Stacking the Deck (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 2) (5 page)

“Is it? Serious, I mean?”

“Actually, yes. Just the other day he said he thought we should take things to the next level.”

“Exact words?”

“Exact words.”

“God, I wish I were you.” Liz gave her a sidelong look. “I do! I have fantasies that I wake up living your life. Then
I’m
the one who’s smart. Successful. Makes enough money to live on her own. I think I was more disappointed than you after the other night. I had such high hopes.”

“Stop. You do not fantasize about my life.”

“Hello? I live in a trailer with my mother, am currently cleaning people’s toilets for a living and haven’t had sex with a partner other than myself since I got toasted New Year’s Eve. I’d be crazy if I
weren’t
fantasizing about living someone else’s life.”

“It’s not a trailer. It’s a double-wide. And besides, you know you have a lot going for you. Your time will come. You’ll see.”

“Right. Like I’m going to meet my soul mate over a toilet bowl.”

“It could happen.”

“Only in your world, honey. Hence the fantasies.”

“There must be somebody in Sugar Falls worth dating.”

Bailey shoved the rest of the Snickers bar into her mouth and chewed. She stared over Liz’s shoulder. “Define ‘dating,’” she said.

Liz turned at a sound in the driveway. An unfamiliar pickup coasted to a stop, the driver’s door creaked open, and a weathered boot hit the ground. Two sneaker-clad feet followed. Liz got a brief glimpse of a masculine, jean-clad backside as the man picked up the empty boot and threw it back into the pickup, then slammed the door shut. He turned.

Liz froze.

Oh. My. God.

Carter McIntyre?

Liz smacked Bailey on the back. “What the hell is
he
doing here?” she whispered. “His uncle was supposed to be coming!”

Bailey just shrugged, swallowed, and chugged her latte.

Carter’s sneakers scrunched on the gravel drive as he loped toward them, head bent, fishing in his jeans pockets for something and clearly not finding it. Liz was grateful, as it gave her a few precious moments to collect herself. She swiped at the flecks of paint still clinging to her arms and old college T-shirt as she peered at him through her lashes.

Wow, he’d changed. So had she, of course, but knowing that only made her feel foolish for expecting him to look like the teenager he’d been ten years ago. His hair was thick and dark and slightly unruly as ever, but gone was the almost too-lanky frame of youth. His shoulders had broadened, and his face was fuller somehow, yet still lean and expressive. His pecs jumped under his tee as he finally looked up and extended one solid, muscular, man-sized arm toward her.

“Wow,” he said. “Beth ‘the Brain’ Beacon in the flesh! Long time no see.”

“It’s ‘Liz’ now.”

She reflexively extended her hand, resenting him acutely even as her fingers reached for his palm like a drowning victim reaches for a life preserver. For one thing, he was two hours late, clearly no more driven or reliable than he was ten years ago. Two, he was as smart-mouthed as ever. And three—her eyes skittered from the tips of his dust-covered sneakers to his tanned, smiling face—he was even more sinfully gorgeous than she remembered.

Liz swallowed before she drooled and made a complete fool of herself. Why couldn’t he have turned out all pot-bellied and prematurely bald for crying out loud?

The next thing she knew, his hand closed over hers.

She pumped his hand twice—just to be polite—then yanked hers away again before the firm calluses on his fingers had a chance to register in the part of her brain that was checking him out in a way she didn’t intend to acknowledge.

What the hell was wrong with her? Had she no self-respect? No shame?

Granted, any woman’s heart would skip a beat when faced with that testosterone-ridden, mega-watt smile he was flashing. She was only human after all. But still.

Liz tugged the hem of her T-shirt down over her belly button.

“Hey, Bailey. How’s it going? Still over at Willard’s Auto?” Carter’s eyes passed over Liz’s chest as he spoke.

Bailey shook her head. “No. Willard and I had a parting of ways after I kneed him in the balls for pinching my ass. I’m cleaning houses now until I can afford my own shop.”

Carter’s eyes made a second pass over Liz’s front even as he raised one dark brow at Bailey. “I’ll consider myself forewarned.”

“Oh, honey,” Bailey laughed, her blonde ponytails bobbing, “You don’t need to worry. I only knee smarmy guys.”

They chuckled at each other, Carter grinning charmingly, Bailey’s baby blues twinkling over the lid of her mocha latte.

“Well,” Liz interrupted, stepping between them. “I hate to rush you, but we should probably get started.” She pointed to her watch. “You
are
late.”

She couldn’t say why she felt the need to point that out, but it was disconcerting having him standing there all relaxed and sexy and confident and flirting with her best friend when her stomach was doing odd little flip-flops in her gut right under her belly button. It annoyed her, especially, that he could waltz up to her after ten years, flash that trademark smile and make her feel like time had stood still.

But, of course, it hadn’t.

His eyes registered a moment of irritation, but he quickly covered it with a wider smile and something he did with his eyebrows that looked slightly naughty and made her woman bits stand up and take notice in a way they had no right to in old sweats being almost-engaged and everything.

“So. Liz, huh?” he asked.

Liz hid a smile. You’d never hear Grant saying the word ‘huh.’ If it even
was
a word.

“Yes,” she articulated in her most business-like tone. “In my first job, my boss’ wife was also named Beth.” She wasn’t about to admit she’d harbored a three year crush on said boss and had daydreamed of his choosing her over his ‘other favorite Beth’ until a reorganization in the firm had saved her from sure lifelong humiliation. “I decided I preferred Liz.”

“Fair enough.” He stared at her chest again.
Hello! I’m up here!
she wanted to yell.

They stood a few feet apart, Bailey uncharacteristically silent, Liz staring at a point beyond Carter’s left ear, Carter staring at her boobs—the sexist jerk. He was probably wondering if they were real. Would it be such a shock that she’d actually grown into a B-cup in the last decade?

