Page 87 of Rookie Recovery

That filthy grin stretched wide. “What if I need a wank in your bathroom before dinner?”

I tilted my gaze up to the tiled ceiling far overhead. Why me? Lord, why. Me? Thank God, the cashier was preoccupied with our predecessors—would she have understood the word wank? I couldn’t remember which of Bowie’s British things were common and which I was used to—but my cheeks still flamed.

Bowie didn’t stop. “I mean, I know I can’t count on you to have it. God knows you’re too uptight to ever touch yourself—”

“Oh, my God.” I was dying. Burning alive from the inside out. Was I blushing? I wouldn’t have considered myself a prude—Katie could go to hell—but Bowie knew how to press all the right buttons. “Have you been out in public before?”

“No, not much.” His eyebrows arched upwards in almost-convincing innocence. “After I outgrew the lead, my mum stopped taking me places.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. “I can’t imagine why.”

He seemed to have some sense of propriety, though, because he shut up when the cashier turned to us. Actually, he beamed her one of his signature Bowie grins, and I swear she started inventing ways to get his pants off. Or at least his number.

If only she had to listen to him talk for five minutes. Two.

Back in the car, he wondered aloud how I’d survived into my latter thirties, and whether I’d noticed the detailed architecture on the trolleys at the entryway. “Do you think they’ll be in the museum someday?”

“I might be too damaged to touch a grocery cart again,” I admitted as I steered the Tundra through the light traffic of Downtown. The high sun set the city ablaze.

Bowie’s eyes glowed, the green a breathtaking contrast to the deep blue stretched behind the towering city skyline. “Is there therapy for trolley trauma?”

“Maybe the museum has an outreach program?” I mused. I turned the truck onto my street, headed for the parking garage.

“Good thing crotchety old bachelors don’t need trolleys.” He beamed my way, ever so proud of that little quip.

I slid the truck into its underground parking spot. “Fuck off, Bowman.”

Which, he then did, right out of my car and into the elevator.

Leaving me with the groceries. “Fuck you, Bowman.”

But for some reason, I was smiling.

I could get used to this.

Specifically, to Archie Bowman, star hockey player and British phenom, in my kitchen. Cooking me dinner. He was humming and wearing a damned apron and oven mitts, for fuck’s sake. The apron was goddamn pink and read Just Eat My Meat and Brady was following him around like there was no way he wasn’t about to drop half a cow for her.

It was so adorable, my grumpy old soul didn’t know what to do.

But I could get used to it.

I sat on a bar stool at the island, my bad leg stretched out onto the neighboring chair. Pretending I was watching football on the TV in the living room even though I was much more interested in a different sports star. Who happened to be bopping his tight ass around my kitchen to the tune of “Happy”, my golden retriever shadowing his every move.

It was the home-iest my home had ever looked. Or felt. And I didn’t know what to make of that. But I was pretty sure I wanted today to go on a good bit longer than it likely would.

A second tune echoed in over his humming, and when he dropped the oven mitts onto the counter to dig into the pocket of his jeans, I realized it was his phone. “Hey, Mum.”

Mum?

My brain ground to a screeching halt, and the TV in the other room faded into a blur in the background. Bowie switched the phone over to speaker and set it down on the island countertop so he could re-don his mitts and tackle the pan he’d extracted from the oven. Brady wagged hopefully.

“Nah, just putting dinner in,” Bowie was saying. “I’m making a roast.”

“A whole roast?” The female voice was British and cheery, with that little tilt of parental concern at the end that made me think she was furrowing her brows and wondering if he was eating enough. “All for yourself?”

Or, by the sound of things, eating too much.

“I’m at Jamie’s,” Bowie said as he started pulling knives out of the block. My brain caught up with the conversation as his mom hummed in excitement.

---