All Shook Up Read online

  His problems should be so simple. It had eaten holes in his gut when she’d pushed past him and stomped off, saying cocks were a dime a dozen and maybe she’d just go find another one to finish the job. He’d started after her in a red-hot lather, only to be brought up short by the realization that he was still working. He’d never cheated an employer of an honest day’s work in his life, and it wasn’t until it was much too late to matter that he’d remembered he was the employer. By then, of course, she was long gone.

  He was an idiot. A freaking idiot. He could have had her, and he sure as hell hadn’t stopped because of any lousy scruples about her being some Goody Two-Shoes. He’d stopped because he’d almost blurted how much he’d wanted to make love to her. To make love. Jesus Jake. Two lousy weeks in this place and he was turning into someone he didn’t even recognize.

  The fact was, he was nursing a bad case of blue balls and had no one to blame for it but himself. Forget semantics—call what they’d been about to do fucking or call it making love, but what it boiled down to was one fact: they had been about to do it, and he’d let the opportunity pass him by. If he hadn’t gotten all shook up over a stupid word, he would’ve finally satisfied this burning need to know what it felt like to be deep inside her. By now everything could have been back to normal. But oh, no, he’d had to…

  The threshold he’d been planing faster and faster suddenly swam into focus, and he saw that he’d reduced it to about the depth of a toothpick. “Son of a bitch!” In a rare, unchecked fit of temper, he flung the wood plane out into the yard. If that wasn’t just frigging great! Now he’d have to find a piece of wood to rebuild it, or he’d have the wind whistling through here like a goddam Kansas prairie. Of all the stupid, rank amateur, dumb-ass mistakes—

  “That’s what I like about you, Carver,” commented a cool voice. “Your unquenchable cheer.”

  J.D.’s head snapped up and his heart began to thud against his rib cage. Dru walked toward him across the clearing. She was dressed in her usual work uniform of sleeveless polo shirt and walking shorts, but just for a second he got a flash of the image he feared was seared on his retinas for all time: hair tumbled, mouth red and swollen from his kisses, bare breasts thrusting up at him while a flush suffused her from chest to forehead.

  His dick started to twitch to life, and swearing beneath his breath, he surged to his feet. He wasn’t even going to go there. He’d burned that bridge and it was probably a damn good thing. It was time he got his ass back to a businesslike neutrality when it came to her. From now on, he was Switzerland.

  And damned if he’d let himself wonder if she’d gone out and found another man after she’d left him the other night, either.

  He surreptitiously adjusted himself before he crossed the porch and ambled down the stairs. He bent over to pick up the plane, then straightened to watch her traverse the final few yards. She had a pair of quik-grips in her right hand.

  She held the bar clamps out to him. “Here. Aunt Soph said you’d asked for these and she’d neglected to bring them when she stopped by earlier.”

  “Thanks.” She looked as though she were ready to turn right around and leave, and he heard himself explain, “I’ve got to glue some pieces back together on my canoe, so I needed these to hold it together until it dries.”

  “Hmmm.” She couldn’t have looked more disinterested, and once again she made as if to leave. But then she hesitated and glanced toward the canoe, which rested upside down on the porch, and at the pile of wood shavings where the threshold used to be. She gave the latter an unsmiling nod. “What are you doing there?”

  “The door sticks when it gets damp, and my original plan was to shave a little off the threshold so it’ll open and close more smoothly.”

  “Looks like you shaved off more than a little.”

  He shrugged. “I got carried away. Now I have to rebuild the damn thing.”

  “Is that why you threw your thingamajig?”

  “It’s a wood plane. And yeah.” He rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. “Not very mature of me.”

  She simply stared at him.

  “I was frustrated.” And he was getting more frustrated by the minute. Dammit, did she have to be so damned distant? She talked to him as if he were one of the guests—so freaking polite, you’d never suspect they’d been all over each other the other night.

