One Reckless Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

sky, not steal state secrets!”
    “I told you before, I don’t care about any of that—I just need you to understand this is private property.”
    “So I can be on your property long enough to have sex with you, but not long enough to look at the stars?”
    “It’s not like that.” She sensed him shaking his head.
    “Then what’s it like?”
    “It’s got nothing to do with me, or you. And it’s none of your business. And you’d do well to just forget you ever saw me here or that this night even happened.”
    “That sounds like the best suggestion you’ve had yet,” she assured him, her voice thick with sarcasm.
    “Good,” he said—and this time he actually sounded like he meant it.
    Jenny stood there for an uncertain moment longer, but quickly realized there was nothing left to say. That feeling of emptiness she’d anticipated started setting in sooner than she’d expected. She’d thought it would require getting away from him first, being alone. But being with him, she realized—apart from when they were having sex—was a lot like being alone.
    So without another word, she began to walk away, back through the woods toward the downhill descent that led to the canoe landing.
    “Hey,” he called behind her. “You, uh, want me to walk you down to the lake?”
    “Go to hell,” she tossed back over her shoulder.
    And it was only when he didn’t answer that she realized that, just like the first time they’d met, she was hurrying away from him. And that, in the end, she still hadn’t gotten what she’d wanted—she hadn’t gotten to see the stars. And that if this was a game of some sort, he’d won—again.
     
    Go to hell .
    “I probably will,” Mick muttered to himself as her footsteps grew more distant.
    He stood unmoving in the woods, listening, carefully listening, to faint and still fainter sounds of her walking through the brush, of a boat being pushed into the water, and could almost feel her getting farther away each second.
    Around him now—stillness. Perfect, blessed stillness. As it should be. As he needed it to be.
    But— shit.
    Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
    What had he done here? What the holy hell had he done?
    At a time in his life when he most needed not to be found, at a time when he most needed to be as non-existent as possible— he’d screwed the police chief’s daughter. What the hell had he been thinking?
    Well, he knew what he’d been thinking. That she was still just as pretty—only grown-up now, which was even better. And that there was still something between them—the same thing he’d felt the first time he’d met her, that invisible something that moved between a guy and a girl and drew them together whether they liked it or not.
    The stupid part had been giving in to that.
    For God’s sake—he’d really just had sex with her. With Jenny Tolliver.
    He’d known her name then, and he knew it now, too. He wasn’t sure why, either time, he’d acted like it was such a mystery. He just hadn’t wanted her to know, he guessed, that he’d even realized she existed. That he’d seen her, when they were teenagers, cheering at high school basketball games in that little red-and-white skirt. Go Bulldogs—ruff , ruff , ruff! That he’d seen her back then hanging out at the Whippy Dip, with guys who were much cleaner-cut than him but who were still probably talking her out of her panties on hot summer nights.
    He blinked, still shocked to remember that he’d just talked her out of her panties. Well, not talked—no, not that at all. But the result was the same, and something he would never forget. The police chief’s daughter, who had provided him with more than a few teenage fantasies, who he’d been certain would never look twice at him, had just done it with him in the woods.
    The wonder of that—and the horror of it—made him drop to his knees on the forest floor and close his eyes. He ran his hands back through his hair, frustrated.
    She couldn’t