“Oh, Charmaine. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Watch the road, honey. You almost hit that guardrail.” He laughed at the foul word she said, then continued. “If you really must know, Clarence says I should screw your brains out till you walk funny.”
“He never did!”
“Yes, he did. Not in those exact words, but the meaning was the same. ‘Ride you long and hard till you walk bowlegged.’ ”
“That was so crude.”
“You asked.”
They didn’t talk much after that till they got to the supermarket, Charmaine having decided to put a zipper on her lips. Besides, she couldn’t rid her mind of the image of Rusty riding her hard. They had gone down only two aisles at Albertsons and were in the produce section when Rusty started whining about going home.
“What is it about men and shopping?” Charmaine inquired idly as she examined a bunch of bananas, wondering if she had all the ingredients for Bananas Foster. She had a special recipe from a New Orleans Cajun restaurant. “Women see it for the orgasmic experience it can be, while men regard it as pure torture.”
“Hah! The only orgasmic thing I can imagine is you holding those bananas and me imagining what you could do with them. Holy crap, Charmaine, are you deliberately trying to torment me?”
Surprised, Charmaine looked from Rusty to the bunch of bananas in her hand. When understanding dawned, she flashed him a glower. “Not everything in the world is about sex.”
“Maybe not to you,” he said and stomped off to the apple section.
She watched him walking, with way too much interest. He wasn’t the only one with sex on the mind, truth to tell. His kiss last night had about knocked her for a loop. And staring at his tight butt in those tight jeans right now, well, sex about said it all.
A young college girl noticed, too. The blonde sidled up to Rusty and asked him a question about apples. Apples! Like that was what she was interested in with a drop-dead gorgeous cowboy. And Rusty, the jerk, just tipped his hat back and smiled down at her and answered her questions as if he were suddenly some Johnny Apple-seed or something. Not that Charmaine was jealous or anything. But she was thinking about sashaying over there and walloping blondie over the head with the bunch of bananas she still held in her hands.
“I think the best ones are McIntosh, darlin’,” she heard him say.
Darlin’? Oooh, I’d like to wring your neck, you randy, stupid, too-good-looking jerk.
He sauntered back then and dropped a bag of Mclntosh apples into their cart. “Shopping’s not so bad, after all,” he announced.
Forget neck-wringing. Shooting would be better. She practically growled at him, especially when he winked at her, understanding perfectly that she had not liked what she had just witnessed. “Be careful, stud, or you’re gonna land yourself back in jail on statutory rape.”
He jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “She’s twenty-one. Legal. She told me so. Not that I care. All I did was answer the girl’s question.”
Uh-huh, and apples and her giving you her age just went hand in hand. “Like you’re suddenly the apple expert? And you ask where the sex idea came from? Well, you just said something a few minutes ago about sex being on your mind all the time.”
“No, no, no. That’s not what I said, sweetheart. At least that’s not what I meant. You and sex are always on my mind these days.”
“Oh,” she said, and couldn’t help herself from grinning ear to ear. He still wants me. I mean, I knew he wanted me, but it is so damn good to hear him say the words. How pathetic can I get? “You are pathetic,” she said.
“Yep,” he agreed. “And so are you, being jealous of a young twit like that. Talk about! Like I would be interested in her when you’re around, waving bananas in my face.”
She dropped the bananas into her cart and pushed the cart away. But she was still grinning ear to ear,
Charmaine had the cart half-full and was ready to leave a short time later, but she had lost Rusty back in the paperback book section about ten minutes ago. She finally found him near the front of the store, down on one knee, talking to a German shepherd the size of a pony. Rusty had had a dog just like it when they’d been together, but Eli had been ten years old then, and he’d died about three years ago. At least, that was what Rusty’s father had told her. Well, this dog wasn’t quite like Rusty’s had been since it was a Seeing Eye dog, on a leash held by a middle-aged lady wearing dark glasses and sitting on a bench, talking softly with Rusty.