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Authors: Mary McNear

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BOOK: Butternut Summer
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Will closed his eyes, just for a second, bracing himself for what was next. Christy, he knew, did not take rejection well, since, like most exceptionally attractive people, she'd had very little experience with it. And, in fact, when Will opened his eyes, he saw there was a little muscle working in Christy's tightly clenched jaw.

“Okay, Will, I'll tell you what I'm going to do,” she said. “I'm going to go sit at the bar and order a drink and drink it while you finish your game. Not because I understand why you need to finish it but because I've missed you, and I don't know when I'll be able to see you again after tonight. So when you and Jason are done, come and get me and we'll leave. All right?”

“No,” Will said. He didn't know who that single word surprised more, him or Christy.

“No what?” she asked, her blue eyes, with their heavily mascaraed lashes, opening wide.

“No, I'm not leaving here with you tonight.”

“Why not?”

“You don't need to know why not, Christy,” he said, trying to keep a lid on his exasperation. “I'm a free agent. I'm not your husband; you already have one of those, remember?”

She flinched, visibly. They both knew Will had never said anything like that to her before. But then again, they both knew Will had never not wanted to go home with her before either. He watched, uncomfortably, as the expression on her face turned from shock to hurt to anger.

“That wasn't very nice, Will,” she snapped, and then she walked away.

“What was that about?” Jason asked, mystified, when Will rejoined him at the pool table.

“Nothing,” Will mumbled, setting up to take his shot.

“That didn't look like nothing,” Jason observed. “But I have to say, Will, she looks hot when she's angry. Then again,” he added, drinking his beer, “she looks hot when she's not angry too.”

Will set up his shot and took it. It was a lousy shot.

“Hey, Will, if you want to take off with her, that's fine,” Jason said, watching as the pool balls scattered ineffectually. “I'll find someone else to play with.”

“No, I don't want to go. But you know what? I don't really want to play pool, either. Let's get another round at the bar.”

They both sat down at the bar and ordered a beer, and Will drank his moodily as he thought back to the night he'd met Christy. He and Jason were at a different bar, a dive bar called the Mosquito Inn, where they went sometimes just for the hell of it. Christy was there too, with a friend, and the two of them had sat down at the bar with Will and Jason. Will had seen her wedding ring right away, and he'd been on his guard. He didn't have many rules in his life, but not getting involved with married women was one of them.

Still, it had seemed to him, at first, that if getting involved was the farthest thing from his mind, it was the farthest thing from Christy's mind too. She wasn't flirtatious—except, maybe, for that adorable pout—she was just unhappy. Very, very unhappy. She'd gotten married too young, she told Will, to a man who didn't really love her. Mac, her husband, was a salesman who traveled a lot on business, and she was lonely when he was away, but she was even lonelier when he was home. Most of the time, he just ignored her. When he wasn't ignoring her, he was being mean to her. She started her story sitting at the bar with Will and finished it sitting in his pickup truck in the bar's parking lot. By then, she was crying, and even with mascara-blackened tears running down her cheeks, she'd still looked ridiculously beautiful. He'd comforted her, as best he could, getting cocktail napkins from the bar for her to dry her tears with, holding her, stroking her back. But when none of these worked, he'd taken her home to her lonely house and made her feel less lonely—all night long. And leaving her house the next morning, Will hadn't felt especially guilty about it either. He figured if her husband was as big a jerk as she said he was, he probably didn't deserve her fidelity, anyway . . . That had been a year ago.

Since then Christy had seemed happier. She rarely mentioned Mac anymore, though that was partly because Will, who tried not to think about him, didn't want to talk about him either. He'd never met him before, and, except for the pictures of him at Christy's house, he wouldn't have recognized him if he had. But sometimes, Will felt bad for the guy. And that wasn't the only problem with their arrangement. Because between the coded messages Christy insisted they use when they texted each other, and the sneaking around, and the lying, he was starting to feel like Mac wasn't the one who was the jerk here. He was.