  The thought hauled him up short. Jesus, Carver, can you possibly be a bigger ass? He acted as if she’d been the one to cut things off instead of him. No doubt she was behaving exactly the way she thought he’d prefer.

  The way he should prefer…yet somehow didn’t.

  The truth was, he didn’t have a clue to how to talk to her today. Yet he didn’t want her to leave.

  He made another attempt at conversation. “I notice the sous-chef is back at work. Did you decide to give him another chance, then?”

  “Yes. I ran into him shortly after I left…um.” Her gaze shifted away in her obvious discomfort at bringing up a reminder of their encounter; then she squared her shoulders and gave him a level look. “He was down by the lake and in no shape to be near the water or on the road, so I manhandled him up to the lodge and got him settled for the night in a spare room.” Her shoulders hitched delicately. “He assured me yesterday that if he had any further problems, he wouldn’t handle them by trying to drown them in a bottle, so I’ve put him on probation.”

  It was a perfectly polite recital of the facts—and it made him crazy. Would it kill her to inject the smallest inflection into her voice? It wasn’t as if he were asking her to jump for joy or even smile at him—although she sure as hell was quick enough to smile at everybody else. Surely she could spare a meager hint of warmth. Was that asking so fucking much?

  But then, why should he expect otherwise? She wasn’t the great Edwina’s relative for nothing. The Lawrences were real big on offering affection and then yanking it away just when you thought it might be safe to reach out for it.

  J.D. drew himself up. “Well, I’m sure you’ve got things to do,” he said flatly. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  “What?” She blinked those intensely blue eyes at him. Then they went all frosty and she, too, drew herself up. “Oh. Yes, of course.” She surveyed him dispassionately. “Good luck with your canoe and your thingamabob there.” She waved vaguely at the pile of wood curls that used to be his threshold. Then she turned and walked away.

  J.D. went back to work. It was quite a while before it dawned on him that if Dru had been busy settling in the drunken sous-chef, she probably hadn’t had the time to carry through on her threat to find herself a stud. Good. He could just shelve this stupid-ass jealousy once and for all. Get back to his real life.

  So why did he still feel like putting his fist through the nearest wall?

  14

  Butch stopped to pick up a six-pack of beer on his way home. It was celebration time. He’d just completed his last day on the current job and the next one didn’t start until the middle of the month. So he had a couple of weeks to enjoy the summer weather, maybe go down to Alki and watch the girls in their bikinis in-line-skate along the path fronting the beach. Life was good.

  It would be a helluva lot better, though, if the family of the man he’d accidentally shot would quit agitating for their brother’s case to be kept open. Unfortunately, it had been a slow couple of weeks, newswise, so the local stations kept running the damn story with updates on the family’s sense of outrage. One of the younger, more militant members had even insisted it was a hate crime based on the store clerk’s race.

  What a crock of shit. It was a fucking accident; if the clerk hadn’t made that dumb move that looked as if he were going for a gun, he never would’ve been hurt. His stupidity was what had gotten him killed—he could have been frigging purple and it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. They oughtta just let him rest in peace.

  But what the hell, it couldn’t last much longer. Statistics were in Butch’s favor—a
more newsworthy story was bound to break any minute now; then today’s filler would become yesterday’s sound bite. Besides, it wasn’t like J.D. had ever resurfaced, so even if the damn stations did squeeze another ounce of drama out of a story that had already been sucked dry, chances were he was already somewhere halfway across the country where he’d never hear it, anyhow.

  Butch collected the mail from the row of mailboxes on the apartment building’s first floor but didn’t bother sorting through it as he climbed the stairs to his apartment. What was the point—all it ever contained was either bills or Gina’s beauty magazines and catalogs. Mail was strictly her territory.

  He let himself into the apartment and tossed the stack on the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. He put the six-pack in the fridge, pulled out a bottle, and popped the cap. Grabbing a bag of chips from the counter as he passed by, he headed into the living room and turned on the tube.

