Exclusively Yours (18 page)

“I’ve thought of a question. A very serious question, as a matter of fact.”

Her eyes were wary, but amusement played with the corners of her mouth. “A serious one, huh?”

“Very.” Since she wouldn’t let him kiss her, he bent his head and nipped at her neck, just below her ear. “After you left for California, did you ever pretend guys you were with were me?”

“Yes,” she whispered as he kissed his way down to the vee opening of her shirt. “And sometimes you were even battery operated, too.”

And damn if the perennial erection didn’t return. “I can’t think about that too much or I won’t be able to walk.”

“How about you? Did you pretend other women were me?”

More than he cared to admit, and not just when it came to sex. “Only the blondes.”

“Very funny.” She sighed when he flicked his tongue over the hollow at the base of her throat. “Too bad New Hampshire and California are so far apart or we could schedule some booty calls.”

He forced a laugh, but on the inside his heart was doing a little flip-flop. It was the first reference she’d made to the possibility of a relationship after the vacation was over and, even though she’d said it as a joke, he got a little hopeful. Maybe a long-distance romance would work until he could talk her into coming home where she belonged.

He was saved from having to answer that by a knock on the door but, on the downside, he had to stop nibbling at her neck. “I knew they’d come after us eventually.”

It was Brian, a little out of breath. “You guys have to come down now so the grown-ups can decide what we’re doing today.”

“Tell them we’ll be right there,” he told the boy, who nodded and took off running again.

He dug into his gym bag, looking for the small toiletry bag so he could clean up a little, too. Keri wasn’t the only one with morning and breakfast breath.

“Have you seen the bug spray?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s right there on the…” It wasn’t there. “I
thought
it was on the table.”

“I did, too. And there was an extra bottle in my bag. Oh…that
bitch
.”

He stopped rummaging through the bags and looked up. Keri had her arms crossed and was literally tapping her foot.

“Terry! She said she’d hide my bug spray if I had sex with you.”

“Come on, babe. It’s not like she was sneaking around, listening at doors.”

She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You were the one waving condoms at Kevin like a winning poker hand.”

“Poke’er.”
Heh
. “Get it?”

“Focus, Joe.”

He was, just apparently on the wrong thing. “It’s probably in the cupholder of one of the chairs.”

“All of it? Even the extra bottles and the repellant wipes I don’t bother using because the mosquitoes don’t seem to be at all deterred by natural tropical scents, which makes sense because why would mosquitoes be afraid of flowers?”

“They’re probably not all in the cupholder, no.”

“She snuck in here while we were at the restaurant and stole all my bug spray.”

“Our bug spray. She took mine, too.”

She crossed her arms and scowled at him. “You should write her into your book and do horrible things to her.”

He chuckled. “I try not to do horrible things to people I know in my books. They get upset.”

“Oh? What about Carrie Danielson?”

Busted. “You were gone, presumably forever.”

“Yeah, well now I’m back. And I have no freakin’ bug spray.”

While he wasn’t stupid enough to say it out loud, she was awfully damn cute when she was pissed. “Let’s go clean up and then join the crowd. I’ll get your bug spray back.”

“No.”

“No what?” If they were going to hang out in the cabin all day, he was taking his clothes back off. And hers, too. Bacon breath be damned.

“I’m not going out there. Everybody knows.”

“Knows what?”

“That we had sex, Kowalski.”

“They didn’t think I was a virgin, babe.”

“No, they know you had sex with
me
. Because you told Kevin, who probably told everybody, which wasn’t supposed to happen. Your mother’s probably baking our wedding cake right now, for chrissake.”

It was a punch to his gut, the immediate visual of Keri in a wedding dress, walking up the aisle toward him. It superimposed itself over the memory of her on prom night, when she’d worn a pretty navy blue thing with a long zipper he’d enjoyed pulling down one excruciatingly teasing inch at a time.

