by Karen Booth
“Now I’m confused because I know you’re a text slut. You said some very naughty things last night.”
My eyes clamped shut. I’d known that was dumb when I did it. “That’s not the same thing.”
He laughed. “So I was right, you are a tease.”
* * *
I made coffee Thursday morning and got right to work after Sam was off to school. I was in the home stretch with the article—I needed to listen to the record once Chris got me the CD, write the review, and then the final polish. The phone rang and I took the pencil out of my mouth, a bit dismayed by the number of teeth marks in it.
“Chris, hi,” I answered, saving my work on my laptop.
“Hello, yourself. What are you doing?”
“I’m writing a magazine article about some musician from England. He’s a real ass.”
“They all are, and yet you make it sound fascinating.” He cleared his throat. “So, my dear, I’m calling to extend an invitation and just tell me if you want me to bugger off. Would you like to come up to the city for the weekend? We could spend some time together and I could deliver your CD in person.”
The question sent my mind racing. “You know that’s not a good idea. I would be in serious trouble with Rolling Stone if anyone saw us together.”
“Of course.” He hesitated for a moment. “I could come to see you.”
Now it was full-on panic. “Oh, wow, you know, that sounds great, but I’m not sure that would be very smart either.”
“Nobody will find out about it if I come down there. You live in North Carolina for God’s sake.” It was going to be tough to break it to him that we didn’t have tumbleweeds rolling down the street in front of the General Store. “Seriously, Claire, it’s been two weeks and our phone calls aren’t cutting it anymore.”
I didn’t have enough time to think let alone come up with a good excuse. It was a huge risk. But my mom was there in my head. She’d conveniently decided that she now had a vote on anything related to Chris. She thought I should say, “yes” and worry about everything else later.
“I guess it would be okay.”
“Wonderful. Where should I stay?”
The thought of him booking a hotel made me even more nervous—registering names, using credit cards, being in a public place.
“It might be best if you stay here, in my guest room. But this is just as friends. Can you live with that?” My heart thumped like it couldn’t find the right gear—speeding up and slowing down, sometimes stopping altogether and then racing back to life.
“Of course, just as friends.”
Chapter Twelve
I was frantic, with a disaster for a guest room, including a closet full of wrapping paper and the hideous crystal bowl my sister gave me for Christmas. Finding the good sheets meant some lengthy exploration of the linen closet, but I wanted Chris to be as comfortable as possible.
The doorbell rang when I got out of the shower. I rushed to answer it in my robe, dripping water on the floor. I greeted the deliveryman with the twisted towel on my head flopping to the side and prayed I wasn’t giving him a free peek as I signed for the flowers, several dozen purple tulips.
Sam yelled for me from upstairs.
“Yeah. I got it,” I answered, but she was already standing on the stairs.
“Who are those from?”
I shook my head as I plucked the envelope from the arrangement. The card read: In anticipation of a wonderful weekend, Christopher. I blew out an exhalation, appreciating the striking color of the tulips.
“Well?”
“Um, they’re from Chris.”
She slid her hand down the banister and jumped the final steps. “Oh, boy.” She was fine with Chris coming for the weekend, but openly suspicious of him and his motives, which was normal for her. She questioned any man that came into our life.
When I pulled up to the airport terminal, I was horrified by the semi-disgusting state of my backseat. I crumpled the greasy fast food wrappers that Sam and Leah had left behind, dashing to a trashcan on the sidewalk.
“Destroying evidence?”
I turned to glimpse an implausible sight—the source of that heavenly voice, dressed in jeans, a gray t-shirt and a beautifully beat-up caramel brown leather jacket. He dug his hand into his hair and smiled a smile that crumbled my insides, leaving fragments of me scattered on the sidewalk. I’d forgotten the full scope of how tempting he was in person.
“No. I mean, just some trash from the car.” He had me flustered from the word go—it was so much easier to speak in sentences on the phone.
He curled me into a hug with one arm and kissed the top of my head. “Your hair smells good.”
Goose bumps started at my shoulders and made a slow outward crawl. I’d never survive an entire weekend of him. Every nerve in my body would be shot by the time it was over.
“Thanks. I just took a shower.” I looked down, feeling shy. “Thank you for the flowers. They’re beautiful.”
The airport security guy with the Day-Glo yellow jacket blew his whistle sharply, eyeing my car. I hurried Chris and sped away before I got the lecture about leaving my car unattended at the curb.
I felt more at ease once I could busy myself with driving. “How was your flight?” I glanced over to see his profile and the seductive mole on his left cheek. Drive the car, Claire.
“Boring, but short. I can never read or sleep on the plane so I end up pestering the poor soul next to me or ogling the flight attendants. Uh, there’s someone in that lane.” He pointed out the other car with an anxious jab.
“Yeah, I see him. Are you hungry? I thought we could pick up Thai food. It’s Sam’s favorite.”
“Sounds perfect. I look forward to meeting Samantha. It’ll be interesting to see how much she’s like her mother.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I’m guessing she’s as much of a handful as you are.”
“Who says I’m a handful?” I changed lanes to pass an annoyingly slow driver and I noticed Chris watching over me, grinning at my huffy response.
