The Bachelor Next Door

The boy shook his head. “Why?”

“Basketball is against the rules. I thought we could toss the pigskin around.”

“Mommy?”

“If Mr. Santini has a ball than I don’t object to your catching it,” she reluctantly agreed. Tossing a ball wasn’t the same as playing in a game, she reassured herself.

“As it happens, I do,” Rafe said, grinning at her.

“All right!” Andy dropped the stick he’d been tossing to the dog and followed Rafe across the street.

Santini had been in their lives for only a short time, but already he had a lot of influence over Andy. She watched her son staring up at Rafe and wondered how a man who spent most of his time with beautiful women and fast cars would react to blind hero worship.

She started to call Andy back, but Rafe was showing him how to hold the football. Cass watched her little boy come one day closer to manhood, and a part of her wanted to die. She’d carefully guarded Andy, but she had the feeling that soon he would throw off that protection.

Rafe helped Andy the way a father would help a son. Showing him things that only a man could. Cass felt convinced that Andy was becoming too attached to their neighbor. Her son was using Mr. Santini as fill-in father.

She couldn’t picture Rafe in the role of a dad. He treated Andy kindly, but sometimes he acted as if her son were an alien being. Having Andy underfoot had to be trying for a man like Rafe.

Cass watched them playing ball in the front yard and forgot that Rafe wasn’t the fatherly type. He seemed perfectly at ease with her son for perhaps the first time since they’d met. She couldn’t believe this was the same man who roared out of the neighborhood once a day in his Jaguar convertible.

Her heart ached as she watched them playing ball. She wanted the scene to be real. She needed a man to share her life and Andy’s. She knew that Rafe wasn’t that man but it was still hard to stop her heart from hoping.

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.

“Hello, Santini.” She wanted to put distance between them, and using his last name helped her to think of him as a buddy.

Rafe finished securing the section he was working on before glancing down at her. “Morning, Gambrel.”

That he didn’t mention her earlier gawking earned him points for tact, which she honestly admitted she’d thought he lacked.

She wished she’d changed into jeans before coming over. For some reason Rafe seemed to be glaring at her legs. Cass was generally happy about the way she looked, but now she thought about the extra five pounds she hadn’t lost since Christmas last year. “Do you need some help?”

“No,” he said, and rolled out another section of tar paper. “I roof in my sleep.”

Feeling put in her place, she wanted to escape. Her conscience demanded she make one more offer of help. “Wouldn’t two hands make the job go faster?”

“Yeah, I guess it would.” He sat back on his heels. “You’re not feeling guilty, are you?”

The twinkle in his eye warned her he was up to no good. But like an unsuspecting mackerel being lured to a fisherman’s hook, she swallowed the bait. “Guilty about what?”

“Sitting under the shade of the porch while I labored out in the hot sun.”

“Santini, don’t you know better than to give the help a hard time?” she asked before walking back toward her house.

“I guess not, Gambrel.”

She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “Should I stay?”

“Yes, ma’am, please.”

The polite tone to his words made her think he might be teasing again. She took a step toward the ladder intending to climb up to the roof. “Hang loose, Gambrel. I’ll be right down.”

In a matter of minutes Rafe was at her side. “You’ll need a tool belt and a hammer.”

“I thought I’d just hand you things and hold them in place.” She really didn’t know that much about home repair.

“What things, Cass?” He poured roofing tacks into one of the pockets on the leather tool belt.

“Nails and stuff.” She fidgeted, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“You’re a real tools expert.” But there was no censure in his tone, only the teasing lilt she’d come to expect.

“You’re treading on thin ice, Santini,” she warned him, playing along with his game.

“I’m scared, Gambrel. Real scared.” He handed her a rubber-handled hammer. “Turn around.”

She did and was engulfed by Rafe. His body warmth and musky scent surrounded her as he wrapped the tool belt around her waist and fastened it. If she leaned back an inch she’d be pressed up against his chest. A shiver passed through her, and temptation warred with good sense as she thought of his naked chest.

“There you go,” he said. His voice sounded different. A deeper, huskier version of his usual tone that made her aware of the difference between them. He stepped away from her and put his hand on her shoulders, turning her to face him.

“Thanks,” she managed to squeeze out of her dry throat. The weight around her was unaccustomed and felt weird.

Cass settled the hammer into one of the loops. Rafe passed her a scraper and a few other tools she couldn’t identify. “Is that all?”

“Distribute the weight of the hammer and the mallet.”

She moved the tools around. Well, she felt downright handy now.

“Do those shoes have good soles?”

“Yes, I think so.”

He knelt down near her knees. “Let me take a look at the bottom of your shoes.”

