Then the doorbell rang and the panic sliced into her, ripping at her skin. This is it. She wrapped her arms around her aching stomach and spun to the mirror again. All she saw were the boobs—the huge, swelling boobs—that so didn’t belong in a halter dress. She couldn’t move.
Paralyzed.
In front of a mirror.
Her worst nightmare.
The doorbell rang again and she curled her fingers into a tight fist. “You can do this, Kristen. He won’t run. He likes you.”
As fast as the shoes would let her, she sped to the stairs. “Coming!”
At the door, she stopped, focused on the marking in the grain. Screw it.
She threw the door open and Billy—being Billy—shifted his gaze right to her chest. She squeezed her butt cheeks together—as if that’ll make the monster boobs look smaller—and tilted her head toward the ceiling.
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
Sickness pelted her and she bit her lip, willed herself to stand straight. A smacking noise brought her gaze back to Billy, sprawled on the ground, flat on his back and groaning, his head shifting back and forth.
“I’m not falling for that trick again,” she said.
“I knew it.” Another groan. “I knew that dress would slay me. I can’t even stand.”
Mr. Hawkins, her sixty-ish neighbor appeared in front of the house walking his dog. Of course, the dog stopped to sniff the tree. Fabulous. Not only did Mr. Hawkins see her, he was staring. At the boobs.
“Kristen. Wow,” he said.
She stepped back from the doorway. Damned Billy, making her wear this dress. “Hi, Mr. Hawkins.”
Billy rolled to his side and faced Mr. Hawkins. “She looks amazing doesn’t she? I’m crippled here. Crippled, man!”
Mr. Hawkins’ gaze was still plastered on Kristen. “I’m about to be on the ground with you.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said. “Mr. Hawkins, thank you, but if you want your regular dose of key lime from my chef, keep walking. Billy, get off the ground before I close this door.”
“I think I can crawl.” He then got to all fours and did just that, which, all joking aside, was taking it a bit too far. Instinctively, she knew he was trying to make her laugh, but the crawling, the fuss gone amok, made her more conspicuous. She suddenly couldn’t get the door closed fast enough. His playfulness was too much. He’d pushed it too far.
Her breath hitched and she gasped into her hand as tears filled her eyes. Dammit. What was she doing in this ridiculous dress? Making a fool out of herself. With Billy on her floor. Was she out of her mind?
Now that he’d seen her in the dress, she’d grab one of her slouchy sweaters and button it up to her chin.
She blinked three times to clear her eyes. “Please get up.” She spun away. “Please. Just. Get off. The floor.”
He shot to his feet. “What?”
Nope. Not gonna freak out in front of him. She rushed to the back of the house toward the kitchen. “Come inside. I’ll get you something to drink.”
“Kris?”
He came up behind her and grabbed her arm.
“I need a minute.” And dammit, her voice hitched again.
“Are you mad at me? I was joking. You look great. That’s all.”
“No. I’m not mad.”
“Then what?”
“My neighbor saw me.”
His head lolled forward. “You’re crying because your neighbor saw you?”
“Yes! Because women my size do not belong in dresses like this. It’s embarrassing to have my sixty-year-old neighbor look at me, with my tits hanging out and my hips wanting to bust free. I’m humiliated, Billy. And you rolling on the floor only makes it worse.” He stepped forward and she threw her hands up. “No. I don’t need to be babied. I need a sweater.”
Pushing him aside, she ran to the stairs, her ankles wobbling on the stilt shoes. She just needed a sweater. A sweater would ground her. Bring balance. She charged upstairs, went to her bedroom closet and yanked the closest one off the shelf.
“Hang on,” Billy said from behind her.
She whipped around, holding the sweater to her chest. “No.”
“I’m sorry. I thought the dress would be fun. I didn’t realize it was such a problem. You should have said something.”
Great. Now he thinks I’m a freak. “We made a deal. I didn’t want to renege.”
