Nanny for the Army Rangers by Krista Wolf

 

Sixteen

 

 

DELILAH

I hit the STOP button on the boombox’s ancient cassette player, which was belting out the heaviest of heavy metal tunes. The music stopped instantly. My ears rang in the sudden silence.

“Why don’t you take a break for a minute?”

Duncan was a good ten feet up on an extension ladder, spackling drill holes in the sheetrock. He glanced down at me, drenched in sweat.

“I brought iced tea.”

His frown at the sudden musical intrusion turned into a smile. He climbed down, still shirtless. His tan, muscled body was covered in splatters of white joint compound, in varying degrees of drying on his flawless skin.

“Sweetened or unsweetened?” he asked.

“Roll the dice and find out.”

He took one of the glasses from the tray I held, and I took the other. Duncan toasted me with a tired grin, then tilted his head back and drank. His Adam’s apple bobbed sexily as the cool liquid flowed down his perfect throat.

Wow.

I tried to avert my eyes before I was caught gawking, but there was really nowhere else to look. His broad chest was shirtless and sculpted, his arms ripped from God-only-knew how many missions or exercises or whatever it was Army Rangers did. I was learning a little bit about their military service and their civilian lives, but I was also busy with the twins. Except for right now during their nap-time, when I had a daily break.

“This is good,” he declared, setting the empty glass back down. The ice-cubes rattled noisily before settling. “Got another?”

“Here,” I laughed. “Take mine. I’m not thirsty anyway.”

He shot me a sideways glance, perhaps at the last thing I’d just said, then drained half of the next glass too. While he drank, I picked up the cassette’s case and turned it over in my palm. The date on the Dokken album was 1984. Absently, I wondered how many times it had been played between then and now.

“Haven’t seen one of these except in my parent’s attic,” I smiled, remembering. “So you’re a vintage guy, huh?”

“I used to have an older cousin,” he explained. “He willed me about a million cassettes and that old boombox when he died.”

“Oh,” I said awkwardly.

“Overdose. Fentanyl.”

I lowered my eyes. “I’m sorry Duncan.”

“Don’t be,” he countered. “He was a lot older than me and I barely knew him. I’m pretty sure he willed me this thing as a joke,” he nodded toward the oversized cassette player, “but it turns out I love it. Some of the old metal albums from the 80’s are pretty amazing. Who would’ve thought, right?”

I smiled, admiring his positive spin on what for most people could’ve been a sad situation. He looked happy, if a little exhausted. He’d come straight back from the city this morning and went right to work on the house.

“If you don’t mind,” he pointed upward, “I’d like to finish this coat of spackle before—”

“I kissed Liam last night,” I blurted out abruptly. “Julius too.”

As far as I was concerned it was like ripping off a Band-aid: it hurt less if you did it quickly. And I really needed to do it.

“I know,” said Duncan, without missing a beat.

I couldn’t hide my look of incredulity if I’d wanted to. “You know?” I gasped. “How?”

“They told me,” Duncan said simply. Reaching into the spackle bucket, he began slathering more of the white pasty compound into his mud pan.

My jaw was halfway to the floor. I picked it up.

“W—Why would they… I mean, how would—”

“We don’t keep secrets, the guys and I,” Duncan explained simply. “It’s always been that way. Out on the battlefield, back at home — it’s all out in the open.”

There was an awkward pause, interrupted only by the scraping of his spackle-knife. “Oh,” was all I could think of to say.

“Liam, Julius and I are a team,” he went on. “We share everything. It’s best that way.”

I squinted back at him. “So you’re not even mad?”

“Why would I be mad?” Duncan shrugged. “You’re a grown woman. They’re grown men. You can do whatever you want.”

“Well I was very tired,” I explained, “they were buzzed. It was after midnight. Everyone was loopy, and it just sort of—”

He dropped a hand on my shoulder, adding a wry smile. “Delilah, it’s okay.”

I thought this morning might be awkward, especially since Liam and Julius were already in the kitchen — and of course fully worked out — by the time I dragged myself out of bed. I was already feeling guilty for a lack of willpower the night before, so it didn’t help that they were all pumped and glistening and just about stripped down for the shower.

But they made me coffee, and they even apologized for last night. I told them there was nothing to be sorry for. That I didn’t regret a single thing, which I really didn’t.

The conversation might’ve gotten even more interesting, but Courtney had chosen that moment to wake up. Her soft coos and cries began emanating from the baby monitor clipped to my hip.

“Did you think I’d be upset?” Duncan was asking. His dark eyes, which somehow perfectly matched his goatee, flashed dangerously as he awaited my answer.

“Not necessarily,” I said hastily. “But I didn’t want you to feel…”

“Left out?”

“Yes.”

He smiled again before moving a hand back to the ladder. Just before he turned to start climbing again, I crossed my arms.

“You can kiss me if you want to,” I said, as casually as if I were offering him another iced tea. “You know, to even the score.”

Duncan’s beautiful mouth twisted into a half-grin. “Really?”

My heart began a double-time rhythm. What the hell was I doing?

“It’s only fair,” I shrugged. “You did say the three of you share everything. Why not even things out?”

For a long moment he did nothing. Then, moving carefully, I watched him set the mud pan down on the covered piece of mystery furniture he’d been using as a work table.

“I’ve never kissed a girl just to even things out,” he said glibly.

He was toe to toe with me now, face to face. The heat coming off his naked skin was palpable. His shoulders were so big and wide, they seemed to eclipse everything else in the room.

“Well now’s your chance,” I told him.

His eyes were shrewd, and they regarded me carefully. At any moment his arms would reach out. His hands would grasp my shoulders, or maybe he’d pull me in by the hips…

“Do you want to kiss me?” he asked.

I wasn’t ready for the question at all. I was too busy prepping for the kiss.

“I uh, I’m just offering. It’s up to you.”

His hands slid forward not toward me, but along his own massive forearms. He crossed them over his chest and shook his head.

“That’s not an answer.”

Once more my eyes crawled his shirtless body. I had the urge to reach out and rub my hands up his chest, then over his shoulders and down his arms. I could pretend I was scraping off all the pieces of hardened spackle. Shit, the gesture might even be plausible.

“Every time I’ve kissed a girl it’s because she wanted me to kiss her,” Duncan said matter-of-factly. “Not to even things out. Not to pay off some imaginary debt.”

I bit my lip in confusion. This wasn’t what I was expecting at all!

“I’m going to have to think about it,” he said, sweeping up his tools under one arm. Before I could say another word, he began climbing the ladder.

“You should think about it too,” he called down, before the scraping started up again.