If I’d been there, I could have stopped at least one, if not all, of those things from happening. I would have tied up the boat for Gretel the way I always did, caught Troy on his way out to smoke pot in the middle of the night, and turned my baby sister’s potty mouth around with love. Seraphina worships me. If I’d told her to keep her words sweet enough for Baby Unicorn Story Time, she would have put on her rainbow leg warmers, trotted around the family room, and neighed a promise to do better from now on.
But I couldn’t quit the tour and run home to prevent further disaster. I’d signed a contract, and more importantly, I’d chosen Lips on Fire. I’d chosen friends who are like family, music I love, and the freedom to make my own mistakes instead of scrambling to stay one step ahead of the latest Strong family crisis.
Still, I’ll do just about anything for my family, including devote my vacation to gutting the house while Dad’s helping build a yurt city in Arizona and Mom and Seraphina, the last kid left at home, spend the summer with Aunt Maggie in Montreal.
The same applies to Bridget.
I would do almost anything for her, but I won’t hurt her. Ever.
That’s why this begins and ends today. And why I’m going to have to fight like hell to keep my head on my shoulders and not get carried away by the energy that pulses between us, thick and sexy, promising we’d make magic together—no tutoring required.
But she’s never going to be mine, so the kindest thing I can do for this girl I adore is give her the confidence to get out there and find someone else.
“Are you still there?” she whispers.
“I am,” I say. “Just taking a moment to breathe. That’s the number one secret to confidence. Remembering to breathe.”
Her lips twitch. “Pretty sure that’s not true. I’ve been breathing for a long time. Pretty much nonstop since the day I was born, in fact.”
“But when’s the last time that you really thought about it? That you paid attention to the way it feels when the air moves in and out of your body?” I silently curse my words as soon as I say them. They’re way too suggestive, at least to me, opening the door for impure thoughts to come in and prowl through me like hunting cats.
But, thankfully, Bridget doesn’t seem to notice.
“Pretty often.” She brings a hand to her chest, freckled fingers pressed to the pale skin above the V-neck of her long-sleeved T-shirt. “When I start feeling anxious, my doctor told me to put my hand here and breathe into it, long and slow. Four beats in and five beats out. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it just…”
“Just what?” I ask.
“Makes things worse,” she says, her hand dropping to her side. “Being in your body can be scary, you know? When your heart won’t stop racing and your throat closes up and you’re not sure if you’re having an actual medical emergency, or if your brain is just trying to kill you a little.”
I wince, hating that she suffers like that, even every once in a while. I know she’s had issues with anxiety on and off since she was a kid—her mom was a piece of work who didn’t inspire a lot of peace and tranquility in her children—but we haven’t talked about it much.
“But it’s not always like that,” she continues. “Sometimes a few deep breaths are great. But they’ve never made me feel confident.”
“That’s because you’re not breathing the way I’m going to teach you to breathe. You’re not breathing into what you want.”
She cocks her head. “How do I do that?”
“Eyes stay closed,” I say, spotting a flash of blue. “First, you have to get grounded. Before you can get where you want to go, you have to be where you are.”
Bridget smiles. “You’re such a Zen master. If the rock-star thing doesn’t work out, you can start an ashram and lie around on your yoga mat all day saying wise things while beautiful girls braid your beard.”
“I’ll braid my own beard,” I say. “I’m pretty particular about how I like that done.”
She laughs and my heart flops like a landed fish aching to get back to the ocean. But my fish-heart is staying put, no matter how much it thrashes around because the Ocean of Bridget is off-limits. I ignore the squirming, fluttering feeling and say, “Start by telling me what you feel. Right now.”
“I feel warm,” she says after a moment. “But not too warm. Perfectly warm.”
“Good, but try to get more specific. Where do you feel warm? How is your body letting you know that everything’s all good?”
Her tongue slips out to wet her lips, and the ache inside me moves lower, but I ignore that, too.
“I feel the sun on the side of my face, but the sea breeze is keeping my skin cool. I can feel it whispering through the hairs on my arms and whooshing down the neck of my shirt on the ocean side.” She takes a breath and her lips curve. “It’s nice, familiar. I love a gentle breeze, even when it’s cold. It’s like a hug from Mother Nature.” Her nose wrinkles. “That probably sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
I swallow hard. “It doesn’t sound silly. Tell me more. What else?”
“Salt on my lips,” she says, the pink tip of her tongue making a second appearance, threatening to send me into cardiac arrest. “The wood railing against my fingertips. The cool of your shadow on my chest. And…”
“And?” My voice is husky, but I can’t help it. She’s so damned sexy right now.
“And your smell. Lumber and detergent from your shirt and sun-warmed skin. Your sun-warmed skin, which smells different than anyone else’s.” She takes a deeper breath, letting it out with a sigh that’s also sexy as hell.
I fight the question rising inside me but finally can’t help but ask. “How is it different?”
She tips her chin up. Her eyes are still closed, but I swear I can feel her attention roving over my face, seeing through me, figuring out that the last thing I want to do is teach her how to attract other men. “I’m not sure you want me to answer that,” she finally whispers, making the knot low in my body twist even tighter.
