The Bachelor Next Door

“What if it doesn’t?” he asked to keep her there.

“Then you’ll be fined,” she said. She started back across the street. “Have a good night, Mr. Santini.”

“You too, Cass.”

Damn that woman. Underneath that prim and proper exterior lurked a temptress. A woman who liked to laugh and tease. He wanted to see more of that lady, he decided.

Cass held the phone against her shoulder and secured the leftover dinner in plastic wrap. Closing the refrigerator door with her hip as she started the dishes, she said, “I’ll stop by first thing in the morning, Dana.”

Cass thought about her friend and co-chair for the PTA bake sale. Dana’s son Jeff was in Andy’s class, but the two boys didn’t get along.

She hung up and stared out the window. Dusk had deepened into night, and the imitation gas street lamps were sparking to life. She liked this quiet neighborhood with its old houses.

Andy sat on the front porch doing his homework, and Cass quickly finished the dishes before joining her son. He had wanted to invite Mr. Santini to dinner, but Cass had put Andy off. Rafe’s influence over Andy was getting out of hand.

Rafe didn’t encourage Andy, but her son was hungry for masculine attention. The other day Andy had used a swearword that her son knew warranted strict punishment. She’d also seen her son leaving his shirt off and swaggering when he walked. The same way Mr. Santini did.

Rafe had included Andy in a softball game the previous Saturday. Her son was still talking about it and asking her every evening when he could join Little League football or baseball. Andy was obsessed with getting involved in sports and mimicking their new neighbor. Cass knew she had to put a stop to things and quickly.

The loud barking of Tundra announced the arrival of Rafe before he rounded the corner. Cass told herself not to look. That he was a temptation in those ridiculously skimpy running shorts, but her gaze was drawn to him all the same. If Rafe was an example of how men could look by running a few miles every night, men across America would be hitting the streets.

Cass pretended she didn’t notice Rafe. He waved to Andy as he jogged up the walk. Tundra breathed heavily at his feet. Andy set his pencil aside and gave her a pointed look. “Mommy?”

Andy never phrased out questions when just a word or a look would get the point across. She debated for a moment and decided that the husky wouldn’t hurt her son. She nodded slightly and Andy beamed with pleasure.

“Can I play with Tundra, Mr. Santini?”

“Sure,” Rafe sat down on the bottom step as Andy bounded off the porch.

Cass watched her son toss a stick to the dog, and soon the animal and boy were playing on the lawn. “Would you like something cool to drink?”

“Got any beer?” he asked. He smelled of sweat and male muskiness. Cass wanted to lean closer to him, to feel him surrounding her, to inhale the scent that was subtly Rafe. She wanted to taste the sweat that glistened on his arm and to experience this man in a way that she’d thought she’d forgotten.

“No. Iced tea would be better for you.” She couldn’t help the way she’d been raised, and drinking except at family celebrations and holidays was strictly forbidden.

“Not if it’s sugary.”

Always a comeback, she thought, enjoying the game as much as he did. “Like beer has any nutritional value.”

“What it lacks in nutrition it makes up for in taste.”

He had to be kidding, beer tasted like...well like beer, nothing else even came close to that taste. “My tea’s not sweet.”

“Than I’ll take you up on that offer.”

She fixed them both a glass of tea before returning. This would be a good time to ask him to stop including Andy in games. There were a few man-type things that she didn’t know how to handle, and this was one of them. How did you politely tell a man that he wasn’t the right type of influence on your son?

Quite honestly there were more than a few things she didn’t know about raising a son. Teaching Andy to color in the lines and to use the potty was easy compared to coaching him on ignoring bullies. She didn’t want Andy to grow up being afraid of other boys, but at the same time she wanted him to be someone who used his mind to settle arguments, not his fists.

“Thanks,” Rafe said as she sat down next to him on the step.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, trying to ignore the heat radiating from his body.

He took a long swallow of tea and then bounded to his feet. “Hey, Andy. Have you got a football around here?”

The boy shook his head. “Why?”

“Basketball is against the rules. I thought we could toss the pigskin around.”

“Mommy?”

“If Mr. Santini has a ball than I don’t object to your catching it,” she reluctantly agreed. Tossing a ball wasn’t the same as playing in a game, she reassured herself.

“As it happens, I do,” Rafe said, grinning at her.

“All right!” Andy dropped the stick he’d been tossing to the dog and followed Rafe across the street.

Santini had been in their lives for only a short time, but already he had a lot of influence over Andy. She watched her son staring up at Rafe and wondered how a man who spent most of his time with beautiful women and fast cars would react to blind hero worship.

She started to call Andy back, but Rafe was showing him how to hold the football. Cass watched her little boy come one day closer to manhood, and a part of her wanted to die. She’d carefully guarded Andy, but she had the feeling that soon he would throw off that protection.

Rafe helped Andy the way a father would help a son. Showing him things that only a man could. Cass felt convinced that Andy was becoming too attached to their neighbor. Her son was using Mr. Santini as fill-in father.

She couldn’t picture Rafe in the role of a dad. He treated Andy kindly, but sometimes he acted as if her son were an alien being. Having Andy underfoot had to be trying for a man like Rafe.

Cass watched them playing ball in the front yard and forgot that Rafe wasn’t the fatherly type. He seemed perfectly at ease with her son for perhaps the first time since they’d met. She couldn’t believe this was the same man who roared out of the neighborhood once a day in his Jaguar convertible.

Her heart ached as she watched them playing ball. She wanted the scene to be real. She needed a man to share her life and Andy’s. She knew that Rafe wasn’t that man but it was still hard to stop her heart from hoping.

She went inside to prepare a snack for Rafe and Andy, knowing they’d be hungry when the game wrapped up. There was something homey about preparing iced tea for two sweaty males, Cass thought with a smile. Tundra snoozed under the oak in the front yard and Cass felt content for the first time in years.

Three

Rafe tossed the football to Andy and watched the kid jump to catch the ball. The boy had the potential to be a dedicated athlete. The desire to succeed burned brightly in his eyes. He had the innate skill that few possessed and seemed to enjoy every sport that Rafe introduced to him. The grin on Andy’s face erased much of the apprehension Rafe usually felt when dealing with the boy.

Rafe hadn’t been around children for the majority of his life. In fact the last time he’d been with other kids was—he searched his memories—hell, not since he was a boy.

Kids were foreign entities that Rafe didn’t deal well with. They were crying, sticky little people that always talked loudly. But Andy Gambrel was different. Andy had a sense of maturity seldom found in one so young.

The other kids in the neighborhood were older than Andy, and Rafe had watched the boy playing alone over the last week. Something about the solitary way the boy had amused himself generated a sort of sympathy in Rafe. No child should be left to himself like that. Rafe never had been, and for some reason he didn’t want Cass’s son to be, either.

Andy tossed the ball back to him, and Rafe caught it one-handed. “Have you ever gone to a basketball game, Andy?”

“No, we’ve been down to the Bob Carr auditorium for plays and musicals though.” Andy scrunched his face in a look of pain. “Sometimes we see people going to the Magic games.”

“What show did you see?”

“A French play Les Misеrables,” Andy said, correctly pronouncing the French title. “It was okay for the first twenty minutes, but all that singing was boring. Mommy really liked it. She even cried.”