It's in His Kiss

by Caitie Quinn

  “Why don’t you guys give me some pointers before we get started?” she asked, and just like that, Lisbeth was back where she liked to be: the center of attention.

  She did a replay of that shoulder roll thing that had her sack-dress dropping elegantly off one shoulder. Then, batting her eyelashes with a giggle, Lisbeth gracefully eased her hand back and swung it forward is if to throw an imaginary ball down the alley that was – of course – nowhere near her since she had strategically turned sideways for the greatest viewing angle.

  One guy’s gaze went right, one left. Well, I guess we now knew who liked legs in the group.

  Lisbeth held her pose for a moment before straightening and flipping her hair in her signature move.

  Oh for crying out loud. First the guys ask me if I’m named after a porn star and now Lisbeth is acting like a stripper.

  “Actually,” Ben said, making me wonder what he was replying to. “A stripper takes her clothes off while she makes a spectacle of herself.”

  Exactly how many ‘Did I say that out loud’ moment could I squeeze in tonight?

  I turned to face him, not even considering letting him off the hook. “Same difference, right? She had your full and undivided attention in a manner that isn’t what someone might consider modest. It must be hard to be so easily lead astray.”

  I peeked in her direction to see what she was up to now. At the head of the alley, Lisbeth grasped the bowling ball between her two tiny hands, Dane rearranging her stance. But he wasn’t who had her attention. Ben was.

  I’ll give Ben this – he was one smart cookie. He’d gotten her game from the beginning and now he gave her just enough attention to keep her working the flirt instead of looking at him like he wasn’t good enough to polish her rented shoes. He hovered at my elbow, that cocky grin and lifted eyebrow mocking me…a state of affairs I was depressingly used to in only one hour.

  “You know,” Ben continued as if he was going to say something I might be interested in. “You don’t have to let her grab all the attention like this. I brought Dane to make the numbers nice and even.”

  Seriously? He brought the most gorgeous man on Earth for me so he’d be free to flirt with my friend?

  “You know what you need?” he asked.

  It was never a good thing when someone asked that. For years I’d been trying to come up with a way to stop that sentence in its tracks, but I never seemed to find one. Instead of looking lame, I just cocked a brow at him.

  “You just need some lessons in flirting.” He grinned and I wanted to kick in his perfectly straight, white teeth. “Sunshine, by the end of the night you’re going to need that notebook back for all those kissing notes if you listen to me.”

  NINE

  So that was his game!

  Commit theft and blackmail to get Lis, then distracting me with the most perfect specimen of male beauty ever seen.

  Not so fast, mister.

  “So, not only did you steal my notebook to get at Lisbeth, but you’re willing to pimp your buddy out to her boring friend?”

  His smile slipped a bit. Most guys didn’t like being reduced to a Seller-of-People, I guessed.

  “That’s what you think? That I’d pimp him?” He stepped forward into my dance space.

  If I was Baby, I’d be telling this Johnny off. Of course, if I was Baby I’d be secretly having an affair with him while my doctor-daddy totally missed that I’d grown up and become a slummer at camp.

  What was my point? Oh, yeah. Him big pimping and space invading.

  “Let’s see.” I held up my hand and started ticking reasons off on my fingers. I feared I might run out of digits before I got to the end of this particular tirade. “You laugh at my embarrassment. You steal the notebook that you know I need for work. You blackmail me so you could meet my friend. You then drag us here, which I can only assume is because you know there’s no competition for her attention in a back-alley bowling alley. Then you flirt with her outrageously. But, when you see you need to distract me more, you throw Mr. Too Good Looking To Be Real at me.”

  His smile thinned, predatory. Like he knew so many things I didn’t. Which was probably true. He took another step toward me, forcing me backward.

  Over his shoulder, I heard the high pitched giggle of a Lisbeth trying to regain everyone’s attention. Sorry Lis, but you’re on your own. I had to escape the big bad wolf.

  Each step he took toward me, I took one back. His smile became thicker, as if I were being hunted and he’d suddenly turned deadly.

