Sugar Daddy (41 page)

Grabbing the cell from my ear, Reardon growled, “I don’t know what you were saying to Shay, but I’m hanging up now, brother.”

“G’night, Ransome,” I shouted before Reardon ended the call.

The phone clamped in his hand, he pulled over as soon as we hit McCants Drive, looking like he was gonna throw the thing out the window. “Was all that necessary?”

“Not a damn bit, but I like playin’ with you.”

Sending a meaningful look to his lap, he smirked. “You were playing with something else before.”

The engine purred like a fat, well-fed cat, the moon a saffron sphere held aloft in a belly of pitch-black night. His berry red lips glistened; my tummy contracted.

“You wanna do a little necking?”

He lifted me half over his lap until my breasts were compressed against his chest, his fingers threading through my hair, withholding his lips from mine.

Slanting my eyes to his, I cajoled, “Y’all gonna screw me in this racy car? What’s it called again?”

“Maserati.” He delved to my lips. “Farina.” His mouth moved down my neck, suckling the sensitive skin beneath my ear. I moaned, much louder than the idling engine.

Sitting back, he surveyed my swollen lips. “I wanted to take you home, make love to you, sleep with you all night long knowing you wouldn’t have to leave me.” He tugged my ponytail, chuckling darkly. “That’s still what I intend to do.”

Darn it all!

Pausing at the intersection of McCants and Pitt, the
sold
sign on Mimi Flossie’s house sat front and center, and sudden sadness tightened my throat. I’d all but grown up in her cottage, and now I’d never set foot in it again.

Reardon brushed his hand down my cheek while I looked out the window. “You okay over there?”

“Yeah, it’s just my Mimi still owned that house until a few weeks ago.”

“You used to come out to Cove Inlet often?”

“All the time. Diving off the overhangs at high tide in the summer, gettin’ oysters, wadin’ in the mudflats…”

We ambled along the alley of palm trees lining the footbridge at Cove Inlet, then jumped onto the marsh flats. Tall reeds skimmed our legs, fiddler crabs dodged our bare feet. Nets and a bucket between us, the low tide lapped our toes from the Intracoastal Waterway before it rolled onto the open waters of Charleston Harbor.

The humidity of the September day melted into welcome warmth. Before we began, Reardon whipped off his shirt, tossing it toward the bridge. Bare-chested, bathed in moonlight, there was no finer sight.

“We shrimping? Because if you keep staring at me like that, I’m gonna rethink what I said earlier about cars and sex,” he said when he caught me drooling.

I reeled in my tongue. “Let’s do it.”

He quirked an eyebrow.

I blushed. “Shrimpin’, I mean.”

As we toiled side by side, working up a sweat, he had the audacity to give me lessons on technique. Pressed firmly behind me, he took my hands in his, wound our arms back and let fly the net over the bay to sink in the form of a jellyfish into its depths.

“Just like that, darlin’.”

Hand over hand, we pulled in the casting net, finding nothing inside but several long pods of slimy seaweed and one very pissed off crab.

“That’s how you do it, huh?” I jostled him with my elbow.

Suppressing his grin, he shrugged. “Maybe they’re not running tonight.”

“How about you go over there?” I pointed a few yards over. “And I’ll stay here, and we’ll see who gets the biggest haul.”

“A challenge, Miss Greer?”

“Sounds like it, Mr. Boone.”

Swatting my bottom, he leaped past me. “May the best–”

“Woman!”

He winked. “Win.”

Calling across the oyster shoals, we spent the next hour heckling and hounding, our jests rebounding in the salty air:

“You get a good catch?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Darlin’, I’m not so far away I can’t tell you’re coming up empty.”

“You wish.”

“Want to know what I really wish for?” He pointed to the sky, draped in a cascade of starry lace.

“G’on then.”

Dropping the webby net, he ranged toward me. His loose gait at odds with his longing expression, fixed on me. The final paces were covered by both of us, my hands reaching for his face, his curving around my back.

Husky words spilled from his lips. “I wish this night could go on forever.”

“Maybe it can.”

The kiss we shared was a slow sizzling warm-up. When our tongues touched, it was
I want that.
Our fingers gripping said
I need you
. The way he glided me up his torso while I angled my head in a perfect fit spoke clearly of
Oh yes
.

Between panting breaths, we said the most important words out loud: “I love you.”

Gathering the pathetic haul of our work, guiding me with his free hand, Reardon stowed everything in the trunk of his car. “Let’s go for a swim.”

“We didn’t bring–”

He pulled out two huge fluffy towels.

“I was gonna say bathing suits.”

“Even better.” His smile was wolfish.

The tide turned, racing spiritedly toward shore, only to break in gentle wavelets. We headed back to the water, hand-in-hand. The creek grasses and old wooden trolley bridge glowed moonlight white, setting off a romantic scene.

We crossed the shallows to a sandbar, sooty-soft underfoot and hoarding the warmth from the earlier sun.

A quick dip to my mouth, dropping his shorts at the last minute, he dashed into the inlet’s lazy ripples. “C’mon, darlin’, it’s warm.”

