Wild Raspberries by Jane Davitt Read Free Book Online Page A

and let me get to Mr. Thompson’s sciatica and baby Jordan’s two-month needles?” she demanded.
    He pursed his lips. It seemed to be his day for people walking all over him. He made one last attempt to keep his home pest-free. “People will talk.”
    “If his name was Danielle, not Dan, they would.” Their eyes met with a shared understanding. Tyler had told her the reason he’d turned her down when she’d asked him out to dinner, a few months after he moved in. She’d considered it, shrugged, and told him that a meal she hadn’t cooked and a conversation with someone who hadn’t known her since birth would do nicely even without the prospect of sex for dessert, and did he like Italian?
    They met for dinner a few times a year and went to the movies now and then, the invitations always coming from her. He’d never been to her home, though she’d stopped by his once or twice — on foot. Although he resisted all her efforts to draw him into the town’s social life, his friendship with her had given him an acceptance of sorts in the town. People still viewed him warily, but he wasn’t the only unsociable eccentric in the area, after all.
    She thought she knew him. If he had any regrets, it was that she deserved better than the half-truths he’d shared with her.
    “Fine,” Tyler told her tersely. “He can stay for a day or two, assuming he hasn’t already left town.”
    “A week, at least, and I want you resting that ankle, you hear me? Unless you want to be limping for the next few months.” She stood to open the door for him and then glanced through the slats of the blinds into the parking lot. “If he’s the scruffy man leaning against your truck, I think you can assume he’s staying. Is he gay?”
    “Not that I know of,” Tyler said evenly, refusing to give her the satisfaction of looking startled at the segue. “And I don’t see it being something I need to know. Did I mention the part about him being twenty? And a complete stranger?”
    She opened a drawer and took out a sample box of condoms. “I wasn’t asking if you planned to sleep with him, Tyler. But whatever his orientation, he should take these with him when he leaves.” She tossed him the box and he caught it with his left hand, without fumbling. He wasn’t naturally ambidextrous, but it was something you could learn, and he had. It had come in useful more than once.
    “I’ll make sure he gets them.”
    She glanced out of the window again. “Cute,” she decided. “But way too skinny.”
    “Living on fresh air and sunshine will do that to you.”
    Cute? Not the word he would’ve chosen, but cute was safe; he didn’t think he’d ever fucked anyone who fit that description.

Chapter Five
    Dan looked at the bags on the floor. Maybe he’d gone a little wild. There was no way he’d fit all of this into the pack he’d bought, even folded down small. He still had fifteen bucks left, though, money he planned to give back to Tyler as soon as they were someplace they could argue in peace.
    The town was so much like the one he’d left that he’d been both soothed by its familiarity and jittery because he kept expecting to see a face he knew. The streets were tree-lined and wide, there wasn’t much litter or graffiti, and people were nodding to each other as they passed.
    Oh, yeah. Just like home.
    He’d gotten some stares, but the town wasn’t small enough that a new face stuck out a mile, not with the summer visitors out in flocks, buying up souvenirs, their faces shiny with sunscreen, their arms dotted by bug bites.
    Not that anyone would look at him and think “tourist”; his jeans were too filthy for that. He’d bought some basic toiletries and then gone into the clothing store. The prices had made him blink and back out again, fast. A dollar store with a wide selection in the window display had looked promising, and he dug through a basket of sale items in a dark corner and bought some socks with Santa hats on them and