If I mention that I haven’t been laid for six months, are you going to start lining up hookers? he’d asked, and she bit the side of her lips to keep from laughing and waking him up. She’d worked for a comedian once who had asked her to get him a hooker. He’d used a certain escort service and had wanted Chelsea to go pick the girl up and drop her off. He’d wanted her to come back two hours later, then take the girl back home. She’d refused, and the comedian had paid for a cab instead.
Unlike the comedian, Mark Bressler obviously had no problems when it came to getting females. He was very good-looking and had a raw sexual aura that surrounded him like a poisonous cloud. Unless he had some sort of fetish, she just couldn’t see him dialing up hookers.
She moved to the heavy drapery and shut the curtains. It was a good thing she wasn’t easily offended anymore. If he’d made those comments about her large boobs several years ago, she would have burst into tears and run from his house, which she suspected was the reason he’d insulted her.
Again.
She turned, and he rubbed his injured hand across his stomach and chest, the rasp of his splint barely audible over the low voices pouring from the television. He didn’t open his eyes, and she wondered if she should wake him for lunch. Instead she tiptoed out of the room. Best not to poke the beast.
She went back to work, answering fan letters. For the next two days she wrote mostly generic responses or deleted inappropriate messages. Wednesday, she took a break from the computer to drive Mark to a doctor’s appointment a few miles away, and Thursday she drove him to the Verizon store. Both times he was such a horrible backseat driver, she threatened to drive him around in her Honda if he didn’t shut up.
He did. For a few minutes.
“Son of a bitch!” he swore as she drove him home from the Verizon store that Thursday afternoon. “That car almost hit us broadside.”
“A miss is as good as a mile,” she quoted her mother.
“Obviously not, or your car wouldn’t be dented to shit.”
Her Honda wasn’t “dented to shit.” It had a few minor parking lot dings. “That’s it. From now on we’re taking my car. You call me a tick and a nag, but you are the worst backseat driver in the entire state of Washington and half of Oregon.”
“You don’t know every backseat driver in Washington and half of Oregon.”
She ignored his comment. “You bitch when I pull out too fast. You bitch when it’s not fast enough. You bitch when I go through a yellow light and bitch when I stop,” she said. “For a person who has so much in life, you complain a lot.”
“You don’t know jackshit about my life.”
“I know that you’re bored. You need a hobby. Something to do.”
“I C1emdon’t need a hobby.”
“I’m thinking you should get involved in youth hockey camp. I know from reading your fan letters that you were a positive influence in the lives of those kids.”
He looked out the passenger window and was silent for several moments before he said, “In case you haven’t figured it out, I can’t skate these days.”
“When I went to that Stanley Cup final with my sister and Jules, I noticed that the Chinook coaches just stand behind the bench, act really cranky, and yell a lot. You can do that. You’re good at being cranky and yelling.”
“I’ve never yelled at you.”
“You just yelled ‘son of a bitch’ at me.”
“I raised my voice in reaction to you almost killing me. I survived one car wreck. I don’t want to be taken out now by a little person who can hardly see over the dash.”
Maybe that explained why he was so horrible when she drove him around. He was terrified of another car crash. Of course, that didn’t explain his ass hole behavior at home. “I can see perfectly fine and I’m five-one and a half.” She stopped at a red light and looked across the car at him. “In order to be considered a little person and attend the annual LPA national convention, I’d have to be four-ten or under.”
He turned and faced her. Both his brows rose above the frames of his sunglasses.
“What?”
He shook his head. “You know the height requirement of little people?”
She shrugged and glanced up at the traffic light. “When you grow up with kids calling you a midget, you look these things up.”
He chuckled, but she wasn’t amused. The one time he decided to laugh, it was at her. The light changed, and she put her foot on the gas pedal. Once again he’d managed to change the subject. “One of the letters I answered yesterday was from Mary White. You coached her son Derek.”
He turned and looked out the passenger window once more. He was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “I don’t remember a Derek.”
She didn’t know if that was the truth or he was just trying to shut her up. “That’s a shame. The impression I got from his mother was that you were a great coach.”