The Girl Most Likely To...

by Dorien Kelly

  She returned the favor, letting her line of vision follow the course she meant her lips to take. He was gorgeous…fit, strong, made to love and create new life.

  “You’re a regular banquet, Cal Brewer.” Dana ran her fingertip across his chest, past his navel and into the dark hair at his groin.

  “The possibilities are um, boundless,” she teased as she circled her palm around his erection.

  “Dana…” The word was part warning and part plea.

  She bent and kissed him. Cal’s hips arched off the bed, and he groaned. Ah, but she was truly just beginning. His hand cupped the back of her head as she deepened her mouth’s embrace. She loved giving him this pleasure, loved feeling the answering tension deep in her own body.

  He murmured sexy words to her, hot words, begging words. She took them all in, as she’d taken in him. This, she was sure never to forget, no matter how many years she lived without him.

  Just when she was certain she was about to find her release by tasting him, loving him, his fingers tensed against her and he rasped, “Stop!”

  Almost dizzy with passion, Dana rolled to her side. He drew her upward and kissed her deep and hard.

  “You’re the most amazing thing that ever happened to me,” he said. Her throat tightened with emotion. She wanted to tell him the same thing, but couldn’t. Not when she planned to save him from MacNee by walking away tonight. As she struggled to regain her composure, Cal leaned over her, opened the nightstand drawer and took out a box of condoms.

  “Let me,” she said as he pulled a packet from the box. She brushed her fingers against his erection. It was hot and damp from her attention.

  He drew in a hissing breath. “Don’t, or we’ll both regret it.” He quickly rolled the condom into place.

  Before Dana could even figure out how she’d gotten there, she was flat on her back and he was thick and hard inside her. He flexed and withdrew, then pushed his way back in. She gasped. His expression was almost a smile, but somehow an expression of hunger, too.

  He cupped her bottom, positioning her hips until they met him perfectly. They found a rhythm. Again and again he came into her, until she was so close to falling over the edge that all she could do was cry his name. She turned her face into the pillow, trying to gather the strength to handle the storm to come.

  “No. Look at me. I want to see you come.”

  Dana gave herself up to him, and they arched and peaked together.

  Later, as they lay there, their limbs tangled and souls meshing so perfectly, she admitted the truth to herself. She was strong, but not strong enough to give up Cal Brewer.

  11

  DANA COUNTED April’s passing days by her growing to-do list. Far before she was prepared, May arrived. On the weekends, the town was packed with tourists, but her day spa remained unfinished. Watching all that money march right past her doorstep was killing her. Cal kept offering to help, and she kept refusing. One of them had to keep a grip on the big picture. It looked as though it was up to her.

  Before opening for business, she needed to get the two private shower rooms finished off. Luckily, all the major work—electrical, plumbing and the tiling of the steam showers and tubs—had been completed before her plan had been blown to smithereens. If she could just hire someone to lay the floor tile, she knew she could recoup the money in a matter of days.

  Her banker hadn’t been very impressed with her logic. He had been more concerned about her ability to repay her outstanding loan, considering the number of times Devine Secrets had recently shown up in the newspaper’s Police Beat column. Telling him that Mike’s idiot cousins had buckled under increasing police pressure and last week confessed to the initial vandalism incident didn’t help, especially since Mike still walked the streets a free man. One dim hope remained.

  Dana had known about the money from Grandmother Devine for years. When her sister, Catherine, was accepted to medical school, their mother had looked skyward and given thanks to Grandmother Devine. When her brother, Josh, had decided to study abroad after college, Grandmother Devine was again blessed. But when Dana had asked for help paying for beauty school, she was told that times were tough.

  Rather than push it, she had taken a night job as a cocktail waitress on Rush Street. Tips were good and she’d become talented at fending off the gropers. She’d quit once she’d gotten her first salon job. As adept as she was at avoiding wandering hands, she decided she’d rather eat less than put up with them.

