Scarlett appeared—her blonde hair shiny and styled, her eyes seeming huge with the dark makeup—and behind her was another face. A male face. And it looked like he’d spent as much time on grooming before the date as she had, from his near-orange skin to the dark makeup around his eyes.
“Finn,” she said with a fake smile, “this is Peter. He dropped me home and asked if he could come back for a nightcap. Do you want to join us, maybe for appletinis?”
I stuck out my hand and smiled, but mine was more genuine than Scarlett’s had been. Asking the other to join in for appletinis was part of our code, meaning, I don’t want to be alone with this person. And I was more than happy to oblige.
“Good to meet you, Peter. Let me show you the sofa while Scarlett makes us some drinks.”
He looked from her back to me. This was obviously not the direction he’d been hoping the night would go.
“Okay, sure,” he said, apparently deciding to ride it out to get to the prize. I smiled wider, baring my teeth. Scarlett was not his prize.
Scarlett disappeared into the kitchen and Peter followed me, but I stopped before reaching the living room.
“So, um, you’re her roommate, right?” he said, his voice hopeful.
I dropped the smile. “Peter, it’s time to go home.”
“What?” His eyes darted to the kitchen doorway.
“You’ve probably had a very nice night, but it’s over. You can leave now.” I took the few steps back to the front door and swept an arm toward the exit.
“But, Scarlett—”
“Is too nice to say it. She was going to let you down easy, but I can tell you’re the sort of guy who’d appreciate knowing up front. So I’m doing you a favor, man to man.” With one hand in my pocket, I opened the door with the other. “As I said, good to meet you, Peter.”
He slowly covered the distance to where I waited, his gaze swinging to the kitchen and back a few times first. “Yeah. Um…you, too.”
Then he was gone and I grinned. My work here was done. I closed the door behind him and arrived at the sofa at the same time as Scarlett, with three opened beers in her hands. We didn’t even keep the ingredients for appletinis in the house—the offer had been all about the code—so I hadn’t been sure what she’d bring. Beer was the perfect choice to celebrate Peter’s departure.
“Where’s Peter?” she asked, glancing around the room.
“He had to leave.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Finn, what did you say to him?”
“That he should leave.” I sank onto the sofa and stretched my legs out in front of me, more relaxed than I’d been all night.
She raised her face toward the ceiling. “Shit. I leave you alone for two minutes—”
I held up a hand to interrupt. “You wanted him gone, right?”
“Well, yes, but he was nice. I was going to have a drink with him then tell him I needed some sleep.” She handed me a beer and dropped onto the sofa. “And I’ll save you the trouble. Yes, he was wearing guy-liner and had a man tan.”
“And more foils than a fencing competition,” I added and swigged the beer.
“He was just putting in an effort, which is more than I can say for some of the guys I’ve dated.” She picked at the label on her beer. “Did he say anything when he left?”
I shrugged. “He won’t be calling.”
She dragged her laptop from the coffee table and opened her dating chart. “Another one-dater to add.”
“But this one wasn’t your fault. And, the good thing is you realized before you had to kiss him this time.” I took another mouthful of beer, feeling pretty satisfied with the outcome.
“Oh, I kissed him,” she said casually as she typed. “Twice.”
The beer went down the wrong way and I coughed and spluttered for a couple of moments before I could reply. “You kissed him? You didn’t even like him!”
She shrugged and closed her laptop. “He was kinda cute. And I needed the practice.”
“Guy-liner and a man tan,” I pointed out, surprised I even had to.
She sighed. “But the kissing was awful.”
All of a sudden, the evening seemed a little brighter. Then I remembered I was the one who was supposed to have been teaching her about kissing, so I made sure my face was serious as I said, “Which was his fault.”
“Oh, totally.” She took another sip of her beer. “If nothing else, your lesson taught me to raise my standards in my kissing partners.”
That moment when our lips had first touched filled my mind, blocking out all other thought. My skin heated, and the air felt thick. She wasn’t the only one whose standards had been raised.
“Glad to have been of help,” I said, hoping it sounded casual, and finished my beer. “By the way, I enrolled you in a silversmithing workshop in a couple of weeks.”
She groaned and wriggled back in the sofa. “Is this another attempt to get me to be a professional artist?”
“Nope. This time it’s about my career.” The prospect of getting her to spend time with other artists was a side benefit.
She arched an eyebrow, clearly not believing a word. “You want to be a professional artist now?”
“I want to make my own reconstruction of the Silver Flute of Ur.” The two badly damaged silver pipes that had been found in the Mesopotamian city-state of Ur were older than any other existing wind instrument from the Near East, and one of my obsessions. Scarlett had sat through me explaining the discovery and its importance a few times already, and the fact that she didn’t ask what the Flute of Ur was showed she’d paid attention. I appreciated that about her.
“Fair enough, but why am I doing the workshop when you’re the one who wants to make the flute?”
“Here’s the beauty of the plan.” I put my empty beer bottle on the coffee table and snagged the extra one. “I’m enrolled as well.”
She eyed me dubiously. “And you need me to hold your hand?”
