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“Well, she can just forget it. He’s not the literary type.”
“You shouldn’t have kissed him last Christmas at the Harpers’ party. And kept kissing him.”
Jane felt her face redden as it always did when she thought about those kisses. “He’s the one who kissed me under the mistletoe.”
“How well we remember the cherished moment.”
“He would have kissed anybody if she’d been standing under the mistletoe.”
“Not like that. You both looked plenty smitten. And once you two started, you couldn’t seem to stop.”
“I—I was too flabbergasted and outraged.”
“All anybody remembers is how you both looked pie-eyed the rest of the night. You couldn’t look at each other without turning red. He is so cute. And hot. I don’t get why you still hate him. Those wet T-shirt photos were flattering. I’m still jealous because he didn’t take a single one of me.”
“I’m going to hang up if you don’t shut up about this.”
“Okay already.”
“Besides, he’s been going out with Carol Frey.”
“I rest my case. Look who’s keeping up with his love life. But for the record, you’ll be glad to know, Mom says that’s off. As of last night.”
Jane’s racing heart leaped into her throat. For a long minute she was unable to swallow, much less answer. Finally, she managed to say, “Look, I really do have to go.”
“Not before I read you his love letter.”
Against her will, Jane listened. Of course, after the first word, when she got to thinking it really might be Matt, she was spellbound. Certain phrases like I would give anything to turn back time before the moment I hurt you, made her go hot all over and catch her breath as she dreamily remembered Matt’s lips clinging to hers.
“So, what do you think?” Mindy asked when she’d finished.
Jane’s heart was racing at an even more frightening pace as she pondered the phrase there has never been anyone in my heart except you. Soon it became difficult to breathe.
She remembered the warmth and eagerness in his eyes after their Christmas kiss. The next day when she’d refused to wave or speak to him on the town square after he’d waved, he’d looked so strange and hurt. Since then he’d been awfully nice. Not that she’d responded.
“I—I think I’d better get dressed now,” Jane said quickly.
“Okay, be that way. But don’t forget, I’m taking you to lunch on the river—for your birthday.”
“I’ve been starving all week so I can eat three crepes and a chocolate dessert. It’s not often that you pick up the check, little sister.”
“Can I help it if I have issues about growing up? Unlike you, I never sprouted big boobs to console me.”
Jane sighed. She hated her figure. “You’re sure Mom won’t forget about picking me up?”
“As sure as one can ever be about a mom who paints her fingernails and toenails with shiny blue paint and consults astrology charts before making the simplest decision.”
“She’ll probably talk about that ol’ letter the whole way into town,” Jane said.
“One way or the other, she’ll get her licks in.”
“How’s she feeling?” Jane asked, her voice softening.
“Stronger every day since she stopped the chemo.”
“I’m glad I came home…even if she reads our fortunes and meddles to make them come true.”
“I know. Mom may be trouble but she’s fun.”
For no reason at all, at the thought of trouble and fun, Jane thought of Matt, and smiled.
Chapter 2
Matthew Harper’s alarm blared at him from the kitchen counter of his ancient blue trailer. God, he had the hangover from hell. He’d slept with the cat from hell on the mattress from hell in a trailer that was hotter than hell. The air-conditioning had bummed out months ago, which shouldn’t have mattered since Jerry Keith should have had his new house built way before May. Hell, J.K. had sworn he’d be finished way before March. But little brothers weren’t so hot at keeping their promises.
Sweat rolled off Matt’s forehead. Hell and damnation, but the heat was fierce! The sun was barely up, and the sheets were plastered to his damp body. So was his crazy cat. Tonight after work he was definitely installing his new window unit.
He’d have time since Carol had broken their date for tonight—broken all their dates for that matter, even their date to the Spring Fling. When he’d said he wasn’t ready for marriage, she’d broken up with him—period.
The phone began to ring, but he fought to ignore it. Nobody in Red Rock but a lunatic or a bothersome woman who wanted an engagement ring would call a man before he had his coffee. He let the phone ring and tried not to listen when his machine picked up.
