1-900-Lover. Rhonda Nelson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ next time,” he offered, once again unable to conjure an artful remark.

      She chuckled grimly, pulled a slight shrug, then turned her attention back to the tapes. “One can hope.” She slipped a tape into the player, and hit the rewind button. “So Scott’s your nephew? How old is he? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

      “Seventeen.”

      “He seems like a good kid. Bright.”

      “He is. Though obviously his judgment isn’t always on the mark,” he added pointedly.

      Rather than being insulted, she merely smiled. “He’s a teenager,” she said, as though that explained everything. “They’re a breed apart until those hormones level out. Particularly boys.”

      Interestingly, her matter-of-fact tone resonated with the voice of experience. Still… Will grimaced. “I don’t think that excuse is going to fly with his mother.”

      She depressed the play button and shot him an enigmatic look. “Then perhaps you should talk to his father.”

      Impressed with the insight, Will inclined his head. Actually, he’d considered bypassing his sister and talking to Jim. Jim, he knew, would at least understand the motivation behind his son’s ignorant, thoughtless episode. He winced.

      Lori…wouldn’t.

      She’d be angry and appalled, and the combination of the two wouldn’t leave any room for understanding. Will had initially rejected the idea of bypassing Lori—it was the easy way out for him, ergo it had to be wrong. Now he wasn’t so sure. Now he—

      His thoughts ground to a halt as Rowan’s voice, then his nephew’s sounded from the machine—her sultry “Hello,” then Scott’s nervous squeak.

      “Hi. I, uh…” He cleared his throat and his voice lowered to a comical level. “Hey. What’s happening, baby?”

      Will felt a smile tug at his lips and his gaze instinctively found hers. She, too, wore an amused expression.

      “Look, Slick, you’re not old enough to have this conversation,” Rowan told him, instantly seeing through the ploy. “Call back in a few years.”

      “Wait!”

      From there, things happened exactly the way she’d told him. They’d chatted, she’d tried to disconnect, citing the enormous phone bill someone would not approve of, and his nephew, to Will’s astonishment, had glibly announced that his uncle wouldn’t notice another 1-900 number because he frequently called them himself. In fact, Scott had continued, his uncle had probably called her in the past. Rowan had laughed at Will’s outraged expression as he fervently denied the charge.

      “I don’t need to have phone sex,” Will felt obliged to repeat after she’d turned off the tape. The unspoken because-I-can-get-laid-without-it hung between them, eliciting another mysterious smile from her. Her eyes twinkled.

      “I’m sure you don’t.”

      He nodded succinctly. “Damn straight.”

      She chewed the corner of her lip, presumably to keep from chuckling at his expense, and busied herself by putting the cassette away. She was laughing at him, Will knew, and he couldn’t blame her because he was making a macho ass of himself. But he couldn’t help it. It was a matter of honor, dammit. Men who could get laid in the traditional sense didn’t call total strangers and whack off to the tune of a few well-rehearsed pants and sighs.

      Phone sex? Will thought dubiously. Come on? He preferred his sexual encounters of the physical kind, thank you very much. He liked slow and tender, hot and frantic, and wasn’t averse to a little kinky now and then. Sex was sex and, regardless of the method employed, hell, he thought with a slow smile, it was always good.

      He’d never once thought about having a woman talk him through it…but he wasn’t averse to a helping hand every now and then.

      His gaze instantly drifted to her hands, and it took very little effort to imagine one of hers wrapped around him, touching him the way she’d implied she’d touched good ole Roy. A flash of heat detonated in his loins and a serious sense of excitement, one he hadn’t felt in eons, pulsed through him.

      She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Do you— Do you want to listen to the other tapes, or will that one suffice?”

      Will grunted, unnerved. “That one will suffice.”

      She nodded, apparently still not trusting herself to look at him. “Good. Could I see that phone bill?”

      He frowned, baffled. He couldn’t imagine why, but he handed it to her nonetheless. “Sure.”

      Her lips moved as she silently scanned the bill, and it belatedly occurred to Will that she was tallying the multiple charges. In her head, without the aid of a calculator. Impressed, he readied his mouth to comment, but was interrupted as she handed the statement back to him. “Okay. Let me get my purse and I’ll write you a check.”

      He blinked. “A check?”

      “For the charges,” she called over her shoulder. She disappeared into the back of the house, then emerged seconds later with a wallet. By the time she’d made the return trip, he’d managed to organize his chaotic thoughts into some semblance of order.

      “Look, this isn’t necessary. I didn’t come here to get you to refund the charges.” And he hadn’t. Quite frankly, he hadn’t thought beyond blasting her into oblivion, but he hardly needed to share that with her, did he?

      She finished writing the check, scrawled her name across the bottom, then tore it out of the book and handed it to him. A smile caught the corner of her ripe mouth. “No, you came here to rip me a new one.”

      He’d opened his mouth to argue, but a guilty laugh emerged, beating him to the punch. He pulled a shrug. “Like I said, I was pissed.”

      “You don’t say?” She batted her lashes with feigned innocence. “I hadn’t noticed.”

      He owed her an apology, Will knew, and though saying he was sorry wasn’t a phrase that came naturally to him—quite frankly, he wasn’t used to being wrong—tendering the expected nicety now didn’t seem quite so onerous.

      He exhaled mightily. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, albeit awkwardly. He glanced at the floor and was momentarily distracted by her bare feet. Lots of toe rings and a small tattoo of a butterfly decorated the skin right above her pinkie toe. Another bolt of heat landed in his groin and he struggled to find the rest of the apology. “I— I shouldn’t have come here. I, uh— I should have called.”

      “Yes, you should have,” she replied levelly. “However, when Scott needed further tutoring, I should have given him my home number instead of continuing to let him call the 900-number.” Her lips formed another droll smile, and her eyes twinkled with humor. “In my defense, I was trying to guard my privacy.” She sighed softly. “At any rate, I intend to refund the charges, so just take the check, we’ll be square and we can forget about this mess.”

      He doubted it, but he reluctantly pocketed the cash anyway. “At least let me pay you for the tutoring sessions,” he offered. He laughed grimly. “Believe me, if the kid had asked me for help with science he would СКАЧАТЬ