Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

27. A legally binding sex pact

27

A LEGALLY BINDING SEX PACT

CAMPBELL

Guys are idiots,” my niece announced as she climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door. I was on Thursday evening carpool duty, picking up Isla from her first student council meeting of the school year while Laura attended Wes’s away game.

Melvin shoved his head between the seats and gave her face a slurp.

“Gross.” But she gave the dog an affectionate squeeze anyway.

“Who is he, and where can I find him?” I demanded, reaching for my seat belt. The high school wasn’t that big. I could hunt down the teenage idiot in question in no time.

Isla’s lips quirked. “You can’t go beat up a teenage boy even if he is an idiot, Uncle Cam.”

“No, but I can scare the shit out of him. Make him change schools. Assume a new identity. Make him wear a fake nose and glasses for the rest of his life.”

Her smile was fleeting. “I thought he liked me. He’s been flirting with me all summer. Teasing me, playing dumb little pranks. And then today he goes and asks Alice to homecoming.”

“That sucks,” I said, putting the truck in drive.

Homecoming. I shuddered involuntarily. Isla was fifteen and terrifyingly beautiful. Without a dad around anymore, I didn’t know how Laura hadn’t sent her to school with a bodyguard to chase off the disgusting hormonal teenage boys. I’d been one. It was a miracle I hadn’t been run off by shotgun-wielding fathers every time I’d left the house.

“I just don’t get it. If he didn’t like me, why did he act like he did? And if he does like me, why would he ask someone else to homecoming? I’d rather he be honest than blowing hot and cold.”

I stared at the sunset ahead and thought of Hazel.

Since my “discussion” with my brothers on Monday, I’d done my best to ignore Hazel. Which proved to be a lot harder than I thought, considering I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Kissing her. Talking to her. Watching her frown at the screen of her computer as she wrote.

“Guys are stupid sometimes. Most of the times,” I corrected. “You shouldn’t date any of them until they’re in their thirties.”

“That’s what Uncle Gage and Uncle Levi say. Hey, can we stop for a birch beer?” Isla asked.

It was our thing. For celebrations or cheering up, we’d grab two bottles of birch beer from the convenience store and drink them on the way home.

“Sure, kid.” Instinctively, I patted my pockets for my wallet as I steered us in the direction of Wawa. “Shit.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have my wallet.” I must have left it at Hazel’s when I’d paid for the hoagie lunch delivery. I had a vague recollection of tossing it in my tool caddy, which I’d left there.

“That’s okay. This one’s on me,” she said.

“No way a niece of mine is picking up the tab,” I said, snatching my emergency $20 off the sun visor.

“Such a gentleman,” she teased.

I didn’t feel like a gentleman. I felt like a piece-of-shit high school sophomore who was too stupid and selfish to know how to treat women right.

After I dropped off Isla and Melvin—with an extra birch beer in case tomorrow wasn’t any better—I headed back toward Main Street. I drove past Hazel’s, noting that her lights were on. I doubted she was working, given the only inspiration I’d delivered this week was that of a hot-cold man baby.

The wallet could easily wait until morning. It wasn’t like I was going to go on some kind of online shopping spree from my apartment couch.

Besides, me parking in front of her house after eight o’clock at night would only spark rumors that neither of us needed to deal with.

The smart thing was to go home and stay home.

I went home and parked in the lot behind the general store. Drumming my fingers on the wheel, my gaze slid to Hazel’s book on my dash.

“Fuck it.”

I grabbed my keys and climbed out. But instead of heading up the back stairs to my second-floor apartment, I pulled on a Bishop Brothers hat—as if that would disguise me—and headed toward Hazel’s. Just out for a casual evening walk. Nothing suspicious about that, was there? Lots of people walked.

Rather than cutting through the gate and her front yard, I skulked up the shadowy driveway, then fought my way through overgrown landscaping to her walkway.

The porch light was on, and so were several fixtures on the first floor. The woman had no window treatments. Which was how I got a front-row view of her dragging a stepladder across the hall in those short shorts I hadn’t stopped thinking about since Monday.

Irritation had me knocking harder than necessary.

Startled, Hazel dropped the ladder with a clang. She dropped to a crouch and did a frantic search of the immediate vicinity, presumably for a weapon.

“It’s me. Open up,” I said gruffly.

I didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed that she took another ten seconds to continue searching for an appropriate weapon before giving up and opening the door.

