Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy (10 page)

Don’t get distracted.  Remember your evil plan!

“Can I get you a beer?” I asked, stepping away from the counter.

Ed nodded, and I got one from the fridge, uncapped it, and set it next to him.  I almost felt a little guilty as he took his first sip.  Almost.

Taking my spot across the table from him, I started cutting up peaches.  I kept casting glances his way from under my lashes, wondering about him.  Wondering what he was hiding.

He was good with a chef’s knife, and efficient, chopping the potatoes in neat, even pieces.  His hands were strong and competent, his forearms lightly tanned under his rolled-up sleeves.  I sliced my own fruit automatically, my heart racing in the silence that stretched out between us.

He glanced at my cutting board.  “Those look good,” he said.

“Dotty got a couple flats of them at Costco and spread the love.  You wanna try?”  I held a piece of peach out at his mouth level, perfectly aware of what I was doing—attempting to do.  I wanted to feed it to him, wanted to feel those lips slide against my fingers.

I enjoyed Ed.  I enjoyed flirting with him, and I enjoyed that confused look on his face.  I wanted to see what he’d do…

He reached out and plucked it from my fingers with his own.

Damn it.

But then, holding my gaze, he popped it into his mouth.  His eyes glimmered with a gentle amusement, and at the same time, they seemed warm with something else.  I watched the muscles in his jaw flex as he chewed, watched him swallow and lick the juice from those scrumptious lips.

My body responded as if he were giving me that look from between my naked thighs.  Lust rushed through me, such a heavy surge of it that its demanding roar filled my ears.  I swayed, a hairsbreadth away from climbing over the table to claim that naughty mouth for myself.

I wanted him.  I wanted Ed. 
With a madness.

“Sweet,” he said approvingly.  Then he went back to chopping.

I stood panting on the other side of the table, my lower belly tight as a guitar string, my sight hazed by lust. 
Down girl,
I yelled at myself. 
Down!  Not the time or place!  Get ahold of yourself!

Something cool dribbling on my foot helped.  I jumped back and realized these peaches were so damn juicy, they were now forming a puddle on my floor. “Hell.  I need a paper towel,” I said, trying to catch the running juice in my hands.

Ed fetched a couple from their rack, and I started to mop up the mess.

“Would you like a bowl?” he asked.

“That’d be wonderful,” I said, looking up at him from where I’d crouched to press the wadded paper towels to the puddle on the floor.

He fetched one from the bottom cabinet next to the sink, set the bowl next to my cutting board, and scooped the sliced peaches in.  Then he found a pot, filled it with water, and set it to boil for the potatoes.

I mopped up the splatters, grimacing as I spread sticky juice around.  When I stood up, planning to get a dish cloth, it took me a moment to find him.

Ed was crouched next to my lower cabinet door, fiddling with it.  He glanced up and caught me looking.  “Your cabinet handle was loose.”

When I walked closer, I could see him tightening the screws with his Leatherman.  He opened the other door to tighten those, too.

As I returned to my peaches, he tightened the next set of cabinet hardware.  As I mixed up my flour and oats and butter and sugar for the crisp’s topping, he tightened the one after that.  I watched him, bemused.

How could a person be so completely opposite the crazy blonds outside?  Where they destroyed, he fixed.  Where they were loud, he was quiet.  Where they were light, he was dark.

I was moving to wash my hands when my hip caught the handle of a measuring cup sticking out over the edge of the table.  I tried to catch it, but fumbled it instead.  It clattered as it hit the floor, and dusted the tile with flour.

“Let me get it,” Ed said.  He’d been crouched next to the final set of cabinets, and he lowered himself to one knee as he reached to pick it up.

The moment seemed to slow down for me.  I was drawn in by the sight of his strong, tanned fingers clasping the white plastic.  When he held it up to me, I followed the path of his arm up to his eyes.

I lost my breath.  I don’t know what it was about this man, on his knees, but…
wow
.  If I thought my sudden arousal of a few minutes ago was strong, I’d been wrong.  This surge of lust,
this
one, thundered through me like 180 wild horses.  It trampled my resolve even as it carried me away.  It shocked me to stillness, blew my hair back… and left everything else in the dust.

I wanted to do things to him.  I wanted to rip his shirt open and push it back over his shoulders, trapping his arms behind him.  I wanted to lean down and bite his lips.  All while he was on his knees before me.  I’d shove my hands down his collar, unheeding of where I left butter and sugar and cinnamon.  I’d drag my nails up his back, and then bury my fingers in his hair.  I’d ravage that mouth, discover every square inch of it that I couldn’t see.