  My back hit a wall before I’d noticed he’d walked us into the darkened emergency exit.

  “I’m flirting with her? You think I’d give her two glances if she wasn’t your friend?” His hand came up. “Yeah, I’d give her two glances. But they wouldn’t be flattering. I’m not stupid enough to get that close to a girl like her.”

  “But – ”

  “No buts, Sunshine.” He glanced back over his shoulder where Dane held Lis’s attention. “That girl is shallow and rude. She’s a horrible friend and probably the worst girlfriend on the planet. But the moment you walked around that bar with your little notebook and your ‘hey, can I kiss you’ line, I’ve been planning this.”

  Now I was just plain lost. But planning sounded nefarious.

  “Planning what?” As soon as the words left my lips, I wanted them back. Never, ever, ever, ever-ever-evereverevereverever ask a question you don’t want the answer to.

  “Did you know you hum constantly? You sing under your breath even when there’s not music.” He took another step toward me, but the wall held off my retreat. “You bop around in that head of yours watching everything and staying out of the way. You let her be the center of attention when she can’t hold a candle to you. She’s dull and self-centered.”

  I glanced past him. I knew it was all true — well, the part about letting her be the center of attention. Earlier in the evening I’d begun to really see what type of friend I had in her. The worst thing she could have done for our friendship was drag me out tonight. I’m a great lunch-on-Sunday friend for her, but seeing the way she was…the way she expected me to be… I’d already known in the back of my heart that she wasn’t going to be anywhere near my inner circle after this.

  “I thought, if I could get you out, get you into the spot light, you’d shine.” His grin hitched up. “And you did. When you sang, everyone stopped. They couldn’t help themselves. But the second you handed that microphone back, she took over again.”

  He was right. And I knew what he wasn’t saying… I let her take it back.

  “I don’t know how to be like her.”

  His head tilted to the side, the smile shifting again, getting softer, kinder.

  “You don’t have to be like her. That’s the whole point. No guy in his right mind would really be interested in her.” He hitched his thumb back in their direction. “She’s a puddle.”

  He was so close now, I could feel him as if we touched in all the places we didn’t. It was daunting and exciting. It scared the snot out of me because I loved having him so near.

  The street value on the Ben-drug in Jennaland would be off the charts.

  He pulled my notebook out of his back pocket and all I could think was who cares about the stupid notebook. See? Ben-drug, addictive and dangerous.

  He bopped me on the nose with my own property and then held it there between us.

  “I thought you might want this back.”

  “Oh? You think?” Finally Jenna. Join the conversation, for crying out loud. “No clue what gave you that idea.”

  I snatched the notebook out of his hand, ready to make my escape before I made a huge fool of myself.

  “Well, I figured you’d want to have it on you.” His hand came up to brush across my cheek, pushing my loose hair our of my eyes. “You know. To take notes.”

  Before I knew what he meant to do, or could argue with him about the pity kiss, his lips brushed mine. And then they took mine. And then
I lost track of time… maybe even days…or years.

  It wasn’t so much that it made me remember past kisses. It was more like it made me forget every other kiss I’d ever had.

  He lifted himself away and then set his forehead against mine.

  “So, you ready to make our escape? Dane’s covering for us and I know a great place that serves crepes all night.”

  Wait. This sounded suspiciously like a date.

  “It is a date, Sunshine.”

  Oh for crazy-girl-talking-out-loud sake.

  He wrapped his hand around my free one and nodded toward my notebook. “I’m hoping you’re looking for more than just first kiss research. Second kisses can be really difficult to remember too.”

  And I was hoping he was thinking about second date notes.

  “I am.”

  Geez.

  About the Author

  Caitie Quinn loves to laugh, has been told she smiles too much, and honestly believes that Jeeps… the vehicle and the guy…. are better with the top off. If you like her stories, you need to thank her two grandmothers, Grammy M and Nana, for passing on that wonderful (hereditary?) storytelling gene.

  Visit Caitie Quinn online at http://caitiequinn.wordpress.com/