Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“An hour,” I said.

“Thirty minutes,” McGillicuddy said. “I’ll help him. Then I’m taking Tammy bowling, so if you go for a jog, I won’t be around to see it.” Lori mouthed a thank you to her brother. “Okay then. Thanks for the wakeboarding tips, guys.” She started the engine and cranked the throttle into reverse.

“Wait a minute,” Rachel protested over the idling engine and the bubbling lake. “I thought we would really get some wakeboarding tips.”

“Are you kidding?” Lori shouted. “You chicks are hopeless.” Rachel and Tammy laughed with her as the boat floated backward and then idled forward, toward her dock.

We watched them go. McGillicuddy stared at Tammy’s ass in that bikini. Sean pined after Rachel. Cameron seemed astounded at the whole sight—Lori had never entertained girlfriends before—but it was impossible to tell which girl he was looking at.

And I decided that if I ever went out with Lori again, I would install ten or twelve alarm clocks in the truck to wake us up, just in case. Being grounded from her was torture.

Finally McGillicuddy said, “I’ll go get some wax.”

“Thanks, man.” I appreciated him helping me meet with Lori.

“Better you than Cameron,” McGillicuddy grumbled. “I know where Cameron’s been.”

Sean snorted.

Cameron said, “I already told you, I did not come on to Lori.”

He’d better not.

Half an hour later, I snagged two bottles of water from the fridge. I should have taken only one in case I was intercepted. But even though Lori and I had kissed a lot in the past week, Lori was squeamish about drinking after me. We’d shared drinks while riding around in my truck. She’d even used my toothbrush once. And I’d seen her hesitate. Probably because Sean had spit in her Coke ten years ago. If I were her, I would be grossed out for a long time too.

en I headed outside. e heat of the afternoon would take your breath away, but after the frigid air-conditioned house, my skin drank it in. I stuck the bottles of water in the mailbox, which couldn’t be seen from my house or Lori’s through the thick trees. She wasn’t at the road. Since hanging around our mailboxes would look guilty, she’d probably set off jogging. She was fast for a girl, but I could catch her.

Which way had she gone? We should have discussed this before. But if we’d agreed to go to the left or the right, she would have messed it up anyway. I gazed down the street dappled in shade, then turned the other way and jogged into the sun.

Normally I ran to detox my brain when Sean made me so mad I couldn’t think straight. This happened once a day or so. Running got my mind off my troubles.

is time, running did not get my mind off Lori. For one thing, the skull-and-crossbones pendant she’d given me banged against my breastbone with every step. I didn’t want to take it off, though. For another thing, when I finished this run, she would be at the end of it.

ree miles later, I’d returned to the mailboxes. at’s when I saw her jogging toward me from the other direction. Her blonde ponytail bobbed behind her. She wore nothing but a sports bra and very small running shorts, and her tanned skin shone with sweat. It was almost as good as seeing her in the bikini. Better, in a way. Lori’s body was most beautiful in action.

Lori’s brain, as usual, was a couple of steps behind her body. I swear she stared straight ahead without seeing me for a full ten seconds, listening hard to her music, daydreaming.

Then she broke into the biggest smile. She pulled out her earbuds and stuffed the cords into the armband that held the player. “Mr. Vader!” she called in the awful British accent she used when she thought somebody was mad at her. “We shan’t meet like this anon. ‘Tisn’t proper.” It was hard to stay angry. I did my best. “We weren’t even apart for twelve hours, and you flirted with Parker Buchanan.”

“I waved to Parker Buchanan.”

“You flirted with Cameron.”

“I knew you’d say that.” She reached me and put her hands on her hips, breathing hard. “He sat close to me in the boat so we could hear each other over the motor.” I believed her. The thing was—and I knew this was unreasonable—I didn’t want her talking to Cameron at all.

She bent over and put her hands on her knees. is gave me a nice view down her bra. “Cameron and I were talking about you,” she panted. “He said that you—” She straightened and looked around us at the woods. “We need to talk, and we can’t do it out here.” I stared her down, trying to stay mad at her, trying not to glance at her boobs.

She tilted her head to one side and grinned. “You’re sexy when you brood.”

I pressed my lips together.

“You’re cute when you try not to laugh.” She tickled my ribs, which were more ticklish than usual because I wasn’t wearing a shirt.

