Her Gentle Gangster by Carolyn Faulkner
Chapter Four
Cara
At first,it’s amusing, what he’s doing.
And then he hands me the second check of the morning.
The crowd has gone, Diana had helped me deliver all the cakes and has hightailed it back to the house. It seems he has sold every last cake back to the shoppers. I’m standing in Michael’s doorway, half in and half out, watching him move around the kitchen. How can a person be so calm after dropping so much money on a whim?
“This is insane. You already paid for everything and more,” I say, shaking the check at him.
He pours himself a cup of coffee and offers me one. I shake my head.
“Yeah, but it didn’t quite go as planned. The only way I could make those people go away was to let them buy the damn cakes. I couldn’t very well profit off my little scheme, now, could I?”
The light in his eye lights a fire below my waist. I lick my lips.
I check the amount on the check. “Wait a minute; this is thirty dollars less than the first check. Not that I’m complaining, but….”
“I kept one for myself.”
Curious, I ask, “Which one?”
“It reminded me of you.”
I look, and on the kitchen table is the lemon blueberry layer cake. “The one with the yellow sugar daisies all over it.”
Smiling at him, I open my mouth to speak, but the words don’t come.
“I think we’re done here. Tell Bill and Corrina to come on over for cake later when they get home.”
I bite my lip. “Mom and Dad are in Barbados for their 25th anniversary. Hence why they didn’t mind me using their yard for the sale.”
He eyes me. “Barbados, huh?” He looks a little strange, a little sad. “Imagine being 46 and celebrating 25 years of marriage.”
I nod. “They’re my parents, so, yes, I can imagine.”
We share an awkward silence, and I’m not sure where to look. His stomach growls, and I have an urge to putter around his kitchen and fix him an omelet. Finally, he says, “So I’m sure you’ve got things to do. School papers to grade and such.”
I laugh. “We don’t grade papers in pre-K.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure you have things to do. Like, put tables away.”
“Diana can do it,” I say with a smirk. “Community service.”
“Do I wanna know?”
I laugh and shake my head.
“She might need you to supervise.”
“Mr. B, Michael, I’m not her parole officer. She’s a big girl. Like me.”
Michael’s jaw ticks. “Well…it was good seeing you again, Cara.”
He seems as if he’s trying to get me to walk out this door. If he’s so worried about being alone with me, he should put on a shirt.
“Let me thank you properly.” I take a step toward him. His eyes go wide, and he backs away from me.
“You have to go. You don’t need to thank me.”
“Why don’t you let me cook you breakfast.”
He dabs the corner of his eye, strangely.
“Because it would be wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Wrong, unseemly. For me to have you in my house by yourself.” He backs up again, now gripping the edge of the countertop. His knuckles are as white as the marble.
“Nonsense, I’ve been alone with you lots of times.”
“Not since you grew up into—” He blinks, darting his eyes around the room aimlessly.
“Into what?” What in the world could he mean? Surely he doesn’t mean… That would be too good to be true. I’ve dreamt about it, hoped for it. Sure, I’m here offering to cook breakfast, my heart pleading for any excuse to be close to him. But I never thought that he would reciprocate my feelings.
Finally, he pushes off the countertop and points at me. The look on his face is so severe, I flinch. “Into twelve different kinds of mind-blowing sex in a sundress.”
I gasp and blurt before I can correct myself. “Mr. Brennan.”
He takes a step toward me, and slowly I begin backing toward the door. My mind tells me to turn and run, but my body says stay.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly, holding up his palms in apology. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I shake my head and whisper, “I’m not scared. I think we need to unpack what you just said.”
He closes in another step, and now my back faces the street, the door still open, thanks to Diana wheeling the carts away without stopping to close the door.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” He towers over me in the open doorway, his shoulders level with my nose. I can smell his masculine scent. Move one inch, and I’d be burying my face in that expanse of silky chest hair. I swallow hard. It’s time to tell him the truth.
“I think you needed to say that,” I say. “Just like I need to say some things.”
My eyes drift upward to meet his big, soulful green eyes, his fierce expression that communicates both fear and something like desperation.
“Michael, it’s not just about the money. I like you. I’ve always liked you.”
A curse escapes him. “That’s sweet of you to say. Really. But when I look at you, I think about fucked up shit.”
I know he doesn’t mean to hurt me, but that stings. “Don’t call it that. Please. It’s not fucked up. I’m a grown woman.”
