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photogenic, but the cards were top-notch. She’d spent a bundle on them.

    Matt gave Drew his hat back. “Thanks.”

    “Sure thing.” Drew settled the baseball cap on his head once more. “You guys need to try out for Little League. We’re drafting players for teams next Wednesday.”

    He might have been talking to the boys, but his eyes were on Lucy.

    Suddenly, Jacquie wasn’t in the mood for sex anymore. She felt cheap for even trying to manipulate it. The biting heat of tears threatened, and in her mind, she swore every sailor curse she knew.

    “Baby, I need to go meet my client now. The painting will have to wait.”

    Then, on an impulse, Jacquie threw her arms around Drew, kissed him soundly on the mouth, forcing herself not to linger and taste, to get her body revved up for nothing. The kiss wasn’t for Drew’s sake, or even her own. It was to show Lucy Carpenter this man was off-limits.

    Jacquie stepped away from Drew and felt Lucy’s gaze on her. She smiled an internal smile of smug satisfaction. Especially when she lowered her eyes to the fly of Drew’s pants and saw that her little “goodbye” kiss had awakened him with a little “hello” that only she would notice.

    “Well, it was nice meeting you,” Lucy said, then took her two boys and guided them to a booth.

    Walking outside, Jacquie found her Jaguar in the lot and took one last look at Drew, who was headed for his Hummer.

    If she didn’t love him so much, she would have cared that he walked away without saying much more to her other than he’d see her around, call her later.

    Fingering a cigarette out of the soft pack, she lit up.

    But she did love him, and damn if it didn’t hurt like a bitch.

Journal of Mackenzie Taylor

    I met Drew Tolman for the first time when I was twelve years old. Momma and I were sitting on the porch sipping Dixie Colas when a big, shiny car pulled up to our curb. She wasn’t expecting him and she just about dropped the glass in her hand.

    I remember him staring at me, then looking at Momma, then back at me and looking at me as if he wanted to turn me inside out, to have a better look.

    I remember him saying he wanted Momma to take a test. She told him to go to hell.

    I figured out something right then. If Drew Tolman was going to hell, I’d likely be going right after him. He was my kin, and I knew it.

    I looked just like him, and the face in the mirror that stared at me every day finally made sense. We had the same muddy brown hair, the same hazel eyes, same mouth, and same skin color.

    Before he came to see Momma that day, I knew his name was listed on my birth certificate.

    I wanted to be his daughter, but he wasn’t ready to be my daddy. I heard him tell Momma that he had to figure out what he was going to do, that he wasn’t convinced on words alone.

    Meeting him, I was convinced. I knew what he couldn’t accept.

    I didn’t see him again until I was fourteen. By then, it was too late.

    I didn’t want to be his daughter anymore.

     

    There are things about a person’s biological composition that my teacher, Miss Oldenburg, says are genetics. You simply can’t change what the good Lord gave us. Miss Oldenburg is of the theological theory, not Mr. Darwin’s, when it comes to man’s creation. I’m of the same mind.

    Ever since I was a little girl, I liked playing softball. I don’t know why I took to throwing a ball like that. I asked my momma and she said I was born to it. I never knew what she meant by that because my “daddy” was a long-haul truck driver and Momma didn’t have an athletic bone in her body.

    If only I hadn’t found my birth certificate, Momma wouldn’t have had to tell me the truth and I’d still be thinking Bobby Wilder was my daddy.

    Before I knew he was my dad, I’d heard of Drew Tolman. When I was seven, Momma took me to Vero Beach to watch the Dodger’s play a spring training game. After the last inning, she left me in the stands with my aunt