Changes

by Judith Arnold

  Chapter Six

  Holy shit.

  He shouldn’t have started this kiss—but now that he had, he couldn’t stop it. She tasted so good, so sweet, better than any dessert they might have ordered at the Lobster Shack. Better than any woman he’d ever kissed before.

  One kiss, and he was rock-hard. It took all his willpower to keep from arching his hips into her, letting his body find the heat of hers. He didn’t have any willpower left to stop kissing her.

  So he didn’t stop. He tasted, sipped, nibbled, nipped. He ran his hand up her spine to the nape of her neck and dug his fingers deep into her hair. He’d wanted to touch her hair the moment he’d seen her at the Faulk Street Tavern Saturday night, the moment the song had started to play and his gaze had met hers. He’d imagined her hair feeling like honey, because it was the color of honey. But of course it didn’t. It felt like strands of satin.

  Her hair was amazing, but so was the rest of her. He knew she was slim—he’d easily lifted her over the retaining wall that morning—but wrapping his arms around her informed him of how slender her waist was. He remembered how tempting her ass had looked in her stretch-fabric running pants, and he decided that, as soft and seductive as her hair was, he needed to explore more of her.

  He ran one hand down her spine to the small of her back, then lower, cupping one tight, round cheek.

  Mistake. He’d thought he couldn’t get any harder. That one touch proved that he could.

  She made a tiny sound—a sigh, a groan, a feline purr. God, he wanted her. All of her. All night long. “Come home with me,” he whispered against her mouth, trying to remember when he’d last laundered his sheets. If she was half as crazed with lust as he was, she wouldn’t notice the sheets. She definitely wouldn’t notice the dingy shower curtain.

  “I can’t,” she murmured.

  He could practically hear tears in her voice. He could practically feel them in his eyes. Not because she was denying him what he craved, but because she was reminding him of everything that was impossible about this, about them, about letting one blazing kiss lead them where they both wanted to go.

  Maybe she didn’t want to go there as desperately as he did.

  Christ, maybe she was kissing him only to get back at her domineering fiancé. The guy had pissed her off, so now she was extracting her revenge by tangling tongues with Nick. It was possible.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he loosened his hold on her. The fingers that had arched so naturally around her butt now curled into a fist as he let his hand drop to his side.

  She lowered her eyes. Her lips were swollen, glistening with moisture. I did that, he thought with a combination of satisfaction and irritation. He’d kissed her—and himself—senseless, and now she was saying no, and he was… Pissed off didn’t come close to what he was feeling.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

  “Yeah.”

  Her gaze shot up to his face. She appeared startled by his anger. Wasn’t she as frustrated as he was? Wasn’t she as exasperated that the domineering fiancé, the asshole whose ring she’d deliberately removed, was preventing them from going the distance? Or was she just playing Nick, fooling around a little before she put her ring back on and became the dutiful bride-to-be?

  Instead of firing back at him, she brought her hand to his face and caressed his cheek. Her fingers felt cool against his skin, which was practically steaming from the lust burning inside him—and her touch was so gentle, her expression softening from surprise to wistfulness, that he felt his fury drain away. “Nick,” she said.

  He waited, watching her, wishing she would keep her hand pressed to his face forever. Or else press it to his throat, his chest, his dick.

  “I can’t start something with you when I’m engaged to someone else.”

  Something? Were they pursuing something? He’d thought they were just going for a hook-up. No complications. No meaning attached to it. No thinking allowed.

  Which was ridiculous, and wrong. Casual hook-ups had been fine when he’d been younger, but he was thirty now. He liked to know the woman he was making love to. He liked waking up with a woman as much as he liked sleeping with her.

  Diana was right. This was something. Damned if he knew what. But whatever it was, he couldn’t just blow through it, have some fun and move on.

  And if it wasn’t a casual hook-up, if it was something… Well, there was a fiancé in the picture. Nick might not be the noblest guy in the world, but he didn’t make a habit of fooling around with women who were publicly attached to other guys. He had at least that much integrity.

  “Sorry,” he said, apologizing for having forgotten the existence of her fiancé when he’d kissed her, and ruing the fact itself. Yes, he was sorry she was engaged. If she weren’t, they might be in his car right now, speeding back to his house, him flooring the gas pedal and her running her hand up and down his inner thigh.

  “I have to work this out,” she said. “I have to…I don’t know, try to make some sense of everything.”

  By the time she made sense of everything, she’d probably be back in Boston, with her antiques and her family and her fiancé’s family. And her fiancé.

  It would probably be for the best, too, Nick thought, although his body wasn’t convinced. Just looking at her gave him a hard-on. Remembering how she’d felt in his arms, her hair spilling through his fingers, her lithe body pressed to his, made him think that her refusal to go home with him was not even remotely for the best.