“Your dad will murder me.”
“No, he won’t!”
Michael brings one balled fist to his mouth and presses it to his lips.
“I’m a man with powerful, grown-up needs. Physical needs. You’re a perfect little, I don’t know, dandelion with feelings and deep thoughts, and I don’t want to sully that with….”
“What makes you think there’s anything wrong with you—”
Some strange awareness stops me from saying another word. Something out of the corner of my eye, or a sixth sense that someone is watching. Or wanting attention. My eyes drift downward, and I see what it is that’s making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
The presence is deep pink, veiny, and protruding from the fly in Michael’s pajama pants.
I gasp again, this time in shock that this man’s rod is poking out, winning in the fight against the loose confines of the flannel drawers.
And damn me if I don’t salivate as intensely as the dampening of my untouched sex.
I swallow. “Is that…?”
He looks down. “Oh fuck!” Michael turns away from the door.
“Were you not wearing…why are you not wearing underwear?”
“I was naked before Mrs. Hurley showed up,” he explains, which explains nothing. I find myself wanting to elbow Mrs. Hurley in the ribs the next time she shows up on Michael’s doorstep.
“You could have thrown on undies before engaging with the public outdoors, you know.”
“Look. I’m hungover; I’m not thinking straight. And to be honest, before the cake hordes started knocking down my door, I was getting ready to…never mind.”
“Tell me.”
“Forget it.”
“Getting ready to what?”
“Cara.”
“Mr. Brennan, Michael, were you about to—”
“Stop.”
He’s right. I’ve made him feel embarrassed, and I hate it.
“That’s something we have in common, Michael. Well, not so much anymore since I moved back home. So little privacy. It’s been…a very long time.”
I know what I’m doing. I know it’s especially crass for me, someone who criticizes the way her sister talks. But this feels different. I know he’s looking at me differently, and he needs to know I’m grown now.
“Fuck me.” His shoulder rolls as he tucks himself back into his drawers then rests one hand high against the wall. His head hangs like he’s deep in a troubling thought, like he’s fighting invisible demons.
“Please tell me the truth. Everyone shields me from everything shocking because they believe I’m so delicate. The truth is I’m deadly curious. I have so many questions. And I wouldn’t want answers from anyone—anyone—but you, Michael.”
He responds through gritted teeth. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I trust you. I know you better than you think I do. Do you remember when you used to live downtown, and you’d see me reading in the park before school?”
His voice is raspy; he raises his head to look back at me over his shoulder. “Yes.”
I am fighting so hard to keep tears at bay now. If he knew the depths of my feelings. If he knew the things I could declare right now. “I went there on purpose, hoping to see you. I planned it out. I just wanted to be near you. I know, it’s crazy and pathetic and—”
“Cara. Don’t talk about yourself like that.”
Michael turns around to face me.
“It’s true. I’ve had a terrible crush on you my whole life. Ever since I was thirteen, I knew I wanted you to be my first kiss.”
Michael chuckles. “A lot can happen in ten years. Thank god, right?”
I hold out my hand. With a confused look on his face, he hesitantly places his hand in my palm. I take it, my body sighing at the connection to his warmth, to his rough, grown-man hands. I turn it over and trace my finger around his palm. “This was the last thing I saw of you before I went to college. You gave me a check, but I didn’t care about that. You shook my hand and held it briefly in both of yours. I looked down and….” I turn his hand over and trace the lines of veins on the back of it. “I memorized every hair, every line, every callous. I left for college, and my first ever sex dream was about those hands.”
“Whoa, Cara.”
I flip his hand palm up once more and lower my lips, kissing the tip of his index finger.
My eyes rise to meet his while I do this, and I see the rapid rise and fall of his chest. “Sweetheart. You didn’t…you didn’t…wait for me. Tell me you didn’t. Not through four years of college and….”
I shake my head and move on to the tip of his middle finger, this time gently kissing and sucking it to the first knuckle.
“Thank god,” he breathes.
“I didn’t wait,” I say when I let go of his finger. “You were in my dreams every night. So it never felt like waiting. These fingers, these hands, that built skyscrapers,” I say, kissing his ring finger down to the second knuckle, “were claiming my body every night in my wet dreams.”
Michael curses, yanks his hands away from my grip, and runs his fingers along his scalp. His hair gets even more mussed in the process, making him look ten times sexier.
And the next thing I know, with those hands, those lips, he changes my whole world.