“What do you want?” she asked, crossing her arms. She had on a cropped long-sleeve shirt. Her hair was piled on top of her head in some knot thing, and she was wearing her glasses.

Cozy Hazel was one of my favorites. Not that I had favorites. Or that I paid attention to what she wore. Or that I gave her more than a passing thought.

“Hello?” she said, waving a hand in front of my face.

“Wallet.” God, I was an idiot. Why couldn’t I just have a nice, normal conversation with a nice, normal woman? Why did everything have to be such a goddamn pain in the ass?

I heard voices and a series of shrill yaps coming from the sidewalk behind me. I knew those barks. It was Ms. Patsy taking her pack of rabid chihuahuas for their evening stroll.

“You want my wallet?” Hazel asked, lifting her eyebrows.

“No. I want mine. I left it here.” I pushed my way inside and closed the door behind me before Ms. Patsy could spot me.

“Well, have fun looking for it,” Hazel said, returning her attention to the stepladder. She dragged it another two feet toward the sitting room.

On a long-suffering sigh, I grabbed it from her. “What are you doing?”

She gave the ladder another tug. “I’m trying to hang up some curtains so the five citizens of Story Lake don’t get an eyeful of me watching trashy TV at night.”

I picked up the ladder and carried it into the sitting room.

“Couch looks good,” I said. It was one of those white fluffy things that looked more like a cloud than a piece of furniture. It was flanked by two fussy end tables. She’d repurposed the upholstered ottoman from the parlor as a coffee table. The new seating area faced the wall, where a not-quite-large-enough TV leaned precariously against its cardboard box on the floor.

“I know I should have waited until you redo the floors, but it’s really nice to have a place to sit that isn’t a moving box or the floor.”

I set the stepladder up under one of the tall front windows and picked up the curtain rod she’d left on the floor. “How are you putting these up?”

“Well, it came with screws. I found a screwdriver in the garage and figured I would just manually…” She performed a poor imitation that was closer to stabbing than screwing.

“No, you won’t.”

“Who are you? The curtain police?” she quipped.

“You try to do this yourself, you’re gonna end up stabbing a dozen holes in the plaster and yourself. I’ll have to fix all of them, which will piss me off, and I’m fresh out of Band-Aids.”

“You’re always pissed off,” she complained.

“A fair assessment.”

She tapped her foot in its fuzzy flip-flop-like slipper. “Fine Whatever. I’ll just get those paper blinds that you stick to the frame.”

“Go get my drill.”

“What? No. Get it yourself.”

“I need my drill, a level, some of that blue painter’s tape, and a pencil if you can dig one up. Should all be in the tool tote in the kitchen.”

“Why?”

“So I can hang your damn curtains so people can’t see you watch your trash floor TV.”

“Why are you being almost nice all of a sudden?”

“Because I drove my niece home from school and she was pissed at a guy who blew hot and cold instead of just being honest. Because I’ve been acting like a thirty-eight-year-old teenage idiot too busy drawing lines and crossing them to clear the air with you.”

Hazel studied me for a beat. “Okay. I’ll get your stuff.”

“How’s it look?” I asked, holding the rod and curtains above the window trim.

“Good. You were right about not hemming them. They look fancier this way,” Hazel said.

“I mean, does it look level?” I said dryly.

“Oh, yeah. That too.”

“Screws,” I ordered.

She handed them over, and I held them between my teeth.

“Anchors.”

The plastic wall anchors appeared in my open palm. I laid them out on the top step of the ladder.

“Drill.”

She hefted it up, looking excited and shiny eyed. Made me feel damn heroic.

“Wait!” she said when I lined up one of the anchors. “Can I watch you do it so I can do the second window myself?”

“Sure.” I understood the desire to make something your own. Putting the work in forged a deeper connection. I still felt a sense of pride driving through town and seeing old projects. At my old job, the projects had been bigger. Office buildings and strip malls. But there was always something special about seeing what your own hands were capable of.

I made quick work of screwing the curtain rod into place and gave it a testing tug.

“It looks amazing.” Hazel clapped her hands as I straightened the white linen panels.

“You know we’re just gonna have to take them down when the painters come.”

“I know. But at least for now, it feels more permanent and less like I’m living in limbo.”

“All right, Trouble. Your turn,” I said, dismounting.

She gathered up my tools while I carted the ladder over to the second window.

“No way,” I said, when she reached for the first step.

“What?”

I pointed at her fuzzy flip-flops. “Not in that footwear.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but I shook my head. “I saw you get smacked in the head by a bald eagle carrying a fish. I’m not sayin’ it was your fault, but I am sayin’ trouble follows you. Closed-toed shoes. Now.”

