Talk Nerdy to Me (Nerds, #5)(11)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

"I hated that scene, too."

He thought it was a good sign that they agreed on which scene they hated. "But the scene in the car, where you see her hand against the steamed-up glass …"

"Very hot." She continued to stare down at the muck in the washing machine, but her breathing changed. "Have you ever been on a ship?"

"No."

"No matter where you are, you can still feel the vibration of the engines. I’ll bet they felt it there, in the car, the whole time. Very erotic."

"Mm." Where was a cruise ship when a guy needed one?

"We should turn this machine back on and see what happens."

A working washing machine had been part of his earlier fantasy. He could back her up against it and they’d both feel that vibration running through them as they …

Oh, hell, what was he thinking? That was the kind of sexual experience that stayed with a guy forever. One up-against-the-washing-machine moment and he’d give up on Hoover Dam to stay in Middlesex for the rest of his life. Guaranteed. He wasn’t Rick, so he’d be crazy to try and act like him.

"Let’s do it." Eve reached for the knob.

"Wait." Charlie had to come up with a way to derail this impulse. Fortunately, he glimpsed something in the washer. Stuck between the pages of her clutter book was a type of metal fastener he’d been needing for a repair on his mother’s garbage disposal and he hadn’t gotten around to picking one up yet.

He plucked it out of the glop. "Did you get this for the hovercraft?"

She paused and looked at him for a full five seconds as the sexual heat budding between them began to diffuse. "Uh, no. I thought I might need it under the dashboard, but I don’t think it’s quite right. I need the next size up, probably."

"Can I have it?"

"Be my guest. There’s some other hardware stuff in there, too." "Really?"

"Sure. I’m always collecting pieces of hardware."

He gazed at her in wonder. "Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who get their kicks strolling through a hardware store."

"Maybe." She smiled at him, but it was fondness rather than lust in her blue eyes. " ‘Fraid so."

She really had the most amazing mouth, and he wouldn’t have to move very much to reach it. Just one kiss. A kiss wasn’t the same as washing machine sex. He could handle one little kiss. A haze descended over his brain as he leaned forward, focusing on that wide, welcoming mouth…

"Oh, Charlie." She sighed and reached up to cradle his head. The phone she was holding banged against his ear.

He reached for it. "Here, let me have that." He was thinking of dropping it into the washing machine, so it wouldn’t ring any more and disturb them.

"Uh-oh!" She backed away from the machine, which meant backing away from him, too. "I almost forgot! I have to call Eunice and see if Rick’s over there."

The haze began to clear from his brain. "Is someone looking for him?"

"Manny is. He said Rick wasn’t answering his cell." Eve punched a number into the phone.

"Did you tell him that Rick might be over at Eunice’s house?"

"No, because I didn’t want Manny and Kyle running over there. Who knows what’s going on?"

"Maybe nothing." Charlie couldn’t convince himself of that.

"Maybe more than we care to know. Anyway, I said I’d check out what was happening with his cell. Manny and Kyle just got back from Hartford. Did you know they went to Hartford?"

"They ran an errand for the bakery." Charlie pushed the thought of the X-rated cookie cutter from his mind.

"Well, they’re back."

"Did they change their minds about coming over to help with the hovercraft?" Charlie thought that might be good, to get more people into the project. Then he’d be less likely to end up alone with Eve, which was a responsibility he seemed unable to handle.

"I don’t think they plan on helping. They said something about frosting cookies for Myrtle and Rose." Eve held the phone to her ear. Then she rolled her eyes. "Answering machine."

"Listen, maybe I should drain the water out while you’re on the phone."

"Good idea." Eve turned back to the phone. "Eunice, if you’re there, pick up. I need to talk to Rick." She tapped her foot on the bathroom tile as she waited.

Charlie listened to the water gurgle out of the washing machine. "I think they probably went to the movies."

Eve covered the mouthpiece. "You’re delusional." Then she spoke into the phone. "Okay, I guess you’re.. .unavailable. But Manny needs to talk to Rick, so call me back when you get this." She disconnected the phone. "Mark my words. They’re doing it."

