Shameless. Tori Carrington

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СКАЧАТЬ Christenberry stared at him in open-mouthed shock.

      That was it. He and his friends were going to put this ridiculous topic to rest. Right now.

      “Julie, man the register, please,” he said to a part-time sales associate who was stocking books nearby.

      He grabbed Gauge by the arm and led him in the direction of the stockroom. “You and I need to talk.”

      “It’s about damn time.”

      He could say that again.

      He opened the door, ushered his friend through it, and then stared at another associate who was stripping the covers off paperbacks to send back to distributors for credit.

      “John, go see if the music center needs any attention for a few minutes, will you?”

      The teen eyed him and a grinning Gauge and hastily left the room.

      “Christ, Kevin, you’re worse off than I thought.”

      Kevin stared at his friend. Gauge looked unaffected as he leaned against a table and crossed his feet at his booted ankles and then his arms over his chest. His T-shirt today was black and sported the logo from a Memphis House of Blues.

      “This has got to stop. Right now,” he said, pacing one way and then back again. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I can’t ban these…images from my mind.”

      “What images? Of Nina naked and moaning?” Gauge nodded. “Yeah, I’m going through pretty much the same thing.”

      Kevin stopped and fisted his hands at his sides. The idea that his friend felt the same way about Nina bothered him even more than the thought of his own agitated state.

      “What? You believed you’re the only one who’s been suffering since our little conversation the other night?”

      “But you’ve slept with two women since then.”

      Gauge grinned. “And your point is?”

      “My point is that you’re an asshole.”

      Gauge chuckled at that, nudging up Kevin’s already soaring stress level.

      Kevin grasped Gauge by the front of his T-shirt, forcing him to uncross both his ankles and his arms.

      “Whoa, watch it now.” Gauge’s smile disappeared briefly, the moment suddenly tense.

      Kevin released him and took a long breath. “Sorry.”

      Gauge smoothed down his wrinkled T-shirt. “No need getting violent on me. I can set you up with someone if you’re feeling that pent-up.”

      “No, thank you.”

      “You sure? Because I can guarantee you’ll feel one thousand percent better tomorrow morning.”

      “No, you would feel better. I’d probably feel worse.”

      “But what if that person was Nina…?”

      4

      “THERE’S SOMETHING different about you,” Nina’s grandma Gladys said, pointing a red nail in her direction. “I don’t know what it is, but rest assured, I’ll figure it out before I leave here today.”

      Nina took a sheet of cookies out of the oven, placed them on the counter and then shook her hands out of the oven mitts she wore. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Everything is exactly the same as it was when we had lunch last week.”

      Liar.

      Everything had changed. Not physically. But emotionally, Nina felt as if a door had opened, offering views out onto a lush vista she hadn’t known existed.

      All she had to do was step through that doorway and welcome the change.

      And those emotional changes would then also become physical.

      Through the round window in the kitchen door, she watched as Kevin chatted with Heidi Joblowski, her assistant. She gave an involuntary shiver.

      “Ten years younger,” Gladys said, her gaze following Nina’s. “That’s all I’d need and that man would have been in my bed aeons ago.”

      Nina nearly choked. “Ten years would make you sixty.”

      Her grandmother grinned. “Your point being?”

      Her point being that there still would have been more than twenty-five years between her and Kevin.

      Then again, her grandmother was probably right. She would have found a way, by hook or crook, to back Kevin—or any man she wanted—into her bed.

      She shook her head.

      Thankfully Gladys wasn’t sixty anymore. She was seventy. And finally beginning to show it.

      Nina hid a small smile as she took off her apron and then picked up the two plates she’d prepared. “Grab those soft drinks, will you? Our table’s just been vacated.”

      Their table was the one for two in the far corner of the café Gladys swore was the only place to sit. “All the better to see the hot young men you work with,” she’d told her granddaughter.

      Nina positioned the plates on the table and moved her chair so that she sat more next to her grandmother than across from her. She’d learned long ago not to block her view. Besides, there was always the risk of getting whiplash from Gladys asking her to quickly lean this way or that so she could get a better look at something, or rather, someone.

      Of course, her grandmother had no way of knowing that she now shared her interest in her coworkers. Rather than cluck her tongue or put up her hand to ward off any unwanted comments on either Kevin or Gauge’s posteriors, she intended to appreciate the view with her.

      “So, are you done with your redecorating yet?” Nina asked, waiting until Gladys was seated and had placed her paper napkin in her lap, despite her casual surroundings.

      She was long accustomed to her grandmother’s oddball behavior. She might sit with perfect posture, but her sometimes purple hair, her hot-pink lipstick and her gold lamé jackets gave her an air of regal yet trashy pride.

      Gladys waved her hand as she took a bite of her tuna salad sandwich on whole wheat. “That’s been done for weeks. Where have you been?”

      Right here. And she’d enjoyed three lunches with her since then. But Nina figured it was as good a place to start conversation as any. Urging her grandmother into a monologue about the fit nature of the handyman the decorator had sent to do the more difficult work—or the good-looking decorator himself, even if he did prefer men to women—would have gotten the ball rolling.

      But her grandmother wasn’t biting anything more than her sandwich as she watched Gauge entering the café for a cup of post-lunch coffee.

      Her grandmother elbowed Nina so hard she almost fell from her chair.

      “There СКАЧАТЬ