Redwood Bend

in the distance, he heard soft talking. Phone call to a girlfriend? He smiled to himself—guys always got the bad rap for locker-room talk when really, the girls were worse. They couldn’t wait to get their friends on the phone and describe every detail.
He felt eyes on him. He opened one blue eye and met with four brown ones.
“Did you have a sleepover, too, Dylan?” one asked.
“Did you forget about your pajamas, too? Because we had to sleep in our unders because we forgot about them.”
“Did you have to sleep in your unders?”
He lifted his head. “Katie!” he yelled.
She darted into the bedroom and when she saw her sons, she put her hands on her hips. “Is this where you keep your school clothes?” she asked. “Go change, right now.”
“Mom, did Dylan have to sleep in his unders?”
“Did he forget his pajamas?”
Her lips twitched as she struggled to keep from laughing. “Well, for heaven’s sake, will you look at that. He must have. I wouldn’t have noticed, since I’m more polite than you—I gave him privacy and slept in the other room, since he’s a guest.” She shuttled them out of the room. “Get changed now—you don’t want to be late.” Then she looked at Dylan and covered her laughing mouth with a hand.
“Not funny,” he said grumpily.
“Funny,” she insisted. “You can have the cabin to yourself—get up, go back to sleep, whatever. I’ll be gone about a half hour. Coffee’s on. I’ll bring back breakfast from Jack’s.”
“Then I have to go,” he said.
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “I understand completely.”
My God, he thought. Did she take nothing seriously? Here they’d romped the night away in complete carnal pleasure and at first light he’s caught naked in her bed by her children! They’d be in therapy until they were twenty.
But of course they hadn’t seen anything… He was covered, Katie claimed to have slept in the other room and the clothes he’d left on the living room floor the evening before were neatly folded on the top of the chest of drawers, his boots standing politely on the floor. Even the dresser drawer where she kept all the extra condoms was closed; no wrappers on the night side table. Katie had tidied up and taken a shower; the ends of her hair were still damp and she wore jeans and a sweatshirt.
But they knew he’d been there. Was that a bad thing?
He took a shower and while the spray ran over him he closed his eyes and remembered the last shower here, in the middle of the night, with Katie. And with the help of a little soap and shower gel, he had her up to seven while he lingered around four because she couldn’t keep her soapy hands off him and he didn’t have a condom in the shower and he lost his mind and damn! She really was going to kill him. And he was going to die with a smile on his face.
But how did she do that? Show him the sex goddess when they were alone and that primly amused young mother in the light of day? She was like two completely separate women in one skin. He was going to have to get out of here before it became any more obvious he couldn’t be without her in his life. Over breakfast they would talk, he would thank her for being the best sex of his life, tell her truthfully that he’d never forget their “date” and then he’d head for L.A. or Montana.
When she walked in with a brown paper bag, she was smiling. “Preacher’s omelets are so huge, we can split one…”
“Okay,” he said weakly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” Everything.
“You have a very strange look on your face.”
“Crap,” he said. He took the bag from her hands, put it on the counter and threw her over his shoulder, her laughter pealing out through the little cabin as he carried her back to the bedroom. Once there he pulled off her clothes, put his hands and lips on every inch of her body and took her to eight. And nine.
“My God,” she said, breathless and glistening. “This has to stop! At least long enough for nourishment!”
He laughed at her and said, “That omelet’s cold anyway. It’ll keep ten more minutes. I have to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“How screwed up are your kids going to be about finding me in your bed?”
“They didn’t even mention it, Dylan. I suspect they thought nothing of it.”
“But we’re not married or anything…”
“Neither are Conner and Leslie, where they spent the night last night, although they are an established couple who live together. But the