He leaned against her. “You do the same thing to me. What do you say we go deal with the bet and see what happens from there?”
She wanted to; he could see it in her eyes. But he also knew she wouldn’t. Vanilla, her ex had called her. It was going to take a lot more than a kiss in a parking lot to undo vanilla.
He could dare her or he could kiss her into melting that particular flavor out of her psyche, but he wasn’t going to. He wanted her to want it. To want him. And not because he was dancing or she was drunk, but because she saw what she liked and went after it.
He’d wait.
“Come on. Let me take you home.”
He felt her wide-eyed stare the entire walk around the front of his truck.
***
Lara was having a hard time processing what had just happened. One moment she’d been a surging sea of hormones, and the next… nothing. Well, okay, her hormones were still doing cartwheels, but he’d stopped.
Stopped.
What the hell was with that? Those khakis weren’t exactly chain mail; he wanted her. She’d felt how much he’d wanted her. And now he was walking away? Taking her home?
Jesus. Was Jeff right? Did she have vanilla written all over her? A big fat sticker on her forehead? Gage was probably so opposite of vanilla that she’d scared him off.
He pulled his car key from his pants pocket. “So, where to?”
She took a deep breath. “Your place.”
The key fell out of his hand. “What?”
“Your place. After all, you owe me.” There. How un-vanilla was that?
“You’re sure?”
Not a drop of ice cream’s chance in hot fudge sauce was she sure about this, but she’d already committed herself. “Would you make me pay up if you’d won?”
The heated look in his eyes was her answer.
“Exactly. Pay up or I’ll tell everyone you reneged.”
Seriously, who was this woman who’d invaded her normal vanilla self and turned it red-hot chili pepper spicy?
Gage jammed the key in the ignition, dragged the gearshift into reverse, and peeled out of the parking lot.
Lara squirmed in her seat, fully copping to nerves. He barely glanced at her. His eyes were glued to the road when ten minutes ago they’d been glued to her.
What if he was disappointed? After all, she hadn’t been able to keep her husband interested. The man who’d supposedly pledged to make love to her for the rest of his life. Gage had women flinging themselves at him. She’d seen it first-hand. Why on earth would he want her?
“You’re over-thinking this.”
His cowboy drawl didn’t turn her on near as much as his real voice did. Because it was his. Real. And laced with all sorts of skin-shivering tones and inflections, and the way his lips formed the words…
He grabbed her hand and intertwined their fingers.
Yes, he was right. She was over-thinking it. All she had to do was look at where their skin touched and realize it didn’t need any thinking. They did it for one another. What that would mean down the road, she didn’t know. And right now, she didn’t care. All she wanted to examine was what it would mean for them down this road.
He turned into an older sub-development. Two left turns later, he was pulling into the driveway of a 1970s split level with newer siding, replacement windows, a two-car garage, and a plastic swing set in the back yard.
“This is your house?”
“My parents’. We inherited when they died.”
He’d brought her to his parents’ house.
Sure, they no longer lived there, but this wasn’t some hook-up joint bachelor pad. This was where he’d grown up. Where his family had lived. Reality.
Crud. She most definitely was vanilla. She couldn’t insult this house, those family memories, with a lap dance. Especially her first lap dance.
He had her door open before she’d processed that last thought.
Then he held onto her arms with his strong hands and the last thought disappeared in a surge of that red-hot yearnin’.
“I told you to stop over-thinking it.”
The yearnin’ fizzled. “I can’t help it. This… Is your boyhood bedroom still like it was when you lived here? Trophies and posters and baseball gloves?”
He looked away. “It’s not like that. I mean, yes, my bedroom’s still the same, but I sleep in the master bedroom now.”
His parents’ room. She raised her eyebrows.
“I’ve remodeled it. I’m doing the whole house. Bringing it up to date. Undoing the way it was.”
But he’d never get rid of the memories and she’d never forget that he’d probably skinned his knee here, or ate his mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies, or made out with his first crush in the basement.
Yes, she really was that vanilla.
The front door opened and a little boy sat in a wheelchair in the doorway, waving at them as if the house were on fire. “Gage! You’re here!”
“Connor. Hey, buddy.” Gage dropped his hands from her arms and tilted her chin up. “Looks like I’ll have to give you a rain check on that lap dance.”
She didn’t know whether to exhale in relief or regret.
Then he grabbed her hand and led her up the ramp to the front door, a modification he’d obviously made for his nephew’s injuries.
Regret. Definitely regret.
“Hey, Con. This is my friend, Lara.”
“Hi, Lara.”
“Hi, Connor.”
Gage ruffled Connor’s hair. “What are you doing here? Where’s your mom?”
“She’s in the bedroom, unpacking.”
Gage’s hand stopped mid-ruffle. “Unpacking?”
A woman who looked enough like Gage to be his sister appeared behind Connor. “Yes, unpacking. You were right. It makes more sense for us to live here. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
“No. Not at all. I just, that is, I wasn’t expecting it to be tonight.”
