Switch Me On

“He’s on his way over,” Paulie’s wife, Sally, added. “Don’t run this one off. He’s really cute.”

Aribella Madden playfully swatted Sally, then made her way onto the dance floor, bumping into Larry Carson. With the employees from his jewelry shop, Larry was singing “Deck the Halls with Loads of Money.” Ari flashed on seventh grade when selling diamonds had been a twinkle in Larry’s eye and he’d given her a ring from a bubble gum machine as a promise. Her heart warmed, as it always did at fond memories of men she’d dated, or just hung out with, which meant almost every guy in the bar. It was always easier to remember what she’d liked about her exes in hindsight. Larry’s Unwelcome Incident had occurred when he’d married Sally’s sister, Katie. Quickly, the two of them had made three wee ones, but Larry still called when he received inventory he knew Ari would love, like the earrings she was wearing.

Ari had noticed the stranger, of course, but she was sworn off men again, and he’d been in the darkest part of the bar, over by Paulie’s pride and joy, the vintage jukebox. He’d been talking to Robby and Alice, too. Bad sign. Maybe he knew Robby from Raleigh, since Robby had gone to Duke. That might be interesting, since Ari, herself, was moving to Raleigh the week after the Unwelcome Incident to end all Unwelcome Incidents. The Final Incident, which was twenty-one days away. Just this morning she’d signed a lease on an apartment, and tomorrow, she’d start advertising for a tenant to rent her cottage, providing herself with a new income stream. The inlet had awesome coastal properties, but due to the economy, locals often went to work in nearby cities, then the population doubled on holidays when they boomeranged.

If the guy was visiting Robby and Alice, it really was a bad sign, though. Robby was Ari’s STRE—shortest-term romance ever—and the only one whose marriage had not been an Unwelcome Incident. During their few dates the year before he’d found Alice, Robby had tried to psychoanalyze her, so his was one couch Ari was happy to forget.

What did the man approaching her do? Play basketball? He had to be six-four or something, but he wasn’t stooping down to everybody’s level. Exuding raw confidence, he used his hips and shoulders to part the party, not his hands—she always noticed a guy’s hands—and then he stopped in front of her. The music stopped, and her voice sounded a little slurred to her own ears. “Friend of Robby and Alice’s?”

“Just met. Shrinks,” he warned, with a quick shake of his head. “Beware.” He was so tall that he’d had to adapt, evolving an interesting way of bending more with his knees than waist, then he tilted his head sideways and dipped it, so he could peer into people’s eyes. Her eyes. Once he’d arrested her with his vision and convinced himself she was focused solely on him, he lowered another fraction and made the sign of the cross with his fingers.

Her feeling exactly. “On the upside, if you’re a serial killer, or have some truly disgusting fetish, the Siggie Freuds would have figured it out by now and warned me.”

“So much for patient-doctor confidentiality.”

“The only thing worse than shrinks is shrinks who gossip.” Robby Shoemaker had announced to half of Blackwater Inlet that she had issues with intimacy, but that had only been with him! He’d said she had a weird thing for guys’ hands, too. She liked guys’ hands, sure, but why would that be weird?

“There are fetishes that don’t disgust you?”

“Some. And I draw the line at dating serial killers.”

“That’s what I hate about small towns. A guy can’t get away with anything.”

“Girls either.” She’d learned the hard way. “Let me guess. Big city guy.” Due to the daiquiris, it came out sounding like big shitty guy, so she corrected. “City.”

“Shitty on occasion,” he confessed. An index finger, which he seemed to have a habit of raising, pointed into the air, as if to alert her that he needed to clarify. “Never to you.”

All men said that. He did have interesting hands. They were in constant motion. Big and super-masculine, the fingers long, strong and thick, and yet artistic, somehow. Despite their size, she could imagine them working on small, intricate things. Boats in bottles. Keyboards. Female parts that usually stayed hidden in folds of flesh. Not that she wanted to know more about him, she told herself. She’d spent years laying the groundwork for the moves she was making this month, and she wasn’t going to risk some man turning her head. She hated to admit it, but men did have incredible power over her. Could she help it if she was female?

