Bungalow Nights - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,59

and then we’ll see it.” God, once he started on the promises, he couldn’t seem to stop.

“Sure.”

The melancholy on her face made him nuts. “We’ll make a wish on it then,” he said.

She turned her head, perking up a little. “A wish?” Her lips curved.

“Yep. That’s a bit of folklore I picked up.” He touched the pillow of her bottom lip with the tip of his forefinger. The surface was unbearably soft. “Tell me, lovely Layla, what does your heart desire?”

Her smile fell. Her lashes swept down to hide her eyes. And Vance cursed himself. Her heart’s desire? It would be to have her dad beside her right now, you idiot, not some substitute. Pissed at his own stupidity, he fumbled again for the flask and took another drink. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just ignore me.”

Instead, she took the whiskey from him and sipped, grimacing as if it was medicine. “What about you, Vance? What would you wish for?”

“That you wouldn’t be sad,” he said, and meant it to the marrow. “That I could take the pain away for you.”

Her head bent as she seemed to consider it. “Maybe you should save that wish for yourself,” she replied after a long moment, lifting her gaze to his. “You’re sad, too.”

“Me? No.” He had annoyances. Grievances. Frustrations. But sadness? “Not that.”

Layla took another sip from the flask. “Come on. Fitz and Blythe...”

He snatched the liquor from her. “I don’t want to talk about them.” It was another reason he’d spent four days avoiding her. There was no need to dig around in that old nonstory.

“We’re going to have to.”

In the waning light, he frowned at her. “I don’t see why.”

“Because we’ll be at your family’s ranch.” She hesitated. “Look, I know we’ve been stepping over the elephant in the living room, but we can’t do that forever. If we’re going to do the pretend girlfriend/boyfriend thing again on Picnic Day, I need to have a better understanding of—”

“What, you haven’t had a boyfriend before?” he asked, throwing the question out like bait. Anything to redirect the conversation.

She made a face at him. “I told you. I’ve had experience. I’ve kissed. I’ve been in relationships.”

Ah, yes, thank you, God. His little fish had gone right for the worm. “Forgive me for finding it hard to see your tough-as-nails father allowing you to kiss anybody.” Even as he said it, he worked hard to put their kisses from his mind, the sweet plumpness of her top lip, the soft velvet of her tongue.

Her laugh was rueful. “Okay, I admit it. He was an impediment in my younger teenage years. I wasn’t allowed to attend many parties or go out on one-on-one dates. I thought I might die a ninety-five-year-old virgin.”

Vance wasn’t surprised that the colonel had tried to shelter his only daughter. “But in your older teenage years?”

“I had more freedom.” She found the flask that he’d dropped on the blanket between them. “I was a freshman in college when Dad’s latest deployment left me with an empty house—Uncle Phil was at a meditation center for the weekend. So I devised a battle plan to put an end to my untouched status.”

It was almost dark now, but he turned toward her, anyway, intrigued—no, appalled. “A battle plan?”

“A strategy, if you will,” she said. “An agenda. An approach to finally learning what it seemed as if everyone else in the world my age already knew.”

Wow, Vance thought. No romantic daydreams for this girl. No getting swept away by emotion or even hormones for Layla. The soldier’s daughter thought in terms of tactics and maneuvers to get what she was after.

She swigged some more from the flask. “Here’s the truth. I’d had exactly one date that ended in exactly one kiss before the night I engineered to experience the whole shebang.”

“Shebang,” he echoed. “She-bang?”

“Whoops.” Layla released a husky, half-tipsy giggle. “Bad choice of word.”

He snatched the metal canister away from her. “I think we can leave it at—”

“So I had this battle plan,” she continued. “I’d been to the doctor for birth control, I had condoms, I bought a slinky nightgown, I picked a guy who seemed respectful and who I kinda liked.”

“You kinda liked him?” Vance asked, now almost aghast.

“Well, no,” Layla admitted. “I actually liked him okay, but I amended it later...when, you know.”

A chill rocketed up his spine. “No, I don’t know.” And how can I find this asshole? “Did he...what did he do?”

“He just didn’t do it for me.” Layla was silent

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