The List by Tawna Fenske

Author:Tawna Fenske [Fenske, Tawna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Entangled; Scorched; erotica; erotic; erotic romance; Tawna Fenske; Mistaken identity; fish out of water; fling; list
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC (Scorched)
Published: 2017-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Simon

Over the next week, Cassie and I text each other sporadically. She’s out of touch for two days doing fieldwork at a remote logging site near the coast. I keep my phone switched off the afternoon I take Junie to the zoo for her birthday. We see pandas and gorillas, and I expertly dodge my sister’s questions about women.

“Is Britney coming with us when we go to dinner?” she asks through a mouthful of cotton candy.

“No, she isn’t.” I try not to grimace at the reminder of a girlfriend I haven’t seen for years.

“Paula?” Junie scrunches her face in concentration, determined to get it right. For people with Down syndrome, retaining and relearning information can be a challenge. It’s always been a struggle for Junie. “Paula is your girlfriend,” she says with a note of uncertainty.

“I haven’t had a girlfriend for a long time,” I assure her. “Want to go see the penguins now?”

My sister frowns, and I can tell she’s trying hard to remember our previous conversations. To conjure a verbal or visual cue that might trigger her memory. “But I thought maybe you would get married,” she says. “I liked her.”

It’s unclear which “her” she means, but the guilty pang in my chest is the same either way. “Nope!” I announce in the most upbeat voice I can muster. “I’m not getting married. I don’t even have a girlfriend.”

I can almost pretend I don’t picture Cassie’s face when I say it. That I don’t wish things could be different between us.

Or that I’m not desperate to see her by the time the weekend rolls around. It’s Saturday when I find myself in the driver’s seat of a pickup truck that smells pleasantly like potting soil and Cheetos. I keep stealing glimpses at Cassie beside me, her hair curling around her ears as she studies the map spread across her thighs.

I’ll admit the first time I read item number five on The List, my nuts shriveled like a pair of prunes wedged between the ice trays. I’m all for creative sex, but sex in the snow?

Not my idea of a good time.

But four hours of round-trip driving alone with Cassie is my idea of a good time. I’m behind the wheel of her battered work truck, which was her idea. The four-wheel drive should prove handy where we’re going, which is apparently the middle of nowhere. Since she has a better idea than I do where we’re headed, she’s in charge of map reading and navigation.

That works for me. Makes it much easier than explaining how I managed to afford a $220,000 Mercedes on a computer store clerk’s salary, and oh by the way, did I forget to mention I own the whole damn company?

I’m not lying, exactly. I’m just not volunteering the whole truth. Maybe if I keep telling myself that I won’t feel so bad about it.

“Okay, turn left here,” Cassie says.

“Where?”

“That little mile marker right there. Oh! You just missed it.”

“That was a road?” I glance in the rearview mirror.

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