by Joanne Pence
She rolled her eyes. "No way! An older girl looking at you? She must have been totally desperate!"
He shrugged. "Maybe, but she sure could kiss."
She pursed her lips together, wanting to knock that smirk right off his face. She rocked her shoulders in a quick, small motion from side to side while thinking over his words. "Well, smarty, since you know so much about it, why don't you tell me?"
"Sure."
She froze, her breathing stopped, then she forced herself to appear cool and calm. She peeked at him, then dropped her gaze. "Okay," she said.
"Well, first, you, um... Well, you... Hell, I don't know how to describe it!"
Relief flowed through her. "Some help you are!" she said haughtily.
He folded his arms, his legs stretched out before him. "Well, I guess I can show you. But don't get any ideas! It's just to help you out, nothing more."
Her mouth dropped open. "Get ideas? Don't you wish!" Her heart thrummed. "Well, I’m sure I don't need help, but...I guess it won't hurt to find out what that seventeen-year-old taught you."
He took her hand and led her deeper into the park, to a secluded bench that faced the pond and was hidden from the walkway by large bushes. She sat, and he sat beside her. He turned her shoulders toward him, lifted her hands to his neck, then slid his arms around her waist. "Comfortable?" he asked.
Her heart beat so fast she was feeling light-headed. She gave one quick nod.
His gaze held her captive. "Now, someone who knows what he's doing, when he kisses a girl, does it slowly and gently. Got it?"
She nodded.
"Like this." He pulled her waist closer, causing her head to drop back and her lips to part slightly as she gasped with surprise. He cocked his head, lightly kissed her mouth, and drew back. He lightly kissed her again, then tilted his head so that his nose was on the other side of hers while meeting her with light, feathery kisses that sent tingles through her body. She was ready to move a whole lot closer to him when he lifted his head.
"Only if the girl likes that and wants more, does the guy who knows how to kiss involve his tongue at all."
"I see." He pulled her closer. Her arms tightened around his neck as he lowered his mouth to hers. His tongue brushed over her lips, playing and teasing at the entrance to her mouth, until she lifted her tongue to touch his. As his lips slid sideways over hers, her breath caught, and, again he stopped.
"That's right. The girl invites when she's ready, then they can kiss well. Got it?"
She nodded vigorously.
"The guy who doesn't know how to kiss will simply go up to a girl, slap his mouth across her face like a slab of raw liver then cram his tongue down her throat as far as it can go. I'm surprised the girls don't gag."
Lisa put her hand to her throat and swallowed hard.
Tony smiled. "I guess some girls just don't know any better."
Her voice was tiny. "I guess not."
"Are you ready to put it all together?"
"I think so."
He reached for the top button of her jacket and, to her surprise, unfastened it. As each button fell open, she felt her stomach tighten and her breathing grow more shallow. Then he slipped his arms under her jacket, circling her back. She waited. He nodded. Slowly, she lifted her hands to his broad shoulders.
As their lips, she shut her eyes and leaned closer. His lips passed gently, lovingly over hers and she drew him closer, wanting more of his kiss. The moment his tongue touched her lips, she met it with hers and felt a tremor pass through him. His arms tightened as his tongue found its way into her mouth. She took it between her teeth, biting down lightly. Surprised he lifted his head and looked at her. She laughed and lifted her hands to his hair, stroking the soft locks with her fingers. She watched a grin steal across his face, his eyes crinkling in delight, and she pulled his head down to hers again. His soft groan of pleasure was a triumph to her and she abandoned herself to his kiss, unzipping his jacket and sliding her arms within it, letting her hands travel along his back, upward, trying to reach his shoulders, until the fabric of his jacket stopped her. For the first time she became acutely aware of the difference in their bodies--he was hard, sinewy, smooth but steely to the touch. And she liked to touch him.
At the same time, he caressed her, but never higher than her rib cage, and never lower than her hips. Still, her body tingled with a new awareness, and every sense seemed heightened, and each moment, magical.
