A Man for the Summer by Ruby Laska Page A

she spoke again, her voice was throaty and there was a hint of a smile in the corners of her lips.
    “I said, Sugar?”
    Sugar . She’d said it twice, and there was something unexpectedly nice about it. The last—the only?—endearment a woman had for him before had to do with his privates, something he’d never gotten entirely used to. But this was something else, Junior’s whiskey and molasses accent and her just-woke-up hoarseness…
    “In your coffee? Hello? Anybody there?”
    Sugar . Duh.
    “Uh—yeah.” Griff felt his skin redden as a trace of amusement made its way into Junior’s grin. “And cream.”
    “Well, I don’t have any. Of either one. Sorry. Guess you’ll just have to drink it black.”
    “Well, why’d you ask then?”
    Junior shrugged, measured coffee out of a brown paper sack. “Just, y’know, curious.”
    Irritation returned. This woman was irritating. It wasn’t his imagination, or her hangover. She just was.
    “How come?” he demanded.
    “How come what?”
    “How come you were curious? About how I take my coffee? Does it mean something around here? Some sort of small town voodoo or something?”
    Junior turned and regarded him. She let her eyes travel up and down, and Griff was acutely aware of his stubble, his wrinkled shirt. Her killer smile.
    “Hey, what did you do with those steaks?” she finally asked.
     
     
    The man could cook, at least, Junior had to admit. She plowed through the steak, which was grilled to perfection, blackened on the outside and almost mooing in the middle. Griff sat across the table stabbing his half-heartedly with a fork, not saying much.
    Well, what did he expect? She knew she hadn’t been much fun last night, and she felt bad about that, really, but it was hard to work up much contrition the way Griff was moping around.
    He looked as though he’d been up all night. Interesting. In Junior’s experience, most guys didn’t stick around until morning, and if they did, they were the kind that would sleep until noon and wake up wanting to know if she’d mind doing their laundry.
    “Great steak,” she said suddenly, and smiled brightly. Poor guy. Maybe it was just dawning on him, what they’d done. Making a baby . Hell, when she got around to letting herself absorb that fact, Junior was pretty sure it was going to lay her flat, too. But for now, her priority was food, coffee, and figure out what to do with the sweet, hapless guy sitting in her kitchen.
    In that order.
    “Thanks,” Griff said. “They had a pretty good selection over at the supermarket.”
    “Dudder’s,” Junior corrected him, automatically. Supermarket? The place was a dusty corner grocer, the only one in town, though lots of folks drove the thirty miles to the Costco in Sedalia once a month to stock up.
    “Yeah,” Griff replied, and the ghost of an ironic smile flitted across his lips. “ Dudder’s. ”
    Junior frowned. Why was it that everything this man said sounded like criticism? Or was it just her own insecurity making her wonder if everything had a deeper meaning.
    After all, did it really matter what he thought about Poplar Bluff? He wasn’t going to be spending any more time there if last night paid off. Or even if it didn’t. Junior had a feeling that if she hadn’t managed to get pregnant the night before, she wasn’t going to be making any second attempts. Griff was on his way right out of her life.
    A brief pang surprised her. What did she care if he left in ten seconds, or ten minutes or even ten hours? He was nothing to her. A means to an end.
    Which felt kind of bad. Kind of wrong , if she was really honest with herself. Men used women all the time, in her experience, but Junior found that being on the other end for once didn’t feel very good at all.
    “Hey,” she said. “About last night--”
    “Yeah, we need to talk,” Griff agreed, a little too quickly. “Look, I feel really bad about, you know…” his voice trailed off and his features