by Beverly Bird
“I don’t have one,” he reminded her shortly. “Look, I want to get her some more punch. Go find something better to do than bug me.”
He zeroed in on the last of the potent red stuff in the bowl. The more he thought about it, the more he decided that getting her “tipsy” probably wasn’t a half-bad idea. She needed to relax, take her mind off things.
Suddenly he realized that no matter what the rule might be about pairing off, it never held sway at midnight. That was asking too much. In about fifteen minutes, people would start drifting. They would start trying to make sure that they were beside the person they wanted to be with at the stroke of twelve.
And when midnight came, no matter how cool Tessa been all night, no matter how distracted she’d been by this amazing new world he’d shown her, she was going to hurt. She’d look around at people groping for the body closest to them. She’d look around at embraces simple and urgent, friendly and passionate, tentative and hopeful and determined. And in that moment, if at no other time tonight, Gunner was reasonably sure that her husband’s poignant absence was going to swamp her.
It was not her first New Year’s without Matt Bryant, he reminded himself. But last year at this time, she would still have been stunned, pain raining through her like broken glass, unwilling and unable to assimilate the rolling over of one year into the next. This year would be different.
He reached down impulsively and caught her hand, hauling her to her feet. Tessa scrambled not to lose her balance.
“Gunner, what are you doing?” she cried.
He realized he didn’t even have a clue. More punch, he remembered. He’d been planning to ply her with more of the punch. With any luck, she’d pass out and miss midnight entirely.
“Here,” he said, dragging her over to the table.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “I think I’ve had enough.”
Probably. “Yeah, but it’s New Year’s,” he insisted, filling another glass for her. He had no idea where her other one had gotten to. There you go, Angie, he thought. If I hadn’t taken my eyes off her, I’d know where it was. He was absurdly proud of that point.
“No, Gunner, really,” Tessa said, shaking her head. “I feel dizzy.”
He stood helplessly with the glass in his hand. After a moment, he tossed it back himself. He felt the bourbon or whatever it was shoot into his blood and clear his head.
“Come on,” he said suddenly.
“Where?” Tessa scowled at him. He was acting strange, she thought. Or maybe it was just her perception. Everything was slightly off-kilter. She had to close one eye periodically to let the room straighten itself out. She wasn’t drunk. She never got drunk. But she’d had enough to think maybe she ought to stop now.
She looked up at the clock on the wall. It was almost midnight. Something inside her squirmed.
Gunner wrenched her arm suddenly, pulling her into the hallway.
“What are you doing?” she cried again. “Gunner, you really have to learn to stop acting so impulsively.” She remembered that during one of these past, long nights, she had decided that that was his biggest problem. But it was refreshing, she thought now, fighting the urge to laugh. It was like the backlash of wind in your face on a roller coaster ride.
He nearly had her to the stairs. “I’m going to show you your room,” he answered, his jaw tight.
“My room?” She pulled back against his grip.
“Yeah. That way when you’ve had enough, you can just go to sleep.” And if he dragged this out long enough, she’d still be up here at the stroke of midnight, he thought. Alone. Without fifty to a hundred people cuddling up to each other right in front of her eyes.
“Gunner, I can’t stay here all night! You never said anything about all night!”
“Well, what did you think I was going to do?” he snapped. “Stay here until dawn and then come back for the parade at ten?”
“I don’t—I didn’t—” They were halfway up the stairs. She thought frantically. “I don’t have a toothbrush!”
He glanced back over his shoulder at her. “So use your finger. Or I’ll run out to the nearest drugstore and buy you one, for God’s sake.”
“They’re not open now.”
He swore. He could not believe they were arguing about a damn toothbrush.
“I can take a cab home,” she said. “You don’t have to drive me and come back.”
“Not in this lifetime, sweetheart. I know these streets. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you leave here all...all tipsy on New Year’s Eve, and trust in their mercy.” He opened the first door they came to and shoved her inside. She stumbled a little, and he was instantly contrite.
“Sorry.” He reached out fast to grab her elbow and steady her.
Her eyes came around to him, slowly and wide. “You’re touching me again, Gunner,” she said slowly, with something like wonder.
He snatched his hand away and cursed silently. What the hell had he gotten himself into here?
“Sorry,” he said again. Hell, this was ridiculous. He’d only taken her elbow.
Then it dawned on him that she wasn’t angry.
“Uh, the bathroom’s right across the hall,” he said, shaken. He moved past her into the room, yanking down the bedspread. “It’s all yours, anytime you want it. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered.
She decided to give up the fight. She was too tired—maybe even too tipsy—to argue with him. And something about him made her feel safe. No matter how many people there were downstairs, no matter how many of them might slink off later, looking for a bed to lay down in, she knew Gunner would make sure she had this room to herself.
She sank onto the edge of the bed. “You can go now,” she said quietly. “I think I’ll just...I’ve had enough.”
Gunner hesitated. “Well, good. That’s good.”
“You can go back to Angela.”
“Huh?”
“I saw you talking to her and watching me,” she whispered.
“So?” Why did he have the sneaking suspicion they were entering that ozone layer again?
