One Lucky Deal (3 page)

“I can go two weeks without some action,” Tad promised her. “How about you?”

“I’ve already gone two weeks without some action.” Candace groaned at that revelation.

“Two more makes it a whole month. Can you go that long? I don’t need you getting ornery on me from lack of orgasms,” Tad joked.

“I think I can handle it. If I have to I’ll just get reacquainted with myself.” Truthfully, she’d never become unacquainted with herself.

“Seriously?” Tad smirked and eyed her up and down. “Can I watch?” She backhanded him in the gut. “Is that a no?”

“Hell no.” She led him back to their table.

“Aw, come on, I’d let
you
watch.” Tad pinched her hip, and she elbowed him off her, but Candace couldn’t help herself as she let out an unwanted snort of laughter. Tad’s usually tight and serious face broke into a full smile. A full-fledged Tad grin was incredibly rare.

“What’s so funny?” Reagan asked the two of them.

“Nothing.” Tad blinked and pinched the bridge of his nose as if he were trying to clear an image from his mind.

“We chose each other.” Candace watched the vast variety of shock and amusement play out on their friends’ faces.

“You do realize this means that for the duration of this challenge you will only be able to sleep with each other?” Ronnie eyed both of them.

Candace let out a derisive noise.

“That means you’ll not be having any sex for as long as this challenge lasts.” Reagan nodded at the two of them as if she didn’t believe they’d fully understood the concept of this bizarre challenge.

“Yeah we get it,” Tad said a little defensively.

“Let’s raise the stakes.” Reed leaned back, folding his hands behind his head. “If you do not complete the entire challenge, or even if you fail a mini-challenge, or refuse to do it, both of you will have to wash my truck once a month for the next six months.”

“Oh, and you’ll have to balance my checkbook,” Reagan piped up.

“And pick up my dry cleaning,” Ronnie added.

“My bar tab.” Joe grinned. “And free babysitting.” Joe pointed at Ronnie’s adorably pregnant belly.

“I sort of figured that was coming, regardless,” Candace said under her breath to Tad.

“Okay, but if we make it through all of this, then what? What do we get?” Tad raised his eyebrows and folded his arms over his chest. The damp T-shirt emphasized the tight, solid firmness of his body.

“Free mani-pedis for life.” Reagan pointed at Candace. “Free haircuts?” She lifted one perfectly sculpted arched brow.

“I’ll take your Saturdays at the shop for a month,” Reed offered.

“I’ll be your personal shopper.” Ronnie nodded. Thank God because both Candace and Tad hated that chore—going to the grocery store.

“All right, what about you, Officer?”

“I’ll let you pick up my tab and babysit my adorable kid?” He laughed. Everyone else laughed too, but Tad just kept looking at him expectantly. “I’ll do my best to work on a get-out-of-jail-free card?” That got Tad to at least crack a smile. “I don’t know. I don’t have a lot to give … maybe I can get Stella to whip up some brownies.”

“Deal.” Candace jumped and then winced because her fat-girl ways were showing again. She tried so hard to keep them under wraps since that summer she’d spent sneaking around camp to sleep with Tad. She’d dropped sixty pounds and kept them off because she was religious about exercise and counted calories like it was her job. She made exceptions only for beer … and the occasional brownie … and pizza … and wings.

“All right.” Reagan rubbed her hands together. “So where should we start?” The four of them huddled together and whispered while Tad stood there with his arms folded over his chest. Candace’s hands were stuffed in the pockets of her shorts.

“Don’t forget our wings and our pitcher, Joe,” Tad reminded him. Joe groaned but slid out of the booth and walked up to Marlena, who was manning the bar.

“Okay. First mini-challenge.” Reagan grinned. “Since we’ve already gone over the fact that this is an exclusive relationship, and neither of you are to date or sleep around on each other, your first mini-challenge is hand-holding.”

“Hand-holding?” Candace laughed.

“Yes, until the next mini-challenge. Every time we see you, you’d better be holding hands.” Reagan looked down at their hands and nodded for them to begin right now.

Candace looked over at Tad. She wasn’t going to make a big deal about this. They threaded their fingers together and Tad slid into the booth beside Ronnie, tugging Candace down with him.

Joe came back to the table with a basket of wings and a pitcher of beer. He sat them down in front of Tad and Candace. “What’d I miss?”

