The Kissing Game

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Simon shook his head. “If I promised to be faithful, I would be. If I asked someone to marry me, I'd hold those vows sacred.”

  His blue eyes were lit with intensity, and Frankie found herself believing him. Of course she believed him. Simon would keep his promises. But the promise of a lasting relationship was one he'd never, ever make, not in a million years.

  “I just haven't met a woman that I'd want to spend the rest of my life with,” he continued. “I haven't been in a relationship that hasn't made me feel …. hell, I don't know …. trapped.” He looked down at the book he was still holding in his hands and cleared his throat. Frankie found herself holding her breath, waiting to hear what he had to say. “Everyone thinks all I do is have fun, but you know what? I'm not having so much fun anymore. All of my friends are getting married and having babies, and I'm still dating their little sisters. At the rate I'm going, sometimes I feel as if it's just a matter of time before I start dating their daughters. I'm tired of it, Frankie. But every time I'm with a woman and I ask myself if maybe she could be the one, I come up with a four-foot-long list of reasons why I should turn and run. So I run.”

  Simon looked up at her, waiting for some kind of response, wanting to hear her opinion and advice. It was odd—Frankie had known Simon since his family had moved onto the key when he was a teenager. Through the years, despite the fact that she was his sister Leila's friend, they'd had quite a number of these soul-baring heart-to-hearts, and Frankie had never failed to be surprised by the faith and trust Simon put in her friendship.

  She knew for certain that his conversations with whoever his current lady-love was never went this deep. Still, there were times—like when Frankie watched him across a crowded restaurant as he flirted with a dinner date, drawing the palm of his lover's hand to his lips, or when he slow-danced with some lovely young thing at the Rustler's Hideout—that she would have traded the heart-to-hearts for a bit more body contact.

  But not anymore, Frankie reminded herself.

  She had been hired to find Jazz. How about that for destiny? She was going to be paid—and paid well—to find the one boy she'd never managed to forget.

  But if Jazz was so unforgettable, why was she so damned distracted by Simon's picture-perfect looks, by his elegant cheekbones and perfectly shaped nose, by his neon-blue eyes and his graceful lips, by his thick blond hair and to-die-for body …. ?

  “Maybe you have to stop thinking of yourself as being trapped,” she told him, pulling her gaze away from his. “Secure is a much nicer word for a permanent relationship. And maybe if you focus on what you've got rather than what you can't have …. “

  “Easier said than done.”

  “You know, I predict you're going to meet a woman you simply cannot live without,” Frankie said. “You're going to take one look at her, realize that she's your soul mate, and you're going to promise her the sun and the moon.”

  “Soul mate, huh? You're a hopeless romantic, Paresky. Man, who would've thought?”

  Frankie turned back to the copy machine, opening the lid and turning the ledger's page. She pressed the start button and the machine hummed. “So what if I am?”

  Simon pushed himself up so he was sitting on the table. Frankie had her back to him as she diligently made copy after copy from the record book. “Tell me about this Jazz guy that you're looking for. I didn't really know him, but I remember that you and he were hot and heavy for a while.”

  Frankie turned to look at him, and as usual, her eyes were unreadable. “I never went out with the kids who came down here for vacation,” she said. “Except for Jazz. He was different. He was the kind of boy who read classic literature and watched movies with subtitles. He could recite poetry and play the piano, and he picked me a bouquet of wildflowers every time we were together. I never knew anyone like him before.” She smiled. “He was my first.”

  “First lover?”

  Her smile turned to a disbelieving frown. “Lord, no. I was only eighteen. I wasn't ready for that. He was, but I wasn't. No, I meant he was my first kiss.”

  “At eighteen? Man, you were innocent.”

  She smiled again. “Yeah, I guess I was.”

  “So is he your ‘soul mate’?”

  Frankie leaned back against the copy machine, a flash of emotion in her eyes. “I don't know. Maybe. I mean, doesn't it seem odd that after all this time I should be hired to find him?”

  “As if it's fate?”

