Perfect Summer (25 page)

His stomach rumbled, giving him a welcome reason to look away. “Sorry.”

“You’ve more than earned a hearty breakfast.” Summer’s hand dropped, and she stepped back. She glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Technically, it’s almost lunch, but who cares?”

Clint took a deep breath as his eyes flickered toward the front door. The media was there, pressing in on him.

“What should we do about the front yard press conference?” Clint's palms were starting to sweat. He turned his attention on her. Focus on her and to hell with the media. She was his priority.

She shrugged. “Let them wait. They've been there a while already, so what’s another hour going to hurt?”

She chewed on her lower lip.

God, that drove him crazy.

“I know how much the endorsement deal means to you. If you need to pretend that we’re nothing but friends, I understand. Last chance.”

What was he missing?

“We passed friendship about”—he checked his watch—“fourteen hours ago.”

“Being seen with me will make you fodder for late-night comics. Jay Leno must be drooling.” She yawned and opened the white, side-by-side refrigerator, pulled out a carton of eggs and a package of bacon, and hip bumped the door closed.

Didn’t she understand that the media was ruthless? And that her life was about to become public…very public?

“I'm not worried about me. I'm worried about you.” He really didn’t care what happened to him—that was a first. He straightened to his full height of six two. He was standing up for her even if she didn’t know she needed a champion. Putting himself between her and the media was the only way he could be her hero.

Summer pulled a cast-iron pan out of the cabinet next to the stove, ripped open the bacon, and dropped several pieces in the pan. “Why?”

“I'm used to the attention, but you're a rookie.” Clint pulled the dishwasher open. It was full of clean dishes. If Jacky boy could do the dishes, so could he. In fact, he’d be the best damn dish-doer in the world. Distraction was the best way not to think about all those cameras waiting for him.

“Bacon and eggs okay with you? I know you love pancakes, but I’m out of syrup.” Summer cracked an egg on the side of the pan and dumped the innards next to the frying bacon.

“I can't believe you're making me breakfast…finally. Can I help?” He grinned like an idiot. They were cooking together. It was nice.

She turned a knob on the stove, and the blue fire under the pan flickered higher. “There may be another way with the press.”

“What?” He unloaded the plates. After opening several cabinets, he found the one with the plates and stacked his handful on top.

Summer cracked another egg.

Clint inhaled deeply. The kitchen smelled like a diner. It was homey, doing kitchen stuff with her. Plus, he’d scored two homemade meals in less than twenty-four hours—the Super Bowl was starting to seem like sloppy seconds.

“I’m listening.” He pulled out the clean silverware, opened a couple of drawers until he found the right one, and put away the forks and knives. “What do you have in mind?”

“The unexpected. What if we didn’t hide from the media?”

Sweat broke out on his upper lip. “What do you mean?”

He couldn’t talk to reporters on the fly. He needed a speech, talking points, and a couple hours of meditation.

“Food. Instead of confirming or denying a relationship, we say nothing and feed them homemade cinnamon rolls.” She flipped the bacon. “I did my student teaching at a private school that only took ADD kids. We had this one who talked all of the time. After trying everything I could think of to keep him quiet, I handed him a package of bubble gum. He popped in a couple of pieces. Low and behold, silence. He was too busy chewing to talk.”

“I like the way you’re thinking.” The adrenaline pounding through his system backed off, and he focused on unloading the dishwasher. The wineglasses were next. With one in each hand, he lifted them out and found the right shelf.

“Plus, it’s kind of hard to be snotty to the people feeding you.” Summer reached around him and grabbed a plate out of the cabinet. “You could fire up your espresso machine. We’ll hype them up on caffeine and sugar and send them on their way.”

“Okay.” He grabbed the pots. “As soon as I finish this, I’ll get started.”

Life was better with a plan. He always had a plan. Leave it to Summer to come up with something practical but off-the-wall.

“Wait.” Every plan had a hitch, and the adrenaline started up again. “Where do we get the cinnamon rolls?”

“My freezer. Baking is a hobby.” She patted her stomach. “Body by cinnamon roll.”