My eyes refocused. From the way he was looking at me, I got the feeling he maybe knew what I was picturing.  I realized he was still holding out that measuring cup.

I took it from him.

He shifted in preparation to move back to his cabinet.

“Whoops,” I said.

I let the measuring cup slip through my fingers.  It clattered against the floor, shaking a second layer of white dust onto his knee and my toes.

He paused, looking down at the cup.  I could see his shoulders moving as he breathed.  Whatever he was feeling, he was feeling it strongly.

I was pushing him, I knew that.  My heart thudded, watching him, waiting to see what he’d do.

He shifted slowly back toward me, and reached out with an equally slow motion that put his face within inches of my hip.  He grasped the handle, and paused there.  My body tingled, straining toward him.  I wanted him to circle his now flour-dusted hand around my ankle, smooth it slowly up to my thigh.  I wanted his mouth on my belly.  Then, lower.  The spot pulsed, aching for him.

It was with regret that I watched him straighten back up.  But then his head tilted back, and his eyes flicked up to mine.  They were deep, dark, and full of burning emotion, like a window had been opened straight to his soul.  I saw it right there in that moment.  Ed wasn’t just a nice, shy guy who happened to be good with a screwdriver.

Ed was strong.  Carnal.  Commanding. 

And he was on his knees before me, looking up at me like he wanted to eat me alive.

I reached for him.

The screen door opened.  “Are we late?” Helly asked.  She and Gary clattered through the door, her with two bottles of wine, him with a box of beer.

Ed stayed where he was, looking at me challengingly.  And right then, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  I wanted to spank him as much as I probably deserved to be spanked.

I took the measuring cup from the object of my growing fascination, and stepped away.  “Nope,” I said, turning toward her.  “We were just getting the potato salad around, and I’m finishing up a peach crisp.”

Behind them, J.D. slipped in the door, a silent blond shadow.  I hadn’t expected him, but as I’d said, the more the merrier.

“Ooo.”  Helly made a beeline for my leftover peaches.  She set down the booze and shamelessly carved herself a slice.  She seemed completely oblivious to the sexual tension she had walked in on.

But J.D., not so much.  He’d pulled up short just inside the door, and was glancing back and forth between me and Ed—who’d moved back to my cabinet handles.

Chapter
Nine

H
elly and I chatted while I finished up dessert, and Ed stirred together the potato salad.  Gary and J.D. carried dishes to the table up on the deck, and hunted up a few extra chairs.

They were back in the kitchen, poaching my peaches, when the older two brothers banged in carrying a platter of ribs.  Zack and Rory’s eyes went straight to Ed.

“Ah.  Figures you’d be in the kitchen with the women,” Zack said.

Ed looked up at him, his expression mild as milk.  “There aren’t many places better to be,” he replied.  Helly giggling as Gary crowded close to wipe a smear of flour off her nose emphasized his point.

Rory grunted.  “What’d you do to get invited to dinner, anyway?”  His tone implied it’d been something cheap and dirty.

Ed hesitated.  He glanced at me.

“He rescued me,” I said.  At the time of the invite, I thought it’d be interesting to throw Ed and the brothers together, see what happened. Now, I was interested to find myself feeling oddly protective where he was concerned.

“
Rescued
you?”

“She fainted and fell in the river,” Helly said, talking around the last peach slice.

I winced, and with good reason.  Everyone with a penis was staring at me.

“You fell in the river?” Rory asked, right over top of Zack’s, “You
fainted
?”  Rory stifled his chortle for a moment, but then quit trying.  Zack joined in, and they brayed like a pair of asses.

I wondered, suddenly, how I’d ever found them attractive.  I’d been wanting to be the meat in their sandwich, and now I wasn’t sure if I’d ever live down the shame.  Where before it’d been arousal making my blood pound thick and hot, now it was embarrassment with a side of irritation.

“You can take those ribs up onto the deck,” I said, wanting to get rid of them ASAP. 

The brothers may not have heard me.  They didn’t move, except to shake with laughter.

“Now,” Ed added, his tone deadly.

The brothers went silent, staring at Ed.  Testosterone was suddenly a perfume in the air.

In my periphery, I could see J.D. shaking his head.  It looked like he was trying to discourage his brothers.

Rory and Zack took a step forward, and suddenly J.D. was there, one arm wrapped around each of them.  “Let’s just get those ribs to the table,” he murmured.

“But—ouch!” Rory yelped as J.D. did something painful to him.  They turned around, and J.D. herded them up the stairs.

“That was interesting,” Gary said, his tone just as mild as Ed’s expression had been.

Crack! 
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the brothers having an abrupt encounter with gravity.