“Oh now, don’t start this. You’re so defensive. You need to loosen up.” He put his hand on the back of my neck and began kneading, creating a most pleasant friction. “You assume I’m going to say something bad.”
Sam was waiting for us in the kitchen when we got to the house. She’d showered and changed into her UNC sweatshirt, her blonde spirals back to their usual springiness. I only hoped her mood would match her happy hair.
“Hi, honey.” I set my things on the kitchen table and took the take-out bags from Chris, who’d insisted on carrying everything. “Chris, this is my daughter, Samantha.”
He extended his hand and gave hers a quick kiss. “Your mum was right. You’re quite a beautiful young lady.”
I watched, anxious to see her reaction. Nothing could crack open a woman’s tough exterior faster than a compliment.
“Yeah, she says that stuff. Last night, she was going on and on about how handsome you are and, what was the word you used, Mom?” Sam narrowed her focus. “Oh yeah, hot.”
Chris grinned, looked at the floor, and then up at me. An instant of quiet played out and I felt the need to fill the embarrassing void.
“We picked up Thai food. I got the red curry you like.”
“Awesome. That should totally clean out my sinuses,” she replied, still sizing up Chris.
“Let me show Chris up to his room and we’ll back down in a minute. You can get started if you’re hungry.”
The guest room was at the end of the hall, with a queen bed that I hoped would accommodate his limbs, and my mom’s antique dresser she’d had when she was a girl. One door down from my room, the proximity was foolish, not that I could do anything about it. I already knew I would have a difficult time sleeping with him breathing nearby.
“You have your own bath. I know it’s not The Rivington.”
“It’s perfect. Thank you.”
The apprec
iative look on his face had me feeling as though a lumbering oaf was clog dancing on my chest. “Hungry?” I asked.
“You know it.”
Sam had set the table while we were upstairs—two place settings and candles while conspicuously dimming the lights. She was sticking it to me, hard.
“Aren’t you joining us?” I asked her.
“Nah. I want to check my e-mail. I’m sure you two want to be alone anyway.”
We sat down to eat, the candlelight casting an irresistible glow on Chris’s face. He raised his wine glass to clink with mine and his green eyes, which were almost black in the low light, deepened the channel he’d begun digging through my psyche at the airport.
Our dinner was so intoxicating that I felt hammered after one glass of wine. We talked about our week, which meant we talked about him, but that was perfect as far as I was concerned. He said astonishingly clever things and I giggled like a little girl and used every excuse I had to stare at him.
After dinner, I washed the dishes while Chris explored my CD and record collection. “Very impressive,” he commented when I joined him, an unfamiliar grin on his face.
“Uh, thanks,” I replied, wondering why he was so smiley.
“I discovered something quite interesting. You own every Banks Forest record on both vinyl and CD. You have some singles that are quite difficult to find.”
My heart froze in my chest. I hadn’t thought to hide my Banks Forest collection. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
He pulled out a rare Japanese import 12” single—white vinyl. I’d paid too much money for it, spending two solid weekends babysitting to earn the money. I’d called the record store every day after school to see if they still had it, their only copy, hanging in a plastic sleeve on the wall behind the register.
“I don’t even have this one,” he said.
The back cover had a photo of the band that still electrified me—Chris looked unbelievably dreamy, glowing tan with streaks of blonde in his coppery brown hair. His feet were bare and his shirt was, of course, open wide. They were in St. Barts, in the Caribbean, where the band had shot several videos. Even now, the image sent waves of fiery tingles down my spine.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” he asked.
“Uh, I was a fan in high school. That was a long time ago.” I stumbled over my words, playing it off as a triviality. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think it was important. I’m doing a story about you, not Banks Forest.”
“True.” He seemed to be enjoying every moment of our exchange. “Let’s do the math, Claire. How old were you when you bought this?”
“I don’t know, seventeen or so.” I had an inkling of what was coming and I scoured my brain for a way out of it, but came up with nothing.
“I see.” He looked at the single again and returned it to the shelf. “It’s been a long time, but I seem to remember that most of the Banks Forest fans were girls about that age, sixteen or seventeen.” He stepped closer, ramping up my nervousness. “I don’t want to make sweeping generalizations, but most of our fans had romantic feelings toward one of the band members.”
I tried to send him psychic messages. You already know the answer. Please don’t make me say it.
“I’m curious, just for my own personal information of course, which member of the band you had an affinity for.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Hmmm, Claire? Was it Graham? The girls just loved Graham.” He stepped closer and narrowed his stare. “Maybe Nigel?” He inched toward me again. “Surely, you must remember who your favorite member was.”
I twisted my mouth in an attempt to disguise my embarrassment, but that look of British smugness told me I’d never get out of it. I glanced down at my bare feet and then around the room, studying the red and blue Oriental rug and my dinged up coffee table. I searched for a place to rest my eyes, ultimately landing on a plant in need of water.
“You were my favorite,” I confessed in a whisper.
“I knew it.” He winked at me. “Now things are getting interesting.”