I grabbed her hand. With the middle finger of my other hand, I traced the neckline of her bra. I asked appreciatively, “Sports bra or what?” Her green eyes widened, the same color as the wild trees behind her, and her lips parted.

Suddenly it was too hot, even for me. We stood on an asphalt road that had been melting in the sun all day. I could hardly breathe the thick air. Her heartbeat raced under my fingertip.

I put my hand down. en I walked over to the mailbox and slid out the bottles of water. “Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?” I asked, handing her a bottle.

“Our parents may have mounted closed-circuit cameras in the poison ivy.” She uncapped the water and took a long drink.

“I wouldn’t put it past my mom at this point.” I drank too, then poured water over my head. Then poured some over hers.

She sputtered. “My hair just blew around a boat for nine hours, and I ran a few miles on the hottest day of the year. You’re ruining my look.”

“You’ll dry in thirty seconds in this heat.” I touched one finger to her wet lips. “And you’re beautiful. You’d have to work pretty hard to mess that up.” She moved her head ever so slightly. Her lips slid one millimeter against my fingertip, and electricity rushed through my whole body. I lost my breath again.

“Come on,” I choked out. With one last glance around our empty yards and the deserted road, I took her hand and pulled her away from our houses, toward the woods.

Adam let my hand go when we reached the side of the road. Blackberry brambles crowded the bank. As we tried to find a way through, it was every delinquent teenager for herself, apparently.

Out of habit I plucked a few berries and popped them into my mouth. Too late I remembered we were headed for a tryst in the forest together, not playing army with pinecone grenades and our brothers. I should not eat before kissing.

But three steps ahead of me, he plucked some berries on the fly too. Maybe this afternoon wasn’t as strange as I thought. Maybe we really were headed into the trees for a discussion, as I’d suggested. It was innocent after all. Relieved and disappointed, I bit down on the blackberries. Sweet juice filled my mouth, and then the bitter aftertaste.

I picked a few more berries as I passed. Just as my cheeks puffed out to full capacity in mid-chew, Adam found a break through the thicket and up the hill. He turned around and extended his hand to help me up.

I froze, staring at him in the thick heat, leaves tickling my legs. Boys did not help girls. Not in my experience, anyway. When I was one of the boys, they tromped ahead of me and never once looked back to see if I was still there, much less in need of assistance. Boys had helped me only recently, when they wanted something.

No, this walk through the woods would not be innocent.

Taking his hand, I said, “Fank woo.”

“Hm,” he laughed with his mouth closed.

We crashed through the forest. Since we were sneaking this time together, it seemed like we should have tiptoed along, but there was no way to walk quietly through dry leaves. It also seemed like his brothers and my brother would jump out from behind a bush at any second, or that a snake would fall heavily across my shoulders. Once Sean and Cameron had told me a story about snakes in the jungle dropping down on people from trees. en they hid in Adam’s tree house with a rubber snake and waited for me to pass by underneath. If I had not been six years old at the time and in perfect health, I would have had a heart attack.

e suspense was too much. We’d walked far enough. We couldn’t see the road or the houses that we’d reach if we kept going. e dark trunks of maples and oaks surrounded us, and the late afternoon sun made the green leaves glow overhead. I stopped behind a huge pine—keeping it between me and the road, because it offered extra protection from the prying eyes of boys and parents—and pulled Adam in front of me. “What I wanted to talk to you about was—” He kissed me. At first he gently touched his lips to mine. e more exciting development was that in order to do this, he’d stepped very close. His chest was an inch from mine. I could feel his heat. He tasted of blackberries. He leaned even closer and braced his muscular arms on the tree on either side of me.

When he broke the kiss to take a breath, I whispered, “Tree hugger.”

He opened his eyes, blue as the afternoon sky, and gave me this look. A combination of amusement and exasperation and hunger. He looked like a teenager making out in the woods. Puzzling through this, I realized that I was gazing at him from the perspective of a six-year-old girl playing army and dodging rubber snakes.

But he was this teenager, and so was I. I felt the same need for him that he felt for me, like a force was drawing me forward into his heat. I just didn’t know how to say it.

He cupped my chin with his big hand and watched me. He breathed hard through his nose. His shoulders heaved way harder than they should have after a few minutes of kissing. I was about to suggest some additional conditioning exercises before football season started. I opened my mouth to tell him.

