Open Invitation

by Tiffany White

  Kyle looked at her in amusement. “What? That you’re still in one piece or that I got you here on time?”

  “Either,” Amanda answered, checking her watch. It was 5:25. “You really did get us here on time.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?” Kyle replied as they got out of the car. He came around to join her and chucked her beneath her chin. “You gotta learn to trust me, sweetheart.”

  Her muttered reply made him laugh.

  When they got inside the mall, Amanda groaned. There was a long line at the ticket counter. The death-defying trip had been for nothing. They were going to have to go to a later show, anyway.

  Kyle turned Amanda’s chin toward him to get her attention, reached into the pocket of his bomber jacket, pulled out two theater tickets and flashed them in front of her eyes.

  “But how…?” she asked.

  Kyle waggled his finger at her and grinned. “Uh-uh. What’d I tell you about learning to trust me? Now, I promised Noah I’d pick up some peppermints for him. There’s a special kind he likes at a store a few doors down the mall. Here, you hold the tickets and wait right here, and I’ll be back in just a sec.”

  “But…” she began objecting, looking down at her watch.

  Kyle winked and mouthed the words “Trust me” as he took off at a half run down the mall.

  Amanda looked around as she waited impatiently. The mall was new to her, yet familiar. It followed the general pattern of newer shopping malls, with the lower level being occupied by a cinema complex, a food court and several small boutiques. The mall’s developer had used a lot of Art Deco design as its stylistic signature.

  She looked at her watch again. The show would start in one minute, and there was no sign of Kyle.

  As she waited she had a sudden flash of panic that all her success up to now had been a fluke. Where was the exit?

  No. She was being ridiculous. It was her concentration she was really worried about. Two new elements had been added to her way of working: she was going to be viewing the movie with an audience—and with Kyle. She wasn’t certain which would affect her concentration most, but she could hazard a guess.

  Amanda saw that the line at the ticket counter had dwindled to nothing, and she glanced at her watch. It was 5:40. The show had already started. So much for trusting Kyle Fox, she thought, then turned at the sound of running footsteps.

  It was him.

  She glared at him.

  He threw up his hands. “The register tape ran out. What could I do?” he said, shoving the bag of peppermints in his jacket pocket and taking her arm.

  “Wait,” Amanda said, pulling away from him as he headed them toward the ticket taker. “We can’t go in there now.”

  “Excuse me?” Kyle asked incredulously.

  “We can’t go in there now,” Amanda repeated, biting her bottom lip.

  “We can’t?” Kyle turned to her, hand on hip. “Are you going to tell me why, or do I have to guess?”

  “The feature’s already started,” Amanda explained, speaking to him slowly, as if he were of questionable intelligence.

  “I know that. But, it’s only been on for—” he reached for her wrist and checked her watch “—ten minutes at the most. Five minutes of that is previews. I don’t make a practice of it, but missing five minutes isn’t going to make or break the film. I’ve missed more than that before and had no trouble reviewing the movie.”

  She stood staring at him, refusing to give in—either to his argument or the delicious tingle his touch had elicited.

  “Do you realize how ridiculously stubborn you’re being?” Kyle forced the words through clenched teeth, his demeanor all heated frustration and dark blond machismo.

  Amanda stood firm against its admitted effect. “I am not being ridiculous.” Now he had her clenching her teeth.

  “A-man-da…!”

  People were giving them curious glances, but she held her ground. Moviegoers in the smaller market she’d worked in had spent their hard-earned money based on her judgments. They deserved a professional review, and that meant watching the movie from opening to closing credits. “Kyle, it’s just not proper,” she objected finally.

  “Hell, neither am I, but you’re just going to have to get used to it.”

  “And you’re going to have to get used to showing up on time,” she countered.

  He ignored her dig and got down to the problem at hand. Precious minutes were wasting, and he didn’t want to go in halfway through the film. “Look,” he said, “I assure you moviegoers are late sometimes, too. That doesn’t prevent them from going in after the feature’s started.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not.”