“So I’ll get out of your way now,” she said more firmly. “That’s why you brought me up here, isn’t it? So you didn’t have to...you know, watch over me anymore. Go on, Gunner. Go back downstairs and enjoy yourself. You don’t have to baby-sit me.”
“I wasn’t baby-sitting you,” he snapped.
“Yes, you were. You’ve been watching me all night like you’re waiting for me to change color.”
He swore richly. And at that moment the shouts began erupting from downstairs.
It was midnight, or damn close. Ten, nine, eight...
He watched her come off the bed again like a shot. She turned around in a little half circle, looking wildly around the room.
“Tess—”
She whirled back to him. “Go on, Gunner, or you’ll miss it.”
Everything he wanted was right here. “Yeah, sure.” He didn’t move.
Seven, six, five...
“Tess?” His voice was odd, strained. “You okay, Princess?”
“Fine,” she managed to say in a strangled voice. “Right as rain.”
No, he thought. No. She was shaking like a leaf.
Ah, hell. He closed the distance between them again abruptly. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she asked, confused.
Four, three, two...
He realized that the voices weren’t quite in sync. The hollering in the street, filtering up to them from the open front door, was a half beat ahead of the voices rising in glee in the kitchen. Someone had left a radio on in one of the other bedrooms, and the announcer was saying there were still fifteen seconds to go.
This stroke of midnight was going to last about an hour, he reckoned grimly.
“I was trying to spare you this,” he said hoarsely. “I just couldn’t think of any way fast enough.”
“Spare me?” Her voice broke. “Oh, Gunn
er.” He was so kind inside that cocky, self-sure exterior, she thought. She could deal with him far more easily if he wasn’t so... so good.
One...
She was safe with him. Somehow, impossibly, she was sure of that. He’d help her through this.
“Kiss me, Gunner,” she whispered impulsively. “I don’t want to think. And it’s midnight. It’s tradition.”
He felt something cold and wary shoot through him. Then it was hot and amazed and oh, too willing.
“Come on, Tess,” he said roughly. “You’re drunk.”
“Not really. No, I’m really not.”
He swallowed a groan. His hands curled into fists at his sides. Tessa didn’t notice. She didn’t look down. She looked up slowly, into his face instead.
She’d been aware of him, starkly, titillatingly aware, for days now. She was alive. She hadn’t died with Matt. And she’d felt little spasms inside every time she let herself notice the way Gunner moved. She melted a little every time he gave that crooked grin. But not once, she thought wildly, not once until now, had she really noticed his mouth.
It looked soft enough to kiss, his bottom lip slightly fuller than the top. It lost that appearance when he grinned the way he did, but he wasn’t smiling now. Little lines bracketed the corners of his mouth—laugh lines, she thought. And there was something like a dimple at the lower right part of his jaw, only not quite a dimple because it was longer, less deep than that. Light from outside and from the hallway played over his face and left a shadow there.
“Go to bed, Princess,” he said, his voice raw.
Happy New Year!
She flinched as though someone had struck her.
He was too close to miss the reaction. He hadn’t intended to touch her. God, no. He hadn’t once really considered it, hadn’t allowed himself to. But then her mouth opened ever so slightly, and he felt her breath, sweet with the punch, and he was only a red-blooded, all-American male after all.
He let his hands find her hair. His fingers tunneled into it on either side of her head, slowly, almost of their own volition. He lowered his mouth to hers, agonizing inch by inch, watching her carefully the whole time, watching her eyes.
They just kept getting wider.
He was ready to move back if she gave even the slightest hint that she had changed her mind. She didn’t.
He felt her shudder as his lips finally touched hers. Something incredible shot through him, nearly taking his legs out from under him.
He had all the finesse she had supposed. Oh, he was good at this. Experienced, she thought. It showed. His hands held her head still while he tilted his own, just so. And his mouth covered hers with so little pressure that she felt something ache inside her for more, needing more contact, something deeper, something harder. He would make her want, and want badly, before he finally gave.
He’d.keep it chaste, Gunner decided. Pretend she was...oh, hell, he didn’t know. Sort of his sister, maybe. Yeah, that would work. Easy. No big deal. Just a kiss. And then he felt her leaning into him and he realized that for full seconds now he’d been tracing her lower lip with his tongue. Tasting punch. Wanting to taste her. Needing it. It was agony. She was not his sister.
He felt her fingers dig into his waist, holding on as tightly as though she were being tossed around by a storm. His caution went out the window.
He pulled her sharply and suddenly toward him. His tongue left her lip and plunged into her mouth, desperate to find hers. He was just a man, only a man, after all. What the hell did she expect from him? Anger at himself, at his own weakness, made everything inside him burn even more.
She felt something ignite within him. Felt his urgency. His fingers clenched suddenly at her scalp. His chest was like granite, relentless pressure crushing her breasts as he held her to him, still with nothing more than his hands in her hair. She felt her nipples tighten at the contact even as she felt him getting hard. She had to pull away. Had to stop this insanity. She’d been wrong. It didn’t stop her from thinking. It made her think too much.