He kissed me again. His tongue passed my lips and played across my teeth. We’d only been kissing like this for a week, but it seemed very natural when I kissed him back the same way. My body was on autopilot as I reached blindly for his waist and dragged him even closer, his torso skin-to-skin with mine against the tree. Who were we? I was turning into any of the assorted older girls who’d been seen leaving the cab of Sean’s truck at night. I’d always viewed those girls with a mixture of awe and derision.

Sexual attraction was funny. Lust was hilarious.

Now, not so much. Those girls had my sympathy, because I totally got it. I ran my fingers lightly up Adam’s bare back.

He gasped.

I opened my eyes to see if I’d done something wrong. He still touched the tree, but his muscles were taut, holding on to it for dear life. His eyes were closed. He rubbed his rough cheek slowly against mine. I had done nothing wrong. He was savoring.

I knew how he felt. Tracing my fingernails down his back again, I whispered, “Stubble or what?” Eyes still closed, he chuckled. “I’m not shaving until our parents let us date again.” He kissed my cheek.

“What if it takes… a… while?” I asked, struggling to talk. He’d made his way down to my neck. His tongue circled there slowly. “ere are only six or seven weeks until August football practice starts, right?”

“Hm.” His mouth moved up my neck, toward my ear. Oh.

“Will you be able to stuff your beard into your helmet?” I croaked.

In answer, he put his lips on my ear. I forgot the next joke I’d planned to make and lost myself in Adam.

I know this is hard to believe. We had a lot to worry about. My dad was threatening never to let us date again. And we were making out in broad daylight, with mockingbirds calling to each other and cicadas buzzing in the trees. We’d watched a lot of DVDs with our brothers over the years—or I had, and Adam had wandered in and out because he couldn’t sit still. We’d made fun of couples who suddenly decided to make out when they’d just escaped from a hoard of alien robots bent on killing them and taking their brains back to their home planet or an insidious, sentient slime that would hunt them down and eat through their flesh to their skeletons in a matter of seconds. Who could concentrate on kissing in these situations?

Now I understood. Adam kissed his way from my ear to my mouth. He hooked one thumb in the waistband of my shorts. I kissed him harder.

I enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. But in the back of my mind, I worried that if we were gone too long, our parents would find us. And I still hadn’t had a private talk with him.

I pushed him away. “We need to go before our parents wise up,” I panted.

He came right back for more, regaining his balance and bracing his arms on both sides of me again, caging me in. “I was just getting started,” he growled in my ear.

I giggled. I’d never pegged myself as a giggler, but when Adam acted like this I couldn’t help it. “Why couldn’t you get started last night?”

“I was sleeping,” he said haughtily. He buried his face in my hair and sniffed deeply. I hoped this was not too unpleasant an experience after all the running.

That was fine. I would have stood there all day and let him sniff my hair. He could take care of himself. But I couldn’t shake the feeling we were running out of time.

“Seriously, Adam, we need to talk while we can.” I put my hand on his bare chest and pushed him six inches away, where he couldn’t reach my hair anymore.

He gazed down at my hand.

“I was talking to Cameron—,” I began.

Adam grasped my wrist with two fingers, like he didn’t really want to touch it, and removed my hand from his chest.

“—about how rude you were to your mom when she offered to help us,” I finished. “Frances had heard about it too. I know you’re mad, Adam, but it doesn’t make sense for you to dig a deeper hole for both of us.”

He scowled down at me. “I’m right and my mother is wrong.”

“I know…” I almost called him “baby.” I know, baby. I caught myself in time. en I wondered why I’d caught myself. It just seemed foreign for this endearment to come out of my mouth. To Adam. And he would not have appreciated it, anyway. After sixteen years as the baby of the family, he did not consider it a compliment.

“I know,” I said again. “But Cameron said your mom would help us if we stay apart for a while first. In the meantime, if you can keep from cussing in front of her, I have a plan that might convince my dad to let us date a lot faster.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “You make terrible, terrible plans.”

“Hey,” I protested. “One of my plans caught you, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you meant to catch Sean.” He took his hand off my shoulder.

I waved his concerns away, along with a cloud of gnats that had found us in the forest. “You’re getting lost in the details. Keep the big picture in mind. e plan is, I will find someone to date who is a hundred times worse than you. You will be the lesser of two evils. My dad will see the error of his ways in banning me from dating you, and he’ll let us get back together.”

Adam nodded.

I nodded with him, grinning. “Good, huh?”

