Cheri on Top by Susan Donovan Page B

frowned. No, she didn’t know what Gladys was saying. She refused to know what she was saying. “But Aunt Viv never married,” Cherise said.
    “Ha! That wasn’t from lack of offers, let me tell you! She liked to play the field, is all.”
    Cherise turned her face into the wind and used her free hand to rub her brow. What to do with this new information? Her grandfather hosted weekend bacchanals. And her great-aunt was the teenie-weenie-bikini-wearing town slut, dirty dancing to raunchy James Brown tunes with a pot-smoking, beatnik trumpet player. Cherise felt a sick headache coming on.
    The BlackBerry rang.
    She fumbled for the smartphone and saw it was J.J. Her heart began pounding. “Hello?”
    “Where are you?”
    Cherise sniffed. “Hello, J.J. I’m just fine. Thanks so much for asking.”
    He chuckled. “And I’m fine, too, thanks. Now, where exactly are you?”
    “Out of the office. I have some personal things to take care of. I borrowed Gladys for the day. We’re headed to … Asheville … to do some shopping.”
    Cherise ignored Gladys’s clucking sounds.
    “You have a paper to run, Miss Newberry.”
    “Is there something I can do for you?”
    “Nope—just wondering when you’ll be back in the newsroom.”
    “Not till evening.”
    “Have fun in Asheville.” Click .
    Cherise took the phone from her ear and tossed it in her purse.
    “My, my, my,” Gladys said. “Three days home and you’re already torturing that boy?”
    Cherise fiddled with her hair. “My home is in Tampa, and I have no idea what you mean by ‘torturing.’”
    “Uh-huh. Now, I don’t blame you. If I were only fifty years younger, or even forty years younger, oh, what the hell, even thirty years younger, I’d be all over—”
    “Stop! Turn here!”
    Gladys huffed. “Well, I never…” She shook her head at Cherise the whole way up the gravel lane. She stopped the car and turned off the engine, and the two women sat in silence for a moment.
    “Sorry for cutting you off like that,” Cherise said.
    Gladys shrugged. “You need to relax, Cheri. You’ve got nothing to worry about. He’s never wanted anyone but you, anyhow.”
    In slow motion, Cherise cocked her head, not sure she’d heard right. “Excuse me?”
    Then Gladys slapped Cherise on the shoulder playfully. “Now, just looky at what we got here!” Both women stared out the windshield at the army of workers swarming the cottage. There were at least a dozen men of various physical types, hues, and ages climbing on and milling around the house. Men pounded on the roof and the porch. They wiggled under crawl spaces. They perched on ladders. They shored up cracked stone. There were even men hacking away at the overgrowth and putting down mulch. Cherise counted six pickups, an electrician’s van, and a plumber’s truck.
    “Granddaddy told me he’d hired some workers,” she whispered. “Boy, he wasn’t kidding!”
    “He wants you to be happy here, I guess.” Gladys craned her neck to follow three shirtless men as they hauled a wooden beam down to the water’s edge. “I know I’m happy here.”
    “Let’s just get this over with and get back to town.” Cherise managed to keep hold of the tie-downs while exiting the passenger side of the car. “Could you give me a hand with the—”
    She froze. Her jaw fell open. She pressed the front of her thighs against the car for support, so she wouldn’t fall off the earth’s crust. Oh, god- damn , she couldn’t help it. What was he doing here? She would recognize him anywhere, in any context.
    She watched him hand off his end of the wooden beam to another man. Then with one motion, he ripped off his T-shirt and tossed it to the grass, the muscles in his back rolling and twisting as he moved. It was a dance. It was a dance of male power and sexuality, and it made Cherise’s mouth go painfully dry.
    She swallowed hard as she watched him stroll to the water’s edge, still in his work boots and a threadbare