Taylor's Temptation

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Oh, tell me,” she breathed. “Please, Bobby, tell me what you dream.”

  “What do you think I dream?” he asked harshly, angry at her, angry at himself, knowing he still wasn’t man enough to hang up the phone and end this, even though he knew damn well that he should. “I dream exactly what you’re describing right now. You in my bed.” His voice caught on his words. “Ready for me.”

  “I am,” she told him. “Ready for you. Completely. You’re still watching, so I…I touch myself—where I’m dying for you to touch me.”

  She made a noise that outdid all of the other noises she’d been making, and Bobby nearly started to cry. Oh, man, he couldn’t do this. This was Wes’s sister on the other end of this phone. This was wrong.

  He turned his back to the mirror, unable to look at his reflection.

  “Please,” she gasped, “oh, please, tell me what you dream when you dream about me.”

  Oh, man. “Where did you learn to do this?” He had to know.

  “I didn’t,” she said breathlessly. “I’m making it up as I go along. You want to know what I dream about you?”

  No. Yes. It didn’t matter. She didn’t wait for him to answer.

  “My fantasy is that the doorbell rings, and you’re there when I answer it. You don’t say anything. You just come inside and lock the door behind you. You just look at me and I know. This is it. You want me.

  “And then you kiss me, and it starts out so slowly, so delicately, but it builds and it grows and it takes over everything—the whole world gets lost in the shadow of this one amazing kiss. You touch me and I touch you, and I love touching you, but I can’t get close enough, and somehow you know that, and you make my clothes disappear. And you still kiss me and kiss me, and you don’t stop kissing me until I’m on my back on my bed, and you’re—” her voice dropped to a whisper “—inside of me.”

  “That’s what I dream,” Bobby whispered, too, struggling to breathe. “I dream about being inside you.” Hell. He was going to burn in hell for saying that aloud.

  Her breath was coming in gasps, too. “I love those dreams,” she told him. “It feels so good…”

  “Yes…”

  “Oh, please,” she begged. “Tell me more….”

  Tell her…When he closed his eyes, he could see Colleen beneath him, beside him, her body straining to meet his, her breasts filling his hands and his mouth, her hair a fragrant curtain around his face, her skin smooth as silk, her mouth soft and wet and delicious, her hips moving in rhythm with his….

  But he could tell her none of that. He couldn’t even begin to put it into words.

  “I dream of touching you,” he admitted hoarsely. “Kissing you. Everywhere.” It was woefully inadequate, compared to what she’d just described.

  But she sighed as if he’d given her the verbal equivalent of the Hope Diamond.

  So he tried again, even though he knew he shouldn’t. He stood there, listening to himself open his mouth and say things he shouldn’t say to his best friend’s sister.

  “I dream of you on top of me.” His voice sounded distant and husky, thick with desire and need. Sexy. Who would have thought he’d be any good at this? “So I can watch your face, Colleen.” He dragged out her name, taking his time with it, loving the way it felt in his mouth, on his tongue. Colleen. “So I can look into your eyes, your beautiful eyes. Oh, I love looking into your eyes, Colleen, while you…”

  “Oh, yes,” she gasped. “Oh, Bobby, oh—”

  Oh, man.

  Chapter 11

  Just after midnight the phone rang.

  Colleen picked it up on the first ring, knowing it was Bobby, knowing that he wasn’t calling for a replay of what they’d just done.

  Pretended to do.

  Sort of.

  She didn’t bother even to say hello. “Are you okay?”

  He’d been so freaked out earlier that she’d made up an excuse to get off the phone, thinking he needed time alone to get his heart and lungs working again.

  But now she was wondering if that hadn’t been a mistake. Maybe what he’d really needed was to talk.

  “I don’t know,” he answered her. “I’m trying to figure out which level of hell I’m going to be assigned to.”

  “He’s able to make a joke,” Colleen said. “Should I take that as a good sign?”

