Sunny Says (10 page)

Sunny watched, horrified, as he
removed his pants and his socks. When he hooked his thumbs in the tiniest pair
of navy briefs she’d ever seen, she squeaked, “Don’t you dare!”

Laughing, he stopped his
striptease, then made a running cannonball into the pool. Water and flowers
splattered high in the air, then rained back down on her in a deluge. Before
she could escape, he cut her off, breaststroking toward her with a rose in his
teeth.

He pinned her against the side
of the pool and offered her the red bud. “For you, mademoiselle, with my most
profound apologies.”

“You’re acting crazy.” She
batted the flower away. “This is madness.”

“Madness. Definitely. I also
apologized to Carlos. Bought him a beer and rehired him. All for you.” He
snapped off the stem of the rose she’d mangled and stuck it behind his ear.

He grabbed another flower as it
floated by and brushed its wet petals under her chin. His eyes glittered with a
strange luminescence, and he slowly lowered his mouth to hers.

Wrinkling her nose, she turned
her face away. “Kale Hoaglin, you smell like a brewery. Are you slightly
inebriated?”

“Only for you, Miss Sunshine.”
He gave her that sappy grin again.

“Hoaglin, you’re drunker than a
skunk. Get out of the pool before you drown.”

He tried to kiss her once more.
She managed to evade his lips, but he contented himself with nibbling the side
of her neck and making forays into her ear with his tongue. The sensation
almost shot her out of the water. He pressed himself closer against her,
rubbing his chest across the flimsy lace covering her breasts.

“Why don’t we get rid of this,
sweetheart?” His fingers fumbled with the front clasp of her bra.

She slapped his hand away. “Kale!
What’s gotten into you?”

He gave her a comically
lascivious grin and wiggled his eyebrows. “It’s not what’s gotten into me, it’s
what I want to get into you.”

She tried to be offended;
indeed, she should have been offended, but try as she might to keep a straight
face, she burst into giggles. “This is totally out of character for you. How
many drinks did you have with Carlos?”

“Two or three. Three or four. I
don’t know. I lost count. Give me a kiss.”

She avoided his mouth again, but
he busied himself with running his tongue along her jawline, down her throat,
taking little nips as he went. She wanted to say that his mouth and his hands,
which seemed to be all over her, didn’t affect her, but she would be lying.
Even with him half snockered, his moves were incredibly erotic.

Before she realized what was
happening, the clasp of her bra popped, and his hand cupped her breast instead
of the fabric.

“Oh, babe,” he moaned, nibbling
her earlobe and rolling her hardened nipple between his fingers. “You set me on
fire.”

“Kale, this is crazy.”

“Hell, yes, it’s crazy. I’m
crazy. I’ve been crazy since I first set eyes on you. I haven’t had a decent
night’s sleep. I can’t concentrate on my work because all I can think about is
you. I want you so damned badly that my teeth ache all the time.” He lifted her
from the water until her bare chest was level with his mouth. “And every time I
shave I see these in the mirror.”

He nuzzled his face between her
breasts, stroking his cheeks against first one nipple, then the other before he
took one pebbled tip into his mouth and suckled.

The unbelievable sensation
snatched a gasp from her and bowed her back. A million chill bumps raced over
her skin. She grabbed handfuls of his wet hair and bit her lip to keep from
crying out. Never had anything felt more seductively splendid.

A tiny voice in her mind
whispered that she must stop this wanton behavior with a man she’d vowed never
to speak to again. She ignored it, wrapped her legs around his waist, and basked
in the worshipful ministrations of his hot mouth and questing fingers.

Somewhere amid the sensual fog,
she heard a car door slam, but she ignored that as well.

“Sunny!” Estella called. “Are
you all right? I found your clothes on— Oops. Sorry. Forget I interrupted.”

Sunny’s eyes widened in horror,
and the sensual fog disappeared in a flash. “Kale! That was Estella.”

“Mmmm.” He didn’t miss a beat in
his attention to her breasts.

“She saw us.”

“Mmmm.” His hand curved over her
bottom, slipping under the elastic of her panties.

“We have to stop this.” She
yanked his head away and almost laughed at the expression on his face. The rose
tucked behind his ear made the situation even funnier, but she dared not laugh.
“We have to stop this,” she repeated.

“Aw, honey, do we have to? I don’t
think I can stop. I’m too far gone.”

She rolled her eyes. “Use that
line on somebody who’ll believe it.” She pushed against his shoulders. “Now let
me go.”

He lifted his face to hers. “Just
one kiss first.”

“No.”

“You’re a hard woman, Sunny, my
love.” He gave a snort of laughter. “And I’m a hard man. I’m so hard, I think I
may die.”

She stifled a giggle. “You’re
not going to die. You probably won’t even remember this in the morning.”

He lifted her up and sat her on
the side of the pool. “Oh, I’ll remember, sweetheart.” He kissed her knee. “I’ll
remember everything.”

*    *    *

When consciousness pierced Kale’s
brain, he threaded his fingers through the raw nerve endings growing from his
scalp, pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, and moaned. He raked
the thick hunk of moldy bear hide—it was where his tongue used to be—across the
roof of his mouth and grimaced. It felt like the leavings of the Shrine Circus
after a two-week engagement.

He tried to sit up, but
something shattered behind his eyeballs and he flopped back down. He grabbed
his head, feeling sure that a homunculus in his skull was performing a frontal
lobotomy without an anesthetic. He plucked something from behind his ear and
squinted at it. A wilted red rose. He lay there, his hands across his chest in
a death pose, the drooping flower clutched in his fingers.

He groaned. She was wrong. He
remembered every humiliating detail of the night before. Including the part
where Sunny and Estella had helped him up the stairs as he sang “Keep Your
Sunny Side Up” at the top of his lungs.

