Spin (22 page)

I put my mouth directly over his and
whispered, “Fuck yeah,” and started tugging up my dress.

“Fuck yeah,” he agreed and started helping.
He picked me up and sort of carry-dragged me into the bedroom.

“So, anything at all?” I asked, panting as
we tore each other’s clothes off, because I wanted to hear him say
it, over and over and over again. “I could do anything?”

“Anything,” he agreed as I pulled down on
the waistband of his jeans. “What you really like is food.”

“I’ve thought of it sometimes,” I admitted
as we tugged my dress off together. In the darkness of the past,
alone, unseen, I’d thought about it. Dreamed about it. Discarded
it.

“So do it,” he urged, tearing the dress over
my head. He paused when he looked down. “Where are your shoes?”

“On the Sandler-Rosses’ front yard. I threw
them out the window when I drove away.”

He started laughing and pushed me back on
the bed. “Do it, Janey.” It sounded sexual and possessive and
freeing, and it made me hotter than anything else he’d ever done or
said. “Do whatever you want.”

“I can do that,” I whispered as I pulled him
down on top of me.

“You can do anything,” he said back, pushing
my knees apart. “I’m right here if you need me.”

His smile came down to kiss my smile, and it
was the best kiss I ever was a part of, bar none.

I WOKE THE next morning with a wavy, surreal feeling,
a combination of spring-like hope, belly-deep fear, and a mild
hangover.

I’d texted Savannah last night, told her to
hold on and I’d call her in the morning. So that’s what I did.

Finn stayed home with me too. As I hit 3 to
speed-dial Savannah, I watched him through the window, down in the
meadow, Max at his side, doing something with the fences.

“Are you okay? What should I do?” was the
first thing Savannah said, before she knew anything.

I explained the whole story, and she cursed
Peter J. up one county and down another. I was impressed. Then,
after this highly validating experience, we talked cold, hard
decisions, starting with the clients who’d fired us. Savannah was
all in favor of hunting them down and trapping them like the prey
they were, but I shook my head.

“Let them go,” I told her.

“Let them go! You worked to get these
clients. You sacrificed hours of good conversation and sanity to
get these clients, Mac. You’re just giving them up?”

“Yeah.” I looked out the window at Finn, who
was whacking away at brambles along the tree line where he wanted a
paddock. He wanted horses. I was scared of horses. This was kind of
exciting.

Savannah said, “They don’t know what they’re
missing,” and I sat up straight.

“Listen, Savannah. I think I’m out. For
good.”

“What?”

“I think I’m done driving other people’s
cars.”

Smart Savannah was quiet for a long minute.
I waited. I was learning. Then she sighed. “Okay. I think I knew
that was coming.” She drank a sip of something. “I need to meet
this Finn guy. He must be something.”


“Oh, he’s something.”

We were quiet together a minute. It was a
weird moment, because until now I hadn’t really realized this meant
I wouldn’t be working with Savannah anymore. But then, she was so
good, I hardly worked with her at all anymore anyhow. We each had
our own clients; I brought them in, farmed out a lot of them to
her, and kept the big ones for myself.

It was time for her to have the big
ones.

“So, you want to buy me out?” I said.

I heard a tiny sound, like a noisy sip. Or a
gulp. Or a sob. “Sure.”

I leaned back and closed my eyes. “A
buck.”

“Jane.”

“Two.”

“Can I come see you?”

“Please.”

“Make me one of your drinks. I’m on my
way.”

Savannah flew into Reno, and we picked her
up. We were back at Finn’s place by evening, and I got her drunk as
a skunk. Finn got a little drunk too. He liked Savannah. She liked
him, a lot. It was a little scary. And we talked. A lot. We agreed
on a price for the buyout. We tweaked some of my drink recipes for
fun; Savannah had the tongue and nose to detect the subtle
differences I was going for when I tried one mint leaf versus two,
or papaya instead of prickly pear. And, as always with Savannah,
whatever I was working on got ever so slightly and ever so much
better.

We hugged for about an hour when she left
the next morning. She didn’t want a ride to the airport; neither of
us did long good-byes. So we said good-bye in the doorway, and Finn
called a cab and paid for it. I have no idea how much it cost, but
we were out in bum-truck-nowhere, so I knew it was a lot.

I hugged him afterward, partly in gratitude,
partly because I was crying and didn’t want him to see.

“We handled over a thousand events
together,” I said as he guided me inside. “And now I’ll never see
her again.”

“Janey,” he said, calmly reinjecting sanity,
“you’ll see her in a week. She’s coming back to handle the Sandler
job next weekend.”

Well, that was true. Less dramatic, but
true. I’d called Olivia and given her Savannah’s number, and
explained Savannah was still available to them and would handle all
the outstanding problems and chaos that still had to be herded into
submission.

Olivia accepted on behalf of her parents.
I’m pretty sure they hadn’t preapproved that message, but no way
was I going to stop Olivia from taking a stand. Especially when it
benefitted Savannah. I was just disappointed I couldn’t hide in the
bushes and watch when she told them.

Also, I was greatly looking forward to the
moment when Savannah met Mr. Peter J.

Olivia cried a little before we hung up. I
didn’t mention anything about what her dad had done, but maybe she
knew. I cried a little too, because I felt so good, and Olivia was
so steamrollable, and there was nothing I could do about it. Not in
her life, anyhow. Only my own.

Afterwards, I let Finn sit me at the counter
and get me a lemon water. “Now what?” I said, sort of rhetorically.
Sort of not.

Morning sun poured through the open windows.
The air smelled good, like river and grass and bright new wood from
the construction site. The sky was crushingly blue.

“Now you have some decisions to make,” Finn
said.