  Dana felt incredibly proud of what she’d accomplished on her own. She had never again asked her mother for money. Now she had no choice. Today, she was conducting a stealth mission. If she gave her mother advance warning of what she wanted, she’d be greeted by a tidy note filled with excuses taped to her mother’s front door.

  After taking a moment to push back the galling feeling of failure over having to go begging, Dana rang Eleanor Devine’s doorbell. Theirs was not a “drop by anytime” relationship.

  Her mother pulled aside the white voile curtain covering the door’s half window. Displeasure quickly replaced the curiosity in her expression. The door opened slowly, grudgingly, and just enough for Eleanor to peer through.

  “Hey, Mom. Hope you don’t mind that I dropped by.”

  “Hello, Dana.”

  The door opened no wider.

  “I have something I need to talk to you about. Maybe you could let me in.”

  Sparrows chattered, a car drove down the street, but her mother was silent.

  “Five minutes,” Dana bargained, hating that she had to do this.

  “Fine, but no longer. I’m due at the country club to help with the Spring Benefit committee.”

  “No problem.”

  Her mother opened the door. Dana stepped in and waited to be ushered to the kitchen or somewhere. Instead, they stood in the entryway, with all the cross-stitched fluffy bunny artwork her mother loved.

  “Well?” Eleanor asked.

  “Can’t we sit down?”

  Her mother huffed an impatient breath and checked her watch. “If you insist.”

  After they were seated at the kitchen table, Dana cut to the chase. “I’ve thought of every way around this that I could, but I’ve come up blank… I know you’ve heard about the troubles I’ve had at the salon, and I’ve reached the point where I need a little help to get the renovations done on time.” She dragged in a breath and then said, “Mom, could I use some of the money Grandmother Devine left us?”

  “What money would that be?” her mother asked through razor-thin lips.

  “You know…the money you used to help with Catherine’s and Josh’s school expenses.” She pushed on in the face of her mother’s stony silence. “I remember Dad telling me I never needed to worry about college because Grandma had taken care of that. I know things were tight when I left for school, but maybe now—”

  “Do you have any idea what medical school costs?”

  “No.”

  “Or a year of studies at Oxford?” Her mother shook her head. “Of course you don’t because you didn’t have the brains or the ambition to get ahead like your sister and brother. Your grandmother’s money is long gone, and even if I had a million dollars sitting in an account, I wouldn’t risk a penny of it on you.”

  “But she left it to me, too. Dad said so.”

  Lines of bitterness marked Eleanor’s face. “Your father said many things. After the grief and embarrassment I’ve suffered because of your behavior, you’re entitled to nothing.”

  “Why are you doing this?” The question was more a kind of emotional reflex than really wanting to know, because Dana had heard this speech before.

  “Where do you want me to start? In high school when I had to deal with the other mothers’ whispers about your promiscuous behavior, and with you sneaking in at all hours, or worse yet, not coming home at all?

  “Then again, maybe you’d like to discuss current events, since you’ve decided to ruin Cal Brewer’s life just as you rui
ned Mike’s. And don’t give me that shocked look. I heard about the two of you making a spectacle of yourselves down by the river.”

  Dana wasn’t feigning shock. If her mother had heard about Cal, the story had traveled far. Eleanor clung to the fringes of the Westshore Country Club clique, locals who outsnobbed the snobbiest. Generally, they cared only about trunk-slammer affairs. Townies fell beneath their notice, though, ironically, the clique itself was included in that group.

  “Cal’s a friend,” she said.

  “If you were really his friend, you’d leave him alone. He has a chance to be something.”

  As much as Dana had changed, her mother would never see it.

  “Let’s just stop here,” Dana said. “Forget I asked you for help. I must have been out of my mind.” As she left the kitchen, she said, “I’ll see myself out.”

