Naturally Naughty by Leslie Kelly Page B

realized…”
    “What?” she prompted.
    “I don’t know. How much I cared about him, I guess?” He gave a sad laugh. “How much I’d miss him, even as I find out day by day how very little I knew him.”
    Having lost her dad at a young age, Kate could understand that feeling of wishing she’d had a chance to know a parent. “I’m sorry, Jack. I know how it is to lose your father.”
    “I know you do. You were a kid when you lost yours, right?”
    She nodded. “Six.”
    He shook his head. “Awful. Your mom was so young to be a widow.” He lowered his voice. “And she never remarried.”
    No, Edie had never remarried. She’d instead wasted decades on a man who was married to someone else. Kate rubbed a weary hand over her brow. “No. But we’re talking about your father.”
    “Yes, we are,” Jack replied. “He left a mess behind him.”
    More than you could possibly know.
    “I told my mother I’d come help her out this summer, sell some real estate, get some paperwork taken care of.”
    “And you can’t do that on Lilac Hill?”
    “I’m a grown man, Kate. Can you picture me living inmy mother’s house for a month, being scolded not to let my shoes scuff up her tile floor, and to be careful not to rumple the plastic on the sofa in the parlor?”
    She couldn’t help it. She burst into laughter. “She has plastic on the sofa?”
    A faint smile crossed his lips. “Yeah.”
    “Does it ever come off?”
    He shook his head.
    “Not even if the First Lady came over?”
    “Well, maybe the current one. But definitely not a Democrat. And certainly it wouldn’t come off for me!”
    Suddenly his childhood sounded less golden than she’d always imagined. “Sounds like you were the classic poor little rich kid.”
    “I did okay. Thankfully, your mother was around a lot.”
    Kate’s smile faded. Yeah, her mother had been around the Winfields a lot more than he knew. She wondered what he’d think about that.
    In her heart she knew it would hurt him, just as it had hurt her to learn a parent she loved really hadn’t been perfect. Maybe if she were a vindictive person…or maybe if Jack weren’t already mourning his father’s death…she’d have told him. As it was, she simply couldn’t. No matter what he’d done to her, no matter how much his broken promises had hurt her, she couldn’t repay him with that kind of spite.
    His sister was much better at that, she recalled.
    “Anyway, I wanted to be on my own,” he continued. “There aren’t a lot of furnished short-term rentals around. Your mom seemed happy to let me stay here for a month. End of story.”
    Kate sensed it wasn’t really the end of the story, but she was too tired to think about it tonight. She still hadn’t quiteabsorbed the fact that she was here, back in Pleasantville, this time not only for an afternoon, but for weeks.
    And Mr. Gorgeous was her next-door neighbor. Oh, joy.
    “You need to leave,” she finally said, wanting him out of here before she did something terribly stupid. Such as kick him, kill him. Or even worse, kiss him. “I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.”
    He looked around the empty room. “Uh, where?”
    “I brought a sleeping bag for tonight.”
    “The power’s not even on and it’s hot as blazes in here. You’ll roast.”
    “I’ll be fine. Just go, please? I’m really beat, it was a long drive from Chicago.”
    He turned to leave, then hesitated. “Look, your mom’s furniture is all still in her house. Why don’t you stay over there tonight? It’ll be more comfortable than the floor.”
    Stay there? With him? And give him another chance to use her again? Do I have I’m A Sucker stamped on my forehead? No, thanks, mister .
    Then she thought about her revenge plan, one of her main reasons for coming back here. Hadn’t she intended all along to get involved with J. J. Winfield? Seduce and destroy. Entice and evade. It appeared he was handing her the prime opportunity to do exactly that.
    But