“Why not?”
“Because the only way I can think to describe it isn’t…friendly.”
“Tell me.” The hint of a growl in my voice warns that I’m getting too close to the fire. But I can’t resist. I suddenly feel like I’ll die if I don’t know what goes through Bridget’s head when she smells me.
Her teeth bite down on her bottom lip, and then she says, “You smell like something I want to taste,” and my control is instantly shredded.
I have to get out of here, away from her.
But first she needs to know that she’s perfect.
“Open your eyes.” I thread my fingers into her hair, holding the strands away from her face as the ocean breeze does it’s best to tug them free.
Her lashes sweep up, revealing sleepy blue bedroom eyes that vaporize all but the last of my restraint. The hunger and longing on her sweet face are the sexiest things I’ve ever seen, but I can’t tell her that.
At least not in those exact words.
“You’ve got this,” I promise instead, holding her gaze, even though seeing how much she wants me feels a lot like slamming my fist into the center of a bruise. “You are so beautiful and so sexy. A guy would have to be a fool to turn you down. All you have to do is take your pick, Bridge. You don’t need lessons.”
“But what if I’m a bad kisser?” she asks, leaning into me until her breasts are mere inches from my chest and my pulse is beating hard in places where it shouldn’t be beating, and I shouldn’t be hard.
“You’re not,” I grit out through my tight jaw.
“You only kissed me once. After we’d both been up all night worrying about Colin and Kirby getting killed in Vegas. You were sleep deprived and exhausted.”
“It was fine. You were fine.” My blood rushes faster as she shifts even closer, close enough that she’s going to touch me soon. And when she does, she’s going to feel exactly how “fine” I think she is. I’m so hard I’m testing the integrity of my zipper.
&
nbsp; “Fine,” she echoes, lips turning down. “That’s not exactly a rousing endorsement, Shep. It sounds to me like my form could use some work.” Her gaze caresses my mouth again, making me forget how to breathe. “Or at the very least some…fine tuning.”
She pushes onto tiptoe, and I stumble back so fast I don’t have time to untangle my hands from her hair and end up pulling several curly strands out by the root.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I say, as she makes a startled sound and presses a hand against the side of her head.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeat. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says with a tight laugh, rubbing her scalp. “I mean, as fine as a girl can be when she realizes the thought of kissing her is so repulsive it makes men trip over themselves in their hurry to get away from her.”
“Bridget, that’s not—”
“It’s okay, Shep.” She lifts her hands in surrender. “I get it. I’m so awful that I’m beyond help.”
“That’s not it at all.”
She looks up, her eyes shining. “Then what is it? I know you’re worried about our friendship, but I’ve already ruined that, so—”
“You haven’t ruined anything,” I say, desire sucker punching me in the gut all over again. “I just… I can’t, Bridget.”
“Why?”
Her voice catches, dragging, tearing at my heart until I can’t stop myself from confessing, “Because if I start kissing you again, I’m not going to want to stop. I might not be able to stop.”
She goes still, and then her brows drift up her forehead in slow motion. “Really?”
“Really.” I bite down on my bottom lip hard enough that pain flashes through my jaw. I want her so much it already feels a little like dying, but what a sweet fucking death it would be.
Her eyes narrow. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel less pathetic?”
“No, I’m not, and you’re the furthest thing from pathetic.”
“Not true,” she argues. “I haven’t been on a date in eight months, and the last two guys I did go out with both said I reminded them of their sister. It’s like I have no sex vibe.”
“You have a sex vibe.”
“But what if I don’t… What if—” Her words end in a swift inhalation as I step in, pinning her between me and the dock, my head spinning as her body fits against mine so perfectly it’s like we were made to fill each other’s empty spaces.
Every space…
Her eyes go wide as I press my hips closer to hers, making sure she feels every aching inch of me as I murmur into her ear, “Believe me now?”
Her hands tangle in my T-shirt on either side of my waist. “You really want me?”
“So much.” I fight to hold back a groan as she rocks her hips forward, pressing tighter to the clear evidence of her power over me. “And this is why I know you don’t need help. You just need to go after what you want. No man in his right mind is going to say no to you.”
“But you are,” she whispers, her breasts flattening against my chest as she wraps her arms around me. “And I still have the same problem I had before.”
I risk a glance down into her eyes. “How so?”
“Just because a man wants me, doesn’t mean I know what to do with him,” she says. “I’ve only slept with one person, Shep, and Nathan was a virgin when we moved in together, too. I probably have no idea what I’m doing in the bedroom. And I get so nervous even thinking about being intimate with someone new.” She pulls in a breath and lets it out, her eyes locking more firmly on mine. “But maybe I wouldn’t, anymore, if I could practice with a good friend…”
The thought of “practicing” with her makes even more blood rush away from my brain, and then she says, “And I already know I love kissing you. The way you make me feel, it’s just so…”
The last of my control evaporates. Before I realize I’m moving, my lips are on Bridget’s, my tongue sweeping into her mouth, tasting the sweet and salty heat of her while my hands roam places they shouldn’t. My fingers dig into the firm muscles of her ass through her jeans, dragging her even closer to where I’m already so fucking hard for her.
