by Jan Hudson
“Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot . . . shoot!”
She rang the doorbell, hoping that Estella hadn’t left for the station yet. She could hear the bongs resonating through the house, which seemed as empty as King Seti’s tomb. Since it was already nine-thirty she really hadn’t held out much hope, but to be sure, she went around to the back to check the garage. It was empty.
“Rats!”
Trudging to the patio, she tossed her bag on a table and plopped down in a chair to wait. She felt a little guilty about leaving the news team in the lurch—Hulon would probably have a coronary or crawl out on the ledge when she didn’t show up—but that was Mr. Big Shot Kale Hoaglin’s problem.
Hoisting her feet onto another patio chair, she crossed her arms and stared at the lights reflected off the swimming pool. She didn’t need his stupid job. What she’d told Kale was true: She did have a standing offer from the weather channel on cable TV. And she’d had a few feelers from some of the smaller stations in Houston and a major station in Dallas. But most of them wanted her to do the weather. The street-gang story she’d envisioned would have made a great tape to send out to prospective employers, showing that she could do something besides talk about temperatures and storm fronts. Now that idea was shot to smithereens.
She hadn’t signed a new contract with KRIP, hoping to take a spot that presented the greatest opportunity for advancement toward her ultimate goal of being a network correspondent—or something bigger. Ravinia had known that and had given her blessing. She’d planned to stay in Corpus until Estella’s baby was born and Ed came home, then move on. What was she going to do now?
Certainly she couldn’t stay in the same house with the pompous sourpuss who was now her ex-boss. She’d rather have her toes roasted over a burning pit than endure another night under the same roof with him. Still, she had Estella to consider. They could go to a hotel for the night, but Estella would be tired when she got home and needed her rest. She couldn’t go dragging a pregnant woman around at all hours.
She slapped a mosquito that was feasting on her neck.
Tomorrow morning, bright and early, she planned to find them an apartment.
She slapped another mosquito on her arm and checked her watch. Darn Kale Hoaglin! She still had a while to wait until Estella got home, and not only was she hot and tired and sticky, but the blasted mosquitoes thought she was the Friday night buffet.
The shimmering coolness of the pool looked extremely inviting. Pity her bathing suit was upstairs.
She slapped another mosquito.
What the heck? she thought, and shot up from her chair. She stripped down to her yellow lace panties and bra, walked to the deep end of the pool, and dived in.
The water felt heavenly.
She swam several lazy laps, then flipped onto her back to float and watch the stars. She’d miss the pool and the privacy she and Estella had enjoyed in Ravinia’s house.
“Ravinia,” she whispered skyward, “I know you must have loved him, but your nephew is a dweeb.”
Something plopped in the water next to her, startling her. Then something landed across her midsection. Alarmed by the thought of frogs or snakes, she squealed and quickly brushed off the foreign object, then frantically splashed herself upright, treading water and trying to locate what had frightened her.
Two long-stemmed red roses floated on the water next to her. Relieved to see flowers instead of creepy-crawlies, she laughed. Another rose hit the water beside her. And another. And another.
She turned to find Kale standing on the apron of the pool, tossing roses from the huge bundle he held.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Showering you with flowers. Hoping you’ll accept my apology.” He kept throwing blossoms until the surface of the water was littered with roses. “Is it working?”
“No. Go away.”
He only stood there and grinned like a possum. She wanted to throttle him. “That water looks inviting,” he said. “I think I’ll join you.” He kicked off his loafers and unbuckled his belt.
“No!” she shrieked, suddenly remembering her attire. “I’m in my underwear.” She herded roses around her, trying to preserve her modesty and stay upright at the same time.
“I noticed. But don’t worry, I’ve seen you in less.” He gave her another one of those silly grins and took off his shirt. “A lot less.”
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 splend
id.
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?”
He squirmed slightly. “We can discuss that later.”
“I think we should discuss it now.”
He rubbed his fingers across his mouth so vigorously that she thought he might take the skin off. “You can, on one condition.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And that is?”
“That I go with you.”
She considered his proposal for a moment. Even if he had nixed the gang story, she knew that the position offered would be great experience and would look good on her resume. Being able to continue her investigation was icing on the cake, but the independent streak in her was indignant at his suggestion that he be included. Another part of her was relieved that he’d be around. Not only could she learn from his mentorship, but her next interview was scheduled with a group from the Cut, an area where most of the dives made El Gallo Rojo seem like Maxim’s.
“All right. I’ll try it for a month or two. But I won’t sign a contract.”