“No, nothing is interesting. That was a long time ago.” My defense was pathetic, but I persisted. “What was I supposed to say to you the day we met? Hi, I’m Claire.” I mocked myself, staring at the ceiling, knocking my head from side to side. “I was totally in love with you and your band when I was a teenager.”
He interrupted. “Hold on. When you say you were in love—”
“You know what I mean.” I squinted, beyond annoyed. “I was in love with the idea of you, let’s put it that way. You don’t honestly think I should’ve told you that before the interview. I would’ve had zero credibility. Would you still have told me everything?”
“No. I would’ve seduced you and sent you on your way. After lunch, of course.”
“Very funny. You know, I totally figured out that you planned the trip to Francesca’s and our lunch, that you were trying to butter me up.” It seemed like the perfect time to bust him and it happily deflected things from me.
“You’re right. I did plan all of it. I thought it’d be more fun.” I was perturbed by his ready disclosure of the facts because it felt as if I hadn’t caught him in a thing.
“Oh, and the whole trying on clothes thing, that didn’t have anything to do with your good looks and the fact that I’m a woman.”
“Just like your change of clothes that night had everything to do with me being a man.”
I pursed my lips, confronted again with my attempt at matching his manipulation.
He lowered his voice, “I never planned for it to go beyond lunch.” Now he seemed unsure of himself—vaguely unsure, but I would take what I could get. “You’re a mystery to me, quite fascinating actually. You’re the first woman I’ve met in a very long time, possibly ever, who didn’t seem the slightest bit impressed by me. You’re definitely the first woman I’ve ever met who didn’t want anything from me.”
He passed along a piercing gaze that left me needing air and took my hand. He wound up with only a few fingers, but it didn’t matter. I was too wrapped up in words like fascinating.
“I wanted to spend more time with you. That’s why I put things off when we got to the restaurant.” Anyone else would’ve had a hard time with it, but he looked me right in the eye, unafraid. “Let’s sit,” he suggested, with brand new optimism in his voice.
I followed, but left a polite distance between us. “It’s not true that I didn’t want anything from you. I wanted you to tell me things that you didn’t want to. That’s something.”
“That’s not what I mean, Claire.” It was heaven to hear him say my name. Claire, Claire, Claire. “A lot of women would’ve been fawning over me, especially with the events of that day, and you didn’t seem to care at all.”
“I was working. Even if I was impressed, which I was, it wouldn’t have been professional for me to let on to that.”
“You’d be surprised what some women will do. Most women flaunt their feelings so they can get a piece of me.”
“I was too busy being pissed at you.”
He laughed, smiling softly and reaching his arm over the back of the couch, bridging the divide between us. “You’re so far away. Come here.”
I scooted across the seat cushion a millimeter at a time. I was one weak moment away from pushing him back on the pillows and unleashing twenty-two years of pent-up teenage desire. My eyes remained on alert, my shoulders scrunching around my ears as if I was a turtle unsure of the world outside her shell.
He put his arm around me and cupped my shoulder with his exquisitely tingly hand. “This is better.” He kicked off his enormous black leather shoes and stretched out his long legs beneath the coffee table, making himself at home. “Why were you so angry?”
“Because I felt like you tricked me and I felt stupid for not seeing it while it was happening. I never should’ve let things get so far off track. I could’ve screwed myself out of a very important interview.”
He shifted hi
s body weight toward mine and that made my entire body teeter on the edge, his presence creeping over me.
“Is that why you came to my room distracting me with perfume and cleavage while you asked me those awful questions?” he asked, further softening his voice.
My own voice squeaked in my throat. “I wouldn’t exactly call it cleavage. And I had to do something…”
He reached over and his hand touched mine, putting an end to my train of thought. His thumb rode across my knuckles while his remaining fingers tucked underneath to touch my palm. I sat mesmerized by his hand on mine—so innocent and sweet, and such a dangerous boundary to cross.
My heart ached and struggled. I could’ve written a surprisingly detailed inventory of the reasons I shouldn’t do this. My career, my future, Sam’s future; all tied to one moment, one act that would mean I’d crossed the line, and for what? My heart would undoubtedly get broken. Chris Penman didn’t fall for women like me.
He spread his hand over the top of mine, obscuring it beneath his fingers, strong from years of guitar playing. I tried to stop, but I couldn’t help but turn toward him as he lowered his head to mine. My eyes closed and I became painfully aware of every uncertain move my body made.
The heat radiated from him as he drew closer, time moving at a crawl, my mind moving at record speed. I desperately wanted the kiss, despite my miles-long list of doubts. I could feel it in my head before it happened—the protracted version of my teenage daydream.
He gently pulled me closer, locking his hand around my waist. His face brushed against my hair and he moved his mouth to my ear, leaving my cheek white hot and me flustered. “May I kiss you, Claire?”
Just do it already. “We shouldn’t,” I murmured, finding my face nestled in his magnificent neck, the stubble gently poking at the bridge of my nose as I recognized his smell, pure and pleasing.
He eased my hair away from my neck and his lips wandered closer to my skin. “Because we’re just friends?”
I’d have to be an idiot to be just friends with you. “I guess so.” I was ready to give in after nanoseconds of superficial protest—right when our glorious moment dove sharply and went down in flames.