Page 140 of Kiss an Angel

“That’s what he says about you,” Heather pointed out patiently. And then, even though she was beginning to think she was wasting her breath, she said, “If the two of you would just get married, you’d be so busy bossing each other around that you’d leave everybody else alone.”

“I wouldn’t marry him for anything!”

“I wouldn’t marry her if she was the last woman on earth!”

“Then you shouldn’t be sleeping together.” Heather adopted her best Daisy Markov voice. “And I know you sneak over here to be with her just about every night, Dad, even though sex without a deep commitment to the other person is immoral.”

Sheba turned red. Her dad opened and closed his mouth a couple of times like a goldfish, then began to bluster. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady. Sheba and I are just friends, that’s all. She’s been having trouble with her water tank, and I—”

Heather rolled her eyes. “I’m not a moron.”

“Now listen here—”

“What kind of example do the two of you think you’re setting for me? Just yesterday I was reading about adolescent psychology for my homework assignment, and I already have a couple of big strikes against me.”

“What strikes?”

“I lost my mother, and I’m the product of a broken home. That, plus what I see going on right now with the two most influential adults in my life, makes me more likely to have a teenage pregnancy.”

Her dad’s eyebrows shot up practically to his hairline, and she seriously thought he was going to pee his pants. Even though she wasn’t afraid of him like she used to be, she wasn’t stupid, either. “Got to go. See you guys later.”

She slammed out of the trailer.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Settle down,” Sheba said. “She’s just trying to make a point.”

“What point?”

“That the two of us should get married.” Sheba plopped a dab of taco meat in her mouth. “Which just goes to show how much she knows about the real world.”

“You got that right.”

“She still hasn’t figured out how incompatible we are.”

“Except in there.” He jerked his head toward the bedroom in the rear.

“Yeah, well . . .” A foxy smile came over her face. “You peasant boys do have your uses.”

“Damn right we do.” He drew her into his arms, and she snuggled against him. He started kissing her, but then he drew back because both of them had things to do, and once they got started with each other, they had a hard time stopping.

He saw that her eyes looked troubled. “The season’s almost over,” she said. “A couple of weeks and we’ll be in Tampa.”

“We’ll still see each other this winter.”

“Who says I want to see you?”

She was lying, and both of them knew it. They’d become important to each other, and now he had the feeling she wanted something from him that he couldn’t give.

He buried his lips in her hair. “Sheba, I care about you. I guess I even love you. But I can’t marry you. I got my pride, and you’re always stomping over it.”

She stiffened and drew away, shooting sparks at him and acting like he was some kind of cockroach. “I don’t think anybody asked you to get married.”

He wasn’t good with words, but there was something he’d been trying to say to her for a long time, something important. “I’d like to marry you. But it’d just be too hard being married to someone who’s putting me down all the time.”

“What are you talking about? You put me down, too.”

“Yeah, but I don’t mean it, and you do. There’s a big difference. You really think you’re better than everybody else. You think you’re perfect.”

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