Nicole Laurent

This excerpt is from the sexy romantic comedy I’m currently working on. Warning: Rough draft! Unedited!;) Just wanted to give you a peek at my current WIP. More of chapter 1 will be forthcoming at a later date!

 

Chapter 1

 

     There are moments in life when you should be able to lift your head up, throw your shoulders back and muster up some dignity. Tessa Aldridge decided that this certainly wasn’t one of them. Looking down at the sun-worn patio chair cushion she had folded around her nude body, she wondered for the fifteenth time why she’d even agreed to come home to Georgia to housesit for her wayward parents. Oh yeah. The damn dog.  Who was locked up nice and safe inside the house while she stood wet and naked on the back porch.

 

     Throwing her best glare at the hot tub that had seduced her into this mess, she tapped on the glass window of the back door one more time, trying to entice Miss Beasley off the couch.  If she could do that, there was a chance she could get the lazy Basset Hound to come to the door, stand up on her hind legs and unlock it.  Perhaps she’d grown opposable thumbs since this morning.

 

     From the front of the house, all she could hear was the opening strains of Miss Beasley getting her howl on.  Dear God, how did her parents live with that noise? And what the hell was the deal with the back door automatically locking itself?  Studying the knob in the dim porch light, she realized it was new.  And then she remembered the last time her parents had come to visit her in New York and how her father thought the self-locking mechanism on her apartment door was ingenious. Fabulous.

 

     Standing on her bare tiptoes, she looked across the yard and over the fence. She could see that there were lights on in the neighbors’ house and wondered if they still had her parents’ house key. Neighbor, she corrected herself, not neighbors. Her mother had mentioned that the husband had died suddenly last year.  That would leave the lonely widow as her only hope.

 

     Glancing disgustedly at the floral bi-fold cushion barely covering her torso, Tessa minced across the backyard, through the gate and into the neighbor’s side yard. The sound of a car approaching and a flash of headlights had Tessa flattening herself against the siding, swearing to herself. Making her way to her neighbor’s back gate, she swore once again when she found it locked.

 

     She was naked, wet, wearing fashion designed by Lawn and Garden and locked out. This would never happen in New York. Okay, perhaps it would happen.  Bizarre things happened daily in the city she’d called home for the last six years. But never to her.  

  

     Tessa decided to take a moment, regroup and knot the little cushion ties together at the side to secure her ensemble.  Then she lifted her head up, threw her shoulders back and marched, with dignity, around to the front of the house.

 

     Clutching the front of her cushion to her breasts, she lifted a manicured finger and leaned into the doorbell.  Nothing. She waited a minute and rang it again.  Still nothing. With impatience, she raised her fist and knocked crisply on the frame of the screen door.  And waited. And waited. That was when she noticed the music coming from somewhere inside the house. Was the poor widow hard of hearing? Wasn’t she under 50?  And was she really into Fall Out Boy?

 

     Waiting until the song was over, Tessa swung open the aluminum framed screen door and banged directly on the front door, nearly losing her cushion in the process.  She heard a masculine, “Keep your pants on!” from the bowels of the house and she narrowed her eyes at the door.  If she had freaking pants she wouldn’t be bothering this … this…

 

     The door swung open to an annoyed but sinfully shirtless young man.  Damn.  They didn’t make them like that when she was in high school. He was wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans and the six-pack his momma gave him. Tearing her eyes from a set of gorgeously well developed pectorals, Tessa looked into a pair of heavy lidded brown eyes that made her want to drop her cushion, knock him to the floor, and ride him until those chocolate eyes rolled back into his head.

 

     What is wrong with you, Tessa? He’s a child!  An exquisitely constructed, strapping child, but a child all the same.  She was just searching for words when she noticed the sardonic twist of his mouth.  His sexy mouth… with satiny pillow-lips, a little stubble around it and a hint of a cleft beneath.  At least he was old enough to shave.

 

     Deciding that she didn’t like that smirk, not one little bit, she said, “I fail to see what you find so amusing.”

 

     The man, er, boy leaned insolently in the doorway with his arms crossed as he took a leisurely gander at Tessa from the tips of her polished toes to the top of her blonde head. Then his eyes seemed to rest on her left side where the two ends of the cushion were haphazardly tied together, but didn’t meet.

 

     He shook himself out of his small stupor and leaned around her looking left and right as if searching for something. Then he glanced back at Tessa with one eyebrow arched and said, “Am I being punk’d?”

 

     Tessa cleared her throat primly and said, “I don’t even know what that means.  Is your … grandmother home?”

 

     He just stared at her, his face serious, almost too serious, but his eyes sparkling with humor. “Lady, I’m not sure. She lives in Boca.  Want me to call her and check?  This might be her bingo night.”

 

     The widow moved to Boca Raton?  And left her house to this … this infant? “Who are you?”

 

     “Don’t you think I should be asking you that?”

 

     Tessa shook her shoulder length bob into what she hoped was perfect order, held out one hand and said, “Tessa Aldridge.  Bob and Alice Aldridge’s daughter. I’m dog sitting and I seem to have locked myself out of the house.”

