Читать книгу Driving Her Wild - Meg Maguire - Страница 9

3

STEPH TOWELED OFF by her phone’s scant glow and pulled on her date clothes.

Any second now, she chanted in her head. Any second now, the lights would come back on. Please, let them come back on. She didn’t want to spend the night here. Her evening had sucked hard enough already.

But she also didn’t want to get Patrick fired. Technically he probably deserved it, but he reminded her too much of her younger brother, Tim. Sweet guy, but so clueless. She’d be angry to hear about anybody getting Tim fired for screwing something up—which he probably did every single day at the auto shop where he worked—and it made the idea of doing the same to Patrick feel gross. Though she would firmly suggest he look into a third vocation.

She found him in the back corner of the gym before the open fuse box, talking on his phone, flashlight gripped between his arm and ribs.

“No,” he was saying, “it doesn’t have one. This thing’s practically made of mammoth tusks. Half of it’s still K and T.”

Steph tugged the flashlight free, aiming it at the panel as he poked and fussed.

“Thanks,” he mouthed.

The fuse box was a massive thing, with rows and rows of toggle switches and several dead, frayed wires leading nowhere. This building was easily over a hundred years old, and not well maintained. Perhaps this would be a tricky puzzle for even a decent electrician to solve. Maybe he was a decent electrician. Maybe his evening was proving even more frustrating than hers. She felt embarrassed for bitching him out.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. Hang on.” He set his phone down and pulled on a pair of gloves from his tool belt. Steph stepped away a pace, watching his back flex as he messed with something or other. She could see the shapes of his lats and traps and the swell of his deltoid, and wondered how he’d gotten those. She’d always had a weakness for a man with a nice back. She pondered what he might look like, doing push-ups with his shirt off—

Suddenly, a miracle.

She gasped as the overhead lights flickered to life with buzzes and ticks. Patrick whooped and picked up his phone. “You hear that? You are a lifesaver. I owe you. Again. Okay, go back to sleep. Oh—who won tonight? Nice. Later, man.”

He turned to Steph, beaming and incredulous. Smiling this way, he made her forget how annoying he was in light of how handsome he was. Nothing flashy, just an honest sort of face, but that smile lit him up. It lit her up, too, in ways she’d sworn she was done feeling toward guys like Patrick Doherty.

“Okay,” he said. “Now all I have to do is make sure the security system’s working and we can get the hell out of here.”

They walked to the front of the gym.

“Green light!” he said as the panel came into view. But his smile drooped as they got closer. Not green—yellow.

“What does yellow mean?” Steph asked, pushing on the bar of the door. Still locked.

“I dunno.”

They peered at the little digital screen. Custom settings lost. Enter access PIN to reactivate default settings.

“That’s okay,” Patrick said. “It’ll only take a minute to re-program the hours.” He crouched for the manual, finding the label printed with the device’s serial number and code.

“Four nine four, zero two two...” He hit Enter. The light turned red. PIN not recognized.

“Hmm.” He entered the digits again. PIN not recognized. 5 incorrect PINs will result in system lockdown. Two chances blown.

“Let me see.” Steph gave it a try, but he hadn’t misread the numbers. PIN not recognized. 5 incorrect PINs will result in system lockdown. “What the hell?”

“It worked earlier. Maybe there’s some other code in here, for this situation...” He flipped through the booklet. “Or I could look up troubleshooting tips on my phone.”

Dear God, the so-called expert they’d hired was going to Google his way out of this? Wilinski’s really did need all the help it could get.

“This is still an improvement,” he said.

“How?”

“We’ve got power again. And lucky for you, I got that new flat-screen all wired up. Why don’t you watch a movie or something? I’m sure I’ll figure this out in no time.”

Steph wished she believed him, but nothing he’d yet done had instilled her with even the tiniest speck of confidence. “Fine.”

She dried her hair in the locker room then grabbed a sports drink from the fridge in the office, jotting it on the lengthy I.O.U. list Mercer kept taped to the wall.

