Spin (4 page)

“What do you say, Jane?”

My heart hammered. “Yes,” I said.

What had I just said?

He turned the key in his ignition. “Follow
me.”

My head felt spinny. “To where?”

“It depends on what you want to do.” He
paused. “You hungry?”

“No.”

“Thirsty?
The cars in front of us began to
move. “No.” Oh boy, I was in trouble now.

I could feel him watching me. “Want to see
my place?”

Now we both knew very well what he was
offering. It was time to inject some reality into this moment.

So I took a deep breath and said,
“Absolutely.” Because if I was going to be bad, I was going to be
very, very bad.

He grinned as he shoved on the gearstick and
put his truck into first. “Follow me, beautiful.”

And I did feel beautiful, gorgeous and dizzy
and reckless. This was
much
better than taking off my bra.
Much better than anything I’d done the last few years of my life.
Maybe the last five years.

Okay, maybe seven.

Okay, eleven. And about seventy-two
days.

I gestured wildly at the person driving the
car behind Finn, and he let me in. I could have kissed him but
settled for a huge wave, and slid my car in behind Finn’s battered
red truck.

Screw the maps. For tonight.

~ Finn ~

SCREW IT.

I glanced in my rearview as I put on my turn
signal. She was still there, a ways behind me, long, dark hair,
high cheekbones, dirty sexy smile, great laugh. Bringing her here
was probably a mistake, but screw it. I’d made a lot of mistakes in
my life. Let Janey Mac be one of them.

Janey Mac, with her socialite mother—or as
much -ite as Dodge Run got—and her drunkard but politically
powerful father had been the leader of everything in Dodge Run,
from cheers to civic causes to coat drives. She’d been a human
motor of getting shit done, always smiling, always bright.
Perky.

Annoying.

Except for that night down by the river.

I’d graduated the year before her and was
only at the town’s annual celebration to escort a graduating niece
who was known to cut a little too loose. I’d ambled down to the
dark river and the dynamo of Janey MacInnee burst out on me,
bitching about school and the town, sick of being perfect and going
nowhere with it.

She blinked when I called her on it. Then
she’d smiled. Then she pushed up on her red-painted toes and kissed
me, and I thought my body would explode.

For the second time.

Eleven years later, I could still feel the
reverberations.

If all she needed to light her fire was a
reminder that people would drag you down if you let them, I could
educate her all day long.

I swung onto the long, dusty lane that led
to my house and very few others. Destiny Falls was a small town
that bordered several very rich ones, and my place was on the
outskirts. Only a few folks lived here, on twenty- to fifty-acre
properties that sloped down to the
creek-that-turned-into-a-crystal-clean river. At least when there
was rain.

I forced myself to go slow on the dusty,
bumpy road. Which was probably a good metaphor for the evening
ahead.
Slow down.

I pulled up in front of the house. It was a
half-done masterpiece. Built a hundred years ago in an old-style
barn raising. In recent years, I’d started renovations from the
ground up, expanding the footprint and framing out an additional
three thousand feet of house with high, arching ceilings. One day
it would be a timber cathedral. Truly awesome. After I poured in a
million dollars cash and a shitload of hard work. But it was mine,
and it was worth it.

And it would take a while.

Probably another good metaphor for the
night.

I killed the motor and climbed out just as
she pulled up.

Today, I was her fling. Just like that night
by the river.

I’d take it. Because I remembered her
hard.

I got out of my truck and waited. I’d been
waiting a long time.

A small cloud of dust rose up around her
low-slung car like a cartoon as she killed the engine and climbed
out. She shaded her eyes against the six o’clock sun staring her in
the face and said, “Hi,” real soft.

My cock got hard. “Hi.”

She looked over my shoulder at the hills
marching up the north side, lush and silent and blindingly green.
Then she looked down at the open space of the valley fragrant with
tall, dry, rustling grasses. Long white fences framed my meadows
and sloped down to the creek-that-turned-into-a-river beyond.

“This is beautiful,” she said in
church-voice.

“Thanks.”

She turned to the framed-out length of my
home, beams glowing in the sun. “Wow.” She was quiet a moment.
“Yours?”

“Mine.” I felt a fierce satisfaction in it.
In the way she’d said wow.

“Are you doing it yourself?”

“With some friends, mostly me. The original
house is on the side, and that’s where I live. It can be sectioned
off while I work on the rest.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean really beautiful.”

“Really, thanks.”

She brought her gaze back. “And a little
crazy. I mean
this
”—she waved her hand between our
bodies—“is a little crazy.”

“Okay.”

She squinted at me. Or maybe at the sun.
“Right?”

“Right.”

She stare-squinted a little longer. “Doesn’t
that bother you?”

I shrugged. “Beautiful and a little crazy. I
can do that.”

Her cheeks rounded into a smile. “Yeah,” she
said softly. “You never had a problem with crazy.”

“You’re the one who kissed me.”

She laughed. “I lost my mind.”

“Twice?”

The smile got pretty huge. She tipped her
head down, and for a second, I thought maybe I’d pushed too far;
then she looked back up, smile in place. Nope. Nothing was too much
for Janey. She might not know it, but I did. She made a move toward
the door of the new construction. “May I?”