 

     Both eyebrows raised, he looked at her formally outstretched hand and snorted. Snorted! Then he scrubbed his hand over his military short brown hair as if trying to decide if he’d just opened the door to the twilight zone.

 

With an absent shake of his head and a grin, he took her hand and rubbed his thumb across her knuckles and made to pull it towards his mouth. Nearly stunned stupid by the courtly gesture, she blushed and stammered a bit, making how do you do noises while he laid a kiss against her knuckles. The heat of his lips combined with the jolt of electric awareness had her yanking her hand back abruptly.

    

“Do you happen to have a key to my parents’ house, Mister …”

    

“Mann. You can call me Carter.”

 

     She blinked, trying to mentally categorize exactly who this man-child was. 

 

He stuffed his hands into his pockets drawing her eyes to his jeans, jeans that appeared to be stained with … paint? Dragging her eyes back up and forcing herself not to pause too long at ground zero, she asked, “So are you little Harry’s son?” God, she hoped not because that would make her far too old and he was far too young for the current licentious thoughts running through her scrambled brain. She might actually get arrested.

 

     Folding his arms across his chest again, he narrowed his eyes and said, “I’m Harry.”

 

     Almost forgetting she was standing nearly naked on her neighbor’s front porch, she retorted, “You just said you were Carter.  I used to babysit little Harry.” She held up her hand at about shoulder level and said, “About yea high? So skinny I could have used him as a toothpick?”  Too late, she realized her error. Mister Mann straightened a bit, puffed out his spectacular bare, hairless chest and gritted, “I’m little Harry Mann.”

 

     She couldn’t help it. She laughed.

 

     And with that, he shook his head, stepped back and shut the door in her face.

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****Excerpt Part Two****

 

     That didn’t go well. Tugging her cushion up more securely, she rang the doorbell once again. Heavy footsteps approached from the other side of the door and she could have sworn she heard his deep voice mutter, “Are you kidding me?”

 

     The door swung open again and, yup, he still looked sexy. Really, really annoyed but it was working for him. Concentrating on presenting him her most apologetic, beseeching face, she said, “I’m sorry. I was rude.”

 

     He leaned into the doorjamb, hands tucked into armpits and raised his eyebrows indicating that he had all the time in the world to listen to her grovel.

 

     And grovel she would, because her yard wear ensemble was beginning to itch and she shuddered to think what microscopic creatures were living in it. “Look, can I step inside?  You seem to have me at a disadvantage.”

 

     He studied her a moment, let out a hefty sigh and stepped back to let her into the foyer. Closing the door behind her, he leaned against it and made a gesture for her to continue with her groveling.

 

     Okay, Tessa. You can do this. Just pretend he’s an account you can’t afford to lose and say whatever you need to say to get what you want. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t really laughing at your name. Harry Mann is a fine name. An excellent name, really.  It’s just that you said ‘little hairy man’, and-”

 

     He held up a hand to stop her. “Got the joke.  Got the joke the first two hundred times I heard it. Which is why I go by Carter now.”

 

     She nodded quickly, relieved that they were making headway. “And Carter is an excellent moniker.” Did she just say moniker? Tone it down a notch, Tessa! “It’s very … E.R.  You know … the cute doctor? Must see TV?”

 

     “You should probably stop now.”

 

     She nodded her head like a bobble doll. She was so not on her game.  It had to be the naked thing. “Could, uh … do you have a key?”

 

     His supple lips tipped up at the edges. “I might.”

 

     “I said I was sorry,” she said, then crossed her arms in a show of confidence.  The effect might have been lost when her movement made the cushion shift exposing her left breast. Blushing, she adjusted the cushion and glanced up to see Carter still staring at the formerly exposed area as if she were still on display.

 

     Interesting.

 

     She decided to use her feminine wiles to her advantage. It was marketing 101, after all: sex sells. Clasping her hands in front of her and purposely shifting the cushion to expose part of her left hip, she lowered her head slightly and looked up at him through her lashes. “Would you, by chance, have a t-shirt or something I could borrow?”

 

     He was staring at her hip. Which must have somehow blocked his hearing. Or thinking.

 

     “Carter?” she said sweetly. At least she thought she sounded sweet.

 

     He blinked and looked up at her, his eyes much darker now. “I’m sorry.  Did you say something?”

 

     Plucking at the fabric near her hip, drawing his eyes down again, she said, “A shirt?”

 

     He shook his head and pushed off the door with a muttered, “Christ,” then added, “follow me.”

 

***

 

Carter barely repressed the urge to stop in the hallway and thunk his head against the wall. Repeatedly. Contessa Aldridge showed up on his front porch, late at night, wrapped up like a pornographic present. Okay, she was decked out like a garden display at Home Depot, but that chair cushion did little to conceal the lush curves he’d been lusting after since he was thirteen.

 

     Tessa had been the star of every one of his pubescent dirty dreams. At thirteen, he’d been old enough to be left home without a sitter. That was until he’d made the fatal mistake of ‘borrowing’ his parents’ second car one evening when they had gone to a dinner party. The stupid thing was when he’d taken the car, he’d had no real destination in mind. He’d just wanted to see if he could do it.  The look on his friends’ faces when he stealthily picked them up one by one was almost worth the humiliation that followed when he locked the keys in the car, with the engine running, at Reid Latham’s house. Reid’s parents were not amused. And neither were Carter’s.

