“Yup. You go do good things.”

“Okay.” I drop another kiss on her lips, slipping her a little tongue before I head for the door.

“Miller.”

I turn to find her twirling her hair around her finger. “’Sup, sweets?”

She hesitates and then asks, “There won’t be any hooker bunnies, will there?”

I come back to the bed and lie down beside her, stealing the lock of hair from between her fingers. “It’s not gonna be like one of those parties at Lance’s. It’s a fundraiser for breast cancer. I don’t know who all is gonna be there, but people will take pictures. It’s inevitable. This is where that whole trust thing comes in, Sunny. It’s a social event. I’m there to make a donation, and then I’m coming back to you, because you matter. The bunnies don’t. Can you try to keep that in mind when the pictures start rolling in?”

She nods.

“I should put on some hooker-bunny repellent to be safe, shouldn’t I?”

Grabbing her by the ankles, I drag her to the edge of the bed until her legs hang off the end.

“What are you doing?”

I hook my thumbs into the waist of her shorts and pull them down, along with her panties. “Putting on bunny repellent.” I drop to my knees on the floor. Her book is still lying open on her stomach. “I’ll be thinking about you the entire time I’m there. As soon as I get back I’ll rub some of that pink lotion on your poison ivy.”

“’Cause that’s so sexy and all.”

“You don’t think so?” I kiss the spot below her navel. I don’t have time to warm her up.

Randy knocks on the door. “Butterson, we gotta go unless you wanna be there all day.”

“Two minutes!” I shout back.

Then I put my mouth on her and erase the sad look from her face, replacing it with another orgasm.

***

The fundraiser is about half an hour away. We don’t take the rental, which would be lame. Instead we borrow one of Waters’ cars. He has two in the garage. One’s a truck with sweet rims. The other is an old-school Iroc Z with an eagle painted on the hood.

“Waters is a weirdo, isn’t he?” Randy eyes our ride.

“He’s marrying my sister, so yup.”

“Not that I’m complaining.” He slides into the red-leather interior. The whole thing has been redesigned so the inside looks like a racecar.

I don’t expect we’ll be gone too long. All we need to do is write a check, get the car washed, schmooze with the host, and I can get back to Sunny. We’ve only got another night or two before Randy goes back to Chicago. I don’t have to get back right away, but Sunny has work, and that means going back to Guelph. I’ll bite the bullet and stay a couple extra days there, even if it means awkward dad conversations and sleeping in the spare room.

As soon as we pull out of the driveway, I start with the questions. “So? What’s the deal?”

“Huh?” Randy’s on his phone, texting. He pauses and sniffs. He lifts the bottom of his shirt to his nose and follows with his fingers. “What’s that smell?”

“Bunny repellent.”

“Say what now?” He arches a brow.

I repeat myself, but don’t elaborate.

“It smells a lot like pussy.” He cracks a window and goes back to texting.

“Speaking of, what happened with Lily?”

She came through the kitchen to get coffee while I was cutting peaches for Sunny and me. She was wearing Randy’s T-shirt. She was also friendly. It was very un-Lily.

“We had fun. Several times.” He doesn’t pause his texting. “I’m hoping to have even more fun tonight.”

“Oh, yeah?” I try to see what’s on his screen, but it’s impossible to read and drive at the same time. “Who’re you texting?”

“No one.”

“Please tell me you don’t have plans to meet up with a bunny this afternoon?” I don’t need more drama. I’ve already had enough over the past week.

“No, man. I’m not a total asshole.” He sends one more message and pockets his phone. About two miles down the road from Waters’ cottage, I spot a camping trailer parked halfway in the bushes. I slow down.

“Is that Bushman and Benji?”

Randy frowns as we pass. “Maybe? It’s hard to tell.”

There’s a car behind us, so I speed up again. “If it’s still there on the way back, I’m definitely stopping. Those guys are as persistent as the stalker bunnies.”

“No kidding. That dickhead kept texting Lily all night. Eventually I made her shut off her phone, otherwise I would’ve thrown it out the damn window. Or gone to find the fucker and broken all his cocksucking fingers.”

He flips through radio stations and taps his fingers on his knee.

“So?”

He stops fidgeting to look at me. “So what?”

“That’s all I’m gonna get? You had fun.”

“Don’t forget the several times part.”

“I’m guessing I was wrong about the vagina teeth if you managed to get in there more than once.”

“Vagina teeth?”

“Yeah. I figured she’s kinda snarly, so maybe her vagina is, too.”

Randy shakes his head. “Butterson, sometimes your brain is a fucked up place to be.”

He flips down the visor and checks his reflection in the mirror, smoothing out the short ponytail he’s sporting. He’s joined the man-bun fad. I think he looks like a douche, but the ladies seem to like it.

“She wasn’t snarly with me at all.”

“That’s because you were boning her.”

“Lily’s actually a lotta fun.” His mouth quirks up in a private grin. He flips the visor back up. “She has a cousin who was at Camp Beaver Woods this past week.”

“With us?”

“Yup.”

“No shit.”

“She said he’s been playing hockey since he could hold a stick, but her aunt and uncle have, like, six kids, and they can’t afford all the lessons, or whatever. Don’t tell her I told you, though. I think he might’ve been one of the kids you helped subsidize.”

“Huh.”

“I don’t think she hates you as much as you think.” His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he checks the message, ending the conversation.

I try to decide if Lily has been different with me since we arrived yesterday, but I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell with all the Benji BS and Sunny’s poison ivy.

The fundraiser takes place at a cottage on top of a hill. The driveway curves around a rocky bend, making the actual structure impossible to see. Cars snake upward in a slow line—luxury rides interspersed with moderately expensive vehicles. Based on the sheer number of cars, we’ll be sitting here for a while. It’s like a small version of a car show. The rental would’ve sucked compared to Waters’ car.

Randy pulls his phone out and sends a few more messages while we wait, so I do the same, including a warning to Sunny that we saw a camping trailer parked a couple miles down the road from the cottage.

Sunny messages back. They’re hard to decipher without listening to them, but the last one has a heart and a kissy lips emoticon, which is cool.

Randy passes over his phone with our invitation to the suits manning the gates. The dude passes me a clipboard with a bunch of forms to sign. I pass it to Randy to scan, otherwise we’ll hold up the line.

“It’s a bunch of waivers for photos. The usual.” He passes it back to me, I sign, and we move forward.

As soon as we round the bend, the cottage comes into view. It makes Alex’s pad look like a dump, and that’s saying something. Three stories of glass, wood, and stone are built into the side of a steep, rocky incline. The view is spectacular. The top floor is the only one accessible from the driveway. I’d love to appreciate the architecture more, but I suddenly realize I’m in trouble. Cars worth a quarter million dollars and up line the edges of the driveway. Two Ferraris—one red, one yellow, a black Mercedes, and an orange Lambo are among the nicest.

I’m a guy. I have a hard-on for cars. I don’t own anything quite so insanely expensive, only because Violet won’t let me. The money’s there, but she wants me to wait a few years before I do something stupid with it—like throw it away on a car I’ll never fit in comfortably.