She wished hands weren’t her weak spot. He had awesome hands. Robby had been right about her in that regard. Now the guy was rubbing the sexy hands together in a way that sent a warm thrill through her. Everything in the dim bar became a lumen brighter, the edges around objects sharper. Yes, this guy was definitely tactile. He untwined his fingers, then pressed his palms together again. Using the thumb of one hand, he massaged the webbed area between a thumb and index finger. Nicely trimmed nails, but not too fussy. She hated obvious manicures.

Because she’d been studying the hands intently, she missed something he said. Before she could ask him to repeat it, jukebox music tidal-waved over them, and a finger circled his ear to indicate he could no longer hear. Bending, he leaned closer, probably to ask if she’d like to dance, but before he could, something took hold of her, either hormones or instincts or alcohol, and she shot him a game grin and simply yelled, “Yes!” For a second, he had made her want to say yes to anything.

“That’s a record,” he yelled.

As his hips and shoulders rocked to house music, she decided there was something really edgy about this guy. Easily, he could have seemed too geeky, but he was oh so not. Like how he was still wearing a suit this late on a Saturday night, and hadn’t bothered to undo the tie. Most guys would have loosened the knot, at least. Instead of looking out of place, he seemed like he didn’t care what he wore or what anybody thought of him, and she envied him that.

“A record?”

Not breaking dance stride, he brushed back his sleeve, practically forcing her eyes to follow his index finger as he swiped it across the watch. It was as if he’d sensed her attraction to his hands and kept them moving on purpose. Like the suit, the watch looked expensive but utilitarian. She couldn’t decide if everything he wore was custom, or if a female did his shopping, or if he hated shopping but was so hot that he’d look awesome in anything. Tilting his head, he angled it until he’d positioned his eyes in her line of vision again, so she wasn’t staring at his expansive chest.

“Sometimes it takes me a full ten minutes to get the girl to say yes,” he yelled. “Usually she tries to find out what she’s agreeing to.”

“Bet you’ve made better time than ten minutes.” He was pretty slick. As he smiled yes, the crowd got hit by something electric and pulsed, pushing her into his arms. Unprepared for the jolt that hit her when his hands settled on her waist, she felt it zip through her, positively electric. All the fabric between her skin and his fingers seemed to vanish. A fireball shattered near her solar plexus, exploding and sending darts of pleasure to all her extremities. For the space of a heartbeat, everything seemed suspended. She could swear those hands were strumming her sides, causing the ripples of vibration, and all at once, she felt really drunk, as if she was staggering, not dancing.

“You can tell me your name,” he yelled.

No way, she thought, urging Hot Hands under the glitter ball to get a better look at him before they went one dance step further. Another sizzling jolt of heat pulsed through her veins, this one higher voltage, leaving her nerves jangling. He had more sculpted facial bones than she’d realized. Knitted eyebrows as dark as his hair made him look totally unnerdy, way more calculating. The splash of blue in his gray eyes was more visible now. Whoa! Another fuse ignited, and a line of fire raced through her veins and ended at her heart, making it stutter.

Not that she could afford any entanglements. In twenty-one days, she’d be out of Blackwater Inlet. Nothing was going to change that, especially not some sexy stranger dragging her toward the steamiest, darkest abyss at the edge of the dance floor and yelling, “Let’s get sweaty, baby.” She wasn’t sure how many songs played before he’d pulled her under the light again, both of them panting hard, but by then, perspiration was coating every inch of her skin, tickling all the crevices.

He yelled, “Do you have a name?”

He was still fishing. When she caught a whiff of Boondocks’ most expensive scotch mixed with testosterone and mint, the grain alcohol of the male cocktail, she knew she’d better avoid this guy the way an alcoholic avoided a drink. He’d said, the girl usually says yes in ten minutes.

“The Girl will do.”

“What will she do?”

“Remains to be seen,” she yelled. “And that’s annoying.”

“Summing people up by their function?”