“We’re okay!” called Rory.

“Dammit, guys.  I can’t take you anywhere,” Helly groused.

Oh my god.
  I didn’t even need to look.  I had a weak stair halfway up, and it hadn’t even occurred to me, but with two or three grown men on it…

I covered my eyes.  “How bad is it?” I asked no one in particular.

“They took out the left side of a couple treads,” Ed said from that direction.

“But I saved the ribs!”  This from Zack.

I didn’t take my hands from my eyes.  I didn’t want to see, couldn’t face more destruction right now.  It seemed for every step I took toward fixing my cabin, I took a bigger one in the other direction.  And I
still
had a giant hole in my roof.

I felt more than saw Ed stop in front of me.  “Well, you can still get up the steps, but… it looks like that whole middle section of your stairs is rotted, even the stringers.  Maybe the roof leaked at some point before?”

My shoulders hunched inward, and despite telling myself it was only a staircase, I found myself right back on the edge of hyperventilation.  The brothers had broken my house.  Again.  I had to walk those stairs at least twice a day, and now, apparently, they were fucked.

Ed put a warm hand on my shoulder.  “Hey.”

I finally opened my eyes and looked up at him.

“Why don’t you go on up with everybody to dinner?  I’ll put in a couple temporary treads, and join you shortly. It should only take me a few minutes.”

“You need any help with that?” Gary asked.

“Naw, I can get it.”

“Temporary?”  My throat was burning.  I would not cry in front of Ed.  I would not.

“You’re gonna need a new staircase,” he said, his voice gentle.  “That one’s not safe.”

I finally looked that direction.  Yep, my stairs were fucked.

“I always wanted a spiral staircase,” I said, trying very hard to look on the bright side.

He looked back at my stairs, his gaze thoughtful.  “Just in the corner, there, so it goes straight up to the landing?”

“Yeah.  That way, I wouldn’t be tripping on that last tread every time I try to get into the bathroom.”  It was something I’d been thinking about for a while.  The problem was the spiral stairs themselves.  You either had to buy them as a unit, and pay astronomical shipping to Alaska, pay a fabricator in Anchorage to make them, also at an astronomical cost, or have someone make them on-site.  But of course, the moment you uttered the words ‘spiral staircase’, hobbyist carpenters ran away.

Ed nodded.  “That would save a lot of room.  Big items would be harder to get upstairs, though.”

I shrugged.  I already had my bedroom furnished, so that wasn’t a problem.  And as for future items:  Where there was a will, there was a way.

Helly pushed a platter of watermelon into Gary’s hands and picked up the potato salad.  I watched them negotiate my stairs. 
Bless them
, my friends skirted the broken treads without comment.

“Why don’t you go on up?” Ed said.  “I’ll be up in a few.”

I nodded and gathered up the condiments.  Hugging the wall, I climbed to the deck.

I sat down, and the brothers quickly pulled up chairs to flank me.  Gary sat at the end of the table, with Helly at his right hand.  J.D. started to sit across from me, but Helly shooed him away.  “Nuh-uh, you’re at the end,” she said.  He looked confused, but hesitantly settled in opposite Gary.

When Rory reached for the ribs, Helly slapped his hand.  “We’re waiting for Ed,” she said.

“But they’ll get cold,” Rory whined.

Helly gave him her crazy eyes.

There was a moment of tense silence as the brothers considered staging a revolt.  Then Zack pulled that phone back out, and passed it to J.D.

Below, we heard the characteristic squeal of a nail as it was pulled.

Helly was trying to tell me something with her eyes, but it wasn’t translating as well as our usual messages.  Gary sat back, tapping his fingers, a little smile on his face.

The brothers started passing the phone back and forth across me, checking their YouTube comments.  “A million views!  We’re famous!”

I shook my head, and caught another of Helly’s exaggerated, indecipherable looks.  J.D. was glancing back and forth between us, a little frown between his brows.

From the other side of the building, a saw buzzed.

Gary held out a hand.  “Lemme see what you got there.”  He watched the video.  Then, he played it for Helly.

A hammer pounded on the stairs.  A few moments later, Ed popped up in the doorway.  He leaned the hammer against the wall, and took the last available seat.  I stared across at him, thinking he might just be most awesome human being I’d ever met.

“So, Ed,” Zack said as we started to pass the food.  “That camo paint job on your boat.  A real, authentic slice of the bush right there.  Did you paint it yourself?”

I shot him a look where he sat to my left.

“It’s a doozy.  A real chick magnet,” Rory said.  “I bet the girls flock to you when you cruise around in that beauty.”

