Kathleen O'Brien - Everything but the Baby

“Will you go to bed with him?”

She stopped, the hanger frozen an inch above the rod.

She stared over her shoulder at Mark, who looked genuinely curious.

Damn it.

She was an idiot.

She really hadn’t thought of that.

DANIEL O’HARA HATED the rain. Whenever one of those typical Florida afternoon thunderstorms broke loose, the pro shop at The Mangrove filled up with wet, irritable tourists who seemed outraged to discover that their vacation package hadn’t come with a sunshine guarantee.

Daniel ordinarily liked this part-time job okay—it was laid-back and it was fun to see all the new equipment first. Besides, he’d do anything to get a few hours away from the Hideaway and from his parents. Ever since the trouble last winter, they watched him like a hawk.

But he didn’t like it when it rained. The guests needed someone to take their frustrations out on, and the seventeen-year-old nobody behind the register made the perfect target.

And, of course, he had to treat them like royalty, even though they smelled rank and they dripped all over the merchandise, because, of course, they’d stayed out on the golf course too long, as if ignoring the rain would make it go away. They pawed the clothes, swung the clubs and tried on cap after cap. They bitched about everything and never bought squat.

He was trying to explain to Mr. Inkerfino that they didn’t carry these microfiber, herringbone golf shorts in a four-X—without implying that people who wore four-X probably shouldn’t even be on a golf course and definitely shouldn’t be wearing herringbone—when he caught a whiff of jasmine and sandalwood above the sweat.

His heart did a pole-vault jump. That was Janelle Greenwood’s perfume. It was probably the only perfume he’d recognize with his eyes closed.

“Hi, Danny,” she said from behind him.

He handed the three-X shorts to Mr. Inkerfino, then turned, smiling. “Hi, Ms. Greenwood.”

She tilted her head, giving him a mock stern look. “Ms. Greenwood?”

He shrugged, hoping the flush he felt around his chest didn’t make its way to his face. He had a zit right near his hairline and his freckles would probably light up like a Christmas tree. His stupid sensitive skin was one of the eight million reasons he hated being a redhead.

For the freckles, his grandfather said he should swab them with the blood of a hare or distilled water of walnuts. When he was a kid, he had begged his mom to make some kind of rabbit dinner, in the hopes that he could get hold of some blood. The walnut thing just didn’t make any sense to a ten-year-old at all.

She’d refused, so he had the damn things still. The sign of a true Irishman, his father assured him proudly. Yeah, right. Freckles and blushes and acne. Real sexy.

“Ms. Greenwood?” Janelle said again, softly.

Last time she was in the shop, she’d asked him to call her Janelle. Anything else was silly, she’d said, considering that she was probably only a few years older than he was. But his manager, Mr. Beaner, was a real stickler and he would have fired Daniel if he heard him getting chummy with a customer.

“Umm…well… Hey, that’s your new tennis dress, isn’t it?” Daniel hoped she’d be willing to change the subject. He’d helped her pick the dress out yesterday and it looked really hot on her. “Did you get rained out?”

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