  “Exactly.” She brought the copies to the table and took another ledger book. “Come on, don't just sit there. Highlight these.”

  “He's probably married.” Simon slid off the table and down into a chair as he uncapped the yellow highlighting pen.

  “Maybe he's not.”

  “Maybe it's just a coincidence that you're looking for him. Just because you bump into the guy again doesn't make him your soul mate. Look at you and me—we're together all the time. That doesn't make us soul mates.”

  Frankie snorted. “I should say not. Especially since I'm clearly last on your list of the women in town you'd like to seduce.”

  “What?”

  She carried another stack of copies to the table. “Nothing. Never mind.”

  Simon caught her arm, tipping his chair back to gaze up at her. “Says who?” She wriggled to get free, but he wouldn't release her. “Where on earth did you ever get that idea?” he asked.

  Frankie sighed, embarrassment tingeing her face. Up close like this, her skin was remarkably smooth and the faint pink of her blush made her look charmingly, delightfully sweet. Her eyes were lowered and her lashes looked as if they were a quarter of a mile long, thick and dark against her cheeks. She smelled good too. She'd showered while he was driving Clay Quinn up to the resort. Her hair was still slightly damp around the edges, and the sweet scent of her shampoo lingered. She'd changed back into her default uniform—baggy shorts and an old T-shirt—but Simon was well aware of the trim, compact, and totally feminine body she was hiding under her androgynous clothes.

  She lifted her gaze, looking directly into his eyes, and Simon nearly fell over backward in his chair. It was as if she had touched him and the warmth of that touch had traveled down beneath his skin, tunneling throughout his entire body, causing every cell to tingle.

  But she didn't seem to notice. She tugged again, trying to get her wrist free from his grasp. “I don't know why I said that,” she admitted. “I mean, I'm glad that you think of me as a friend, not a …. I mean, I'm not your type, so of course you wouldn't …. “

  “You think I think you're not my type?”

  “Well, yeah.” Frankie finally pulled away from him.

  “What if I told you you were wrong, and that I think an average of seven lustful thoughts about you every day?”

  Frankie laughed, rubbing her wrist. “I'd laugh in your face and call you a liar.”

  “It's true.”

  Her dark eyes flashed. “Give me a break, Simon.”

  “Have I ever lied to you?”

  She smiled slightly. “Probably.”

  Man, he was actually sitting there, flirting with Francine Paresky. He smiled back at her, silently challenging her not to be the first to look away.

  “Right now, for instance, I'm having seven lustful thoughts simultaneously.”

  She glanced away, but only for a second. “Only seven?” she said, lifting one eyebrow a bit.

  Man, she was actually flirting back. Simon had always thought that she thought he wasn't her type. Except for that one time, nearly a dozen years ago, he'd never even dared to ask Frankie out. Oh, he pretended to ask her out, like when he found that incredible black dress in her closet. But neither of them ever took that seriously. Maybe he should have ….

  Maybe all this time he'd been wrong. Maybe all this time Frankie had been hiding her attraction to him the same way he'd hidden his attraction to her.

  The thought nearly made his head explode. He knew he was looking at Frankie with pure hunger in his eyes, bu
t he couldn't stop himself.

  “If we don't get back to work, this is going to take all night,” Frankie said, trying hard to be businesslike.

  “I've got all night.”

  Simon's words were loaded with meaning, and Frankie had to turn away, afraid of letting him see the look she knew was on her face.

  Simon Hunt wasn't indifferent to her after all. The news filled her with a wide variety of sensations. Pleasure. Excitement. Delight. Panic.

  Particularly panic.

  She felt oddly like the creator of some horrible monster, knowing that if she glanced back at Simon again, he'd still be gazing at her with that fiercely burning heat in his eyes. She'd seen him look at women like that before—other women, never her. Until now.

  Jazz. What happened to the excitement she'd been feeling about seeing Jazz again? It was nothing. It was buried underneath the knowledge that with little effort, sophisticated and incredibly sexy Simon Hunt could very well share her bed in the very near future.

