The Bachelor Next Door

Rafe chuckled.

“I bet the Orena—the Orlando Arena—is great.”

The touch of envy in the boy’s voice was barely audible, but there. Rafe wondered if Cass realized how much her son wanted to go to a game. Probably not, or she would have taken him. She was a good and caring mother, even if she was a bit overprotective.

“Have you seen the Magic play?”

“Yeah,” Rafe said. “I have season tickets.”

“Oh,” the boy said, so softly and wistfully that Rafe bit back a grin. The kid wasn’t stupid and had an understanding of manipulation that would have made any father proud.

They tossed the ball back and forth a few more times. “You want to go to a game sometime?”

“Wow, I’d love to. But Mom would never let me go. She’s still ticked about the softball game last weekend.”

Cass had to loosen up. Her son was starting to develop into a man, and she was fighting him every step of the way. “What’s wrong with the softball game?”

“I wasn’t exactly honest about what we were doing,” Andy confessed.

“We’ll see if she wants to go with us,” Rafe suggested.

“You think she might want to?” Andy asked.

No, Rafe figured she wouldn’t want to go, but saying no to her son was going to be hard. “It can’t hurt to ask.”

They rejoined Cass who brought out more iced tea and freshly baked bran muffins. Cass reminded him of every ideal that American men had about a mother. She was kind, firm and caring. She baked, cleaned and was at home when Andy arrived from school.

At the same time she had a sexy little body that made Rafe think of long hours spent in bed. That was why he kept coming back. Why he put up with her lectures on using correct grammar and not cussing. She was Rafe’s ideal of the perfect woman, which is why he would never allow himself to have a relationship with her. No man would ever have just a fling with her. She was the kind of woman a man made a commitment to. A commitment was the one thing he couldn’t offer her.

“Cass, I asked Andy to join me at a Magic game tomorrow night, and I’d like for you to come with us. What do you say?”

Her gingery eyes widened with speculation, and he saw the refusal written there before she opened her mouth. “Thank you for asking, but Andy and I wouldn’t be able to find tickets to the game. I hear they’re sold out.”

Tricky lady. She always had an excuse handy, but this time he was prepared. “I have season tickets.”

She glanced at her son, and Rafe could see her weighing the consequences of declining. She sighed, and it was not a welcoming sound. “Well, then I guess we’d be happy to go with you.”

Cass spent the morning pretending not to notice Rafe. Andy had talked about the impending basketball game all the way to school. She had the feeling that this was going to win her son a lot of points with his friends. Not many second-graders were invited to go to see the Orlando Magic play.

Cass sighed. By nature she was calm and unflappable, but Rafe Santini had a way of making her forget to be calm and unflappable. He’d put several wood cutouts across the front of his lawn of a woman bent at the waist with her frilly drawers showing. In front of his porch he’d placed large, plastic flowers in florescent blue, orange and green. He had the most hideous looking yard on the street.

The complete craziness of the yard was at odds with the man who patiently taught her son to play catch and the finer points of basketball. This was the man who wanted to needle her because she made him remove his basketball hoop.

Rafe’s multidimensional personality kept her on her toes. The sexy man made her nervous and achy in places that she hadn’t thought of in a long time—secure emotional places that she’d forgotten. He made her feel vulnerable, and that wasn’t necessarily bad because Rafe also made her laugh again.

She liked his sense of humor, which was almost always present. She liked the deep well of patience he showed with Andy. And most of all she liked the way he dug in and finished a job no matter how dirty or tedious. She just plain liked him and that was dangerous.

He worked on his house in denim cutoffs that should have been illegal. The faded material clung to his legs, revealing every muscular inch. His backside had originally drawn her attention, and she stared at him now as he hefted a box of shingles onto his shoulder.

He sang a lively country tune about trashy women and bopped along to the music. He had his own style, she thought with a grin. If one could call it style. She giggled out loud, picturing Rafe in one of the trendy men’s magazines.

As usual he wore no shirt, though she tried not to notice. Why couldn’t he have a paunch around the middle? Or a soft belly and flabby legs? Was that too much to ask?

She watched his muscles ripple with each movement of the hammer. Cass stared at his back until she realized what she was doing. Get a grip, girl, she admonished herself.

Rafe waved at her, and Cass knew she’d been caught staring up at him. She raised her hand in acknowledgment, and he just grinned in a way that made her want to run in the house and hide.

Cass forced her attention back to the Victorian Renaissance chair she was reupholstering for Mrs. Parsons. Rafe’s decadent image haunted her. She hated to think she was turning into a slavering sex fiend, but the man refused to stay out of her mind and his naked chest wasn’t helping.

The hammering stopped, and Cass scowled as she glanced up again. Rafe worked on a two-man job by himself. He rolled out the tar paper and hammered in the tacks before starting the process all over. At the rate he labored, the small section he was reroofing might not be finished until tonight.

Cass finished adding the trim to the chair, then stood and brushed the fabric threads off her khaki shorts. Her mother had raised her to be neighborly, and that meant offering help. She crossed the quiet street and shielded her eyes against the sun.

“Hello, Santini.” She wanted to put distance between them, and using his last name helped her to think of him as a buddy.

Rafe finished securing the section he was working on before glancing down at her. “Morning, Gambrel.”

That he didn’t mention her earlier gawking earned him points for tact, which she honestly admitted she’d thought he lacked.

She wished she’d changed into jeans before coming over. For some reason Rafe seemed to be glaring at her legs. Cass was generally happy about the way she looked, but now she thought about the extra five pounds she hadn’t lost since Christmas last year. “Do you need some help?”

“No,” he said, and rolled out another section of tar paper. “I roof in my sleep.”

Feeling put in her place, she wanted to escape. Her conscience demanded she make one more offer of help. “Wouldn’t two hands make the job go faster?”

“Yeah, I guess it would.” He sat back on his heels. “You’re not feeling guilty, are you?”

The twinkle in his eye warned her he was up to no good. But like an unsuspecting mackerel being lured to a fisherman’s hook, she swallowed the bait. “Guilty about what?”

“Sitting under the shade of the porch while I labored out in the hot sun.”

“Santini, don’t you know better than to give the help a hard time?” she asked before walking back toward her house.

“I guess not, Gambrel.”

She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “Should I stay?”

“Yes, ma’am, please.”

The polite tone to his words made her think he might be teasing again. She took a step toward the ladder intending to climb up to the roof. “Hang loose, Gambrel. I’ll be right down.”

In a matter of minutes Rafe was at her side. “You’ll need a tool belt and a hammer.”

“I thought I’d just hand you things and hold them in place.” She really didn’t know that much about home repair.

“What things, Cass?” He poured roofing tacks into one of the pockets on the leather tool belt.

“Nails and stuff.” She fidgeted, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.