J.D. was trying to get his brothers’ attention again, rather frantically making throat-cutting motions.

Zack snorted.  “I bet their tops just fall right off when you drive by.”

“Hey—” I started.

Rory spoke over me.  “Yeah, what’d a unique watercraft like that set you back?  Twenty bucks?”

I glanced over at Ed, wondering how he’d respond to such blatant needling.

Ed seemed calm.  Amused, even.  The corners of his beautiful lips twitched upward.

“Thank you for fixing my stairs,” I said, hoping to derail the antagonism.

He smiled at me and nodded.  Then his gaze flicked to the brothers.  “The boat leaked, and the previous owners were going to toss it out.  I patched it, and I had a free boat.  As to it being a chick magnet—” he looked across at me with laughing eyes “—Suzy drifted almost right to it, so there may be a seed of truth there.”

“I’m surprised you could even get that tub moving fast enough to rescue our girl,” Zack said, slinging his arm around me.  The offending appendage retreated fast enough when I jabbed the tender underside with my fork.

“Yeah, it does appear you’ve been cursed with a tiny engine,” Rory added.

POW!!!
  Everyone jumped.

Rory flew upright holding his eye.  “Ow!” he cried.  “What was that for?”

A cork bounced off the glassware before settling against the rim of my plate.  Across the table from us, Helly sat, relaxed, the wine bottle in her hands still aimed.  “You’re being a dick,” she informed him.

Next to her, Gary was trying—unsuccessfully—to stifle his chuckles.

“But he—” Rory started, his arm outstretched toward Zack.

“Is also being a dick.  Yes.  He’s next.  Wine, anyone?” she asked.  Without waiting for Ed’s say-so, she poured some in his glass.

We had just gotten through passing the food, when Zack spoke up again, tempting fate.  “So, Ed,” he said, “What do you do for a living?”

Yeah, Ed
, I thought, leaning forward with interest.

“This and that,” Ed said.  “A lot of handyman work.”

“Oh yeah?  How much does work like that pay?”  Triumph glimmered in Zack’s eyes.

“Not much,” Ed admitted.  “These are excellent,” he said as he started in on the ribs.

“I agree,” said J.D.  “Is this a vinegar-based barbecue sauce?”

Rory ignored his brother in favor of glowering at Ed.  “Are you married?”

Helly shot him a warning look.

“What?  It’s a fair question,” he said.  “He lives out in the woods—he could be hiding a dozen wives, and no one would ever know the difference.”

“Nope, never married,” said Ed, who I thought might have the patience of a saint.

“Girlfriend?” asked Zack.

“No.”

“Gay?” asked Rory.

I wanted to bury my face in my hands again, but I couldn’t seem to look away.

“I bet he’s a pervert,” said Zack.  “It’s always the quiet ones.”

Helly started peeling the foil away from the top of the next wine bottle.

“Why are you so interested in my sexuality?” Ed countered.

Zack ignored the question.  “No, wait. I bet he’s single ‘cuz of the beard,” he cracked.  The two just about died giggling.

“Why
do
you have so much hair on your face?” asked Rory.

“Testosterone,” said Ed.  He was making a neat incision around the inside of his watermelon rind.

Zack: “Why are you dressed like a lumberjack?  You gonna go cut down some trees?  Huh,
Ed
?”

“I might.”

J.D. was starting to look like a bobblehead as his gaze swung back and forth between his brothers and Ed.  He seemed a little pale.

I was about two seconds away from climbing onto Ed’s lap, and finding some way while I was there to make the brothers very, very sorry.  A way that would probably feature tongue.  Lots and lots of tongue.

“Ed… What’s that short for?  Edwina?”

“No.”

“Being a bona-fide bushrat,” said Zack, “I can’t help but wonder… Do you bathe regularly?”

POW!!
went the next cork, but Zack was ready, and managed to dodge it.  It bounced harmlessly off my siding.

“Certainly,” Ed said, looking unperturbed by the byplay.  “The question is, do you?”  He’d looked up with his inquiry, treating them to his deep, dark, challenging stare.

And, miracle of miracles, the brothers backed off.  They turned a little red as they let their eyes drop to their food.  It was partly because, no, having been living in my yard for the last couple days, they hadn’t been bathing regularly.  Sitting between them, I could confirm the lack by smell.  And partly… Well, that other part must have been Ed.  That look he’d given them had been quelling.

But they didn’t stay down long.  Zack turned in his seat to look down at me.  “How come you fainted?” he asked.  “You’re not pregnant, are you?  Is it his?”

J.D. sucked some wine down the wrong pipe and started to cough.  His eyes teared as he thumped on his chest.