  They walked side by side up the wharf to the parking lot by the Lobster Shack, no longer holding hands. Neither spoke. Diana seemed lost in thought, and Nick wouldn’t have been able to string three words together if he’d tried. His mind was as dense as shoreline fog. Only one word managed to break through the thick, gray mist: Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  The drive back to the inn passed without conversation. She sat next to him, her face pinched, her arms wrapped around her middle in a self-protective hug. He thought about turning on the radio, but while a dose of loud, clashing rock would give his brain a needed jolt, it would probably scare her. Even worse, he might turn on the radio and hear David Bowie singing that freaking song.

  There was nothing wrong with the song. He couldn’t blame it for what had happened between him and Diana. What should have happened. What wasn’t happening.

  Not a word shattered the silence until he eased the car to a halt in front of the inn’s broad porch. Only then did she speak: “I’ll see myself in, thanks.”

  Apparently she took him for a gentleman, assuming he would have gotten out of the car, opened her door for her, and walked her up the steps to the porch and inside. He wasn’t always the epitome of courtesy. With Diana, he would have been. But she didn’t want him to be.

  She unfastened her seatbelt and turned to him, once again wistful, her eyes shimmering in the gloom of the car’s interior, her lips still rosy, still way too tempting. The word sorry was replaced in his mind by the word desire. And then the word hopeless.

  “I have to think,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  He nodded. He wasn’t going to say desire or hopeless. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to say sorry. He’d already said that. It wasn’t worth repeating.

  He waited to start the engine until she was safely inside the building, the heavy front door swinging shut behind her. Then he coasted down the driveway, back out to Atlantic Avenue, and a couple of blocks south to Faulk Street.

  On a Monday night, the bar wasn’t that crowded. The place was busy enough for Gus to earn a nice profit, but not packed the way it had been on Saturday night. A slow song he didn’t recognize, layered with syrupy violins and soulful singing, filled the air, and several couples rocked back and forth on the dance floor, arms wrapped around each other, feet barely moving. Lucky people, he thought. They were holding their lovers, rubbing body parts, getting it on as much as it was possible to do while fully clothed and in a public pl
ace.

  He crossed directly to the bar. Gus was pouring something pale and frothy from a blender pitcher into a bowl-shaped glass. She handed it to a waitress, then acknowledged Nick with a squint and a pointed critique: “You look like hell.”

  One thing about Gus: she didn’t mince words. “Thanks. I wish I could say the same about you.”

  She smiled. “Bad night, huh. What can I get you?”

  He wasn’t sure. He’d had a beer with dinner, but he could manage another drink without jeopardizing his driving skills. He eyed the whisky bottles arrayed along the mirrored wall behind her.

  “He’ll have coffee,” Ed Nolan’s voice reached him from behind.

  If it were any other cop, Nick would have figured the guy was intervening because Nick was acting dull and dazed. But Nick didn’t have a buzz on—what was the opposite of a buzz? Was it possible to be too sober? And Ed Nolan knew Nick as well as Nick knew himself. Ed knew what Nick could handle, what he couldn’t, what he needed.

  He wasn’t sure he needed coffee, but he probably needed Ed.

  “Two decafs,” Ed told Gus. “This boy looks shit-faced.”

  “I’m not drunk,” Nick said.

  “I didn’t say you were.” He took the two steaming mugs from Gus and beckoned Nick to follow him. They settled into an empty booth just steps from the jukebox. If Nick had been thinking more clearly, he would have grabbed the banquette that faced away from the jukebox. But Ed took that seat and Nick wound up with a clear view of it, its peacock decoration glowing, its glossy veneer reflecting golden light from the ceiling lamps.

  He steered his vision to Ed. Tall and broad-shouldered, Ed Nolan projected strength and vigor, even though he was closing in on his sixtieth birthday. He had a square face, blunt features and a thick head of slate-gray hair.

  Ed was as close to a father as Nick had ever had. Nick was as close to a son as Ed had ever had. Ed’s daughter was somewhere out west, San Francisco or Seattle, drifting around, selling jewelry at craft fairs or something. His wife had died when Maeve had been a teenager, and she hadn’t taken it well. Ed knew a thing or two about screwed-up teenagers.

  “Drink,” he said, nudging one of the mugs closer to Nick. “You heard what I said to Gus. It’s decaf. It won’t keep you up all night.”

  The coffee wouldn’t. Memories of kissing Diana would. Nick drank. The coffee was scalding and bitter, the exact opposite of Diana’s sweet, soft lips.

  “So,” Ed said, cupping his beefy hands around his own mug. “What truck ran you over?” Although he’d lived in Brogan’s Point for years, he still talked like a kid from Revere, the proudly working-class town abutting Boston to the north. Ask Ed where he grew up, and he’d say, “Ra-vee-ah.”

  “A truck named Diana Simms,” Nick told him.

  Frowning, Ed rummaged through his memory and came up empty. “She from around here?”

  “She’s from Boston. Staying at the OB Inn.”