  He surveyed her tweed trousers, white flannel jacket and turtleneck sweater and threw up his arms in disgust. “I don’t believe you. Your mind is as locked up and buttoned-down as your clothes.”

  Amanda ignored his remark about her clothes but couldn’t resist making her point. “Don’t you scowl at me. If we were reviewing movies the proper way, we’d have advance screenings and you wouldn’t have to put up with theater schedules. You could have the movie start when you chose to arrive.”

  “You can forget that idea. I like a crowd.”

  “You mean you like an audience,” Amanda said, and immediately regretted her words. She hadn’t meant to let him provoke her, but he seemed to do it as he did everything else…effortlessly. Damn him.

  Still, having gotten her shot in, she was going to have to make nice. She was, after all, the new kid on the block. If she wanted their on-air partnership to be a success, she needed Kyle’s cooperation.

  “We can see the next showing,” Amanda suggested reasonably.

  “I can’t, I’ve got a date,” he lied. “Now are you coming?”

  He had a date. Amanda was suddenly tired and conceded against her better judgment. “Oh, all right. I wouldn’t want you to cancel something important, like a date, over me.”

  Kyle’s victory grin appeared suddenly, then disappeared just as suddenly when he saw Amanda’s reaction to it.

  He took the tickets from her, handed them to the ticket taker, then ushered her inside the dark and crowded theater. There wasn’t much choice in seating. He found two seats in the back row and stood aside to let her in first, taking the aisle seat to accommodate his long legs.

  The previews were over, the opening credits were over, and the movie was well under way. Amanda was trying to make the best of the situation. A situation that had quickly gone from bad to worse. Kyle’s physical presence in the dark, intimate theater was having a decided effect on her. Ignoring that effect wasn’t going to be the piece of cake she’d tried to convince herself it would be.

  She couldn’t quite see him sitting there beside her; her eyes were still making the adjustment from light to dark, but every nerve in her body assured her he was there. The seats were small and close together in the shoe-box-size theater. Kyle’s mossy after-shave was potent at such close range, stimulating her senses and enhancing her disturbing feelings of arousal as they sat with their arms touching from shoulder to elbow.

  She tried to concentrate on the screen, but the dangerous romantic visions going on inside her head distracted her and caused her to jump nervously when Kyle relaxed his leg against hers.

  The tantalizing aroma of fresh popcorn wafted in from the lobby. Kyle’s stomach growled its acknowledgment.

  Whispering to Amanda that he’d be right back, Kyle headed for the concession stand. When he returned a few minutes later, he was carrying a large container of hot, buttered popcorn that smelled heavenly and a couple of cold drinks.

  “Fighting whets my appetite,” he whispered, handing over her drink. “Besides, it’s a sacrilege to watch a movie without eating popcorn.” Sliding into his seat, he nestled the container of popcorn between his thighs and leaned close to her ear, whispering, “Help yourself to a handful whenever you want.”

  She knew he w
as getting back at her for arguing with him. Well, there was no way she was reaching into his lap for anything. But she did. There was something about the smell of fresh popped popcorn she’d never been able to resist. But she wasn’t about to look over at him and see the satisfied smile she was sure had taken up residence on his lips.

  She ignored him as she reached for the warm popcorn, building up a lazy rhythm: hand to mouth, hand to mouth. Occasionally, their slippery hands would collide in sensual contact as their fingers scrunched into the container. If it seemed to happen more frequently as time passed, it was surely just coincidence.

  Amanda’s hand became smeary with butter and salt, and she raised it helplessly, at a loss about how to clean it. Kyle had thought of everything but napkins.

  “Why don’t you just lick it?” Kyle leaned in to whisper.

  His timing and delivery was flawless. Oh, he was bad.

  It was delicious torture feeling his eyes on her as she tentatively slipped her finger into her mouth. She squirmed under his gaze, feeling as if he were watching something much more intimate. When he moved beside her, she jumped involuntarily, then felt foolish. He’d only been reaching for his handkerchief.