“Oh, gawd.”

Had he really done the
breaststroke with a rose in his teeth? It had seemed very spontaneous and
romantic at the time. He couldn’t recall ever having made such a complete jackass
of himself.

The mere thought of tequila made
him shudder.

Forcing himself out of bed, he
stumbled to the shower and stood under the pelting spray for ten minutes on
warm, then another five on cold. After he’d made a few swipes with a towel, he
knotted it around his waist, leaned against the basin, and stared at himself in
the mirror.

His eyes looked like a
topographical map of Mars.

He grabbed his shaving cream,
but the morning ritual seemed too overwhelming to perform at the moment.

There was a knock on the door.
He winced.

“Are you decent?” Sunny called
from her room.

“Barely.”

“I’m coming in. Okay?”

He hesitated.

The door opened a crack. “I come
bearing coffee and aspirin. Are you all right?”

He hesitated again.

“Kale? What are you doing?”

“I’m considering cutting my
throat with this razor rather than face you after my asinine behavior when I
came home last night. But I think I’m too weak to make a decent job of it.”

She laughed and pushed her way
in, looking fresh and adorable in a little strapless blue jumpsuit the color of
her eyes. She held out two tablets and a mug. He took the aspirin and downed
half the steaming coffee in one gulp.

“I don’t think your behavior was
so bad. For once you seemed really human. And I thought you looked kind of cute
with the rose behind your ear.”

He groaned. “Don’t remind me. I’ve
sworn off tequila permanently. Not even in my next life will a drop pass my
lips.” He finished off the coffee.

“Want some breakfast?” she
asked, all smiling and perky, but with what seemed a hint of secret amusement
at his dilemma.

“Maybe later. First I have to
somehow summon the energy to shave.”

She lowered the lid on the
toilet seat and said, “Sit down . . . I’ll shave you.”

Hell, she couldn’t do any worse
of a job than he would. He sat.

She busied herself running water
in the basin and lathering his face. Wielding his safety razor in one hand, she
stepped between his outspread legs and lifted his chin with one finger. He
could smell her perfume. Even in his miserable state, her nearness started to
affect his body.

“Have you ever done this for
anyone before?” he asked.

“Oh, sure. Lots of times.”

The thought of her rendering
such an intimate service to another man knotted his stomach. “Who?”

“For my oldest brother when he
broke his arm. For my father when he was in the hospital for gall bladder
surgery. Trust me. I’m a whiz. Shaving you is a piece of cake. My father uses a
straight razor.”

She made a swipe down his cheek,
then another. He didn’t see blood dripping.

“Do this.” She tightened her top
lip over her teeth. He imitated her actions. Her finger held up the tip of his
nose, and she carefully scraped the whiskers from his upper lip. “Now this.”
She jutted her chin and stretched her lower lip.

He complied. She looked so cute
with the tip of her tongue peeping from the corner of her mouth as she
concentrated that he wanted to kiss her. He gripped his knees with his hands to
keep from touching her. His palms grew moist.

By the time she’d finished, he
was aching to take her to his bed and make love to her until sometime next
week. He caught the back of her thighs with his hands and looked up at her. “I
may have been stewed last night, but I meant what I said. I want you.”

She stepped away quickly,
averting her eyes and occupying herself with cleaning the razor and tidying the
sink. “I don’t think that it’s a good idea for us to become involved . . . that
way.” She picked up his empty mug. “Breakfast will be ready when you are.”

*    *    *

Kale pushed back his plate. “Thanks.
That was great. I may live.” He glanced at his watch, noting that it was almost
noon
.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on a story this morning?”

“Nope,” she said. “I’m
unemployed. But I do have to look at a couple of apartments this afternoon.”

“Unemployed? Apartments? What in
the hell are you talking about?”

“I see you’re back to your old
self, scowling and growling. Have you forgotten? I quit KRIP, and since—”

“Dammit, Sunny, I thought we had
that settled. I squared things with Carlos, and I apologized to you. I
practically had to mug a florist to get him to sell me those roses. He planned
to use them on a casket spray.”

She pressed her lips together to
keep from smiling at the memory of him tossing that bunch of roses into the
pool. “The flowers were a lovely gesture, and I appreciate the thought, but
nothing has changed. I can’t work for someone who has no respect for my
integrity.”

“What do you mean, no respect?
If I didn’t respect you, I’d have you stripped and lying across this table,
with me licking grape jelly from your navel, right now.”

“That sounds like sexual
harassment to me.”

He raked his fingers through his
hair. “Oh, hell, Sunny, your job and the way I feel about you are two different
issues.” He swiped his hand across his face. “Let me make you a proposition.”

Cocking her head, she widened
her eyes and fluttered her lashes in a caricature of a simpering female. “I
think you just did that. It involved grape jelly.”

His jaw muscles twitched as
though he had a mouthful of jumping beans. “I’m trying to be serious here. Will
you at least hear me out, Miss Larkin?”

She gave him a curt nod. “Certainly,
Mr. Hoaglin.”

“I want you to take over as KRIP’s
anchor on the Monday-through-Friday news.”

Surprised at the offer, she
asked, “Why me?”

“Because you’re the most
qualified person for the position. Hulon is a disaster. He can devote himself
full-time to being news director, which he can handle credibly. I can have
Roland Cantu, who does the weekend weather, fill in on week-nights until I can
arrange something else.”

“Would I be allowed to continue
my story on street gangs?”

“The anchor position would give
you a twenty-five percent raise in salary, and your weekends will be free.”

She leaned closer and looked him
in the eye. “But would I be allowed to continue my story on street gangs?”