Clint shook his head. Self-deprecation was so second nature to her that she didn’t even notice. Yep, he’d track down everyone who’d ever bullied her and use their heads for punting practice. “Do I have baked goods to thank for those?”

He traced her cleavage.

“One-track mind.” She rolled her eyes.

He stepped behind her, snaked his arms around her, and settled a hand over each breast. “I know lots of women who would kill for these.”

“Grateful plastic surgeons are rubbing their hands in greedy anticipation.”

“Seriously, your chest jiggles.” Clint jiggled them. “They’re fantastic.”

Didn’t she know how rare it was to see, much less feel, real breasts? Especially perfect ones like hers.

Summer went very still. “I take it the women you normally sleep with don’t jiggle...anywhere?”

“No, ma’am.” He kissed the back of her neck. “They’re as lean as I am.”

Yuck. He shivered.

“I just decided to only date jiggly women from now on.” He kissed her ear. She was warm and soft all over. “I love the way you feel against me.”

She relaxed against him, and he held her. They rocked from side to side. It was peaceful. Summer was his calm before the storm. She made everything perfect.

Summer couldn't quite get a handle on Clint. It was nice of him to spend the whole night instead of rushing out immediately after sex, but he was taking too much on himself. She was a big girl. She laughed at her own joke as she pulled the last pan of cinnamon rolls out of the oven and set it on the stovetop to cool. She could take care of herself.

And sex with him—
wow
was the only word that did it justice. Between last night and this morning, they'd done it five times. Some parts were a bit tender, but it was worth it. Walking might be hard, but smiling was easy.

He stepped beside her and slipped an arm around her. “That's one satisfied smile you're wearing. Care to share? I could use something to take my mind off the impending press confrontation.”

He was acknowledging his fear. It was good he felt comfortable enough with her to talk about it. While he sounded stressed, he wasn’t panicked. Progress.

She reached into the drawer on her left and pulled out a spreading knife. “I was just thinking about the fact that we've had sex five times—”

“Six. The shower counts.”

“Oh, yeah.” She nodded. “Six times. That's more than Jack and I ever did it total, the whole time we were together.”

Clint put his hands over his ears. “I don’t like to think of you with anyone else. In fact, I'd be happy to never hear of Jack again.”

“Why?” She couldn't help but think of Jack. He was her only frame of reference.

Clint dropped his hands. “Jealousy wasn’t something I suffered from…until you.”

“What's your record for number of times in a twenty-four hour period?” Summer slathered cream cheese icing on the cinnamon rolls. It wasn’t that she wanted to know how she compared to his other bed partners, it was just that...well, she wanted to know how she compared to his other lovers.

“I don't know.” He swished a fingertip through the frosting and licked it. “Yum.”

“Of course you know. Why won't you tell me?” Summer glanced at him.

Was his face turning red?

“Are you blushing?” She did her best not to smile.

“No.” He hung his head.

“Then tell me.”

“Eleven.” He shook his head. “I can't believe I just admitted that.”

“All with the same woman?” Summer continued smoothing icing on cinnamon rolls. Because her interest was only curiosity, she could look at his sex life objectively. Clint was an excellent lover, had been with lots of women, and when he was done with Summer, he’d resume his conquest of the fairer sex. She wasn’t destined to be his any more than he was destined to be hers. She stabbed the spreading knife into the frosting and reloaded it.

“No.” His voice cracked, so he cleared it. “Three.”

“At the same time?” Did they play rock, paper, scissors to decide who went first?

“Yes.” He combed his finger through his hair. “Can we talk about something else…please?”

“No, this is interesting.” Summer tried to picture it in her mind, but the mechanics were a little fuzzy. “How exactly does a ménage à…quatre work? Ménage à trios sounds better.”

He swallowed a couple of times and looked like he was choosing his words very carefully. “Ever heard the phrase
two’s company and three’s a crowd
? Well, it was more like three’s company and four’s a crowd. I was the odd man out. I learned two very important lessons that day; first, women who are into that sort of thing like girls much better than they like boys, and second, I’m a one-woman kind of guy.”

“Both valuable pieces of information. Still, eleven is the number to beat. Six more times”—she glanced at the clock on the microwave—“in the next ten hours to break your record.”