Tad and Candace held up their clasped hands as Ronnie grinned up at him. “Hand-holding.”

“Hand-holding.” He shook his head. “Nice.”

Candace let go of Tad’s hand so she could pick up a buffalo wing and eat it when Reagan asked her, “What are you doing?”

Candace and Tad both stopped with a chicken wing halfway to their mouths and looked at each other and then back at Reagan. “Eating?”

“With your hands?” Ronnie grinned like she was delighting in Candace’s discomfort.

“Are you throwing in the towel already?” Reed grinned and poured beer into their empty glasses.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Tad raised his eyebrow in question.

Reed shook his head. “Hold ’em.”

Tad heaved a giant sigh as if to silently ask Candace what she’d gotten him into. She wasn’t liking it any more than he was. She licked the sauce off her fingers before offering her hand back up to him.

It was a challenge to eat wings one-handed, and their entire crew was enjoying watching them struggle through it. Tad was the last person she should be upset with. They were, after all, in the exact same boat.

“Your hand is sweaty,” she mumbled to him while the rest of the group talked among themselves.

Tad tore his hand away and quickly wiped his palm against his jeans. “Well, yours feels like an ice cube.” He clutched her hand again in his.

“That’s because you’re cutting off the circulation in my fingers with your death grip.” After ending up with most of the sauce all over her face and using an obscene amount of napkins, she’d given up on the chicken wings.

“Holding your hand is like hanging onto a limp noodle.” So Candace clenched him tighter, and he loosened his grip, and suddenly there was nothing left to complain about.

“Is there a problem?” Reed smiled at them, sensing the tension in the air. “Am I smelling a forfeit?”

“No!” they both stubbornly said in unison.

“No backing out,” Tad leaned in to say to her while the rest of the table began taking bets on how long they would make it.

“You either, Dundee.” His breath smelled like chicken wings, and her stomach growled. She was pissed. She wasn’t skilled enough to eat them with just her right hand.

He gave her a strange look, and then she watched the realization slowly dawn on him. “Switch me spots.”

“Why?” she asked, looking around trying to figure out if she had a better view at a television she hadn’t noticed. Was there a game on?

“So we can both eat.” Her sister Reagan was sending her that look from across the table. Candace just rolled her eyes but she slid out of the booth and then back in toward the middle. He grabbed her hand in his, only this time it was her right hand in his left.

“What was that about?” Joe asked.

“She’s a lefty.” Tad then went back to eating, and now that her dominant hand was free Candace helped him devour their free wings.

* * * *

Bimonthly poker night was a time-honored tradition. These guys had been playing for years, and just recently added Shea, Reed’s daughter’s boyfriend, and Candace to the group. Candace was added mostly because she was Tad’s roommate, and she brought the poker table to the equation. It was used as Tad and Candace’s dining room table every other night of the week.

“Where’s my shirt?” Tad walked out of the bathroom with nothing on but that towel slung low and wrapped around his hips.

“Why did you wait so long to shower?” Candace pushed the sleeves up on her lightweight brown shirt. “The guys are going to be here soon and you’re going to be walking around naked looking for your clothes.”

“It was that or sit around all night smelling like a gym bag.” Tad lifted a cushion on the couch and peered under it.

“You’re going to do that anyway.” Tad looked up at her and made a face. She smiled sweetly back at him. Taking pity on him when he went to the freezer and peered inside it, Candace rolled her eyes and sighed. “You are the worst searcher on the planet. What would your shirt be doing in the freezer?”

Candace came up beside him and leaned against the counter. The freezer was billowing out visibly cold air, and when Candace’s gaze slipped to Tad’s hardening tan nipples she reached out and closed the door. “What shirt are we looking for?” She blinked.

“You know the one.” He motioned to his naked chest. “The one—you know, it’s—” Then something must have caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. “That damn dog.”

Candace didn’t know what had happened, but she winced and slowly turned around just in time to catch Tad pulling out his black Ramones T-shirt from beneath Sara. Sara reached out with her teeth and grabbed ahold of it. She was obviously not ready to give it back. Tad tugged on the shirt and Sara tugged back, thinking it was a game.

Zeke, apparently not wanting to be left out on any of the fun, pulled on Tad’s towel. Since Tad hadn’t secured it very well, off it came in one easy tug.