  And tomorrow Frankie would wake up to find the nearly twenty-year friendship she had with this man destroyed. Tomorrow she'd wake up and join the ranks of women like Maia Fox. She'd join the legion of women whom Simon had loved and left. And she used the word loved only in the very loosest physical sense.

  At least she wouldn't make the mistake of believing that she could change Simon. At least she wouldn't be foolish enough to hope that he would treat her any differently from the hordes of foolish women who had come before her.

  She wouldn't do that—because she wasn't going to sleep with Simon. Not tonight. Not ever. Provided he didn't catch her at a particularly weak moment. Provided she didn't get pulled in by the molten lava of his gaze.

  “Just get back to work,” she told him, carefully keeping her eyes on the copy machine.

  FOUR

  FIGURED I'D FIND you girl-watching,” Leila Hunt said, slipping into the seat across from Simon's at the resort restaurant. “Good grief, is that Frankie?”

  Simon nodded.

  “What is she wearing? Is she wearing …. ?”

  “A dress.”

  “Who's she with? He's not bad. Really nice smile—”

  “He's a client.” Simon's words came out a little too tight, a little too clipped, and his sister looked at him in surprise.

  “Of yours?”

  Simon forced himself to relax, to smile, to hide the fact that he was sitting there with his insides tied in knots because Francine Paresky was sitting all the way across the room, actually wearing one of the dresses—the blue-flowered one— he'd found in her closet, and having dinner with Clayton Quinn.

  That could have been him sitting there. It should have been.

  “No, believe it or not, the client's hers,” he told Leila, and his voice actually sounded natural. He sounded lighthearted and even slightly disinterested. “She's working on a case for this guy, trying to locate the beneficiary to a will.”

  “That's great.” Leila took a bread stick from the basket in the center of the table, breaking off a piece and popping it into her mouth. “Just yesterday Frankie was telling me she was so broke, she was going to have to go back to chartering fishing trips here at the resort for Preston Seaholm.”

  “Oh, man, you're kidding.” Simon grimaced, pulling his gaze away from the animated conversation Frankie was having with Clay Quinn to look at his sister. “I thought she swore she'd never do that again.”

  Leila's violet eyes were dead serious. “Taxes are coming due. She didn't have much of a choice.”

  Two years earlier Frankie had worked regularly at the resort, taking groups of vacationers on expeditions on Pres Seaholm's fishing boat. The groups were usually all men, and they usually drank quite a bit of beer as they fished. Sometimes the guests got rowdy and very rude. Once Frankie had felt sufficiently threatened to dump her life-vest-clad passengers into the ocean and haul them back to the harbor by ropes tossed off the stern.

  Simon never found out exactly what happened to set off that chain of events, but Leila had hinted that several of the guests decided that the money they were paying Frankie to captain the charter boat entitled them to certain sexual favors.

  Yes, Frankie had been able to take care of herself, but Simon shuddered to think what might have happened if those men had been a little more inebriated, or a little more determined to have their way.

  Frankie was tough, but she was barely five feet tall. A six-foot-tall man would be able to overpower her rather easily. And she wouldn't stand a fighting chance against a group of men.

  Just the thought of her working that charter boat again made Simon's heart lodge in his throat. But she wasn't going to have to do that, he told himself. She had this investigation job for Clay Quinn. Thank God for Quinn.

  “I got a call from Mom today,” Leila told him. “She's going to stay with her friends on St. John for another month. She's actually thinking about buying a condo down there.”

  “Uh-huh,” Simon said absently, not really paying attention to his sister. He was staring across the restaurant again, watching as Frankie laughed at something Quinn said. Damn Quinn anyway. Damn him for sitting where Simon ought to be sitting.

  Frankie's eyes were sparkling and she was smiling, her dark hair gleaming in the restaurant's dim lighting. Simon quickly pulled his own eyes away from her, well aware that Leila was watching him.

  His face had been expressionless—he knew it had been. But Leila was looking at him, her eyes slightly narrowed. “Si, are you …. ?” She couldn't possibly have seen anything on his face, but still, somehow she knew. “My God, you are.”

