The ringing went on and on. After she counted twenty, she snatched up the receiver and yelled, "What!" If David thought he could harass her like this, see what he thought when she called him at two in the morning. Brothers! It was Shelley. "Well, you've done it now," was her sisterly opening shot.
Jaine rubbed between her eyebrows; a definite headache was forming. After the exchange with David, she waited to see where this one was going.
"I won't be able to hold up my head in church."
"Really? Oh, Shelley, I'm so sorry," Jaine said sweetly. "I didn't realize you have the dreaded Limp Neck disease. When were you diagnosed?"
"You are such a show-off. You never think of anyone but yourself. Did it ever cross your mind, just once, how something like this would affect me, or the children? Stefanie is mortified. All her friends know you're her aunt – "
"How do they know? I've never met her friends." Shelley paused. "I suppose Stefanie told them."
"She's so mortified she owned up to the relation? Strange."
"Strange or not," Shelley said, regrouping, "that's a disgusting thing for you to put out there in public." Swiftly Jaine mentally reviewed Marci's television spot. It hadn't been that specific. "I didn't think Marci was that bad."
"Marci? What are you talking about?"
"The spot on television. Just now."
"Oh. You mean it's on television, too?" Shelley asked in rising horror. "Oh, no!"
"If you didn't see it on television, what are you talking about?"
"That thing on the Internet! Stefanie got it from there." The Internet? Her headache exploded into full bloom. One of the geeks at work had probably posted the newsletter article, in its entirety. Fourteen-year-old Stefanie had indeed had an education.
"I didn't put it on the Internet," she said tiredly. "Someone at work must have."
"Regardless of who did it, you're behind that… that list even existing!"
Suddenly Jaine was fed up past the gills; she felt as if she had been walking a tightrope for several days now, she was stressed to the max, and the people who should be most concerned and supportive were giving her hell. She couldn't take any more, and she couldn't even think of anything scathing to say. "You know," she said quietly, interrupting Shelley's harangue, "I'm tired of the way you and David automatically assume I'm to blame without even asking me how this whole thing happened. He's mad at me about the car and you're mad at me about the cat, so you attack without asking if I'm okay with all this attention about the list, which if you thought for one second, you'd know I'm not okay with it at all. I just told David to kiss my ass, and you know what, Shelley? You can kiss my ass, too." With that, she hung up on yet another sibling. Thank God, there weren't any more. "That was me at my peacemaking, mediating best," she said to BooBoo, then had to blink away an uncharacteristic dampness in the eyes.
The phone rang again. She turned it off. The numbers in the message window on the answering machine said she had way too many messages. She deleted them without listening to any of them and went to the bedroom to get out of her work clothes. BooBoo padded in her wake. The prospect of getting any comfort from BooBoo was dubious, but she picked him up anyway and rubbed her chin against the top of his head. He tolerated the caress for a minute – after all, she wasn't doing the good stuff, scratching behind his ears – then wiggled free and jumped lightly to the floor.
She was too tense and depressed to sit down and relax, or even eat. Washing the car would burn off some energy, she thought, and quickly changed into shorts and a T-shirt. The Viper wasn't very dirty – they hadn't had any rain in over two weeks – but she liked it to gleam. All that washing and polishing, besides burning off stress, was satisfying to her soul. She definitely needed some soul- satisfying right now.
She fumed as she collected the things she would need to make the Viper beautiful. It would serve Shelley right if Jaine took BooBoo over there and left him to destroy her cushions; since Shelley had new furniture – it seemed she always had new furniture – she likely wouldn't be as sanguine as Jaine about losing cushion stuffing. The only thing that kept her from transferring BooBoo was the fact that their mom had entrusted her beloved cat to her custody, not Shelley's.
As for David – well, it was pretty much the same situation. She would have transferred Dad's car to David's garage except for the fact her dad had asked her to take care of it, and if anything happened to it while it was in David's custody, she would feel doubly responsible. Any way she looked at it, she was stuck. After gathering her chamois cloths, pail, special car-washing soap that wouldn't make the paint job lose its luster, wax, and window cleaner, she let BooBoo out onto the kitchen porch so he could watch the proceedings. Since cats didn't like water, she didn't think he'd be very interested, but she wanted the company. He settled in a tiny patch of late afternoon sunshine and promptly took a kitty nap.
The driveway next door was bereft of dented brown Pontiac, so she didn't have to worry about accidentally spraying the thing and arousing Sam's ire, though in her opinion, a good wash job wouldn't hurt it. Probably wouldn't help much, either – it was too far gone for such surface beautifying to make much difference – but a dirty car offended her. Sam's car offended her a lot. She settled down to industriously washing and rinsing, one section at a time, so the soap didn't have time to dry and cause spots. This particular soap wasn't supposed to spot, but she didn't trust it. Her dad had taught her to wash a car this way, and she had never found a better method. "Hey."
"Shit!" she shrieked, jumping a foot in the air and dropping her soapy cloth. Her heart nearly exploded out of her chest. She whirled, water hose in hand.
Sam jumped back as water sprayed across his legs. "Watch what the hell you're doing," he snapped. Jaine was instantly incensed. "Okay," she said agreeably, and let him have it full in the face.
He yelped and dodged to the side. She stood braced, water hose in hand, watching as he rubbed a hand across his dripping face. The first water attack, accidental as it had been, had wet his jeans from the knees down. The second one had pretty much taken care of his T-shirt. The front of it was soaking wet, sticking to his skin like plaster. She tried not to notice the hard planes of his chest. They faced each other like gunfighters, separated by no more than ten feet. "Are you fucking crazy?" he half- shouted.
She let him have it again. She sprayed with a vengeance, chasing him with the stream of water as he tried to dodge and dance out of its way.
