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When they were done, he stroked her hair, which had come out of its ratty ponytail. “Just to refresh your memory…” He traced the small of her back under her T-shirt. “You said I didn’t turn you on.”
She sank her teeth into his collarbone. “You don’t turn me on—not the rational part of me anyway. Unfortunately, I also have slutty parts. Those you definitely turn on.”
He wasn’t nearly done with her, and he started to touch those slutty parts all over again, but she rolled off him into the weeds. “We can’t stay out here fornicating all night.”
He grinned. Fornicating, indeed.
She still wore her T-shirt, but the rest of her was naked. She reached around for her panties, which gave him an outstanding view of her bottom as she spoke. “Riley is the only person who won’t have figured out what we’re doing.” She located the panties, stood up to pull them on, and had the gall to sneer at him. “Here’s the way it’s going to be, Boo. I’ve decided you and I are going to have an affair—short and nasty. I’ll be using you, pure and simple, so don’t go all touchy-feely on me. I don’t care what you’re thinking. I don’t care about your feelings. All I care about is your body. Now are you okay with that or not?”
She was the damnedest woman he’d ever met. He grabbed her shorts before she could pick them up. “What am I getting in return for the humiliation of being used?”
The sneer reappeared. “You’re getting me. The object of your desire.”
He pretended to think it over. “Add a few more dinners like today, and I’m in.” He snaked a finger under the leg hole of her panties. “In all the way.”
Jack pushed his chair back from the cottage’s kitchen table and began tuning his old Martin. He’d recorded “Born in Sin” with it, and now he wished he hadn’t been so impulsive about giving it away. Those dings and scratches represented the last twenty-five years of his life. But finding out that Marli wouldn’t let Riley near any of her guitars made him crazy. He should have been aware of something that important, but he’d kept himself in deliberate ignorance.
Riley pulled up a chair, sitting so close their knees nearly touched. Her eyes filled with wonder as she gazed at the battered instrument. “It’s really mine?”
His regret evaporated. “It’s yours.”
“This is the best present I ever got.”
Her dreamy expression made his throat tighten. “You should have told me you wanted a guitar. I would have sent you one.”
She mumbled something he couldn’t make out.
“What?”
“I told you,” she said. “But you were on the road, and you must not have heard.”
He had no recollection of her mentioning a guitar, but then he seldom gave their strained telephone conversations all his attention. Although he frequently sent Riley gifts—computers, games, books, and CDs—he’d never picked out any of them himself. “I’m sorry, Riley. I guess I missed it.”
“That’s okay.”
Riley had a habit of saying things were okay when they weren’t, a practice he hadn’t noticed until these past ten days. He hadn’t noticed a lot about her he should have. As long as he paid her bills and made sure she attended a good school, he’d figured he was doing his fair share. He hadn’t wanted to look beyond that, because getting more involved would have interfered with his life.
“I know most of the open chords,” she said. “Except F is hard to play.” She watched intently as he tuned, soaking in everything he did. “I looked up stuff on the Internet, and, for a while, Trinity let me practice on her guitar. But then she made me give it back.”
“Trinity has a guitar?”
“A Larrivee. She only took five lessons before she quit. She thinks guitar is boring. But I’ll bet Aunt Gayle will make her start again. Now that Mom’s dead, Aunt Gayle needs a new partner, and she told Trinity they could be like the Judds someday, except more beautiful.”
He’d seen Trinity at Marli’s funeral. Even as an infant, she’d been irresistible, a rosy-cheeked cherub with blond curls and big blue eyes. The way he remembered it, she’d seldom cried, slept when she was supposed to, and kept her baby formula in her stomach instead of turning it into a projectile as Riley had. When Riley was a month old, Jack had left on tour, glad to have an excuse to get away from a moonfaced, screaming baby he didn’t know how to comfort and a marriage he’d already discovered was a big mistake. Over the years, he’d sometimes thought he would have been a better father if he’d been given a charmer like Trinity, but the past ten days had enlightened him.
“It was nice of her to lend you her guitar,” he said, “but I’ll bet her cooperation didn’t come free.”
“We made a deal.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Do I have to?”
“Depends on whether you want me to show you an easier way to play the F chord.”