Then high school Keri faded, leaving just the thought of the here-and-now Keri making her way toward the altar while his brothers fidgeted with their tuxes and their mothers sniffled into crumpled tissues.

He didn’t know how the hell it had come to this, but yeah, he wanted that.

Then she laughed at him. “Oh my God, I said wedding and you just totally shut down. You are such a guy, Kowalski.”

Let her think that. It was better than confessing he’d been playing wedding planner in his mind. Maybe asking her opinion on a traditional carrot cake. “Nobody cares if we’re having sex.”

“Tell that to the mosquitoes.”

“Come on. Let’s go see what the family’s up to.”

She shook her head, trying to stare him down. “I’m not going out there.”

He shrugged and put his hand on the doorknob. “Okay. But you’re forfeiting a question.”

“Oh, you bastard. You know you haven’t given me shit to work with already!”

“You agreed to the terms by showing up, Daniels. You refuse to take part in an activity, you forfeit a question.”

“Fine. But if I take a bunch of shit about last night, I’m wiping your hard drive.”

“Is that what they’re calling it nowadays?” He held the door open and laughed when she slapped him in the stomach as she walked by.

“I hate mosquitoes.”

“Then put on some bug spray, dumbass.”

“Leo!” Mary barked. “Don’t call Joe’s girl a dumbass!”

Joe’s girl
. She couldn’t believe she’d called her that, or the way her stomach started to hurt. It had been a long time since she’d had occasion to remember how much she hated that.

Leo threw his hands up in the air. “What? She can’t figure out mosquito repellant repels mosquitoes? That makes her a dumbass in my book.”

“All of my bug spray mysteriously disappeared while Joe and I were out to breakfast,” she explained, casting an obviously accusing glare Terry’s way.

Mary didn’t miss it. “Theresa, did you hide Keri’s bug spray?”

Put on the spot, she obviously didn’t dare lie. “Yup.”

“Why?”

Keri saw Lisa’s eyes get big and then she focused all her attention on giving Joe an
I told you so
look he couldn’t miss.

“Because she…” Terry paused, then gave her mother a falsely sheepish grin. “It was a practical joke, Ma. That’s all.”

“Go get it, then, before the mosquitoes eat her alive.”

With the rather disappointing show over, everybody went back to talking about where they wanted to ride later, so Keri wandered over to the coffeepot and stole the last cold cup from the bottom. She turned to ask if she should make another pot, but a woman Keri didn’t recognize and a little boy were walking up to Lisa.

“Hi, Bobby’s mom. I’m Sean’s mom.” Both women laughed, then launched into a discussion about Bobby going up to their campsite to play trucks for a little while.

But Keri was barely aware of them.
Hi, Terry’s mom. I’m Keri’s mom.
It was happening again. Hadn’t Mary just called her Joe’s girl?

She couldn’t remember how old she was when she realized her mother had no identity of her own. More than likely it was a long-growing awareness rather than a single moment.

Keri’s mom. Ed’s wife. Mrs. Daniels. Her dad called her hon and Keri called her mom. She never heard anybody call her
Janie
. Oh, logically she knew people must have—Mrs. Kowalski, for one. They were friends so one could assume first names had come into play.

For a while, Keri had even listened for it. And maybe that’s why, as they were filing into the gymnasium to “Pomp and Circumstance,” she’d been horrified to overhear a woman whisper, “That’s the valedictorian’s girlfriend.”

“Oh, that’s right,” her companion had responded. “I’d heard Ed’s daughter was Joe’s girl now.”

She’d made the rest of that long, slow walk cataloguing the ways she’d been referred to lately. Ed’s daughter. The Daniels girl. Doll (her father’s pet name for her) and Peach (her mother’s). Joe’s girl.
Babe.

The index card taped to her folding metal chair read K. DANIELS.

“Keri,” she had whispered to herself. And as she smoothed her gown and adjusted the mortar perched atop her big hair, she’d wondered if her mother had ever done the same.