In the screening room there was a shelf lined with VHS tapes and DVDs—old boxing matches and MMA footage, plus a nice library of fight flicks. She picked The Karate Kid, her favorite from kindergarten. The movie had probably shaped the entire course of her life. She hit Play. Two recliners sat side by side, and she plopped into one with a weary huff.

She was supposed to be at a bar, nursing a vodka and tonic and hitting it off with Dr. Dylan. Yet here she was, drinking Powerade at work well after closing time. Story of her life. The past couple years, she’d often lamented feeling trapped in the gym. This was just sick—the first week of her fight retirement and here she was, literally trapped in one.

She was just nodding off, mouthing along with the movie dialogue, when a knock on the doorframe jerked her wide awake.

Patrick was smiling in a way she didn’t trust one bit.

“So?”

“Yeah, so...”

She groaned. “Seriously?”

“I got nothing, here. If I punch in one more PIN and it doesn’t work, the cops get called.”

“Can you call the security company?”

“I did. They’re sending a guy out.”

She relaxed back in her chair.

“He’ll have a service PIN that’ll disarm the system from the outside. But he has to do it in person—it requires a code and a key. He can’t just give me the digits.”

“Oh well.”

“But the guy on call is over in Chicopee, so...”

“What? Oh come on. That’s two hours away!”

“Sorry.” Patrick unbuckled his tool belt, set it aside and sank heavily into the other recliner with a wailing of springs. “This time it really isn’t my fault.”

Good God, two more hours...? But what was the alternative? Call 9-1-1 and get the door busted in, probably wind up stuck here answering questions and filling out police forms, with both the manager and owner out of town... Plus if this really wasn’t Patrick’s fault, it’d be a shame to drop him in trouble over whatever fees they might get charged if the fire department had to bail them out. She could appreciate that as lousy as her evening was turning out, at least she wasn’t worried about whether or not she’d still have a job come morning.

“Okay,” she said with a mighty shrug of surrender. This night was just destined to suck. Might as well embrace it. “I guess we’ll just have to wait it out.”

He turned in his chair, leaning his arm along the headrest. “I appreciate it. And I’m sorry.”

“You’re still a terrible electrician,” she reminded him. “But maybe this could have happened to anyone, given how old the wiring must be. And maybe it’s the company’s fault the system’s not working. Though it’s weird both those things should have gone wrong in one night. To one man.”

“Luck of the Irish.”

“You would know, Patrick Doherty.”

“Maybe it’s fate that we got trapped here together.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I’m single,” he said casually. “You’re single, for as long as I can keep you out of that hot doctor’s clutches...”

“Please don’t hit on me. This evening has been enough of an ordeal already. Let me just watch my movie and take a nap, and we’ll both pray the security guy can fix all this in like, two seconds. Then we’ll never speak of it again.”

She shut her eyes, but Patrick didn’t make it even a full minute before interrupting her snooze. “So, your job...”

She sighed, meeting his eyes. “What about my job?”

“So are you like a pro-lady-wrestler, or...”

If looks could kill, hers would’ve punched straight through his heart and out the other side. “I’m a jujitsu instructor.”

“That’s what that’s called, all that rolling around in a karate outfit you were doing the other day? Joo jitzoo?”

Lordy. At least he hadn’t called them pajamas, she supposed. “It’s called a gi.”

“But it’s basically wrestling, right?”

“Brazilian jujitsu evolved from judo, and yeah, it’s a grappling-based martial art. But I don’t get greased up in a sequined bra and booty shorts and body-slam other women.”

“What do you do?”

“Have you never seen cage fighting?”

“Not really.”

That would never do. She sat up straight, chair back snapping to attention.

This wasn’t how Steph had planned on spending her evening, but she might as well make good use of the time by educating yet another person on what MMA was all about. She went to the shelf, finding a VHS of one of the best pro events there’d ever been from way back in the sport’s more lawless days. Patrick had to help her, switching the video input to the VCR.

