Page 26 of The Last Love Song
Or maybe something to make her sleep and sleep and sleep.
Her gut burned.
Unable to touch her laptop—which scared her more than if a coiled rattlesnake lay on the bed—Megan stretched her arm over her head to where her cell phone rested. She reached for it underneath a clunky old vanity she’d bought at a garage sale in an effort to make their house prettier.
To make up for the fact that her father’s bitch of a wife had left him because Megan wasn’t the kind of daughter she must have wanted when she said she’d adopt a child.
Clicking on the phone, Megan didn’t care about the mess or the nail polish or the dirt that might be in the carpet fibers where the side of her face lay. Even though she kept seeing that stupid social networking site in her mind’s eye, she forcedherself to focus on her phone’s screen and typed in “how to stop cyberbully.”
Stupid, useless crap popped up about school policies to deal with the issue. Bypassing rules for reporting incidents to teachers and useless advice like “ignore them and hold your head up high.” She scrolled through page after page until she got to a support group for women who’d been cyberbullied and cyberstalked. The snippet about the site read as if they might be for real, and that’s what caught her eye.
When she clicked on their page in a new tab, she spotted a coming soon! header that advertised a feature to help users collect data. Data that could be useful to the police to help stop the harassment. What if she could actually send cops to the houses of all these false-faced, full-of-shit seniors, who acted as if they were such great kids in front of their parents?
Eyes racing over the details, she found the name of the webmaster.
Holy crap.
Sitting up, she enlarged the font on the phone to be sure she had read it correctly.
And discovered the mayor of Heartache, Tennessee, was responsible for maintaining the website that could help Megan. She checked her watch, wondering how fast she could clean up her room. Because she couldn’t blow off her music lesson with Ms. Finley now. Not when Megan knew damn well her guitar teacher had a friendship with Mayor Chance. Hadn’t she seen them together yesterday?
Going to the lesson would be a better solution than downing too much cold medicine and pretending these poisonous people didn’t exist. The hope of fixing this would get her through at least one more day.
“What do youmean you don’t know how to fish?” Heather stared at him as if he’d stepped off an alien spaceship. This skill deficiency was unheard of in her world, apparently.
They stood on the banks of the Harpeth River, fishing gear in hand, thanks to Tiffany and Cole, who’d encouraged him to stay by giving him loaner equipment rumored to be top of the line. Not that Zach would know.
All around them, residents of Heartache cast their lines and settled in to enjoy the concession-stand snacks and entertainment. At noon, there would be a free barbecue picnic and the winners of the tournament would be announced.
“My father spent all my childhood scamming investors and wooing potential clients with trips on his private plane. We weren’t exactly bonding over family outings, let alone father-son time on the local lake.” He passed Heather the high-tech fishing pole Tiffany McCord had given him, his hand brushing hers. He lingered against her soft skin until her eyes widened with awareness. “But I’m sure I’ll figure it out if you teach me.”
Hedidn’ttry to make it sound like a come-on. But he knew he’d been fairly transparent when it came to Heather Finley. Not that he was purposely flirting with her. He simply wanted to touch her more. And with the time dwindling until he had to come clean about the missing town money and the old rumors surrounding her dad, Zach couldn’t help taking advantage of the hours they had together before everything became more complicated.
Would she blame him for those old rumors coming to light? Worse yet, would she blame him for being forced to choose between her dream audition and standing by her family? His gutchurned, but it didn’t do a damn thing to lessen the attraction he felt for her. An attraction that grew stronger the longer he spent with her.
“No wonder you brought me.” She juggled the fishing apparatus with ease, balancing the awkward weight. Even in her knee-length skirt, she looked at home on the riverbank. “Although you don’t need a dinner date so much as a press secretary to run interference for you at events like this.”
She pointed to a quieter spot around a small hill and he followed her there, watching her pick her way around tree roots and rocks in a pair of pale blue ballet flats.
“I’d take the date over the aide any day.” He sat beside her on a grassy patch. “But you’d be an enticement to come to work more often if you were my secretary.”
“In your dreams, Mr. Mayor.” She smiled, though. Just a hint of a wicked little grin that turned him inside out.
“Definitely. But I hope they don’t remain mere dreams,” he whispered while she cast the line, his eye roaming her demurely covered curves that were—he had to be honest—every bit as enticing now as they’d been the night after the wedding when he’d been treated to a peek at her bare waist.
“Were you paying any attention to how I did that?” she asked, turning the crank on the reel to tighten the line, her cheeks pinker than they’d been a minute ago.
“I think it’s safe to say you have my undivided attention.”
“Then my work here is done.” She passed over the fishing pole.
“It’s more fun to watch you.” He accepted the rod and reel, but jammed the end into the dirt so he didn’t have to hold it. It was what other people were doing.
Heather gasped. “Tiffany is going to have a conniption that you used her three-hundred-dollar fishing pole like a twenty-five-dollar beater.” She pointed to the ambitious store owner,who seemed to be enjoying her master of ceremonies role. She mingled with guests just long enough to tout the merits of her sporting goods, but she rarely left the side of the reporter attending the event.
“So I’ll buy it. That’ll make her happy.”
“Itisthe Porsche of fishing gear.” Heather eyed it dubiously. “I guess that’s about right for you.”
