Kathy Altman - Staying at Joe's

She sucked in a breath. “Damn you and damn that bottle, Joe Gallahan. What you miss is your old life. You’re just too proud to admit it.”

“I am not drunk. I’ve been drinking, yeah, but it takes more than a few swallows of hooch to knock me on my ass. And you’re wrong, slick. I sure as hell don’t miss my old life. Right now? I’m missing my beauty sleep. So unless you want to join me...”

“Haven’t we punished each other enough?”

“Hardly.” He yawned, then scrubbed a hand over his hair and headed toward his bedroom. “Lock the door behind you. Don’t forget we start at seven tomorrow.”

“This is ridiculous,” she said to his back. “There’s no reasoning with you.”

“Yet you persist.”

Because that’s what idiots do. She sighed. “Why is it so important for me to stay?”

At the door to his bedroom he turned. “Because I can make you. I may not wear a suit anymore, but I still like to call the shots.” He bared his teeth. “Almost as much as I like to drink ’em.”

* * *

JOE LAY ON his back, one hand cupped around the kitten sprawled on his chest, the other pressed to his head. The cat was snoring, every fur-coated rumble like a buzz saw ripping through Joe’s brain. How the hell could something so small create such a massive sound? And why hadn’t that handful of pills kicked in yet?

Gingerly he raised his head high enough to aim a one-eyed squint at the clock. Almost time to roll. Yeehaw. He lowered his head again, and groaned when it connected with his hard-ass pillow. If he weren’t expecting Allison he’d stay in bed, at least until he could blink without sending pain shooting through his skull.

Then again, if he weren’t expecting Allison he wouldn’t have polished off that bottle of whiskey last night.

Two weeks. Damn. He’d better stock up.

He closed his eyes, pictured her in her borrowed getup and shifted on the bed. Who knew a determined woman sweating through an oversize pair of coveralls could be such a turn-on? Too bad she’d never let him anywhere near that zipper. He let loose an aching moan.

And then, of course, there was the outfit she’d showed up in last night. Tight jeans and some silky, floaty, barely there top with short sleeves. Pale pink, like the polish on her naked toes. When they’d stood in the cool darkness of the kitchen, where he could hear the excited hitch in her breathing, and smell the familiar spicy peach scent she’d stroked across her skin, all he’d wanted to do was strip her, push her against the wall and lick every inch.

But he hadn’t wanted her to smell the booze on him. Because he’d known she’d react...well, exactly how she had reacted. Which was why he’d led her to the living room after all. Where she could see for herself what he’d been up to.

As often as he’d fantasized about taking a horizontal trip or two down memory lane the last couple of days, he knew it would never happen. Allison Kincaid had never been the type for casual encounters. And shame on him, anyway, for lusting after a woman he didn’t trust any more than he trusted Vince Tackett.

What he should have done was get up early this morning and hit the treadmill. An hour-long run would have helped take the starch out of his libido.

Who you kidding, asshole? He’d had to practically crawl to the bathroom to get the ibuprofen.

He exhaled, deposited the kitten on the bed beside him and pushed himself up. The pounding in his head didn’t get any kinder, but at least he no longer felt the need to hurl.

I don’t want to be here. Haven’t we punished each other enough?

So much for a truce. Not that either of them had really wanted it in the first place. Damn it, why’d she have to go all judgmental on him? It was no surprise she hadn’t appreciated his comment about calling the shots. But he deserved some payback of his own and he was going to get it.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to get anything else.

He stroked a palm down the length of his hard-on, his groin somehow managing to out-throb his head. He imagined Allison sinking to her knees in front of him, licking her lips and humming deep in her throat....

He called himself one of the names he’d considered for the cat, peeled off his boxers and staggered to the shower, desperate for the temporary relief of a hot water massage and a personal hand job.

He was showered and dressed and considering a little hair of the dog when the buzzer sounded. Allison called out then appeared in the doorway wearing jeans and a bright green top, the grimy coveralls over one arm, her pale blond hair neatly gathered in a plastic clip. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her ivory cheeks still flushed with sleep, and it was all he could do not to flash back to the rare mornings they’d awakened in the same bed, him reaching out, her instantly arching, pressing close and hot against him—

Judas Priest. How the hell could he still want her, after everything she’d done and who she’d become? He angled away from her. Busied himself pulling mugs out of a cupboard.

“You stayed,” he said curtly.

“You didn’t give me a choice.” She looked around, probably for the kitten, and draped the coveralls over the back of the nearest chair. “Are you feeling as miserable as you look?”

“Just about.”

“Good.”

He banged the mugs down onto the countertop, then flinched.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, with just the tiniest trace of smugness. “I know there are...things we don’t like about each other. Things we both did that we’re finding hard to get past. Simply put, if we have any hope of getting this job done, we have to overlook these things—all of them. For now.”

“You mean, so Tackett can have his way.”

“So we can all move on.”

“To D.C. Where I get to be Tackett’s lackey. Got any pointers for me, Kincaid?”

Her lips went tight and she shook her head. “Got any coffee for me, Gallahan?”

It was like they were playing Go Fish. He set his jaw and slid a mug across the counter, hiding a wince at the loud scraping sound. “Help yourself.” He watched her, wondered what she’d do if he offered her a little Irish to go with her brew. As she hefted the pot, her gaze veered to his yolk-smeared plate in the sink and he closed his throat against an instinctive invite. She already had him by the short hairs. Damned if he’d offer up his balls, too.

And anyway, he didn’t have any eggs left, though where the hell they went, he had no idea. The loaf of bread seemed shorter, too. He hadn’t had that much to drink. Maybe he’d started sleep-eating? Wouldn’t be much of a stretch, considering what he’d dealt with over the past few days.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she murmured.

“Bring it with you.” He grabbed his own mug and headed for the door. But she didn’t move, didn’t even seem to hear him, her attention focused on the microwave he kept on top of the chest-high refrigerator. The kitten bounced into the room and was headed for the food dish when Allison suddenly reached out and stabbed a button on the appliance. The high-pitched ping startled the cat. Tiny claws scratched feverishly over the linoleum as the kitten scurried out of the room.

All Allison had done was zero out the remaining seconds on the display, but she was smiling as if she’d set the thing to detonate the next time he used it.

An hour later they had the carpet in #5 rolled up to within four feet of the far wall. They knelt in opposite corners, each working a hammer into the space between the carpet and the tack strip. As awkwardly as Allison handled her tools, she worked faster than he did. It was the damned hangover.

And his tendency to stop every minute or so and look over at her.

She’d shocked the hell out of him when he’d ordered her to wrestle a carpet lined with decades of grime and she hadn’t told him to go screw himself—because she sure had every reason to. She was used to wining and dining clients in high-end restaurants, facilitating million-dollar contracts and shopping for PR party duds at cutesy designer boutiques in Old Town. Yet here she was, wearing ill-fitting, stain-resistant cotton and big-ass boots, helping him renovate a country motel without giving him anywhere near the grief he deserved.