He tried desperately to move away, but there was nowhere for him to go.
“I can’t lift my arm enough to put it on the back of the seat,” he said in a choked-sounding voice. “I’m sorry.”
Colleen couldn’t help it. She started to laugh.
And then she did the only thing she could do, given the situation. She threw the truck into Park and turned and kissed him.
It was obviously the last thing he’d expected. She could taste his disbelief. For the briefest moment he tried to pull away, but then she felt him surrender.
And then he kissed her back as desperately and as hungrily as she kissed him.
It was a kiss at least as potent as the one they’d shared in the alley. Did he always kiss like this, with his mouth a strange mix of hard and soft, with a voracious thirst and a feverish intensity, as if she were in danger of having her very life force sucked from her? His hands were in her hair, around her back, holding her in place so that he could claim her more completely. And claim her he did.
Colleen had never been kissed quite so possessively in all her life.
But, oh, she liked it. Very much.
Quiet, easygoing Bobby Taylor kissed with a delirious abandon that was on the verge of out of control.
He pulled her toward him, closer, tugging as if he wanted her on his lap, straddling him. As if he wanted…
“You know, on second thought, Kenneth, we might get to Kenmore faster on the T.”
Oh, my God.
Colleen pulled back the same instant that Bobby released her.
He was breathing hard and staring at her, with a wild look in his eyes she’d never seen before. Not on him, anyway, the King of Cool.
“This is how you help?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes,” she said. She couldn’t breathe, either, and having him look at her that way wasn’t helping. “I mean, no. I mean—”
“Gee, I’m sorry,” Kenneth said brightly. “We’ve got to be going. Clark, move it.”
“Clark, don’t go anywhere,” Colleen ordered, opening the door. “Bobby’s going to drive. I’m coming around to sit on the other side.”
She got out of the truck’s cab, holding onto the door for a second while she waited for the jelly in her legs to turn back to bone.
She could feel Bobby watching her as she crossed around the front of the truck. She saw Clark lean forward, across Kenneth, and say something to him.
“Are you sure, man?” Clark was saying to Bobby as she opened the door.
“Yes,” Bobby said with a definiteness that made her want to cry. Clark had no doubt asked if Bobby wanted the two of them to make themselves scarce. But Bobby didn’t want them to leave. He didn’t want to be alone with Colleen until he absolutely had to.
Well, she’d really messed that up.
As Bobby put the truck in gear, she leaned forward and said, across Clark and Kenneth, “I wasn’t trying to make it worse for you. That was supposed to be like, I don’t know, I guess a…a kind of a kiss goodbye.”
He looked at her and it was a look of such total incomprehension, she tried to explain.
“It seemed to me as if we’d just decided that our relationship wasn’t going to move beyond the…the, I don’t know, platonic, I guess, and I just wanted—” She swore silently—words she’d never say aloud, words she usually didn’t even think. This wasn’t coming out right at all. Just say it. What was he going to do? Laugh at her for being so pathetic? “I just wanted to kiss you one last time. Is that so awful?”
“Excuse me,” Clark said. “But that was a platonic kiss?”
Bobby’s hair had come out of his ponytail. She must’ve done that when she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him as if there were no tomorrow. As she watched, he tried to gather it up with his right hand—his good arm. He settled for hooking it behind his ears.
“Dude. If that was a platonic kiss,” Clark started, “then I want to see one that’s—” Kenneth clapped his hand over his mouth, muffling the rest of his words.
“I’m sorry,” Colleen said.
Bobby glanced up from the road and over at her. The mixture of remorse, anger, and whatever those other mysterious emotions were that seemed to glisten in his dark eyes, was going to haunt her dreams. Probably for the rest of her life. “I am, too.”
Chapter 9
There were protestors. On the sidewalk. In front of the AIDS Education Center. With signs saying NIMBY. Not In My Back Yard.
Bobby, following Colleen’s directions, had taken a detour after letting Clark and Kenneth out near Kenmore Square. Colleen had something to drop at the center—some papers or a file having to do with the ongoing court battle with the neighborhood zoning board.
She’d been filling up the silence in the truck in typical Skelly fashion, by telling Bobby about how she’d gotten involved doing legal work for the center, through a student program at her law school.
Although she’d yet to pass the bar exam, there was such a shortage of lawyers willing to do pro bono work like this—to virtually work for free for desperately cash-poor nonprofit organizations—student volunteers were allowed to do a great deal of the work.
And Colleen had always been ready to step forward and volunteer.
Bobby could remember when she was thirteen—the year he’d first met her. She was just a little kid. A tomboy—with skinned knees and ragged cutoff jeans and badly cut red hair. She was a volunteer even back then, a member of some kind of local environmental club, always going out on neighborhood improvement hikes, which was just a fancy name for cleaning up roadside trash.
Once, he and Wes had had to drive her to the hospital to get stitches and a tetanus shot. During one of her tromps through a particularly nasty area, a rusty nail went right through the cheap soles of her sneakers and into her foot.
