The Best Man (8 page)

Was she having morning-after
thoughts? Wasn’t it rather adolescent to try to hide behind shades? And why
such a tortuous response to his simple question about growing up a preacher’s
kid? He’d had a buddy in high school who’d been a preacher’s kid. Clearly he’d
seen some pluses, but there were also the obvious minuses of church people
expecting the kid to be a saint.

He smiled. Somehow he didn’t think Kitty
had ever been confused with a saint. He raked his fingers through his hair. Maybe
his question hadn’t been so simple. Her family probably hadn’t been overly
pleased with the daughter becoming an out-of-wedlock teenage mother. But they
must’ve gotten their heads around that. Susan had turned out to be a delightful
young woman. Surely, Kitty must have had lots of support raising the girl.

Jared smoothed out his mustache. He
hadn’t meant to pry. He’d thought they’d share some small talk. He’d ask her
about her childhood days and she’d ask about his, and then they’d move on. Simple.
Apparently, not.

He reached for the bill and glanced
at his watch. He’d already missed the opening race, but he’d head out to Arlington anyway. That was closer to where he expected to spend the night.

He smiled. That was definitely one
thing to look forward to. He hoped Kitty didn’t wake up in a foul mood every
morning.

Precisely at seven that evening,
Jared rang her doorbell. He tried to hide his surprise when she opened the
door. She stood in front of him with the most helpless, forlorn look. She was
hardly dressed for going out to dinner, or for seduction. She wore yellow
shorts and a paint splattered man’s shirt.

Silently, she led him directly to
the kitchen. It was only then that he noticed she was barefoot. No high heels. No
nothing. She probably had no idea how sexy she looked in those tattered clothes
with bare feet. He used extreme control not to lay her over the dining table. She
didn’t look like a woman with love on her mind.

She poured them each a cup of
coffee. He figured he could use something stronger than that.

“Sit,” she ordered. “We need to
talk.”

He sat. It was never wise to argue
with a woman until he knew what the hell she was going to argue about.

Kitty remained standing. Her hands
trembled slightly as they brought her coffee mug to her lips. She set the mug
on the table and laced her fingers at her waist. “I don’t know how else to ask.
So I’ll just ask you straight up. Have you fucked my daughter?”

“What?” Jared was on his feet before
he could think.

Kitty took a step back and shot him
a wary look.

“Jesus H. Christ, is that why you
were so wired this noon? Why didn’t you ask me last night?”

“I didn’t fucking think about it
last night!” She swallowed. “I’m asking now. Did you fuck Susan?”

He shook his head vigorously. “I don’t
have time for college girls. I like my women a little older,” he paused, “and
hopefully a little wiser. Why in hell would you ask such a question?”

“Your son,” she stammered. “Jackson told me Susan had slept with most every man who would be attending the wedding.”

He took a step forward. She didn’t
retreat this time. He reached out and cupped her chin. He ran his thumb across
her lips. “Did you wonder about that when we danced at the reception?”

She glanced down at her toes. “The
question crossed my mind.”

“And you still led me on.”

“Not on purpose. I knew I had the
redeye to catch.”

“Right. And then you conveniently
forgot about your daughter until after you had a chance to sample what I was
offering. Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No. That’s not it. I’d forgotten
about Susan until this morning.”

He placed his hands on her
shoulders. She showed no sign of resistance. He crushed his mouth against hers
and ground his body against hers until she began to respond in kind. He slid
his lips off, cupped his hands over her curvy ass and ground her yellow-clad
crotch against his erection. He nodded when she adjusted her fit until he was
certain she had him where she wanted him. “And what were you planning on doing
if I said I had fucked Susan?”

Her eyes glazed and she worked her
lips with effort. “Sending you away.”

“Really? You could’ve walked away
from this?” He hoisted her legs until he held her butt in his hands and she
locked her legs behind his back.

“Yes,” she panted, gliding up and
down his cock through the fabric. She bit his shoulder. “Oh, God. Why are you
doing this to me? Oh God, I can’t stop. I’m coming.”

She clasped her arms around his neck
and tightened the grip of her legs. He held her steady, letting her body quake
against his. He held her until his arms screamed for help. At last, she tried
to find the floor with her feet.

Kitty took a step back from him and
wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes still seemed out of focus. “Why?”
she reiterated.

Jared filled his chest with air and
steadied his own pulse. “I need you to know I’m a damn difficult man to get rid
of until I’m ready to go.”

“And you’re not ready.”

He shook his head and watched her
lips curve up into a half-smile. “Sometimes you can be quite perceptive. You do
believe me—about Susan?”

She nodded. “You wouldn’t lie about
that.”

“That doesn’t sound like a total
vote of confidence.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know you that
well.”

He grimaced. “Maybe we should do
something about that. Anyway, since we’re talking about our children, let’s get
one more out of the way.”

Kitty shrank from him. “Jackson.”

“Jackson. So do I care that you
fucked Jackson—apparently you would’ve cared some, at least, if I’d gotten it
on with your daughter. The answer is hell, no. He’s an adult. You were an
adult. Just for the record, if I had hooked up with Susan, I would’ve hoped you
could’ve remembered that. But,” he held up his palm to prevent Kitty’s
interruption, “that didn’t happen. I gather from what you said at the wedding
reception, Jackson didn’t exactly ring your chimes.”

Kitty wet her lips and swallowed but
didn’t try to speak.

“I apologize for that,” Jared
continued. “He should know how to treat a woman by now. And don’t trust
everything the boy says. Jackson is noted for exaggeration. I don’t doubt she’s
been with a number of guys, including my son, but I highly doubt I was the only
man at the wedding who hadn’t screwed her.”