She discovered boys had a particular taste, and she liked the way Tony tasted. His scent, up close, was different, too, and she could feel the pulse on his neck, and his rapid heartbeat when his chest pressed against hers. With one finger, she traced the outline of his ears, she touched his nose, his cheeks, his eyebrows. Everything about him seemed unique to her, despite how well she thought she knew him. Every new thing she learned, she liked. That day, she learned all about kissing Tony.
o0o
She did have her date with Stompin’ Steve Peters that Saturday night so long ago. They went to the movies. Afterward, he drove out to a country lane, parked the car, took her in his arms and kissed her. She promptly gagged, and he, just as promptly, brought her home.
Lee giggled at the memory, then giggled harder, and finally, laughed until tears came to her eyes. She had spent years getting all but nauseated by nearly half the men who tried to kiss her and never, until just this moment, figured out why.
"What's so funny?"
She looked up. "Tony!" Her face was still shiny with mirth.
Dark brown eyes swept over her discarded stockings and bare toes wriggling luxuriously in the grass. The sight of those ten perfectly manicured red-tipped toenails rocked him without warning, the sight was so erotic that he felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. He tore his gaze from her feet to meet her bemused eyes. "I don't know about this, Lisa. You're sitting here laughing all by yourself. It's good it was just old Ton' who found you. People have been locked away for less."
"Where's your friend Trish?"
"Gone home, I think. I haven't seen her for a good hour."
"Oh. That's too bad."
"Not really." He looked uncomfortable, as if he shouldn't be here talking to her like this, shouldn't be seeking out her company. "Ben told me he saw you heading this way, but you hadn't come back..."
Is that so, Mr. Santos? She suddenly felt good. "It was nice of you to check up on me. I'd hate for a blue whale to carry me off."
He smiled. "Is that what you were laughing about?"
Her gaze shifted to a white oleander bush and she rubbed a fingertip over the smooth skin between her eyebrows. "Actually, I was just remembering Steve Peters. It made me laugh."
"Ah, yes." He put his hands on his hips. "The original liver lips."
That drew her back. "The what?"
He looked sheepish. "Nothing."
"You knew!"
His eyebrows rose in innocence. "Knew? Knew what? What are you talking about?"
She cocked her head. "Nothing. But if I ever find out you knew..."
He held out his hands, palms up toward her and backed up a couple of steps. "I swear I'm innocent--whatever it is!"
"Oh well, it was probably for the best." She gazed up at him, his dark eyes, his mouth...and the memory of how good it felt to kiss him washed over her again, memories of nights in Tony's Bonneville where those "practice kissing" sessions continued. Good God! Where had that memory come from? Where had all these memories come from? Unnerved, she put her shoes on and stood.
He was sorry she put them on. He liked seeing her barefoot and relaxed, all warm and sunny and laughing. He liked it a lot. To his consternation he also liked the way she’d been looking at him before she turned away. He could feel heat throughout his body from her gaze, and felt a fire building around his groin.
"I wonder if my aunt is ready to go home yet," she said as she started walking back toward the picnic area.
He walked beside her. "I saw her talking to Gene Cantelli about ten m
inutes ago."
"Really?" She wondered if Miriam had been with Gene all this time. If so, she was glad.
As they reached the barbecue area he began to chuckle. "God, Lisa--Stompin' Steve!" He shook his head. "He became a lawyer, you know."
She snorted, then held her hand to her nose, horrified at the unladylike sound.
He glanced at her, then both of them burst out laughing.
"Hey, don't laugh," Tony said. "I owe that man a debt of gratitude I can never repay. I'm sure you don't remember, but it was because of him we first "
"I remember...right back there by the pond. They took away our bench, though."
Our bench. He seemed to notice the slip as soon as she said it.
"You do remember!" His voice dropped. "I'll be damned!"
"I seem to remember a lot more than I realized."
"Hey, that isn't why you were laughing, is it?"
She looked at the toes of her shoes as she walked along. "Not at you, Tony. Never at you. At me."
He stepped in front of her, stopping her progress and forcing her to look up at him, his expression suddenly serious. Then he slid his hands into his back pockets. "Why?"