  DANA DROVE to Cal’s lodge just past ten that evening. The night was wet and heavy with a rain that had begun to fall in early afternoon, and hadn’t stopped until recently. Thankful she wasn’t being followed, she wound down the dark country road. Because it was late and the deer were active, she kept a careful eye for them. Out here, the locals said it was always the one you didn’t see that blindsided you.

  The same could be said for her conversation with her mother. She thought she’d been prepared for rejection, but she’d been wrong. Letting go of one’s last hope was never easy, or painless.

  Even hours of work in the salon had done little to take the sharp edge off her ache. She’d always known that her mother had little use for her. She had sensed it from the time she was a child. While it had hurt and confused her, she’d had refuge with her father. He had loved her unconditionally, encouraging her to choose her own star and reach for it.

  After he’d died, she’d been adrift. Her mother had been too caught up in her own anger that he’d had the nerve to die to pay attention to Dana. Dana had done her best—and worst—to get just a moment’s notice. Her worst always seemed to do the trick. In a way she could understand why her mother was now incapable of seeing that she’d made something of herself. What hurt was the knowledge that Eleanor Devine wanted her to fail.

  Dana pulled up in Cal’s drive. Just seeing his lights on made her feel better…warmer, somehow.

  By the time she’d parked and made it to the door, he was waiting for her. When he hugged her, she couldn’t quite make herself let go. It wasn’t fair or safe to seek comfort from him, at least the kind she wanted, but she couldn’t help herself.

  He tipped up her chin and looked into her eyes. “You okay?”

  She nodded and stepped out of his embrace. “Let me get my shoes off. I’m getting mud all over your floor.”

  “I’m not worried about my floor,” he said as he took her jacket from her and went to hang it up. “Now, you, on the other hand, I’m worried about.”

  Once her shoes were off, he pressed a mug into her hands. “Hot chocolate, with a little extra kick,” he said at her questioning look. “Now come sit by the fire.”

  Dana could think of no place she more wanted to be. She settled next to Cal and sipped her drink. The slight taste of peppermint picked up the soothing smoothness of the chocolate. “It’s wonderful,” she said.

  “Thanks. Rough day at the office?” he asked, just as one spouse would ask another—one of those nuances of emotional intimacy she knew so little about, and was so scared to learn. Dana felt tears well in her eyes.

  “The usual,” she said, trying to match his light tone.

  “Somehow, I don’t think so.”

  She was afraid to say anything, because if she did, the floodgates would burst and everything would rush out—the knowledge she wasn’t worthy of her mother’s love, the fear that she was falling in love with Cal and the terror that everything she’d fought so hard to make her own was slipping away.

  “It’s nothing. I’m…I’m…”

  The tears started, and once they did, there was no stopping.

  Cal took her drink from her and set it on the coffee table. He wrapped his arms around her. How she had needed this, possibly even more than she’d realized.

  “It’s going to be okay…whatever it is,” he said.

  Wrapped in his arms, it was easy to believe that might be true. As the tears stopped, Dana began to talk….

  CAL WATCHED as Dana slept on the couch, curled up against him. He had wanted to know her past, what drove her, and now he did. The knowledge was almost a physical ache.

  He had always taken the love of his family as a given. Mitch and he might not always see eye to eye, and Hallie worried that he was turning into some sort of emotional fossil, but no matter what, they were family. For all that Dana had two siblings and a mother, she was as alone as a person could be. Until now.

  She had him, whether she was willing to accept it or not.

  Other than the close encounter of the MacNee kind, no one outside of his family had seen him with Dana. Cal figured there were two ways to conduct a life: in the shadows, like Richard MacNee and his worming around, or out in the open. Stepping into the daylight could well lose Cal the job as police chief, but it would salvage his self-respect. With luck, it would also gain him the love of Dana Devine. And that was worth any price.

  DANA JOLTED out of an exhausted sleep. Around midnight, Cal had made sure she got home safely. Now it was… Actually, she had no idea. She squinted at the numbers on her alarm clock. Okay, not quite past one.

