by Rachel Cross
Her eyes narrowed. Because he ought to have known her better than that, that’s why. Her temper rekindled. He thought she was just like the rest of them.
She opened her mouth to reiterate what a jerk he was, but then stopped as she noticed the shadows under his eyes and the misery all over his face.
He thought she was just like the rest of them.
That would have hurt more except she had a sneaking suspicion it had less to do with his opinion of her than it did with his opinion of himself. He didn’t think he had anything to offer a woman besides sex appeal. No one in high school knew the real me—wasn’t that what he said before? He was a good time, and that was it.
Her anger softened somewhat, and she took a step toward him. “Michael—”
He frowned warily. “Are you going to plant me into the wall again?”
“What? No—” None of this was going at all the way she planned. She gave up trying to figure it all out and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “You think I don’t really know you, don’t you?”
He stared at her, and she thought she saw some of his guardedness drop away. For a moment, at least. “You probably know me better than anyone has in a long time,” he countered quietly. “But—”
“But not well enough to see past your face, is that it? Past your looks and charm?”
“There’s not much else to see.”
“Yes, there is. You’re loyal, and kind, and—”
He shook his head. “You’re just seeing what you want to see, Shannon. I—”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she exclaimed, her frustration growing again. “You actually think I‘m too blind see who you really are? That I couldn’t possibly feel anything real for you?”
Michael’s face was unreadable, but he didn’t interrupt her this time. In fact, he almost seemed to be holding his breath as he waited for her to continue.
“Well, I’m not blind. I see your faults just fine. Want me to prove it?” She started ticking them off on her fingers as she listed them. “For starters, you’re a little vain. And you rely on your looks to get what you want way too much. And you’re too hung up on the past, too.” She paused for a minute to pull together her scattered thoughts. “You don’t think things through all that well, and you’re headstrong—and it’s not like you’re that good-looking, you know,” she added, sounding a little sullen even to her own ears.
Good grief. Shakespeare she was not.
She shut her mouth abruptly, thinking that if this even remotely qualified as a declaration of love, it had to be the worst one in the history of mankind.
“I see,” Michael said gravely after a minute of awkward silence. “Thank you for your honesty.”
“You’re welcome,” she said stiffly.
He ran a hand over his mouth as if he was trying not to smile, and something in his heavy manner softened. “So, you drove all this way to tell me how screwed up I am and that you don’t really find me very attractive?”
Shannon could feel her cheeks bloom with heat. “Well, that wasn’t my original plan, no.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t know if you want me or not, but—”
“Sweetheart, you have no idea.”
She let her breath out with a slight hitch and a rush of emotion. “Then why did you leave? And what was all this,” she waved her hand at the room around them, “tonight?”
“I was trying to be noble and self-sacrificing.”
“Well, knock it off!”
Michael started to laugh, and it was a sound that was full of relief. “Yes, ma’am,” he said obediently, and then in about two seconds he closed the short distance remaining between them to take Shannon’s startled face between his hands and bring his mouth to hers.
Recovering from her surprise, Shannon wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life as heat rushed through her. Her fingers curled in his hair, and his hands travelled slowly down her back, making her heart pound even faster. So the night at the park had not been a fluke, she realized, feeling lightheaded. The lips this man had, and the things that he could do with them . . .
But this time she was not the only one affected by it, because Michael seemed out of breath, too, when they finally separated—and he did not go far. He touched her face with his fingers, and then ran them through her hair as he looked at her searchingly. “You sure about this?” he asked her softly, and the tentative look in his eyes made her want to wrap her arms around him all the more.
She nodded, unable to speak so soon after the way he had just kissed her.
“I’m pretty screwed up, you know. I’m not sure I’m worth the—”
Shannon shut him up with another kiss, her feelings for him overcoming her shyness, and any hesitation that might have plagued Michael seemed to vanish then because all Shannon knew after that was that his lips and his hands seemed to be everywhere at once. And yet somehow it still didn’t feel like enough of him.
“I hated the idea of my brother doing this with you,” he said finally against her mouth. “It drove me crazy.”
His words sent a little thrill down her spine. “Really?” she managed, her voice somewhat breathless but not so breathless that she couldn’t hear the undercurrent of delight in it. She was sure Michael must have heard it, too.
“Yeah,” he said, his lips traveling over her jaw and down to her throat. “And this . . . ”
Her skin felt like it was on fire wherever he touched it. “Anything else?” she asked him, wishing her voice didn’t tremble quite so much but glad she had gotten it working again.
“Oh, yes,” he whispered against her neck, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “Let me show you . . . ”
Epilogue
Two months later
She was as ready as she was ever going to be for this night.