It had hurt like hell, and she’d cried—a lot like the way she’d cried the other night. Wiping her tears away fast, so that, with luck, he and Wes wouldn’t see.
It had been a bad year for her. And for Wes, too. Bobby had come home with Wes earlier that year—for a funeral. Wes and Colleen’s brother, Ethan, had been killed in a head-on with a tree, in a car driven by a classmate with a blood-alcohol level high enough to poison him.
God, that had hurt. Wes had been numb for months after. Colleen had written to Bobby, telling him she’d joined a grief counseling group connected to Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. She’d written to ask Bobby to find a similar support group for Wes, who had loved Ethan best out of all his brothers and sisters, and was hurt the worst by the loss.
Bobby had tried, but Wes didn’t want any of it. He ferociously threw himself into training and eventually learned how to laugh again.
“Pull over,” Colleen said now.
“There’s no place to stop.”
“Double park,” she ordered him. “I’ll get out—you can stay with the truck.”
“No way,” he said, harshly throwing one of Wes’s favorite—although unimaginative and fairly offensive—adjectives between the two words.
She looked at him in wide-eyed surprise. He’d never used that word in front of her before. Ever.
Her look wasn’t reproachful, just startled. Still, he felt like a dirtball.
“I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly, still angry at her for kissing him after he’d begged her—begged her—not to, angry at himself, as well, for kissing her back, “but if you think I’m going to sit here and watch while you face down an angry mob—”
“It’s not an angry mob,” she countered. “I don’t see John Morrison, although you better believe he’s behind this.”
He had to stop for the light, and she opened the door and slipped down from the cab.
“Colleen!” Disbelief and something else, something darker that lurched in his stomach and spread fingers of ice through his blood, made his voice crack. Several of those signs were made with two-by-fours. Swung as a weapon, they could break a person’s skull.
&nbs
p; She heard his yelp, he knew she had, but she only waved at him as she moved gracefully across the street.
Fear. That cold dark feeling sliding through his veins was fear.
He’d learned to master his own personal fear. Sky diving, swimming in shark-infested waters, working with explosives that, with one stupid mistake, could tear a man into hamburger. He’d taken hold of that fear and controlled it with the knowledge that he was as highly skilled as a human being could be. He could deal with anything that came along—anything, that is, that was in his control. As for those things outside of his control, he’d developed a zenlike deal with the powers that be. He’d live life to its fullest, and when it was his turn to go, when he no longer had any other options, well then, he’d go—no regrets, no remorse, no panic.
He wasn’t, however, without panic when it came to watching Colleen head into danger.
There was a lull in the traffic, so he ran the light, pulling as close to the line of parked cars in front of the building as possible. Putting on his flashers, he left the truck sitting in the street as he ran as fast as he could to intercept Colleen before she reached the protestors.
He stopped directly in front of her and made himself as big as possible—a wall that she couldn’t get past.
“This,” he said tightly, “is the last time you will ever disobey me.”
“Excuse me,” she said, her mouth open in outraged disbelief. “Did you just say…disobey?”
He’d pushed one of her buttons. He recognized that, but he was too angry, too upset to care. He was losing it, his voice getting louder. “In Tulgeria, you will not move, you will not lift a finger without my or Wes’s permission. Do you understand?”
She laughed at him, right in his face. “Yeah, in your dreams.”
“If you’re going to act like a child—unable to control yourself—”
“What are you going to do?” she countered hotly. “Tie me up?”
“Yes, dammit, if I have to!” Bobby heard himself shouting. He was shouting at her. Bellowing. As loudly as he shouted in mock fury at the SEAL candidates going through BUD/S training back in Coronado. Except there was nothing mock about his fury now.
She wasn’t in danger. Not now. He could see the protestors, and up close they were a far-less-dangerous-looking bunch than he’d imagined them to be. There were only eight of them, and six were women—two quite elderly.
But that was moot. She’d completely ignored his warning, and if she did that in Tulgeria, she could end up very dead very fast.
“Go on,” she shouted back at him, standing like a boxer on the balls of her feet, as if she were ready to go a few rounds. “Tie me up. I dare you to try!” As if she honestly thought she could actually beat him in a physical fight.
As if she truly believed he would ever actually raise a hand against her or any other woman.
No, he’d never fight her. But there were other ways to win.
Bobby picked her up. He tossed her over his good shoulder, her stomach pressed against him, her head and arms dangling down his back. It was laughably easy to do, but once he got her there, she didn’t stay still. She wriggled and kicked and howled and punched ineffectively at his butt and the backs of his legs. She was a big woman, and he wrenched his bad shoulder holding her in place, but it wasn’t that that slowed him.
No, what made him falter was the fact that her T-shirt had gapped and he was holding her in place on his shoulder with his hand against the smooth bare skin of her back. He was holding her legs in place—keeping her from kicking him—with a hand against the silkiness of her upper thighs.
He was touching her in places he shouldn’t be touching her. Places he’d been dying to touch her for years. But he didn’t put her down. He just kept carrying her down the sidewalk, back toward the truck that was double parked in front of the center.
