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You sound smart, April, now act smart. Enjoy the moment and quit with the awe and wonder.

Joe’s weight, leaden with completion, rested on her for only a moment before he rolled to her side and pulled her close to his big muscular body.

“That was so far past ‘okay,’ I left orbit.” He closed his eyes, rested a forearm across his face.

She kissed his tattoo and ran her hand over his heaving chest then down, stopping above his depleted sex. “How long will it take you to reenter earth’s atmosphere?” She ran her hand back up his chest then straddled him, settling between his thighs.

He gripped her shoulders. “Whoa, aren’t you the impatient one?” When her hair brushed his shoulder, he added, “Not that I’m complaining.” He played with her hair, letting long tendrils slip across his palm—catching them in his fist. He drew her face close to his. “And in answer to your question, I’m seeing the curvature of Mother Earth, as we speak.”

“Good”—she kissed him lightly, a bare touch of her mouth to his—“because not being sure how long this, whatever it is, between you and me will last, I plan on making the most of it.”

Joe frowned. “What exactly does that mean?”

“That means, Joe, that this night of debauchery isn’t going to alter my universe.” She forced a smile and made herself sound stern and committed. Always the best way to tell a lie.

He rolled over her, pinned her beneath him. “Afraid I’m going to offer you a ring and picket fence just because we—”

“Fucked,” she said, and hid the hard swallow she needed to get down the knot in her throat.

He stroked her hair back. “We did that all right.” His eyes were an inky blue in the blinking red and gold reflections pouring into the room from the street below. “But if there’s a chance there’s more going on here than either of us expected, you should know I’m good with that.”

“Don’t, Joe,” she said, feeling panicked. “Don’t make something out of this. Just don’t, okay?”
It’s too soon, way, way too soon.

“Okay.” He smiled at her, his easy capitulation not matching the knowing, teasing glint in his eyes. “How about I do this instead?” He slid down, took a nipple in his mouth and suckled gently. April felt it to the soles of her feet.

“That’s a very good beginning.” She sighed and arched to his mouth.

“And this?” He slid a hand down between her legs, found her clitoris with the precision of a master.

She craned her neck, reached for a breath but couldn’t find one. And when he stroked and rolled her hot clit between his fingers—nor could she find any words. She moaned.

Still playing her, he lifted his head. “No more talking?”

“Not a word,” she gasped. “Not another word.”

Chapter 15

Morning sun, blinding bright and screaming of the heatwave outside, poured into the bedroom.

Would’ve been smart to close the blinds.

Joe, facing the white brilliance, kept his eyes shut, concentrating instead on the warm body pressed against his back. The sun, the late morning hour, the need for coffee and food, not one of them was a rival to the hand sliding over his hip and between his thighs to check him out. A woman who liked morning sex—his kind of woman.

She closed her hand around his morning salute, stroked him slow and easy. “You awake?” she asked, kissing his shoulder.

“I sure as hell hope so.” His body did what it had to do when it got primed, and pushed into her hand. She obliged with a not so gentle squeeze that sucked out a good share of his lung’s oxygen. “Because if I’m not, and I wake up and find out what you’re doing to me is a dream.” He bucked into her hand, then rolled onto his back. “I’m fucked.”

Her hair was a wild tangle, her eyes were gleaming green in the brightness of the room. She was smiling—and she took his damn breath away.
He was fucked all right
. . .

“And not in a good way.” She pumped him gently.

He had about a nanosecond’s worth of control left before his caveman came out. He held on to it. “You got it.”

She squeezed and ran a finger over his tip. “Want to shower?”

He covered her hand—the one stroking his erection. “Can I take this with me?”

“That’s the plan.”

Hell of a plan
 . . .

The phone rang.

Joe closed his eyes and cursed. He didn’t want to answer it, but one look at April’s face told him that wasn’t an option. He picked up.

“Is April there?” Cornie asked, her words rushed, a little shaky, as though she’d been crying. “I
need
to talk to April.”

“For you. The Cornball,” he said, bracing himself for what he knew was coming. He held the mouthpiece to his chest, added, “This is going to end badly, for Sparky down there. I know it.”

