One Night Stand with My Daddy's Best Friend

1

MARK

h, my goodness, Mark get in here, it’s so cold out there.”

I was very glad that Karen DeBoise did not make me wait on the

front stoop for very long after I rang the doorbell.

I stepped inside. The house was warm and smelled of the impending holiday.

“Oh, this looks like a good vintage,” she cooed when I handed her the bottle of wine I had brought. I shrugged out of my coat and being familiar with the DeBoise household, I put my coat away in the hall closet. I pulled the knit cap from my head and tucked it into my coat pocket.

I ruffled and then smoothed out my hair. Having my hair look smashed down from wearing hats was never a good look, but it was unseasonably too cold not to be wearing one.

“Come on in, the kids are playing video games in the bonus room.”

I followed her deeper into the house. A tall Christmas tree blocked the floor- to-ceiling picture window. Garlands and displays of bright red ornaments decorated the rest of the home. Karen was always one to decorate no matter the holiday.

I followed Karen into her kitchen. The warm smells of roast and nutmeg were stronger there. I could only assume Karen had spent the better part of her day preparing tonight’s dinner, but her kitchen was immaculate. Her entire house always was. Showroom perfect.

“Is this a chill or a warm?” she asked, holding up the bottle.

“That’s a room temp wine.” I had no doubt that she actually knew how to serve the wine and was testing me to see if I knew.

“Peyton has cocktail makings out if you want to serve yourself.” She pointed with a bob of her hand toward the great room on the other side of the kitchen.

“I’ll just have a beer,” I said as I opened the refrigerator.

“You know where to find them.” She had turned her back on me and was doing something at the stove.

When I righted myself and closed the refrigerator door, I was caught off guard by a beautiful smiling face. I gulped. Beautiful women didn’t usually have an impact on me like that. There was something familiar about this one. I felt I should know her. But she smiled at me as if she knew me.

“Hey, Doctor Mark, how are you doing?” I gulped. “Yeah, good.”

She breezed past me and opened the fridge. When she closed it again, she held two beers. She looked at me again, gave a little shrug, and turned and left. She climbed the stairs that led to the bonus room. I watched her shapely ass wiggle up the stairs in a pair of tight yoga pants, that should be illegal for the thoughts that were rushing into my head.

I looked over my shoulder at Karen to make sure she hadn’t seen me stare like a frat boy at her guest.

“When you said kids were upstairs, you meant Peyton too right?” “Yeah, go on up.” I had been dismissed.

“Who else is here?”

“Just the kids. Dinner should be ready in fifteen, twenty minutes tops.”

Just the kids? Karen and Peyton’s kids were kids. Teenagers the last time I saw them. If that woman wasn’t a guest, she had to be…

“Was that Brooke?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You’re letting her drink beer now?”

“Are you all right?” Karen laughed. She turned and leaned a hip against the counter. “She is twenty-four. I pretty much don’t have a say in letting her drink if she wanted to.”

I choked on the drink in my mouth.

“Twenty-four? When the hell did that happen? Didn’t she just graduate high school?”

“Blink and they grow up when you aren’t paying attention. Don’t you dare say anything about you getting old. Trust me, with every birthday she has, I find myself another year older."

“You’re not old, cause that would mean I’m old, and I’m in my prime.”

“You think you’re some bachelor with all the time in the world to start a family while Peyton is upstairs contemplating his mid-life crisis. You know I caught him looking at sports cars online. I’m not ready to give up my minivan yet, and he’s shopping for red convertibles.”

I rubbed my jaw, scratching the bristly hair that I hadn’t bothered to shave off that morning.

“Well, he is old. You and me, we’re not old. I’m barely forty-five, And you’re still, what thirty-nine?” I teased; I knew we were the same age.

She shook her head. “I’ve decided once I hit forty, I’ll stop celebrating my birthday and start ageing backward. I’m currently thirty…” she scrunched her mouth to the side and looked up. “Five. I think. Or maybe I’m thirty-four. Maybe I’ll stop once I get back to twenty-five. It will be easier than having to constantly figure it out."

“Or you could age like the rest of us?”

“Where is the fun in that?” Something started buzzing. “Go upstairs and tell them dinner is ready, will ya?”

“Should I take a walker for the old man?”

“Shut up,” she laughed and shook her head. “You’re right though, he is old. Fifty-two next year.”

“Oh, no wonder he’s looking at red cars. It’s a requirement.”

I climbed the stairs two at a time and paused as the landing opened up to the bonus room. In all the years I’d been coming over to the DeBoise house, I had seen this exact scene so many times. Peyton was on the couch with a game controller in his hand, and the two kids sitting in front of him on the floor with their own controllers. Hell, many times I had been on that couch with him. But this time those kids weren’t kids. They were adults now.

I already hadn’t recognized Brooke, she was stunning. And the man next to her, well he had to be her brother, Rhys. If Karen had not said anything, I honestly would have thought they were a young couple Karen and Peyton had invited to dinner.

I watched the game for a minute. Someone was getting their ass kicked. “Are you the one losing?” I asked.

Peyton turned a glance to me and returned his focus to the video game. “Hey, when did you get here? Come on in.”

“I’m the one getting my ass handed to me,” Brooke did not take her focus from the game, she shifted her entire body as she played as if she controlled her avatar on screen.

Rhys sat still, his eyes laser-focused on the big screen TV, his fingers flying over the controls. “You always get your ass handed to you. I don’t get why you insist on playing.”

“Because, at some point, I will defeat you. I will!”

“Well maybe lose a little faster, Karen told me to let you know that dinner is ready.”

Peyton tossed his game controller aside with a groan. “I’m out.”

“Give me a minute to win, and we’ll be right down,” Rhys said with all the confidence of someone who knew he was about to win.

I headed back down the stairs.

“I haven’t seen the kids in forever. Rhys has a beard, that’s not weird,” I said.

Peyton clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s good to have them home. But yeah, they’re all grown up. Karen keeps making noises about turning Rhys’s room into a craft haven. But I’m not so sure. I mean Brooke is back with us for a while until she figures out what she’s doing next.”

“Wash your hands,” Karen called from the dining room.

I stopped in the guest bathroom before joining them in the dining room.

“Brooke,” I started as she sat down across from me. “Your father was saying you’re trying to figure out what’s next? What have you been doing?”

Brooke blew out a big breath, making her hair fly away from her face. “I have officially graduated, so I couldn’t stay in Scotland. No more student visas. Now it’s about finding a job, that’s hopefully not waiting tables or fast food. I’ve already done both of those.”

I nodded, not certain what to say next. “How about you Rhys, what have you been up to?”

“Rhys has a girlfriend,” Brooke said in a very teasing manner, enough to annoy her sibling.

“Not a girlfriend, a fiancée. I’m spending Christmas with her family. Mom is not happy about it.”

“You’re just too young,” Karen said. “You have your whole life ahead of you. Look at Mark, he’s at a good age to get married. Why aren’t you married yet, Mark?” She deflected the conversation.

“Mom, I’m older than you were when you and Dad got married,” Rhys said. “We aren’t going to get married until after I finish law school.”

“Law school? Wow.”

“Maybe I should go to law school?” Brooke mused.

Karen reached over and patted Brooke on the shoulder. “I think law school requires more focus than you’d be comfortable with.’

“Law school would eat you alive,” Rhys added.

Brooke screwed up her face in the same manner her mother had earlier. She looked at me and gave a big shrug.

At that moment, I didn’t know what to do either.