“See?” he asked, crouching beside her, switching cables, close enough for her to catch the annoyingly pleasant scent of his skin. “I’m not completely useless.”

Steph hit Play and they returned to their seats. “Now pay attention and I’ll show you exactly how un-like pro-wrestling this is.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you ever watch boxing?”

“I don’t follow it, but yeah, I’ve seen a few matches.”

“Kickboxing?”

“Does that Van Damme movie count?”

“Nearly. Anyhow, MMA is way more like boxing than pro-wrestling. For starters, it’s real.”

The event coverage started up and she fast-forwarded, skipping over a particularly bloody preliminary match.

“Whoa,” Patrick muttered.

She stopped when the tape reached the main event. It was an epic fight—nonstop action, the perfect mix of stand-up and grappling, a million exciting reversals and near-submissions.

“So, wait,” Patrick said halfway through the first round.

She turned, finding his lips pursed, brow furrowed adorably.

“Yes?”

“So you actually do this?”

“I do. Or I did. I’m just a trainer now, so I won’t be doing much more than sparring. I’m getting old for it.” Some fighters could stay professionally viable all the way to forty, but Steph wasn’t destined to be one of them. She could feel the sport taking its toll in her joints, and her post-match aches and pains lingered far longer than they had when she was twenty.

“But you got hit in the face and stuff?”

“I did. Plenty.”

Patrick’s blue eyes studied her. “It doesn’t show.”

“Well. Thank you.”

“Except for your nose, but that’s my fault.”

She waited for him to get predictably obnoxious with the topic, and ask if rolling around with women turned her on, if anybody ever had wardrobe malfunctions, if perhaps she’d like to wrestle with him, here and now. But after a moment’s contemplation, all he said was, “Huh.”

“Huh what?” She hit Pause on the remote.

“I dunno. That’s cool. Can you...”

Can I what? Pin you? Come on, out with it. I’ve heard them all.

“So can you stop somebody from like, attacking you?”

She blinked, surprised at the question. “Not if they’ve got a gun. But yeah. I fought off a mugger once. And one time I was hiking with my friend and somebody’s dog attacked her, so I kicked it.”

His eyes grew wide with horror. “You kicked a dog?”

“It was attacking my friend! It should have been on a leash.”

“Poor dog. It was probably just protecting its owner.”

“It punctured her skin!”

“Poor dog,” Patrick said again, and Steph realized he was winding her up.

“You own a dog, don’t you?” How could he not?

He frowned. “I did. I lost her in my divorce.”

Divorced. So Patrick Doherty wasn’t just floating through his easy life, drifting blindly from one opportunity to the next on a cloud of lovability.

“What breed?” she asked.

“Pug.”

She had to laugh.

“What?”

“I dunno. You just seem like a Golden sort of guy.”

“Well, I wanted a black Lab, like I grew up with. But my ex was in love with those pugs. And she was a great dog—really sweet. Just not the kind you can toss a Frisbee for on the beach.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-five in April.”

“Were you married long?”

“Almost four years. We split up the Christmas before last.”

As someone currently hell-bent on finding a partner, Steph couldn’t help but want to ask what had gone wrong for Patrick and his. She held her tongue.

He smiled at her, a warm and disarming gesture. “You can ask what happened. I can tell you want to.”

She bit her lip. “What happened?”

“I kinda wish I knew.” Leave it to poor, charming, clueless Patrick to not even know what had ended his marriage.

“I was really happy. I loved my wife, I loved our home. I loved how we spent our free time. I was just checking my watch, thinking we’d probably socked away enough money to start talking about the whole baby thing.”

“But she hadn’t been thinking the same?”

He shook his head. “Not the way I was. She told me, ‘I want to be able to stop working when I become a mother, but that’s never going to happen, is it?’ She’s a corporate accountant—she made way more money than me. I said hey, I’d be happy to only take weekend work and do the stay-at-home-dad thing. But that wasn’t cutting it for her. I wasn’t cutting it.”

“Ouch.”

