Sunday bliss, so why did suddenly it all feel so…wrong?

“Olivia?”

I turned at Alex’s question and flashed him a smile I couldn’t be sure looked real. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

He tilted his head the tiniest bit. “You want to take a break?”

Patrick must have heard concern in Alex’s tone, because he looked up again. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” I waved a hand. “Too many pancakes. Let’s go.”

Alex had changed out of his Hello Kitty pajamas and into a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, but his feet were still bare. He tapped one against the dance pad, but didn’t start the next song. He looked from me to Patrick.

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

But there was no way I could beat him, even with the different levels set to make it more to my advantage. I was distracted by the sudden, unexpected wave of nostalgia and something else, something I couldn’t parse. My performance was sucktastic.

“I think you’re letting me win,” Alex said.

Patrick scoffed from the couch. “Olivia never lets anyone win. Take your victory and savor it.”

I gave Patrick a narrow-eyed glance. His teasing had a ring of truth to it that sat wrong with me. “I should get going.”

This got Patrick’s attention, and he looked up. “Now? I thought you’d stay for dinner, at least. Alex says he’s going to cook lamb chops.”

Alex laughed. “Dude.”

I looked at him. “Now you know the real reason he’s letting you stay.”

My teasing, too, had a ring of truth to it, but Patrick didn’t seem to care.

“It’s okay. I like to cook.”

In the background, the music of the game blared on and on, though I couldn’t blame my inching headache on that. I looked at Patrick again, settled so neatly on his couch with his book, and his friends around him, catering to him. Giving him whatever he wanted. Patrick annoyed me sometimes, the way anyone can on occasion. I hadn’t hated him in a long time, but I remembered, suddenly, how it felt to hate him.

“I’m sure they’ll be delicious, Alex, but I can’t stay. It was nice meeting you.” I reached for his hand, and he took mine. Shook it firmly and let it drop.

He put his palms on his hips. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

“Well, if you ever come back to visit Patrick, I’m sure you will.” I was already turning to go.

“I’m staying in the area, actually. I got another consulting job. Just short-term.”

I paused. Patrick looked up. He put down his book.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“My contact with Hershey Foods just got back to me,” Alex said. “I’ll be here for about six months. Maybe eight, depending.”

This caught Patrick’s attention and he sat straight up. “Where are you staying?”

“Not here, don’t worry.” Alex laughed. “I’ve got a room booked at the Hotel Hershey for a week, but I’m looking for a place to rent for the rest of the time.”

The sound of heels echoing on the wooden floors of my too-empty extra apartment rang in my ears, along with the ka-ching of a cash register. “I have a place you might be interested in.”

Both men gazed at me then. Patrick’s brows had raised. Alex looked assessing.

“I bought a building,” I explained. “An old firehouse. I live on the second floor, but the ground-floor apartment is vacant and partially furnished.”

“You told me you didn’t want to deal with the hassle of having a tenant.” Patrick’s tone, faintly accusatory, put a small curl in my lip.

Alex, on the other hand, let his gaze drift back and forth between the two of us before his mouth tipped up a fraction at the corners. “Where’s your place, Olivia?”

“Annville.”

I said it just as Patrick said, “The middle of nowhere.”

“Annville,” I repeated, “is about twenty minutes from Hershey. Same distance as from here.”

“Sounds great. When can I see it?”

“How about right now?”

Alex smiled. “Perfect.”

Chapter Three

Alex drove a crappier car than I expected. I hadn’t noticed the baby-shit-brown sedan parked along the street in front of Patrick’s house the night before. It probably looked much better in the dark.

“Rental,” he explained when I stared at it.

I’d parked my own car with the pride of privilege in Patrick and Teddy’s narrow driveway in front of the garage. “Mine’s around back. I’ll pull out and wait for you so you can follow. Oh, and let me get your cell number in case we get separated.”

He had a crappy car but a very, very nice and shiny new iPhone, the latest model. “Yeah, I’d better take yours, too.”

There was nothing strange about this exchange. Hell, random strangers gave each other their numbers all the time. Texting had replaced normal face-to-face conversations. Pretty soon we’d all just implant chips in our heads and never leave our houses. Even so, tapping his long and unfamiliar number into my phone felt somehow intimate and strangely permanent.

“Now you,” Alex said, and held up the phone’s camera. “Smile.”