  She was guessing. She couldn't possibly know for certain what he was thinking and feeling. No way. “I'm what?” he asked, his voice cool and calm.

  Leila was blunt. “You're targeting my best friend to be your next flavor of the week.”

  Simon made himself laugh. “Don't be ridiculous.”

  “It does sound ridiculous, doesn't it? I say the words, and they sound utterly ridiculous. You and Frankie ….?”

  Simon took a careful sip of his drink. The soda was cold, and the rum felt warm. Together they made his stomach jump. What was wrong with him? “Obviously your imagination is on overload.”

  “But I saw you staring at Frankie with that look in your eyes,” Leila said.

  “What look?”

  “You know the look I mean. The one where you really look.”

  “Of course I'm really looking. I'm curious. I've never seen Francine wear a dress before. It's bizarre.”

  Leila didn't believe his protests for one second. She laughed, looking at her brother with both pity and amusement in her eyes. “She will never— never in a million years—fall for your lines. She's seen you in action way too many times for that to happen.”

  “For what to happen?”

  Leila looked up as her fiancé and Simon's longtime friend, Marsh Devlin, pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. The way she instantly transformed was amazing. Simon's sister was quite attractive with her violet eyes, short blond curls, and sweetly heart-shaped face. Still, she was nothing truly exceptional. But when she looked at Marshall Devlin, her love for the man became an almost tangible, visible thing and she became incredibly, breathtakingly gorgeous.

  And Dev. Dev had been his best friend for years, and Simon had never seen him look so thoroughly happy.

  He couldn't help but feel a pang of envy. He'd been avoiding Dev and Leila lately, he realized. The pair still disagreed and had spirited debates— they probably always would. But they clearly loved each other. Their love and happiness made them seem so …. complete. Every time Simon was with them, he felt like a puzzle with several pieces missing.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked them. “Celebrating your ten-and-a-half-week engagement anniversary or something?”

  Marsh smiled across the table at Leila, and Simon had to stifle his annoyance. They deserved to be happy. He, on the other hand, deserved nothing. He glanced at Frankie
again. And nothing was exactly what he was getting.

  “Actually we're meeting Jesse here for dinner,” Marsh told Simon in his crisp English accent.

  Simon sat up. “Jesse's in town?” Marsh's American half brother was nearly ten years their junior. It had been years since Simon had last seen Jesse Devlin. He remembered him as a tall, athletic college kid more interested in baseball than in school and grades. He had to be …. what? Twenty-seven years old now—not a kid anymore.

  “I think he's here to try to borrow some money,” Marsh said with a rueful grin. “He doesn't believe a doctor could be anything but loaded. We'll have to set him straight.” He took in Simon's well-groomed hair and casually dressy clothes. “You're not here alone, are you? You could join us—”

  “Simon's got a thing for Frankie,” Leila announced, and Marsh's smile turned to a look of astonishment.

  “Frankie Paresky?”

  “Fine.” Simon spread his hands as if he didn't give a damn what Leila said or Marsh believed. “Spread rumors about your best friend.”

  “He was sitting here, looking at her,” Leila told Marsh. “You know the way I mean. He was looking at her as if he were wishing she was something he could order from the menu.”

  “So I was watching her.” Simon heard exasperation creep into his voice. “She looks really good tonight. So I find her attractive. I find all women attractive.”

  “No, you don't.”

  “Yes, I do. It's no big deal.”

  “I know how you operate—”

  “I should have gone someplace else—”

  “It starts with a crush, an attraction—”

  “But my date wanted to come here,” Simon finished.

  As if on cue, the woman he'd met an hour earlier out on the resort patio swept into the res taurant.

  She was a knockout. She was wearing a skintight pale pink dress that accentuated her hourglass figure. The dress was outrageously short, and her legs were long and shapely. Her hair was red, and pulled up off her neck in a haphazard fashion that made her look both seductive and innocent.

  “Your date?” Leila repeated with a frown.