  She wiped her fingers and mouth with the soft cotton cloth. It smelled faintly of his after shave. He must have slipped it in his pocket right after shaving. She dropped the handkerchief in her lap and reached for another handful of popcorn, beginning her lazy hand to mouth, hand to mouth rhythm again, becoming absorbed in the movie, until she no longer bothered to look when she extended her hand. Which was a mistake.

  Reaching absently for the last handful of popcorn, she was mortified to find that Kyle had set the empty container on the floor. When her hand touched his crotch, she met obvious evidence that he dressed to the left. He didn’t jump at her touch. Instead, he went absolutely still. Why was he somewhat aroused?

  She pulled her hand back from the shape of him and muttered her apologies. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard strangling sounds coming from Kyle’s direction. Well, she wasn’t going to look. If he was choking on a popcorn kernel, he would just have to choke.

  Finally he made a slurping sound with his drink and seemed to be all right. She sat chewing the ice from the bottom of her drink, trying to pretend she hadn’t touched him so intimately. That was hard to do when the very air between them was now redolent with sexuality. They were for all intents and purposes sitting in a darkened movie theater on a Saturday night like a couple of teenagers. Only unlike those teenagers, they weren’t climbing all over each other. But they were thinking about it. Or at least she was.

  She tried to concentrate on the movie, hoping it would distract her. Wrong.

  About halfway through, Kyle stretched and casually put his arm along the back of her seat. Amanda sat tensely, conscious of his arm resting gently against her. She tried not to let it encourage her to lean toward him and rest her head on his shoulder as she wanted to. She was finding the combined scent of his spicy after-shave and the buttered popcorn a powerful aphrodisiac.

  The second half of the movie had no chance at competing with the fantasy unfolding in her head.

  Kyle cleared his throat when the credits started to roll. The sound brought Amanda back to reality with a start. The movie was over. She was so embarrassed. How could she have made such a stupid blunder? How was she ever going to face him? Maybe he would be a gentleman and let her pretend it had never happened.

  As the houselights went on, Kyle leaned close and whispered, his voice as suggestive as a young marine’s wink, “I could cancel my date.”

  He wasn’t going to be a gentleman.

  Well, he was going to get a lady. Knowing how much he hated prim and proper, Amanda hid her embarrassment behind it. In her best snitty voice, she replied, “If I’ve turned you on, it was strictly accidental, I can assure you.”

  Kyle, who had only been teasing…well, half teasing, had had enough of her prim and proper for one night.

  His response when it came carried a thread of amusement.

  “Sort of boggles the mind to imagine what you’d do to turn me on on purpose.”

  AT TEN O’CLOCK that same evening, all the shops in the mall had closed. The cinema box office was the only place doing any business.

  Kyle picked up the ticket the young ticket seller slid toward him.

  “Must be a good movie, huh?” the ticket seller asked, remembering Kyle from earlier in the day.

  Kyle didn’t answer her question. He was in a real bad mood. He was feeling vulnerable and refusing to acknowledge it. Instead, he focused on Amanda Butterworth as the problem. How did one compete with a woman? Did one compete with a woman? If he was competitive and aggressive, he would look like a bully.

  His evil twin, Lyle, the one he’d invented in childhood to take the blame for all the devilish urges he acted on, had surfaced yesterday outside Noah’s office when he’d used his size and anger to intimidate Amanda. She’d been right to call him on it. He was sorry, but he wouldn’t let her know he regretted the kiss, even if he had enjoyed it.

  He was too afraid of losing.

  “Why has Noah taken it into his head to give me a cohost?” he mumbled to himself as he entered the theater.

  “I don’t want any cohost,” he muttered, sitting down in the back of the near-empty room. And he certainly didn’t want Amanda Butterworth.

  Oh, but he did.

  ACROSS TOWN, Amanda paid for a ticket to see the same movie.

  This time she saw the movie in it’s entirety, from opening to closing credits. And she saw it without distraction.