Shannon examined her reflection in the mirror in her bedroom, twisting this way and that to make sure there weren’t any wrinkles or loose threads that needed attention—or worse, any part of her skirt accidentally tucked into her pantyhose.
Nope. Everything appeared to be as it should be. Including her hair, which she deliberately left down. It was getting easier to do that now, and if she wasn’t exactly a full-fledged woman of confidence yet, she liked to think she was making strides in that direction.
Despite its lack of wrinkles, she smoothed the dress’s silky jade green fabric anyway, more out of nerves than anything else. It was a pretty dress—“It is now,” Michael had said when she tried it on for him for the first time. He had then tried very hard to coax her into slipping back out of it.
She smiled now at the memory. It gave her a little boost of confidence, which she sorely needed tonight.
Her ten-year reunion. She had been dreading it since she first got the invitation in the mail weeks ago, which was one reason why she was making herself go. It was ridiculous, she had decided, that one single social event should strike fear into anybody’s heart like this, particularly if that person was no longer an insecure teenager.
So she was going. But she had lost count of the number of times she had nearly blurted it out to Michael and asked him to go as her date. It would have been a lot less intimidating—and, quite honestly, kind of fantastic—to walk into a room full of her former classmates on the arm of the heartthrob of their high school years, but he’d spent years being treated as little more than eye candy. She was not about to treat him that way, too.
Besides, it was better this way, she told herself. More fitting. It meant she wasn’t afraid to stand on her own two feet around the people who used to intimidate the crud out of her, right?
Right. It sounded good anyway, even if her subconscious wasn’t buying it.
It wasn’t as if she would be totally without allies there, she reminded herself as she gave Bo a pat on the head and collected her purse. Drew would be there, too, and now that she wasn’t tongue-tied around him anymore they were genuinely becoming friends. He was even softening toward his brot
her, which Shannon knew was no small thing to Michael.
So even if she was going stag tonight, it was comforting to know that she could at least count on a dance or two with the former prom king and student body president of the McKinley High class of 2003.
Going downstairs, Shannon grabbed a sweater from the hall closet and opened the front door.
And saw Michael reclining against the porch railing, dressed to the nines in black slacks and a dress shirt that was missing a tie and open at the collar but still somehow amazingly dashing on him.
She stared at him in shock while his eyes travelled over her appreciatively, and he smiled in greeting. “Wow,” he murmured in a voice that sent delicious shivers down her spine. “You look like every man’s fantasy come true.” He straightened and came over to where she still stood speechless, then bent to kiss her, slowly and very deliberately.
She blinked at him when he finally separated his lips from hers.
“So, are you ready then?” he asked her, offering her his arm.
“I—what?”
“Are you ready to go?” Michael checked his watch. “Doors open at eight, right?”
“What doors?”
“At the high school. It is eight, isn’t it?”
“How did you know . . . ” She trailed off, confused as to what he was doing there. Delighted, but confused.
“Drew told me. Or did you forget that he and I are on speaking terms now?”
“Drew told you?” That would teach her to confide in her boss.
“Yes, he did. He also told me why you neglected to mention it to me.” Michael’s voice softened along with the light in his eyes as he looked into hers.
“Oh.” Yes, she was really going to have to think twice before spilling anything to Drew again, or at least anything more personal than her grocery list, she thought as she felt her cheeks grow warm. “Well . . . ”
“You’re very sweet, you know that?”
Her cheeks grew even warmer.
“And I appreciate you trying to protect my feelings,” he continued, with a solemn look but a suspicious twinkle in his dark eyes. “But I’m afraid you’re just going to have to get used to being seen in public with me.”
“Well, if I have to, I have to,” she conceded gravely, and then she grinned and put her arms around him. “Thanks for coming tonight. I was dreading going alone.”
“Wouldn’t miss it. Although—” He trailed his fingers down her back. “I wouldn’t mind cutting out early.”
Yes, early was good, she thought with another lovely shiver as his fingers left a trail of heat on her skin. Then she took the arm he offered her and followed him off the porch.
He stopped halfway to his truck and turned to look at her in the deepening twilight. “Shannon . . . ” he started, and this time his voice was soft and halting. “I—”
“Yes?”
“You and me, we . . . ”
She held her breath. The look in his eyes was so earnest, it made her heart do a funny sort of flip inside her chest. He almost seemed, well, shy. Michael Kingston, heartbreaker, was clearly struggling to say something he wasn’t used to saying to a woman, and his awkwardness at that moment was all the more endearing for that. “Yes?” she said again, more softly.