“I can see that.” The woman held out her hand and, yes, that smile was all her brother’s. “Hi, I’m Missy. I’m Gage’s sister.”
“Lara. Uh, Gage and I…”
He squeezed her hand. “We had dinner together.”
His sister didn’t miss the hand squeezing. “Oh.”
Lara didn’t know who blushed more, she or Missy.
“I was just, uh…” Coming here so your brother can light my fire.
“Connor and I, we could go out. For a movie. Or something,” said Missy.
Gage bit his lip and Lara could see his smile just itching to get out. “Don’t worry about it, Missy. We were just stopping by for me to pick up a few things.”
They were? Lara just kept blinking. She’d let him handle this.
“I’m going to fix something for Lara, so I’m just stopping in to pick up my tools.”
He had all the tools he needed already on him.
Lara gulped and prayed no one heard it. What the hell had been in her dinner? As far as she knew onion rings and coleslaw were not aphrodisiacs.
“Oh. Okay.” Missy turned back into the house. “Come on, Connor. You can see Gage tomorrow.”
“Can I come with you, Gage? I can hand you your tools.”
The adults looked anywhere but at each other.
Gage ruffled his hair again. “Not this time, kiddo. I might not be back ’til after your bedtime.”
“Aw, man. It’s summer. Can’t I stay up late?”
“You heard your uncle, young man. Let’s go.” Missy grabbed the wheelchair’s handles and spun Connor back into the living room. “Have fun, you two.”
They would if they could just find a place to be alone.
Chapter 13
Lara’s house wasn’t that place.
Gage had had all sorts of fun ideas planned for them: first he’d start with some straight up dancing, then he’d get down to the lap part of it, and then, well, maybe there’d be some horizontal dancing.
But when they p
ulled into the parking lot of her condo complex and saw Cara’s car—with a crying Cara in it—Gage kissed the idea of any kind of dance goodbye.
He’d rather be kissing Lara.
He put the truck in park and rested his forearms on the steering wheel. “Guess it really is a rain check, huh?”
Lara winced—that, at least, salvaged his ego somewhat. “I have to see what’s wrong.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“Would you be? I have the choice between a hot guy giving me my own personal show or listening to Cara’s heart breaking.”
“You think I’m hot, huh?”
She smacked his arm. “You know you are. That’s not a newsflash.”
He grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her in for a quick kiss. He’d show her how hot he was—for her.
There was nothing quick about it.
Lara sucked in a breath and his tongue went with it, and Gage was gone. He fumbled with her seatbelt and dragged her up against him. Thank God for bench seats.
He wrapped his arm around her legs and drew them across his thigh.
Ah, yeah, there. He needed pressure right there.
She groaned and shifted, and yeah, even better.
He angled her head and thrust his tongue into her mouth in a motion the rest of his body wanted to make.
Then she cupped his cheek and Gage about blew a gasket. Her fingers lit up his skin like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
He dragged his lips from hers and buried them in the crook of her neck. God, she smelled as good as she tasted, though no onion rings this time. Some sweet fruity scent that made him want to lick every square inch of her.
He shuddered as his cock jerked against her leg. Man, he wanted her. But not in the front seat of a truck in a parking lot where anyone could see, with her cousin twenty feet away, crying her eyes out.
He framed her face with his hands, capturing those sensuous curls between them, and kissed her cheek. The tip of her nose. That top lip that he wanted to bite—
He nibbled it.
Lara sighed. Shuddering-ly so.
He smiled as he kissed her again. A last kiss. A sweet one. One that wouldn’t have him hard and aching the rest of the night—
Or might, but in a good way.
“I had a great time tonight,” he whispered as their foreheads and noses touched.
Her eyes—dark with passion—blinked at him and it was all Gage could do not to lay her back on the bench and finish what they’d started.
“You did?”
He wanted to kill her ex-husband for putting that doubt there. He was making it his personal mission to wipe it away and maybe wipe up the floor with the ex, should he ever have the dubious pleasure of meeting the prick.
“Yeah, I did. But there’s some unfinished business here, you know.”
“I know.” She wet her lips.
His good intentions about letting her walk out of this cab without him making love to her were sorely tempted. “You’re not going to be the one to renege, are you?”
Another lip-licking.
His fingers curled into her hair.
“No. I won’t renege.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to that.” He took a deep breath—and committed that sweet scent to memory—before sitting back. “You better go in. She needs you.”
Lara nodded. “Thank you. For…”
He put a finger on her lips. And never wanted to move it. “Nothing to thank me for.” He leaned over and opened her door. “Yet.”
Chapter 14
Lara wasn’t sure how she managed to make it out of Gage’s truck and over to Cara’s car without dissolving into a puddle of pheromones.
Cara’s tear-stained face looked up, startled, only to dissolve into another crying jag.
Lara opened the door. “Come on, Car. Let’s go in.”
“Why are guys such pricks?” Cara hiccupped as Lara opened the door to her condo.
