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"He teaches?" Lucy said, taken aback.
"Yeah. Bryce told me. He teaches at some Special Forces school. You could see him all the time. Pepper could see him all the time. She keeps saying she's his egg. She wants a family. She wants him in the family."
"That I can't deliver. I don't think he's a family kind of guy." Lucy tried to relax into the music, taking the edge off her lousy day. "This really is a great song." She closed her eyes and listened to the liquid notes. "Fu
"Thirty-something Army captains," Daisy said.
"Daize-"
"I'm not teasing, Lucy," Daisy said. "I mean it. He's a good guy. Close your eyes and think about him. About him, not the shoot or whatever the mess is, just about him. Because you care a lot, Lucy. It shows."
Behind Daisy's voice, Susa
Oh, God, she thought, don't let me fall in love with him. Lust I can handle but-
"Don't screw this up, Luce," Daisy said.
"You're not helping."
"Yes, I am." Daisy pushed her glass away. "I've had too much to drink to drive, and I'm so tired I'm going to fall off this chair. So I'm going to crawl in bed in the back with Pepper. If you decide to drive to the hotel, wake me up when we get there, and I'll go pack so we can leave. But I hope you don't. I hope you go find the guy who needs you like you need him."
"Such a romantic," Lucy said, trying to keep her voice light.
Daisy shook her head and started down the short passage to the bed where her daughter slept, dreaming of Wonder Woman.
"Wait," Lucy said, and Daisy stopped. "I want us to be together. I don't want to lose this again."
Daisy nodded. "Me either."
"So we'll work something out," Lucy said. "New York or here, we'll work something out. But we'll be together. Okay?"
Daisy's eyes filled with tears. "Okay," she said, her voice breaking.
"And we'll take care of each other," Lucy said, nodding.
Daisy nodded back, and sniffed.
"Good night," Lucy said, fighting her own tears.
Daisy came back and hugged her, strangling her just like Pepper had. "I love you, Luce," she whispered.
"I love you, too, babe," Lucy said, putting her cheek against Daisy's hair as she hugged her back. "So much. From now on, we're together."
Daisy nodded and then pulled away, sniffing. "But we need a man around, too, to like, hook up the stereo. Go get the Green Beret. He'd be good."
"I don't know if he does stereos," Lucy said, and Daisy gave a watery laugh and went back to bed.
Lucy wiped away her tears as Susa
It didn't help. By the time Susa
Lust, she told herself. Perfectly understandable. Perfectly healthy.
And really a good deal for J.T., too, and not just for the sex. He was so reserved, it was probably hard for him to co
Make love with J.T. until her brain melted.
Okay, I want him, she thought, relieved to acknowledge it.
And I want him now.
Then she put down her scotch, turned off the iPod, found her flashlight, and went out into the woods to get him.
Chapter 14
The thing about the woods at night, Lucy thought as she walked along the side of the road, was that it was dark. Really dark with the trees branching over the road, shutting out the moon, dark enough that the miniflashlight from her purse was fairly ridiculous. Gator dark, one might say. Sufferin' Sappho, it's dark. She thought about going back and then thought, No, and kept going, shining her flash on the ground ahead. She was not going to spend another night trying not to think about what she wanted when she could have him.
She was pretty sure she could have him.
She tripped over something in the grass and played the flash over it, remembering how J.T. had tracked down Pepper, fire ruts, the dirt freshly cut. Had to be J.T. and his big-wheeled Jeep. She followed the ruts with her flash but they disappeared into the trees along what could barely be called a road, more an afterthought at the end of one. The woods got really dark, darkest where the ruts went, and she thought, It didn't used to be this hard to get a guy to sleep with me, and followed them in.
As soon as the real road disappeared behind her, she lost her sense of direction and stuck with the ruts as her only hope, not only of finding J.T. but of ever getting out again. And when she found the Jeep and he wasn't in it, she had a moment of panic. Going on would be suicidally stupid, staying here would be unbearably frustrating, going back would be worse than the other two combined.
"J.T.?" she called into the darkness and waited a moment. Nothing. Oh, come on, she thought. How far into the woods could he have gone? "J.T.?" she called again, louder this time, and then jumped when he said from behind her, "You know, it was nice and quiet here until you showed up."
She turned around and played the flashlight in his face for a second before he took it out of her hand and shut it off. She stepped closer. "You know, you're damn hard to find."
"That was the point. It's easier to be alone if you're damn hard to find."
Lucy stepped still closer and he didn't back up. "Yeah, but you didn't want to be alone," she said, praying that was true, and then she leaned in and kissed him, almost missing his mouth in the dark until he corrected for her and kissed her back, his mouth hard on hers, his hand cupping the back of her head. He tasted right, hot and sweet, and she gave in to the kiss, letting it flood her. And when he pulled back, she was dizzy from him, clutching him as she sucked in air, trying to get her breath back.
"Okay," he said, sounding as breathless as she was. "The way back to the road-"