“Shit,” Tad cursed, dropping the shirt and reaching around to try to grab back the towel, but it was too late.

“Hey,” Joe, Reed, and Shea called from the doorway as they entered the house. “Joe brought the beer. I picked up a pizza, and Shea’s packing Red Vines.”

“Holy hell.” Joe laughed.

“What’s going on in here?” Reed chuckled “Did we interrupt something?”

“Um…” Candace was trying not to stare but she hadn’t seen him naked in close to ten years, and damn, the years had done him some good. He was nothing but rock-solid, hard, sinewy muscle and … impressive.

“Dude!” Shea held a hand in front of his face, obviously trying to block Tad’s privates from his line of vision.

Candace quickly reached forward and grabbed her fuzzy purple pillow from the couch and tossed it at Tad. He caught it and used it to hide his man business as he backed up toward his room. “I’ll be out in a minute. And anything on four legs better be in hiding.”

Once he was gone, Candace took it upon herself to tell the guys in vivid detail about the double tug-of-war that left Tad bare-ass naked in front of everyone. They all were laughing until tears were spilling out of their eyes. When Tad emerged he was straight-faced. Obviously he didn’t find the incident nearly as funny as the rest of them did.

“All right, if we’re done laughing, can we play some poker? Please?” Tad took his seat next to Candace.

“Hey, don’t get hard, Peter, we’re just playing with you.” Joe smirked.

Tad shook his head, rolled his eyes, and just focused on dealing out the cards. “Hey, cut him some slack. It is a little drafty in here,” Reed joked. Candace knew it must have been a joke because there had been nothing small about it. She shook the thought from her head and tossed in her ante.

“Aren’t you two supposed to be holding hands?” Shea asked. “I heard something about hand-holding.”

“Hey, yeah.” Joe motioned to the two of them and eyed them expectantly.

Candace groaned. “How are we supposed to play cards holding hands?” She shook her head. “No, absolutely not. Poker night should be a safe zone. We should have some sort of boys’ night immunity.”

“Do you hear that, Joe?” Reed asked.

“Yeah, sounds like someone’s going to be picking up our bar tab.” Joe high-fived Shea, who’d been the one to bring this whole hand-holding thing up.

“Fine.” Candace reached over and grabbed Tad’s hand and laced her fingers between his. It left them to play basically one-handed, except they had to keep borrowing their held hands to ante in and raise. They finally found a little reprieve when it was one of their turns to shuffle.

When the games were over they usually sat around and drank another beer and bullshitted for awhile, but Tad was still acting ornery and he was definitely acting like he was done holding Candace’s hand. “All right, boys, see you tomorrow.”

“Kicking us out?” Joe laughed, getting up and pushing in his chair, nearly stepping on a snoozing Charlie in the process.

Rudy was scratching at the back door, wanting to go out to sniff and pee around. Candace got up and whistled, sending all five of them out for the last time that night.

“No, they just want to get back to doing what they were doing when we walked in.” Shea laughed and shoved the end of a licorice in his mouth.

“Shut up,” Tad said, but good-naturedly.

“What? You don’t think she’s hot?” Shea asked, and Candace’s ears perked up. She might not have necessarily found Tad all that attractive, nor did she particularly want him to find her attractive, but … she did want to be found attractive … even if it was by Tad.

“She’s all right,” Tad answered, and Candace decided she’d take that as a compliment, even though it could easily have just been Tad’s nice way of saying “hell, no.”

“Well, since she got a glimpse at you all naked, if the sight of her doesn’t make you want to puke up beer and pizza, I’d say turnabout is fair game,” Shea said just before he, Reed, and Joe all walked out the door. Candace had begun collecting empties and rinsing them out in the sink.

“Did you hear that?” Tad asked as he put the pizza box in their recycle container hidden underneath the sink.

“Yeah.” Candace laughed, expecting Tad to laugh too. She turned to find him looking at her pretty seriously.

“I think he’s on to something.” Tad leaned back against the kitchen counter.

“What?” She turned the water off in the sink.

“It’s only fair. You’ve seen mine; let me see yours.” He nodded at her and she searched his face, looking for a hint as to if he was kidding. She couldn’t tell, but she had that spine-tingling feeling convincing her that he wasn’t.