Exclusively Yours (5 page)

But she was ready for this. During an assignment at a summer camp for underprivileged kids founded by an A-lister early in her career, Keri had mastered the art of the perfect s’more.

The key was in the organization and careful preparation. First, a square graham cracker had to be set on the picnic table with a smaller square of chocolate centered on top of it. Another graham cracker set next to it. Only then should the marshmallow be toasted to a perfect golden brown. Set it on top of the chocolate, along one edge of the cracker, put the other cracker on top, exert slight pressure and then drag the stick out in the direction of the opposite edge, thereby spreading the gooey marshmallow along the chocolate. Count to ten, then eat. A perfect s’more.

“Everybody got a stick?” Kevin asked.

In case the chorus of cheers wasn’t enough, the five kids offered visual proof in the form of a flurry of wildly waving sticks. Keri flinched when Danny’s threatened to take off the tip of her nose.

Kevin ripped open the bag of marshmallows and Bobby squealed with delight. Before Keri could point out it was time for neither sticks nor marshmallows yet the kids had presented their sticks like Musketeer swords and their uncle shoved a marshmallow on the end of each one.

She could only watch in horror as, after throwing elbows for position, the kids converged on the fire. Joe, Mike and Kevin circled constantly, adjusting stick heights and pointing out when one needed to be turned. Bobby’s burst into flames and only Mike’s reflexes kept him from jerking the stick and winging the flaming marshmallow into the air.

Suddenly sticks pointed at her from every direction, marshmallows varying from light beige to charcoal black drooping from the ends.

“You’re not ready!” Stephanie shrieked, just as Bobby’s overcooked glop let go of the stick and dropped onto the toe of Keri’s sneaker.

“I need a cracker!”

“Where’s the chocolate?”

“Uncle Joe, she doesn’t even know how to make a s’more!”

Keri scrambled, dispensing crackers and chocolate as fast as she could while Bobby’s burnt marshmallow bonded with her shoelaces. By the time Brian was shoving his in his mouth, Joey was roasting his second marshmallow.

Thirty minutes later, when Lisa finally called a halt to the sugar consumption, Keri was exhausted, sticky and feeling slightly nauseated by the s’mores each of the kids had made special just for her. She’d tried accidentally dropping Stephanie’s on the ground and kicking it under the picnic table, but the girl had seen her and, not wanting her to be sad, promptly made her another.

And Brian, the little twerp, had definitely earned his dollar. He was responsible for the marshmallow gluing Keri’s hair to her left ear, the smear of chocolate down the leg of her jeans and the graham cracker crumbs he’d managed to dump down her back while giving her a
thank you
hug.

As soon as the last mouthful was gulped down, the kids disappeared to the playground, leaving the grown-ups to deal with the fall-out. Keri was about to drop into a chair, but Joe grabbed her by the elbow and held her up.

“You’ve got marshmallow on your ass,” he said, and she could tell by the damn dimples it was killing him not to laugh in her face.

“That was the most demented display of s’mores making I’ve ever seen,” she hissed, resisting the urge to kick him in the shin.

“You’ve got chocolate on your lip.”

Before she could react his finger was there, the tip dipping into the hollow of her mouth and then gliding across her lower lip. She shivered, unable to look away as Joe brought that finger to his mouth and sucked the chocolate off the end.

The faint suction sound made her insides quiver and she had a hell of a time swallowing. He was sure taking his time about it, and a glimpse of tongue flicking away the last of the chocolate spiked her body temperature.

A moan almost escaped her throat and Keri dug her fingernails into her palms. What was wrong with her? Her body was acting as though she hadn’t had sex in…

How long had it been? Months? Years, even? No, it couldn’t have been years since she’d had sex. That would be sad. The last time had been Scott, colleague with benefits until he’d moved to New York. That had been…thirty-one months ago.

She hadn’t had sex in thirty-one months.

“Get a room,” Kevin told them as he shoved Joe out of his way. He picked up an empty Hershey’s bar wrapper and walked away.

The trance broken, Keri turned her back on her tormentor and busied herself gathering the graham crackers strewn across the picnic table. Thank goodness for Kevin, or who knew what her traitorous body might have coerced her into doing.