When he stood, I took back my earlier thought. There was nothin’ finer than Reardon, in the moonlight, wet and inviting.

“That a challenge?” I called.

“Damn right.”

Putting on a show, I took my time all the way to the scraps of my bra and the nothingness of my panties. Every article of clothing discarded found him a few steps closer to shore until he ran at me, catching me in his arms. His kiss smothered my false cries of outrage as he raced back into the water.

“Mmm,” he hummed when my nipples floated bright and obvious through transparent fabric. Sloping down, his fingertips pinched and released, commanding my breath as he drew the buds erect.

I leaned back, releasing the catch, baring my breasts to the pulls of his mouth. The ends of my hair spread by the current, my pussy wet by more than water.

Hot and hard, his length found me where my body boiled over. I eased my hands between us, inching his briefs over his glorious erection until the waistband snugged under his balls. “Here?”

“Now.”

There was nothing but a lacey string to pull aside and my fingers to guide him inside and
oh, the feel of him filling me.
Blazing on the outside, steely on the inside, stretching me. Cool water eddied around us, licking my body while he lapped all over my breasts.

I crossed my ankles at his backside, digging in as his thrusts forced moans from my mouth.

Held by Reardon’s hands on my ass, I came. He buried his face between my breasts, his raspy scruff and the thick rush of his release spurring me on until I rose above the waves, a keening mermaid.

Clinging to his shoulders against the drifting tide, I kissed him drowsily. “We didn’t hardly catch any shrimp.”

“I’ve caught you, Shay. That’s all that matters.” He sealed his declaration with a sultry mesh of lips and tongues.

* * * *

Reardon looks after his own.

Palmer had looked after me, the best he could.

I’d sat on the bed with the wrapped parcel in my hands every day since he’d left.

It seemed the smallest gesture, but I couldn’t get my feet to move.

Not yesterday, or the day before.

But I could do it today.

Only person I’d looked after at the end of our marriage was myself, felt like.

’Bout time I gave something back to Palmer.

Driving out 17 North, destination Bulls Bay Marine Contractors
,
my heart sat right in the middle of my throat.

Rolling up my window against the chalky dust when I hit the dirt track, I gunned over potholes and pebbles chewing holes in the rusted muffler of my Honda. Skidding to a stop in the gray gravel lot, I saw Curtis first.

His poker face was as good as ever. He returned my wave, but his expression never wavered.

I hollered, “Know where I can find Palmer?”

His bushy brows beetled, he tied his meaty arms around his chest. “You got some balls comin’ out here, Shay.”

“I’m not here to hurt him.”

“S’pose not. Not much more you could do that you haven’t already.” It took him a minute to decide if I’d do more harm than good. Finally he shoved his arm to the left. “Thataway.” He turned on his heel and lumbered away, spitting a long stream of brown baccy juice to the ground.

I came across Palmer in the outbuilding bent over stacks of plans with a crew surrounding him, and cleared my throat.

His cornflower blue eyes alight with passion I hadn’t seen in months crashed with mine, their fire doused so fast I heard the hiss.

He dismissed the men. “Y’all can knock off for fifteen.”

They cut a wide swath around me while I made my way toward Palmer.

At the drafting table, I laid the box down. “I wanted to give you this.”

The only thing neat and tidy about our break-up was the parcel in his hands. He inspected me like I was a rough draft with out-of-plumb dimensions he could never get right.

“It’s Delilah’s ultrasound, the one I gave you.”

He tore through the paper and into the box, lifting out the shared image we had of our daughter. Holding it against his chest, he steadied himself against the corner of the high table. Once he’d gulped a few times, he laid the picture down, fingers tracing the wobbly image.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Me too.”

“We just weren’t–”

“Strong enough. I know.” Suddenly, his palms were on my face. “I hope you’re happy, Shay.” Genuine emotion made his voice break.

I covered his hands with mine. “I want you to be happy too, Palmer.”

Sadness flooded his features, rising in his eyes until he closed them. “This hurts.”

I nodded.

“This is the last time, huh?” he asked shakily.

Snapping my hip to his, I dared a heartbroken smile. “Nah, you’ll see me again. Remember, it’s only Mount Pleasant.”

“I mean the last time I can hold you,” he explained in a cautious tone. “Can I? Hug you?”

“You always could.”

“Guess that was my problem.”

He folded me into him. Sawdust and sweat and Palmer.

The brief respite didn’t last long. He walked me to the Honda. “She looks good.”

“She’s hangin’ in there.”

We weren’t talking about my car.

He helped me inside, running fingertips along the window frame instead of my face.

While I backed away, he stood and watched.

He raised a hand and half a smile.

I pulled over as soon as I was out of sight, blindsided by feelings, blinded by tears.

A half hour passed before I could put the car in gear again.

Driving forward.

* * * *

It took a good few weeks to feel comfortable spending the entire night with Reardon. But I never did get totally accustomed to being with him. I just...I couldn’t get over the way he looked at me, lovingly, passionately, as if I was something so precious to him.