“All this resentment came pouring out of her like a volcano. All this anger I’d never even realized she felt toward me. I just...” He shrugged, looking utterly lost. “My own wife thought I was a failure, and I didn’t even have the first clue. I’d thought we were fine. It was so weird, like we’d been living in these two completely separate realities.”

Steph’s heart hurt for him. How often had her dad beat himself up with those same feelings of provider inadequacy?

“You said you’re really a carpenter?”

He nodded. “I’m a great carpenter. Craftsman-type stuff, ornate trim and cabinetry. I moved to the North Shore thinking there’d be tons of work, restoring all those amazing old colonials.” His eyes lit up, simply talking about it. “And at first, there was tons of work. Everyone was buying and flipping fixer-uppers during the boom. I was turning jobs down left and right, cherry-picking the coolest ones. That’s how things were when I met my wife.”

“Then the real-estate bubble burst?”

“Yeah. Now I’m lucky if I get even one job a month, fixing somebody’s deck for a quarter of what I might charge doing the custom stuff I’m really good at.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t be here now, wrecking your day, if I didn’t need the money. My mortgage was steep to begin with. Take away my ex’s income and it’s a bear, even after the refinancing.”

“Can you not sell it?”

His gaze dropped to the armrest, where he rubbed at the worn leather with his big fingertips. “Maybe I could. At a loss, though. And I’ve put so much work into that place...it’d break my heart. It’s a great old house—not huge, but right on the beach, in Newburyport. I’ve put years of my life into fixing it up, thinking it was where my kids would grow up. And I mean, they still could. Who knows? But not if I can’t keep up with the payments.”

She nodded, sadness deepening. She could appreciate that—pouring your heart and soul and sweat into a purpose for months and months, only for it to come to naught. She’d trained for and lost enough matches in her career to understand that heartbreak perfectly.

“That sucks,” was all she could think to say. She reached over and gave his forearm a commiserating pat, same as she would have if one of her brothers had broken some bad news. But this touch felt nothing like she’d expected. The contact zinged straight up her fingers and arm, dropping through her middle like a gulp of hot chocolate, warmth sinking right into her toes. Oh no.

She snatched her hand away, clasping her fingers. No no no. She was not entertaining this attraction for a second.

This was all wrong.

It was probably pushing 1:00 a.m. She might’ve been kissed by Dr. Dylan Benedetti already, had this evening gone to plan. Yet here she was, locked at work with the embodiment of every guy she’d ever dated and sworn to put behind her...and he’d just zinged her. It had to be some kind of test.

But she could admit Patrick wasn’t quite like all those exes. He was in his thirties for one, with a marriage already under his belt. Lovable cloddishness aside, he was a man, not a guy. He’d suffered more disappointment and shouldered more responsibility than she’d have guessed. And these extra dimensions only made her sexual attraction feel all the more charged and unwieldy. And reckless.

Steph hit Play. They watched the tape through to the end of the match, and she stole sidelong glances, smirking at the way Patrick winced.

She shut it off. “So that’s MMA.”

“That’s barbaric.”

“The rules have gotten stricter since that event. No knees to the face once a guy’s on the ground, that kind of thing.”

“And that’s what you do? Or did?”

She nodded.

“On TV?”

“Not always, but a few times.”

“It must pay well.”

She shrugged. “At the top, yeah.”

“Were you at the top?”

“No. But it’s what I love. I made enough to make it worth it.”

“Until now.”

She stretched, and let her arms flop along the back of the recliner, feeling the hour. “I’ll be thirty in a couple weeks. My body doesn’t bounce back the way it used to, and I’m tired of all the traveling. I’m ready to settle down.”

“With a hot doctor.”

She smiled. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

“Blind date, right? Who hooked you guys up?”

Her cheeks warmed. “The matchmaking agency upstairs.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of trying that...I’ve had crappy luck doing the bar scene again, and the online stuff intimidates me. I have no idea what to say to make myself sound interesting. Going through an actual service must be expensive though.”