He had a bitter taste in his mouth now, and he took a slug of his beer, hoping to wash it away, but it stayed there, and thinking about the first night he'd met Christy wasn't helping. He was wondering if she'd ever been as unhappy as she'd said she was, wondering, too, if Mac had ever treated her as badly as she'd said he had. And, most of all, he was wondering why this was the first time he'd bothered to ask himself either of these questions.

“Christy's still here,” Jason said now, breaking into his thoughts.

“Yeah?” Will said.

“Uh-huh. And I don't think she's ready to give up on you yet,” Jason observed, looking down the bar.

Will followed his eyes and saw Christy talking to two men sitting at the other end of the bar. She was pointedly ignoring Will and Jason, but she was lavishing attention on her two new friends, tossing her long blond hair, and laughing exaggeratedly at whatever they were saying. Will looked away, but Jason was fascinated by her performance.

“She keeps looking over here, Will. I think she's trying to make you jealous.”

“It's not working,” Will mumbled into his beer.

“Okay, she just walked away from those two guys. One of them, by the way, looks like he's about to cry in his beer. I think he thought he was gonna get lucky. Let's see, what's she doing now. She's walkin' over to the jukebox, she's puttin' some quarters in—”

“Hey, Jason,” Will broke in. “I don't need the play by play.”

Jason shrugged and was silent for a few minutes, but then Will heard him whistle softly under his breath. “Will, you have got to see this,” he said.

Will glanced over to where the jukebox was and saw that Christy was dancing, suggestively, by herself. Even Will couldn't quite bring himself to look away, which meant he was in good company, since by now the whole rest of the bar was staring at her too.

She was dressed tonight in a tiny, vintage rock concert tee, denim cutoffs that were so short the linings of the pockets peeked out from beneath their fashionably ragged hems, and high-heeled wedge sandals that made her long suntanned legs look even longer. Her arms were above her head, her head was thrown back, and her eyes were closed, as she swayed and swiveled to an '80s rock anthem that everyone in the bar knew by heart.

“Will, seriously,
just go with her already
,” Jason said. “I can't take much more of this.”

“Yeah, well, you're pathetic,” Will said, making a point of staring into his beer.

“I'm not pathetic,” Jason said, unperturbed. “It's just . . . her legs, Will. What's up with them? Seriously. How does she get them so shiny?”

Baby oil
, Will almost said. This was true. He knew for a fact that Christy rubbed it into her legs to make them softer and smoother because he'd seen her do it on more than one occasion. But he didn't tell Jason this; he'd never hear the end of it if he did.

“You know what?” he said suddenly, taking out his wallet and throwing some money on the bar. “Let's go.”

“Go?” Jason objected. “The show's just getting started.”

“Well, it's over for us,” Will said, sliding off his bar stool.

“Will, I haven't even finished my beer yet.”

“We'll stop and buy a six-pack,” Will said. “Then we'll go back to the garage and play some darts, and I'll try really hard not to beat you.”

“Okay,” Jason said reluctantly, taking a final swig of his beer and giving Christy one last look. “But you're paying for the beer.”

A
n hour later they were back at the garage. They'd finished their dart game, and they were sitting outside in a couple of beat-up old lawn chairs, drinking beer.

“I thought you said you were going to let me beat you at darts,” Jason said, a little sulkily.

“Did I say that?”

“Yep,” Jason said, reaching into the cooler between them and grabbing another can of beer. “You said that, Will.” But Will could see he'd already forgotten about it. This was why he could spend as much time with the guy as he did; Jason was the most easygoing person Will had ever met.

Jason started to open his can of beer, then changed his mind and held it up against his forehead instead. Even now, with a decent breeze finally blowing, it was still at least ninety degrees outside.

“By the way, you were right about that girl,” Jason said, taking the beer can away from his face and popping it open.

“Which girl?”

“That girl from today. Daisy. She called right before closing to see if her cell phone was here. I said it was, so she's going to pick it up tomorrow.”