Clearly she needed to avoid being alone with Joe. Sure, that was problematic with them sharing a cabin and sleeping only a few feet from each other. But she could make sure his family was always around during the day and then feign sleep as soon they retired to the cabin at night.

Being alone with Joe Kowalski was going to get her in trouble. Only this time giving in to his charm could get her in trouble with Tina, who was a lot scarier than her dad, even without a five-iron.

Not that he’d been anticipating a good night’s sleep anyway. Arranging to have Keri Daniels spend the night in a bed only six feet from his own wasn’t one of his brighter ideas. Arranging to have her sleep six feet away for
thirteen
nights was just downright moronic.

Keri sighed again. They were getting louder, and he knew why.

“The more you think about it,” Joe said, “the more you’ll have to go.”

She picked up her head and punched her pillow into a ball. “I didn’t have anything to drink for hours.”

“I noticed, but now you’re thinking about it and you aren’t thinking quietly.”

“Fine.” He heard her throw back her covers and then stumble toward the door.

“The flashlight’s on the floor to the right of the door.”

There were some fumbling noises, and the flashlight clicked on. She managed to shine it in his eyes twice while slipping her shoes on and heading out the door.

She was gone all of twenty seconds.

“Oh my God,” Keri yelped, slamming the door behind her. “There are eyes out there.”

Yup, sleep really was just a pipe dream tonight. “Furry woodland creatures, babe.”

“I think it was a raccoon.” It was hard not to laugh at her when she twisted the deadbolt.

“Look on the bright side—if the raccoon’s hanging out at our site, the skunks and bears are probably visiting somebody else.”

“How can you find this funny?”

“I’m not the one who’s gotta take a leak.”

Four D cells’ worth of light burned into his retinas when Keri turned the flashlight on him. “I can’t sleep until I’ve gone to the bathhouse, Kowalski. And if I don’t sleep, you don’t sleep.”

That much was obvious, so Joe swung his legs over the edge and stood. Unlike Keri, he wasn’t wearing pajamas that buttoned to his eyebrows and he laughed when the flashlight beam ran down over his black boxer briefs before whipping back to the door. He pulled on his sweatpants and shoved his bare feet into his sneakers. After a brief hesitation, he pulled a shirt over his head. While his bare chest was still buff enough to attract the females, up here they’d all be of the buzzing, biting variety.

“Let’s go,” he said, and he wasn’t surprised when she made him go out the door first. Without relinquishing the flashlight, of course.

There were a couple of low fires burning in the campground as they made their way to the bathhouse, but all was mostly quiet. The Kowalskis always arrived on a Monday so they could be all set up and get a few rides in before the place filled up. Joe reached over and took the flashlight out of Keri’s hand so he could turn it off.

“I can’t see,” she protested.

“Just be still a second and let your eyes adjust.”

“If I stand in one place too long the bugs will hang an all-you-can-eat buffet sign on me.”

He chuckled softly and started walking again. “You used to love being outside with me at night.”

“I used to strip on pool tables to Guns N’ Roses, too,” Keri said, “but times change. People change.”

Joe would have liked to deny he’d changed all that much, but it probably wouldn’t have been true. He’d been a gung-ho boy who’d made good on his dreams, only to end up jaded and still looking for…something. But even though Keri had changed a lot more than him, just being with her made him remember being young.

“It doesn’t get dark like this at home,” Keri whispered, and he was reminded how far her home was from his.

“Bright lights in the big city,” he muttered, thankful their arrival at the bathhouse derailed any further discussion about Los Angeles.

Keri was in there a few minutes, then emerged with a sheepish smile. “Thank you. I think I can sleep now.”

“Or we could go make out on the see-saw,” he said, just to make her laugh.

It worked. “Terry said she’d hide my bug spray until I duct tape my thighs together if I try making out with you.”

Keri stumbled on a rock and Joe instinctively took her hand to steady her. After she regained her balance, he just sort of kept it. “How did that happen to come up in conversation?”

She turned her head and he could see the gleam of her teeth when she smiled. “It was right after Lisa offered three days of lifeguard duty if you and I can have sex in her RV’s shower without knocking it off its levelers.”

Joe stopped, still holding her hand. “Why the hell was anybody talking about us having sex? Not that it’s a bad thing, but…why?”

“Mostly to annoy Terry.” But she looked away when she said it.

