It was no surprise. He was dependable. Smart. Sexier than a man had the right to be at ten in the morning.
Their eyes met only briefly before he looked away—still it was enough to send a wave of heat through her. Shame. Embarrassment. Mortification. What exactly had she said to him last night? I want you. In broad daylight, she couldn't believe her audacity. What had she been thinking?
Still, he was here. He'd shown up bright and early this morning, hot cup of coffee in hand, to help lug all of the boxes of emergency supplies out of her living room and into the Relief Aid truck.
He'd said hardly anything to her. In fact, he'd only said, "Hi," and then got to work with Clark and Kenneth, hauling boxes down the entryway stairs and out to the truck. Bad shoulder or not, he could carry two at once without even breaking a sweat.
Colleen had spent the past ninety minutes analyzing that "Hi," as she'd built wall upon wall of boxes in the back of the truck. He'd sounded happy, hadn't he? Glad to see her? Well, if not glad to see her, he'd sounded neutral. Which was to say that at least he hadn't sounded unhappy to see her. And that was a good thing.
Wasn't it?
Everything she'd said to him last night echoed in her head and made her stomach churn.
Any minute now they were going to be alone in the truck. Any minute now he was going to give her the friends speech, part two. Not that she'd ever been persistent and/or stupid enough before to have heard a part-two speech. But she had a good imagination. She knew what was coming. He would use the word flattered in reference to last night's no-holds-barred, bottom-line statement. He would focus on their differences in age, in background, in everything.
One major difference between them that she already knew was that she was an idiot.
Colleen climbed in behind the wheel and turned the key. Bobby got in beside her, picking her backpack up off the floor and placing it between them on the wide bench seat, like some kind of protective shield or definitive border.
She and her brother Ethan and her sister Peg, both who'd been closest to her in age among the seven Skelly children, had made similar boundaries in the far back seat of their father's Pontiac station wagon. Don't cross this line or else.
"Hey," Clark shouted over the roar of the diesel engine. "Can we bum a ride into Kenmore Square? You're going that way, right?"
"Sure," she said. "Squeeze in."
She felt Bobby tense. And then he moved. Quickly. He opened the passenger-side door, and would have leaped out to let the younger men sit in the middle—no doubt to keep from sitting pressed up against her—but Kenneth was already there, about to climb in.
As Colleen watched, Bobby braced himself and slid down the seat toward her.
She took her pack and set it on the floor, tucked between the seat and her door.
He moved as close as he possibly could without touching her. It was amazing, really, that he could be that close yet have absolutely no physical contact.
He smelled like baby shampoo and fresh laundry with a hint of the coffee that he seemed to drink each morning by the gallon. His hair was back in a ponytail again. She couldn't imagine him letting her braid it later today. She couldn't do it now, not the way they were sitting. And she knew that after Clark and Kenneth got out of the truck, Bobby wasn't going to let her get close enough to braid his hair ever again—not after what she'd said to him last night.
"Sorry," she said, her voice low. "I guess I must have embarrassed you to death last night."
"You scared me to death," he admitted, his voice pitched for her ears only. "Don't get me wrong, Colleen, I'm flattered. I really am. But this is one of those situations where what I want to do is completely different from what I should do. And should's got to win."
She looked up at him and found her face inches from his. A very small number of inches. Possibly two. Possibly fewer. The realization almost knocked what he'd just said out of her mind. Almost.
What he wanted to do, he'd said. True, he'd used the word flattered as she'd expected, but the rest of what he was saying was...
Colleen stared at that mouth, at those eyes, at the perfect chin and nose that were close enough for her to lean forward, if she wanted to, and kiss.
Oh, she wanted to.
And he'd just all but told her, beneath all those ridiculous shoulds, that he wanted her, too. She'd won. She'd won!
Look at me, she willed him, but he seemed intent upon reading the truck's odometer. Kiss me.
"I spoke to Admiral Robinson, who greenlighted U.S. military protection for your trip," he continued. "He wants me to remain in place as liaison with your group, and, well—" his gaze flicked in her direction "—I agreed. I'm here. I know what's going on. I have to stick around, even though I know you'd rather I go away."
“Whoa, Bobby." She put her hand on his knee. "I don't want you to go anywhere."
He glanced at her briefly again as he gently took her hand and deposited it back into her own lap. "The thing is..." He fixed his gaze on a point outside the truck. "I can't stay in the, uh—" he closed his eyes briefly "—the capacity in which you want me to stay."
She laughed in disbelief. "But that's crazy!"
He leaned forward to look out the passenger-side door, checking to see why Clark was taking so long to get in. Her roommate's brother was holding on to the door, blue head down, intent upon scraping something off the bottom of his shoe. "The admiral told me that Wes'll be back in about three days," Bobby told her.
Three days. That meant they didn't have a lot of time to "Once he's back, it'll be easier for me to, you know, do the right thing. Until then..."
"Do the right thing?" she repeated, loudly enough that Kenneth looked uncomfortable. "How could this," she gestured between them, "not be the right thing when everything about it feels so perfect?"
Bobby glanced back toward Kenneth and Clark before finally meeting and holding her gaze. "Please, Colleen, I'm begging you—don't make this more difficult for me than it has to be," he said, still softly, and she knew, just like that, that she hadn't won. She'd lost. He wanted her, too, but he was begging her—begging her—not to push this attraction that hung between them too far.
He wanted her, but he didn't want her. Not really. Not enough to let what he was feeling take priority over all their differences and all his asinine personal rules.
Colleen felt like crying. Instead she forced a smile. "Too bad, Taylor, it would have been amazingly great," she told him.
His smile was forced, too. He closed his eyes, as if he couldn't bear looking at her, and shook his head slightly. "I know," he said. "Believe me, I know."
When he opened his eyes, he looked at her, briefly meeting her gaze again. He was sitting close—close enough for her to see that his eyes truly were completely, remarkably brown. There were no other flecks of color, no imperfections, no inconsistencies.
But far more hypnotizing than the pure, bottomless color was the brief glimpse of frustration and longing he let her see. Either on purpose or accidentally, it didn't matter which.
It took her breath away.
"I need about three more inches of seat before I can close this door," Clark announced. He shifted left in a move reminiscent of a football player's offensive drive, making Kenneth yelp and ramming Bobby tightly against Colleen.
Completely against Colleen. His muscular thigh was wedged against her softer one. He had nowhere to put his shoulder or his arm, and even though he tried to angle himself, that only made it worse. Suddenly she was practically sitting in the man's lap.
"There," Clark added with satisfaction as he closed the truck door. "I'm ready, dudes. Let's go."
Just drive. Colleen knew the smartest thing to do was to just drive. If traffic was light, it would take about fifteen minutes to reach Kenmore Square. Then Clark and Kenneth would get out, and she and Bobby wouldn't have to touch each other ever again.
She could feel him steaming, radiating heat from the summer day, from the work he'd just done,
and he shifted, trying to move away, but he only succeeded in making her
aware that they both wore shorts, and that his bare skin was pressed against hers.
She was okay, she told herself. She'd be okay as long as she kept breathing.
Colleen reached forward to put the truck into drive. Raising her arm to hold the steering wheel gave Bobby a little more space—except now his arm was pressed against the side of her breast.
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...
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 fa
vorite—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.
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 zen-like 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 g
o 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'Hal-laran!"
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.
Seal Team Ten Page 214