“I’ve never—I mean . . . ” He cleared his throat and tried again, the rising color in his cheeks obvious even in the growing darkness. “I just want to say . . . I . . . ”
“Yeah,” she told him, her heart thumping pleasantly fast. “Me, too.”
“I—yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Michael took a deep breath. “Well, good. I’m glad we had this talk . . . ” And he drew her toward him. She went quite willingly.
Several minutes later, Shannon tore her mouth away from his. “We’re going to be late,” she told him breathlessly.
“So then we just get to make more of an entrance—”
She laughed and pulled him in the direction of his truck. “Come on. I promised myself I’d go to this thing, and I meant it.”
He sighed but gave in and followed her. “I guess it would be a shame to waste the sight of you in that dress. You’re going to outshine everybody else there.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
Michael opened the passenger’s side door for her. “Nowhere?”
“Well maybe somewhere,” she admitted. “But I need to get to this reunion before I lose my nerve, so—”
“Understood.” He closed the door after her and then rounded the truck to get in on the driver’s side. “It might actually be fun, you know. Seeing old faces, catching up on what people have been doing for the past ten years . . . ”
“Uh huh. Sure.”
“Hey, keep an open mind.”
“Catching up shouldn’t take long. Not much has happened to me in the last decade.”
He turned the key in the ignition. “Wait until your next reunion. You’ll have all sorts of news to tell people then.”
“Will I?”
“Oh, yeah,” he told her, giving her a look that was full of promise. “I guarantee it.”
About the Author
Christine S. Feldman writes both novels and feature-length screenplays, and, to her great delight, she has placed in screenwriting competitions on both coasts. When she is not writing, she is teaching kindergarten, puttering around in her garden, ballroom dancing with her husband, or doing research for her next project.
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
57 Littlefield Street
Avon, MA 02322
www.crimsonromance.com
Copyright © 2013 by Christine S. Feldman
ISBN 10: 1-4405-6905-3
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6905-0
eISBN 10: 1-4405-6906-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6906-7
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
Nothing’s Sweeter than Candy
Lotchie Burton
Avon, Massachusetts
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Chapter 1
Candace Brown stood in the hotel lobby staring at the row of elevators, hesitant to push the button that would take her to the upper levels. Nash, her once-in-a-blue-moon lover had called. He’d said he was in town, but only for the night. Her “if you had any sense” inner voice had shrieked bad idea as soon as she’d hung up the phone. But every woman alive knows raging hormones and no sex for months will kick a sensible thought in its ass, and trample it right into the dust.
She’d rushed out the door, jumped in her car, and driven there at breakneck speed, ready for a long-overdue romp between the sheets. Now with only an elevator ride standing between her and satisfying the ache between her legs, that nagging voice reemerged and refused to be ignored. And it told her she was about to take stup
id to a whole other level. Suddenly she was undecided.
In the few months she’d known him, he’d never shown a capacity to care about other human beings or feel real emotion. There wasn’t a sensitive, civilized bone in his body. Lately, he’d started the annoying habit of calling her “Freak.” He claimed it was a term of endearment, but the unpleasant way the word rolled off his tongue felt more like accusation than kindness. She loathed the way it made her feel. Nash enjoyed using offensive, demeaning language to make her uncomfortable and feel less like a woman and more like an object.
Basically, Andrew Nash was an asshole. He’d weaseled his way into her life using his affable charm, a trait she’d quickly learned was pure gimmick. Her first mistake was agreeing to go out with him, immediately followed by her second: going to bed with him. And she’d continued falling into bed with him again and again, all while ignoring her better judgment and ditching her sense of pride.
So why did she keep coming back? Because he was handsome and fit, and in spite of his asinine behavior, the man knew his way around a woman’s body. His hands and mouth flowed like pure magic over every inch of her—pushing her buttons, plucking her cords, and playing her like a fine-tuned instrument. Aware of his abilities and her weaknesses, he skillfully used both to manipulate her and turn her inside out. When she was with him, she was the freak he’d named her—he knew exactly how to make her lose control. It pissed her off that the man who let loose her deepest inhibitions took such great pleasure in mocking her for it.
The fact that Candace’s lust for Nash far outweighed her self-respect hadn’t mattered until now. So what had changed? Why hadn’t she pushed that elevator button? Maybe she’d finally grown tired of his demeaning comments and deliberate disrespect. Maybe the sex wasn’t worth the insults. Maybe it was time to stop settling for temporary satisfaction while enduring constant humiliation. While struggling to make her choice, she was distracted by her reflection in the highly polished chrome of the elevator doors. The sight stirred up a startling memory; the walls and sounds of the lobby melted away, replaced by a more powerful and provoking image.