He kept nodding, but his mouth drew into a tight line. “This person you want to date. It’s Sean.”

“Sean!” I exclaimed. Sean hadn’t even crossed my mind. “No! I was thinking about Kevin Ye. Do you know him? He’s two years older than us, but he was in my driver’s ed class last year because he’d flunked it twice. I’m pretty sure he didn’t graduate, what with prison and all. Anyway, one day last week when you and I were driving into town, I saw him mowing the grass with a work-release crew. Maybe I could even convince him to wear his orange jumpsuit on our date. at would really impress my dad.

Do you think Kevin Ye would go out with me?”

Adam’s hand was over his mouth, hiding his baby beard. But his light blue eyes widened with horror. I did not want him horrified. He would be difficult enough to drag into the plan as it was. Instead of just the skull and crossbones around his neck, he needed a more specific warning label that said DOES NOT TAKE DIRECTION WELL.

I wasn’t giving up. The plan was a good one. I could be flexible and change the details until Adam agreed to play along.

“You’re probably right,” I said. “Forget Kevin Ye. Sean would be easier.”

“I knew it!” Adam pointed at me. “You were trying to get Sean this whole time.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you saying? I planned to get Sean, I got you instead, but I was always aiming for Sean, and now I’m going in for the kill?”

“You don’t fool me. You play dumb, but you made an A in trig. You’re diabolical without even trying.” I folded my arms on my sports bra. “I’m pretty sure that’s a contradiction in terms, but remind me to look up ‘diabolical’ later.” He put his fists on his hips, which made the bare, tanned chest in front of me look even broader. “I won’t be able to give you that reminder, Lori, because we’re not allowed to see each other, and you’ll be out with Sean.”

“What is this business with Sean?” I insisted. “I thought you and Sean worked everything out. I saw y’all talking Saturday night.”

“Worked everything out? I guess. We agreed that he would not interfere when I tried to get you back, and I would not interfere when he tried to get Rachel back.”

“Oh.” I’d thought they’d talked about something more meaningful and brotherly, like how Sean had mistreated Adam for sixteen years and how Adam had begun to strike back in a big way. I’d hoped they had, because it would have meant Sean might help Adam and me out of our latest predicament. But this was too much to ask.

Before that night, I’d never seen Sean and Adam voluntarily have a talk with each other. Ever.

“Well, fine,” I said. “I won’t go out with Sean either.”

We both jumped when a bird burst from a dogwood near us and soared away. Adam watched it as it went. I watched Adam. He tracked the bird with his eyes, chin lifted as if he’d regained his dignity. I expected the next thing out of his mouth to be an apology for doubting me.

What he said was, “Who’s your next choice? Cameron?”

Brilliant! I hardly even registered the sarcasm in Adam’s voice. I snapped my fingers. “at’s not a bad idea. Cameron’s three years older than me. He’s about to be a sophomore in college. My dad will pass out. He’ll be so happy to have me dating a high school junior again! Even if it’s you.”

“Plus, you and Cameron are so familiar with each other anyway, since you’ve already made out.” His blue eyes accused me. This time his sarcasm was hard for me to gloss over.

Exasperated, I put my hands in my hair, which was a mistake because it was up in a ponytail. I only managed more of a tousled, cornered-by-my-boyfriend’s-superior-logic look before putting my hands down. “Adam, we did not make out. We kissed once, when I was eleven. I should never have told you that.” I really never would have told him if I’d had any idea he would be my boyfriend a week later and he would throw it back in my face. “I am trying to solve this problem for both of us, and all you can do is be unreasonable and furious about everything.”

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to not want you to date my brothers or a freaking convicted felon,” Adam said. “What did Kevin Ye get arrested for, anyway?

Didn’t he steal a car?”

“He stole the driver’s ed car.” I laughed. Then I saw how Adam was looking at me. “He gave it back.”

“They make you give stuff back, Lori, after they arrest you for stealing it.”

I opened my mouth to respond. I was going to say something about Kevin passing driver’s ed the third time he took it, despite his brush with the law. But now Adam was giving me a look that said, I know you are not about to defend Kevin Ye. I closed my mouth.

Adam sighed through his nose, disgusted. “I can’t believe you’re trying to plan your way out of this. What we do together is none of our parents’ goddamn business, and if you try to work around what they say, you’re just giving in.”

