About That Kiss

by Jayne Addison

  “No.” Nick’s answer was empathic. “I’m out to get you.”

  Joy placed her hands on top of the table. Nick reached across to touch the tips of her fingers with his own.

  She suddenly withdrew her hands and got up from the table. “I need to think.” Even if she believed him—and she couldn’t have said at that moment if she did or not—she didn’t want to be someone he latched on to on the rebound. Was second best the way he saw her?

  “Do you want something more to eat?” she asked stupidly, not knowing what to do or say now.

  “No.” Nick shuffled the deck without realizing he even had the cards in his hands. “Are you still hungry?”

  “No.” Joy looked at her feet. “I don’t feel like playing cards anymore.”

  “Neither do I.” Nick laid the deck of cards down. “Are you tired?”

  “A little, but I couldn’t fall asleep yet.” She was much too unsettled to even consider it. “Would you like some music?”

  “All right.” He followed her with his eyes as she went over to the radio on the counter next to the stove. Eric Clapton came across the wire singing, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Nick couldn’t have picked a better song that mirrored his thoughts.

  “Dance with me,” Joy invited on impulse, as his gaze connected with hers.

  Nick didn’t have to be invited twice. But as he got in front of her and went to draw her in, Joy quickly stepped aside.

  “Are you trying to tease me?” He moved to the music with her without making another try to touch.

  “You’re the tease.” Joy’s hips swayed while her heart battered wildly. “I’m the one that’s mixed up.”

  “Let me get you unmixed up.” Nick sexily bit down on his bottom lip and raised a brow.

  “I don’t know if you can.” Joy flipped her wild mane of cinnamon brown hair and smiled at him.

  “You are one cruel woman.” Nick whistled through his teeth.

  “Do I really affect you?” Joy asked. She wanted him to tell her he loved her again, but she didn’t know how to ask. And, she knew she still wouldn’t be able to accept it even if he did say it.

  “I’ll play with you, if you want,” Nick grinned. “But don’t tell me that you don’t know just how much you affect me. I haven’t been able to keep it a secret when I’ve been kissing you. Do you know what it’s like for a guy to have barely any willpower at all?”

  “I know what it’s like for a woman,” Joy answered, rotating her hips.

  “Tell me?” Nick asked.

  “Just dance,” Joy ordered.

  “Do I get to hold you?”

  “No.” Joy spun around.

  Nick saw a smile on her lips when she turned again to him, and he felt his chest expand with warmth. He didn’t touch her—not with his hands. He touched her with his eyes.

  Eric Clapton finished singing and The Rolling Stones took over. Joy suspended her motion as the even sexier, more raucous tune filled the room, but the expression she gave him was vixenish.

  “I’m game, if you are,” he said.

  Not pulling her eyes from his, Joy let the Stones direct the heated rhythm of her body. But it was Nick Tremain’s dancing, not Mick Jagger’s voice, that fanned the fire that had her burning up.

  Joy was winded and her hair was flying all over the place as she whirled in a final spin before coming to a halt in front of the counter as the song ended. Nick pressed his palms flat to the counter, keeping her in his space. Exhausted physically and mentally, Joy dropped her head to his shoulder. Nick buried his face in her hair. The music, which had gotten softer in the background, didn’t intrude on them at all.

  “Mick Jagger is Eddie DeMarco’s idol,” Joy said pointlessly.

  “Is he?” Nick put one hand around her.

  “Yes.” Joy nodded her head into his shoulder. “I didn’t want to go out with Eddie tonight. I didn’t want to be with Eddie even when you and Diana came with us to Gillie’s.”

  Nick put his other hand under her chin and raised her face. “Are you saying I was jealous for nothing?”

  “Nick…” Joy murmured. “I really am mixed up.”

  “I know, baby.” He hugged her gently with only that single hand around her waist. “You just keep thinking.”

  Joy put her arms up to his shoulders and rested them there without letting her hands curve around his neck. “You’re going to make a real mark when the East End Journal comes out,” she said softly.

  “We’re going to make a mark,” Nick corrected, gazing into the bright lights in her eyes. “You and everyone else on the staff.”

  “It’s smart of you to wait two more weeks before we put our maiden issue out.” Joy’s eyes stayed on him, and her heart felt as if it had dropped the burden it had been carrying—if only for that moment.

