37

[Patrick]

"Crap, crap, crap, if he sees us together with wet hair, we're screwed."

"The wet hair is just icing on the cake," I said lightly, hoping to calm her down enough to short circuit her anxiety.

Kat started scooping up dirty clothes and shoving them under the bed. "If anyone asks, this is my room."

"Not a chance," I said, even though I knew what she was getting at.

"Grab up all your crap and throw it across the hall."

"My crap?" I suppressed a laugh and watched as she went into speed freak mode and hustled me, my overnight bag, and my shave kit into the tiny room at the head of the stairs.

Kat rushed over and made sure the bed had sheets and pillows. I scattered some dirty clothes across the floor while she yanked the covers off the bed and made it look like my bedroom usually did. "There, he might believe this."

I smirked. "I'm impressed."

"You should be, since it's your ass I'm covering."

I waggled my brows suggestively and croaked like a frog. "Not for long, princess."

She rolled her eyes and tore across the hall at the sound of her father's voice approaching the stairs. I closed my door and counted out the seconds, knowing a knock would land in under a minute. At the 29th second, someone knocked on the door of the room I'd just vacated. "Kat, please open the door, and you better pray I don't find that deep-faced man boy lurking in there."

I knew this wasn't funny, but I couldn't help but smile. Walter Stratford had a comic element about him and a flair for the dramatic that amused me greatly. He should be pounding the boards of a stage, not delivering babies. My smile faded when I realized that the guest bathroom that adjoined my new quarters was bone dry, and it would definitely be on his check list when he saw my dripping wet hair. Luckily, my room had a door that opened onto the bathroom, so I jumped off the bed and slipped into the bathroom. I ran the shower until drops dotted the glass and tile and turned one of Rachel's big, fluffy towels into a sodden mess after drying off my hair. Unfortunately, the mirror was not fogged up, but I hoped Wally would overlook that in his zeal to get his meathooks around my neck to throttle me.

[Kat]

My father looked tired, worried, and so far beyond angry that he'd dropped it over the Devil's Slide. "I told you to come home."

"As I explained, Patrick needed me. He got kicked out..."

"Which I already knew."

"And his mother's boyfriend destroyed his motorcycle."

A tiny sliver of sympathy pierced through his outrage. "I'm truly sorry to hear that, but it still doesn't excuse you."

"Dad, you and Mom raised me to help a friend in need, and that's what I was doing." My voice was rising, because I knew I didn't have a pot to piss in.

"Really? Is that all he is to you?" Dad was staring hard at my nightstand and when I saw what had caught his attention, my stomach fell through the floor.

He walked over and picked up the used condom wrapper. "Explain."

There was no way out of this. "I can't."

"Because it's complicated, and I wouldn't understand?" Dad said, his face reddening as he caught sight of two more wrappers that had fallen to the floor.

I hung my head and dug an imaginary grave with my slippered foot. As I envisioned Dad throwing me into it, I said, "It is complicated."

Dad pocketed the wrappers and speared me with a steely glance. "How long?"

"Only a short time."

"And you think using protection is any guarantee that he hasn't put a baby in you?"

"No." I could only guarantee that Dad would be totally shocked if he knew how often and how intense the sex had been. And if I mentioned that our last little adventure in the shower was completely wild and unprotected sex, he'd blow a gasket. Telling him I'd been on the pill for years would completely destroy his coveted image of his innocent little girl, who had abandoned innocence back in Ohio along with her optimism.

"Where is he?" Dad looked in the closet and checked the bathroom, breathing a sigh of relief when his favorite manboy was nowhere to be seen.

"Across the hall."

Dad shook his head. "For how long, ten minutes?"

He wanted me to deny it and declare Patrick and I weren't cohabitating in this room. But the game was up, and I was done lying. "Yeah. He moved across when you arrived."

"So you're sharing this room."

And loving every twisted, sensual second of it. "Yes."

He rubbed at his eyes and I realized how shaken he was. "How could you?"

I moved to face him. "It's real simple, Dad. I love him."

We were interrupted by a soft knock at the door, and there were Patrick and Rachel, and judging from their rapturous expressions, they'd heard my declaration.