She saw the way the setting sun's rays shone on the blackness of his hair, bringing out wine red highlights, the way his shoulders jutted straight and broad under the pale gray sweatshirt he now wore over his tank top, the way his dark eyes still mesmerized her and made her want to immerse herself in them and never walk away.
Then she lowered her gaze, and shrugged. "No reason, Tony. Nothing I could even begin to explain."
"Try me."
"No, but thanks."
"You're sure?"
"Sure." She smiled, secretive and sensual. He was fascinated by these facets of Lee Reynolds, as enthralled as he'd been seventeen years ago.
She slipped her hands in her pockets and they walked along in silence. Now and then, their arms brushed, but neither moved far enough away to end the contact.
Chapter 11
One of the Circle Z Ranch’s wild oak and brush covered hills stood higher than the others. When Tony wanted to be alone, it was the perfect place to go.
He sat with his back against a tree trunk, one leg stretched out straight, the other bent at the knee. Before him lay rolling pasture land. A group of his horses ran free over an open field under the watchful eye of two ranch hands. Sometimes he came up here just to look at the scene below, as if to convince himself that the land before him was really his own.
At other times, like now, he came to think through problems. His father had warned him against seeing Lisa again, and he had to admit Vic was right.
Tony side-armed a stone high into the air, and watched as it sailed down the hill to land far below his perch. Years ago, after Lisa left him, he often wondered what his life would have been if he and Vic had never come to Miwok. If he had never met her. He never would have known what it felt like to be completely in tune with another person, what it felt like to be with someone and know that only with them were you whole, and that without them you were no more than a shell of yourself. He would never have known the torture of losing the person he felt that close to, and would never have known a loneliness so complete and so black he had wished he could die from it.
He flung another stone, harder this time.
It had been his fault that he and Vic had moved here. He'd caused Vic to leave the best paying job he had ever held. In the end, the move was a good one for Vic, but at the time, it had seemed catastrophic.
Although born in Texas, he’d traveled with his father all over the west as Vic worked on different ranches. Out of the blue, an old friend offered Vic a job at a wealthy riding academy in Malibu. Vic quit his job in Albuquerque for California, and checked them into a motel while he tried to find an apartment near the riding academy. Whenever the two of them showed up to look at a vacancy, though, they were told the apartment had been rented only hours before. Vic's search widened until, eventually, he ended up in the San Fernando Valley, the agricultural fringe just north of Los Angeles.
Tony had just turned fifteen, halfway through his freshman year, and found himself in a new high school. It was a nightmare. The kids saw him as a hick, and "Tex Mex" was the nicest of the names he was called. The Mexican kids thought he was strange because he wasn't from a barrio, could speak almost no Spanish and didn't do anything they considered cool. To the whites, though, he was Mexican, one of "them," and ostracized from the white kids' world.
He fought his way through the first few weeks, then gradually changed his style of dress and speech. He was tired of being an outsider, tired of being lonely. When he was younger, he’d had baseball, the one thing he did better than any of the other kids. Baseball was what had helped him become accepted in new schools time after time. But as he got older, baseball wasn't enough. A part of him hated Vic for taking him away from the horse and cattle ranches where Vic had worked, from the nomadic life they’d both loved. Yet another part found him poking fun at the country bumpkin image of the ranches he'd grown up in. He wanted to belong. Other kids did.
Finally, he found a crowd willing to accept him. They were a tough group, one that Tony saw as the neatest, most savvy and most fearsome in the school.
Vic railed against the gang of boys Tony hung around with. When Tony took an interest in girls, Vic found them even worse. He called them nothing but putas. Tony defended his friends until he could scarcely say a word to his father without an argument.
Four weeks into Tony's sophomore year, he came home at three o'clock in the morning. The low riding car's souped up engine jerked to a stop in front of the apartment building where he lived. He rolled out of the car, too drunk to stand. The quiet street erupted with hoots and loud laughter by boys still in the car, and with lusty, raucous jokes by the girls.
