A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(6)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Shelby was on her way to the Busy Bee for a late lunch, annoyed to find she was disappointed that she hadn’t run into Boston Macnamara on her eleven o’clock tour. The house had been silent except for the shuffling of her guests, murmurs that they swore the upstairs hall was cold, and the low hum of a fan Boston had left running in his bedroom.

“Hey, Shelby, honey, darlin’, sugar, what are you up to?”

Big arms wrapped around her from behind and Shelby was swallowed in a convulsive bear hug from her ex-husband, Danny Tucker. She loved Danny, she really did. All two hundred brawny pounds of him.

He had caught up with her outside the hardware store, next to the diner, and she nearly dropped the keys in her hand from the impact of his embrace. “Hey, Danny. I’m grabbing some lunch. You want to join me?” At least if she had Danny to distract her, she wouldn’t be tempted to call up mental images of Boston and the eyelet spread for cheap thrills over her ham and cheese.

“Sure, I’m in town all day. You buying?” Danny pulled off his baseball hat and grinned, his cheeks sunburned from another day out in the fields.

She snorted. “You wish. Dutch, buddy. I don’t recall agreeing to any alimony that says I have to buy you lunch.”

He laughed, that carefree sound that endeared everyone to him. “Damn, I should have had the lawyer write that in. That’s a good one.”

Danny was good looking, an all-American boy. Healthy, hardy, blond. A ripped-T-shirt-wearing farmer, and doggone nice to boot. Lack of love or lack of friendship had not been a problem in their marriage. It had been lack of passion.

Shelby felt a pang of something that was either loneliness, regret, or heartburn from going too long since breakfast. Her fingers drifted up to Danny’s cheek. “You fool, you got sunburned again. How many times do I have to tell you to wear sunscreen? You watch, when you’re fifty years old they’ll be hacking half your face away because of skin cancer.”

Danny covered her fingers with his, large calloused fingers that always had dirt under the nails. Workingman’s hands, unlike that city boy who probably stopped into a salon called Rupert’s or something once a week for a sissy manicure.

“That’s because I don’t have you taking care of me anymore.” He took her hand to his mouth and kissed each of her fingertips, his brown eyes teasing.

For the ten-thousandth time Shelby wondered why life couldn’t be simple. In a perfect world, she would be weakkneed with wet panties right now, urging Danny to whisk her off to the back of his truck for a nooner. In her less-than-perfect Cuttersville reality, Danny’s kisses were just warm and wet, like a friendly dog.

Yet Boston Macnamara set her thighs burning.

She decided she was a contrary soul.

Boston tried to concentrate on Bob and Phil, the plant managers for the Cuttersville division of Samson Plastics, but all he could do was stare out the window at Shelby Tucker getting mauled by some big brute of a guy wearing a sweat-stained gray T-shirt with the sleeves torn off.

He forced himself to look down at his turkey sandwich, which was loaded with bacon and had a glop of mashed potatoes lying on the plate next to it. Picking the bacon off, he wondered exactly why Bob and Phil were treating him like he was the second coming of Christ.

They were gushing. Hearty. Jovial. Nervous, and sweating like two overfed pigs in golf shirts.

“So exactly how long are you going to be here?” Bob asked for the fourth time in the three hours since Boston had met him. “Mr. Delmar didn’t say.”

Since Boston had no idea and wasn’t about to admit that Brett Delmar had left him dangling on this one, he shrugged. “As long as we feel it’s necessary.”

For what, he hadn’t a damn clue, since he had no idea what exactly he was supposed to be doing in Cuttersville. At his tour through the plant that morning, he had decided to treat it as an inspection, since his duties had not been defined to him by Brett. He would see if the plant was running efficiently, then report back to his boss.

Then beg to get the hell out of here.

Before he dropped dead of a heart attack from excessive fat and grease at the Busy Bee Diner.

He wiped his bacon-compromised fingers on a paper napkin and looked out the window again. Shelby was still wrapped up in the sweaty embrace of Farmer Ted out there. “Who’s that guy with Shelby Tucker?” he heard himself say before he could debate the wisdom of it.

Why he cared, he couldn’t imagine. If Shelby had a nice local boy to squeeze her day and night, it wasn’t his concern.

Except her grandmother had hinted that Shelby was available.

Which still had nothing to do with him, since he wasn’t interested in entangling himself with the local tour guide, no matter how firm her thighs were.

Phil set down his barbecued sparerib sandwich and narrowed his eyes to look out the window. “Oh, that’s Danny Tucker. Her ex-husband.”

A piece of turkey fell from Boston’s open mouth to his plate.

Well, well. Another good reason he shouldn’t entangle himself with her. An ex-husband who looked to still be very friendly with her. Good thing he wasn’t seriously considering doing anything with or about her. He was far too rational for that.

The ex-husband appeared to be sucking on her fingers now. Boston tried not to imagine doing the same. “It must have been an amiable divorce.”

Phil had gone back to his sandwich, but Bob smoothed back his receding hair and nodded. “Yep. No one was really quite sure why they got divorced. But maybe it was because they got married just about right out of high school. Five years later people change, I guess.”

Five years? She had been married for five years? She looked younger than him, and yet she had been married for quite a while and divorced already. Boston hadn’t dated any woman longer than a year, and he was leery of even getting a dog. Committing to anything other than his job for an extended period of time, with no closing date, scared the proverbial shit out of him.

Bob said, “You know, our numbers at the plant are really good. We’ve met production for the last eight quarters and our overhead is low.”

Boston forced his mind off Shelby and to the man sitting across from him. Bob was staring at him intently, and Phil had shifted on the cracked vinyl booth. Boston noticed for the first time that the diner was once again hushed, like it had been that morning. While he’d been staring at Shelby out the window, every man, woman, and child inside had been staring at him.

Bob and Phil, between effusive compliments, kept emphasizing their productivity, and Boston finally caught the hidden meaning. Would have caught it earlier if he hadn’t been distracted since the minute he’d woken up and found Shelby gaping at his tortured penis.