  “I wasn’t joking. Dammit, Colleen, I can’t do that ever again. I can’t. I shouldn’t have even—”

  “All right,” she said. “Look, Guilt Man, let it go. I steamrolled over you. You didn’t stand a chance. Besides, it’s not as if it was real.”

  “No?” he said. “That’s funny, because from this end, it sounded pretty authentic.”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “Sure. On a certain level it was. But the truth is, your participation was nice, but it wasn’t necessary. All I ever really have to do is think about you. If you want to know the truth, this isn’t the first time I’ve let my fantasies of you and me push me over the edge—”

  “Oh, my God, don’t tell me that!”

  “Sorry.” Colleen made herself stop talking. She was making this worse, telling him secrets that made her blush when she stopped to think about it. But his feelings of guilt were completely unwarranted.

  “I’ve got to leave,” he told her, his voice uncharacteristically unsteady. “I have to get out of here. I’ve decided—I’m going down to Little Creek early. I’ll be back in a few days, with the rest of Alpha Squad.”

  With Wes.

  One step forward, two steps back.

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go into detail with my brother about—”

  “I’m going to tell him that I didn’t touch you. Much. But that I wanted to.”

  “Because it’s not like I make a habit of doing that—phone sex, I mean. And since you obviously didn’t like it, I’m not going to—”

  “No,” he interrupted her. “You know, if I’m Guilt Man, then you’re Miss Low Self-Esteem. How could you even think I didn’t like it? I loved it. Every excruciating minute. You are unbelievably hot, and you completely killed me. If you got one of those 900 numbers, you could make a fortune, but you damn well better not.”

  “You loved it, but you don’t want to do it again?”

  Bobby was silent on the other end of the line, and Colleen waited, heart in her throat.

  “It’s not enough,” he finally said.

  “Come over,” she said, hearing her desire coat her voice. “Please. It’s not too late to—”

  “I can’t.”

  “I don’t understand why not. If you want me, and I want you, why can’t we get together? Why does this have to be so hard?”

  “If we were a pair of rabbits, sure,” Bobby said. “It would be simple. But we’re not, and it’s not. This attraction between us…it’s all mixed up with what I want, which is not to get involved with someone who lives three thousand miles away from me, and with what I want for you, which is for you to live happily ever after with a good man who loves you, and children if you want them, and a career that makes you jump out of bed with pleasure and excitement every single morning for the rest of your life. And if that’s not complicated enough, there’s also what I know Wes wants for you—which is more than just a man who loves you, but someone who will take care of you, too. Someone who’s not in the Teams, someone who’s not even in the Navy. Someone who can buy you presents and vacations and houses and cars without having to get a bank loan. Someone who’ll be there, every morning, without fail.”

  “He also wants to make sure that I don’t have any fun at all, the hypocrite. Making noise about how I have to wait until I’m married, when he’s out there getting it on with any and every woman he can.”

  “He loves you,” Bobby told her. “He’s scared you’ll end up pregnant and hating your life. Abandoned by some loser. Or worse—tied to some loser forever.”

  “As if I’d sleep with a loser.”

  Bobby laughed softly. “Yeah, well
, I think I might fall into Wes’s definition of a loser, so yes, you would.”

  “Ho,” Colleen said. “Who’s Mr. Low Self-Esteem now?”

  “Wes’s definition,” he said again. “Not necessarily mine.”

  “Or mine,” she countered. “It’s definitely not mine.”

  “So, okay,” he told her. “We toss the fact that I want to make love to you for about seventy-two hours straight into that mess of what you want and I want and Wes wants. Boom. What happens upon impact? You get lucky, I get lucky, which would probably be transcendental—no, not probably, definitely. So that’s great…or is it? Because all I can see, besides the immediate gratification of us both getting off, is a boatload of pain.

  “I risk getting too…I don’t know, attached to someone who lives three thousand miles away from me.

  “I risk my relationship with your brother….

