"You guys sounded good."
He squeezed her shoulder. "We need to sound better. That one reel with Adam showed how much better we need to get."
"Pooh. It just proved how much better you can get." She extracted her hand from his pocket and herself from his side, to pook him on the nose with one finger. "Dump Mike, David. Either that or change to sea-chanteys. He sounds like a Beals' Island lobsterman. No brogue, no lilt. With a good lead singer, you guys can make it. Look at Adam and Ish."
"He sounds like a Beals' Island lobsterman because that's what he is. His name is Mike Beals, you little cabbage! His great-grandpappy settled the place!"
David ducked to one side and scooped up a handful of snow. She dodged and retaliated. After a fast and flurrious skirmish they both ended up rolling in a snow-bank with Jo on top. She shoved another handful of snow down his jacket.
"Peace, woman!"
"You surrender?"
"What terms?"
"Abject slavery."
He grew still. Staring down at him, Jo swore she could see the deep brown of his eyes even in the glow of the streetlights. He smiled.
"Done."
Jo stumbled to her feet, suddenly wobbly at the knees. She covered her confusion by shaking snow out of her hair like a redheaded poodle. Her tongue had decided it was time to go on strike.
"I think you mean that," she whispered, finally.
He lightly touched her shoulders, turning her to face him, and then brushed snow from her cheeks.
"I do."
They hugged for some unknown length of time, just hugged through three sweaters and two layers of synthetic goose-down. Somehow it felt sexier than screwing bare-ass naked on the seventeenth green of the municipal golf course under a full moon.
Finally, he pulled back and kissed her on the forehead. "I love you, Jo."
"I love you, too. David, you want to move in with me?"
God, that was a shivery thought, her tongue running away with itself. First it shut up like a clam, now it spouted things without asking her permission. She'd slept with ten or twenty men, but she'd never lived with one. It was a huge step, from making her body feel good to inviting a man inside her life, for Chrissakes. Jo felt like she'd just jumped from a plane with no reserve parachute.
"Jo, what about Maureen?"
The soft focus faded. She felt the sinking lump in her stomach that said the main chute had just failed.
"Oh, fuck Maureen." She stifled a giggle. "I mean, not literally. Oh, hell, yes literally. Go ahead. If she says yes, go ahead. I won't mind. God knows, she needs something in her life!"
She was blithering, covering up the Maureen Question. How much did she owe her baby sister? When did she get to have a life? She could talk with Momma 'til the cows came home, but the Maureen Question wouldn't go away.
"David, Maureen's more than just a roommate problem. She's stone-ass crazy. Clinically bonkers. Does that bother you?"
He took her hand and started up the slippery hill. She backed off to give him thinking time.
They paused for a traffic light even though there wasn't a car in sight. He drew her closer, wrapping his arm around her waist again.
"Honestly, Jo, it bothers me some. Not enough to matter. Even if your sister's cracked, you look sane to me. If you're thinking about kids, most madness isn't inherited. Besides, like Teddy Kennedy once said, I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."
Kids. Age thirty-something, maybe she should be thinking about kids. David looked like good father material. He limited himself to two drinks a night, never snarled at her even when she was a bitch, willing to wash dishes and unplug a toilet and reach things down from high shelves. And he didn't snore. Everything she needed in a man.
Everything that Daddy wasn't.
Of course, he earned about enough money to keep himself in guitar strings. He'd make a nice pet, though, even if he wasn't a provider. He followed me home, Mommy. Can I keep him?
The light went from red to green to red again while they snuggled. A cop cruised by, slowing down before deciding they didn't look like a threat to public decency. Too cold for that.
They hugged and snuggled some more. Then she sobered and forced herself back to the subject at hand. She'd better get it all out in the open.
"David, Maureen's crazy. Dad's a drunken wife-beater. Mom's a religious freak: if she hadn't gotten married I think she'd be a nun. I'm what you'd call an 'experienced woman.' You up to handling all that?"
"I don't have to live with the rest of the mob." He nuzzled her ear, again. "And I enjoy your experience. You're like Adam with his guitar: you don't get that far without some damn good teachers and a hell of a lot of practice."
"Stop that! Your hands are too cold!"
The hands stopped. They retreated. They left a tingling sensation on her butt, and she didn't bother to refasten the popped snap of her jeans. Hip-huggers, they wouldn't fall off unless she asked them to. Which she probably would, but not until she'd walked another few blocks.
A hot shower for two would warm up those hands quite nicely.
She loved those strong musician's hands with the dancing fingers. Sometimes she felt jealous of his guitar strings. If he moved in, she could get him to play love-songs at three A.M. and then proceed to the logical conclusion.
Yeah. He could play love-songs at three A.M. with Maureen in the next bedroom.
She followed that thought to its logical conclusion and smiled up at him. "Maureen's got to go."
David blinked. "Just kick her out, like that?"
She pulled him across the intersection as if she was going to serve papers on her sister tonight. It was time to get this nonsense over with. Make a clean break.
"Lover, she's a leech. A twenty-eight-year-old dependent child,
