Kiss Mommy Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page A

beautiful face. I could love this man, she realized with some sense of panic. I could really love this man.
    She hadn’t necked in a parked car in years, more years than she could remember. Donna tried to picture who the boy had been, her mind careening back through at least ten casual lovers, rolling over on assorted beds back through time, pausing long enough to single out one or two who had approached love, perhaps overtaking it only to see it slide backward, rolling slowly into a steady decline like Sisyphus’ mythical rock until it hit bottom. Rock bottom.
    This time was nothing like those.
    Victor’s lips were gentle, not urgent. His kisses were the kisses of a romantic, not a horny teenager. His mouth was open but not devouring, knowing exactly when and how, and how much. Her mother had been right—he had good hands.
    “Why are you stopping?” she heard a voice ask. Her voice. “Who said that?” she laughed, trying to joke, surprised at her own eagerness, her own willingness not to be coy.
    “As much as I love the ocean,” he said quietly, his head lowered against hers, his breath gently whisking against her chin, “I’ve never been one for making love in the front seat of a car—or the back seat, for that matter.”
    The revelation came as no surprise. She fought the urge to ask, “Your place or mine?” and remained quiet until he resumed speaking several seconds later.
    “Besides,” he continued, “I don’t like starting anything I can’t finish.”
    “Why can’t you finish?” she asked, again surprised by the urgency in her voice and the disappointment she heard creeping in. They both laughed.
    “Because I have to be up very early in the morning,” he answered, taking her hands and intermingling their fingers.
    “Going somewhere?” she asked, hearing a loud voice inside her saying, “I knew it was too good to be true; he’s leaving to join the Peace Corps in darkest Africa first thing in the morning!” The voice was so loud and insistent she almost didn’t hear what he actually said in the following instant. “You’re going where?” she shouted, Africa quickly becoming the preferred place to be, as she permitted his voice to penetrate the one now screaming inside her.
    He said it again simply, with even a hint of a smile. Almost, in fact, if it was possible, eloquently. “To jail,” he repeated, and then neither said another word.

THREE
    S he picked him up in front of the West Palm Beach jailhouse at seven P.M. on Sunday night. He was smiling, looking none the worse for wear for his two-day incarceration—if anything, he looked even better than she remembered, dressed casually in blue jeans and an open-neck shirt. He was already waiting for her—they had released him some ten minutes ahead of schedule.
    “Time off for good behavior,” he joked, getting into the passenger seat beside her and immediately cradling her in his arms, his lips tasting better than a good brandy as they touched lightly down on hers.
    “Honest to God,” she began, starting the ignition, “I don’t believe this whole thing.” Especially the way my heart is thumping, she thought. She pulled away from the curb into the middle of the street. For some reason, the West Palm Beach jail was situated on one of West Palm’s main streets just next to a used car lot. From the outside, it looked like just another reasonably run-down store front.West Palm Beach was separated from its easterly counterpart, Palm Beach, more by a gulf of dollars than by the inland waterway that physically divided the two territories. West Palm had a decidedly lived-in aura; nothing in Palm Beach proper betrayed any signs of use or age—except possibly its population.
    “Do you always pull away from the curb like that?” Victor asked casually. “You’ll ruin the tread in your tires.” Donna smiled, finding it very difficult to concentrate on anything other than the few black hairs she had seen escaping the top of his pale