Okay.
Fine
. Maybe he was just looking because she could not stop swiping at the damned paint flecks. Liz forced herself to drop her hand and look him in the eye. Chickadees tweeted inappropriately in the trees nearby.

“So,” he said again looking at her face for a change, “Bates? I thought you went to someplace in California.”

Liz stared down at her own chest. Oh, good God, he was looking at the
logo
? She felt her already flushed face creep up the heat scale a notch. “Bates was undergrad. I got my master’s at Stanford.”

“Right. Hard to get farther from home than that.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

His eyes told her she was lying through her teeth. Which she was, of course. The pervert mind reader. “So. What’s the job you want quoted?”

Bailey cleared her throat, causing Liz a momentary pang of guilt for having forgotten she was even there. “Well, love to stay and chat with you two, but I’m late picking up my mom. I’ll call you later, Liz. ‘Kay?”

“Sure.” Liz watched Bailey start her old Toyota and drive away before turning her attention back to Carter.

He raised that eyebrow again. Curse it.

Smoothing her hands over her sweats and telling her woman bits to calm the heck down already, Liz motioned for him to follow. Despite going through the charade for appearance’s sake, she had no intention of hiring him—even if he was her great-aunt’s best friend’s grandson.

After all, when you’ve spent the better part of your youth harboring a one-sided crush on the high school bad boy, you don’t generally want him to see you single, unkempt, and scraping your parents’ trim boards ten years later.

Unless you were single. Which she most definitely was not.

“Patio,” she said succinctly as she pointed around the back corner of the house.

“Patio?”

“My parents want a patio instead of the deck. It’s old and in disrepair and needs replacing.”

“So you want a similar footprint?” He leaned against the back split-rail fence, afternoon sunlight accenting the dark highlights in his hair.

“I guess.” Liz was only half-listening. The other half of her brain was wondering if his hair was as silky as it appeared. Her woman bits perked up at the word silky.

“Should I include cost of demolition and disposal for the deck?”

“I suppose. I mean, how much will that run? On second thought—no. I’m here. I’ll take care of it.” She licked suddenly dry lips, her fingers flexing at her side, wondering why they were bothering to discuss a job she had no intention of giving him. Except she hadn’t told him that. Yet. She made a mental note to add ‘deck demolition’ to her to-do list.

“I’ll quote it just in case. So what are we using? Concrete pavers? Bluestone? Was there a particular look or color you’ve seen that you like?”

“Ah, no. Just, you know, a patio. Whatever’s cheapest and quickest. My parents didn’t say.”

He paused, his pencil poised over a grungy notepad he’d finally found in his chest pocket, and Liz fought not to squirm under his gaze. His eyes were a deep green, like an old Coca-Cola bottle. But rather than wholesome familiarity, the color gave an air of reckless changeability to his expression.

That and his lips. He had firm, beautiful lips.
Kissable lips
, she thought. How often had she daydreamed about this man’s lips? But who wouldn’t? He could smile broadly, the quintessential class clown; tilt them cockily, the smug rebel; or spin some sort of magic spell that transformed his face such than no woman—young or old—could resist his dazzling charm.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

The lips moved, and it took Liz a moment to realize words had passed over them. Her eyes slid up to his. “Uh, sure,” she said, wishing she could stop thinking about this man’s lips long enough to gracefully send him on his way. Oh Lord, had she just said
uh
?

“Are you free for dinner?”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah, you know, where they serve food. I’m starved, and I’m thinking if I give you a few minutes you’ll know what you want me to quote out here, and I won’t pass out from hunger.”

“Oh. I don’t think dinner’s a good idea. I’m not staying. In Sugar Falls, that is. This is just a vacation. Sort of.”

Plus I have an almost-fiancé, she wanted to add, realizing she was starting to babble for some unknown reason, perhaps because
The Lips
were now softly curving in a manner that could only be described as sinfully sensual. Although why she was thinking about ‘sin’ and ‘sex’ in the same sentence at that particular moment was something she didn’t intend to think about.

One dark brow shot to the sky. “You don’t plan on eating while you’re here? You’ll get even skinnier than you are now.”

Did he just call me skinny?
the unhelpful part of her brain squeaked delightedly. “Of course I plan to eat,” she scoffed. “Besides, I’m a mess. I’d need to clean up. Change...”

“No problem. I can wait.” He flipped his notepad closed and crammed it in his back pocket. Liz couldn’t help but notice how his jeans pulled taut across his hips as he did so.

“I... fine. All right,” she said. She told herself she was agreeing because Trish had yet to take her shopping. It had nothing to do with the shivers of awareness that tickled her spine every time those mesmerizing green eyes slid her way.

Carter smiled again, nodded, and strode away before she could reconsider. Moments later her cell phone rang from her pocket. Liz pulled it out with a shaking hand, glanced at the screen then stuffed it back in. She’d call Grant later.

Just as soon as she figured out why on earth she’d agreed to go on a sort-of dinner date with her high school crush.

CHAPTER FIVE
____________________

L
IZ GUZZLED A GLASS OF WATER, stripped like a mad woman and showered in under five minutes. She was downstairs again in fifteen.

She glanced at her knee-length khaki skirt and pale blue tee, satisfied she’d chosen something no-nonsense and sensible, something that said “this is not a date” without going so far as to imply she had no self-esteem or desire to be acknowledged as a woman. It was a lot to expect from an outfit yanked hastily from one’s suitcase, but Liz wasn’t one to leave these things to chance.

Her heart beat high in her chest as she stopped briefly at the hallway mirror on the way by, feeling for all the world as if she were sixteen again and ducking into her locker to check her teeth and hastily chew a stick of Juicy Fruit before study hall.