Tempt Me Tonight (22 page)

Yet she shook her head. “No, I don’t. How many times? Who was on top? Was there foreplay? Did she have an orgasm?”

He just gaped at her. Then swiped his hand slowly down his face as he let out the heaviest sigh yet. “And we have to go through these details why?” Was she trying to torture him?

But she looked earnest when she answered, like there wasn’t a bit of malice intended. “Because I need to know, Joe. I just need to know.”

Joe glanced down, focusing on the worn steering wheel, the same faded red as the dashboard. “Okay. It was only once, I was on top, there wasn’t much foreplay, and I have no idea if she came, because to tell you the truth, at that moment, it was all about me.”

Next to him, she let out a soft breath. “And so, how…was it?”

He made himself look at her again. “It…filled a certain need, I guess—satisfied my curiosity. But it left me empty inside—because I knew it should have been you. And because I knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. It was over before I even knew what was happening and I couldn’t take it back.” He suffered the hurt, felt it washing over them both, all over again—and he wanted this awful talk to be done. “Is there anything else? Anything more you want to know?”

Slowly, she nodded—and shit, he sensed something else big coming.

“Tell me about your daughter.”

Joe shot his gaze to her. “She’s not my daughter.”

She flinched, so he knew he must have said it too brusquely, but he couldn’t help it. The words had just come out that way, and despite having the power to dispel the rumors if he wanted, maybe he was tired of everyone in town
assuming
Carissa was his.

“What do you mean? I thought…”

“She’s not mine, Trish. I had a
DNA
test done after she was born.”

Yet Trish still looked completely confused, and he supposed he could understand why. “But Debbie told me you…spend time with her, sort of helped raise her. Why would you do that if she’s not yours?”

Maybe that was part of the reason he’d let so few people know the truth. Maybe it was easier to let people think he was a shithead for not officially claiming Carissa than it was to explain why he’d been there for someone he really had no connection to.

“It’s hard to explain,” he began. “The whole time Bev was pregnant, I thought the baby was mine. I knew she slept around, but I didn’t figure she’d slept with somebody else right at the same time she’d slept with me. I was pretty freaked out, but I was planning to do the right thing, take on the responsibility.”

Trish nodded, and Joe thought back to those strange days that had altered his life so drastically. That whole year had changed…everything. “When Carissa was first born, I saw a lot of her. I changed diapers, gave her bottles, all that. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was trying.

“Then I ordered a
DNA
test. My mom’s idea. She watched a lot of TV, knew about stuff like that. I did it just to be sure. And Bev was pissed. But then it came back negative—I wasn’t Carissa’s father.

“Thing is, though, by that time, I felt like I was.” He shrugged and let his voice soften. “I’d never been much of a baby guy before, but she was pretty damn cute—little brown eyes, little blip of a nose. And when Bev told me the only other guy who could be Carissa’s dad had been passing through town to join the Marines and that she didn’t even know his last name—well, it bothered me to think of Carissa never having a dad.

“And right then…” Joe drew his gaze away as his chest tightened, along with his throat. “My mom died. And things were bad. Really bad. My dad left, and—”

“Your dad left? Left you and Jana?”

The interruption drew his gaze to Trish’s; he’d forgotten she didn’t know that. “Yeah.”

Shock repainted her face. “And Jana was…how old? Eleven or twelve?”

His voice went a little lower, remembering. “Yeah.”

“Why? Why on earth did he walk out on you?”

Joe could only sigh. He wasn’t going into
these
details, too, no way—all this was hard enough to talk about as it was. So he kept it simple. “Mom’s death was…hard on
all
of us. In different ways. But the upshot is…you see your little sister suddenly left without a mom or a dad and…you kinda don’t want
anybody
to be stuck that way. So even though I wasn’t Carissa’s father, I just…kept coming around.

“Not as much as before, and I never pretended to be her dad or asked her to call me that—I was just…this guy in her life. And I still am. I don’t see her as much as I used to—she usually stops by the garage once a week to hang out a while—but that’s only because I don’t have a clue how to entertain a thirteen-year-old girl. I’m just kinda…there for her when she needs me. That’s all.”

Trish’s expression bordered somewhere between puzzled and amazed. “So she doesn’t know why you’re in her life?”