“I need you to translate,” I clarified. I wouldn’t survive a workshop without her.
The suspicion in her eyes didn’t ease off. “I only speak the one language.”
“Not true. You speak Artist Talk. Completely different language. When I called to sign us up, the woman spoke for two minutes about the course, and I only understood about a quarter of what she was saying. If I’m going to get anything out of the workshop, I’ll need an interpreter.”
“If I agree—”
“Too late to disagree,” I said. “You’re already enrolled.”
“If I agree”—her hazel eyes didn’t waver—“what do I get out of it?”
I grinned. “The chance to help make a replica of the Silver Flute of Ur. It’s what all the cool kids are doing.”
“I can hardly contain my excitement,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm, which didn’t matter. She’d clearly decided to come with me.
Before she could change her mind, I jumped up. “Another beer?” I asked, using the fail-safe method of alcohol-as-distraction.
“Why not.” She passed me her empty and I grabbed two more bottles from the kitchen.
We drank the beers, then another each, as I updated her on two students in a first-year class I tutored—the guy was head-over-heels about the girl, and she was completely oblivious. He was trying time-honored traditions of shy guys everywhere, such as passing her notes and making her giggle. It was sweet, and part of me wanted to put the two of them together in a room and tell them to cut to the chase. Instead I was pretending it wasn’t happening under my nose and letting things take their natural course. And keeping Scarlett updated, naturally.
She smiled and put the most recent empty beer bottle on the coffee table.
“Another?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m nicely buzzed but not too far gone.”
“Me, too.” Four beers in quick succession had made me pretty happy with the world. Well, they had until she opened her mouth again.
“Speaking of you t
eaching people things, I think I need another kissing lesson.”
Suddenly the walls of the room started closing in on me, and my gaze automatically went to her mouth. Her lush mouth that still had the remnants of fiery-red lipstick.
I swallowed. “No, you don’t. We don’t kiss anymore. We’re friends who don’t kiss.” Panic was rising up from my chest. “We don’t want to form a habit.”
She shrugged, apparently having forgotten we’d already dealt with this. “It takes twenty-one days to form a habit, so I think we’re safe.”
“Actually, that’s a myth. It takes a minimum of twenty-one days, but it’s usually more like sixty-six.” I snapped my mouth shut, aware I was babbling.
“Well,” she said, her eyes bright with the beer-buzz, “we’re even more safe then.”
“Regardless, we agreed not to do it again. We don’t want to jeopardize our friendship.” But I was uncomfortably aware that the real issue was if I started kissing her again, would I be able to stop?
“Yeah, I know.” She picked up her empty and started picking at the label.
“Are you letting Appletini Guy’s bad kissing get to you?”
She didn’t look up. “I don’t remember our first lesson very well.”
The blood in my veins froze. A kiss that had rocked my world hadn’t even made enough impact on her to be memorable?
“You don’t remember?” I repeated, just to be clear. “It was only two nights ago.”
“I haven’t forgotten we kissed, obviously, but I can’t remember details, like what the most effective elements were.”
I shifted in my seat. Every second of that kiss was burned into my memory bank. It seemed that hadn’t been as mutual as I’d suspected. I blew out a breath and focused on being a teacher in the situation, not a man who’d been carried away with his own lesson.
“I think you’re over-analyzing this. The elements don’t matter on their own. It’s more about the big picture.”
“Would you say that to your undergrads? Don’t worry about the specifics of the aqueducts, or which emperor came to power in what year. It’s more about the big picture of knowing there was a Roman Empire?”
“Well, no, but it’s completely different,” I said, looking down the hall and wondering if I could escape the conversation by simply leaving.
“How?” she persisted. “In both cases, you’re teaching something. So the student needs the topic broken down into bite-size pieces.”
At the word “bite” all the air left the room. Scarlett must have interpreted my silence to be disbelief because she grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper.
“Here.” She smoothed it out on the coffee table in front of us. “I’ll graph it for you.”
That snapped me back. “You’re going to graph our kiss?”
She drew an X and Y axis, then a line that went up across the page, but not smoothly—there were spikes and bumps along its progress.
“So, here, for example”—she pointed to a sharp rise in the line—“you did something and the kiss took off. What was it?”
“Seriously?” She wanted to talk as if it had been a clinical experience?
“If this had been a kiss for kissing’s sake, then, sure, we could leave it alone. But it was a lesson. How am I supposed to learn if I don’t remember the stimulus that caused the response?”
“You don’t need to. You were great. There’s nothing more to learn.” Better than great. Her kissing had been phenomenal.
“Again, if an undergrad wanted to learn more about the Roman Empire than they needed to for the first-year exam, would you tell them they were fine, or would you point them to more resource material?”
I blinked. “I’m resource material?”
She threw her hands up in the air, as if she was the one who was exasperated. “You’re the one who offered the lesson in the first place, so yes. You are my resource material on kissing.”
I looked over at the array of empty beer bottles on the coffee table. “We really need to make it a rule that we don’t talk about kissing after we’ve been drinking.”
