Playing Games. Dianne Drake
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the morning I’ll need an ark. You don’t happen to have one handy, do you? Or some bailing buckets?”
“Huh?”
“My faucet’s leaking. More like gushing all over the place. By morning my apartment’s going to be flooded.” Well, maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but demented drips called for desperate measures. “I need someone to come over here right now to fix it, before it starts leaking through the floor into the apartment below.” Well, maybe another teensy, weensy exaggeration. But if that’s what it would take to get him over there…
“Do you know what time it is, lady?” He was making no attempt to hide his irritation. “Because if this isn’t an emergency…” Bordering on downright hostile. But still so sexy she was thinking junk food. Always the infallible substitute.
“Well…” Roxy shrugged, then looked at the bug-eyed, tail-ticking cat clock on the wall. “Yep, I know exactly what time it is. I know what time it was when I called before—both times. And I called at respectable times then—you know, during the day, when you had that message on your voice mail saying to leave a message, that you’d call right back. But that didn’t work, did it? Since you never called back, and you never came over. So this time I thought if I called in the middle of the night when you’d probably be sleeping, I could wake you up and talk to you directly.” Roxy shut her eyes, trying to conjure up his sleeping image. Dark and brooding, hair tousled, sheet coming up only to his waist. Strong arms, naked chest…He wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing under the sheet because men like that always slept in the nude. Or they should, anyway. Damn waste of a lot of good maleness if they didn’t. God, she needed a Twinkie. “And since you’re up right now, why don’t you come on over here and do something about the drip? Okay?” With or without clothes.
“I’ll put you on the list for first thing in the morning,” he grumbled.
A turndown? He was actually refusing after she pleaded her case so eloquently? Well, that wasn’t good enough. If she had to suffer the drip, so did he. Roxy gritted her teeth for the next round. “Which is when? Nine o’clock? Ten o’clock? It can’t wait that long. It’s already oozing through the floorboards. You’ll be getting a call from my downstairs neighbor any minute.”
“Then go stick your finger in the dike, lady. That’ll hold it until morning.”
Roxy’s foot began its impatient tapping again. At this rate there really would be a flood before he got over there. “So, will a bribe work on you?” she blurted into the phone. Drip, drip. “Anything I have, short of sexual favors.” Of course, if he came over there the way she’d pictured him in bed… “Just please, come and take care of it right now. Okay? Or bring me a pipe wrench so I can do it myself.”
“You ever used a pipe wrench, lady?”
“Well, no. But how hard could it be? You clamp it on the pipe then twist.”
“All that leaks isn’t in the pipe.”
“Hey, I’ve got plenty of Bob Vila tapes and I know how to use them.” The only response to what she thought was a reasonable request was an audible, and very vexed, sigh. So she continued. “And if you let me use your tool I’ll promise not to ever call you at three-thirty in the morning again.”
“Three-forty,” he grunted. “And no way in hell are you touching my tool.”
Touching his tool…Boy, oh boy, the ideas that came with that. The ideas and the images. You wish I’d touch your tool, Mr. Handyman! “Three-forty,” she agreed. “So if your tool is off-limits, that means you’re coming over and doing it yourself. Right?” It was beginning to sound promising, from a purely plumbing perspective, of course.
“Who the hell are you, and where the hell do you live?”
So he wasn’t very friendly. Brooding and temperamental types were good, too. Especially when they packed a pipe wrench. And right now, the wrench was all she really wanted. “Roxy Rose. Apartment five-B.”
“Five minutes.” Then he hung up.
Five minutes—just enough time for him to get dressed. Damn! Another fantasy shot to pieces.
On her way from the kitchen into the dining nook she used as her office, Roxy passed by a large hall mirror and stopped, then hopped up on a plastic step to appraise her face. Whoever had hung that mirror must have been hanging it for Amazon women, because in her full five-foot-two glory she could just barely see her face. In fact, the mirror chopped her off at the nose, giving her a clear shot only of her eyes and forehead. So she’d bought the step. Easy solution. Just the way she liked things—easy.
Roxy smiled at the reflection and pushed her tangle of uncombed hair back from her face. “It’s a natural look, trendy-chic,” she always claimed, when friends asked why it was sticking out in odd directions, different odd directions. Truth was, she didn’t like the bother of fixing it, and she’d owned that disarrayed look long before it had become trendy-chic. “Oh well,” she sighed. “It’s not like this is a date.” Besides, no one had ever accused her of being a trendsetter—not in Roxy-mode. Roxy was no-fuss, nomuss, no makeup, with no particular concern over it. Trendy was Val’s gig, one she used for special appearances, photo shoots and the like. Geez, those mugs of her on the city buses. All over Seattle. Here a Valentine, there a Valentine, everywhere a Valentine. And all those billboards. Yikes! There were certain stretches of road she assiduously avoided because she loathed and detested being looked down upon by the pseudo-her camouflaged up to fit the public perception.
Hopping off the step, Roxy wondered if now would be a good time to get Mr. Beautiful Buns to lower the mirror, since he was already going to be there with his tools. Does-n’t hurt to ask, she decided, kicking her step back to the wall. Probably wouldn’t hurt to throw on a tighter T-shirt, either.
“WHO’S THERE?”
“It’s three forty-five, lady. Who do you think it is?”
“Can you show me some identification please—slip it under the door?”
“Lady, the only ID I have on me is my pipe wrench. So open up or I’m going back to bed.”
Smiling, she knew what ID she wanted to see. Yeah, like she’d really ask him to turn around so she could take a look. Only in your dreams, Rox. “Well, hold out that pipe wrench where I can see it,” she said, opening the door an inch. And there it was, his tool thrust right out there at her, and right behind it bare chest. Bare chest every bit as good as his backside. The she-gods were loving her tonight because this was pure, glorious male potency at its best. “Okay, I’m going to trust that that’s a pipe wrench.” Not that she had even looked at the wrench.
“It’s a pipe wrench, lady, so do you want me coming in and using it, because I’m two seconds away from going back across the hall to bed. Which is where I should have stayed in the first place.”
Mercy, mercy, please come in and use it. “Across the hall, as in you’re my neighbor?” Through the crack in the door, Roxy’s eyes wandered from his chest, down the low-riding jeans to his bare feet then back up to his chest. Hairless—somewhat surprising, since men with black hair usually had a fine mat on their chest. But his chest was boldly bare, showing off his flat, rippled stomach. Oh, my heavens, a six-pack! “I guess I’ve just been too busy to meet—”
“Your leak, lady?” he interrupted, his lack of interest in neighborly chitchat made abundantly clear by his testy intonation.
Roxy’s eyes went back up to his face. Except for the furious scowl it wasn’t bad—not bad at all. Probably the first time she’d looked past his…endowments, and she sure liked what she was seeing. Whiskey-brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and that nighttime shadow of stubble. Now, that would be something real nice to wake up to. She remembered waking up to Bruce. He looked more like the bad end of a mop in the mornings. “Please come in…um…neighbor.” She unlatched the chain, opened the door and pointed to the kitchen. “It’s through the living room…”
“I