“You want me to list the reasons alphabetically or just shout them out in random order?” Lara asked as she dropped her keys on the table beside the door and headed into the kitchen for the bottle of zinfandel she’d bought last week but had been too beat to open since. “What’d Nick do?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem.” Cara flopped on the sofa that’d been the second thing Lara had bought for her new “single” place when the divorce had been final. A bed had been the first—one she’d covered in frilly, flowery sheets and way too many pillows. No more of the monochromatic “grown up” bedroom décor Jeff had insisted on.
“So why are you crying? I thought you guys had a casual relationship.” She poured two glasses of wine and brought them into the living room.
Cara sniffled. “So did I.”
Lara handed her a box of tissues. “Then what’s the problem?”
“He wants me to move in with him.”
“You’re kidding.” Lara plunked down on the sofa next to her.
“I wish.” Cara yanked a wad of tissues out of the box. “Why’d he have to go and mess everything up?”
Lara stroked Cara’s curls. “You know, most women wouldn’t be upset about this. Most of them would be thrilled.”
“I’m not most women.”
That she wasn’t. Cara was one of a kind. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m certainly not going to move in with him. I mean, come on, Lar, can you see me doing the domestic goddess thing? Me, who’d rather drive twenty minutes for take-out than boil water? I don’t know one end of a broom from the other, and making homemade chicken soup and nursing someone through a cold is worse than an IRS audit in my mind. How could he want to live with that?”
Lara grabbed another wad of tissues as Cara dove into the one she already had.
“What if you start out slow? Just do two days. Forty-eight hours. You go to his place after work, have dinner, hang out, do whatever… You get up the next morning, go to work, then back to his place afterwards. By the time dinner the second day hits you’ll know if you want to stay there or go back to your place.”
“See? Now that’s what I told him, but he’s Mr. All-or-Nothing. He can’t be happy with stop-gap measures.”
“Car, give the guy a break. Most people aren’t stop-gap measure sort of folks. He cares about you; he wants you to be around.”
“Yeah, but what about what I want?”
“What do you want? You wanted happily ever after with Dale—”
“Don’t mention that jerk to me if you want to live to see tomorrow.”
“Is it possible you’re not over him?”
“Seriously, Lara, you might be my cousin, but I am not above taking you out if you keep going with this train of thought. Dale and I are over. Done. Finished. He lost out on the best thing that ever happened to him and I am not about to dig myself back into the hole that it took too damn long to climb out of it, and if you think for one minute that I’d even consider a repeat, then you don’t know me—”
“Car—”
“—as well as you think you do—”
“Car—”
“—and I am so not going there.”
Lara clamped a hand over her cousin’s mouth. “Hey. Quiet for a second, will ya?” She took her hand away, just an inch, fully prepared to slam it back in place if Cara even thought about opening it again.
“Good. Now shut up and listen to me for a second.” Lara tucked her hand under her thigh. “I don’t know if you just heard yourself, but everything you were saying about Dale? You’re projecting that onto Nick.”
“I am not—”
Lara whipped her hand out. “I mean it; stop talking.” She waited until Cara scrunched her face into a scowl before nodding.
Her hand went back under her thigh. “Okay, then. What I heard you saying in that lovely little tirade is that you don’t want to be hurt like Dale hurt you ever again, and by giving in to what Nick wants, by opening yourself up to a more serious relationship with him, you’re opening y
ourself up to the possibility that he might do it.”
“That’s ridiculous, Lar. Nick’s not Dale.”
Lara crossed her arms, sat back, and smiled.
“Oh, you think you’re so smart, don’t you?” Cara socked her in the stomach with a pillow.
“Uh, if I were so smart, I would have dodged that punch.” Lara shuffled around on her seat so she could protect her midsection from any more wayward pillow attacks. “But seriously, Car, think about it. Nick’s done nothing but treat you wonderfully, given you your space, and now he wants to live with you. Where’s the problem?”
“The problem is…” Her mouth swished back and forth in a classic four-year-old’s temper tantrum grumpy-face look, one Cara had perfected at age two and never outgrown.
“Yes?”
“What if he can’t live with me? What if it’s not okay that I fold the towels in thirds as soon as I’m finished using them? What if he can’t stand having a utensil drawer that’s arranged by size and usage? What if he leaves the toilet seat up?”
Lara tucked the pillow under her arms and tried really hard not to laugh. If only that had been her and Jeff’s problem.
“Honey, those are minor things. I know, I know. You don’t see them like that, but you and Dale were compatible that way and it still didn’t work out. Maybe this is the Universe’s way of telling you to give Nick a chance. Try something different. Go outside your comfort zone.”
Or maybe it was the Universe’s way of telling her that because Gage was waaay outside her comfort zone.
Cara got it the same time she did. “Oh, like I should be adventurous?”
It was her turn to get socked in the stomach with the pillow.
Which erupted into a giggle-fest of pillow smacking that sent a cloud of used tissues snow-falling onto the rug.
When the giggles subsided, they were on the floor in front of the sofa with the tissues squashed beneath their butts.
“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” Cara said, slumping against Lara’s back.
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