My Sunshine (2 page)

“It’s just a toy?”

He nodded. “Pretty much. I have it in private storage and I
hardly ever drive it. Now, the Viper, I drive quite often. That’s what I drive around town mostly. The Lexus is mostly for longer trips or if I need a backseat.”

Chloe
giggled.

“For passengers,”
John quickly explained.

“I knew what you meant,”
Chloe said with a laugh. She pulled her car to a stop behind the stranded Lexus. They both got out, and John unlocked his car to retrieve a bag from the trunk.

“What happened to the car? What did it do?”

“It just cut out on me. It did it twice. The first time, it started right back up, but the second time, it just died. Maybe it’s the battery.” He sat his bag on the ground and climbed in behind the wheel and tried to start the car again. It rolled over, but wouldn’t start.

Chloe
shook her head. “It’s not the battery.” She caught his
“
do you know what you’re talking about
?
” look. “It’s just a guess,” she said with a shrug. “Here comes Daniel.” She nodded toward a wrecker coming toward them.

Chloe
had informed Daniel of the identity of his newest customer over the phone, but he had seemed unimpressed. “So what’s the problem?” Daniel asked after the two men shook hands.

John
relayed the car’s symptoms. “Maybe it’s just the battery,” he suggested again.

“Try to start it again,”
Daniel instructed. “Let me hear it.”

John
turned the key in the ignition again. The engine rolled over, but didn’t start. “It’s not the battery. It sounds like something in the fuel system to me. I’ll take it back to the shop and I’ll look at it first thing in the morning.”

“Sounds good,”
John said. “Thanks for coming out so late.”

He pulled his wallet out of his pocket. “What do I owe you for
your trouble?”

Daniel
shook his head. “It’ll all be on your bill when the car is ready. Do you need a lift somewhere?”

“I’m taking him to the motel,”
Chloe interjected.

“Okay then,”
Daniel said. “I’m going to get this car loaded up. Do you have a cell number I can reach you at?” He pulled a pad of paper and a pen out of his shirt pocket. John rattled off his cell number.

“You ready?”
Chloe asked, walking back to her car.

John
nodded and followed her. Within a minute they were pulling into the motel parking lot. “Would you like to get some breakfast in the morning? I could come pick you up.”

John
smiled. “I would, thank you.” He opened the car door. “How’s nine?”

“Perfect,”
Chloe replied, trying to keep her excited breath steady.

He started to get out of the car. “Why don’t you come while
I get checked in? That way you can come right to my room in the morning.”

“Okay.”
Chloe shut off the engine and accompanied John to the office.

The old man working in the office was sitting in a chair
watching The Tonight Show on a small color television. He stood up when they approached. “What do you need, Chloe?

Daniel
has finally come to his senses and thrown you out?”

Chloe
felt her face burning. “I…I…” she stammered.

“I need a room for the night,”
John said. He didn’t know what was going on, but he sensed trouble, and he didn’t like it.

“Is she staying with you?”

John shook his head. “Chloe just brought me here. My car broke down on the interstate. I need a room for the night.”

“Sure,” the old man grunted. He pulled a key from the
pegboard behind him. “Cash or credit?”

John
took a credit card out of his wallet. “Credit.”

The man took some information from
John and processed his credit card. Finally after several minutes, he handed John the key. “Room 210. Check out is at eleven-thirty. No smoking, no drugs, no parties.”

“No problem,”
John mumbled as he took the key.

Chloe
followed John out of the office. She turned and looked back at the old man. He had the phone to his ear. She hadn’t heard it ring, and she knew he was calling his wife, who would call her sister, who would call her cousin, the biggest gossip in the town. By morning everyone in Canton would know that she had checked into the motel with a stranger from out-of-town. And, true or not, most of them would believe it.

She sighed, and
John turned around. He saw the sad expression on her face. He wanted to ask what was on her mind and what he could do to make it better, but he didn’t.

“Room 210
’’, he said, “let’s go check it out.”

She followed him to the room. He unlocked the door and
swung it open. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean, and it had everything John would need for the night. He had stayed in many, many hotels in his career and this definitely wasn’t the worst on the list.

“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” she said. “Have a
good night.”

“Wait!” Her goodbye triggered something inside him. He
didn’t want her to leave. “Why don’t you stay for a while,” he suggested. He really wanted her to stay. He had a reputation of being a playboy and most of the women he encountered knew it. It was easy for him to find a date, easy for him to get laid, but he wasn’t thinking about bedding Chloe. He wanted to talk to her. There was something about her that intrigued him.

Chloe
was surprised by his offer. She wanted to stay. She was unbelievably attracted to him. She hadn’t felt a twinge of attraction toward anyone in years, and he was someone unlike anyone she had ever met before. She wanted to stay and talk to him all night, and do whatever else might come along. After all, he would be out of her life again in less than twenty-four hours.

What could it possibly hurt?

She glanced down at her uniform. She knew she had to smell like the restaurant. “Let me go home and get a shower.

I’ll be back in a half an hour. Is that okay? Will you still be up?”

“If you’re coming back, I’ll wait,” he said. A thrill zipped through her and she practically ran back to her car.

