Chad stirred, jerking his head away from the arm of his couch to look in the direction of whatever had awoken him. Sloshing water, silverware tinkling—someone doing the dishes. Chad rose, working all the kinks out of his joints without the pay-off of the clearheaded relaxation that came from a proper nap.
"I thought I was supposed to be resting," he grumbled. "Hard to do that with this racket!"
"If you want to sleep, go to the bedroom," a plum British accent retorted from the kitchen. "I don't have a lot of time to look in on you, and I'm going to have this house in some order before I leave!"
Muttering to himself, Chad cracked his neck and headed into the kitchen. With his painstaking steps, she knew he was coming a mile away.
"Look at these stacks of dishes!" she chided him. "They need to be done and they need to be done now!"
"They can wait!" He sagged atop the kitchen table. "What kind of maid doesn't take orders?"
"I'm not your maid, Chad, though I dare say even if you were willing to let us hire you one, she wouldn't put up with this treatment half so much as I have.
I'm
just your daughter-in-law, trying to take care of an ailing relation."
"Ailing!" Chad rolled his eyes. He still jogged regularly, still lifted, still boxed. His physique was great for a man in his mid-fifties. The heart thing had just been one of those things. "One little hiccup and this damn family goes to pieces..."
"Heart failure is not a hiccup. You could've died!"
"I can do my own damned dishes..."
"You can rest and recover like you're supposed to."
"Move!" Chad told her, making his way to the sink.
She stood in his way. "You can rinse. I'll scrub."
Chad shook his head. "Of all the... fine. If you want to give yourself dishpan hands, knock yourself out."
"I'd rather explain dishpan hands to my husband than that his father's given himself another heart attack."
"Some husband..." Chad muttered.
He knew his son was queer as a two-dollar bill, but in the public eye, he couldn't very well give that away. What he didn't understand was why someone as beautiful as Hayley Atwell had to settle for being the kid's beard. Was it that hard for her to find a real husband? He supposed it was good for her career as well as his—lots of gossip, lots of movie roles—but it seemed like a waste of one hell of a wife if you asked him.
Harley had filled one half of the sink with hot, sudsy water, and she would only allow her hands to touch it as she scoured each plate before handing them off to him for the insultingly pedantic work of being rinsed and stacked.
"So why doesn't the kid do this himself?" Chad asked. "Too busy to check in on his old man?"
Hayley was in no mood. "It was my idea. I wanted to get to know you a little better."
"Yeah, that's a helluva excuse to invite yourself to bother a private citizen. I just want to get back to my routine."
"I want that as well. Preferably with less health scares. He was really worried about you, you know."
"Has one hell of a way of showing it, going out of town on business..."
"That couldn't be avoided."
"Sure it couldn't. What do you see in him, anyway? I know he's a good kid and all, but how's he take care of you?"
Hayley blushed at his meaning. "There are more important things."
"Not too many where a marriage is concerned. Then, I suppose if my wife and I hadn't given a fig about each other, matrimony would've been smooth sailing."
"I care a great deal about your son. He's a very good friend and far more understanding than a more... romantically inclined husband would be."
"Yeah, I should know, I raised him."
"Yes. If he were inclined as you were, it would probably be the perfect marriage. But if he had any of your stubbornness..."
"Stubbornness goes with passion. You should know that, you strike me as the type."
"The stubborn type?"
"At times."
"Well, I try to be more pragmatic than passionate... at times."
Chad smiled at her. It would've been a lot easier dealing with her if she were an out and out bitch, but he could see how his son would've married her, even while being blind to at least some of her charms. She was a cute little minx, making him feel as young as she was. If he was that young, and as wise as he was now, he wouldn't have married her as part of no
publicity stunt,
no sir.
"If you end up married to a gay man, you could stand to be passionate more often and pragmatic less." He took a puff of suds from a plate she handed him and flicked it at her, landing it atop her blouse. It quickly faded into a large dark circle of wetly clinging cloth atop her breast, her full, milky cleavage even more evident than it had been before. Her bra was less evident; the damp patch showed the outline of her right nipple. Chad's flaccid cock made thoughts of stiffening.
"Hell!" Hayley cried, covering her chest. "This is what I would worry about, being married to a more interested male!"
She went to the oven for the towels dangling from its handle, to scrub her chest dry with her back to him. In the process, she bent to examine her reflection in the tinted glass of the oven door, and Chad could see her shorts slip with enviable license into the crevice of her ass, revealing the tempting curve of her firm cheeks.
Chad pressed himself against the sink to hide his erection, but that only made it harden more, feeling the warm throb of the hot water inside where he pressed himself. This was his son's wife. Sure, his son probably wouldn't give a damn either way, but still, he was reluctant. Yet at the same time, he
wasn't.
Hayley returned with another stack of dishes—they really had piled up, taking over the kitchen like an occupying force. She dumped them into the sink with an evil gleam in her eyes, the water splashing Chad.
"Oops!" she said staunchly. "Sorry. I guess it was just fated that both of us would get wet today."
Chad stripped off his shirt, noticing Hayley's eyes tracking the impressively musculature for a man his age, the saltpepper hair that bristled across his chest. "No problem.
I
don't mind getting wet."
Hayley almost shrieked at his implication. "I would hope my father-in-law is not some sort of dirty old man."
"No, of course not—I'm not that old at all."
"Could you prove it?" she asked, moving to push him to relinquish his position in front of the sink so she could resume rinsing, but he didn't move—instead turning to face her and moving against her, his erection poking her belly, his tongue shooting hotly into her mouth, pressing forcefully down the warm smooth length of her tongue. And Hayley sucked on it, drawing it further into her mouth with her lips pressed against his, clinging to him for a long moment before she slipped away.
It took a moment for Hayley to wag a finger at him. "You'd best behave yourself!" she admonished him.
"You've been around men who behave themselves too much," he told her. "You need one who knows what to do with a damn little cocktease."