“Matt, this is Lula Snow. I need a big favor. It’s about Jane. Pick up.”
Jane? Lula? Carol he could handle. But it was way too early for a man with a hangover to wrap his mind around the Snow women.
Beads of perspiration rolled off his forehead. For the first time he realized his baby brother, Jerry Keith, who was also his unreliable building contractor, had been right on when he’d advised him they should finish the house first and build the garage last instead of vice versa.
What about a freak hailstorm? A man had to house his car, not a car really, a Porsche Carrera GT.
“An air-conditioned garage for a toy?” J.K. had taunted.
“For my baby. For my wheels. She’s a real racing machine.”
Hell, maybe if he’d listened to his brother, he wouldn’t be sleeping on this lousy couch in his lousy, ovenlike, hunting trailer, suffering phone calls about Jane from Lula.
Maybe he should have said yes when Carol had demanded marriage. She was perfect for him. Beautiful, complacent, smart, and smart enough to hide it. Other men envied him when he took her out. Jane, on the other hand, wore glasses, hid her figure and flaunted her intelligence. She had a bad habit of holding on to grudges, too.
As he thought about Jane, which he’d been doing a lot lately, a vision of her lovely mouth, not Carol’s, arose in his mind’s eye to taunt him. The mouth, a familiar demon, was huge and red and absolutely luscious.
Next, that male organ he normally took such immense pride in arose underneath the sheets and said, Hi, here I am, darlin’, to the giant mouth. It didn’t take much guessin’ to know what that excitement was all about.
“Damn!”
Never drink too much when you’ve got to go to work the next morning.
He’d been so happy last night when he’d gotten home and seen Jerry Keith along with a full crew at the house actually hammering and nailing, he’d invited the guys to dinner. No sooner had he started grilling thick slabs of beef when Carol had called to ask if he’d forgotten their date. He’d apologized and asked her over to have dinner with the guys. She hadn’t liked that. Somehow she’d launched into the subject of marriage. The rest was history. Or rather they were history.
Which was why he’d sat out on the big flat rocks on his land with the guys until all hours watching his pet armadillo, Dillard, dig for grubs in the moonlight. They’d all gotten to bragging about women, telling dirty jokes and drinking—mostly drinking. Everybody had wanted to hear the old story about how he and Jerry Keith had snuck up on the Snow girls right when they’d been tanning their legs behind their house that fateful afternoon the year he’d asked Jane to the Spring Fling. Too bad for him the girls had started spraying each other with hoses and Jerry Keith had grabbed his camera and started snapping pictures. But if Matt lived to be a hundred, he wasn’t likely to forget how good Jane had looked with that wet cotton plastered against her breasts.
He rubbed his head where it hurt. The trouble with being a bachelor was the time gap when there wasn’t a good woman to nag you into living sensibly. Carol would have stopped him on beer number three.
All of a sudden the damn alarm clock had his brain throbbing so hard he could have sworn it hopped off the counter straight into his skull. Jane’s red mouth dissolved into the mists of his mind. Groaning, he jammed pillow number three over his head, rolled over onto Julie Baby, who stuck several claws in his chest. When he screamed, she jumped from the bed to the lamp, knocking it over and shattering the bulb.
“Damn your hide, cat!”
Although he wasn’t much on rules, a man should know better than to sleep naked with an untrustworthy female whose nails were too long.
Matt sat bolt upright and glared at Julie Baby, who stared back at him serenely. Did cats ever blink? Growling, Matt threw a pillow at the clock, which hit the floor and mercifully died beside the jagged bits of lightbulb.
The phone rang again.
Lula again.
Later.
The trailer, what he could see of it from the tattered couch, would’ve made a pig oink with pride. The sink overflowed with last night’s dishes. The garbage can brimmed with several days’ stinky leavings.