“I wanted to have a nice evening with you, not throw you into a homicidal rage. Take the dress off.”
“We made a deal.”
“Fuck the deal,” he yelled. “It’s only a dress. A dress I happen to think you look fantastic in. And, from the reaction of your neighbor, I’m not the only one. But if you’re not comfortable, if you don’t believe it, then I don’t want you in it. It doesn’t matter that I’m flipping dumbstruck by how amazing you look and will probably dream about you in this dress for the next twenty years. If you’re miserable, it’s not worth it. So, take off the goddamned dress, meet me downstairs and we’ll start over.”
He turned to walk away.
“Wait,” she said, and he shifted back. “It’s a beautiful dress. It’s just not me. I feel too exposed.”
“And the old lady sweater makes you feel unexposed. I get it, but it’s a crime that a woman who looks like you walks around wearing sacks.”
“Filter!”
He stepped closer, his heated gaze steady on hers. “The last thing you need is for me to filter. You need a man who is attracted to you telling it straight.” He grabbed the sweater and threw it over his shoulder.
“Hey—”
“Get rid of the frumpy sweaters. You’ve got great tits. Rocking tits that make me want to howl. But you insist on dumbing them down with these stupid sweaters.”
“Billy!”
Had this man escaped from a mental institution?
Apparently he wasn’t done yet because he threw his hands up, palms out. His face flushed red and he gritted his teeth. Then slowly, with a seemingly exhausting effort, he curled his fingers into fists. If she hadn’t been ready to kill him, she’d have laughed at his attempts to control himself.
“For some reason, you’ve got it in your head that, because you’re a little bigger than the bean-pole women running around South Beach, you’re not sexy. Well, sweet cheeks, I got news for you.” With both hands, he pointed to his crotch where his shorts had tented. “Fat Amazons don’t give me hard-ons. Fat Amazons don’t make me want to strip them naked and lick their entire body. Fat Amazons don’t keep me up at night thinking about all the things I’d like to do to them.”
At that moment Kristen couldn’t do anything but stand there slack-jawed.
“Are you done?” she managed.
He cracked his neck side to side, breathed in and out a couple of times. “Uh, sorry. Got carried away. You pissed me off. I want you to see what I see.”
“You don’t think I want that?”
“I don’t know what you want.”
She waved a hand to her mirror. “I want to stop hating the full-length mirror. And to stop eating salads day after day because I’m afraid carbs will make me fatter. It’s a vicious cycle. The less I eat, the more hungry I am and the more I beat myself up because I’m not losing weight.”
“That’s because your metabolism is shot. You need to feed your body and give it energy. Your body is begging you to feed it, Kristen. If you want to lose weight, start eating more of the right foods every few hours. Working out once in awhile will help, but eating lettuce for the rest of your life is not going to make you thin. Personally, I like you this way.”
His gaze locked on her face, he ran a hand up her hip, over her stomach and, yes, across her breasts. Her arms and chest tingled. She closed her eyes and imagined those hands on her bare skin.
How long had it been since she’d allowed a man to really touch her? To explore her naked body?
A long time.
If only she could get out of her own
head.
Billy inched closer and the heat of him swarmed her. Even with her Amazonian height and in heels, he stood an inch taller. A big man who made her feel, well, smaller. She stepped closer, slid her arms around his waist and lowered her head to his shoulder. He took his cue and wrapped her in his arms.
“This isn’t so bad, huh?” he said.
“Nope. Not so bad.”
“I don’t understand. All I want is to look at you and all you want is to hide.”
She snuggled into him and the perfection of his body snickered at her. What would he want with me? She squeezed her eyes closed, forced her insecurities away. Didn’t he deserve her at least trying? Maybe she wasn’t comfortable in the halter dress, but she could come up with something else he might like. She backed away an inch, stared up at him. “I think I have a compromise. This dress is just not me. I think I have something else you’d like though. Something that I’m comfortable in, but shows off, as you said, my rocking tits.”
