“Since…” Summer murmurs, acting daft.
Her inability to pull off a ditzy personality reminds me exactly who is standing in front of me, acting like a sexpot, and the remembrance delivers my words without the slightest bit of shame to them. “Since I ate your delicious cunt for breakfast?”
“Sweet Mother of Texas,” she murmurs under her breath before she locks her eyes with mine and mutters, “Your mouth is both filthy and disturbing.”
“And you’re playing with fire if you are doing what I think you’re doing.”
When she bats her lashes, her game is over.
“Are you trying to seduce me, Cocoa?” Her brisk headshake freezes when I add, “Because if you are, it’s fucking working.”
When I tug her toward me with a gentle pull on her wrist, her breathing increases so fast, I’m shocked her towel doesn’t slip from her body.
“But not because of this…” I tug on the hair she meticulously straightened, “… or this.” I rub my thumb over the mascara coating her lashes. “Nor this.” With the same thumb, I scrub off the lipstick her lips are usually without. “But because of this…” I tap on her temple. “And this…” My cock twitches in sync with the vein in her neck when I drop my hand to her chest to point to her heart. “And this…”
I smile along with her when I place my cell phone in her hand. It’s open on an image of a six-year-old boy she sponsored to play in little league this year. His parents couldn’t afford the sign-up fee, so Summer dipped into her savings to pay it for him, and a percentage of her wage at the merchandise store will be automatically distributed to the bill she racked up to purchase him cleats, a glove, and a Ravenshoe Ravens uniform at the merchandise store.
“Coach is telling everyone who’ll listen how you went to bat for a stranger.”
“I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done, especially once you realized he has the same goofy lopsided smirk you wear every time you walk out to the mound when he talks about baseball. I couldn’t say no to it.”
“You could have… but it’s the fact you didn’t that has everyone talking. Even the local journalists want to do a feature on you. They’re on their way here now.”
“Now! They’re coming here now?” When I bob my chin, her eyes rocket down to her teeny white towel. “Sweet baby Jesus, Daddy will lock me away for life if I get photographed like this.” As she races for her suitcase, she murmurs, “Less laughing, Lenigan69. Morejooshing.”
“What am I meant tojoosh?”
My dick gets the memo in the wrong manner when Summer says, “Me!”
“Summer…” She halts, tossing clothes out of her suitcase when I say her name for the second time. When I get her eyes, I remind her who they’re interviewing. It isn’t a spoiled socialite who wants to see her name in print. It’s her. My best friend—the woman I want to cancel every interview for so she can continue seducing me.
I switch off the television when Summer enters our room. Her face is still the same vibrant red coloring it was when she laughed so hard at a joke one of the journalists told, she snorted on live air, but it is a blissful hue more than an embarrassed one.
“Did he see it?”
While nodding, she slips under the sheets and shimmies to my side of the bed. “Uncle Reggie recorded it just in case, but Dad had perfect reception at the right time.” I twist a wayward strand of hair around the messy bun she tossed her golden locks into after her interviews when she nuzzles into my chest and whispers, “They’re going to put a money jar on the counter at the shop for Julian.”
“That’s nice of them.”
She huffs out with a laugh, “It is considering they’ll most likely be theonlypeople putting their money in there. It’s rare to find people willing to help these days.”
Since I can’t deny her claim, I remain quiet. When Summer’s story circulated amongst the team, several key members of the Ravenshoe Ravens’ camp came to the plate for kids in a similar situation as Julian, but there were noticeable absentees on the list. Most particular, Adam, Cody, and my father, who’s telling everyone he’s my manager. They haven’t donated a single dime to the foundation Summer didn’t realize she was founding until her story swept across the globe via multiple social media apps.
“Talking about favors, can I ask you one?”
“Of course,” I reply, peering down at her resting in my arms.
The fact she can continue to surprise me years later still astounds me. “Will you teach me how to swim?” When I nod without hesitation, she blurts out, “Now?”
“Now? It’s damn near midnight.”
“Exactly,” Summer overemphasizes with a girlish squeal. “It’s the perfect time for no one to laugh at my wildly flapping arms and disastrous dog paddle. Please, Lennox. I promise I’ll love you forever.”
“Hey, none of that. We promised there’d be no loving on the agenda.”
As she slips out of bed, she murmurs, “I don’t remembereveragreeing to that.”
I follow her to her suitcase while saying, “I specifically said I wouldn’t fall in love with you, so you’d be free to marry an investment banker with an addiction to prostitutes.”
