The Sex Solution by Kimberly Raye Page B

dressed up and having her picture taken. She wanted to be a model.”
    “Sharon?”
    “I know she seemed very plain-Jane to everybody in town. It’s hard to change your image with people who’ve watched you go through baby fat and braces and bad haircuts. But she had really great features.”
    He zeroed in on the picture again, and for the first time, he noted Sharon’s high cheekbones and nice smile. She was pretty, all right, but not half as pretty as the girl standing next to her.
    “She was going to move to Dallas and sign with Ultra, the biggest modeling agency in town. They book every major runway show in the Southwest.” She stared at the picture and her eyes clouded. He sensed her loss even before he heard it in her words. “She never had the chance.”
    “What about you?”
    “What about me?”
    “Did you have modeling on your mind?”
    “Me?” She shook her head. “I thought about it, but only as something that could never happen except in my head. I thought about a lot of things like that. Like being a rock star or a famous actress.”
    “Or the Incredible Hulk.”
    She turned on him, a smile on her face. “You wanted to be the Incredible Hulk?”
    “When I wasn’t dreaming about being one of the brothers from Bonanza. ” He nodded. “I kicked a lot of ass in those dreams.”
    “I know the feeling. I had this one fantasy where I could outsing and outdance Madonna. Reality-wise, I was more interested in cooking up new recipes for my dad.”
    He turned and eyed the display of colored saucers spread out across the dining-room table. “Looks like you’re still cooking.”
    “In the lab. I don’t get into the kitchen much anymore. I don’t have time.” He could have sworn he saw a flash of regret in her eyes.
    “I know the feeling. I’m not much for cooking, but I can eat. There’s nothing like a bowl of candied sweet potatoes.”
    A wistful smile touched her expression. “Sharon’s mom used to let us lick the bowl when she whipped the candied sweet potatoes the night before Thanksgiving.” She shifted her attention to the photograph. “Sharon would have been so jazzed that I’m working for V.A.M.P. She lived for their lipsticks when we were teens. She would get her aunt from San Antonio to smuggle in a whole box every Christmas—V.A.M.P. isn’t a brand you can find down at the Piggly Wiggly. Only in finer department stores.” She smiled. “We would try on every color.”
    Silence settled in for a long moment before Austin asked, “You were with her that night, weren’t you? The night it happened.”
    She didn’t answer. She simply stared at the picture for a long moment.
    “It was just the two of us,” she finally said. “We were so excited about graduation the next day. It was the first day of the rest of our lives—that’s what Sharon said. We were out riding around in her daddy’s old boat of a car, talking about all the things we were going to do with our lives. Sharon was doing most of the talking—she always did the talking because she had so many things she wanted to do, and I was listening and then…” Fear flashed in her eyes and she shook her head, as if to rid herself of the sudden memory. “There’s really no use in talking about it. It’s over and done with.”
    He nodded. “Maybe. And maybe not.”
    Her gaze collided with his. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “That sometimes things live on inside of us. They keep going, on and on, until we say, ‘Enough.’ That’s the way it was when my dad died. I watched them put him in the ground, but that wasn’t the end of it.”
    He turned and stared at the photograph, but he didn’t see the two smiling girls. He saw his dad and the rage and resentment that had lived and breathed in his glazed eyes. He heard the hate in his voice.
    “He lived on inside my head for a good long time. I still hear him sometimes. ‘You’re worthless, boy. Worthless and useless, just like your mama’.” Not that it