“Three days, huh?”

She tried to pull away, but he yanked her back, so she poked a finger at his chest instead. “Forget it, Kowalski. Sitting by the pool happens to be one of my more finely honed skills.”

“You’ve never been poolside with my nephews.”

So he wasn’t the only one in the campground mentally combining the words
Joe
,
Keri
and
sex
. Interesting.

Then he spotted his sister. Across the dark playground, Terry sat in one of the swings, drawing in the dirt with the toes of her sneakers.

“Hey, I’m going to talk to Terry for a sec. Take the flashlight and go on ahead.”

He could see the urge to protest cross Keri’s face, but then she looked across the playground, too. “Fine, but if I get mauled by a bear, you’re going to feel like an asshole in the morning.”

Joe waited until the flashlight beam—moving at a very fast clip—rounded the corner toward the cabins, then made his way to the swing set. He took the one next to her, careful to hold it still. Damn things made him carsick for some reason.

“I thought it would be easier away from the house,” Terry said without looking up from her dirt scribbles. “But I can’t sleep without his snoring and the quiet here only makes it worse.”

“Everybody will understand if you pack it up and head home, you know.”

She snorted. “And leave you all here to fend for yourselves?”

The old conversational high-wire—how to remind her they were all reasonably competent adults without minimizing the work she put into the family. “A temporary diet of hot dogs and marshmallows won’t kill anybody.”

When she didn’t even crack a smile, Joe started mentally combining the words
Evan
,
head
and
baseball bat
. His soon-to-be-ex brother-in-law was a good guy he’d always considered a friend, but Joe was in big brother mode—even if he was only nine minutes older.

“I thought he’d come running right back,” Terry said. “But he didn’t, and now… He said he was leaving because there had to be more—something
better
—and now he lives alone in a basic closet over a freakin’ Laundromat.”

“I know it seems like forever, but it’s only been three months. You guys can still work it out if you both want it.”

“Why should I try, when he could flush thirteen years down the toilet because I wouldn’t have a quickie on the kitchen table?”

That was a part of the story Joe hadn’t yet heard. “No offense, but I don’t think that fancy brass and glass set of yours would stand up to it.”

“That’s what I told him, and that I’m not serving up Corn Flakes on his ass prints. He was gone forty minutes later.”

“A guy doesn’t walk out on his family because he ain’t getting lucky on the kitchen table. You know there has to be more to it than that.”

Terry sighed and looked up at the stars. “He said now that our daughter’s older and out with her friends so much, he wanted to work on being Evan and Terry more instead of just Stephanie’s parents. He wanted more spontaneity, and he said I treat him more like a second child than a husband.”

Now Joe was crossing that conversational high-wire again, only this time he was blindfolded and slightly intoxicated. She did, after all, excel in family micromanagement and treated them all like children at times. This was the woman who asked him every single year if he’d packed enough underwear for the trip. But again, now was not the time to even hint at siding with Evan.

“It was probably some midlife meltdown,” he said, “and he just doesn’t have the balls to come crawling back.”

“Maybe.” She sniffed and shrugged her shoulders, and the subject was closed. “What are you doing with her, Joe?”

He didn’t need to ask who she meant. “I don’t know, sis. It started out as some weird mix of curiosity, revenge and nostalgia, but now… Sometimes she’s a total stranger and sometimes she’s the Keri I loved. And the chemistry’s still pretty damn potent.”

“She’s going to leave again, the second she has what she wants from you, and don’t forget it. She’s not any better than Lauren.”

That was a low blow, but not a surprise. Terry didn’t like feeling shitty alone. But dragging his ex-almost-fiancée into the pity party was just bitchy. “She’s nothing like Lauren. Keri’s not hiding what she wants from me or why she’s here. And I know she’ll be gone as soon as she has her interview. I’m just enjoying her company until then.”

Terry turned to make eye contact with him again. “I didn’t like the guy you became after she left the first time, and I still don’t think you should be around her.”

“For chrissake, Terry, you’re acting like a mother hen.”

As soon as the words left his mouth he wished he could take them back. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever said them to her, but he couldn’t have chosen a worse time.

“Fine, Joe,” she said in a low voice. “Get your heart broken again. We can be a matched set.”

Then she crossed the playground to her camper without looking back.