His hair was completely down, loose around his face, and she caught some of it with one of her flailing hands. Caught and yanked, hard enough to make his eyes tear.
“Ouch! God!” That was it. As soon as he got back to his room, he was shaving his head.
“Let! Me! Go!”
“You dared me,” he reminded her, swearing again as she gave his hair another pull.
“I didn’t think you were man enough to actually do it!”
Oh, ouch. That stung far worse than getting his hair pulled.
“Help!” she shrieked. “Someone help! Mrs. O’Hallaran!”
Mrs. who…?
“Excuse me, young man…”
Just like that, Bobby’s path to the truck was blocked by the protestors.
One of the elderly women stood directly in front of him now, brandishing her sign as if it were a cross and he were a vampire. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him from behind her thick glasses.
Take Back the Night, the sign said. Neighborhood Safety Council.
“He’s being a jerk, Mrs. O’Hallaran,” Colleen answered for him. “A complete idiotic, stupid, male-chauvinist jerk. Put me down, jerk!”
“I know this young lady from church,” the elderly woman—Mrs. O’Hallaran—told him, her lips pursed in disapproval, “and I’m certain she doesn’t deserve the indignity of your roughhousing, sir.”
Colleen punched him in the back as she kneed him as hard as she could. She caught him in the stomach, but he knew she’d been aiming much lower. She’d wanted to bring him to his knees. “Put me down!”
“Colleen, do you want us to call the police?” one of the two men asked.
She knew these people. And they knew her—by name. From church, the old lady had said. Colleen had never even remotely been in danger.
Somehow that only served to make him even more mad. She could have told him she knew them, instead of letting him think…
He put her down. She straightened her shirt, hastily pulling it back down over her exposed stomach, giving him a glimpse of her belly button, God help him.
She ran her fingers quickly through her hair, and as she did, she gave him a look and a smile that was just a little too smug, as if she’d won and he’d lost.
He forced himself to stop thinking about her belly button and glared at her. “This is just some kind of game to you, isn’t it?”
“No,” she said, glaring back, “this is my life. I’m a woman, not a child, and I don’t need to ask anyone’s permission before I ‘so much as lift my finger,’ thank you very much.”
“So you just do whatever you want. You just walk around, doing whatever you want, kissing whoever you want, whenever you want—” Bobby shut himself up. What the hell did that have to do with this?
Everything.
She’d scared him, yes, by not telling him why she was so confident the protestors didn’t pose a threat, and that fear had morphed into anger. And he’d also been angry, sure, that she’d completely ignored his warning.
But, really, most of his anger came from that kiss she’d given him, less than an hour ago, in front of her apartment building.
That incredible kiss that had completely turned him upside down and inside out and…
And made him want far more than he could take.
Worse and worse, now that he’d blurted it out, she knew where his anger had come from, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, reaching up to push his hair back from his face.
He stepped away from her, unable to bear the softness of her touch, praying for a miracle, praying for Wes suddenly to appear. His personal guardian angel, walking down the sidewalk, toward them, with that unmistakable Skelly swagger.
Colleen had mercy on him, and didn’t stand there, staring at him with chagrin and pity in her luminous blue-green eyes. God, she was beautiful.
And, God, he was so pathetic.
He’d actually shouted at her. When was the last time he’d raised his voice in genuine anger?
He couldn’t remember.
She’d turned back to the protestors and was talking to them
now. “Did John Morrison tell you to come down here with these signs?”
They looked at each other.
As Bobby watched, Colleen spoke to them, telling them about the center, reassuring them that it would be an improvement to the neighborhood. This wasn’t an abortion clinic. They wouldn’t be handing out copious handfuls of free needles or condoms. They would provide HIV testing and counseling. They would provide AIDS education classes and workshops.
She invited them inside, to introduce them to the staff and give them a tour of the facility, while Bobby stayed outside with the truck.
A parking spot opened up down the street, and as he was parallel parking the beast, the truck’s phone rang. It was Rene, the coordinator from the Relief Aid office, wondering where they were. She had ten volunteers ready to unpack the truck. Should they wait or should she let them take an early lunch?
Bobby promised that Colleen would call her right back. He was a half a block away from the center when he saw the protestors take their signs and go home. Knowing Colleen, she’d talked half of them into volunteering at the center. The other half had probably donated money to the cause.
She came out and met him halfway. “I don’t know why John Morrison is so determined to cause trouble. I guess I should be glad he only sent protestors this time, instead of throwing cinder blocks through the front windows again.”
“Again?” Bobby walked her more swiftly toward the truck, wanting her safely inside the cab and out of this wretched neighborhood. “He did that before?”
“Twice,” she told him. “Of course, he got neighborhood kids to do the dirty work, so we can’t prove he was behind it. You know, I find it a little ironic that the man owns a bar. And his place is not some upscale hangout…it’s a dive. People go there to get seriously tanked or to connect with one of the girls from the local ‘escort service,’ which is really just a euphemism for Hookers R Us. I’m sure Morrison gets a cut of whatever money exchanges hands in his back room, the sleaze, and we’re a threat to the neighborhood…? What’s he afraid of?”
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