“Which do you like better?” she asks, even though I don’t respond.
Then she opens her mouth and sings, “I like sweet like candy, hot like whisky, but all I crave now is the flavor of revenge.”
Her voice is amazing.
I know this from the radio, as well as from the fact that her voice sometimes fills the whole house while I’m working.
But seeing her sing is something else entirely. I get now why she hasn’t gotten bored with just her and her music. She is her music.
She repeats the same line again, then looks at me expectantly. “Well?”
“Well what?”
I’m pretty sure she rolls her eyes behind the sunglasses. “The second time I went up on the last note. More upbeat, less scary. But I think I want the song to be scary, you know?”
She chews on the end of a pencil, jotting something in a notebook she seems to carry with her everywhere.
“Whatever,” I mutter.
She looks back at me. “You don’t like music?”
I like music. I just don’t know music. That was more Caleb’s thing. The brother I didn’t know I had. The one who died before I even knew of his existence was some sort of virtuoso. Violin, piano, voice.
I, the backup son, can’t carry a tune in a bucket.
But right now I don’t care about any of that. Not with Jenny Dawson’s perfect tits on display in a tiny pink bikini.
If she’s aware of my staring, she doesn’t show it. Just keeps scribbling in that little notebook while humming to herself. “I need my guitar,” she mutters, more to herself than to me. She disappears, and I admit I crane my neck to check out her ass as she enters the house.
Shit. This has to stop. She’s a spoiled kid, for God’s sake.
I all but attack the boards of the porch, hoping it’ll defuse some of the sexual tension rippling through my body. But the strum of her guitar reminds me that she’s there, playing guitar practically naked, and it’s all I can do not to climb up to the balcony and strip her bare while devouring that perfect body.
Even with the boards in as shitty condition as they are, it’s hard, backbreaking work, and my shirt is soaked through in no time at all. I peel off my T-shirt, using it to wipe my forehead when I see her.
Jenny steps out the back door with two glasses of iced tea in hand.
She’s put on shorts, at least, but from the waist up there’s only the little triangles of her bikini top, the sexy curve of her belly.
“Could you please put on some clothes,” I snap, even as I grab for the cold drink she offers.
“Says the guy with no shirt,” she says, lifting her glass in a mocking toast. “It’s ninety-something degrees and higher than that in humidity. We’re both half naked for the same reason.”
How about we get all-the-way naked for a different reason?
I finish the tea in three gulps. It’s sweeter than I like it, but it’s cold, which is all that matters at the moment. I resist the urge to dump the remaining ice on my crotch.
“Where are the dogs?” I ask, since it’s the least sexy topic I can think of at the moment.
“In my room,” she says. “It’s cooler in there with the air-conditioning unit.”
I stare. “You left the AC on. For your dog.”
“And yours,” she points out.
“You left them in there together? Your dog hates mine.”
“Only because he’s ten times her size and has a mad crush. But actually, I think Dolly’s coming around. Playing hard to get, you know?”