“I’m sure he was.” Bobby shook his head. “When you talk to him, Colleen, it’s probably better not to mention her.”
“Oh, my God, is she dead?”
“No. Do you mind if we talk about something else?”
He was the one who’d brought up Wes in the first place. “Not at all.”
Silence.
Colleen waited for him to start a new topic of conversation—anything that wasn’t about Wes—but he just sat there, distracted by the sight of the river out the window.
“Do you want to go see a movie later?” she finally asked. “Or we could rent a video. I’ve got an appointment at six-thirty with a guy who wants to buy my car. If everything goes right, I’ll be done by seven-thirty, easy.”
That got his attention, just the way she knew it would. “You’re selling your car? This car?”
When she was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, this Mustang was all she could talk about. But people’s priorities changed. It wasn’t going to be easy to sell it, but she refused to let it be the end of her world—a world that was so much wider now, extending all the way to Tulgeria and beyond.
She made herself smile at him. “I am. Law school’s expensive.”
“Colleen, if you need a loan—”
“I’ve got a loan. Believe me I’ve got many loans. I’ve got loans to pay off loans. I’ve got—”
“It took you five years to rebuild this car. To find authentic parts and—”
“And now someone’s going to pay top dollar for a very shiny, very well-maintained vintage Mustang that handles remarkably badly in the snow. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I don’t need a car—especially not one that skids if you so much as whisper the word ice. My apartment’s two minutes from the T, and frankly, I have better things to spend my money on than parking tickets and gasoline.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I have an idea. I’ve got some money saved. I’ll lend you what you need—interest free—and we can take the next week and drive this car back to your parents’ house in Oklahoma, garage it there. Then in a few years when you graduate—”
“Nice try,” Colleen told him. “But my travel itinerary has me going to Tulgeria next Thursday. Oklahoma’s not exactly in the flight path.”
“Think about it this way—if you don’t go to Tulgeria, you get to keep your car and have an interest-free loan.”
She took advantage of another red light to turn and look at him. “Are you attempting to bribe me?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely.”
She had to laugh. “You really want me to stay home? It’s gonna cost you. A million dollars, babe. I’ll accept nothing less.”
He rolled his eyes. “Colleen—”
“Put up or shut up.”
“Seriously, Colleen, I’ve been to Tulgeria and—”
“I’m dead serious, Robert. And if you want to lecture me about the dangers of Tulgeria, you’ve got to buy me dinner. But first you’ve got to come with me while I sell my car—make sure the buyer’s really a buyer and not some psycho killer who answers vintage car ads in the Boston Globe.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Of course I’ll come with you.”
Jackpot. “Great,” Colleen said. “We’ll go take care of business, then drop your stuff at your hotel before we grab some dinner. Is that a plan?”
He looked at her. “I never really stood a chance here, did I?”
She smiled at him happily. “Nope.”
Bobby nodded, then turned to look out the window. He murmured something that Colleen wasn’t quite sure she caught, but it sounded an awful lot like, “I’m a dead man.”
Chapter 3
Dark, cool and mysterious.
Somehow, despite his best intentions, Bobby had ended up sitting across from Colleen in a restaurant that was decidedly dark, cool and mysterious.
The food was great. Colleen had been right about that, too.
Although she didn’t seem to be eating too much.
The meeting with the buyer had gone well. The man had accepted her price for the car—no haggling.
It turned out that that meeting had been held in the well-lit office of a reputable escrow agent, complete with security guard. Colleen had known damn well there was absolutely no danger from psycho killers or anyone else.
Still, Bobby had been glad that he was there while the buyer handed over a certified check and she handed over the title and keys to the Mustang.
She’d smiled and even laughed, but it was brittle, and he’d wanted to touch her. But he hadn’t. He knew that he couldn’t. Even just a hand on her shoulder would have been too intimate. And if she’d leaned back into him, he would have put his arms around her. And if he’d done that there in the office, he would have done it again, later, when they were alone, and there was no telling where that might lead.
No, strike that. Bobby knew damn well it would lead to him kissing her. And that could and would lead to a full meltdown, a complete and utter dissolving of his defenses and resolve.
It made him feel like a total skeeve. What kind of friend could he be to Colleen if he couldn’t even offer her the most basic form of comfort as a hand on her shoulder? Was he really so weak that he couldn’t control himself around her?
Yes.
The answer was a resounding, unchallenged yes.
No doubt about it—he was scum.
After leaving the escrow office, they’d taken the T into Harvard Square. Colleen had kept up a fairly steady stream of conversation. About law school. About her roommate—a woman named Ashley who’d gone back to Scarsdale for the summer to work in her father’s law office, but who still sent monthly checks for her share of the rent, who didn’t have the nerve to tell her father that, like Colleen, she’d far rather be a public defender and a pro bono civil litigant than a highly paid corporate tax attorney.
Bobby had checked into his hotel and given his bag and a tip to the bellhop. He didn’t dare take it up to his room himself—not with Colleen trailing behind, no way. That transaction only took a few minutes, and then they were back out in the warm summer night.