“Oh, you’re not—”

Too late; he’d taken the shot, and held it up to show me how I had a place now in his list of contacts. I was smiling, my head half turned, and the light was better than I’d thought, the picture clear and crisp. I’d be in his phone forever, or until he deleted me.

Alex unlocked his car with the keyless remote. He’d put on a black wool peacoat with an upturned collar and a long, striped scarf. With his tousled hair and long bangs he could’ve been a catalog model, and I mentally snapped a few shots of him looking into a sunset, maybe standing next to a golden retriever, advertising something sexy like cologne or designer sunglasses. Not that I ever got those sorts of jobs, but someday I might.

He caught me looking and smiled as if he was used to being stared at. “Ready?”

“Yep. Follow me.”

He put a hand over his heart and gave a half bow. “Wherever you may go.”

My mouth opened, flippant words ready to spill out, but somehow they got tangled up on my tongue and all I managed was a smile. It had been quite a while since any man had left me speechless with something as simple as a grin and a few words. No wonder Patrick had warned me off. Alex Kennedy was trouble, unfortunately of the best kind.

And he didn’t like girls, I reminded myself. “I’ll be in the silver Impala.”

I kept my eye on him in the rearview mirror the entire trip, but Alex had no trouble navigating the sparse traffic and keeping up with me. We pulled into the alley next to the three-story building that had once been the firehouse on Annville’s Main Street, and parked in the lot behind it. He got out before I did, and tipped his head back to look up at the building.

“Sweet.”

I felt a rush of pride as we both took a minute to look at the building’s brick backside. The iron fire escape wasn’t pretty, but even so, the building was impressive. And I owned it. The whole thing, just me.

“So, this is Annville,” Alex said.

A car crept slowly along the alley and kicked up a stray grocery bag I snagged to toss in the trash. While living in Harrisburg I wouldn’t have bothered, but since moving to the small town I’d taken more pride. “Yep. In all its glory.”

Alex, hands in his pockets, turned around in a circle to give everything another once-over. “Nice.”

I laughed as I turned the key in the back door’s lock. “It will be quite a change from your international globe-trotting.”

“That’s okay. I grew up in a small town. Not as small as this,” he amended, stepping through after me and stomping his feet on the mat. “But believe me, I wasn’t raised a world traveler.”

The long, narrow hall led to a three-story foyer with the wide, wooden spiraling staircase to our right and the door to the ground-floor apartment to the left. Directly ahead, a front door opened onto the sidewalk along Main Street, and tall windows let in a lot of light. Alex looked up, smiling, and let out a whistle.

I looked over my shoulder at him as I opened the door to the flat. “Come inside.”

It wasn’t anything special—a living room, dining area and kitchen, with a bathroom and two bedrooms that had been carved from what had once been the garage housing the fire trucks. It was darker than my place, not having the big second-and third-floor windows, but it did have immense, broad beams in the ceiling, and a nice, open layout.

“What do you think?”

Alex walked around, checking out the wooden floors, the plastered walls. He tested the spring-cushioned love seat left behind by the previous tenants, and peeked into the kitchen while I watched. He looked into one bedroom, then the other, and finally the bath. The whole tour took about seven minutes. He turned to me with a broad grin.

“I’ll take it.”

“Really? That fast, huh?”

“Sure. It beats sleeping on someone’s couch,” he said. “I like it.”

“You don’t even know the price,” I pointed out, though I hadn’t planned on charging much since the place did need some work and something was better than the nothing I’d had from it before.

“Name it.”

I thought. “Four hundred a month?”

“Sold.”

“Should I have asked for more?”

Alex looked around. “Probably. That couch adds a lot of value. The smell, especially.”

“It doesn’t smell!” I cried, horrified. “Does it smell?”

He laughed. “I’m kidding you, Olivia. It’s fine. So…you want first and last month’s rent? A security deposit? Got paperwork to sign?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Umm…”

Alex came forward, hand out. I thought he meant to shake, but when he took mine, he didn’t let go. He pumped my hand slowly, smiling. “Maybe we should just spit on our palms.”

“Wow. No. How about we skip that part. First and last month’s rent is fine, if you have it.”

“I have it.” Alex squeezed my hand and let go, then looked around again. “When can I move in?”

“Whenever you want.”

