Page 26 of Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness

“You can’t help being so hot a girl can’t resist you.”

He started to smile, but stopped himself just in time. She was serious.

“Can’t you do something to make yourself less attractive?”

“Like?”

“Get a bad case of bad breath. Belch. Tell dirty jokes.”

In the meantime, she was standing there, leaning on her mop, looking bed-mussed and sex-flushed. Her hair was half in, half out of its ponytail. One of the buttons on her blouse had come undone, exposing the edge of a red lace bra. Red? His favorite color, next to flesh.

Yeah, he was going to do his best to repel her attraction. Not! “On the other hand, we could just go with the flow,” he suggested.

“You mean, have an affair?”

“For a start.”

She looked at him as if he’d just crawled out from under a rock.

So much for my hotness!

“That’s it. I quit. Don’t worry about the money you advanced me. I’ll pay you back, even if I have to sell my motorcycle.”

Merrill had enough of this seesawing back and forth. Does she, doesn’t she? Will she, won’t she? Fuck that! “I don’t care about the frickin’ money,” he shouted, then forced himself to calm down. “Did I miss something here? How did we go from hot-cha-cha to hit the road?”

“Because I can’t afford to get my hot-cha-cha on.”

“Afford? Are we back to money again?”

“Allow, then. I can’t allow myself to surrender to my weakness again.”

“Again? Like to the father of your child . . . is that what you mean?”

“Exactly. I trusted that boy . . . man . . . and it led to a whole lot of trouble, the least of which was my being pregnant with Maggie. And that’s the last I’m going to say on the subject.”

For now. “All right, but let’s start over here. You are not going to quit. If you want nothing to do with me, fine.” We’ll see about that. “Consider this little kiss fest we just engaged in a lesson learned.” And, boy, did I learn a lot. Like you consider me temptation on the hoof. “Agreed?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“In light of your angst over a mere kiss . . .” Mere? More like walk-off, grand slam, game-over of a kiss. “. . . you’ll probably go bonkers over my next suggestion.”

She rolled her eyes. “Give it to me.”

Oh, baby! Poor choice of words! He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together for a long moment so he wouldn’t betray his take on her declaration. When he had himself under control, he said, “I’d like to move into your place.”

“Shazam!” She tossed her hands in the air as if he was hopeless.

He was, of course. Where she was concerned. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“My place. That’s what you said. Seeing as how my place has one bedroom, what else could you mean?”

“I meant the motel. I have a serious housing issue for the employees I’ve brought in here. Charlie, Famosa, K-4 when he gets here, and myself. I can’t keep staying at the Patterson senior citizen loony bin.”

“The motel rooms aren’t up to code, let alone in any condition to be used.”

“I have an idea—”

“I think I’ve heard enough of your ideas.”