Back in the Burbs by Tracy Wolff
Chapter Eighteen
Am I still grinning a few hours later as the sun starts to set? I am, and I kinda like it, even if my cheeks are gonna be sore tomorrow.
No doubt my back is going to be aching, too, I figure, as I grab another one of the copious trash bags I have to haul to the curb, since tomorrow is trash day. While there is a part of me that’s tempted to wait for the dumpster, I can still hear Nick’s voice telling me it might be a whole month before I get approval. I am not okay with leaving them around the house or backyard until then—not when I still have so many more rooms and closets and trunks and boxes to clean out.
Fuck my life.
Sometime around trip twelve or thirteen—when I’m hot, sweaty, and red-faced—Nick pulls into his driveway again, except this time he actually parks in the garage. Home for the night, apparently, with a life about as exciting as mine.
I head up the driveway at as fast of a clip as my exhausted body can manage—no one needs to see me like this, least of all one of the most attractive (even if he is one of the grumpiest) men I’ve ever met. I know appearances aren’t everything, but right now I look like I’ve been ridden hard and put away wet. Very wet, and not in a good way.
“Mallory!”
I freeze right there on the biggest crack in the driveway as Nick yells my name a second time. Then reality hits that he wants to talk to me—looking like this—and I take off up the driveway at twice the speed. Almost to the door, almost to the door, almost—
“Mallory! I know you hear me!” Nick’s voice rings with exasperation at the same time as his hand brushes my elbow. “What’s going on?”
A zing works its way up my arm from where he touched me. “Oh, Nick!” I press a hand to my heart and lie my ass off. “You scared me! I didn’t know you were there.”
Also, how in the fuck did he move so fast? Is his mom a vampire?
The look he gives me says bullshit, and I brace myself for him to call me out on my lie. He doesn’t, though. Instead, he takes a step back, and I realize two things. One, he looks really, really good in his black pinstripe suit—like, supermodel good. He must have changed into a different hot-guy suit after I saw him this afternoon. And for the first time in a very long time, I’m tempted to reach up and brush an errant lock of hair off a man’s forehead.
I resist, partly because I don’t want to explain to Nick why I’m petting back his hair and partly because there is no way I am going to let myself touch him in any manner. Not Nick, with his growly ways, surly attitude, and ass that defies description but makes me weak in the damn knees.
The second thing I realize, once I shake off whatever bizarre attack of formerly suppressed hormones almost crippled me just then, is that he’s carrying a folder with my name on it.
“What’s that?” I jerk my chin toward the folder with the same wariness I reserve for snakes and ex-husbands, which are basically the same thing.
“It’s just a folder with the forms you need to fill out for the dumpster.” He shrugs off my concern as if it doesn’t matter, as if something with my name on it isn’t my business. “Why?”
I shrink a little bit inside myself. “No reason, I just—”
Damn, why is it so easy to fall into old habits?
“Just what?” he asks when I don’t finish my sentence.
“I don’t have the best luck with folders.” To put it very mildly. “Especially not when they’re handed to me by a good-looking man in a suit.”
That was pretty much how Karl had told me every ounce of bad news in our marriage.