At Peace (The 'Burg #2)(46)

Released from my booty call, I started to move away but his fingers at the underside of my breast suddenly moved up and curled around.

“You understand what this is?” he asked and instantly I nodded.

I knew what it was. Sex. Just sex. A booty call. A really f**king good one.

“My truck’s in the drive, buddy, you’re welcome in my bed.”

“Okay,” I whispered into the pillow, my eyes closed, unsure what to make of this but deciding I’d think of it when Joe hadn’t just given me an orgasm and I didn’t have his body pressed to mine, his hand curled around my breast, his mouth at my ear.

He moved, his whiskered chin scraping my skin as it pulled the hair away from my neck and he kissed me there.

Then he let me go.

Then without looking at him (mostly because I was na**d but also because I was uncertain about how I felt about the state of affairs, primarily me being naked, thoroughly f**ked by a man I went from not liking, to hating, but kept screwing and I’d never left a man in his bed, in his house, to run home in the shortest walk of shame in the history of womanhood, except, of course, the times I did this with Joe), I escaped his room, threw on my nightie, underwear and robe as fast as I could in his living room and I got the hell out of there.

* * * * *

Stupidly, for the next several hours, my eyes went to any window they were near and I peered out.

I wasn’t on the lookout for Daniel Hart’s delivery men, his car, his driver or him.

I was wondering if Joe would come over for pancakes.

Kate and Keira got up, I made pancakes and Joe never showed.

So there it was. Booty call.

I took a shower and got ready to work the afternoon shift at the garden center.

Cheryl had told me there was nothing wrong with a girl getting some. And getting it from Joe was good. So he wasn’t going to be the next love of my life. At least I wouldn’t be totally alone anymore, not if his truck was in the drive. And I doubted it would be hard to call it off if, someday, some guy who did want to “take it there” walked into my life.

It wasn’t great. It wasn’t perfect. It was kind of sad after what I had with Tim.

But it was better than where I was without him.

I figured I could live with that.

* * * * *

Even so, I was on tenterhooks on the run up to dinner, thinking, since the girls asked him, he’d come over. I didn’t make pork chops or risotto because, with having to work, I didn’t have time to make it to the grocery store. I just made meatloaf.

But it didn’t matter.

Joe didn’t come for dinner.

Chapter Seven

Visit from Bonnie

Cal lay in bed, his window open, listening.

He’d been gone a week and a half, had to leave the day after things smoothed out with Violet to see to some work.

He’d told her he was going before she slipped out of his bed the second night they were together, telling him she had to go home to her girls. She hadn’t slept with him that night, just told him she needed to go after they’d finished their second round. It wasn’t even midnight.

Her car hadn’t been in the drive when he got home that day but the boyfriend’s yellow pickup and Kate’s Fiesta were there. From his driveway he could see the girls through the kitchen window, laughing and looking like they were making dinner. Dane was sitting on the counter facing the windows, laughing with them. If they were laughing, things were good. Colt had called while he was gone, reporting there were no more flowers and Vi hadn’t received any further gifts.

He knew Daniel Hart though, he knew the man wouldn’t be done until he had what he wanted, something else caught his eye or someone made him done.

Cal just hoped something else caught his eye.

How life could make it that Hart’s current obsession moved in right next to him, the wife of a man Hart murdered, when Hart had also murdered Cal’s cousin Vinnie, Cal had no clue.

He had been struggling with the decision of whether or not to make the call to Vinnie Senior, his uncle, since Cal found out about Violet and Hart. But after talking with Colt, he decided to wait to see if Hart lost interest before he talked to Vinnie. A call to Uncle Vinnie about Daniel Hart would mean a call to Sal and then there’d be war. Sal was itching for it. Then again, so was Uncle Vinnie.

He heard the sliding glass door to Vi’s house open and he shook his head in the dark, grinning.

Then he threw the covers back, knifed out of bed, grabbed his jeans, yanked them on and went to his backdoor.

He had it open before she hit the steps and he met her on the deck.

She tipped her head back to look at him.

“Hi,” she whispered as if they were in her bedroom and she didn’t want her girls to hear.

“Buddy, get inside,” he ordered, pulling the remote from her hand, he walked passed her, down the steps, across their yards, up her steps and, pressing the buttons on the remote without looking at it, he disarmed the alarm before he got close to the door and tripped the sensors. Then he went through her sliding glass door, closed it, locked it and walked through her house. Unlocking the side kitchen door, he nabbed the key he’d seen on a hook on the wall behind the door and he walked out, locking the door and hitting the buttons on the remote that would arm the alarm.

She was perched on the arm of his father’s chair when he came back. She had her black satin robe on but he could see the lace of another of her sexy nighties hugging her cle**age through the opening of her robe.