April kissed him quickly, smiled, and muttered something about his being a “big boy now” and released his clamoring cock.

She took the phone from his hand, and sat on the edge of the bed. In seconds her face was tight with concern.

Joe and Sparky had dropped off the radar.

Joe figured if someone wrote a book titled
The Top Ten Ways to End Perfect Sex,
his sister’s call would rank number one—ending as it did, what was about to be the hottest morning sex of his life with the abrupt and stunning force of an arctic tsunami.

The kid’s timing was flat-out brutal.

April, rapt in whatever Cornie was saying, got up from the bed and walked to the window. Getting his breathing under control—along with the rest of his anatomy, he didn’t move. Instead he took his own sweet time studying her. Naked. Gloriously naked, she stood looking out at her town through the filmy drapes. The perfection of her lit like a tray of diamonds in the morning light.

She looked back at him, with what he liked to think was regret at what she was missing.

“She okay?” he said, his voice sounding like a dump of gravel.

April both frowned and nodded. “It’s about Phylly,” she mouthed, then gave her full attention back to the phone.

When he finally got it—that she wasn’t coming back to bed, that their day of wine and roses was over before it got started—he left her to Cornie and headed for the shower.

Five minutes later, he was back in the bedroom, with a towel around his goddamn determined erection, and a brain he’d managed to shift from piss-off number one,
coitus interruptus,
to piss-off number two, the search for Phyllis Worth. A woman, that despite her having done a good deed getting April out of a hellish situation, he felt nothing for, and wanted nothing from, other than an answer to the what and why surrounding his birth—and her dumping of a three-year-old boy in an ER room and never looking back. He’d keep his word, help April and Cornie get her back, but that was it. Game over. Hell, if nothing else, the woman was worth saving for the satisfaction of walking out on her and never setting eyes on her again. But to do that, he needed to find her and keep her safe.

Why thinking about her made him feel as if he were picking at a crusty old scab, he didn’t know. Maybe it was some damn inner-child shit. Not that it mattered. Because Phyllis Worth didn’t matter. Not to him. But she mattered to April—and that carried major weight. It was way too late for hearts and flowers about his mother. Milk and cookies she wasn’t, and he’d learned to live with that. He’d let her go years ago—and he didn’t want her back.

April though . . .

April was something else. Somehow, she’d settled into him, and he liked it. Liked how it made him feel. He didn’t exactly know what it meant yet—had no fucking idea what to do about it—but he intended to find out, which meant keeping her out of danger—Phyllis’s danger.

April hung up the phone and stared at him, frowning and chewing on her lower lip. She walked the few steps to the bathroom, put on a robe, and came back into the room tying the terry belt. “Cornie thinks she knows where her mother is.”

Joe, in a final admission of defeat, dropped the towel from around his hips, and pulled on briefs. “And?”

“With a man . . .”

Surprise, surprise.
“Who?”

“Other than his name’s Noah—which means nothing to me—she won’t say any more until she gets back here. She’s afraid if she tells me, you and I will take off after Phylly and leave her behind. Anyway, it’s probably nothing.” She shoved her long dark gold hair back—and when she did, Joe’s thinking snagged on the moment it had first brushed his shoulder.

Like living silk
 . . .

“Apparently she found an old postcard in that box she carted out of the apartment—signed by someone named Noah. I think it’s the name that has her so upset.” She paused. “Cornie thinks she knows about every man Phylly ever dated. She’s always been a little obsessed about them.” April played with the tie on the robe, wrapping it like a bandage around her palm then releasing it. She was thinking hard, he guessed, but not about to share it.

“Does she?” he asked. “Know them all?”

April glanced at him, hesitated. “No. Phylly’s smarter than that. She was also discreet—particularly after Cornie was born.”

“Which leads to question number two: Who
is
the kid’s dad? Does she even know?” His stomach felt as if it were full of glass. And he had a major jolt of empathy for the kid.

“I have no idea. Phylly never talked about him.”

“Then the kid’s looking for him.” Looking for him in every face, in every corner, wanting to know the unknowable. “She’s the right age for it. Maybe she thinks this Noah guy is him.”

