Heather Macallister - Tempted In Texas

But Alec knew what he was doing. He’d already done the math and would have enough quarters left for three loads of laundry, though only enough to dry two.

So he’d dredge up fifty cents from somewhere or hang his jeans over the kitchen chairs for a couple of days. No big deal.

Besides stranding Gwen at the airport, he was conscious of having hurt her feelings. Maybe hurt was too strong a word because Gwen didn’t seem the overly sensitive sort and they didn’t have that kind of relationship. But he felt a gesture was called for because he liked Gwen. He counted her as his first woman friend. Not a former girlfriend from whom he’d parted amicably and still ran into from time to time, but a person he’d met and come to know since he’d lived in the apartment on Westheimer. In fact, he thought of her as a person first and a woman after that—if at all—which was why he’d spoken without thinking.

Somehow, they’d skipped all the messy girl-boy stuff and were just casual friends. He was pretty sure she wasn’t currently seeing anyone, though he hardly tracked her every move. He did know that she worked a lot of overtime, but then, so did he.

In fact, he worked all the time. He had a nifty, nobrainer, thirty-hour-a-week job as the clerk in a pager store that was within walking distance of his apartment. The rest of the time he spent trying to get his fledgling business off the ground.

But tonight, he would give it a rest.

Alec handed the grocery clerk the ten-dollar bill, asked for his change in quarters, then shoved them into his pocket, noting a grease smudge on his arm as he did so.

He’d changed the oil in a car. A self-satisfied smile creased his face as he walked toward Gwen’s car in the parking lot. He’d never changed oil before. Just to be on the safe side, he checked under Gwen’s car for any ominous puddles.

Nope. All right!

He’d spent way too much time and had called his brother-in-law three times, but he’d done it—unfortunately, not in time to pick up Gwen from the airport according to the plan. She’d been a real pal about letting him use her car and not making him grovel for it, either. These past few days it had been great to have a car again. He’d filled up the gas tank this morning, which had pretty much tapped him out. But he’d accomplished a lot on Friday. Meeting face-to-face with manufacturers, brochure printers, suppliers and potential customers for his portable exercise equipment was more effective than e-mail and phone. He’d made some good deals and had a couple of new leads, but no money had come his way.

Well, payday from the pager store was tomorrow. Unfortunately, due to Christmas, he’d only worked twenty hours, but on the positive side, he’d already paid January’s rent.

He pulled into Gwen’s usual parking spot, which wasn’t as close to her apartment as she was entitled. Some jerk who lived in the units across the back parked there. Alec had offered to challenge him, but Gwen wouldn’t let him and said that the walk was good for her. In his opinion, Gwen could use a stiffer backbone, but that wasn’t Alec’s business.

He was only passing through.

Alec showered, changed into his last clean T-shirt—a giveaway from some charity 5K run three years ago—grabbed the pizza and beer, and headed for Gwen’s apartment.

He’d already knocked when he replayed their last conversation in his head and suddenly realized how his cheap frozen pizza and single bottle of beer offering would look.

To stay in the running you’ve got to take her to clubs and restaurants and the bill runs up real quick…. Why didn’t he just bang on the door and shout, “You’re not worth it!”? It would be cheaper.

Maybe she wasn’t home. But Gwen opened the door right then. “Hey, how’s the car running?” She held out her hands for the keys.

If she hadn’t been wearing her Scooby-Doo fuzzy slippers, he would have dropped the keys into her palm and taken his pizza with him. But…but he remembered the first time they’d met. He’d heard the Scooby-Doo theme music coming from inside her apartment and they’d discovered a mutual covert obsession with the cartoon character. He couldn’t afford cable and she got the cartoon channel, so there had been a few instances when he’d watched episodes with her. Okay, more than a few.

“The car runs fine.” He gave her the keys, then held up the plastic bags. “I brought pizza and beer. How about dinner?”

She blinked. “Is there a Scooby-Doo marathon on?”

It was his turn to blink. “Not that I know of. I thought it would be…be nice to…” She thought he only wanted to eat with her so he could borrow her TV set. Had he been that much of a moocher?

“To what?”

“You know, eat dinner together.”

They stared at each other amid an unaccustomed awkwardness. What had he done? They’d eaten dinner together before, and yes, they usually ended up watching Gwen’s TV. But this was different somehow. About the time Alec figured out it was because he’d never sought Gwen’s company just for the sake of being with her, and why hadn’t he, she pulled the pizza box out of the bag.

“You need a distraction while you eat this, huh?”

“Hey, that’s the premium store brand,” Alec shot back, relieved to fall into their usual pattern of mock insults and zingers.

“Ooo, the premium brand.”

“Sarcasm? After I make a genuine spontaneous gesture of friendship and sharing—”

“All right, all right. I’ll heat up the oven.” Laughing, she took the pizza into the kitchen.

Back to normal. He exhaled and wandered over to the sofa, noting her open laptop and the papers beside it. “Gwen?”

She looked at him through the kitchen bar.

“If you’re busy—”

“Actually, you can help me. I’d like a man’s opinion.”

“Oh?” He held up one of the beers and she nodded. Twisting off the top, he set the bottle beside her laptop, careful to keep it away from the keyboard. He didn’t mean to pry, but with the words Plan Of Attack written in eighteen-point type, he could hardly avoid reading. She’d made a column of words like “weakness, strength, objective, timeline, ammunition” and so forth. “What’s up?”

“Just a minute.”

He heard a buzz indicating that the oven had reached the baking temperature and then watched Gwen bend down to put the pizza in. Yeah, she was all right. Great female friend material. Twisting off the top of the second bottle, he took a swallow of beer and hoped again she wasn’t too insulted by his pitiful offering.

He thought of her friend Lisa. No—Laurie. Whatever. That wasn’t going anywhere. For a while there Linda—Laurie?—was sending all the right signals and under other circumstances…under other circumstances, Gwen wouldn’t have been standing right beside them.

Why hadn’t she ever looked at him like that?

Gwen threw away the pizza wrappings and came out of the kitchen. “This is really nice of you.” Her smile was maybe a little too wide to be real.

Hell. “Look, Gwen, I know it’s not much, especially after I—”

“You big doofus, you spent all your money, didn’t you?”

Doofus? “Well, yeah.”

She put a hand to her chest. “I’m flattered.”

“Seriously? You are?”

“Yes. Now sit down and quit fussing.”

“Fussing?” He never fussed. But he sat down.

Instead of being insulted, she was flattered. Women. He’d never understand them.

GWEN SAT beside him and handed him a brown foam insulator with the Kwik Koffee logo on it. Just when she’d given up on men, one of them had to go and do something sweet. Trying not to make a big deal out of Alec’s gesture, Gwen nodded to her laptop screen as she fit her bottle into the foam rubber. “I’m going after a promotion,” she said. “And I’ve been trying to think like a man.”