Chapter 7
SEVEN
Derek was going to regret eating the wings.
He wasn’t going to regret being with Reese. His mood had been darkening like an incoming storm, until she had teased him right out of it. She was right. He’d been feeling sorry for himself, which was not cool.
Hey, he still had his job and he could walk. What the hell else did he want?
Right now he wanted Reese Hampton so bad he was salivating. It wasn’t helping that he knew damn well she wasn’t wearing any flannel pajamas under that robe. He’d caught a glimpse of pale flesh more than once.
“How about this? If I win, you have to tell me exactly what you saw in that envelope and what you plan to do with that information.”
She smirked, pulling a hair out of her mouth. “Okay. And if I win, you have to let me print the story when it’s time. First rights to insider info.”
“In the Newark News'? I don’t think so.”
Her cute little button nose wrinkled. “No! In the news organization that I give the story to. The paper that will then hire me and change my life from sewage to meaningful.”
Derek weighed his options. He didn’t think he could trust Reese any more than he could a politician, but she’d already seen the documents. He didn’t want to send her running off to print the story with half the information.
If he strung her along throughout the investigation, it would keep her out of his way. She could have the story once several executives were in the back of a car on their way to prison.
Besides, she wasn’t going to win.
He had the record on dull and boring lifestyles.
“It’s a bet.”
She grinned. “I’ll go first.”
Wiping her hands on a napkin, she tossed her hair back. “Okay, it all started approximately twenty-four years ago when my mother had the bad taste to die on me, leaving me at the mercy of my father and three older brothers.”
“Hey, wow, I’m sorry about your mom.” Derek pictured his mom baking cookies for him and cheering him on at Little League. When was the last time he’d called her?
“Thank you. It sucks because I don’t even remember her at all.
But it’s not like she did it on purpose, or like my dad was unfeeling.
The total opposite. He loved me so much he was terrified he’d screw up raising a daughter.
So instead, he just raised me like a boy.
Sports, buzz haircut, spitting, the whole bit. ”
That explained a lot. It didn’t explain the way she could move around the room with a total sensual femininity, but it explained the stare-him-straight-in-the-face brass balls attitude she had.
“I bought my first bra by myself when I was twelve, with money from my allowance because my dad was in denial. The saleswoman took one look at my clinging baseball T-shirt showing everything and then some, and rushed me off to the fitting room. I emerged with a B cup and a whole new world of information.”
So far, she had him beat.
“I’ll spare you the rest of the horror of my entrance into puberty, but let’s just say I had to fight tooth and nail for my dad and brothers to acknowledge that I wanted to embrace my femininity. And when I expressed an interest in boys, all hell broke loose.”
Looking at her, he could only imagine. He could see her, too, defiant, yelling back at her family, sneaking out of the house to meet a guy.
“I had to lie that prom was a different day, say I was sleeping at my friend Jeannie’s house, then pull my dress out of a duffel bag and put it on in the rest room at the party center.”
“What was their objection to prom? Every kid goes to prom.” A flash of taffeta and a bad tux rose in his memory. Christ, he couldn’t even remember his date’s name. Damn near twenty years ago.
She folded her hands across the table and raised an eyebrow. “Three older brothers had all been to prom. I’m guessing their experience was somewhere along the lines of a drunken orgy. They weren’t about to let me have that much fun.”
That was pretty damn sad. Though he didn’t imagine she’d taken it lying down. “Did you have that much fun? Have a drunken orgy of your own?”
“No. My boyfriend threw up on my dress and passed out by eleven o’clock.”
Derek laughed.
“Hey!”
He shrugged. “It’s funny.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “So, that’s the story of my childhood. I don’t even remember losing my virginity because I was so sure one of my brothers was going to walk in and murder the guy. I spent the whole five minutes watching the door over his shoulder.”
“Five minutes? Damn. You probably weren’t missing much anyway, then.” If he ever had Reese beneath him, he’d need a hell of a lot more time than that. He was thinking hours. A whole night. A month, maybe.
“Oh, please, like you were any better when you were eighteen.”
“I was better than five minutes, that’s for sure.” None of his girlfriends had ever complained.
She snorted. “So do I win the bet?”
She wished. Derek settled back in his chair, stretching out his bad knee. “Not so fast. You’ve got me beat with life before twenty-one, but I’ve got you after that.”
Stacking the dirty plates one on top of each other, she said, “How?”
“You ever been married?”
“No.”
“I have.” Five years of indentured servitude and it still hadn’t been enough to keep Dawn around. “So I win, right there.”
“Why?” She narrowed her eyes. “Just because you were married? What’s so bad about that?”
“Says you who haven’t been married.” He crossed his arms.
“Lots of people are married and seem very happy.”
“Including my ex-wife.” He didn’t have bitter feelings towards Dawn. In fact, he didn’t have a whole lot of feelings for her at all, which seemed wrong given they’d lived together for close to six years. But sometimes he wondered if he’d have made different choices if he hadn’t been with Dawn.
If he hadn’t been so worried that he wasn’t measuring up in her eyes.
Back when he’d been at the academy, he’d always pictured himself working in violent crimes, out on the street, right in the action.
But he’d gone into the financial crimes division because that had seemed the fastest route to a directorship, which was what Dawn had wanted, and he had wanted to make her happy. It hadn’t worked.
Water under the bridge now.
“Dawn wanted two things I couldn’t give her. Money and sperm.”
Reese’s eyes went wide. She dropped a paper napkin. “You don’t have sperm?”
That made him laugh. “No, I’ve got as much as the next guy, but Dawn wanted a kid and I didn’t. I think I knew the marriage was going south and a kid was only going to make that worse.”
“Oh.” She closed her mouth. “So what happened?”
“She left me and married Chicago’s prosecuting attorney and moved into a fancy house. She is currently six months pregnant with their first progeny.”
“Damn, that sucks.”
He shrugged. “She has a right to have what she wants.”
But Reese stood up, yanking her robe belt tighter as she moved away from the table. “So where does love fit in all that? It’s just ‘sorry, you’re not giving me what I want, so see ya?’ That’s wrong. Unless you promised you a baby when you met her. Then you can’t blame her.”
“I don’t blame her. But it feels like wasted time, different decisions might have been made…
anyway. Then I took a tire iron to the knee.
” He didn’t want to talk about Dawn anymore, was sorry he’d started the subject.
No thoughts of Dawn belonged in this room where a gorgeous woman was only a few feet in front of him. Touching distance.
If he reached out and tugged on the belt…
“So I think you win post twenty-one just based on the tire iron. So we’re tied.” She nibbled the tip of her finger in a gesture that had him shifting in the chair.
“Okay, I know a deciding factor to see which of us has a lonelier love life. When was the last time you had sex?”
He shouldn’t have been surprised by anything Reese said, but he still felt his mouth flapping in the breeze. Then answering. “Uh, five months.”
Which right now felt like five hundred years. The stupid teasing robe was gaping at the chest again, and he saw the rise of her left breast. Flannel pajamas, his ass.