Keri wanted to see her name in lights. On a marquee. Or in an entertainment column. She’d made up her mind before Joe even started his speech—the world would see the name Keri Daniels somewhere.

Now she was
this
close to seeing it on the masthead of a major weekly magazine.

All she had to do was resharpen her focus—remember she was being granted unprecedented access to Joseph Kowalski.

Flash
. “Say cheese!”

And his family.

On a more cheerful note, Keri hadn’t spoken to her since the bug spray incident the day before. She didn’t have anything to say to her, either. Nothing nice anyway.

She’d been on her way to the cabin to deliver a few important emails she’d printed out for him from the store’s computer and then forgotten in the turmoil of Evan’s arrival, but Kevin had called to her from his tent site and intercepted her. While he hadn’t given her any specifics, his very pointed suggestion she leave Joe and Keri alone told her all she needed to know.

The dumb son of a bitch had slept with her.

Maybe it wasn’t really her business, but she was the one who’d gone off to UNH with Joe after Keri left and watched him start the slow slide into self-destruction. She couldn’t help but fear his being hurt by the same girl again would trigger the same coping behavior.

Steph laughed, drawing her attention back to site four. Her husband was trying to stuff the haphazardly balled-up tent back into its storage bag, which would never happen unless he refolded the tent in a tight, methodical way.

As soon as he was done, he’d be leaving and then they’d be right back where they started. Actually, no. They’d be worse off than when they started because now she knew they both wanted the marriage to succeed, but neither of them knew how to do it. Somehow that seemed worse than believing the marriage was over because he flat-out didn’t want to be married to her anymore.

She should say something. Anything. Her sending him away with a cold shoulder would just make it harder for them to communicate when she got home. Before she could second-guess herself out of it, she stood up and started toward his site.

“Mom!” Steph yelled when she saw her coming. “You totally have to help us with this. It’s never going to fit.”

“It will. You just have to fold it—” she was going to say the
right
way, “—a different way.”

When a smile tugged just a little at the corners of Evan’s mouth, she knew he hadn’t missed her self-correction. It wasn’t much—not nearly enough—but it was a start, maybe. How long would she last watching everything she said and did, though?

Ten minutes later, the tent was properly packed away and there was nothing for him to do but strap his four-wheeler down and say goodbye.

“Hey, Steph,” he said, “would you run down to the store and grab a Coke for me for the ride home?”

He fished a dollar out of his pocket and then she was off, leaving them alone. Terry stuck her hands in her pockets and waited to see what her husband had to say to her he couldn’t say in front of their daughter.

“So you’ll call when you get home?” he asked. “So we can set up a night to have dinner?”

She nodded. “I think it’s best if we don’t say anything to anybody about it. Especially to Stephanie. I don’t want to get her hopes up.”

“If that’s the way you want it.” He stepped closer to her and it was only then she realized they were hidden from view of the campground by his truck and the ATV in the bed of it. “I’ve got my hopes up, though.”

“Me, too,” she whispered, not wanting to admit it, but knowing the only way they could come out on the other side of this was to be honest.

When he tipped her chin and up and pressed his lips to hers, her whole body shook. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hold him so tight he could never get away again, but she kept her hands in her pockets. Her heart was too bruised to give him anything more.

He drew back and she heard the footsteps hurrying up the dirt road. Steph was back and Terry turned away to swipe at her eyes while Evan took his Coke and said goodbye to their daughter.

“I’ll see you soon, Terry,” was all the goodbye she got, and then he climbed into his truck.

She and Steph watched him drive away and pull out onto the main road, and then she draped her arm over her daughter’s shoulders. For once, Steph didn’t pull away.

“Everybody’s going riding again,” Terry said. “Do you want to go or did riding with your dad tire you out?”

Steph shrugged. “They have that new romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock in it for rent down at the store. We could get it and some ice cream and be lazy bums today.”

Terry was more in the mood for pounding out some frustration on the trails, but she squeezed Steph’s shoulders. “Sounds like a good plan.”