“Nope. Wally and me got into a sand fight at his house.”
Like he’d done since the very first time he’d bathed his son as a newborn, Dylan shaped Adam’s short hair into a point on top of his head, then leaned him back and rinsed out the shampoo. “I’m surprised Shelly didn’t beat on your behind.”
“Hope was there,” Adam said as he shut his eyes and relaxed. “Shelly never whacks ya in front of company.”
“Hope went down to the beach with you?”
“Yeah.” Adam raised his hands to his face and cleared the water from his eyes.
“In a swimsuit?”
“Yeah. It was blue and green.”
“One piece or two?”
“One.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how she’d looked, but he guessed he knew anyway. Hope Spencer would look good in a garbage bag. “What did you all do?”
“Hope took some pictures, and then after a while she helped me and Adam build a sand castle
. Only it got all wrecked when a beetle flew on her arm.”
Dylan raised Adam to a sitting position, then, using his hands, squeegeed the water from Adam’s head. “Did she scream?”
Adam laughed. “Yep, and jumped around, too.”
Dylan would have liked to see Hope jump around in her swimsuit. He shoved the rubber plug into the drain and poured banana-scented bubble bath into the running water. “There’s the soap and washcloth,” he said, pointing to the soap dish. “Scrub yourself real good.” He set a plastic basket filled with a mask, snorkel, and various action figures on the edge of the tub. “Don’t forget your parts. And,” he added over his shoulder as he stood and walked toward the bathroom door, “clean your ears. There’s enough dirt in there to grow potatoes.”
He moved down the short hall to the kitchen and the stack of dinner dishes waiting for him. He reached into the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Bud, and shut the door with his hip. He twisted off the cap, placed it between his thumb and middle finger, and snapped. The cap sailed under the kitchen table instead of into the garbage can and hit Adam’s dog. The puppy lifted her head, then went back to sleep.
Dylan raised the bottle to his mouth and eyed the dishes stacked in the sink. Sometimes he thought it would be so much easier if he just got married. If he just found someone who could put up with him and be a good mama to Adam. Someone who wouldn’t mind taking her turn doing the dishes, and who would be home when he needed to take off on an emergency. Someone to talk to late at night. Someone to run the tips of her fingers across his belly.
But Dylan knew from experience that there was nothing worse than living with a woman for the wrong reasons. Nothing worse than living in a house with a woman he couldn’t love for the long haul. Lying next to her in bed. Having sex with her because it was available, but no longer making love.
He’d done that with Julie. If it hadn’t been for a broken condom, their relationship probably wouldn’t have survived a year. Except for the fact that they’d both been raised on a ranch and both had hated it, they’d had nothing in common. If it hadn’t been for Adam, the relationship wouldn’t have lasted as long as it had. He loved his son and felt truly blessed to have him. They were buddies, but raising a child on his own wasn’t easy. On him or on Adam, and he wouldn’t have chosen it. He wouldn’t have chosen the sole responsibility of raising his son to be a good boy and a decent man.
He wouldn’t have chosen to see the pain and confusion in his son’s eyes when they talked about why Adam’s mama didn’t live with them and why they didn’t live with her.
Every July when Dylan took Adam to the airport to meet Julie, he always had to answer the same question: “Why can’t you come with Mommy and me?” And every year Dylan had to dance around the truth. He didn’t want to spend time with Julie, but, more important, he didn’t want Adam to get the idea in his head about their living as a family. Adam already had some weird notion that once his mother wasn’t on television anymore, she’d move to Gospel and live with them. But even if Julie’s show was canceled tomorrow, Adam’s dream would never come true.
Every year Adam would still go visit her, and every year Dylan would camp out at the Double T for the two weeks that Adam was gone, looking over the books, helping out where he could, and irritating the hell out of his brother-in-law, Lyle. Lyle was a good cattleman and pretty good at the business, too, but even though Dylan had no interest in running the place himself, half the ranch was still his, and it would someday belong to Adam.
Dylan spent the first two weeks of every July going over the price of seed and feed and doing one of a million things that needed doing. But mostly he did it to avoid his empty house.
The water in the bathroom shut off, and Dylan set his beer on the counter. He rinsed the plates in the sink, and as he placed them in the dishwasher, his thoughts turned from his troubles with Adam to his problem with Hope Spencer.
Hope Spencer was a beautiful woman, and there was no denying that he liked the way she filled out her clothes. Even though he would probably never tell her, he liked that she was sort of sassy and smart-mouthed. He liked the smile she brought to his lips, even when he didn’t know why he was smiling.
Kissing her had been a huge mistake. He’d known it even as he’d lowered his mouth to hers. She’d tasted all smooth and boozy. Like a swallow of expensive whiskey, she’d warmed him clear down to the very pit of his belly. The touch of her hands had squeezed his insides until he could hardly breathe. The look in her blue eyes, the passion shining back at him, had nearly sent him to his knees. Sent him there begging her to let him touch her naked skin and kiss between her thighs where she was warm and slick. If he’d had a condom in his wallet, he wasn’t so sure he would have stopped. He wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t have had sex with her right there, in the kitchen, against the refrigerator.
Dylan closed his eyes and pressed a palm to the front of his Levi’s. He wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t have stripped off those Lycra shorts and buried himself deep within her. His tongue in her mouth, his hands on her breasts, and his penis inside where she was hot. Moving with her until her moist walls contracted and squeezed around him.
Beneath his hand, he was hard and he ached, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Well, yes, he did know. He could do nothing or he could take care of business himself. Dylan reached for his cold beer.
Kissing her had been like being struck by lightning. It had raised his hair and burned his insides, but what really worried him about last night was that once he kissed her, he hadn’t given another thought to her profession. She was a writer, and he just happened to be hiding the biggest story since the fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. America’s angel and PTL sweetheart, Juliette Bancroft had an illegitimate son.
Something that was so important, he’d forgotten the second his tongue had swept the inside of her mouth. He was afraid the only thing that had stopped him was the thought of bringing another unplanned child into the world. No way in hell did he want another child under those circumstances.