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My skin is overheating even with the ocean breeze fluttering around me as his words from last night replay in my head, when I slowly turn around. My eyes meet the same sparkling brown ones that followed my every movement the night before, and my heart starts thumping wildly in my chest, remembering what it felt like to have them on me…
Like he’s been around the block enough that he wouldn’t care about the new wrinkles that keep showing up on my skin every time I blink.
Or the little stomach pooch I can never freaking get rid of that I will swear until my dying day is still baby weight thirty-four years later.
Or how I have to stretch before any kind of physical activity or I won’t be able to move for two days.
Or how even if I stretch, I still won’t be able to move for two days, because my goddamn bones are old, and they hurt when I breathe sometimes.
“Are you stalking me?” I mutter, my brain unable to comprehend why he’s here, standing a few feet away from me, at a private party for my daughter and her fiancé.
The corner of his mouth tips up into a smirk. Annoyance replaces any kind of worrisome or lustful thoughts I was having when, all of a sudden, his eyes leave mine as Palmer slams into the front of him. The two men embrace in a laughing, back-patting man-hug while I stand here staring in confusion at what’s happening.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
Birdie moves closer to me and leans in as my stalker and my soon-to-be son-in-law continue greeting each other very boisterously while everyone on the deck watches.
“I can’t believe he was able to come!” Birdie gushes with tears filling her eyes, and one hand presses over her heart. “That’s Uncle Dean!”
“What the fuck?” I whisper a little louder this time for the people in the back, while Bodhi steps in to give the man a hug when Palmer moves away.
“You know, Palmer’s uncle? Or half-uncle… whatever, I’ve told you about him,” Birdie reminds me, while the glass of wine I had a little bit ago starts threatening to come back up.
“What. The. Fuck?”
He’s not a tourist.
Am I happy about that or still pukey? It seems the results are inconclusive.
“Are you broken? Why do you keep saying that?” she asks, grabbing my arm and shaking me a little while my eyes remain locked on… Uncle freaking Dean!
Yes, my daughter has mentioned Palmer’s uncle before, and Palmer himself has been telling me stories about him for years. The black sheep of the Campbell family and the result of an affair Palmer’s married grandfather had with a young woman who cleaned their home. It wasn’t Dean’s fault his father was a cheating bastard, but everyone in that family treated Dean like garbage—his own father included.
Everyone except for Palmer. He adores the man and has said on many occasions that good “old” Uncle Dean is one of the reasons he turned out so normal. Dean Campbell got his engineering degree when he was in the army and learned how to design golf clubs as soon as everyone knew Palmer was headed to the pros. And then Palmer pissed off his father by hiring his uncle to be his clubmaker. Birdie told me he’s old-school, refuses to use a computer for design, sketches everything by hand, and hammers and welds everything by hand as well, even though there are machines and technology that will do it for you now.
“You said he was old!” I remind Birdie as Palmer introduces his uncle to Quinn and Shepherd.
“Uh, he is.” My daughter shrugs.
“You little shit. He’s not that much older than me,” I practically growl at her. “I don’t care if you’re thirty. I will still ground your ass.”
“You know what I mean.” Birdie rolls her eyes. “He’s not young-young, like the guys you go for, so I didn’t even bother giving you an accurate description. As much as I would’ve loved to play matchmaker with you two long ago, I knew you would laugh in my face. And I told you he was older, not old. Why are you freaking out?”
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve spent the last twenty hours or so fantasizing about the man I thought was a stranger I’d never see again, which made it okay, and now I think my head might explode.
Birdie also told me he’s a nomad, a loner, traveling wherever Palmer or any other golfer who hires him needs him to be, and a little on the grouchy side. Combined with everything else I know about the guy, I assumed he was old. Like… a crotchety, elderly man with a bald head, a long gray beard stained with nicotine, and scoliosis from bending over a workbench all day, yelling at people about how technology will rot their brain. A troll living in a van down by the river.
Not a walking, talking advertisement for one of the badass hot guys in my favorite motorcycle club show. A man who shares a name with the hot, famous actor he resembles and who is currently walking back over to stand a foot away from me now that greetings and introductions are complete as everyone talks amongst themselves.
“Don’t worry; I’m not stalking you, sugar.”
Let’s get something straight here. I have never liked it when a man I don’t know calls me a term of endearment. Baby, sweetheart, darlin’—it’s creepy, and weird, and you don’t know me, buddy. I don’t know what it is about the way this man says that word, but all sorts of dirty images start popping into my head that have no business being there.
Like him licking sugar off my body while his facial hair scratches me in all the right places….
Birdie lets out a little gasp when she suddenly realizes what Dean just called me, and I close my eyes, knowing there’s no use trying to stop what is about to come out of my daughter’s mouth.
“Wait a minute! Uncle Dean is our new daddy with the hot voice and the great ass?”