She continued to look at him
wide-eyed and open mouthed.

He placed a finger under her chin
and closed her mouth. “Do you suppose we have any more need to talk about our
children’s love lives?”

“Do you and your son often talk
about your women?”

He smiled at the renewed fire in her
eyes. His Kitty was coming back from wherever the hell she’d been most of the
day. “I never talk with him about my women. Occasionally, when he gets sloshed
enough, he volunteers stuff I don’t particularly want to know.”

“So would you have been attracted to
me if he hadn’t told you I was hot?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. I didn’t
need a twenty-two year old to tell me you were going to be hot, in bed or out.
You exude heat, woman. Do you have any idea how hot you were walking your
daughter down the aisle of that church?”

She shook her head.

“I felt sorry for Susan. Every one
knew she was taken. But you? Hell, even the preacher had to struggle to find
his place in his script after he watched you come down that aisle.”

She smirked. “I do recall a longer
pause than I remembered during rehearsal.” She rose on her toes and nibbled on
his chin. “So who knew you could be good for a woman’s ego?”

He pulled her body in tight to his
and inhaled her scent. “I have my moments. Don’t get too used to it.”

“I won’t,” she murmured. She leaned
back against his arms. “Now that we’ve cleared the air, I’m famished.”

He gave her a crooked smile.

“Not that,” she said quickly. “Maybe
later. I have a favorite Italian restaurant not too far away. Will that work
for you?”

“That works for me.” His gaze
traveled slowly down her body. “Are you going to put on shoes?”

She tapped his chest and winced. “I’m
not going out looking like this. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready.” She
waved over her shoulder. “I won’t be long, really.”

He nodded and then warmed up his coffee
before sitting back down at the table. She didn’t strike him as a woman who
could ever dress in a hurry.

He leaned back and blew air through
his compressed lips. That was close. At least he had some idea what moved her
in addition to passionate sex. Her daughter.

Jared closed his eyes. He hadn’t
lied to her. He hadn’t fucked her daughter. He did have a rule against younger
women. That didn’t mean Susan hadn’t tried to hook up with him.

She’d been as bold as her mother. He’d
been over at her husband-to-be’s place for dinner and to tutor Brad in the use
of a new software business program when Brad had dashed a term paper over to a
professor’s house. Brad’s car had hardly left the driveway before Susan started
making her moves.

He’d told her no. He’d told her
about his rules against younger women. Put out and exasperated, she’d strutted
to within three feet of him, calmly lifted her short skirt and proceeded to
bring herself off. She’d been commando. When she came, she wiped her sticky
fingers on his shirt saying he’d better remember her five or ten years later
when she tracked him down.

Jared shook his head. Susan would be
one pissed off woman if she knew he and her mother had hooked up.

- o -

Feeling much relieved, Kitty hummed
while dressing for her evening with Jared. She might not have been coy about
it, but at least her fundamental question got answered. Jared hadn’t slept with
her daughter.

She shivered, recalling the scene in
the kitchen. Oddly, they’d finished what they couldn’t in the hotel lobby at
the wedding reception. This time he’d purposely pushed her over the edge to
prove a point. He’d had no intention of letting her down until she came. As he
said, she wasn’t going to get rid of him easily without his agreement.

She freshened her lipstick. Not that
she had any plans on dispatching him anytime soon. Even her emergency phone
consultation with her therapist had helped, though sometimes she thought her
therapist might be more wacked out than she was. It was good to hear Sandra
Aster’s calming voice on the line. Sandra had reminded her of some of the devices
she’d learned to avoid getting hooked by her father’s voice. After all, the man
had been dead for nearly a decade, but the tapes spinning her memory could be
as powerful as ever.

She’d go back to using some of the
self-talk messages she and Sandra had worked on over the years. She’d look at
pictures of her father to remind herself that he was only flesh and blood and
that he seldom looked happy, whether he’d been lecturing her, eating at a
barbecue, or even preaching. Her father had been a deeply unhappy man. That was
the case both before she was born and after. She’d really had little to do with
his unhappiness. But she did have to be reminded of that fact from time to
time.

But why now? Why would her father
pop up after being absent from her thoughts for years?

Kitty chuckled, shrugged into a
white men’s dress shirt and tied a knot under her breasts, leaving a clear view
of her belly ring. What was the point of having one if you didn’t show it off
now and then?

She slipped into a string bikini
bottom and reached for a yellow skirt. Maybe Jared was right. She did have a
proclivity for wearing yellow.

But Sandra was way off base about
Jared. Sandra’s response to the sudden intrusion of her daddy’s voice was to
ask if there was a new man in her life. They’d gone over her teen years not
long after she and Sandra began working on her crap. Her dad always got
furiously jealous if she dated a guy more than twice. He thought they were
getting serious.

And she had spent a lot of time
fantasizing about each boy. Was this the one she’d live out her days with? Maybe
she
had
been serious, in a young girl’s fanciful way.

That was her daddy’s problem—though
he’d been quite adept at making his problem hers, including complaining to the
boys’ parents that he feared the devil might lead them astray. She smiled. By
the time she and Todd got together later in high school, she no longer told her
parents when she would be with a boy. Dates just happened. She’d made up for
lost time learning about sex. And then she’d gotten pregnant. Maybe there
was
a devil.

According to her daddy,
she’d
been
the devil. She preferred to think of the devil as having a cock.

She slipped her feet into her
reliable yellow high heels. She grinned, imagining Jared with horns. Certainly
the devil must have a thin mustache. Everyone knew that.