Trick - By Lori Garrett Page 0,15

grins down at the tray of glasses on the floor before he picks them up. “But, damn, son. You got fine taste in females, and I respect your diversity.”

I grunt my response and he whistles all the way out the back door.

Rochelle. Fuck.

We’ve been on and off since the night we met up at a car show. She was the girl in a tight leather skirt and tiny tank top draped over the hood of an old model Corvette. She was one of a dozen I slept with in an attempt to erase Harlow from my memory.

It didn’t work any better with Rochelle than it had with any other girl, but there was something cold and detached about her that was strangely comforting. Maybe because her lack of feeling mirrored the blankness I felt inside. Maybe because I was happy to finally be around a girl whose feelings I couldn’t hurt, and who didn’t make me feel anything more than fairly comfortable and occasionally horny.

We never made anything official, but the longer we hooked up, the more determined she was to make our situation legal.

I always planned to get married, I guess. I come from a big family, and want one of my own someday, hopefully before I’m old and decrepit. It’s not marriage that has my feet cold necessarily. Maybe it’s the idea of Rochelle as the mother of my children.

Because I’d settle for a stone-cold bitch for a wife, but when I think about having kids, I want them to have a sweet mother, like my own had been before she died. And maybe I’m the world’s biggest sap because I picture the mother of my children with curly blonde hair and big blue eyes.

But that girl isn’t going to be my wife, so I need to face the facts: Rochelle will wear me down sooner or later. I should just stop stalling and take the plunge. She’s as good as I’m gonna get, and I like that she gets who I am. Low expectations work for me.

I know Rochelle will be here before I finish my bookkeeping, and she’s gonna be on me about getting engaged. That girl is a pain in my dick, but I gotta admire how persistent she is. One thing the two of us have got in common is that we go after what we want without giving a damn who we’ve got to mow down on the way.

Or, that’s how it pans out for everyone in my life except Harlow. That girl twisted her way into my cold heart that summer, and I realized quickly I wouldn’t be able to use her and throw her away like I had with every girl before and after. Which is why I set her free.

Wish the damn fool would keep her fine ass away.

Because, holy hell, her ass is finer than I remembered. I would have liked to get her in the shower with me and soap up those sweet tits, feel her skin wet and warm under my hands. But I had business to take care of in private.

Which makes no sense, since we fucked three times over the course of the night and, even though I’d taken care of things not more than fifteen minutes before, when she wiggled out from under the sheets, that fine body so warm and soft in the morning light, I let her have her way with me.

That girl can ride a dick until a guy sees stars. I’m gonna miss that.

“Holy hell, please tell me you’re naked underneath that get up?” I begged. It was Fourth of July, her father was at some clubhouse gala, and she’d come down to the dock to fish and drink with me. She came wearing a tight, tiny, American flag shirt that raised a lot of...patriotic feelings in me and the tiniest shorts hugging her sweet little heart-shaped ass.

Her giggle knocked me out. She pulled the shirt over her head and tugged very gently on one of the strings knotted behind her neck and under all that hair. “I have my bikini on. For swimming.”

“Hell, baby girl, who was stupid enough to tell you that you needed a bikini to swim in? The water feels so good when you’re naked.” I put my hand over hers and tugged harder on the ties that held the suit on, liking the gasp that came out of her mouth, and liking even better the way the tiny scrap of nothing fell to the side.

I