His breath brushed across her thigh and the muscle quivered. He was so close. Cass’s fingers itched with the urge to bury themselves in his thick black hair.

Cass swayed and her leg scraped against his cheek. The stubbly texture of his skin felt good against the smoothness of her own. Thank heavens she’d shaved her legs yesterday. She leaned away from him in embarrassment. He probably thought she was a love-starved widow.

“Put your hand on my shoulder for balance.”

His words were harsh, almost guttural. Cass knew their brief encounter had affected Rafe as much as it had affected her. She hoped it had. Her heart was beating loud enough to be heard a mile a way.

Oh, damn. She didn’t want this headlong rush into desire. Not now when her life was finally starting to balance out. She was independent and in charge of her own life, but a part of her still longed for someone to hold in the middle of the night. Not just anyone, but a certain man who could fill the emptiness inside of her.

Her hand rested on the tightly corded muscles of his shoulder as he examined the bottom of her shoes. He straightened and gave her the once-over. “Okay, you’re ready to work.”

They labored on the roof for the next two hours. Cass found roofing a hard but interesting task. They’d almost completed the section by mid-afternon, and she was relieved to know that she’d helped Rafe.

The sun was hot and Cass felt her face begin to pinken. “I need a break.”

Rafe glanced over at her. “You sure do. Go sit over there in the shade.”

A large maple tree provided shade on the east side of the roof. Walk across the roof by herself? No way. “I’ll stay right here.”

“Scared, Gambrel?”

Cass wasn’t the type to take a dare. She freely admitted to her faults. And she wasn’t going to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. She doubted that this strong man ever did. “Yes, I am.”

He reached out and brushed a finger across her cheek. “There’s no need to be. I won’t let you fall.”

But she was afraid that he would. Not fall off the roof. Rafe was too good a crew boss to allow any of his workers to get physically injured. But with each minute she spent with this man a part of her trod deeper into dangerous territory. Emotional territory that could spell trouble for her. Territory she hadn’t explored since the early days of her marriage.

He offered her his hand and seated her in the shade before retrieving two cans of fruit punch from an ice chest. He walked with the surety of a cat... no a streetwise warrior. Someone who knew that he could take on any situation. Cass envied him his confidence.

She’d felt weak and shaky most of her life. First with the loss of her father when she was sixteen, then with the loss of Carl when she was twenty-six. Instinctively she was drawn to strong men, yet a part of her resented their strength.

He was watching her, and that made her nervous. She took a long sip of the punch. The sweet liquid left an aftertaste and she set the can aside. “I’d like to invite you to dinner before we leave for the game tonight.”

“It would be easier to grab something at the Orena.”

Cass digested that. “Were you able to purchase tickets for us?”

“I told you I have season tickets.” He stared at her for a full minute before continuing. “Why didn’t you want Andy to go alone with me?”

Cass hedged for a moment. Short of out and out lying, there was no way to avoid the truth. “I don’t like the enthusiasm you have for sports. Andy looks up to you. What you do, he wants to do, and he’s so small for his age, I’m afraid he’ll get hurt.”

“Watching a game?”

“You know that once he gets the bug for any game he’ll be hooked, and then I’ll seem like an ogre if I don’t let him participate.”

“Cass, I’m not trying to influence your son. I thought the game sounded like a good idea, but if you didn’t want him to go, you should have just said no.”

“I know, but Andy wants to get involved in some afterschool activities, and I wanted to ask for your help with something.”

He stared at the top of the aluminum can. “I have no experience with kids, Cass.”

“I know. This is kind of a-man-who-was-once-a-boy question.”

He grinned. “Well, I was a boy once.”

“Somehow I suspected you might have been,” she said before blurting out, “Andy asked me to let him join peewee football.”

“That’s up to you,” Rafe said. Cass knew he didn’t want to be caught up in their lives.

“Rafe, I don’t want Andy to grow up being a little wimp because I never let him try things. But I also don’t want him to get hurt, and football is dangerous. I’ve heard tales from other mothers in the PTA.”

His light eyes were piercing in their intensity. “Injuries happen, Cass. But participating in a sport helps develop discipline.”

Silently Cass heard the censure from their first meeting. Discipline was something Andy lacked. Her son ran wild when he wanted to, and Cass knew she was to blame. “Can you suggest an alternative to football?”

“Let me think about it.” He stood up before tugging her to her feet. “You need to get out of the sun for a while.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You’re turning pink, lady.”

She ran her eyes over his almost bare body. His olive skin had merely deepened in the late-October sun, but if she stayed out much longer she’d look like a lobster. “I’m going.”