  Something had awakened her. The trick was to sort out whether the sound had been part of a dream or part of reality. She lay as still as possible, listening for any unusual sound. After a few strained moments, she convinced herself it was nothing, and settled back against her pillows. As her eyes slipped shut, it rang out again…a woman’s distant, ghostly laughter. Dana shivered. She’d thought she heard random footsteps every now and then, but never this. The sound died away.

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she whispered as much for her own benefit as that of the spirit that was having such a good time giving her the creeps.

  The sound drifted upward again. Dana frowned. When she thought she’d heard footsteps, they had seemed to come from the attic, and all had been quiet since she moved up here. She folded back the covers, stood and tiptoed to the stairs. The door at the bottom was open a crack, and light shone through it.

  “Weird,” she murmured. Mr. V was always asleep by now. Curious, she walked down and pushed open the door the rest of the way. The woman’s laughter—clearly of this world—sounded again.

  She knew that voice.

  Dana tiptoed to the landing halfway down the main stairway. There, in the living room, she saw something more out of this world than the ghost of Old Lady Pierson. Olivia Hawkins and Mr. V were slow-dancing in the middle of the room. The fact that they had no music didn’t seem to bother them at all. Mr. V was looking at Olivia as though she were the most marvelous, incredible surprise.

  Dana hungered for that kind of love.

  She wanted to be able to look at Cal that way, to let everything blossoming in her heart show in her eyes. But that heart also ached with the knowledge that her mother was right.

  She was a bad risk in love, and the last woman someone in the public eye needed. Dana felt her eyes tearing up as she thought about what she was missing.

  To be like the lovers dancing downstairs would be paradise.

  She stood there in her ratty sleep-shirt, weepy eyes and messy hair, gripping the railing and wishing with all of her heart. After a moment, and without once looking her way, Olivia said, “Everything’s all right. You can go back to bed now, dear.”

  Dana managed an embarrassed “okay,” before hightailing it to her attic.

  Olivia Hawkins and Mr. V. Dana Devine and Cal Brewer. Dana wasn’t sure which couple was more unlikely.

  CAL HAD TAKEN a page from Dana’s book: He had a plan. And it wasn’t a bad one, if he said so himself. A week had passed since the night she’d finally opened up to him. I
n that week he’d had flowers delivered to the salon and to the Pierson House daily. He’d helped her with the last details on the day spa rooms, refusing to be chased out just because she was worried someone might see him. And when they were alone, he’d talked with her for hours on end. It seemed as though now that she’d started, she had a lifetime of stuff to get out. He never thought he’d feel so damned lucky to hear a woman talk.

  Tonight, he’d begin the final phase of his plan, which involved champagne, formal clothes and slow dancing. For any woman but Dana, attending the West-shore Spring Benefit would be a no-brainer.

  But Dana was…well, Dana. Proud. Determined. Stubborn. Make that very stubborn.

  The Spring Benefit was an annual party held at the Westshore Country Club, an exclusive old property just outside of town. In theory, it was a fund-raiser for local charities. In practice, it was the warm-up event for Sandy Bend’s summer social season. Everyone converged for one huge blowout.

  Cal wasn’t a “club” kind of guy, but he had attended the party every year since he’d graduated from college. Usually, it was no big deal. He’d simply ask the woman he was dating, rent a tux and be done with it. This was no normal year, though. He had to somehow convince Dana to be seen with him not only in public, but at one of the biggest events of the season. A pretty tall order since he couldn’t get her to sit at a table for two at the Corner Café.

  Tonight, he’d brought a bottle of wine, some brie and a loaf of French bread for dinner. He and Dana set up a makeshift dining area in the Eden Room, whose walls were now a lush, exotic jungle, with vines growing up to the ceiling. His baby sister knew her stuff, all right.

  “Thanks for bringing food,” Dana said. “I think I forgot to eat lunch.”

  He smiled at the idea. It had to be a female thing. Guys never forgot to eat. “So you’re not sure if you ate?”