Exclusively Yours (15 page)

“Well, Dad’s driving it.”

That certainly got her attention. She turned her head just in time to see Evan throw his truck in park and get out. His four-wheeler was in the back of the pickup, camping gear bungee-corded to its racks.

She’d only called him four hours ago, for chrissake.

“Hello, ladies,” her maybe almost-ex-husband said.

Evan wasn’t as tall as her brothers and there was no doubt he’d been well-fed going into middle age, but she didn’t find him any less attractive than she had the day they’d met. His dirty blond hair was getting a little shaggy and she couldn’t help but wonder if he even knew the name of the barber shop where
she’d
always scheduled his appointments.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to sound disinterested and failing by a mile.

“I missed you, too.” He winked at her, then turned to their daughter. “And I couldn’t miss my weekend time with Stephie.”

Funny how missing one weekend had been okay with him
before
she’d made that stupid call. Terry didn’t know what to say. How could he just show up with no warning after what he’d done?

“I’m on site four,” he continued. “Your brothers can all get a good laugh watching me try to put up my tent. Unless you’re going to help me.”

“I’m sure it came with instructions,” she snapped. How
dare
he put her in this position just because she’d been stupid enough to confess her feelings to his answering machine in a misguided, Keri-fueled moment?

“You gonna help me?” he asked their daughter, who absolutely beamed. Funny how an almost teenage girl who couldn’t plug an RV cord into an electrical outlet was suddenly the Bob Villa of tents.

Twenty minutes later, Terry’s palms bore red crescent fingernail marks. They were doing it wrong. They hadn’t stretched it out enough before pegging the corners, plus Steph didn’t drive the pegs in nearly far enough. And how the hell did they expect to get any of it right when they’d let the directions blow into a cluster of blackberry bushes?

Not her problem
. The man would rather be alone than be married to her? They’d see how much he liked being alone when his tent collapsed on him in the middle of the night and he couldn’t find the zipper.

When two arms came around her shoulders from behind, she knew it was Joe and leaned back against his chest as he asked, “What’s going on here?”

“Keri Daniels is going on here.”

“Evan came to see Keri?”

“No. Your girlfriend talked me into calling his answering machine while he was at work and telling him I miss him.” Dumbest idea ever.

“This is a good thing, then. You called. He came.”

She snorted. “He said he didn’t want to miss his weekend with Steph.”

“You want me to go over there and kick his ass?”

Joe could always make her laugh. “That tent’s doing a good enough job already.”

His arms tightened around her and he rested his chin on her shoulder. “Don’t freeze him out this weekend, Terry. I know he hurt you, but from a man’s point of view, his coming up here is pretty huge.”

They watched as Kevin and Mike approached site number four, both of them chuckling and shaking their heads while Terry fumed. Now they’d take over the operation and Evan would be spared the humiliation of calling for help at two in the morning.

“Cut ’em some slack,” Joe said, probably feeling the tension in her shoulders. “He was our family for thirteen years, too. You’re our sister, but he’s our friend. It’s not fair of you to expect us to give him the cold shoulder when he’s right here, smack dab in the middle of things.”

“How do you expect me to deal with all this?”

“Talk to him. Seriously, his being here means there’s a chance you can work this out.”

“Gee, did Ma write that script for you?”

“Strangely enough, the people who love you all feel pretty much the same about this. Wonder why that is.”

“Because you’re all pains in my ass.”

Joe gave her another squeeze, then let her go. “Let him see what you’re feeling, sis. Let him know you’re hurt.”

She had no intention of going crying to Evan. He was the one who’d left. And she wasn’t about to let him know it was destroying her inside.

“How was I supposed to know he’d drive all the way up here? The plan was for him to have to wait for her to come home, so he’d be practically drooling with anticipation by the time he got to see her. Instead,
she’s
foaming at the mouth.”

“She’ll get over it.” When she laughed, he rolled his eyes. “Okay, she can hold a grudge. But, trust me, this is the best thing that’s happened to her in three months. She just doesn’t realize it yet.”

“You’re not done with those potatoes yet?” Mary snatched the roll of aluminum foil away from Joe. “You go help your father. You two are gabbing more than you’re working and we’ll be having baked potatoes for midnight snack at this rate.”

Since neither of them was eager to argue with a woman wielding a roll of heavy duty aluminum foil, Joe shrugged and went off to find Leo, and Keri poked holes in the potatoes with a fork a little bit faster.

“I hear Evan being here is all your fault.” She tore off a square of foil to wrap around the potato Keri handed her.

How was it her fault? “That seems to be the rumor.”