Daniel
had already gone to bed when she got home to the apartment above his garage that she shared with him. She went to her room and stripped off her clothes, replacing them with a robe. She hurried into the bathroom. She showered, shaved her legs and washed her hair in record time. Once back in her room, she dressed in a pair of short denim shorts and an orange tank top. She replaced her glasses with contacts and ran a comb through her still-wet hair. She slipped her feet into a pair of sandals and left her room.

Daniel
was standing in the kitchen, holding a glass of milk.

“Where on earth are you going at this time of night?”

“Justin called and wanted me to meet him and Christy at the campground. There’s a lot of people up there. I thought I would go check it out.” She had thought of that lie as she was driving home. It was completely believable. Meeting her best friend, Justin, and his girlfriend at the campground was something she did on a regular basis.

“Okay,”
Daniel said, buying her story. “Have fun. No

drinking.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chloe mumbled as she left the apartment.

Twenty-eight minutes after leaving him, she was knocking on
the door to John’s motel room.

He swung open the door even before she had finished
knocking. He stepped aside so she could enter the room. He had replaced his jeans with a pair of gym shorts and he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Okay, he works out a lot
.
His hair was wet and he smelled of shaving cream. He had obviously just gotten out of the shower. Chloe took a deep breath as she walked by him. The sexiness of just the way he smelled traveled through her body and almost made her knees buckle.

“I picked up a few snacks,” he said. He had found his way
to the gas station next door. The small table in the room was loaded with bags of chips, cookies, candy bars, sodas and beer.

“You want a drink?”

She nodded. “I’d love a Coke.” She noticed that he was drinking a beer. He filled a cup with ice and poured her a drink from a can. She took the drink and sat down on the edge of the bed.

John
sat across from her on the other bed. He didn’t know what to say. He had never been in such an intimate setting before. Usually when he was with a girl in a hotel room they were both half-drunk and fell right into the bed. His mind raced for just the right thing to say. Lucky for him, she spoke first.

“Where at the coast were you?”

“Carolina Beach. Mike owns a house there.”

“Mike? He’s in the group, too?”

John nodded. “Yeah. Mike Brooks. He’s the tall guy, dark hair.” He could tell by Chloe’s expression that she couldn’t place him. “He was next to me on the cup.”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah,” she replied although she still
wasn’t sure. She mad a mental note to do some research. “Why Carolina Beach? Why not in LA?”

“His wife,
Jane is from North Carolina and she wanted a house there, so that’s where they’ve been staying this summer.

As for LA, we go out there when we need to, but it’s not home.

I wouldn’t want to live there.” Not that he hadn’t tried. He and Tyler, another Parrison member and his best friend and roommate since high school, had rented an apartment there for six weeks earlier that summer. John had a great time there, but he quickly grew tired of the “fakeness” of it.

“Why not? I thought that’s where all the stars lived.”

“A lot do, but it’s so far away from home, and I like

Florida.”

“So you have a house there? In Florida?”

John
nodded. “Yeah. That’s home.” There was a moment of silence. “Have you lived here your whole life?”

Chloe
nodded. “As long as I can remember we have, but Daniel says we lived near the coast when I was a baby. I don’t remember that. So as far as I’m concerned this is home.”

“How small is this town?”

“We have about 2,000 people. The only reason we have so much out by the interstate is because it’s the last exit before the state line. We’re not big enough to justify it.”

“So this is a place where everyone knows everyone else?”

She frowned. “Yeah, everyone knows everyone else’s business, and they believe every rumor, true or not. Like for instance, half the town already knows that I’m here with you.”

“Did that man see you come back?”

Chloe shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He was already on the phone when we left the office. I didn’t tell Daniel where I was going, but he’ll know by morning.”

John
nodded. He knew full well about rumors. “Why does he hate you? I mean, he didn’t sound very fond of you.”

She shook her head. “I dated his grandson back in high
school.” She paused and tried to think of just the right thing to say without revealing too much. “There were rumors that I was a tramp and real easy. Most people here think that about me.”

And that’s just the least of it
.
“It’s not true, but me checking into a hotel with a stranger isn’t going to help my reputation any.”

John
frowned. “I’m sorry. If I had known, I wouldn’t have asked you to go in with me.”

“I knew,” she said, “and I went in anyway.”

John stood up. “Are you hungry?” He walked over to the table and pulled open a bag of Oreos.

She joined him. “Actually yeah. I usually fix myself a

sandwich to take home, but I forgot tonight. I was distracted.”

She took a cookie.

He smiled. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you? To take your mind off of your hunger?” He put his hand on her arm.

She swallowed hard. “I could probably think of a couple of
things.”

“What did you come back for?”

“What did you ask me back for?”

He leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips. “I wanted
to do that.”

“Do it again,” she whispered.

He kissed her again this time backing her up against the bed.

He pressed against her until she fell onto the mattress. “Is this
what you want?”

She nodded and ran her fingertips across his bare chest.

“This is what I came back for.”

He quickly helped her out of her clothes and shed his own.

She watched as he searched his bag for a condom and deftly put it on. He joined her on the bed. “You’ve got a great body,” he said, sliding next to her.