“Sweet.” He turned to me. “Next week? It’ll take some time for me to get some things shipped here. Buy a bed. That sort of thing.”

“That’s fine. I’ll get you a copy of the keys.”

Alex studied me. “You sure you don’t need references or anything like that?”

“Why? Because you’re trouble?”

Alex laughed. “Right. That’s me.”

“I can handle you,” I said.

“I’m sure you can.” Alex’s stomach rumbled suddenly and loudly. After the pancake orgy earlier I’d have thought I wouldn’t eat until the next day, but of course my own stomach had to answer his. “Let me take you to dinner.”

“It’s only three o’clock.”

“Late lunch, then.” He grinned. “Where do you want to go?”

“Alex…I really need to get some work done.”

“Olivia,” he wheedled, a man totally used to getting his own way. “I heard your stomach rumbling. You can’t deny you’re hungry.”

I’d known him for less than forty-eight hours and already I’d seen how he looked when he came, tasted his cooking, had my ass handed to me playing Dance Dance Revolution, and now I was going to practically be living with him.

I let Alex take me to dinner, too.

It was hard to eat while laughing, and he wasn’t giving me much chance to do anything else. Alex had stories, and if I could tell that many of them were exaggerated for effect, it was also easy to believe them. He’d been all over, done so much, that I felt like a real country mouse beside him.

“What is your story, really?” I said over slices of cheesecake and mugs of espresso. “How’d you make it here from Japan?”

“I came from Holland, actually. Before that I was in Singapore. Went to Scotland, too.”

I made a face. “Smart-ass. You didn’t come to Central PA just to visit Patrick?”

“Well…” Alex shrugged. “He invited me, for one thing, and it was on my way back home. Plus I had a lead on this consulting gig. It all worked out.”

“Where’s home?”

“I’m from Ohio. Sandusky.”

“Cedar Point!” I said. “I’ve been there.”

“Yeah. That’s the place.” Alex drank some espresso and leaned back in the booth. He still wore the long scarf, though his peacoat was scrunched in a pile by his side. “I thought I’d get back there for the holidays, but it looks like I’ll be staying here instead.”

“How come?”

This time Alex did more than glance at me. He gave me the full weight of his gaze. “I haven’t been back in a long time. Sometimes, the longer you stay away from something the harder it is to go back there.”

I knew that already. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. So…you don’t get along with your family?”

A pause, a breath. He raised a brow.

“Too personal?” I asked.

“No. Just not sure how to answer.”

“You don’t have to,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. Have you heard the expression ‘home is the place where they have to take you in’? Or whatever it is?”

“Of course.” I licked the tines of my fork and then dragged it through the chocolate syrup on my plate.

“Well, let’s just say I’m more of a ‘you can never go home again’ type of guy.”

“Wow. That’s too bad.”

“Yeah. I guess so. I used to not get along with my family at all. My dad was…” Alex hesitated again, then kept going before I could tell him once more he didn’t have to speak. “He’s an asshole. I was going to say he was an asshole, but I guess he still is. He doesn’t drink anymore, but he’s kind of an ass, anyway. I think that’s just who he is.”

I sipped at the last of my coffee. “But?”

“But he’s trying. I guess. Not that I think my dad and I are ever going to go on that big father-son fishing trip or anything,” he added.

“You never know.”

“I know,” Alex said pointedly. “But at least he talks to me when I call home. And he cashes the checks I send. Well, hell, he always did that.”

Alex laughed. I laughed a second later, thinking I should feel a little awkward about this sharing but…not.

“People change,” I said.

“Everything changes.” Alex shrugged and looked away. “Shit happens. Anyway, I’d been working overseas for a long time. Sold my company a few years ago and wasn’t doing a whole lot. I went back home for the summer and…fuck.”

A harsh word, a little out of place for the circumstances. It put me on the edge of my seat. It sounded good, coming from him, as if he said it a lot. He must’ve been keeping himself in line until now. I liked thinking he might be letting go.

“Let’s just say I remembered all the reasons I’d left home in the first place.” He flicked his bangs from his face with a practiced jerk. “Anyway, I got some offers to do some consulting, got a start with a new company. Traveled for a while, went back overseas. Worked for a while in Japan. That’s where I met Patrick. But the job ended and I had to go somewhere. Thought I’d travel around my homeland instead of being a stranger in a strange land.”