  He was still sitting there, a pile of greasy crumbs and a half circle of empty bottles on the coffee table in front of him, when Gina got home from work.

  She took one look at the mess and snarled, “Dammit, Butch! Pick that shit up!” Without awaiting a response, she dropped her purse on the counter and continued on into the bedroom.

  A few minutes later she reemerged, wearing skintight jeans and a red sweater. She scowled at the mess that still cluttered the table. “I told you to clean that up.”

  Butch slouched lower on his tailbone. “C’mon over here and make me.”

  She snorted. “Forget it. I’m not in the mood for a hump. And I’m not your fucking maid, either.”

  “Hey, who asked you to be? I’ll clean it up when I’m done here.”

  “Yeah, right. I’ll hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Your idea of cleaning up is carrying your mess into the kitchen and dumping it on the counter for me to deal with.”

  “Grouse all you want, babe.” He folded his hands behind his head and smirked at her. “We both know you’re just jealous because my job’s finished and I’m on vacation. Well, tough. I’m in the mood to celebrate, and you’re not gonna screw it up for me.”

  She shrugged and picked up the mail. Butch heard her mumbling under her breath over the bills as she sorted through them. Then she suddenly looked up.

  “Hey, did you know J.D.’s east of the mountains?”

  Butch froze, his beer bottle suspended mid-tip. He lowered it without draining the last sip, a queasy feeling commencing a slow roll in his gut. “J.D.’s still in the state?”

  “Yeah, in the Okanogan, it looks like. I wondered where he’d gotten himself off to; I haven’t seen him around lately. Here, he sent you a postcard.” She flipped it in his direction, then rose from her stool. “I guess I oughtta figure out what to get out for dinner. Would it kill you to get it started once in a while? You get home before I do.”

  He wasn’t listening. He got up off the couch to scoop the brightly colored postcard off the carpet, where it had landed a few feet away. Turning it over, he read the message. His legs went rubbery beneath him and he stumbled back to the sofa. He dropped down with uncoordinated abruptness, and for several long moments he simply sat on the edge of the cushion where he’d landed and stared at the card in his hand.

  Eastern Washington? J.D. was just over the mountains in frigging eastern Washington? Where the hell was this Star Lake place, anyway? He’d never heard of it. The card said in the beautiful Okanogan, but where, exactly? That covered a helluva lot of territory.

  Christ. He rubbed a hand over his face. He’d thought for sure J.D. had headed down to California, or maybe lit out east. East of the mountains had never even occurred to him. There was bupkes construction going on over there for one thing, and besides, Butch had visited that side of the Cascades once when he and J.D. had decided to try their hand at fishing, and he’d never understood why anyone in their right mind would want to go back. It was just one big wasteland, as far as he could see, all ugly brown terrain and sagebrush.

  But I’m still expecting to see your face plastered on the six o’clock news any day now.

  Ah, man. Every one-stoplight little town they’d stopped at on that trip’d had cable television, since without it reception was nonexistent. And on those cable TVs had been the three main Seattle channels, KING, KIRO, and KOMO.

  Two of which were currently airing the brouhaha stirred up by the clerk’s family.

  Shitfuckhell. If J.D. caught sight of one of those reports, he’d be back so fast Butch wouldn’t know what hit him. For all he knew, J.D. was on his way back over the mountains this very minute.

  He shoved to his feet. He’d made one little mistake and he was sorry as could be about it, but it was over and done, and there wasn’t one frigging thing that could be done about it now. He sure as hell couldn’t raise the freakin’ dead.

  Well, damned if he was going to let J.D. screw up his life over some sorry-ass clown who didn’t have the brains to put his hands in the air when a gun was aimed his way. Butch was going to find himself an atlas and see where this Star Lake town was located. Then he’d just have to take himself a little trip.

