* * * * *

Stupidly, for the next several hours, my eyes went to any window they were near and I peered out.

I wasn’t on the lookout for Daniel Hart’s delivery men, his car, his driver or him.

I was wondering if Joe would come over for pancakes.

Kate and Keira got up, I made pancakes and Joe never showed.

So there it was. Booty call.

I took a shower and got ready to work the afternoon shift at the garden center.

Cheryl had told me there was nothing wrong with a girl getting some. And getting it from Joe was good. So he wasn’t going to be the next love of my life. At least I wouldn’t be totally alone anymore, not if his truck was in the drive. And I doubted it would be hard to call it off if, someday, some guy who did want to “take it there” walked into my life.

It wasn’t great. It wasn’t perfect. It was kind of sad after what I had with Tim.

But it was better than where I was without him.

I figured I could live with that.

* * * * *

Even so, I was on tenterhooks on the run up to dinner, thinking, since the girls asked him, he’d come over. I didn’t make pork chops or risotto because, with having to work, I didn’t have time to make it to the grocery store. I just made meatloaf.

But it didn’t matter.

Joe didn’t come for dinner.

Chapter Seven

Visit from Bonnie

Cal lay in bed, his window open, listening.

He’d been gone a week and a half, had to leave the day after things smoothed out with Violet to see to some work.

He’d told her he was going before she slipped out of his bed the second night they were together, telling him she had to go home to her girls. She hadn’t slept with him that night, just told him she needed to go after they’d finished their second round. It wasn’t even midnight.

Her car hadn’t been in the drive when he got home that day but the boyfriend’s yellow pickup and Kate’s Fiesta were there. From his driveway he could see the girls through the kitchen window, laughing and looking like they were making dinner. Dane was sitting on the counter facing the windows, laughing with them. If they were laughing, things were good. Colt had called while he was gone, reporting there were no more flowers and Vi hadn’t received any further gifts.

He knew Daniel Hart though, he knew the man wouldn’t be done until he had what he wanted, something else caught his eye or someone made him done.

Cal just hoped something else caught his eye.

How life could make it that Hart’s current obsession moved in right next to him, the wife of a man Hart murdered, when Hart had also murdered Cal’s cousin Vinnie, Cal had no clue.

He had been struggling with the decision of whether or not to make the call to Vinnie Senior, his uncle, since Cal found out about Violet and Hart. But after talking with Colt, he decided to wait to see if Hart lost interest before he talked to Vinnie. A call to Uncle Vinnie about Daniel Hart would mean a call to Sal and then there’d be war. Sal was itching for it. Then again, so was Uncle Vinnie.

He heard the sliding glass door to Vi’s house open and he shook his head in the dark, grinning.

Then he threw the covers back, knifed out of bed, grabbed his jeans, yanked them on and went to his backdoor.

He had it open before she hit the steps and he met her on the deck.

She tipped her head back to look at him.

“Hi,” she whispered as if they were in her bedroom and she didn’t want her girls to hear.

“Buddy, get inside,” he ordered, pulling the remote from her hand, he walked passed her, down the steps, across their yards, up her steps and, pressing the buttons on the remote without looking at it, he disarmed the alarm before he got close to the door and tripped the sensors. Then he went through her sliding glass door, closed it, locked it and walked through her house. Unlocking the side kitchen door, he nabbed the key he’d seen on a hook on the wall behind the door and he walked out, locking the door and hitting the buttons on the remote that would arm the alarm.

She was perched on the arm of his father’s chair when he came back. She had her black satin robe on but he could see the lace of another of her sexy nighties hugging her cle**age through the opening of her robe.

“Where’d you go?” she asked as he was sliding his door shut.

He turned to her and tossed the remote on the couch.

“You’re in the wrong room.”

“Where’d you go?” she repeated.

“Your system is tight, Vi, but you can’t leave a door unlocked. I locked it, went out your side door.” He lifted his hand, the keys to her kitchen door jingled from his fingers then he palmed them and pushed them in the pocket of his jeans. “Now, like I said, you’re in the wrong room.”

She stood and whispered, “Thanks for thinkin’ of that, Joe.”

Christ, why did his dick twitch every time she said his name?

He decided he was definitely done talking in the living room.

Therefore, he growled, “Get in my bed.”

“Joe –”

There it was again.

Fuck, she undid him and she did it just saying his name.

“Bed.”

She hesitated then she whispered, “Okay.”

He watched her turn and walk down his hall like she had all the time in the f**king world.

He gave it a second to get himself under control so he didn’t go into his room, rip her nightgown off and scare the shit out of her when he did her.

Then he followed her.

* * * * *

“I have to go,” she said against his neck.

She was on top of him, his c**k still inside her, he was still hard, he’d come not a minute before (she’d come earlier but she still rode him hard until he found it) and now she was talking about going.

He had an arm draped around her waist, the other hand in her hair and he tightened both to make his point.

But he made it verbally too. “Not done with you, buddy.”

“Really, Joe, I should go.”

He looked to his clock, it was nearing midnight.

“You tired?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she answered.

His arms got tighter. “Then sleep.”

“Joe –”

He pulled her off his dick and rolled them to their sides, shoving his knee between her legs, forcing her to wrap her thigh around his hip and he did this to make another nonverbal point.

She got his point and whispered into his throat, “My girls are alone.”

“Anyone gets near your doors or windows, your alarm will go off, I’ll hear it, so will Colt, and we’ll move on it.”