He shook his head. “We’ve never talked about it, so I don’t know
what
she thinks. But she probably thinks I
am
her dad.”

Trish leaned slightly forward. “Is that why…you’ve kept it a secret all this time?”

“That’s part of it. Hell, I don’t know if she wants me to be her dad or
not
—but if she does, I don’t want to break her heart by letting it get around that I’m not. As far as telling her the truth goes, I feel damned if I do, damned if I don’t. I didn’t think through this well enough when I was a kid—I was just doing what felt right at the time. But I figure she’d probably rather have me than nobody—know what I mean?”

She nodded, yet he went on. “The fact is—it’s a pretty screwed up situation. Part of that’s my fault. And part of it is Bev’s, for not being clearer on it, too. I think Bev has always wished…”

“What?”

“That there was…more between me and her. But there’s not.” He looked her in the eye. “Never has been, Trish—nothing but that one night, I swear. I just think maybe she’s never told Carissa the whole truth because she hoped someday I’d want to make a family with the two of them or something.”

“God,” Trish finally breathed.

“I know,” he told her. “Pretty fucking ridiculous mess, isn’t it?”

She shook her head. “Well, actually, that’s not what I was thinking.”

He looked up. “No?”

“I was thinking that…you’re kind of amazing.”

He flinched, taken aback. “I am?”

“To try to be a father to her even when you’re not obligated to. And to let people think you aren’t owning up to your full responsibility just to keep her thinking she
does
have a dad. That’s pretty generous, Joe.”

Joe couldn’t have been more shocked. He almost started to argue with her, to insist that he’d handled things wrong, but instead, he just turned it back on Carissa. “Well, she’s a cool kid—it’s easy to want to do right by her.”

“Thanks,” she said, “for telling me that. I know even Debbie doesn’t know, or she’d have told me.”

He managed a smile. “Exactly why Debbie doesn’t know. She’d have told the whole damn world.”

When they went silent, listening again to the gentle sound of the rain, he finally said, “Anything else, Trish?”

Please say no. I’m fucking exhausted here.

She looked sheepish but said, “One more thing.”

He took a deep breath. “What?”

“Tell me about the women. All the women I’ve heard about.”

Christ.
If she
wasn’t
trying to torture him, she was doing a damn good imitation. He’d never even realized until her dad had brought up the same thing this morning that he was considered such a playboy. He suspected he had good old Debbie to thank. “I’m a normal guy, cupcake, not a priest. Yeah, there have been some women. That’s all I can say.”

“Have you been in love with any of them?”

His throat clogged again. He didn’t want to tell her the truth. But he wasn’t gonna start lying now. “Only one,” he said. “You.”

“Oh.” She sounded slightly surprised as their eyes met. But there it was, out on the table—now she knew.

“You?” he asked. He figured after this, he had the right to know.

“Are you asking about sex? Or love?”

“Both.”

She swallowed again, looking nervous. And damn, his stomach was churning like a schoolboy’s waiting for her answer. “I’ve been serious with a couple of guys since you. And I’ve slept with…a number of men, some who were important, some less so.”

“How many?”

She blinked, looking slightly perturbed now—but hell, she’d started it. “How many for you?”

He shrugged sharply. “You’d have to ask Debbie. She’s probably kept a closer count than me.”

“Six,” she said softly. “Counting you now.”

Six. Counting him. Not that many. Despite instantly hating the other five, it still felt like a weight lifted from his chest.

“A hell of a lot less than you, I’m betting.”

That was for sure. “But you were the best,” he said, not gauging the words, just telling it like it was. Their eyes met, and he leaned toward her, coming closer, until their foreheads touched beneath the brim of his hat.

“You…don’t have to say that, Joe.”

“I don’t lie, Trish. I don’t just say things. That’s how it is.” Then he added something he’d been needing to tell her for fourteen years now. “I’m sorry. For the whole damn thing.” Then he shook his head. “You’re the last person in the world I ever wanted to hurt.”

He sighed, tired of all this sad shit, and God knew he’d suffered for it back then; he didn’t want to keep suffering now. So instead he pressed his mouth back to hers, firm but gentle. The energy of the kiss flowed through his veins, filling him up, giving him what he needed. He wasn’t gonna have her forever, he knew that, but he had her now, in this moment—and he needed to feel her, drink her in, as much as he could.

