Katherine Garbera - The Bachelor Next Door

She went inside to prepare a snack for Rafe and Andy, knowing they’d be hungry when the game wrapped up. There was something homey about preparing iced tea for two sweaty males, Cass thought with a smile. Tundra snoozed under the oak in the front yard and Cass felt content for the first time in years.

Three

Rafe tossed the football to Andy and watched the kid jump to catch the ball. The boy had the potential to be a dedicated athlete. The desire to succeed burned brightly in his eyes. He had the innate skill that few possessed and seemed to enjoy every sport that Rafe introduced to him. The grin on Andy’s face erased much of the apprehension Rafe usually felt when dealing with the boy.

Rafe hadn’t been around children for the majority of his life. In fact the last time he’d been with other kids was—he searched his memories—hell, not since he was a boy.

Kids were foreign entities that Rafe didn’t deal well with. They were crying, sticky little people that always talked loudly. But Andy Gambrel was different. Andy had a sense of maturity seldom found in one so young.

The other kids in the neighborhood were older than Andy, and Rafe had watched the boy playing alone over the last week. Something about the solitary way the boy had amused himself generated a sort of sympathy in Rafe. No child should be left to himself like that. Rafe never had been, and for some reason he didn’t want Cass’s son to be, either.

Andy tossed the ball back to him, and Rafe caught it one-handed. “Have you ever gone to a basketball game, Andy?”

“No, we’ve been down to the Bob Carr auditorium for plays and musicals though.” Andy scrunched his face in a look of pain. “Sometimes we see people going to the Magic games.”

“What show did you see?”

“A French play Les Misérables,” Andy said, correctly pronouncing the French title. “It was okay for the first twenty minutes, but all that singing was boring. Mommy really liked it. She even cried.”

Rafe chuckled.

“I bet the Orena—the Orlando Arena—is great.”

The touch of envy in the boy’s voice was barely audible, but there. Rafe wondered if Cass realized how much her son wanted to go to a game. Probably not, or she would have taken him. She was a good and caring mother, even if she was a bit overprotective.

“Have you seen the Magic play?”

“Yeah,” Rafe said. “I have season tickets.”

“Oh,” the boy said, so softly and wistfully that Rafe bit back a grin. The kid wasn’t stupid and had an understanding of manipulation that would have made any father proud.

They tossed the ball back and forth a few more times. “You want to go to a game sometime?”

“Wow, I’d love to. But Mom would never let me go. She’s still ticked about the softball game last weekend.”

Cass had to loosen up. Her son was starting to develop into a man, and she was fighting him every step of the way. “What’s wrong with the softball game?”

“I wasn’t exactly honest about what we were doing,” Andy confessed.

“We’ll see if she wants to go with us,” Rafe suggested.

“You think she might want to?” Andy asked.

No, Rafe figured she wouldn’t want to go, but saying no to her son was going to be hard. “It can’t hurt to ask.”

They rejoined Cass who brought out more iced tea and freshly baked bran muffins. Cass reminded him of every ideal that American men had about a mother. She was kind, firm and caring. She baked, cleaned and was at home when Andy arrived from school.

At the same time she had a sexy little body that made Rafe think of long hours spent in bed. That was why he kept coming back. Why he put up with her lectures on using correct grammar and not cussing. She was Rafe’s ideal of the perfect woman, which is why he would never allow himself to have a relationship with her. No man would ever have just a fling with her. She was the kind of woman a man made a commitment to. A commitment was the one thing he couldn’t offer her.

“Cass, I asked Andy to join me at a Magic game tomorrow night, and I’d like for you to come with us. What do you say?”

Her gingery eyes widened with speculation, and he saw the refusal written there before she opened her mouth. “Thank you for asking, but Andy and I wouldn’t be able to find tickets to the game. I hear they’re sold out.”

Tricky lady. She always had an excuse handy, but this time he was prepared. “I have season tickets.”

She glanced at her son, and Rafe could see her weighing the consequences of declining. She sighed, and it was not a welcoming sound. “Well, then I guess we’d be happy to go with you.”

Cass spent the morning pretending not to notice Rafe. Andy had talked about the impending basketball game all the way to school. She had the feeling that this was going to win her son a lot of points with his friends. Not many second-graders were invited to go to see the Orlando Magic play.

Cass sighed. By nature she was calm and unflappable, but Rafe Santini had a way of making her forget to be calm and unflappable. He’d put several wood cutouts across the front of his lawn of a woman bent at the waist with her frilly drawers showing. In front of his porch he’d placed large, plastic flowers in florescent blue, orange and green. He had the most hideous looking yard on the street.

The complete craziness of the yard was at odds with the man who patiently taught her son to play catch and the finer points of basketball. This was the man who wanted to needle her because she made him remove his basketball hoop.

Rafe’s multidimensional personality kept her on her toes. The sexy man made her nervous and achy in places that she hadn’t thought of in a long time—secure emotional places that she’d forgotten. He made her feel vulnerable, and that wasn’t necessarily bad because Rafe also made her laugh again.

She liked his sense of humor, which was almost always present. She liked the deep well of patience he showed with Andy. And most of all she liked the way he dug in and finished a job no matter how dirty or tedious. She just plain liked him and that was dangerous.

He worked on his house in denim cutoffs that should have been illegal. The faded material clung to his legs, revealing every muscular inch. His backside had originally drawn her attention, and she stared at him now as he hefted a box of shingles onto his shoulder.

He sang a lively country tune about trashy women and bopped along to the music. He had his own style, she thought with a grin. If one could call it style. She giggled out loud, picturing Rafe in one of the trendy men’s magazines.

As usual he wore no shirt, though she tried not to notice. Why couldn’t he have a paunch around the middle? Or a soft belly and flabby legs? Was that too much to ask?

She watched his muscles ripple with each movement of the hammer. Cass stared at his back until she realized what she was doing. Get a grip, girl, she admonished herself.

Rafe waved at her, and Cass knew she’d been caught staring up at him. She raised her hand in acknowledgment, and he just grinned in a way that made her want to run in the house and hide.

Cass forced her attention back to the Victorian Renaissance chair she was reupholstering for Mrs. Parsons. Rafe’s decadent image haunted her. She hated to think she was turning into a slavering sex fiend, but the man refused to stay out of her mind and his naked chest wasn’t helping.

The hammering stopped, and Cass scowled as she glanced up again. Rafe worked on a two-man job by himself. He rolled out the tar paper and hammered in the tacks before starting the process all over. At the rate he labored, the small section he was reroofing might not be finished until tonight.

Cass finished adding the trim to the chair, then stood and brushed the fabric threads off her khaki shorts. Her mother had raised her to be neighborly, and that meant offering help. She crossed the quiet street and shielded her eyes against the sun.