“Why are you just telling me this now?” Will asked, annoyed.

“I don't know. Is it that important?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“I might ask her out when she comes back,” Will said casually, swatting at a mosquito.

Jason stared at him, then shook his head. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

“Why not?”

Jason leaned back in his chair. “Well, for one thing, Christy won't like it.”

“Christy doesn't have a say in the matter.”

“Okaaay,” Jason said slowly. “Well, then, there's your MO, Will. It's not going to work with a girl like that.”

“My MO,” Will said, amused. “What's my MO?”

“Well, let's see,” Jason drawled. “It's been a while. But before Christy, you'd pick up a girl in your truck, drive her out to the lake, and split a six-pack of beer with her while you watched the sun set. Then you'd climb into the backseat for the evening's entertainment.”

Will smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

“Well, it wouldn't sound good to Daisy.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I just know.” Jason shrugged. “You can just tell from looking at her. It's going to take a lot more than a few beers to get her into the back of your truck—if she'd
ever
even go back there, which I seriously doubt she would.”

“Okay, so I'd have to work a little harder with someone like her,” Will allowed.

“A
little
harder? Try
a lot
harder, Will. They're still some girls like that, you know. Girls where, if you want to get anywhere with them, you have to date them. Do you even know how to do that, Will? Do you know how to take a girl out, and, you know, do stuff with her? Like, show her stuff? And buy her stuff?”

“It can't be that difficult,” Will said, amused by Jason's description of dating. It wasn't something either one of them knew a lot about, seeing as how they'd both worked so hard to avoid doing it.

“Besides,” Will added, finishing his beer, “I think you're wrong about Daisy. I think she's the kind of girl who could appreciate life's simple pleasures.”

Jason laughed. “Is that what you're calling it now? ‘A simple pleasure'? I don't know, Will. Maybe she'd appreciate it, but you'd have to wait for her to. And I don't think you'd be willing to wait that long.”

“Maybe,” Will said, distractedly. But he wasn't really listening. He was thinking about Daisy brushing a strand of strawberry-blond hair off her cheek today. It was such a small thing to do, an ordinary thing, an uninteresting thing, really, on the face of it. So why couldn't he stop thinking about it now?

CHAPTER 3

W
hen Daisy walked into the office at the garage the next afternoon, Jason was leaning back in a swivel chair, his feet up on the desk, reading a video-gaming magazine.

“Oh, hi,” he said, when he saw her. He took his feet off the desk. “You're here for your cell phone.”

She nodded and waited for him to reach into one of the desk drawers and pull it out. But instead he pointed in the direction of the service bay. “It's right where you left it yesterday.”

“Oh,” she said, hesitating.

“Will can get it for you,” he said with a smile, and then he went back to reading his magazine.

“Thanks,” Daisy said, feeling a combination of relief and nervousness as she left the office. Relief because she'd been worried she wouldn't see Will today; nervousness because, at the same time, she'd been worried she
would
. When she came around the corner of the service bay a moment later, she expected to find him working on a car, but instead he was rummaging around in a cooler filled with ice.

“Hey,” he said, straightening up when he saw her.

“Hi,” she said, hanging back. It had only been twenty-four hours since she'd last seen him, but already he looked different. He looked
better
. He wiped his hands, wet from the cooler, on his blue jeans.

“I came to get my cell phone,” she said, wishing there was a more interesting way of saying that.

“Right over there,” he said, pointing to the worktable where she'd slammed it down when she'd realized the battery was dead.

Daisy went over and picked it up.

“The battery's probably still dead,” Will said, his eyes playful, and Daisy blushed at the mention of her near temper tantrum.

“Well, thanks,” she said, backing away.

“Anytime,” he said, rummaging in the cooler again. She started to leave, then stopped and turned around. She didn't want to go, but she didn't have an excuse to stay, either. He looked at her for a moment, standing there, then smiled.

BOOK: Butternut Summer
11.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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