Charlie didn’t want to think about it, because thinking about it only emphasized that Rick could enjoy sex for sex’s sake and Charlie couldn’t. He picked up the dripping clutter book. "If we take this stuff out I can run the machine through a complete cycle and make sure it’s fixed. Do you have a big bucket?"

She blew out an impatient breath. "Let’s forget about it."

"You can’t exactly do that. It’ll congeal." Leaving a mess wasn’t Charlie’s style, especially when he’d helped create it. "Then there’s no telling if your machine will ever work right."

"I don’t really ca—" She must have seen the look of dismay on his face. She paused and cleared her throat. "Charlie, it was wonderful of you to give this a shot, but I want you for the hovercraft, not my washing machine."

Hearing her say she wanted him, even if the rest of the sentence was about mechanical projects and not sex, drove out all thoughts of appliance disasters. Instead he found himself concentrating on her mouth and the memory of its moist, velvety interior.

Unless he got out of this cozy bathroom that had a lock on the door and condoms under the sink, he was liable to do something incredibly unwise. He closed the lid on the washer. "Let’s go see about the hovercraft."

Chapter Eight

As they walked into the kitchen, Eve noticed the pizza boxes sitting on the table and remembered they hadn’t eaten dinner. A hot number like Charlie could make a girl forget all about food, but now that he wasn’t kissing her, she discovered she was hungry, after all. "Want to take some pizza and Cokes out to the garage so we can eat while we work?"

"Sure." Charlie walked over and lifted the lid on both boxes. "Looks like Eunice and Puck made off with the pepperoni and sausage. I hope it wasn’t your favorite." "Nope."

"What is?" He glanced over at her.

"Veggie, but I like other kinds, too."

He looked pleased with himself. "Then veggie it is. But it’s not very warm."

"That’s okay with me." She wouldn’t expect it to be warm after all the time she and Charlie had spent in the bathroom fooling around with the washer and each other. "But I can nuke some for you, if you want."

"Nah. Cold is usually how I eat it, because I get involved in some project and forget until it’s too late."

"Me, too. Besides, cold pizza isn’t as messy, so you can work without getting food everywhere."

"Exactly."

They exchanged a smile of agreement, and that smile of his had way more impact now that she knew what a great kisser he was. It didn’t matter, though. Charlie could hardly wait to leave Middlesex, while Eve had finally found a place she wanted to call home. As he’d pointed out, they were headed down different paths.

But they were in the same place right now, and she had to decide whether or not to ignore his noble reluctance and seduce him. A man who could kiss like Charlie might be able to perform other heterosexual tasks with the same level of expertise. After six months of abstinence, Eve found herself more than a little interested.

She grabbed a couple of Cokes out of the refrigerator. "Do you and Rick usually eat one pizza apiece?"

"No. Why?"

"I just wondered why you brought three. That’s a lot of pizza, especially when you didn’t know Eunice was coming over."

He started out toward the garage. "I wanted to make sure I had a kind you liked."

"That was thoughtful." And thought-provoking, too. He’d overbought on the pizza in order to increase his’odds of hitting her preference. He was a guy who really wanted to please. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a lover with that kind of mind-set. She wondered if he’d consider an affair if she promised not to keep him in Middlesex a minute longer than he wanted to stay.

"Charlie?"

"What?" He turned, the pizza box in his hand.

Want to have a no-strings affair with me? It was a showstopper of a line, but she couldn’t deliver it. What if he said no? They’d never be able to work on the hovercraft together for the next few nights if that invitation and rejection hung in the air between them.

"I forgot napkins," she said. "Be right back."

Turning back to the kitchen, she took a deep breath. Might as well face the truth, the one that Charlie had already figured out. Neither of them were the type who had no-strings affairs. Therefore Charlie saw her as off-limits. She might as well be sitting inside a red circle with a slash across the middle.