She stomped out of the room as loudly as her furry footwear would allow, muttering uncomplimentary things about me and my attitude as she went. She returned a minute later in sneakers.

“Better?”

“Don’t get all attitudey with me over job safety.”

“I think I’ve got plenty of reasons to get attitudey with you,” she said as she climbed the ladder. “You’ve been an ass all week.”

“Yeah, well, I had my reasons,” I muttered, trying not to enjoy the fact that I had her long, bare legs and the very brief hem of her shorts directly in my line of sight. I could see the under-curves of her ass cheeks. My grip on the ladder tightened.

“I feel entitled to know your reasons. And what do I measure?” She looked over her shoulder at me.

“Let’s focus on one shit show at a time.” I tore off two pieces of tape and stuck them to the leg of my jeans. “I’m coming up.”

I mounted the ladder behind her and immediately hated myself for it. I couldn’t afford to be this close to her. I didn’t know what it was about the smart-mouthed, interrogating pain in my ass, but I couldn’t trust my body around her. And a very selfish part of me wanted to find out what would happen if I just let go.

“We’re gonna measure the mount position to match the other window,” I instructed, wincing as her rear end coasted over my crotch when she stretched higher.

It took three times longer than it should have because all my brain wanted to do was rhapsodize about her shampoo and how soft her shirt was under my hands. About how warm and smooth her skin would be if I slipped a hand beneath the hem.

With gritted teeth, I walked Hazel through sinking the anchors and attaching the mounts to the wall. Every time she said screw or rod or mount , my stupid dick got harder.

I had to do something before I lost complete control. “Stay there,” I ordered. “I’ll get the curtain.”

Bending over felt like I was tying my cock in a pretzel. The pain was good. It gave me something else to focus on.

I picked up the curtain and rod and straightened just in time to see her stretching up on her tiptoes. When the loose hem of her shirt fell away from her body, my fortuitous angle afforded me an unobstructed look at the underside of braless breasts.

The throb in my erection intensified to Urgent.

“Got it?” she asked, looking down at me as if she weren’t a walking, talking fantasy put here to drive me out of my mind.

“Got what?”

“The curtain rod in your hand.”

I looked down and wordlessly held it up to her.

“You’re making your pissed-off face again,” she noted as she stretched to insert one end of the rod into the mount.

I grabbed the ladder again and tried not to look at any body part that would make me want to snatch her off the ladder and lay her out on the couch. Unfortunately for me, even her calves and ankles were erotic temptations.

Hazel leaned to the opposite side for the other mount, and her foot slipped off the step. Without thinking, I reached up quickly and steadied her one-handed by the ass. The universe was against me today. Because my hand didn’t land on soft cotton shorts. No. My palm was cupping bare flesh. I stared in horror at my hand, which had somehow slipped beneath the hem of her shorts and was on her underwear-less ass.

We were in front of a street-facing window at night. Anyone could walk by and watch our little show.

“Uh, Cam?”

“Fuck. Me.” I gritted out the words.

“You know, I probably would have at the beginning of the week, but then you went all cactus on me,” she said conversationally, ignoring my hand up her shorts.

“Please. Stop. Talking.”

We stood frozen like that for several heartbeats. I used my free hand to grip her thigh and slowly, painfully removed my palm from her ass.

“Get down.”

“But I didn’t finish?—”

“For the love of God, woman. Get down.”

She climbed down the ladder and landed with a disgruntled look.

“You are killing me,” I announced.

“Good,” she said smugly.

“ Good ?”

“It’s nice seeing some kind of emotion from you that isn’t general pissed-offness.”

My hand was warm from resting on her round ass. My dick was acting like a goddamn metronome, keeping the beat of adrenalized blood flow.

I swiped my forearm over my forehead and took a self-preserving step backward, only to nearly trip over my tool tote.

“I forgot to put the curtains on the rod,” Hazel said, ignoring my hormonal crisis in favor of the state of her window treatments.

Swearing under my breath, I stomped up the ladder, removed the rod, threaded the curtains onto it, and hung it back in place.

I climbed down and whirled around to find her perched on the arm of the sofa, watching me.

“They look good.”

I stalked toward her and planted my fists on either side of the rolled arm.

I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to bend her over the couch and rip those little shorts from her body. I wanted to sink myself in her again and again until I was empty, until I had space in my head to think about something, anything, but her.