When the kiss ended, she looked breathless—but then raked one delicate hand back through her wet hair to say, “We should…probably go. It’s been raining awhile now—Mom and Dad will be worried.”

He nodded gently and didn’t protest as she slid off his lap and waited as he started the truck.

The moment was over, the sweet closeness gone.

His heart sunk a little, but hell—what was he expecting? He supposed he should just be thankful for what they’d shared. Both the sex
and
the talking. The talking had been hard, but at the same time he felt like a criminal who’d finally gotten to confess, so maybe he understood now why she’d needed to hear it. Maybe he’d needed to
say
it, too.

They stayed silent as they traveled the now muddy path out of the valley and across the ridge where the Henderson house sat, and when he parked the truck next to the big red barn near the farmhouse and killed the engine, he thought—
what now?

And then he
knew
what now.

Hell, if he was going down, he’d go down swinging.

She was starting to move across the seat away from him, to exit through the stuck door, but he grabbed onto her wrist.

She looked up, their eyes locking.

“Let me see you again, Trish.”

He had to ask, even though he knew he was wasting his breath. Now he waited to see exactly how she’d word her refusal.
No, Joe—it’s not that I don’t want you, it’s that I don’t trust you. It’s that I can’t forgive you. It’s that you’ve slept with every woman in town. It’s that we’ve got different lives and I don’t even live here and I’m leaving soon, blah blah blah.

“Okay,” she said instead.

His jaw dropped. “What did you just say?”

For the first time in awhile, her eyes truly softened. “I said okay.”

Okay
? She’d said
okay?

The next day, a week since she’d first stumbled headlong into her first passionate encounter with Joe, she found herself back at the diner, working vigorously, probably trying to get yesterday out of her system.

Not the sex in the rain part, though.

And not really the talking in the truck part, either.

Mainly the
okay
part.

What had she been thinking?

Probably that she wanted more sex and talking. But now, she couldn’t help worrying. Did this mean she…trusted him suddenly? Did it mean she was diving into a
relationship
with him?

No, and no, she decided, stomping her foot on the old tile floor. She’d just kind of decided, when he’d told her about Carissa, maybe he was a better person than she’d realized up to now. And that maybe it wouldn’t be awful to let herself spend some time with him.

Keep a cool head. You just said you’d see him, not have his babies.

She wasn’t even sure she
wanted
babies anyway. Did
Joe
want babies? After all, he already had Carissa—sort of. Wow, how weird to think of Joe changing diapers, cooing over some tiny baby, feeling warmly toward it.

Yikes
—what was she doing thinking about
babies?

What she
needed
to be thinking about was whipping this place into shape, once and for all. And hey, if she saw Joe another time or two over the next week while she worked on her remodeling project, no big deal. It was…an affair. Yes, an affair. That sounded very mature and cosmopolitan—and it had nothing to do with babies, either.

She looked at the plethora of paint cans around her. She’d been back to The Home Depot amid the morning drizzle. There were also painting tarps, and tape, and rollers and brushes.

And
tables and chairs. She’d bitten the bullet and called the wholesale guy, and he’d delivered them less than two hours later! So there was no turning back now.

She feared her parents might have a heart attack when they found out what she was doing to the place, but she felt bizarrely energized by the project before her. She’d never really done any decorating—she’d even hired her loft out to an interior design team—but she had the wild feeling that she was onto something potentially spectacular here, something at once sophisticated yet small town, funky yet quaint. Before long, she’d have buyers
begging
her to sell them the place.

The cans of paint sat heaped one atop the other. To the colors she’d bought the other day, she’d now added shades of peach, mint, and lemon for the walls. Bolder shades of purple, red, fuchsia, and tangerine sat nearby, too—for the new tables and chairs, which would make much better use of the big floor area between the two rows of booths than the
nothing
that had always occupied it before. Some of the chairs had curlycue backs and she planned to paint each curling piece of wood a different color. She wondered if she was artistic enough to pull off simple designs on the tabletops—maybe a sun here, a moon there, or just some shapes. If worse came to worst, Home Depot had stencils. She’d also bought some spray paint that should work on the booths.