Later. After he got the window unit installed and washed his Porsche tonight, maybe he’d vacuum. Even he could see it was time.
The phone stopped ringing. Lula didn’t leave a second message.
If and when Jerry Keith ever got his ranch house finished, Matt intended to be neater. The trashed trailer, which was supposed to have been temporary lodging, would go back where it belonged—to his hunting lease.
The trouble was Jerry Keith was bad about working for other people instead of for him.
“Have to build clientele. Marketing. That’s your game, ain’t it, Big Bubba? You’re up for director of market research, am I right? Same as Jane Snow? Afraid she’ll beat you?”
Matt knew he’d been way too patient with the brat, but his kid brother did have a few things on his plate—a pregnant wife, for one thing.
At least with no AC and open windows, Matt could hear doves cooing outside and a whippoorwill. The faint breeze that smelled of cedar and grass nearly lured him outside, only the phone rang again, and he picked up.
“Lula, darlin’, you aren’t gonna quit, now, are you?”
“How’d you guess it was me?” She sounded pleased.
“I’m psychic.”
“Like me? Then you probably know why I called.”
“Let me guess. You want a favor.”
“Jane’s car’s in the shop. Could you drive her to work?” Jane. She’d barely spoken to him since she’d gotten him expelled his senior year. He’d been forced to resign as president of his high-school class, and several honors he’d earned had been stricken from his transcripts. He’d been in the doghouse with his folks, too.
“If she calls and asks me herself, I’ll consider it.” Silence.
“Lula, are you still there?”
When Lula still didn’t answer, he began to think about the promotion Jane and he were competing for. If Jane needed a ride, why not scope out the competition? She was a tight-ass if ever there was one. Surprises, especially from him, unnerved her.
“Do you take the Gazette?” There was a note in Lula’s voice he knew better than to trust.
“Am I a red-blooded Red Rockian or what?”
“There’s an anonymous love letter to the editor you might find very interesting. A little birdie told me it was written to you.”
Jane’s mother wouldn’t be talking about Carol. “Are you saying Jane wrote it?”
“Why don’t you drive her to work and ask her yourself.”
The luscious, enormous mouth came back to taunt him. The red lips puckered. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the mouth, Jane’s mouth, stayed right where it was—tempting him.
He’d kissed that mouth.
The lips puckered seductively. Hell, he could almost taste her. He remembered exactly how satiny and slick those lips had felt on the outside and how wet and hot and honey sweet they’d been on the inside. He still couldn’t quite believe she’d let his tongue through the pearly gates without chomping it to bits.
He thought about her hot body, and his number-two brain got so excited it tented the sheets beneath his waist. Good thing the cat wasn’t watching or she would pounce for sure.
“Oh, and one more thing, Matty.” He gritted his teeth at his kindergarten nickname. “My Janie doesn’t have a date to the Spring Fling.”
“Because she’s so damn picky, she’s turned everybody down who’s gotten up the nerve to ask her. Who’s she waiting for—Prince Charming?”
“Could be, handsome,” her mother said slyly. “So, you keep up with my Janie’s love life?”
“With our nonstop gossip grapevine buzzing day and night, I’d have to be brain dead not to know everybody’s business, including hers. How’d you find out Carol broke up with me last night because she’s moving to Houston a week earlier than she thought?”
“She broke up with you because you wouldn’t propose.”
“Damn, you’re good.”
Lula laughed.
“It was pretty late when she called me,” he muttered.
“To be exact, it was 8:30 p.m. ’Cause you stood her up.”
“Next time I want to know what’s going on in my life I’ll call you.”
“If you’re driving Janie, she’s expecting me at 7:30 a.m.—sharp! You know how grumpy she gets if she has to wait even one second.”
“I know how grumpy she is—period—any time I come around.”
“That’s just because she’s afraid to let you know how much she likes you.”
“Right!”
“Trust me. Her mother knows. Remember, I was the one who had to put her back together after you kissed her under the mistletoe.”
“Goodbye, Lula.”