“Good. I don’t know how you did it, but it’s good that he’s here. Maybe that will prove to Theresa they can talk this out and put it all behind them.”

“All I did was tell her she should call him and tell him she missed him. The driving up here and surprising her part was all him.”

And Terry was not happy about it. She was currently sitting in the shade stripping the hell out of fresh ears of corn. Husk was flying and everybody was giving her space. A lot of space.

“Talking it out would require her actually talking to him,” Keri pointed out.

Mary shrugged. “She will. Later, when it’s quiet and the entire family isn’t hanging around.”

If Keri stepped a little to the left, she could see across the campground to site four, where Evan and Stephanie were involved in their own dinner preparations. But while the Kowalskis were going for an all-out barbecue feast, the Porters were roasting hot dogs over the fire with sticks.

She was jealous. Slaving away over dinner wasn’t her idea of a vacation and the fact that she was doing it outside didn’t make it a grand adventure. It just made it harder to wash her hands.

“I’d like to see everybody settled,” Mary continued. “Theresa and Evan. You and Joe.”

“Umm…” Flustered, she dropped the potato and it rolled, which at least gave her the opportunity to crawl under the picnic table and fish it out, giving her a few seconds to think.

What, exactly, did Joe’s mother think she was doing there? She knew he’d told his family she was there to write an article about him and that he’d left out the charming blackmail aspect of the story. But there was no mistaking Mary’s intent—she’d paired them off as couples. Terry and Evan. She and Joe.

She ran the potato under the water spigot and then stabbed it a few times with the fork before handing it to Mary. “Things are very settled between Joe and I. When you guys go home, I’m going back to Los Angeles, where I’ll write my article and get my promotion.”

“We’ll see,” Mary said with an enigmatic smile Keri was afraid to analyze too much. She wrapped the last potato and set down the aluminum foil. “Go help Theresa with the corn, sweetie.”

Great. Cornhusking and a healthy dose of attitude. Just what her day needed. But she did as she was told and dragged a chair over to what looked like bushels of ears of corn. Not that she knew what a bushel looked like, but it was a lot.

“I’ve got this,” Terry snapped.

“Your mother told me to help you. Take it up with her.”

When she didn’t, Keri picked up an ear of corn and tried to do to it what Terry was doing to hers. It wasn’t as easy as it looked, though, and the sticky stuff that was like hair was clinging to the corn and then clinging to her.

“You can buy corn on the cob already prepped, you know,” she said, not even trying to hide her irritation.

“It’s not as good that way.”

She was about to say she was one sticky piece of corn string away from joining Evan and Steph in roasting hot dogs on sticks, then closed her mouth. Probably not the right time to imply Evan was doing something in a better way than his pissed-off wife.

“I can’t believe he came up here,” Terry muttered at the ear of corn she was mauling.

Keri wasn’t sure if she was actually talking to the corn, or if the comment was directed at her, but it was an opening. “Don’t you think it’s a good thing? You called and he came running. Literally.”

“No.” She snapped the ends of the corn off with frighteningly little effort. “I don’t think it’s a good thing. What is it going to help, him being over there cooking like a freakin’ caveman?”

“He’d be over here if you weren’t being such a bitch.”

For a second, she thought Terry was going to chuck an ear of corn at her. But then the mask slipped—just for a second—and Keri saw not anger or annoyance, but total devastation.

“Things were said that can’t ever be taken back,” Terry said quietly, but then she resumed ripping into the corn. “What the hell would you know about it, anyway?”

“About as much as I do about corn on the cob,” she replied, knowing she’d pushed Terry as far as she could for the moment.

They were on the last ears when Joe walked up behind Keri and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Ma said to hurry up or—”

“We’ll be having corn on the cob for midnight snack,” they finished together.

Keri managed a laugh, but she was hyper-aware of Joe’s fingers curling over her shoulders. And hyper-aware of his mother milling around the site, probably nursing her glow of maternal satisfaction thinking Joe was one step closer to being
settled
.

She tried shrugging him off, but he didn’t take the hint, so short of reaching up and physically removing his hands, there was nothing she could do. And, Mary aside, she didn’t really want to.

She was only vaguely aware of Joe talking about what was happening with the steaks and chicken breasts, but
very
aware of his thumbs making small circles, drawing closer and closer to the base of her neck.

What was unsettling was how natural—how couple-like—the gesture was. She had no doubt he was doing it subconsciously with a lack of awareness that made her fear he was thinking along the same lines as his mother.

But then his right thumb hit the sweet spot at the top of her spine and she didn’t care anymore. There was something to be said for a man who remembered just where and how she liked to be touched.