She held tightly to Rafe’s fingers as he led her across the steep roof to the ladder. She glanced down before taking her first step onto the aluminum ladder and felt the world tip on its axis. She closed her eyes as dizziness swamped her.

“I think I’ll stay up here for a while longer.” Maybe the rest of her natural life. She could watch Andy grow up from the roof.

“Come on, little coward. I’ll help you down.”

She stiffened and drew away from Rafe, but didn’t release his hand. “I’m not a coward. Anyone with common sense would be wary of falling.”

“I know, Cass,” he said in the gentlest tone of voice she’d ever heard him use. “I’ll go down first.”

Rafe surrounded her completely as they descended. She should have felt only cherished, safe and protected. But she also felt the first dangerous spark of passion. Her nipples tightened against the lace of her bra, and her body ached.

She leaned into Rafe’s chest and stopped climbing down. He paused, too, a harsh groan coming from his throat, and he rubbed his chest against her back.

“Rafe?” she asked, not sure what she wanted or what she was asking for. Only that she would regret that “something” if she never experienced it. Rafe made her feel alive. Like a woman who’d been frozen for a long time and was only now encountering her true self.

His lips brushed the nape of her neck, and electric shivers coursed through her body. He was warm and hard behind her, and she felt as safe as she would have, flat on the ground. She sank back against him, wanting more than this time and place could offer them.

“Cassie,” he murmured as he ran his lips along the length of her neck. His hands were still secured around her waist, but she’d felt his fingers making forays toward the bottom of her breasts.

Tundra barked loudly, breaking the moment as nothing else could have. Cass felt her face heat with a blush of shame. What could she have been thinking to react so shamelessly in a man’s arms? Especially this very experienced man’s. This man who had women at his beck and call and who was more worldly than Cass would ever want to be.

Rafe was moving again. In a moment they were safely on the ground. “Cass, you okay?”

His voice was sincere and kind and, dammit, she hated how weak and vulnerable she felt. “I’m fine. See you tonight.”

Cass left before he asked questions she didn’t want to answer. She was achy and shaking when she entered her air-conditioned house. She had a bad case of lust for a totally inappropriate man. What the heck was she going to do?

Rafe always wore jeans and a Magic shirt to all the games he attended. He figured Cass wouldn’t have thought to buy herself and Andy one, so he brought shirts for them. He looked forward to showing Cass part of his world.

Rafe also anticipated his good-night kiss. There was no question that he was going to claim one. Her mouth was tempting the hell out of him, and tonight he would know the feel of it under his own. He would know the feel of her in his arms.

Introducing Cass to sports had the side benefit of helping little Andy convince his mom that participating in a game was okay. Though Rafe cautioned himself against caring for the little boy, he liked the kid.

Rafe froze as it suddenly hit him that he was involving himself in this family’s life. He’d sworn not to let himself care for anyone after the death of his family, and he’d lived up to that until now. Until Cass Gambrel had tempted him to care. But along with the temptation was a niggling sense of warning. Mama, Papa and Angelica had depended on him, and he’d let them down. Firmly pushing the faces of the past out of his mind’s eye, he knocked on the door and heard running footsteps on the stairs.

“I’ve got it.”

Rafe grinned. Andy was a lovable kid.

“Hi, Mr. Santini. I thought you’d never get here.”

Rafe handed one of the T-shirts to Andy.

“Wow, thanks, Mr. Santini. Mommy, he’s here,” the boy yelled up the stairs.

“I know, sweetie,” Cass said from the top of the stairs.

She looked as he imagined she would. Casual, comfortable and chic. Not that she would think of herself in those terms. She wore a light green polo shirt and khaki pants.

Rafe was counting on Andy’s help to get Cass to change into jeans and the T-shirt he’d brought for her. “You look nice, but I brought you a shirt to wear tonight.”

Cass walked carefully down the stairs, stopping next to Rafe. He held up the shirt, measuring it against her. He’d gotten the smallest size available, but he had a feeling it would still be too big on her.

“I don’t know. I look funny in T-shirts.”

“Please, Mommy,” Andy cajoled without any prompting from Rafe.

“Come on, Cass. Everyone wears them.”

“Okay, I’ll go change.”

Twenty minutes later they were on their way. Rafe drove Cass’s Volvo through the downtown traffic. Andy sat in the backseat and talked about everything under the sun from school to television then back to school again.

Rafe tried to concentrate on the traffic and driving, but the image of Cass as she’d looked coming down the stairs was burned on his brain. Her jeans were time-worn and faded, hugging every feminine curve tightly. He’d had to ball his hands into fists to keep from reaching out and caressing her sweet rear end.