“You look really mad,” she observed.

“I’m trying to be a gentleman,” I said tightly.

She peered into my eyes, then looked down pointedly at the erection trying to tunnel out of my jeans.

“You’re sweating. The veins in your neck are sticking out like pythons on a sidewalk. You’re about to crack a molar with that jaw tension. And once again, you’re acting like it’s my fault.”

I closed my eyes, hoping that not looking directly at her would help me find my control again. “Hazel, I’m trying to not want to rip off your clothes and break in your couch with sex that you’re not ready for. Okay?”

She scoffed. “I think I’m a better judge of what I’m ready for than you are.”

The woman was playing with fire.

“Are you saying you’d like to have sweaty, meaningless sex with me?” I asked, opening my eyes.

She wiggled her ass on the couch between my fists. “I’m saying, I would have considered it after last weekend until you went all Mr. Freeze on me this week.”

“I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt.”

“By being mean to me? You have the emotional maturity of a toddler!”

I could see her nipples, tight peaks, against the fabric of her shirt. Had that happened when I’d touched her? If I reached between her legs, would I find her wet?

“In my defense, it’s hard to hold logical thoughts when your entire blood supply is in your pants,” I said.

“So let me get this straight. You want me. You want to have sex with me.”

“Dirty, rough, meaningless sex,” I corrected.

I tried not to notice the spark that lit her eyes.

“You want to have dirty, rough, meaningless sex with me. But you’ve decided that you’re not going to because you don’t think I can handle it,” she summarized.

“Yes.”

“So in order to not have dirty, rough, meaningless sex with me, you’re going to act like an asshole so I don’t get hurt.”

“Uh-huh.” When she said it like that, it sounded incredibly stupid.

Our faces, our bodies, were so close. An inch and my fists would be brushing her bare legs. Another inch and my mouth would be on hers.

“I want you. Enough that it pisses me off. I don’t like spending so much time thinking about you. And I really don’t like not being able to touch you. But I’m not looking for a relationship. And falling into bed with you would be stupid with a side of crazy.”

“Here’s the problem. You’re making the decision for me, which is not one of my favorite things.”

“I’m trying to do the right thing, Hazel,” I said, frustration building.

She was looking at my mouth like she was trying to figure something out. “I get that,” she said. “And I appreciate it. But you’re acting like I can’t handle myself. Like I’ll just fall apart once your cock gets anywhere near me. I’m actually pretty insulted.”

“Christ, Trouble. You just walked out of a long-term monogamous relationship. You haven’t dated the last decade let alone had a no-strings fling.”

“And you know what would make me so happy right now?”

“Please say joining a convent.”

She shook her head. “A dirty, rough, meaningless fling. A rebound.”

Her mouth was even closer to mine now, and I could feel my control fraying.

“Getting involved with you, the client who can make or break my family’s business, would be monumentally stupid,” I reminded her. I leaned in and tracked my nose up her jawline.

She let out a hiss of breath. “Okay, then let’s put it in writing.”

I drew back. “Put what in writing?”

“You want to fuck me. I want to fuck you. You don’t want a relationship. I want to focus on writing a book.”

“I feel like you’re laying a trap.”

“Cam, I’ve written more words since you kissed me than I have in the past two years. Imagine my output if you make me come.”

“ When I make you come.” It came out like a threat.

She jumped off the arm of the sofa and grabbed my wrist. “Come with me.”

I let her drag me down the hall, past the library and dining room and into her darkened office. She switched on the desk lamp and flipped her notebook to a fresh sheet of paper.

“We, Hazel Hart and Campbell Bishop, promise to enjoy dirty, rough, meaningless sex as long as it is convenient to us both. We will not allow our physical relationship to interfere with our business relationship. And we will not pursue a romantic relationship with each other,” she said as she scrawled the words onto the page. She signed it with a flourish and held the pen out to me. Her cheeks were flushed, brown eyes glassy.

“You can’t be serious,” I said as she slid the paper to me.

“It’s an agreement in writing. A legally binding sex pact. We’re setting our expectations,” she said.

“What if I’m done having sex with you before you’re ready to be done having sex with me?” The pen was hot in my hand.

“Then no hard feelings. As soon as one of us is done, we’re both done.”

I wasn’t thinking clearly. There was too much need pumping through my veins. That’s what had me putting the tip of the pen to the page and scribbling my signature.

“Okay,” she said. “Now what?”

I tossed the pen over my shoulder and grabbed her.