“I’m not. It’s a means to an end. You have to think like them, Adam.” I poked at my head to signify thinking. “ink like a middle-aged man with OCD, a dead wife, and a teenage daughter. Think like a woman with three teenage sons who once ran a golf cart into the side of their granddad’s house.”

“Cameron and Sean shouldn’t have let me drive,” Adam said in his own defense. “I was seven.”

“You shouldn’t have asked to drive. You were seven.”

“And I don’t see why we can’t just run away to Montgomery.”

is idea sounded as ridiculous now as it had when he’d first suggested it last night. But the sentiment behind it—that was very sweet. As we’d argued, Adam had moved several feet away from me across the forest floor, and I’d backed against the tree. When we stood this far apart, it was hard to remember we were arguing because we wanted to be together.

Boosting myself off the tree with one running shoe, I closed the space between us, put my hand on his arm, and stuck out my bottom lip in sympathy. “I’d like to graduate from high school first.”

He looked down at my hand on his arm and muttered, “I’m not graduating from high school anyway.” I stepped even closer, put my other hand on his arm, and fluttered my eyelashes at him. I was getting good at this, if I did say so myself. “I told you I’d help you in chemistry next year.”

Stubbornly he held onto his anger. He didn’t touch me. But he didn’t back away or shake my hands off his arm, either. He said, “Even if your plan worked and they let us date again, the next time we did something wrong—”

“Why would we ever do anything else wrong? We would be very careful.”

“Lori. This is you we’re talking about. And me.”

I laughed. “I see your point.”

“The next time we did something wrong, they’d just tell us again that we couldn’t date.”

I stroked my thumbs across the golden hair on his tanned arm. “Not if we convince them that we’re meant to be together.”

“I’m not sure we are anymore.”

I looked down at the diamond and pearl ring that my mother had left to me, which my dad gave me for my birthday yesterday. Of course we were meant to be together.

My mother had seen this and as much as told me this before she died. It had just been a matter of me seeing this for myself. But if Adam didn’t believe it anymore… I looked up at him in confusion. “You’re not?”

“Not if you’re that desperate to go out with Sean.”

I pulled my hands off his arm. “So this is what it’s about. You’re still mad about Sean. What happened to what you told me a few days ago, that you’ve been in love with me forever?”

“You’ve been in love with Sean forever, and you expect me to believe you’ve switched from him to me in the past week, just like that?” I’d had enough of this. If he didn’t trust me when I said I wanted him and not Sean, what kind of boyfriend was he? I would tell him we should break up, as if my dad hadn’t broken us up already. ings would be so much easier this way. We could enjoy the rest of the summer. Our dating ban wouldn’t matter anymore, and we could go back to being friends and pretend we’d never gotten together. I hoped. Someday.

And then, something happened. e sunlight filtering through the leaves shifted on his face. He looked different. is boy I’d been staring at in disbelief and deciding to break up with… I knew it was Adam. I was in the middle of an argument with Adam. But in the dim forest light, he didn’t look like Adam. He didn’t even look like Sean, who was so much like Adam in appearance but was two years older.

is time, as Adam pierced me with those light blue eyes and privileged me with the full view of his tanned, muscular chest and the golden stubble on his face—I couldn’t quite get over the stubble—he reminded me of the senior football players whom I’d brought water and bandages to with the rest of the girls’ tennis team last fall.

Boys I’d considered so dreamy and so much older than me that I’d never have a chance with them, so why try?

It occurred to me that August football practice did begin in six or seven weeks. School would start a few weeks after that. With Sean a freshman off at college, Adam would be out of his shadow for the first time—the only Vader brother left in town. Adam would likely start for the varsity football team. He would get noticed. And he would no longer be my property all day every day like he was during the summer. I would have to share him with the other girls in my high school, including every flirtatious ditz in the lower sections of math, where he always got stuck.

I couldn’t break up with him. I couldn’t watch him date another girl, or a series of them, for the rest of high school. I would regret it for the rest of my life.

And I couldn’t afford to argue with him like this. I had to convince my dad to lift the Adam ban before the summer was over. And I had to convince Adam the plan was worth it.

Unfortunately, Adam couldn’t read my mind. “You know what?” he asked. “Screw this.” He turned on his running shoe and crashed through the fallen leaves, toward the road. He must have thought I had no defense for switching from Sean to him so fast.