“Right. I mean, things are pretty wide
open,” I said. Wide open in a wide-open scary way. “If DC’s
out….”

He watched me. “DC is out, right?”

I nodded slowly, and said even more slowly,
“It is a good place to be if you’re an event planner.”

He nodded too, then said, “I heard snakes
drop out of the trees in DC.”

I stared. “What?”

“Yep. Black rat snakes, right out of the
trees. I don’t think they’re poisonous or anything.” He looked at
me like he wasn’t sure on that.

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s a terrible rumor
designed to prevent women from entering our capitol.”

He shook his head solemnly. “Nope.”

I leaned forward. “Right out of the
trees?”

He mimed something coming down from the sky,
plop
onto the kitchen counter.

I reared back and shivered. “Okay, well, now
that I know about the snakes, DC is most definitely out.”

A side of his mouth went up. He came a step
closer and leaned his hip against the counter. “I thought you might
want to know.”

I reached for him. “I won’t go there, ever,
not even if I get elected to something.”

“You’d have to run first.” He put his arm
around my waist, then paused and looked down at me. “You’re not
considering running for office, are you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve
considered
it so much as I haven’t ruled it out yet.”

He shook his head. “They’ll never know what
hit them.”

I hadn’t ruled anything out, except ever
leaving Finn again. But he didn’t know that yet. “So, I guess I
have to give up the hotel,” I said slyly.

He interlaced his fingers at the small of my
back. “I hate that hotel.”

I laughed.

His blue eyes were clear on mine. “Come
here, Janey. Be with me.”

“How long do you want me?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

A fresh, cool wave rose up in me. A stupid
smile pulled at my mouth. I cleared my throat in a businesslike
manner. “I have to go back, of course, to clean up my affairs, and
I have a few clients outstanding that I’d like to see in
person.”

“Sure. But you’re coming back.” He didn’t
phrase it like a question. I didn’t answer it like one.

“I’m coming back.”

“Your apartment?” he asked.

“Oh.” I thought of my glossy apartment. “The
lease is up at the end of next month.”

That made us both pause.

I cleared my throat. “Well, I guess I better
book a flight.”

“I can drive you. It’s only a little over
three hours.”

“And back.”

“And back.” His eyes never left mine.

“I have the rental car,” I reminded him.

“I’ll find someone take it for you.”

I laughed a little. “Finn, the airport is an
hour away.”

“We go to Reno all the time, to ship and
receive. I’ll send two guys, and one can drive your car. Or,” he
added, smiling like he’d just had a good idea, “maybe Beck can just
grab the Express shuttle back.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Poor Beck.”

“He deserves it.”

“Don’t you like him?”

“Love him like a brother. When you do want
to leave?”

“I don’t know,” I said, sort of stupidly. I
wasn’t used to being taken care of. “I guess we could skip the heat
of the day and traffic, and drive out tonight?”

He nodded. “Okay. Tonight. That leaves us
the whole day here.”

“The whole day,” I echoed. I was feeling a
little feverish at this point. Hot and fluttery and light-headed,
with little flushes running over my body. “Okay,” I said, exhaling.
“Yeah.”

He grinned. “Fuck yeah.”

So that’s what I would do, for now. Come
here. Be with Finn. Breathe. Figure it out. If I just kept
following this feeling, who knows where it would lead me?

“Okay,” I said firmly, standing up to sling
my arms over his shoulders. “If you can handle a struggling,
unemployed event planner, I can handle a struggling pawnshop
owner.”

“Co-owner,” he corrected, sliding one hand
up my ribs until his fingers brushed the underside of my
breast.

“Co-owner,” I agreed, kissing his neck. I
shifted to let him get at my body better.

“And we’re not struggling,” he said.

I stopped the kissing. “Hm?”

“We netted two million dollars last year.”
He slid his other hand down to my ass and pulled me up against him
hard.

I stared. “You
what
?”

“Netted two mil.”

I felt absolutely stunned by this piece of
information. My jaw sagged. He grinned, but because he was a good
man, he didn’t gloat. He just said, “Want to go see my river,
babe?”

So he took me down to his river. We walked
through the meadow, Max at our side. The drying grasses in the
meadow were hot and fragrant, and in a fit of romantic frenzy, I
asked Finn to lay me down beside his river and make love to me.

He pointed out there were a lot of sticks
and pinecones and a general expanse of dirt, and that maybe I
should have thought of this while we were back at the house and
could have brought a blanket with us instead of a towel.

Nevertheless, he was ready to fight the good
fight, but I declined.

Instead, I sat on the boulder on the river
side of the little spit of earth between the swimming area and the
main river, while Max romped from swimming hole to river to bank
and back again. I dabbled my feet in the water and watched Finn
bypass the log bridge to swim across, then haul himself out on the
far shore, which gave me a great opportunity to enjoy his wet, hard
body, glistening with wetness. Then he clambered up the cliff and
swung off a rope tied there, and splashed down into the river like
a crazy person.

He swam over to me, his body moving
powerfully through the water. I could see his feet kick under the
surface of the slow-moving river. “You should come in.”

I had no intention of going in. “Is it
cold?”

“Yep.”

I shook my head.

“You scared of cold water too?”

My jaw dropped. “Scared of cold water?” That
was ridiculous. I wasn’t scared of cold water. I was scared of
rivers.

He came a little closer and his feet touched
bottom. He shook his head and drops of water sprayed through the
sunlight; then he leaned his stomach against the boulder and looked
up at me. His eyes were startlingly blue in the bright sun. “It
means we’d need to make a list of all the things you’re scared of
to keep them straight.”

I arched my eyebrows. “Is that so?”