  “You risk your relationship with your brother….

  “You risk losing any opportunities that might be out there of actually meeting someone special, because you’re messing around with me.”

  Maybe you’re the special one. Colleen didn’t dare say it aloud. He obviously didn’t think so.

  “I’ve got a flight into Norfolk that leaves Logan just after 1500 hours,” he said quietly. “I’m going into the Relief Aid office in the morning. I’ve got a meeting set up at 1100 hours to talk about the security we’re going to be providing in Tulgeria—and what we expect from your group in terms of following the rules we set up. I figured you’d want to sit in on that.”

  “Yeah,” Colleen said. “I’ll be there.” And how weird was that going to be—meeting his eyes for the first time since they’d…since she’d…She took a deep breath. “I’ll borrow a truck, after, and give you a lift to the airport.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll take the T.” He spoke quickly.

  “What, are you afraid I’m going to jump you, right there in the truck, in the airport’s short-term parking lot?”

  “No,” he said. He laughed, but it was grim instead of amused. “I’m afraid I’m going to jump you. From here on in, Colleen, we don’t go anywhere alone.”

  “But—”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t trust myself around you.”

  “Bobby—”

  “Good night, Colleen.”

  “Wait,” she said, but he’d already hung up.

  One step forward, two steps back.

  Okay. Okay. She just had to figure out a way to get him alone. Before 1500—3:00 p.m.—tomorrow.

  How hard could that be?

  The Relief Aid office was hushed and quiet when Bobby came in at 1055. The radio—which usually played classic rock at full volume—was off. No one was packing boxes of canned goods and other donations. People stood, talking quietly in small groups.

  Rene pushed past him, making a beeline for the ladies’ room, head down. She was crying.

  What the…?

  Bobby looked around, more carefully this time, but Colleen was nowhere in sight.

  He saw Susan Fitzgerald, the group’s leading volunteer, sitting at the row of desks on the other side of the room. She was on the phone, and as he watched, she hung up. She just sat there, then, rubbing her forehead and her eyes behind her glasses.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Another quake hit Tulgeria this morning,” she told him. “About 2 a.m., our time. I’m not sure how it happened, whether it was from a fire caused by downed power lines or from the actual shock waves, but one of the local terrorist cells had an ammunitions stockpile, and it went up in a big way. The Tulgerian government thought they were under attack and launched a counteroffensive.”

  Oh, God. Bobby could tell from the look on Susan’s face that the worst news was coming. He braced himself.

  “St. Christof’s—our orphanage—sustained a direct hit from some sort of missile,” Susan told him. “We lost at least half of the kids.”

  Oh, Christ. “Does Colleen know?”

  Susan nodded. “She was here when the news came in. But she went home. Her little girl—the one she’d been writing to—was on the list of children who were killed.”

  Analena. Oh, God. Bobby closed his eyes.

  “She was very upset,” Susan told him. “Understandably.”

  He straightened up and started for the door. He knew damn well that Colleen’s apartment was the last place he should go, but it was the one place in the world where he absolutely needed to be right now. To hell with his rules.

  To hell with everything.

  “Bobby,” Susan called after him. “She told me you’re leaving for Virginia in a few hours. Try to talk her into coming back here when you go. She really shouldn’t be alone.”

  Colleen let the doorbell ring the same way she’d let the phone ring.

  She didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to have to try to explain how a little girl she’d never met could have owned such an enormous piece of her heart.

  She didn’t want to do anything but lie here, on her bed, in her room, with the shades pulled down, and cry over the injustice of a world in which orphanages were bombed during a war that really didn’t exist.

  Yet, at the same time, the last thing she wanted was to be alone. Back when she was a kid, when her world fell apart and she needed a shoulder to cry on, she’d gone to her brother Ethan. He was closest in age to her—the one Skelly kid who didn’t have that infamous knee-jerk temper and that smart-mouthed impatience.