And as she dropped her head a little, encouraging him to move those magic thumbs up to her hairline, she couldn’t help wondering what else he remembered about touching her.

“Go,” Terry said.

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Go, but be prepared to suffer for it later, right?”

She sighed. “No, just go hang out at Evan’s campfire. Like Joe reminded me earlier, you guys have been friends for years. I promise I won’t hold it against either of you.”

They left on the double-quick, before she could change her mind, but then Joe remembered Keri. “You don’t mind, do you, babe?”

Since he was halfway across the playground, dragging his chair behind him, when he yelled it, she couldn’t very well say no. Or complain about his calling her babe in front of his family. But he was still relieved when she laughed and waved him away.

The pop and hiss of three cans of Bud—and a Coke for Joe—being opened signaled the commencement of a guy’s night out, even if they
were
only fifty yards from the women and children.

After they ran through sports, politics and an intense debate of Victoria’s Secret versus
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition
models, along with the better part of a twelve-pack, the talk inevitably ran to women.

“We’ve got more women troubles among us four than any dozen men should have to bear,” Evan complained, being a couple of beers ahead of the rest of them.

“I’m not troubled,” Joe protested.

Mike laughed and popped open another. “Man, you got even more troubles than us because you’re still stupid enough to think there’s hope.”

“That’s bullshit. You’re married to a great woman. Kevin’s got bar bunnies throwing themselves at him and Terry admitted she misses Evan. Hope abounds, my friend.”

“You gettin’ any yet?” Kevin asked him.

“Hell no.” Joe raised his can in a mock toast. “But again, hope abounds.”

“You gettin’ old or what?” Kevin asked. “You guys are all alone in that cabin and you can’t get lucky?”

Mike snorted. “Maybe he was that bad the first time around.”

“She’s had a real man since then,” Evan added, “and she’s too worn out from riding to fake a decent orgasm.”

Now that wasn’t funny. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing wrong, but my women don’t fake a damn thing.”

“Hell, Terry doesn’t either. In fact she—”

“Whoa!” all three Kowalskis yelled in unison.

Evan sighed and took another slug of beer. “One of the suck things about being married to your sister right there. You all can share war stories from the sack, but I can’t.”

“Shit,” Joe said. “I’m still trying to scrub the image of you and her on the kitchen table out of my mind.”

Kevin groaned and covered his ears, but Mike leaned forward. “That glass thing? No way that would hold you both.”

“She wouldn’t go for it anyway.”

“Which is why you walked out, according to her.”

“Seriously? I spill my guts and the only part she hears is how I wanted to do her on the table?”

Joe shrugged. “Women.”

“Damn right,” Mike said before knocking back the rest of his beer.

When his brother looked over at the cooler, Joe wondered if maybe he should intervene. Whatever the hell was going on between Mike and his wife wouldn’t be improved any by a raging case of Drunken Ass Syndrome.

“Hey, Mike, you want one of my Cokes?”

“Nah, I’ll have another brewski.”

Well, he tried. “We should have nicked some snacks. You got anything, Evan?”

“Three packages of hot dogs and a jar of instant coffee.”

“You suck at camping, dude,” Kevin said. “You need to go home because Terry? She knows how to pack food.”

“I’m well-versed in Theresa’s superiority in all things, thanks.”

Ouch.
“So how ’bout those Red Sox?”

The standard New England change of awkward subject worked and the conversation drifted into pitching stats and general Yankees-hating.

Until feminine laughter drifting across the playground made them all turn their heads toward the family campfire. The kids and grandparents had all fallen by the wayside at some point, leaving the three women—Keri, Lisa and Terry—illuminated by the fire and small battery-operating lantern set on a cooler. They’d pulled their chairs together and their heads were all bent over, looking at something on the big Igloo.

“I bet they’re playing dirty Scrabble again,” Kevin guessed, and he was proven right when Lisa started laying tiles on the board. Another round of laughter, though he could see them trying their best to stifle it.

Mike shook his head. “If Lisa would do half the words in bed she spells out on that board, I’d be one happy son of a bitch.”

Joe heard the guys laugh, but his lungs were having some trouble fully inflating and nothing came out.

God, she was beautiful. It was a warm night, so her flannel shirt was unbuttoned over a T-shirt and her hair was tousled a little—not sleek and perfect like usual. But it was more than her looks in the flickering light.

He wanted to stop the world from spinning. To freeze time and hold on to this moment forever.

This was the life he wanted. It was the life that once upon a time, he’d thought he’d have. Right now, it was as if Keri had never left—as if she’d been a part of his family all along.

She belonged here with him. He was sure of it. The problem was going to be convincing her.