Her mother, Mom Mad, short for Mommy Madden, did it all the time. She nodded. The man’s hands were on her waist again. She could feel the itch in the fingers, which were trailing where her hips flared. Drums sounded and she danced away, writhing to the beat, but then some yahoo slammed the guy. For that instant, the whole world was reduced to jumbled impressions. His thigh muscles rippling beneath his slacks; her cheek bouncing off a rock hard chest.

She should have known the culprit would be Hunter MacKenzie. He probably thought he was helping her out by pushing her into a man’s arms. Hunter Mac still had a warm spot for her, although they’d only kissed a few times in high school, and his Unwelcome Incident had been one of the first. She’d been a bridesmaid.

The stranger was still trying to steady her. From cheek to toe, they touched all the way down, her breasts cushioned against a chest carved out of granite. She shut her eyes in bliss, feeling all those straining, bulging muscles. It wasn’t overkill, either, like with body builders, just nicely honed. And there was so much tension inside him that when she looked up, into his gray-blue steelies, she felt woozy. Maybe she even tripped. She wasn’t sure. His grip tightened and she suddenly wondered exactly how much she’d had to drink.

“You okay?”

No! She was jittery all over! He did the unique, lean-dippy thing he’d evolved due to his height, not stopping until his eyes found hers like laser beams. Chalk one up to Darwin.

He mouthed, “I’m sorry!”

“It was Hunter MacKenzie’s fault!” she yelled. She was going to kill him for that stupid body-slam.

The guy looked frustrated. “I don’t think I can call you The Girl.”

“Sure you can. You’re The Boy.”

He smiled. “I can keep that straight.”

Whoa. He was looking at her with frank sexual interest. It was sort of a relief. She did do the physical part of relationships really well. Kissing, anyway. She’d had sex, too. Not tons, but enough. It was okay, just never the fireworks she’d hoped. No big explosions, and she hated the predictable letdown. In a second she’d feel...yes, there it was. A tug of longing that said this guy would be different, followed by a rush of warmth. The feeling was like a sweet promise that always turned out to be The Big Lie. Not that she was inorgasmic or anything, but sex was supposed to be at least as interesting as a vibrator, right?

Tonight, she wasn’t going to unwrap the package. She’d enjoy the pretty paper, bow, and greeting card, but she wasn’t sticking around to watch another late-night rerun of her floundering love life, season umpteen. Lifting his wrist to show him his watch, she decided to tell him his time was up, and make some joke about his ten-minute track record—they’d been dancing way more than ten minutes—but when her finger grazed his wrist, she felt his pulse leap. Heat flared like fire on a match. She guessed all the sweaty dances had worked their mojo. The heady elixir of man-sweat had taken his scotch, testosterone and mint cocktail to a whole new level, too. Give me the garnish! Kick it up a notch!

She was reminded of old advertisements she’d spent hours studying—the Marlboro Man, Old Spice and Irish Spring. He was all of them rolled into one. His hand turned deftly in hers, and as his wrist moved, she figured he had to be double jointed or something, then her mind went blank, the whole bar fuzzy at the edges. His strong hand was in hers, palm to palm, and she simply felt lost. When he twined their fingers, it seemed more intimate, somehow, than if he’d just ripped off all her clothes. The Big Lie talking. She’d been here a million times before.

Old Smashing Pumpkins was playing, making her think she’d better start worrying about pumpkins turning into carriages. Dropping his hand, she danced away, but he seemed confident she’d boomerang back. Just like whatever was passing between them, the beat was raw and thumping, and when he found her, they were dancing in earnest. Jumping. Shaking. Vibrating. Getting down and dirty with some bumps and grinds. She lost him, he found her again, and by then she realized there was no escape.

“Awesome!” she conceded.

“You’ve got the sexiest voice I have ever heard,” he yelled.

El dudes always mentioned her pipes. “I know.”

All he was really saying was that he wanted to get laid. After a few more songs, she finally took pity because he kept fishing for the personals, and she yelled that she and Paulie, the owner of Boondocks, had hung out together in the tenth grade, long before his Unwelcome Incident with Sally. Back then, Ari’s dream had been to work in radio, and since Paulie now kept a DJ setup for ladies’ nights, he insisted she spin songs when she came in.