I had to fix this. But jogging after him, clinging to his arm, and begging him to be reasonable would not convince him I was a terrific catch myself, one worth all this trouble. So I used a little strategy, joking my way back into his good graces. “You have no right to dis my plan,” I called after him. “Your idea of a plan is to grow a beard.”

“Hey. It’s a lot harder than it looks. I’ve only been shaving for a year.”

Good. He was joking back. That meant my humor was working on him.

Bad. He didn’t even call this over his shoulder to me. He yelled it facing forward as he stomped through the forest. I could hardly hear him. My humor was not working well enough.

I skipped after him until I caught up. I kept pace beside him, which was difficult. He was much taller than I was, with a longer stride, and he maintained a straight course while I had to dodge around bushes and briars.

“This is good,” I panted. “We’re both awful actors, as we’ve established. If we’re genuinely angry with each other, we won’t have to fake being broken up.” He never slowed down. I practically ran beside him. Branches slapped my face. Acting genuinely angry was getting easier, and I may have forgotten some of my resolve to patch things up with him. “While we’re at it,” I said, “why don’t you call me a bitch like you did a couple of nights ago?”

“Why don’t I call you a slut for hooking up with me just to get Sean?” he snapped.

“Why don’t I call you a slut for hooking up with a different girl every month for the past year?” I yelled at him. “I’ll bet your so-called Secret Make-Out Hideout isn’t even a secret. You’ve had your license for three weeks. You probably took Rachel there before you took me.” He stopped, finally, and gave me a shocked look. Ha—he could dish out the jealous accusations, but he couldn’t take them.

But I didn’t want to one-up Adam. I wanted to be with him and make out with him again, preferably sooner rather than later. “Hey.” I reached over to grab his hand.

Before I could touch him, he dodged away and jogged ahead again. We’d reached the edge of the forest. He barreled right through the blackberry brambles and onto the road.

“Adam,” I called, determined he wouldn’t get away before we could talk this out. I ran after him, hardly noticing the briars scratching my legs. I emerged onto the road in bright sunlight and the full glare of my dad and Frances, who were holding hands.

My first thought when I saw them was, Why are they walking together? Frances was supposed to be my dad’s employee. I was used to seeing them talking, but never touching. en I remembered Frances had not been my nanny for years, and she and my dad were dating as of yesterday. My second thought was, Why are they walking in this heat? Nobody in their right mind would be out exercising in this heat. And—by now you are figuring out I am a little slow on the uptake—only my third thought was, Busted.

The instant I saw Lori’s dad and Frances across the hot asphalt road, I spun around, hoping Lori was still hidden by the trees.

She stood right behind me, in full view. And if my expression matched hers, we couldn’t have looked more guilty.

I turned back around. Her dad’s face was even worse. Glaring at me, he worked his jaw like he was going to say something, but he wanted to make sure he’d thought of the worst possible insult first. He turned redder and seemed to swell, like all his holes were plugged up and the pressure had nowhere to escape.

He opened his mouth.

“It was my fault,” I said quickly.

“I know!” he roared.

At the same time, Lori stepped in front of me and muttered, “Wrong thing to say, Adam.”

“Right.” I put my hand on Lori’s shoulder and pushed her an arm’s length away so it wouldn’t look like I was hiding behind her. “It’s nobody’s fault, because we didn’t do anything wrong.”

Her dad brought his hands together and popped a knuckle.

“Trevor,” Frances said soothingly, rubbing her hand on his back. But she was looking hard at me over her glasses, telling me upstanding citizens did not act this way.

When we were kids, that look from Frances could make Lori and her brother behave, and sometimes even my brothers, but I never seemed to get the message.

“I saw you coming out of the woods,” Lori’s dad shouted at me. “Together!”

“We weren’t rolling in the leaves or anything. Look, no evidence.” I put my other hand on Lori’s other shoulder and turned her around backward, hoping against hope she didn’t have scratches from the tree on her bare back, or bark on her butt.

“Get your hands off my daughter.”

Either I jerked away from her at the force of his words, or she started out from under my hands. I wasn’t sure which. She and Frances and I stared at Lori’s dad in horror.

He was excitable, yes, and he had yelled at me before, yes, but always about safety issues. He thought I was going to set his house on fire with bottle rockets or run my four-wheeler into his Beamer again. When he hollered at me about that stuff, his voice pitched into a whine like a woman.

This was not that voice. This was a full-bodied boom that meant business. He looked and sounded like a big dog defending his territory.