And then she gasps into my mouth, and all I want is to make her do it again, this time while I’m inside her, making her come so many times she won’t have any energy left to worry about whether she’s doing sex right.
“Like I’m on fire,” she says, her nails digging into my shoulders. “That’s how you make me feel.”
“Me, too,” I groan against her lips, knowing we have to stop. We’re fairly hidden here behind the ticket booth, but anyone down walking the beach could see us.
But I can’t seem to stop myself from cupping her breast through her shirt and rolling her already tight nipple through the fabric.
She cries out—soft, but loud enough for me to hear how much she likes being touched there—and I can’t resist pinching a little harder. And then she’s suddenly rocking against me, making these hungry, sexy as hell sounds, and I’m rocking back, my hands everywhere, all at once.
I’m so consumed with wanting her that I don’t care that the wind is getting cold or that the scream of seagulls is closer than it was before. I don’t care about anything except stoking this fire that’s already so hot it’s dangerous.
The thought is barely through my head when something hot and soft smacks against my back and a high-pitched voice screeches, “Get a room, losers!”
Bridget and I jump apart to the sounds of seagulls squawking.
Only it’s not gulls, it’s a gang of junior high-aged boys in board shorts with hamburgers in hand, laughing their asses off. I glance over my shoulder to see half a cheeseburger detach itself from my shirt and splat to the pier, leaving a red ketchup stain behind, and then turn a hard glare back toward the kids.
I don’t glare very often.
I’m scary when I glare, and I don’t like to be scary. But these punks? They get the full eyebrows-furrowed, jaw-clenched, eyes-narrowed combo. A beat later, they scatter, still laughing, but clearly not wanting to stick around to throw any more burgers.
“Oh my God.” Bridget’s breath hitches. “I think one of those kids was Sam Thatcher. I used to babysit him when he was in preschool. I changed his diapers! I really hope he doesn’t tell his mother he caught me making out. I don’t know her super well, but I’m pretty sure Mrs. Thatcher doesn’t approve of kissing in public.”
“I’m sorry.” I step away from her before I do something stupid like start making out with her again. This has already gotten way out of hand. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“But I love the way you kiss me,” she says, her gaze so soft and sexy I know I’m going to drown in her eyes—in her—if I don’t get out of here ten minutes ago.
I take another step back. “I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I can’t do this, but you don’t need a tutor or an experiment or anything else. You’re fine. More than fine. I promise.”
“But I—”
“I’ll see you around, okay?” I lift a hand. “We should grab an ice cream with Kirby or something soon.”
Her face falls, but by the time her lips part to speak, I’m already beating a hasty retreat back to town. I walk this time, I don’t run, but I know it’s the same damned thing.
Still, I don’t see that I have a choice.
I have to protect Bridget from this. From myself. From the fire that’s going to end our friendship if we’re not careful.
That’s what fire does—it destroys things.
If only the flames didn’t feel so fucking good.
Chapter Six
From the texts of Bridget Lawrence
and Theodora Devi
Theo: Thanks so much for working today, babe! We didn’t win the taste test, but we had the highest sales of any booth on the pier. I’m calling that a win!
Bridget: Yay! That’s absolutely a win. I’m so happy for you!
Theo: Me, too! I’m also a little tipsy. My cooks and I
took a detour on the way to the parking lot and hit the Sea Shanty for celebration drinks. I looked all over for you and Shep, but I couldn’t find you, and my phone was dead so I couldn’t text. Everything okay with you guys?
Bridget: Okay isn’t the word I would use…
Theo: Oh no, so you really are in a fight? That’s what Brenda said she heard, but I didn’t believe it. You and Shep are both the sweetest. You’re like baby pandas. Or baby sloths. Or another baby animal that’s high on adorable and low on scary teeth. You’re just too cute to fight.
Bridget: Turns out we’re not, but it’s more complicated than that. I promised I wouldn’t breathe a word about what happened, but I have to talk to someone before I go crazy. Can you keep a secret?
Theo: Of course I can! Who do you think you’re talking to, woman? Tell Aunty Theo everything.
Bridget: No, seriously. I’m for real this time. If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone. Not a soul. Not even your mother.
Theo: But my mother lives in Florida and she barely speaks English. Who’s she going to tell—the other old ladies at tennis class? Did I tell you that she’s learning to play tennis? It is SO freaking cute. She wears this puffy yellow tracksuit that makes her look like a giant Easter peep. And my dad goes with her and films her lessons on his phone so they can watch the video together later and critique her form. It’s both delightful and hysterical. They sincerely don’t seem to realize how awful she is. Like, she is ridiculously, laugh-out-loud horrible. But Dad thinks she’s going to join the pro-circuit and become the oldest woman ever to play Wimbledon.
Bridget: He’s just proud of her. Like always. Your dad is so sweet that way.
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