Tony opened the door to the apartment to find Vic standing by the window waiting for him. He stumbled into the bathroom and threw up.
The next day, Vic quit his job, pulled Tony out of school, and left Los Angeles, heading north. Two weeks later, Vic found a low paying job at a small horse ranch, the Circle Z, in an unknown northern California town called Miwok.
Miwok. The first time Tony saw it, he laughed at the place. It wasn't rugged like ranch land, or exciting like L.A. It was pretty. Pretty! How embarrassing for a kid who'd just learned how to be a big city tough guy.
Tony grinned as he remembered meeting Lisa. She had a Social Studies class in the morning, and he had the same class in the afternoon. In both classes the students had to do a massive report on one state. Lisa had chosen New Mexico, which was the state Tony wanted, since he'd lived there just before coming to California and he knew a lot about it.
All he'd heard about her was that she was brainy, serious and nice. Compared to the girls he used to hang out with, she was plain, dowdy and prejudiced. He remembered how, his first week at Miwok High, she'd gawked at him as if he were from outer space. But he was desperate to get New Mexico for his state report. Hell, if he could have New Mexico, he'd hardly have to do any research or anything. He hated research. He’d approached her.
First she got all huffy about him talking to her, but then she gave him a look of understanding that bowled him over. No other girl had ever looked at him with such trust and compassion. To his amazement, he even told her about his mom dying when he was born. Was he nuts, or what?
But they began to talk, and he remembered thinking that the way her eyes sparkled, she wasn't very plain, and with hair the color of whipped butter, she certainly wasn't dowdy. The way she slowed her step, hung on his every word and acted as if she like being with him, made him think she wasn't prejudiced either.
He liked her so well, he didn't even ask for New Mexico. Instead, he did his report on Delaware. It was small, he reasoned. How hard could it be? Unfortunately, he found out. Right from the start their relationship had to have been pretty serious for a Mexican American, southwestern kid like him to be willing to tackle one o
f the original thirteen English colonies for a state report.
He remembered the first time Vic saw them together. Vic had said, "She's trouble." How could she be, Tony had wondered.
But as he got to know her, he realized that she was quite different from the way she appeared on the surface. It was as if she were a river that seemed placid, but had treacherous rapids just out of sight. She wouldn't admit it, much less talk about it, but he could see it, and knew it involved her mother. Lisa’s demeanor would change when she’d talk about Judith Reynolds. She was always trying to please the woman, but no matter how hard she’d work, no matter how many achievements or awards or successes she’d attained, they were never enough. For Tony, who’d never been given anything but unwavering support and love from Vic, the way her mother treated Lisa was unimaginable.
The worst part was that Lisa wouldn’t talk about it, and would scarcely acknowledge that anything was wrong.
On several occasions, he’d almost told her that he knew--heck, the whole town knew--that Judith Reynolds drank a lot more than was healthy. She made the rounds of different stores to buy her beer, but that didn’t stop people from noticing either the volume or the regularity of her purchases. But since Lisa never brought the problem up, he kept his mouth shut. He wondered if that wasn’t the biggest mistake of his life.
He had thought being there for her would be enough, and she would talk to him if she needed to. After all, she had told him how she felt about him. And later, when they were seniors, she had told him that she loved him. He believed her. But then she left. He still didn't know why. The boy that he was believed she had rejected him, that she’d been shamed by their love. The man he had since become, though, questioned that belief.
He could see, to his amazement, that she still cared about him, and that she was still fighting those feelings. He wondered how long it would be before she left again.
o0o
That same morning, Lee's agent called to say they had just received an offer from Nighttime News, run by one of the competing networks, for her to be the anchor on the weekend news broadcast. This wasn’t another second-rung anchor position, like she had on Evening Newscene, but the actual lead. No more would she have to hear the announcer bellow, "Here is Evening Newscene with Rick Archer!!"--then wait a beat--"and Lee Reynolds." To no longer be the "and" following a long pause after Rick Archer's name was the kind of deal she'd long dreamed of.