“Oh.” Fontana scrounged around until she found it, a vibrating orange glow hidden beneath the comforter. “I have this little toy I pop on my finger when I?—”
“Got it.”
“But I?—”
“Stop now, Quinn, or we’re going to go another round.”
She tapped the vibrator against the phone, then slipped it between her thighs. “Sounds like a plan.”
chapter
sixteen
Walking After You –Foo Fighters
CAMPBELL
His morning runhad not improved the situation. Head pounding, mouth dry, Campbell still felt like shit.
Exhausted from lack of sleep. (After two—count ‘em,two—hours of mind-blowing phone sex. With laughter and normal conversation scattered between the hot moments.)
Confused because helikedthis woman.
Fontana made him laugh, was whip-smart, and too tough for her own good. She managed to surprise him at every turn, so much so that he didn’t know how to anticipate her next moves.
Like they were playing chess without rules.
Rules were beneficial, because he typically used them to his advantage.
Being kept on his toes was a refreshing, wholly unnerving experience.
“And she’s gorgeous, don’t forget that,” he whispered as he slowed to a trot—almost running the other way when he gotclose enough to see John Nelson sitting on the veranda stairs, hands wrapped around a chipped coffee mug, another by his side, a look on his face that said,Let’s talk!
“You get the boy off to school?” John Nelson held the mug out to him.
Campbell slumped onto the step, took the coffee, and drank as if the meaning of life was captured inside a mug statingFarmers Rulein bright green letters. Steam and the pungent scent of Colombian Supremo peppered his face. “Don’t see him around, do you?”
“Nope. That I don’t,” his grandfather murmured with a leisurely sip. “This blessed coffee is too strong, by the by. I may have to get out there and run along with you if I have another.”
Campbell wiped sweat from his brow and grinned. “You’re just used to coffee-colored water. Folgers, this is not.”
John Nelson stretched his shoulders. “Not sure I trust coffee delivered in the mail.”
Campbell hummed a reply, taking in the morning. Nippy, but with a chill that would burn off before lunch. The oaks lining the drive were shedding leaves that tumbled across the yard in a lazy pirouette. A misty fog hung low, soon to be chased away by the sun. The grass had faded to a buttery gray, stretching over gently sloping hills all the way to the horizon.
As far as he could see—True property.
“Farming is good for the soul.”
So is photography,Campbell thought with a silent sigh.
“You could stay and work the land. A small parcel, just for the pleasure of it. Lease the rest out. We have takers. You used to be a mighty good agriculturalist. Knew cotton like almost no kid I ever saw—interested like no kid I ever saw.” He perched his elbows behind him on the top step and stretched out legs covered in plaid pajamas that looked as old as theowner. “That and a camera, until girls came along,allyou got excited about.”
“Not happening.”
“There are modern processes, more organic. Could go that route. Bring your cousins in, do what you’ve always wanted with the mill,” he said, gesturing with his mug to the fields stretching before them. “This is fallow land, prime, and we’ve given it a few years to replenish, never a bad thing. Soybeans, cotton, collards. Maybe could even try something new. Take your pictures but stay here.”
Campbell yanked on his dangling shoelace, riding this out.