  Unless, of course, you counted her bad mood.

  She was annoyed by, yet immensely enjoyed, the erotic thoughts of Kyle that popped into her mind when she wasn’t on her guard. They’d begun with the starched white tuxedo shirt she’d imagined unbuttoning upon first meeting him and had gotten progressively more wicked, wilder and wetter.

  The plots she constructed in her head to get even with him had grown more diabolical hourly and thus were useless. What she needed was a simple way to unnerve him the way he unbalanced her. There had to be some chink in the bored, smugly amused armor he wore.

  Every time she thought about Kyle’s amused response to her putdowns, her hand itched to slap his face.

  He was the most aggravating, conceited, annoying, arrogant…handsome, sexy, exciting…

  CHAPTER THREE

  BY TUESDAY, Amanda had managed to review three more movies. She had met Kyle for all of them. Ignoring his amused smile, she’d bought her own box of popcorn and sat as far away from him as possible. Noah had said he’d like them to attend the same screenings, but he hadn’t said anything about them having to sit together.

  Her free time had been taken up with moving into her new apartment, which had once been a carriage house that someone had converted. The living room and galley kitchen made up the first floor and a loft bedroom and bath were upstairs, with French doors leading off the bedroom to a small sunny balcony. Finding the carriage house had been a great stroke of luck, and the hectic activity of moving in had been a perfect antidote to thoughts of Kyle.

  Amanda had spent the day dusting and scrubbing her new place, and she was hot, damp and tired. On her way upstairs to the bathroom to wash her hands, she lifted the wild mass of brown hair off her neck and blew a stream of air up to her face to cool off. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the bathroom door, she smiled.

  If he could see her now, Kyle wouldn’t think she was so prim and proper. The T-shirt, which was all she had on, barely skimmed the top of her thighs and clung to the curves of her damp skin, making her look positively nubile.

  After washing up, she headed downstairs, trailing her hand along the smooth banister she’d cleaned and polished. She looked out the small octagonal window in the kitchen at the acrobatics of a silly gray squirrel trying to get into the bird feeder she’d put up. She smiled with contentment. It
was pure bliss to finally have a place of her own. When she’d lived in the same town as her parents, her father had insisted it was foolish for her to waste money renting. So she’d lived at home and saved her money.

  She’d used a chunk of her savings to buy the essentials for the carriage house: a brass bed, an antique oak writing desk and chair, a dusty pink contemporary love seat, a glass coffee table and a tall, intricately carved armoire to hold the television and stereo system she’d splurged on.

  Though she hadn’t bought a lot of furniture, the way she’d placed it in the small rooms gave the carriage house a warm coziness, as well as a spare, modern feel.

  The record playing on the stereo ended, and her Whitesnake album dropped to the turntable, the lead singer’s raspy voice asking, “Is this love?”

  The song made her think of Kyle. No, it wasn’t love, but it certainly was lust. And it made her job twice as difficult.

  The last Theater Talk with Kyle alone was due to start. She flipped on the television and made her way back to the kitchen to fix a salad. By the time she finished tossing the salad ingredients, Kyle’s image was flickering on the screen. Breaking off a crusty end of French bread, she picked up her salad and iced tea and carried them to the glass coffee table fronting her squishy, big-pillowed love seat. Tucking her feet beneath her, she settled in to watch Theater Talk, delighting in the feel of the soft upholstery on her bare skin.

  Remembering her admonition, she steeled herself to resist the undeniable pull of Kyle’s charisma…. Little good it did her. The chalk-striped thirties-style suit he was wearing fit him like a dream, making a princely assault on her resolve. His tan made his blue eyes even bluer, and she could almost smell the mossy scent of his after-shave on his clean-shaved jaw. His dark blond hair grazed the English spread collar of his starchy white shirt. A shirt she just knew had French cuffs. Refusing to be susceptible to his admitted charms, she glared at his elegant tie, denying her urge to straighten it, just a little.