Sweetheart Wife novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Pearls

Jonas parked the truck at the end of Tradd Street at ten to seven and did not turn off the engine.

The street was lined with gas lamps, and the old houses glowed yellow behind their iron gates.

I wore a green dress from Hester's closet, taken in at the waist with eleven pins.

Hester had said it fit her at forty, and I did not ask what she had been doing at forty.

I had come to dinner dressed to be looked at.

"You don't have to go in," Jonas said.

"I do."

"Then I go first."

"No." I turned in the seat. "We go in together, and you do not say a word unless I ask you to."

"That's a lot of rules for a man who's been very good."

"You've been good for two days."

"Longer than that," he said, low.

I looked at him.

The dashboard light caught the line of his jaw and the dark of his eyes.

I had a question in my mouth that I was not going to ask.

Why did you type my name?

Instead I put my hand on his thigh.

I felt the muscle jump under his trousers.

"Willa."

"We have six minutes."

"We have a dinner."

"We have six minutes," I said, and slid my hand higher.

His head went back against the seat.

I found the zipper, and he caught my wrist, and then he let go of it.

He was thirty-one and I was twenty-six, and I did not care how it looked.

I freed him, hot and hard and heavy in my hand, and I stroked him in the dark cab with the engine humming.

He watched me with his mouth open and his breath coming short.

"Come here," he said hoarsely.

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