Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

hands over her bare shoulders. She absorbed his warmth, inhaled his scent, savored his taste on her tongue. And when he said softly that he wanted to see her tomorrow, she told herself to tell him no. She needed some time. Needed to figure out what was going on. Needed to get a handle on herself and her feelings. Then she remembered she didn’t have time. In a matter of days, he would be gone. And she might never see him again.

She told herself that would be a good thing. A small, quiet life like hers didn’t have room in it for a man like Cole. He was too big, too brash, too confident. He made her forget things she needed to remember. Things like…

Oh, damn. She’d forgotten them already.

“Come to my studio tomorrow,” she heard herself tell him. “If you come around four, I’ll be ready for you.”

Eighteen

BREE MADE IT ALL THE WAY HOME BEFORE CALLING herself an idiot. But that was only because she’d spent the rest of her driving time calling herself a fool, moron, dummy, imbecile, ignoramus, simpleton, dunce, dolt, jerk, dumbass, bonehead, blockhead, dimwit, half-wit, nitwit…

Well, suffice it to say she talked to herself a lot on that particular drive home.

And when she turned onto the side street by her apartment building and saw Cole Early’s Town Car parked at the curb, she halted her own car, folded her arms over the steering wheel, rested her forehead against them, and did her best not to cry.

She just wanted to go home. She’d held herself together all the way back to her apartment, and now she wanted to lock herself in her bedroom and fall apart. She wanted to put on her pajamas, get the gallon of Neapolitan ice cream out of the freezer and the lasagna spoon out of the drawer, and she wanted to eat and cry until she was sick. She wanted to remember what it had been like to kiss Rufus once, and she wanted to dream about what it would be like to kiss him again. She wanted to pretend everything in her life was fine and ordinary, that she didn’t have to worry about the future, that when she woke up tomorrow morning, bloated and sticky, it would be to a day filled with glorious mundanity.

She couldn’t do any of that if Lulu was upstairs with Cole. Not that she thought they were making use of her bedroom—she knew Lulu well enough to know that—but if Bree had to look at the two of them falling in love, which was what they were doing, whether they realized it or not, and know she would never have that herself, then she would do more than make herself sick on ice cream.

So without thinking about what she was doing, she turned down the alley behind her building and up the street on the opposite side until she was heading back in the direction from which she’d come. She’d just drive around for a little while, she told herself. Until Cole was gone and Lulu was in bed and she could sneak in and feel miserable without anyone knowing. She popped a CD into the player without even looking to see what it was, then smiled when the car was filled with the mellow crooning of Bobby Darin, one of her mother’s favorites. Bree started to sing along, to avoid talking to herself, not really paying attention as one song bled into another. Until Bobby started singing to her that all he could give her was country walks and a hand to hold and a love to warm the winter night. And then Bree was singing back to him that that was all she could give him, too. And all he wanted from her in return—and all she wanted from him—was to know they would adore each other for now and evermore. That was all.

That was all.

She wasn’t much surprised when she found herself pulling into Rufus’s driveway a little while later. Nor was she surprised that his lights were still on. She was even less surprised to see his silhouette appear behind the screen door when he must have heard her car.

He looked surprised, though, when he pushed the screen door open at her approach. Confused and puzzled, too. When he said, “Bree? Is everything okay?” she put her fingers gently against his mouth and shook her head. Then she moved her hand and pushed herself up on tiptoe, curled her fingers over his jaw, and put her mouth on his.

He didn’t question what she did. Maybe he was afraid she would stop. Maybe she was afraid of that, too. Maybe that was why neither of them said a word as Rufus took a few steps backward, into the house, and closed the door behind them. Maybe that was why neither of them stopped kissing the other, either.

Rufus buried his hands in her hair and slanted his mouth over hers, first one way, then the other, again and again and again. Somehow, Bree registered the fact that they were moving. Across the living room, up the stairs, down the hallway, into his bedroom. She felt him tugging her shirt tail free of her skirt, found herself fumbling with the button of his jeans. It was dark in the bedroom, the only illumination coming from a tumble of moonlight outside the open window. She registered the chirp of crickets, the rustle of leaves, the disinterested bark of a neighbor’s dog. Then all she could hear was the rasp of Rufus’s ragged breath against her neck and the hammering of her own heart.

The bed sheet was cool against her back when she fell against it, but his body was warm atop her. He hooked her thigh in one hand and wrapped her leg around his waist as he entered her, deep and hard and strong. She lifted her hips to