 

     But the upside to the whole deal was that until she left for college that fall, the sexy but studious girl next door became his reluctant jail warden, and he, her happy inmate. His parents’ Friday bowling league nights became the sweetest hell that a boy with a perpetual woody could ever hope for.

 

     Just thinking about the juvenile fantasies Tessa had inspired got his dick stirring. Best to shut down that x-rated movie reel now before he telegraphed his thoughts with a tent pole pitching out the front of his pants.

 

     He turned the corner and entered his childhood bedroom, Tessa close on his heels. What the hell had he been thinking inviting her into his bedroom to find a shirt? All he’d planned on doing tonight was to kick back with a beer, some good tunes and work on the second painting in the three painting series he’d been commissioned for. But no. His teenaged hard-on inspiring muse shows up on his front porch at 11 o’clock at night, buck ass naked, being haughty and coy like she couldn’t decide how to act, and shooting his concentration all to shit.

 

     He opened his walk-in closet door and looked over his shoulder to find Tessa turning in circles, taking in the décor of his room. Oh, for the love of Christ, he really meant to take down the Pamela Anderson poster.

 

     Her eyes caught on his and he watched her sassy mouth twitch as she said, “Nice digs.”

 

     “Hey, I haven’t lived here in years. I just came home-“

 

     She waved off his explanation. “No, it’s an interesting retrospective of everything 80s.”

 

     Glancing around the room, taking in all the overlapped posters, he pointed out, “I think I have the early nineties covered as well. There’s Kim Basinger. She’s a classic.”

 

     “Uh-huh. So is Princess Leia. Did men really like the donuts over the ears look?”

 

     “The slave girl look was better. And honestly, we weren’t looking at her hair.”

 

     He was pleased to see her blush.  He’d love nothing more than to find the many ways to make this woman blush.  And not just with his words.  He’d like to use his hands and his tongue, his-

 

     “So do you have a shirt?”

 

     Crap. He was thirteen again.  No, scratch that. He was thirteen, with a seventeen year-old’s libido and a twenty-four year-old’s body. But speaking of bodies … her twenty nine year old body looked mighty-

 

     “Carter.”

 

     “Huh?”

 

     “The shirt”

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****Excerpt Part Three****

 

     Shit. He walked into the closet, flipped on the light and turned to the shelves where his t-shirts and jeans were folded. Thanks, Mom.

 

He’d moved back home when his father died so his mother wouldn’t feel so alone. It was only temporary. It had to be temporary. But she’d fallen into old habits quickly, doing his laundry, ironing his shirts. Every now and then she’d sneak in and make his bed.  It was probably time to move on.

 

     He must have been standing in the closet far longer then necessary because he heard the lovely Contessa shuffle in behind him. He briskly pulled down the shirt closest at hand and cringed as the whole stack of shirts came down with it, along with two Playboys, a Penthouse and… why me? … a Hustler.

 

     Tessa Bent to pick up the Hustler giving him an excellent view of her very fine ass in profile. She stood upright again holding the dog-eared skin mag out to him with a look of here you go, you dirty perv etched all over her face.

 

     He took it back and told her, “Angie Dickenson’s in that issue. It’s vintage.”

 

     “Uh-huh.”

 

     “A collector’s item.”

 

     “Sure.”

 

     She was laughing at him. Okay, she was actually trying to keep her face solemn and serious, but he could see beneath the reserved, no-nonsense façade.  Her blue eyes were sparkling and that sassy mouth appeared to be holding back a rueful smile.

 

     He decided to bait her. Bending to pick up the other magazines along with the heap of jumbled shirts, he said, “What can I say? Always had a thing for older women.” He shoved the pile haphazardly back onto the shelf, turned to her and added, “And blondes.”

 

     Her lips parted as she let out a puff of breath and her eyes went round and doe-like.  While she was still stunned speechless, he took a step forward, Toad the Wet Sprocket t-shirt hanging between two fingers, and closed the space between them. She took a step back, bumping into the doorjamb and sending her cushion askew.

 

     Lifting his arms, he put the shirt over her head, trying to ignore the look of panic mixed with excitement in her eyes. When her head popped through, he gently grabbed her left wrist and threaded it through the sleeve. And she let him. Just stood stock-still and watched him work while her pulse visibly fluttered at her throat.

 

     With one arm through, the shirt covered the area over her left breast. Skimming his fingers up the unbelievably soft skin of her exposed side, he smiled as her eyes closed of their own accord, her body shivering involuntarily. He deftly unknotted the ties, pressed her into the doorjamb, keeping the cushion from falling to the floor. Stretching the loose half of the shirt tight and to the side, he murmured, “Put your arm through, Tessa.”

 

     He could feel her watching him while she fumble to thread her hand into the sleeve. After her third failed attempt, he eased back a bit to help her.

 

And wouldn’t you know it, that’s when that God-awful cushion fell to the closet floor.