The restaurant was only a short walk into Harvard Square. As he sat down across from Colleen, as he gazed at her pretty face in the dim candlelight, he’d ordered a cola. He was dying for a beer, but there was no way he’d trust himself to have even one. If he was going to survive this, he needed all of his wits about him.
They talked about the menu, about food—a nice safe topic—for a while. And then their order came, and Bobby ate while Colleen pushed the food around on her plate.
She was quiet by then, too. It was unusual to be around a Skelly who wasn’t constantly talking.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She looked up at him, and he realized that there were tears in her eyes. She shook her head. But then she forced a smile. “I’m just being stupid,” she said before the smile wavered and disappeared. “I’m sorry.”
She pushed herself out of the booth and would have rushed past him, toward the rest rooms at the back of the restaurant, if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed her hand. He slid out of the bench seat, too, still holding on to her. It took him only a second to pull more than enough dollars to cover the bill out of his pocket and toss it onto the table.
This place had a rear exit. He’d automatically noted it when they’d first came in—years of practice in preparing an escape route—and he led her to it now, pushing open the door.
They had to go up a few steps, but then they were outside, on a side street. It was just a stone’s throw to Brattle Street, but they were still far enough from the circus-like atmosphere of Harvard Square on a summer night to have a sense of distance and seclusion from the crowds.
“I’m sorry,” Colleen said again, trying to wipe away her tears before they even fell. “I’m stupid—it’s just a stupid car.”
Bobby had something very close to an out-of-body experience. He saw himself standing there, in the shadows, next to her. Helplessly
, with a sense of total doom, he watched himself reach for her, pull her close and enfold her in his arms.
Oh, dear Lord, she was so soft. And she held him tightly, her arms around his waist, her face buried in his shoulder as she quietly tried not to cry.
Don’t do this. Get away from her. You’re asking for trouble.
He must’ve made some kind of awful strangled sound because Colleen lifted her head and looked up at him. “Oh, no, am I hurting you?”
“No,” he said. No, she was killing him. And count on Colleen to worry about someone else during a moment when most people wouldn’t have been thinking of anyone but themselves.
Tears glistened on her cheeks and sparkled in her eyelashes, and the tip of her nose was red. Bozo the Clown, he and Wes had teased her whenever she’d cried back when she was thirteen.
She wasn’t thirteen anymore.
Don’t kiss her. Don’t do it.
Bobby clenched his teeth and thought about Wes. He pictured the look on his best friend’s face as he tried to explain. See, she was right there, man, in my arms, and her mouth looked so soft and beautiful, and her body was so warm and lush and…
She put her head back against his shoulder with a sigh, and Bobby realized he was running his fingers through the silk of her hair. She had hair like a baby’s, soft and fine.
He knew he should make himself stop, but he couldn’t. He’d wanted to touch her hair for more than four years now.
Besides, she really seemed to like it.
“You must think I’m a loser,” she murmured.
“No.”
She laughed softly. “Yeah, well, I am. Crying over a car. How dumb can I be?” She sighed. “It’s just…When I was seventeen, I’d imagined I’d have that car forever—you know, hand it down to my grandchildren? I say it now, and it sounds stupid, but it didn’t feel stupid back then.”
The deal she’d just made gave her twenty-four hours to change her mind.
“It’s not too late,” he reminded her. He reminded himself, too. He could gently release her, take one step back, then two. He could—without touching her again—lead her back to the lights and crowd in Harvard Square. And then he’d never even have to mention anything to Wes. Because nothing would have happened.
But he didn’t move. He told himself he would be okay, that he could handle this—as long as he didn’t look into her eyes.
“No, I’m selling it,” she told him, pulling back slightly to look up at him, wiping her nose on a tissue she’d taken from her shoulder pack. “I’ve made up my mind. I need this money. I loved that car, but I love going to law school, too. I love the work I do, I love being able to make a difference.”
She was looking at him so earnestly he forgot about not looking into her eyes until it was too late. Until the earnest look morphed into something else, something loaded with longing and spiked with desire.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and her lips parted slightly, and when she looked once again into his eyes, he knew. She wanted to kiss him nearly as much as he wanted to kiss her.
Don’t do this. Don’t…
He could feel his heart pounding, hear the roar of his blood surging through his body, drowning out the sounds of the city night, blocking out all reason and harsh reality.
He couldn’t not kiss her. How could he keep from kissing her when he needed to kiss her as much as he needed to fill his lungs with air?
But she didn’t give him a chance to lean down toward her. She stood on her tiptoes and brushed her mouth across his in a kiss that was so achingly sweet that he thought for one paralyzingly weak-kneed moment he just might faint.
But she stepped back just a little to look at him again, to smile hesitantly into his eyes before reaching up, her hand cool against the too-hot back of his neck as she pulled his head down to kiss him again.
Her lips were so soft, so cool, so sweetly uncertain, such a contrast to the way his heart was hammering and to the tight, hot sensation in his rib cage—as if his entire chest were about to burst.
He was afraid to move. He was afraid to kiss her back, for fear he’d scare her to death with his hunger for her. He didn’t even know how to kiss like this—with such delicate tenderness.