"Don't tell me I'm crazy!" she shouted, putting her finger over the nozzle to narrow the opening and thus get more force, and distance. "I've had it with people blaming me for everything!" She got him in the face again. "I'm so damn sick of you, and Shelley, and David, and everyone at work, and all the stupid reporters, and BooBoo shredding my cushions! I'm fed up, do you hear?"
He abruptly switched tactics, from evade to attack. He came in low, like a linebacker, not trying to evade the blast of water she aimed at him. About half a second too late, she tried to dodge to the side. His shoulder crashed into her midriff, the impact driving her back against the Viper. Quick as a snake striking, he snatched the water hose from her grip. She lunged for the hose, and he wrestled her back into place, pinning her to the Viper with his weight.
They were both breathing hard. He was soaking wet from head to toe, water leaching out of his clothes into hers until she was almost as wet as he. She glared up at him, and he glared down at her, their noses only a few inches apart.
Water was clinging to his lashes. "You sprayed me," he accused, as if he couldn't believe she had done such a thing.
"You scared me," she accused in return. "It was an accident."
"That was when you sprayed me the first time. You did it on purpose the second time."
She nodded.
"And you said 'shit' and 'damn.' You owe me fifty cents."
"I'm putting in a new rule. You can't incite me to riot, then fine me for rioting."
"You're welshing on me?" he asked in disbelief. "You bet. It's all your fault."
"How's that?"
"You deliberately scared me, and don't try to deny it. That makes the first word your fault." She gave an experimental wiggle, trying to slide out from under the pressure of his weight. Damn, he was heavy, and about as unyielding as the sheet metal behind her.
He squelched her escape attempt by settling even more heavily against her. Water from his clothes dripped down her legs.
"What about the second one?"
"You said f – " She caught herself. "My two words added together aren't nearly as bad as your one word."
"What, they have a points system now?"
She gave him a withering look. "The point is, I wouldn't have said either word if (a) you hadn't scared me and (b) you hadn't cussed at me first."
"If we're assigning blame here, I wouldn't have cussed if you hadn't sprayed me."
"And I wouldn't have sprayed you if you hadn't scared me. See, I told you it was all your fault," she said triumphantly, tilting her chin at him.
He took a deep breath. The movement of his chest flattened her breasts even more than they already were, making her abruptly aware of her nipples. Her nipples were acutely aware of him. Uh-oh. Her eyes widened in sudden alarm.
He was looking down at her with an unreadable expression. "Let me go," she said, more nervous than she cared to reveal.
"No."
"No!" she repeated. "You can't say no. It's against the law to hold me against my will."
"I'm not holding you against your will; I'm holding you against your car."
"By force!"
He shrugged an admission. He didn't seem very alarmed at the prospect of violating any laws against manhandling neighbors.
"Let me go," she said again.
"I can't."
She eyed him suspiciously. "Why not?" Actually, she was afraid she knew why not. "Why not" had been growing in his wet jeans for a few minutes now. She was doing her dead level best to ignore it, and from the waist up – except for her rebellious nipples – she was mostly succeeding. From the waist down, she was an abject failure. "Because I'm going to do something I'll regret." He shook his head, as if he didn't understand it himself. "I still don't have a whip and chair, but what the hell, I'll risk it."
"Wait," she squeaked, but it was too late.
His dark head dipped.
The late afternoon spun away. From somewhere up the street she heard a child shriek with laughter. A car drove by. The faint sound of hedge clippers drifted to her ears. All of that seemed very far away and disconnected from reality. What was real was Sam's mouth on hers, his tongue tangling with hers, the warm male scent of his body in her nostrils and filling her lungs. And his taste – oh, his taste. He tasted like chocolate, as if he had just eaten a Hershey bar. She wanted to devour him. She realized she was clutching fistfuls of wet cotton fabric. One at a time, without breaking the kiss, he peeled her hands off his shirt and tucked them around his neck, allowing him to settle more completely against her, from knee to shoulder.
How could just a kiss arouse her so totally? But it wasn't just a kiss; he used his entire body, rubbing his chest against her nipples until the friction made them stand out, hard and aching, moving the bulge of his erection against her stomach with a slow, subtle rhythm that was nevertheless as powerful as a sea surge.
Jaine heard the wild, smothered sound that erupted from her throat, and she tried to climb him, tried to get high enough to position that bulge where it would do the most good. She was burning hot, dying with heat, half-mad from the sudden onslaught of sexual need and frustration. He was still holding the water hose in one hand. He locked both arms around her and lifted her the few inches needed. The stream of water arced wildly, splattering BooBoo and making him jump up with an outraged hiss, then splashing against the car and wetting them even more. She didn't care. His tongue was in her mouth, and her legs were wrapped around his hips and that bulge was right where she wanted it.
He moved – another of those subtle, rolling thrusts – and she damn near climaxed right there. Her nails bit into his back, and she made a guttural sound, arching in his arms. He tore his mouth free from hers. He was panting, the expression in his eyes hot and wild. "Let's go inside," he said, the words so low and rough they were almost unintelligible, not much more than a growl. "No," she moaned. "Don't stop!" Oh, God, she was close, so close. She arched against him again.
"Jesus Christ!" He closed his eyes, his expression savage with lust barely restrained. "Jaine, I can't fuck you out here. We have to go inside."
Fuck? Inside?
Oh my God, she was about to do it with him and she wasn't on the pill yet!
"Wait!" she yelled in panic, pushing against his shoulders, uncoiling her legs from around his hips and kicking wildly. "Stop! Let me go!"
"Stop?" he said in outraged disbelief. "You said 'don't stop' just a second ago."
"I changed my mind." She was still pushing on his shoulders. She was still accomplishing exactly nothing. "You can't change your mind!" He sounded desperate now.
"Yes, I can."