“Atta, girl.” He set her back so he could look at her. “I never meant to make you uncomfortable. I think you’re beautiful. That’s all.”
He might just get laid tonight.
Kristen breathed in and Billy drew his eyebrows together. “What?”
“I was thinking you might get laid tonight.”
He pumped a fist. “Yes. Go, Billy. See, sometimes the lack of a filter works.”
“But sometimes it doesn’t. You need to focus on those times.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now leave my room so I can change.”
He nodded. “No sweaters?”
“No sweaters.”
* * *
Kristen stepped into the kitchen wearing a pair of shorts and a V-neck T-shirt that plunged into her cleavage, and Billy’s groin area got active. Really active.
He threw himself off the chair onto the tiled floor and rolled to his back, groaning. After what happened upstairs, he figured a little levity couldn’t hurt. Most women would have tossed him out on his asterisk for hollering at them that way.
Suddenly, Kristen was straddling him, lowering that beautiful body of hers over him, pressing that luscious rack against him and shoving her tongue into his mouth. But, with her hands against the floor, she was holding herself up. Nice try, hotness. He clamped his arms around her and yanked her fully on top of him. She struggled to push herself up and he rolled her over, let his weight sink into her.
“Am I crushing you?”
“No.”
“Good.” He rolled back over so she was on top again. “You won’t crush me either.”
If the squinty look was any indication, she was a non-believer.
“Kris, I definitely weigh more than you. If I wasn’t hurting you, you won’t hurt me. That little experiment proved it.”
Slowly, she eased down, testing as she went.
“I’m still breathing.” He smacked her on the ass. “Let me have it, M.H. I can take it.”
And then things got crazy. She flattened herself against him and kissed him with a roughness that had him grabbing handfuls of her hair in his grip. An almost angry surge erupted between them and he held her head in place while he nipped at her lips, her jaw, her neck, wherever he could get to.
She pushed away. “We’re not doing this on my kitchen floor. Back upstairs you go.”
Billy followed her to the bedroom, imagining stripping off her shirt, her shorts, her underwear, her bra. All one by one and very slowly. Finally, his own private peep show.
The minute they hit the bedroom, he grabbed her belt loop, but she slipped away to the windows, where she yanked the heavy drapes closed.
Again he reached for her and began inching her shirt up. She backed away and Billy groaned.
She headed for the adjoining bathroom. “Give me a minute.”
Billy stood in the center of the room wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now? Stand there? Sit on the bed? Get naked? What?
Figuring out this woman’s thought process was a serious challenge. In some ways, his verbal diarrhea worked. At least no one ever wondered.
If he got naked and slid into her bed, she might freak out. Then again, it was pretty dang obvious what they were doing here, right?
Still. He’d gotten in trouble for a lot less than assuming he was getting laid.
He remained standing. In the middle of the room. Safest place. Better than risking an ass-kicking because he hadn’t thought it through. At least when he didn’t filter, he wound up somewhere—even if it was the wrong place—rather than stuck in neutral.
The bathroom door opened and, before she shut off the light, he spotted her in a silk robe.
So much for his fantasy of stripping her. He could make the robe work though. Back to business here.
But when he reached for the robe’s belt, she slapped his hand away and ran her hands under his shirt, lifting it over his head. At least one of them was stripping. His shorts and briefs went next and then, in the darkness, he saw her shadow hustling to the bed, climbing under the covers. With the robe on.
Hiding again.
And Billy stood there, in the dark, ass naked, wondering what the hell he’d have to do to see Kristen Dante in the raw.
He rubbed his fingers over his forehead. “Uh, sorry, this isn’t working for me.”
“What is it?”
Yes, Billy’s pecker whined, what is it? He almost laughed. “You’ll sleep with me, let me put my hands all over you, but I’m not allowed to see you nude. What sense does that make?”
“Billy—”
“Are you going to let me see you naked?” Silence hung heavier than the damned drapes. “Well?” He knew what the answer would be and mentally engaged the filter so he didn’t blow when she said it.