But he liked it. Lord, he liked it an awful lot. He’d had his share of women who’d given him deep, wet, soul kisses, sucking his tongue into their mouths in a decidedly unsubtle imitation of what they wanted to do with him later, in private.
But those kisses hadn’t been even a fraction as sexy as what Colleen was doing to him right now.
She kissed his mouth, his chin and then his mouth again, her own lips slightly parted. She barely touched him. In fact, she touched him more with her breath—soft, unsteady puffs of air that caressed him enticingly.
He tried to kiss her the same way, tried to touch her without really touching her, skimming his hands down her back, his palms tingling from the almost-contact. It made him dizzy with anticipation.
Incredible anticipation.
She touched his lips with her tongue—just the very tiniest tip of her tongue—and pleasure crashed through him. It was so intense that for one blindingly unsteady moment he was afraid he might actually have embarrassed himself beyond recovery.
From just a kiss.
But he hadn’t. Not yet, anyway. Still, he couldn’t take it anymore, not another second longer, and he crushed her to him, filling his hands with the softness of her body, sweeping his tongue into her mouth.
She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her pack fell to the ground, and she kissed him back enthusiastically, welcoming the ferocity of his kisses, winding her arms around his neck, pressing herself even more tightly against him.
It was the heaven he’d dreamed of all these years.
Bobby kissed her, again and again—deep, explosively hungry kisses that she fired right back at him. She opened herself to him, wrapping one of her legs around his, moaning her pleasure as he filled his hand with her breast.
He caught himself glancing up, scanning a nearby narrow alleyway between two buildings, estimating whether it was dark enough for them to slip inside, dark enough for him to unzip his shorts and pull up her skirt, dark enough for him to take her, right there, beneath someone’s kitchen window, with her legs around his waist and her back against the roughness of the brick wall.
He’d pulled her halfway into the alley before reality came screaming through.
Wes’s sister. This was Wes’s sister.
He had his tongue in Wes’s sister’s mouth. One hand was filled with the softness of Wes’s sister’s derriere as he pressed her hips hard against his arousal. His other hand was up Wes’s sister’s shirt.
Had he completely lost his mind?
Yes.
Bobby pulled back, breathing hard.
That was almost worse, because now he had to look at her. She was breathing hard, too, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, her nipples taut and clearly outlined beneath her shirt, her face flushed, her lips swollen and moist from his kisses.
But it was her eyes that almost killed him. They were smoky with desire, brimming with fire and unresolved passion.
“Let’s go to my apartment,” she whispered, her voice even huskier than usual.
Oh, God.
“I can’t.” His voice cracked, making him sound even more pathetic.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I’m—” she shook her head “—I’m sorry, I thought…You said you weren’t seeing anyone.”
“No.” He shook his head, tried to catch his breath. “It’s not that.”
“Then why stop?”
He couldn’t respond. What could he possibly say? But shaking his head again wasn’t a good enough response for Colleen.
“You really don’t want to come back to my place and—”
“I can’t. I just can’t.” He cut her off, unable to bear finding out just which words she would use to describe what they’d do if he did go home with her tonight. Whether she called it making lov
e or something more crudely to the point, however she couched it, it would be a total turn-on.
And he was already way too turned on.
She took a step toward him, and he took a step back.
“You’re serious,” she said. “You really don’t want to?”
He couldn’t let her think that. “I want to,” he told her. “God, I want to. More than you could possibly know. I just…I can’t.”
“What, have you taken some kind of vow of abstinence?”
Somehow he managed to smile at her. “Sort of.”
Just like that she understood. He saw the realization dawn in her eyes and flare rapidly into anger. “Wesley,” she said. “This is about my brother, isn’t it?”
Bobby knew enough not to lie to her. “He’s my best friend.”
She was furious. “What did he do? Warn you to stay away from me? Did he tell you not to touch me? Did he tell you not to—”
“No. He warned me not even to think about it.” Wes had said it jokingly, one night on liberty when they’d each had five or six too many beers. Wes hadn’t really believed it was a warning he’d needed to give his best friend.
Colleen bristled. “Well, you know what? Wes can’t tell me what to think, and I’ve been thinking about it. For a long time.”
Bobby gazed at her. Suddenly it was hard to breathe again. A long time. “Really?”
She nodded, her anger subdued, as if she were suddenly shy. She looked everywhere but in his eyes. “Yeah. Wasn’t that kind of obvious from the way I jumped you?”
“I thought I jumped you.”
Colleen looked at him then, hope in her eyes. “Please come home with me. I really want you to—I want to make love to you, Bobby. You’re only here for a week—let’s not waste a minute.”
Oh, God, she’d said it. Bobby couldn’t bear to look at her, so he closed his eyes. “Colleen, I promised Wes I’d look out for you. That I’d take care of you.”
“Perfect.” She bent down to pick up her bag. “Take care of me. Please.”
Oh, man. He laughed because, despite his agony, he found her funny as hell. “I’m positive he didn’t mean it like that.”
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