  Timing was on his side, at least—he had a couple of weeks before his next job started, so he wouldn’t have Gina riding his back because he’d cut out on work. His mistake was relaxing his guard in the first place—but he’d take care of it now. No way in hell did he plan to put up with having the constant threat of exposure hanging over his head. That was no way to live, and it was clear that the time had come to make his move. From now on, he followed the Golden Rule According to Dickson.

  He’d do unto J.D. before J.D. had the opportunity to undo him.

  Dru’s office door banged open and Tate and Billy raced in. “We’re tired of playing Ping-Pong,” Tate said. “We’re gonna go set up a fort in the woods.”

  She glanced out the window. It had been threatening rain since yesterday, but although dark-bottomed clouds boiled low in the sky, the rain still hadn’t materialized. “Okay, but make me a map of where you plan to set up this fort so I can find you if I need to.”

  “’Kay. Can we ask the Eagle’s Nest to pack us a lunch?”

  “If they aren’t too busy. No pop, though. Ask them to throw in a couple of cartons of milk.”

  “Ah, man,” he groused. But then he grinned at her and raced out as precipitously as he’d entered, Billy hot on his heels.

  Dru smiled and shook her head. She got up to close the door they’d left wide open, then returned to the paperwork on her desk.

  The intercom buzzed a short while later, and without taking her attention away from the report in front of her, she reached over to activate it. “Yes?”

  “Dru, it’s Sally. I’ve got a map at the front desk that Tate and his friend dropped off, and you’ve got a visitor. Do you have time to see Kev Bronsen?”

  “Kev?” She straightened in her seat. “Yes, sure, send him in.”

  It seemed as if she’d just taken her finger off the intercom button when he opened the door and stuck his head in. “I hope this isn’t a horrible time. I know I shouldn’t interrupt you at work.”

  “Actually, I skipped lunch, so I could use a break.” She smiled, genuinely happy to see him. They’d always had a wonderfully uncomplicated relationship. “Wanna go down to the Nest and grab a sandwich?”

  “That’d be great.”

  Seated across from him at a small table several minutes later, she openly studied him. Kev had always been good-looking. Now he also possessed a sophistication and polish that he hadn’t had as a teenager.

  He thrust his long legs out in the aisle on the side where they wouldn’t pose a threat to anyone walking by, tipped back his chair, and gave her a crooked smile. He raised his brows inquiringly when she continued to stare. “What?”

  “I was just thinking how very big-city polished you look. Do we seem like rubes to you now?” They must, she thought as she took in his expensively barbered brown hair and the casual coupling of
his fine-gauge cashmere sweater with a threadbare pair of Levi’s.

  “My first couple of years away, I probably would have said yes,” he admitted with a shrug. “I was pretty full of myself then, and way prouder than it merited that I’d gotten out of here. But I’ve learned that people are pretty much people wherever you go, and a little of the basic decency you find in the folks around here goes a lot further in the long run than the surface sophistication of the city. Trust me, Dru, you scratch that, and nine times out of ten, you’re gonna find some poor slob harboring a shitload of insecurities.”

  Because he looked disillusioned, she said with deliberate dryness, “I wouldn’t be too quick to romanticize small-town folks, if I were you. Your memory can’t be all that short, and not everyone around here is as decent as yours truly, you know.”

  He laughed. “Believe me, I haven’t forgotten what a hotbed of gossip this burg can be.” He studied her as thoroughly as she’d studied him. “For instance, rumor has it that you and Carver were kissing on his porch.” He gave her a reproachful look. “I thought you had better taste than that.”

  “Please.” Dru chortled. “This from the guy who chased Terry McMann for an entire year back in high school. Don’t talk to me about better taste.”

  “Hey, she had great tits and she was accommodating in the backseat of Dad’s Chevy; it didn’t get much better than that.” He smiled reminiscently. “Whatever happened to Terry, anyhow?”

  “She got religion and teaches Sunday school in Yakima. I heard she wears orthopedic shoes now, and has a passel of kids.”