April didn’t say anything, kept playing with her belt. “Anything’s possible, but it’s a stretch, even for Cornie—the date on the postcard is less than two years old.” She stopped, looked at her watch. “Cornie said she’s arranged for a ride back to the hotel, that she’ll show us the card when she gets here—if we promise to take her with us.”

“You ready to make that promise?” He pulled on some jeans.

“Not without knowing what we’re getting into.”

Joe agreed. “If there was a guy named Noah in Phyllis’s life, who’s the most likely person to know about him?”

“Rusty. Definitely Rusty.”

He dug out a Tee from his bag, trying not to think of how many men had traipsed through Phyllis’s life. Even if he did plan to ask her who his father was, chances were she wouldn’t know. His stomach did a roll and twist.

Joe was no monk and definitely not a stone-throwing kind of guy, but the thought of his mother’s busy past made his bile rise. He supposed that made him some kind of sexist, but there it was.

“Something wrong?” April asked.

“Not a thing.” He grabbed her by the back of the neck, kissed her hard and deep, and let her go. That last part wasn’t easy. “Now let’s go see your friend Rusty—before I get a better idea.”

Chapter 16

Phyllis, who’d temporarily parked her rented Ford Focus in a no-parking zone, looked at the map for the hundredth time since her first bad motel coffee—at frickin’ six-thirty in the morning. The last time she’d met up with that time of day it was coming-home time, not getting-up time. And the damn map, with its line and squiggles, was useless to her. She needed to ask for directions.

She pulled back into the smattering of early morning traffic and a drizzling rain. Rain. In August. Who knew? At least it made everything nice and green. She liked that—and the flowers everywhere—but not much else. What the hell people did here after the sun went down, she couldn’t imagine. Took pills to ward off terminal boredom maybe. The trees, the water, the cloudy skies, reminded her of Seattle— where she’d spent just enough time to make the mistake that had her on the run now.

Victor Allan. What the hell had she been thinking?
No answer to that one.

She glanced at the seat beside her, patted the rust-colored carpetbag, and took a breath. At least she still had the journal. Maybe, when she had time to think clearly, she’d figure out a way of using it to protect her—and Cornie. God, she couldn’t stand it if anything happened to Cornie because of her past, and her stupid, self-serving choices. Thinking about it made her crumble inside, so she shook the thought away. Cornie was with April. Cornie was safe—and somehow, Phylly Worth would get herself and everyone she loved out of this unholy mess.

Not for the first time she questioned her crazy decision to come here. Even if Noah was still single, there was no guarantee he’d be filled with delight seeing an aging showgirl on his doorstep. Calling would have been a good thing.

Calling would have given him a chance to say no.

Uh-uh. Crazy or not, she’d committed herself to going to him, and that’s what she was going to do. One thing she’d found out, the man lived miles past nowhere—exactly the kind of address she needed right now.

To get there, she was heading to a place called Horseshoe Bay to catch a ferry, instead of stepping up to the bar at the Horseshoe Club in Vegas, much more her style.

According to the kid at the last gas station, she had another fifteen to twenty minutes of driving, and she’d be at the ferry. When she got there, she was going to call April, tell her she was okay—and for Cornie not to worry. She really wanted to talk to Cornie, but knowing her kid, she’d just get mad—or worse, insist on coming along. That girl was a dog with a bone when she set her mind to something, and Phylly wasn’t up for the fight. For now it was best any talking that needed to be done, be done through April. Besides, Cornie would ask nonstop questions; questions Phylly wasn’t prepared to answer. Yes, her being here and Cornie being as far away from her as possible right now was the best thing.

Hell, all she needed was Cornie along when she knocked on Noah Bristol’s door. That kind of drama would give the man a heart attack.

But before she called April she’d call Rusty, and—

A Starbucks. Thank God.

She glanced at her watch; she had time. She’d get a
real
coffee and call Rusty. Damned irritating using payphones because she’d been too rushed to remember to grab her cell charger. Probably just as well she didn’t have it, because by now Cornie would be calling every fifteen minutes.