  She’d loved him, and he’d died, too. What was it with her…that made the people she loved disappear? She stared up at her ceiling, at the cracks and chips that she’d memorized through too many sleepless nights. She should have learned by now just to stop loving, to stop taking chances. Yeah, like that would ever happen. Maybe she was stupid, but that was one lesson she refused to learn.

  Every single day, she fell in love over and over. When she walked past a little girl with a new puppy. When a baby stared at her unblinkingly on the trolley and then smiled, a big, drooly, gummy grin. When she saw an elderly couple out for a stroll, still holding hands. She lost her heart to them all.

  Still, just once, she wanted more than to be a witness to other people’s happy endings. She wanted to be part of one.

  She wanted Bobby.

  She didn’t care when the doorbell stopped ringing and the phone started up again, knowing it was probably Bobby, and crying even harder because she’d pushed too hard and now he was leaving, too.

  Because he didn’t want her love, not in any format. Not even quick and easy and free—the way she’d offered it.

  She just lay on her bed, head aching and face numb from the hours she’d already cried, but unable to stop.

  But then she wasn’t alone anymore. She didn’t know how he got in. Her door was locked. She hadn’t even heard his footsteps on the floor.

  It was as if Bobby had just suddenly materialized, next to her bed.

  He didn’t hesitate, he just lay down right next to her and drew her into his arms. He didn’t say a word, he just held her close, cradling her with his entire body.

  His shirt was soft against her cheek. He smelled like clean clothes and coffee. The trace of cigarette smoke that usually lingered on his shirt and even in his hair had finally been washed away.

  But it was late. If he was going to get to Logan in time to catch his flight to Norfolk…“You have to leave soon,” she told him, trying to be strong, wiping her face and lifting her head to look into his eyes.

  For a man who could make one mean war face when he wanted to, he had the softest, most gentle eyes. “No.” He shook his head slightly. “I don’t.”

  Colleen couldn’t help it. Fresh tears welled, and she shook from trying so hard not to cry.

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “Go on and cry. I’ve got you, sweet. I’m here. I’ll be here for as long as you need me.”

  She clung to him.

  And he just held her and held
her and held her.

  As she fell asleep, still held tightly in his arms, his fingers running gently through her hair, her last thought was to wonder hazily what he was going to say when he found out that she could well need him forever.

  Bobby woke up slowly. He knew even before he opened his eyes that, like Dorothy, he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Wherever he was, it wasn’t his apartment on the base, and he most certainly wasn’t alone.

  It came to him in a flash. Massachusetts. Colleen Skelly.

  She was lying against him, on top of him, beneath him, her leg thrown across his, his thigh pressed tight between her legs. Her head was on his shoulder, his arms beneath her and around her, the softness of her breasts against his chest, her hand tucked up alongside his neck.

  They were both still fully dressed, but Bobby knew with an acceptance of his fate—it was actually quite calming and peaceful, all things considered—that after she awoke, they wouldn’t keep their clothes on for long.

  He’d had his chance for a clean escape, and he’d blown it. He was here, and there was no way in hell he was going to walk away now.

  Wes was just going to have to kill him.

  But, damn, it was going to be worth it. Bobby was going to die with a smile on his face.

  His hand had slipped up underneath the edge of Colleen’s T-shirt, and he took advantage of that, gliding his fingers across the smooth skin of her back, up all the way to the back strap of her bra, down to the waistband of her shorts. Up and back in an unending circle.

  Man, he could lie here, just touching her lightly like this, for the rest of his life.

  But Colleen stirred, and he waited, still caressing the softness of her skin, feeling her wake up and become as aware of him as he was of her.

  She didn’t move, didn’t pull away from him.

  And he didn’t stop touching her.

  “How long did I sleep?” she finally asked, her voice even huskier than usual.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I fell asleep, too.” He glanced at the windows. The light was starting to weaken. “It’s probably around 1900—seven o’clock.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “For coming here.”