Page 6 of Guitars and Cages

“Well, how’s it going?”

“It’ll be a miracle if he isn’t cussing like a sailor by the time Kimber comes back, which she’ll no doubt try to kill me for.”

“So watch your mouth.”

“Easier said than done, dammit.”

“Should get yourself one of those swear jars. Every time you swear in front of the kid drop a quarter in it, and then when it gets full take him out and go do something fun with the money.”

“Yeah, ’cause that worked so well for you and Dad when I was a kid,” I remarked, and listened to him chuckle. Half the bad words I knew came from him.

“That’s beside the point,” he grumbled. “So, how’d she look?”

“Huh, who?”

“Kimber. Come on, kid, don’t bullshit me; I know you checked her out, you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”

“Hot as sin like always. I’d still love to tag her.”

“Give it up. I’ve been tellin’ ya for years it ain’t ever gonna happen.”

“A guy’s gotta have dreams, Morgan, so don’t you go stompin’ mine.”

“Uh-huh, so you gonna make that shift or what?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll figure it out.”

“Good,” he snapped, before the silence signaled that he’d hung up. I tossed the phone into a pile of clothes that needed washing and sprawled across my bed.

For as long as I could remember, I’d had a thing for Kimber Sinclair, now Kimber Logan, and I wished like hell I’d been the one to give her the family name. It hadn’t helped my cause that she was ten years older than me and treated me like a little brother; the older I’d gotten the more I’d told myself that one day she’d look at me and see the guy she should have been with.

Needless to say it never happened.

She’d married my oldest brother, and for a time I’d lived with them, but shit happened and I couldn’t stay, though I regretted it. Some of it, anyway.

It had been a year since Chase had died. I wondered if she’d been with anyone since, and felt a pang of fury thinking about it. Funny how it wasn’t anger on behalf of my brother, but anger on behalf of myself; I’d never looked at another woman the same way I looked at Kimber.

Guess that was why every relationship I’d ever tried to have had failed. Or at least, that was one reason. The other one, well, the less I think about it the better.

Canada might as well have been Mars for all the chance I was gonna have at trying to get her to finally see me—not like I had much to show. Dejected, I reached for my guitar and let the feel of smooth wood beneath my hands, metal strings, and soft chords shove the memories and dreams away.

Chapter Three

“Hey, doll,” I said with a grin when Tina answered her door. I stared into mud-brown eyes, glad to see she wasn’t high today.

“Hey,” she practically purred, body straightening, making those tits of hers stand up real perky beneath the thin cotton of her worn gray tank top. Her kitty-cat belly ring showed against her concave stomach, crack-whore thin with skinny jeans slipping from her hips. I bruised her even when I was gentle, yet she always let me come back for more.

“Can I ask a favor?” I asked, grinning in that way she claimed always turned her on.

“I’ve only got tequila, and yes, we can share,” she said, grinning back ’cause she was figuring that a couple shots and I wouldn’t care that she couldn’t blow worth a damn and always felt too breakable to really let go with.

“I can’t tonight,” I told her, and watched the light in her eyes dim. “Drink, that is.”

That put the light back again.

“So what’s the favor?” she asked, purr back in her voice as her eyes raked down the front of my body.

“Can you come upstairs...” I began, and she was saying yes and trying to get past me before I could even finish, “... and watch my nephew for a couple hours?”