  “Nick, Nick, Nick.” Ed shook his head and clicked his tongue. “You’re messing around with tourists?”

  “I’m not messing around with her.” Unfortunately, he added silently. “It’s that damned jukebox. She and her boyfriend were here Saturday night. So was I. The jukebox played ‘Changes’ by David Bowie. Nothing’s been the same since then.”

  “Her boyfriend?”

  “Her fiancé,” Nick said grimly.

  A normal person, someone who wasn’t devoted to Gus, someone who didn’t live in Brogan’s Point and hadn’t heard about the legendary powers of the jukebox, would have told him to forget about Diana, take a cold shower and get on with his life. But Ed wasn’t normal, at least not by that definition. “Are you sure the song wasn’t for her and the fiancé?”

  “I’m not sure about anything,” Nick conceded. “But I think she’s sure it wasn’t for her and the fiancé. She sent him packing and stopped wearing her engagement ring.” At least for tonight. Tomorrow it might be sparkling above her ring-finger knuckle once more. “What is it about that frickin’ jukebox, anyway? Everybody else was dancing and drinking and having fun while that song played. Me, I felt like I was drugged or something. I couldn’t move. I could only stare across the room at her. And she could only stare across the room at me.”

  “Who knows?” Ed shrugged. “The jukebox has never spoken to me, not like that.”

  “It didn’t speak,” Nick muttered. “It sang.”

  “The way Gus explains it, it only speaks to someone who needs to hear what it’s saying. Maybe you need to make some changes.”

  “I thought of that,” Nick said. “But I don’t know what I should change. I’m in a good place right now. Work is good. My friends are good. No complaints.” He drank some more coffee. “Maybe she needs to make some changes. The whole fiancé thing. Maybe she shouldn’t marry him.”

  “You’d like that?”

  Nick opened his mouth and then closed it. Sure, he’d like her not to be engaged. If she hadn’t been engaged, they could have been at his house right now, in his bed, trying out every position he knew. But Ed was asking something more. “I hardly know her,” he admitted. “Would I want to be her fiancé? Hell, I don’t know. Is she desperate to get married? I don’t know. She’s a city girl. She buys and sells antiques. What do I know about antiques?”

  “You drive one,” Ed joked.

  Nick indulged him with a smile, then grew solemn again. “I don’t know what I want—except her. I want her.”

  “Maybe what the song was telling you was that if you want to get her, you have to change.”

  “Change what?” Nick leaned back in his chair and spread his arms wide, as if to say, I’m perfect the way I am.

  Ed shrugged again. “Court her. Let her know you’re serious. Let her know you. I don’t suppose you told her about your background.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, right. I’m going to tell a classy antiques dealer from Boston about that.”

  Ed tipped his head and raised his bushy gray eyebrows, as if to say, Why not?

  Here was why not: because a woman like her wouldn’t want anything to do with a guy who’d been convicted of attempted murder, who’d wound up in the justice system, who’d been shipped off to juvie detention until he’d aged out. Who’d been rescued by a good-hearted cop, someone who’d believed him even if the judge hadn’t, someone who’d helped him get scholarships and loans to attend UMass and then to earn a master’s degree in social work. Someone who’d helped him establish a position in town as a youth counselor, offering guidance and support to kids as screwed up as himself, rescuing them the way Ed had rescued him.

  Diana came from the kind of world where a ring with a diamond that took up half her finger was considered “silly.” A world where antiques were bought and sold, not driven.

  “I remember a time,” Ed said, “when you decided you couldn’t hack college. Somewhere in the middle of your sophomore year, I think. You were holding down two jobs, you were drinking a lot—”

  “Not that much,” Nick objected.

  “Enough to cause problems. Your course work was challenging. You felt alienated from your classmates—all those nice kids whose only run-ins with the law were speeding tickets. You called me up and said you were dropping out, you didn’t belong there, you couldn’t do it. Remember that?”

  Unfortunately, Nick did. “I’d drunk too much that night.”

  “And a hell of a lot of other nights,” Ed needled him. “Do you remember what I told you?”

  Nick sighed. “Something wise, I’m sure.”

  “I told you that if you wanted something, you had to go after it. You had to fight for it—even if that sometimes meant you had to fight yourself. You wanted that degree, Nick. You wanted to prove something—to yourself and to the world. You wanted to overcome the shit you’d been through. You wanted to transcend it. So you fought. You fought all the obstacles and you fought yourself, and you got the degree.”

  “I kept
drinking.”

  “Saturday nights, maybe. Not weeknights.”

  Nick sighed again. “Getting my degree was a valid goal. Nailing a pretty antiques dealer who’s engaged to someone else? I’m not sure that’s worth fighting for.”

  “You don’t want to nail her, Nick. You want to have her.”

  “Christ. When did you turn into Yoda?”

  “I’ve always been Yoda,” Ed joked. “You want her? Fight for her.”