“Somebody has a competitive streak.”

“I guess I do.” Summer sucked on her lower lip. That was certainly news coming from the girl who was always picked last at sports and considered chewing gum as aerobic exercise.

“I love when you do the lip thing.” His eyes locked onto her mouth. “I don’t suppose you’d let me watch you eat a Popsicle…or an ice cream cone?”

“Maybe later.” Summer dipped her finger in the icing, brought it to her lips, and sucked on her finger.

If he had been a puppy, there would have been drool running down his chin.

“We could start on lucky number seven right now.” Clint bent down and ran his tongue along her bottom lip. He straightened and pulled a condom out of his back pocket. “I thought I should keep these handy.

“Smart and pretty to look at. Your talents are boundless.” Summer grabbed it, ripped it open, and pulled it out with her teeth.

“Jesus, you’re not going to put it on with your mouth again?” He sounded like a kid actually watching Santa appear in the fireplace.

“For a man who’s had a lot of experience, you seem shocked by things that aren’t that shocking.”

Something caught Clint’s eye, and he glanced over Summer’s left shoulder out the window.

“Holy shit.” He jerked back as his face twisted in outrage. “What the hell is he doing in your backyard?”

***

Clint needed to protect Summer. He pushed her behind him, but not before she glimpsed the man with a camera stepping gingerly into the rosemary hedge running under her kitchen window. She spit out the condom. The helpless look on her face made him want to grab the reporter and start pounding.

“Don’t be scared.” Clint did his best to shield her from view. “I’ll take care of everything.”

He had no idea how, but damn it, he needed to protect her. She was too innocent to know how her life was about to change. Here she was helping him, and he’d thrown her to the wolves.

How much had the photographer seen? Summer’s life was now irrevocably changed and all because Clint hadn’t planned ahead. Nothing she did would ever be private again.

Clint went from turned-on to pissed-off in nothing flat.

Summer’s sexy mouth turned down in a frown. “I guess seven’s going to have to wait.” Grabbing the cordless off the charger, her fingers zoomed over the keys.

“Who are you calling?” They had to be smart about this. Clint took a deep breath.

His first impulse was to run outside and remind the photographer that this was Texas and trespassing was settled with nothing smaller than a forty caliber, but Summer probably didn't have a gun.

Summer smiled. “Security.”

“Hell...o?” said a sleepy male voice.

“There's a peeping Tom in my backyard. Can you send El Diablo over?” She put her hand over the receiver. “Molly’s cat. Chuck’s sister. Thanks.” She pushed a button on the cordless and returned it to the charger.

“Cat?” Clint shot her a look. What was the plan? Have the animal run figure-eights between the photographer’s legs, tripping him, and then extinguish his life force in one suffocating lick?

“He's a pit bull in the body of a Persian.” Summer grinned.

“I can't wait.” Not only was this a bad idea, but it wasn't going to work. Clint liked the beat-the-photographer-into-a-bloody-spot-on-the-pavement idea much better.

Summer grabbed a bowl from the cabinet, filled it with whipping cream from the carton in the refrigerator door, and set the bowl on the counter. “Payment for services rendered.”

Strange men walked through her yard so often that she and the cat had an agreement? “Okay.”

“El Diablo doesn't kill for free.”

Of course.

“Where did your neighbors get a mercenary-for-hire attack cat?” It wasn’t that he didn't believe in a cat’s ability to do harm, but coughing up a hairball wouldn’t do anything but gross out the paparazzi.

“Town Lake Animal Shelter. It’s a no-kill shelter, even though sometimes it's justifiable homicide.”

A loud screech—part cat, part serial killer—tore through the sunny morning.

“What the hell?” Clint turned to the window.

The photographer hitched to the left, and then he was down. A lone hand, still attached at the arm, trailed down the window screen as the man succumbed to the screeching animal.

Clint opened the pantry door. Cream wasn’t good enough. A hard day’s work called for tuna. Not finding any, he backed out.

“Now, I’ll step in and save the poor man from the beat-down he so richly deserves.” Summer picked up the cream and started for the back door. She looked back at Clint. “It’s best if you stay inside and away from the window.”