But then one of his hands left her hair and went to her neck, and his thumb stroked the hollow at her throat, shooting frissons of pleasure through her from that point. And his tongue kept searching for hers, so she sought his with her own.
Stop! Oh, God, she wanted to feel her fingers in his hair. Get control of yourself! But it was bliss, not even really forgetfulness, but more a fullness. It was like being full of him. It was sweeping sensation blotting everything else out. Heat was spiraling inside her. He moved his hand from her neck. She didn’t dare, couldn’t dare, find out where it would go next.
She finally gasped and jerked away from him. Gunner swore richly and dragged a hand over his mouth.
“Your idea,” he said hoarsely after a moment, then he grimaced at his own self-serving words. “My doing,” he added harshly.
“No...I...” She couldn’t finish. She watched him, wide-eyed, her heart thumping, wanting so badly to go back into his arms that it made her shake.
She took another little stumbling step away from him.
“I started it,” she murmured.
“Only so you wouldn’t remember.” And damn it, it hurt. Oh, yeah, it hurt. He felt absurdly used—him, a man who had always maintained that kissing, loving, was a matter of pleasure, nothing more weighty and complicated than that.
“Or maybe so I would,” she said in a very small voice. She spun away from him to look out the window, staring unseeingly at the people cavorting down there in the street. It hadn’t worked.
“So you would?” He felt dazed. “You kissed me so you would remember Matt?”
“Yes... no. Oh, God, no. That’s not it. Exactly.”
“So tell me what it was,” he said, suddenly angry. “Exactly.”
She was silent for a long time. “When it happened, when he was shot...” Her voice trailed off as though the words were acid on her tongue. She licked her lips. Gunner waited.
“When I came through that restaurant door,” she began again, “and saw...” She took a deep breath. “I would have done anything, Gunner. Anything to save him.”
“You didn’t have a gun—”
“Anything.” She interrupted fervently.
“There was nothing. Nothing you could have done.”
“If I had gotten out there a step sooner, I would have thrown myself in front of him.”
That floored him.
Just as he had never loved anyone that totally, that consumingly, neither could he doubt that this woman had. That she would have done it. She would have taken a bullet meant for the man she loved, and she would have died smiling.
Her small cry snapped his attention back to her. “What?” he asked hoarsely.
“I loved him that much, but now I can’t even remember him!”
He wasn’t sure he had heard her right. Then she went on, and he knew he had.
“I can’t really see his face anymore when I close my eyes, you know? Not easily. I can’t remember how he smelled anymore, how he felt! I can’t remember!”
Angela had been right. She was breaking his heart. And it wasn’t a totally selfish pain.
“Tess...”
“I didn’t want to not remember him at midnight! I didn’t want to find out that I...that I couldn’t. Do you understand?” It was what had been scaring her all day, she thought, what had brought her here to South Philly in the first place.
And it had happened.
She hadn’t been able to remember Matt. It had been, for a moment there, as though Matt Bryant had never breathed, never laughed with her, never existed. Her senses, every one of her senses, had been filled with John Gunner.
She felt sick—with shame, with guilt, with too much punch.
“It’s okay,” she heard him say. “I don’t care why...why you—why we did that.”
“You should.”
“Hell, Princess. I’m a mongrel. I have no pride.”
Her gaze shot to him helplessly. She knew
as well as she knew her own name that he was lying. He was doing it to make her feel better. Tessa knew suddenly that she was going to cry.
“Gunner.”
“What?”
“Would you mind...” What? she thought frantically, her throat closing. All she knew was that she had to be alone now. “Would you mind getting me some more punch?”
There was a heartbeat of silence. “Yeah. Sure.” And if there wasn’t any left, he’d get his mother to make some.
He realized, not quite able to comprehend it, that he would do anything for this woman, anything in the world.
He stepped back into the hallway and closed the door quietly behind him. What the hell was he getting into here? What was she doing to him?
He didn’t go for the punch. He was shaken. His whole body seemed to rock from what had happened in there. What she had done. What she had said. He leaned back against the door and scrubbed his hand over his mouth again.
It took a good five minutes for him to get himself under control. For his body to subside. For his heart to stop pounding like a snare drum. He eased his weight off the door and opened it again silently, just a crack, peering in to check on her.
She was curled up on her side on the bed. Tessa Hadley-Bryant had finally fallen asleep. He laughed, a raw, pained sound. His half-baked plan had worked.
Much, much too late.
Chapter 13
Tessa woke the following morning with the feeling that her tongue had cleaved permanently to the roof of her mouth. And she had a headache. She rolled over, looked at the ceiling and remembered where she was. Her voice escaped her in a little cry.
In an instant, her headache worsened. For a moment, she was overwhelmed with things to consider, with impressions and memories. Finally it occurred to her that no matter what had happened between them last night, Gunner had not taken advantage of the situation.
No, she thought sinkingly, he was not a mongrel. No matter what he might want people to think, he was a good, principled man.
Or maybe he’d preferred to spend the night with Angela.
Her heart lurched at that thought. Once again her head filled, this time with fragments of things he’d said to her over the days that had just passed. She reached up to press her fingers to her temples, groaning.