Looking at the situation from her perspective, she was up against quite an obstacle—Hoover Dam, to be precise. Someone could even say she was in a pissing contest with that installation, and considering the volume of water churning through it, she wouldn’t have much of a chance. Plus she didn’t want to deliberately get in the way of Charlie’s dream.

So although he was yummy, she would rein herself in and let any moves be his. If he kissed her, she’d kiss back. If he started undressing her, she’d start undressing him. If he inquired about the location of the condoms, she’d tell him exactly where to find them. He couldn’t very well blame her for throwing a monkey wrench into his scheme if he’d been caught red-handed heaving the wrench himself.

With that settled, she headed back into the garage. She found Charlie studying something that looked like a page of her notes. "Did you find them?"

He glanced up. "Only this page. A corner of it was sticking out from under the hovercraft."

"That’s weird." She put the Cokes on the workbench and got to her knees to look around the edge of the hovercraft.

"I did that already. I didn’t find any other pages. You must have moved the notes and dropped this one in the process."

Still on her knees, she repositioned her glasses and gazed up at him. "I know my house is filled with clutter, but it’s organized clutter. I know what’s there. I wouldn’t have picked up notes that were this important and dropped a page without realizing it. I just wouldn’t."

"Then what do you think happened?"

"I don’t know. I’m the only one who’s been out here."

"Until Monday night."

She stared at him. "What are you saying?"

"I don’t know." He shook his head. "Never mind. I shouldn’t be casting suspicion on anyone."

"Did you see anybody go near the workbench Monday night?" Eve thought back over the discussion they’d had out there with Eunice, Rick, Manny, and Kyle. "Because I didn’t."

"I don’t think I did, either. But I was so engrossed in looking at the hovercraft that I can’t be sure."

She got to her feet. "I would have noticed, and I don’t think they did." Even when she’d been exchanging that meaningful glance with Charlie, she would have seen someone walk over and pick up her notes. Or at least she liked to think she would have. While trying to re-create the scene in her head, she walked over to the pizza box and took out a slice.

Charlie reached in while the box was open and took out a piece, too. "Anybody else have access to them since then?"

As she closed the lid on the pizza box, Eve thought of Eunice, the FedEx delivery, and the unlocked door. "Eunice has a key to the house. I gave it to her months ago so she could put any packages that are delivered to me inside the door. I get a lot of deliveries of parts, and I’m often out of town when they come."

"Would she come in and take the notes?"

"I can’t imagine why. She’s known about the hovercraft pretty much from the beginning. If she’d wanted to steal my notes, she could have done it long before now."

"Maybe she didn’t think it was worth it before, but after Monday night, she realized the notes might be valuable."

Eve swallowed her bite of pizza. "That’s just it— they’re not of much value by themselves. You’d need more than that to market it. Plus the information about the fuel is wrong. I blew up an engine with what’s in those notes. I don’t know how anyone could make use of them."

"She might not know that."

"I’m sorry, but I can’t believe Eunice would steal my notes hoping to make a profit." Even though Eunice liked designer shoes and handbags, she wouldn’t stoop to theft. Would she?

When the doorbell rang, Eve jumped. Then she grinned self-consciously. "Guess I’ve managed to freak myself out."

"Maybe it’s Eunice and Rick coming back."

"I doubt it." Returning her half-eaten piece of pizza to the box, Eve headed toward the kitchen. "They wouldn’t be ringing the doorbell when they could just walk in."

"You mean because Eunice has a key?" Charlie followed her.

"She wouldn’t need it. The door’s unlocked."

"You don’t automatically lock your doors?"

"Not usually when I’m here." She walked through the kitchen into the entryway as the doorbell rang again. "This is a small town. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to live here as opposed to New York. I like not having to lock my door all the time." But she had to admit that finding her door unlocked when she’d come home tonight had been unsettling.

"I’m not sure that’s a good idea, leaving your door open when you’re here."

"Oh, come on." She didn’t like this subject, didn’t like feeling on edge about her personal safety. That was a New York issue, not a Middlesex issue. "Don’t tell me you lock yourself in whenever you get home, because I won’t believe you."