“Yes, I think I will let you in,” I said
quietly.

She smiled over her shoulder and pushed the
door open. She leaned forward and tipped her shoulders to peer
inside, which pushed her bottom out slightly. The skirt hugged the
roundness of her, and her long, shapely legs ended in high heels. I
decided that beds were overrated, and if she grew wary of a little
bit crazy and didn’t want to go inside, having sex right here on
the dirt would be just fine.

“You live alone?” she asked, still peering
inside.

“Yep.”

“Mmm.” I liked the sound of it rolling over
her lips. I also liked the view of her hips turning as she peered
down the long stretch of my framed-out cathedral.

“Holy wow,” I heard her whisper.

I smiled at her ass.

“It’s huger than I thought. And
gorgeous-er.” She glanced over her shoulder. I yanked my gaze up.
“It’s incredible.”

I took a step forward.

She stepped out of the doorway. “I hate to
point this out, but you’re going to be very cold in a few months.
All those rafters, so few walls.” The sun made her cheeks glow.

“I live in the side rooms for now,” I
explained, pointing to the east side of the house, the original
portion. It was functional, my very small home, heated, insulated,
equipped with ceiling fans and furnished in a unique combination of
rustic luxury and tool shed.

“Good planning,” she said.

I swept my gaze down her body, then smiled
into her squinting eyes. “Oh, I’m a planner all right, Jane.”

The entire front of her body was
illuminated, pink shirt, tight black skirt, white, faintly shiny
skin, and a smile.

She stood indecisively, and despite the
bone-deep pressure to get this thing going, I shoved my hands into
the pockets of my jeans and leaned back against my truck. I could
wait. I’d been waiting a long time. Ever since that stupid, fateful
birthday party when she’d bent over my blindfolded eyes, breathing
fast and pretty much rocking my world.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t kissed a girl
before. At fourteen, I’d done a lot more than that. The Dante boys
were usually at the head of that pack. It was that for whatever
reason, when Janey Mac’s body had come close to mine, she smelled
of lemons and it made me feel like I was in a yellow glow. And when
her frightened, excited breath brushed my lips, my
fourteen-year-old body had gone hard.

And just before her hot mouth touched mine,
I’d heard her whispering to herself, “
Do it, do it, do it,
”
and I knew then how scared she was.

The people in my life did not do courage.
And definitely not at thirteen.

You didn’t forget that kind of thing. At
least, I didn’t.

I had all night to convince her this wasn’t
a mistake. I’d been waiting a long time.

I could wait a little more.

~ Jane ~

WE BACKED UP to his truck, then Finn and I stood
there, looking at his masterpiece, admiring beams and vaults and
such. I admit, it was lost on me, because all I was aware of was
Finn. His hard body leaning back against the truck, his short hair
tousled by a breeze, his palms shoved down into his pockets, his
forearms roped with lean muscle.

He seemed completely comfortable with the
silence spreading out between us.

I was not.

I remembered this about him. He’d stand in
the middle of the chaos of a town event like the heart of a
cyclone. All around, men and boys would be whooping and hollering,
shooting off their mouths and sometimes their guns. The women would
be talking, children would be screaming, music would be playing,
and Finn would stand in the center of it all, of it and yet somehow
beyond it all.

Me, I plunged right into the thick of all
that noise and energy. I thrived on it. I aimed for noise and
energy and movement and endless distraction.

Silence might be a problem.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” I
said, looking at the house.

He kept looking at the house too.
“Really?”

My face flushed. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t
be able to detect it from the general summer swelter making
everything else sweaty and flushed.

“You sure about that?” he asked, his voice
low.

We turned our heads and looked at each
other.

“Looking for trouble?” I suggested my own
motives somewhat weakly.

He smiled.

“I don’t do that very much,” I told him.

He rolled his hip against the truck, turning
to me. “Janey, you’ve been looking for trouble since the day you
were born.”

I opened my mouth to say that was not quite
what I meant, and anyhow, it was ridiculous, then I shut it again.
He’d taken his sunglasses off, and I could see his eyes. A definite
point of vulnerability for me, Finn’s blue eyes. Hard to lie when I
was peering into them.

So instead, I snorted. “Me? What about
you?”

He searched mine a moment, then he told me,
“It’s not hard to find trouble if you’re looking, Janey.”

“No, I guess not.” We were quiet for a
minute. “Are you looking, Finn?”

He rested his elbow on the roof of the
truck. “Yeah. I like your trouble.”

“Oh.” Heat spread down my body like a river
starting up.

“And you like mine.”

“I don’t know what makes you say that,” I
said primly.

He laughed. “You kissed
me
,
Janey.”

“I lost my mind.”

“Twice.”

“So I lost it twice,” I said weakly.

He dropped his arm and tugged a loose strand
of my hair between two fingers and lit me up. “Lose it again,” he
said, low and rough.

I was helpless against that voice.

So I went up on my toes and touched my lips
to his, just like always. And just like always, he hit me like
lightning—electric, straight through the center of me.