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Reagan hurried off, and Oakley grabbed her guitar to slip it into the case.
The living room was small and lived in, the furniture and carpet worn but not in disrepair. Nothing fancy, but Oakley’s place had a cozy, welcoming feel to it.
“I heard you playing when I walked up. Great song.”
She latched the case. “Thanks.”
“Who’s it by? I haven’t heard that one before.”
She glanced over at him, wariness putting lines around her mouth. “No one. It’s just a thing I tinkered with a long time ago. Reagan found the lyrics and wanted me to play it.”
“Wait, you wrote that?” He moved closer without realizing he was doing it. That was her song? “What’s it called?”
“‘Dandelion.’ It was just a stupid teenage thing I scribbled down.” She gave him a dismissive wave of her hand. “Reagan wanted to change some of it around and maybe use it as a starting point for one of the songs for the group.”
“Oh, hell no.”
She set down the guitar case next to the TV and peered back over her shoulder. “What?”
His mind was already working, grabbing onto thoughts and running with them. “I only heard a little bit of it, but that’s not a kid’s song. Too much yearning in it for that. And that’s a one-voice song. Besides adding in some drums and a bass track, it didn’t sound like it needed to be messed around with. Maybe you could play the whole thing for me?”
She crossed her arms. “We’re here to work, not to waste time serenading you with my teenage ballads. Plus, I don’t play my own stuff for other people. I only did it because Reagan asked.”
“Hold up. You have more stuff?”
A smile finally broke through at that. She tilted her head. “What’s with you? You look like a beagle who just got offered a rack of ribs.”
What was with him was that he had been trying his hand at producing for the last year, and he hadn’t had a song hit him with that kind of gut-level force since he’d heard Keats. He was still new to this producing thing, but his instincts on what was good hadn’t let him down yet. “Fine. We’ll eat pizza and work. But before I leave, you’re going to play that song for me.”
“I will n—”
He raised a finger. “Remember, I am selflessly donating this Thursday night for the good of children, Oakley. I provided dinner. And I am mostly keeping my eyes to myself even though you are parading around in that enticing ensemble. All I’m asking in return is a song.”
She snorted and looked down at her shirt. “Mickey Mouse does it for you, huh?”
“His ears are very strategically placed. Not that I’ve noticed.”
She narrowed her eyes in playful warning. “Okay. I’ll think about it. One song. But only if we get this plan hammered out before ten.”
“I will accept this deal.” But there she went with the time limit again, which had his mind chasing that bunny trail from last night.
After their dinner the night before, he’d gone home and had tried to talk himself out of his crazy theories about the phone calls. He’d ruled out the most ridiculous one first. No way was Oakley a call girl or escort. She had a kid and wouldn’t be able to get away that much. Plus, during their conversations about the bathroom, she’d blushed. A hooker doesn’t blush.
So there were only a few other possibilities he could think of. One was that she was seeing a guy who liked to role-play. Pike liked those kinds of games himself, so he’d been down that road of false names and such. But Oakley had said she wasn’t seeing anyone and he believed her. Then he’d thought it could be an online relationship thing—pretending to be someone else and hooking up via the Internet. But really, why would Oakley need to catfish anyone? The woman was hot.
So then he’d landed on the last theory. That she was some kind of phone-sex operator. That would explain the guy mentioning minutes.
But maybe he’d heard it all wrong and was chasing crazy ideas. First, did people still call those old-school lines when every porntastic thing imaginable could be found on the Internet? And secondly, after replaying the scene, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that she’d said Sasha to the caller when she’d walked away. Maybe he’d heard wrong. The music had been loud in the restaurant.
And as he followed Oakley into the kitchen to share a pizza with her kid, he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that this doting mother who worked at a non-profit could flip the switch and play filthy phone-sex girl at night. He’d called those lines when he was a teenager. He’d lift credit card numbers from his mom’s boyfriend and charge the calls that way. And he’d gotten quite an education when he’d found there was no limit to what those women would talk about. He had a hard time picturing Oakley saying “fuck” much less describing sex acts in explicit detail.
However, once they were in the kitchen, Oakley turned to him and asked him what he wanted to drink, and that voice hit him again right where it counted. That tone, dropping half an octave, and pressed close to the phone? It could probably make a guy hard before a dirty word was ever spoken. It’d be lethal.
He liked Oakley a lot already but had accepted yesterday during dinner that he was too far from her type to get anywhere. She wasn’t looking to sow some bad-boy oats. She’d moved beyond that phase of life. But if the lovely Ms. Easton wasn’t as buttoned-up and conservative as she was portraying, if she was up to some naughty, secretive business behind closed doors, that put a whole new shine on things. Because nothing was hotter to him than a woman who had her shit together during the day but who could also let loose and play dirty at night.
Maybe that had been part of what had gotten him in trouble with his teacher. She’d been strict in the classroom, so put together. But one day he’d walked up on her in between classes. She’d been bending over to get something on the floor and had stumbled, giving him the glorious sight of her lacy red thong before she could right herself. After that, he’d lost hours in that class imagining what she was like outside of school, picturing what happened when she took the pins out of her hair and stripped off that stern expression. And one day when he’d run into her in town on a weekend, he’d found out.
But that had been his young infatuation and a raging libido at work there. He’d been dumb and eager. She’d been lonely and recovering from an abusive relationship. Looking back, he’d been the epitome of non-threatening, which is why she’d probably crossed lines that should’ve never been crossed. He hadn’t known what to do with that kind of situation then.
