“Breakfast,” she said, pulling back from the kiss. “Ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes,” he said with a little salute. “I’ll just be over here minding my deck.”
“It’s my deck,” she reminded him as she walked back toward the house.
“This week it sure as hell is,” he called after her.
Clover felt good. Good enough to whistle as she cracked eggs into a bowl, put waffles in her toaster, poured orange juice into glasses. If this was how good she felt after having sex once, how good would she feel after the second time? The third time? Surely there was some law of diminishing returns, otherwise after ten times with Erick she’d probably have to be restrained for her own safety until she came down off the sex high. But she was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. After all, who knew what would happen after Thanksgiving? She didn’t even know what to tell PNW Garden Supply about their offer yet. Her life would seriously change if she said yes to it. She’d have a lot of money, yes. But she’d have to pay a lot of taxes on that money, too. She’d be able to quit working for a couple years, but the nursery closed down, anyway, from the end of November to the end of February. And those were the longest, dullest months of her year every year. If she couldn’t work all year, she’d go out of her mind with boredom. Unless...unless she had something to distract her from her boredom. Like a real boyfriend. Not a fake one just for Thanksgiving. But a real relationship that would let her make up for a lot of lost time... That was tempting...very tempting...
Clover rolled her eyes at herself. One night with Erick and she was already planning their entire life together. Not good. She needed to roll back her expectations. Erick had agreed to play boyfriend through Thanksgiving. On Friday after her family left they’d have a nice long talk about whether they wanted to keep doing this on a more permanent basis. And if he said no, she would be okay. She’d miss him probably. She’d already kind of gotten used to having him around. Still, he had a daughter and he had a business and he might not be looking for anything serious. These things happened. Not the end of the world.
But maybe he’d say yes to a real relationship. And maybe they’d start working their way down that long list of all the different kinds of sex she needed to have...
Clover had just put the scrambled eggs onto the plates when her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. She glanced at the number—Dad. Oh, goody.
With a sigh she hit the button and put the phone to her ear.
“Hi, Daddy, what’s up?” she asked, putting a smile into her voice.
“Just checking in on my girl. Your mother wanted to know what you want us to bring for dinner Thursday.”
“Oh, the salad, the cranberry sauce, the mashed potatoes and gravy...desserts.”
“So everything?”
“No, not everything. I can do the turkey.”
“You?” Her father sounded skeptical. She didn’t really blame him. “You’re going to cook the turkey?”
Ruthie had said her father could work magic with a Big Green Egg. Might as well let him cook the turkey. It would impress the heck out of her parents.
“Yes, we’ll handle the turkey.”
“We?” her father repeated just as Erick slid the glass deck door open and stepped inside the house. She looked at him and mouthed, “Help,” at him.
“Who is it?” Erick whispered.
Clover muted the phone quickly.
“Dad. I accidentally said ‘we’ would cook the turkey.”
“We can cook the turkey,” he said.
“What do I tell Dad?”
“Let me talk to him,” Erick said.
“What?”
“Just let me talk to him.”
“Okay, if you insist.” Clover unmuted the call. “Dad?”
“Where’d you go?” her father asked.
“Sorry. The phone cut out for a second. You know I live in the middle of nowhere. Here. Erick wants to talk to you.”
“Who is Erick?”
Erick took the phone from her hand and put it to his ear.
“Mr. Greene?” he said, and Clover tensed into a tight vibrating bundle of nerves. “Yeah, this is Erick, Clover’s boyfriend. I hear I get to meet you all on Thursday.”
Erick paused and winked at her.
“Nice to talk to you, too, sir,” Erick said. “No, Clover was kidding. We can handle all the food unless you or your wife have something special you want to bring... The turkey? Yeah, we’re cooking the turkey, too. What do you think? Fifteen-pounder enough for everyone?”
Erick tucked the phone against his shoulder and with his free hands he reached for her bathrobe cord. She swatted his hands away but that didn’t deter him from putting his hands on her waist and pulling her to him. Clover leaned against him, her arms around his back, and listened to her father chattering at Erick.
“Well, we got seven kids coming but only three of them are old enough to put much of a dent in the turkey. Fifteen should be plenty unless you all want to eat leftovers for a week,” her father said.
“I better make some extra,” Erick said. “My daughter will kill me if I don’t. She’s a vegetarian all year except between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.”
“You have a girl, too?’
“Yes, sir. Seventeen. Almost eighteen. God, I’m getting old.”
“We get to meet her, too, this week?”
“She’s with her mom and her stepdad in LA all week.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Swing by Clover’s nursery next week and you’ll meet her. She works for your daughter.”
“That how you two met?”
“That’s how we met. My daughter fixed us up.”
“Good for her. Clover’s a good one. Can you put her back on the phone?” Erick passed back the phone. He looked adorably smug. Already working his charm on her parents.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said. “You and Erick work out the turkey?”
“We did. I like this Erick fellow,” he said. “Even if he is at your house awful early...”
“I’m thirty years old,” she reminded him.
“You might as well be twelve. Until you’re married with kids of your own, you’ll be my little girl.”
“Well, I’m not married and I don’t have kids of my own, and I’m still thirty. I have the birth certificate to prove it.”
“You’ll understand how it feels when you have your own babies. The sooner, the better.”
“Right, the sooner, the better.”
“Tell Erick you’re not getting any younger.”
“Dad, we just started dating. And two seconds ago I was your little girl. Now I’m getting old?”
“You know what I mean, sweetheart.”
Clover sighed as quietly as she could. “Yes, Dad. I know what you mean. I’ll see you all on Thursday.”
“We’re really looking forward to it,” he said.
“You and me both. But can you do me a favor?” she asked. “Don’t tell Mom and Kelly or anybody about Erick. I’ve got a lot to do this week and I don’t want to be on the phone with them for hours on end.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” he said.
“Thanks, Daddy. Love you. Bye.”
They hung up and Clover sighed again.
“What?” Erick asked as she rested her head on his chest.
“I’m supposed to tell you I’m not getting any younger so you need to hurry up and get me pregnant since I won’t be treated like an adult until I have children. But I’m not supposed to be sleeping with you, either.”
“So I’m supposed to knock you up, but I’m also supposed to do this without having sex with you?”
“Yes.”
“This is going to be difficult. Or not. Got a turkey baster?”
“Welcome to the world of being a woman. We’re not supposed to have sex, but we’re also supposed to have kids. And we wonder why so many women are on Xanax.”
“I’d be swallowing that stuff with a bourbon chaser if I were a woman. Damn.”
“It’s about to get worse,” she said. “Dad can’t keep a secret to save his life.”
“How much worse?”
Clover’s phone started to buzz again. All at once she was receiving a phone call and text messages from both Kelly and her mother with another text message coming in five seconds later from her sister-in-law.
“It’s kind of insulting, isn’t it?” she asked, holding up her phone. The first text message read, Boyfriend??? Oh, my God, it’s about damn time. Finally! I’m so happy! Tell me everything. I can’t believe we get to meet a boyfriend.
Clover shook her head. “It’s the ‘a’ there that really hurts. We get to meet ‘a’ boyfriend, not ‘your’ boyfriend. As if it’s such a huge shock I’d have a boyfriend at all. Thanks, sis. Just the self-esteem boost I needed.”
Erick grimaced as he read the text.
“Pass the Xanax.”
“And the bourbon,” she said as Erick pulled her into his arms. “And to think, I was so happy this morning. Now I have to spend the rest of the day trying to calm down my entire family before they start planning our wedding for us.”
“Or.”
“Or?”