“You’d rather have this conversation stone-cold sober?”
“I’d rather not have this conversation at all.”
“Oh.” Her face fell.
“What?” I asked warily.
“It’s just occurred to me that although I thought the kiss was good, you might not have enjoyed it at all. That’s why you’re fighting so hard against a follow up lesson.” She scrunched up her nose. “It was awful for you.”
I rubbed my temples—I was getting a headache trying to keep up with her thought processes and keep us out of dangerous territory.
“It wasn’t awful.” Amazing would be closer.
“Then why are you so against a follow-up lesson so I can focus on the bits I’ve forgotten?”
Something in the way she said “forgotten” made everything inside me rear up and protest. Maybe it was vanity, maybe it was neediness, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to be considered a forgettable kisser. Especially by Scarlett.
My gaze zeroed in on her mouth as I wrapped an arm around her and tugged her closer, but not quite touching. Her eyes widened and her pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips. I groaned.
“See if you can forget this,” I said, and lowered my head.
She tasted of beer and heat. As my tongue pushed between her lips, I was already gone. There was no need for preliminaries this time. It was nought to one hundred in under a second. My heart hammered in my chest as I slid my tongue along the length of hers. She pressed hard against my mouth, smashing my top lip against my teeth, and I welcomed the bite of pain, the intensity making my pulse leap higher.
She lifted a knee over my lap to straddle me, but she didn’t sit down. Instead, she rested her hands on the back of the sofa behind my head, keeping to our rule of no touching below the neck. My hands squirmed with the need to pull her down those last couple of inches so her butt could make contact with my groin, but it had been my stupid rule, so I gripped the sofa cushions hard.
Lesson. This is just a lesson. Do not get carried away.
There was something erotic about her kneeling over me without our bodies making contact anywhere but our mouths. I nipped at her bottom lip and she gasped, dragging the air from my lungs. She started to lift her head away—probably for oxygen—but I followed, arching up, not ready to let the kiss end.
Wrong. This is not a kiss. It’s a lesson.
The thought was like a mule’s kick to the gut. She’d asked for a second lesson to help her with other guys. I was losing my head, and she was probably being analytical.
This time I let her go, and she fell back onto the sofa beside me. The only sound was of both of us panting. Neither of us moved, both facing forward.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I cursed myself for losing my head in something that should have been more clinical. Impersonal. Something she was going to pick apart in her head and apply when she kissed other men.
I pushed to my feet without turning to face her, refusing to let her see how badly I’d been affected by the kiss.
“I hope you remember that one,” I said over my shoulder. “Because our lessons are over.”
I headed for my room, having never been more grateful for her silence.
Scarlett
I was eating my salad sandwich in the staff lunchroom the next day, but not feeling particularly hungry. And not just because I was a touch hung over.
The first time I’d convinced Finn to kiss me, there had been a fair bit of naïveté involved. Not knowing how good it would be, I hadn’t thought there would be any danger involved.
I’d been wrong. Incredibly, outrageously wrong. Kissing Finn was most definitely dangerous to our friendship, not to mention my sanity.
Luckily, we’d had some awkward moments and moved past it, reclaiming our friendship. My sanity, however, was still in question. Especially after last night.
Knowing how sublime kissing him would
be, and how it could jeopardize the most important friendship in my life, why, in the name of all things sparkly, would I instigate it again?
Alcohol had played a part. A big part. Note to self: stop making kissing decisions while fueled with alcohol.
But it couldn’t take all the blame.
Part of me had been desperate to know if our first kiss had been a fluke. I’d had high hopes for Peter—thinking I could put my kissing lesson into practice—but he’d been such a disappointment that during the date I’d started to wonder if Finn had really been that good, or if I’d exaggerated it in my mind.
At least now I had an answer.
My body temperature went up even thinking about it…
Maybe Finn was an aberration—a kissing savant—and he’d ruined me for all other guys. Now there was a depressing thought.
I dropped my salad sandwich onto its wrapper just as Cathy rushed in, a container of sushi in her hand.
“So,” she said, her eyes alight. “How did it go with Peter?”
I had to remember he was her friend. Well, her boyfriend’s friend, and that was close enough. Diplomacy was key. “I don’t think we’re a good fit for each other.”
“Was it the eye makeup?” She scrunched up her nose. “Because he’s only been doing that since he joined the band.”
“No, there was just something missing. I don’t think he was into me, either.” And the kisses had been awful. “Thanks for trying.”
“I owe you from when you set me up with Mike, then fixed things when we had that big fight. I’ll probably owe you until you’re with the love of your life.”
That was sweet. It hadn’t been much—I’d just invited them out for a drink at our local bar, The Three Beers, without telling either of them the other was coming, then made them listen to each other so all the misunderstandings could be cleared up. The fact that I’d been the one to cause the misunderstandings in the first place was something we didn’t speak about anymore.
“You were right about this plan, though,” I said. “I need to supersede the memory. Who else have you got?” We had to get this show on the road and find someone who kissed better than Finn. Surely there was a man somewhere in Australia who could?
The Finn Factor Page 5