“No.”
“I figured.”
“Billy, it’s easy for people who look like you to get naked.”
“Oh, here we go.” He stopped, clamped his teeth together. Screw the filter. “You are not gonna make this about me. This is your issue.”
“Yes, it is. And I’m trying to tell you how I feel.”
“I know how you feel. The tent sweaters tell me how you feel. I get it, Kris. What I don’t get is how, after everything we just talked about, you would think I’d see you naked and be—what?—repulsed?”
“I wouldn’t think that.”
Billy threw his hands in the air. “Then what’s the fucking problem?”
“Filter!”
“No filter. It pisses me off that you think I am that shallow that I’d see you naked and say, ‘I’ll just throw this one a pity fuck and move on.’”
Kristen sucked in a breath. Yeah, he was being an asshole. Total douche bag. That’s what he was. And he refused to blame it on the ADD.
No wonder his friends grew weary of him.
He held up his hands. “Hang on. I’m sorry. Totally out of line.”
She slid from under the sheet, flipped the lamp on and sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at the floor. “Yes, you were.” She stood, tightened the belt on her rob. “I’m getting dressed.”
Blew that one, Billy boy. “Kris—”
She headed for the bathroom. “I need five minutes to get my thoughts together.”
That would be the least he could give her. Damn, how could he be so totally inept at controlling himself? For years, he’d been practicing listening skills, focusing on the words and forcing himself to not interrupt. Lately, it had all come apart.
When she shut the bathroom door he sat on the bed, breathed in and out a few times, cracked his neck and forced himself to quiet his mind.
Breathe. He opened his eyes, focused on the closed drapes. “I’ll meet you downstairs,” he called to her and hoped to hell she wouldn’t throw him out.
Five minutes later, she came into the kitchen wearing the same V-neck shirt and shorts. At least she wasn’t in one of the tents. Maybe there was hope.
Billy, seated at the table, tapped his fi
ngers. “How pissed are you?”
She leaned against the counter. Arms folded. “Five minutes ago, I was really pissed. Now, not as much. Nothing you said was untrue. You’re the king of truth and, as long as it’s the truth, it should be okay, right?”
“We both know that’s crap.”
“I have self-image issues. It’s true. The problem is, you want me to do something about it and I’ve never been able to figure out how to do that. It’s easy for you to tell me I’m beautiful, and regardless of what you think, I do believe it when I hear you say it. The problem is, when I look in the mirror, I don’t see it. So, unless you’re going to hang out with me all day telling me I’m beautiful, we both have to get used to the fact that I’m uncomfortable being naked.”
“Or figure out a way around it.”
“If you’re up for that, I’m in. If not, walk out of here now. No harm, no foul. I’ll understand and we’ll continue on as business acquaintances.”
“Is that what you want?”
She smiled, but it was that sarcastic you-are-such-a-child smile. “Billy, where are we going with this? Once your work at my hotel is done, you’ll leave. You don’t live here and you travel a lot. You told me yourself you don’t own a home, or even a car because you don’t want to be tied down to one place.”
“That’s not what I said.”
She sighed.
“I said I hadn’t found the place I wanted to be tied to yet. Don’t write me off because of your perception of what I said. The truth is, I’d be ecstatic to find someplace to call home. I’m open to it and very willing.”
“Really? You’re interested in taking on my hang-ups when all it will probably amount to is a brief affair?”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know I enjoy your company and you make me laugh, but I have a lot of responsibilities. I like order. I don’t need you stomping all over my heart and taking off. I’m not interested in that. If you want to have a fling, great, fantastic, let’s do it. But don’t expect me to hand over my insecurities, to allow you into my own personal hell, when you’ll probably be moving on sometime soon. It’s not fair.”
Billy sat back. Blew out a breath. She was right. He’d be going soon. Did he have the right to ask her for anything? Particularly when it came to her vulnerabilities?
Adrienne Giordano Page 14