  Nick’s mouth edged up to a grin. “Cross your fingers that the readership loves it.”

  Joy crossed her fingers. Since he couldn’t see them, and she didn’t want to take her arms down from his shoulders, she trained her gaze on her nose and made an attempt to cross her eyes as well.

  Nick laughed. “Now that’s a face only a guy in love with you could love.”

  “Nick…” Joy tensed just a little.

  The sound of her anxiousness made Nick’s heart lurch. “I won’t say it again until you’re all thought out. How about that’s a face only a mother could love?”

  “Now that’s the truth,” Joy replied with a laugh.

  “I’m hoping to be able to add profit sharing in six months.” He strove not to say anything else that could make her uptight.

  “That’s going to make a lot of people happy.”

  The smile on her face made Nick happy. “What do you say to going house hunting with me tomorrow?”

  “I’d like to.”

  Nick remembered he’d promised Kevin to include Diana in the project. It wasn’t a promise he was glad he’d made.

  “Do you mind if I ask Diana and Kevin to come along?” He minded even if she didn’t, but he was stuck with it.

  “Kevin doesn’t usually show up on Sunday until late afternoon.” Joy lost a sizable amount of her enthusiasm.

  “Kevin asked me to get Diana’s mind off the wedding. He’s concerned she’s getting herself over-whelmed. Do you mind if I still ask her to come along?”

  “I don’t mind.” Joy did her very best not to think anything into it. “My mother might like to come, unless that would bother you.” As valiantly as she tried, Joy couldn’t keep herself from thinking she was going to feel like a “third wheel” if she went with just Nick and Diana.

  “Absolutely, your mother.” Nick hadn’t liked the triangle. Emily Mackey made it better. “I can’t go wrong having a woman along who knows her way around a kitchen.”

  “Are you insinuating I don’t know my way around a kitchen?” Joy asked, feeling some relief that they weren’t going to be a threesome.

  “Do you?” Nick questioned teasingly.

  “Not as well as my mother, but certainly better than Diana. My sister doesn’t put out dinner without a phone. She doesn’t even have to use her last name when she calls in an order.”

  Nick grinned.

  Joy thought about what she’d just said. “I didn’t mean for that to come out the way it sounded.”

  “It sounded to me like amused affection.” Nick quickly gave her his opinion. “I know how much you love Diana.”

  Joy sighed deeply. “When we were young and we shared a bedroom, we’d put our hands out to each other before we went to sleep and we’d say, ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite.’ I don’t know why we said that. Of course, there weren’t any bugs. We just said it. I think it meant I love you.”

  Nick smiled tenderly at her reminiscing, but it wasn’t Diana he wanted to talk about. “About your cooking…You’re going to have to prove your skills to me, if you want me to believe you.”

  “You’re on,” Joy smiled. “I will cook you dinner one night.”


  “How about the first night I move into my new place?” If he had his way, he’d be moving her in with him.

  “All right. The night you move in,” Joy agreed, a total sucker for the mischief in his very blue eyes. God! If he didn’t get her one way, he got her another. “We’re going to have to start out first thing in the morning if we’re going to accomplish any house hunting. I know Diana and Kevin made early dinner reservations for all of us. You haven’t forgotten, have you? We get to debate the wedding menu tomorrow.”

  “Right.” Nick nodded his head though he had forgotten.

  “I just realized Ms. Louella didn’t call today.” Joy’s hands came together around Nick’s neck while her mind was on Diana’s turmoil over the shortening of the train on her wedding gown.

  “She called while you were out getting more paint with Rachel. I gave her Diana’s message.”

  “You did?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I was jealous of Rachel today,” Joy confessed in a whisper as her mind skittered off Diana’s wedding gown.

  Nick’s eyes turned an even more brilliant blue. “Not half as jealous as I was over Eddie DeMarco.” Nick held his breath then, hoping he wasn’t going to turn her away by opening his heart again.

  “Rachel is my best friend. That makes it worse,” Joy insisted, trying to decide if she believed him while her fingers drifted into his hair.

  Nick shook his head, barely. He was well aware of where her fingers were and he didn’t want to dislodge them. “You didn’t go to the lengths I went to.” He winked at her.

  “I did what I had to do,” Joy said with her eyes tantalizing him. “I made sure you and Rachel didn’t get an opportunity to be alone together.”

  “Nothing would have happened.” Nick grinned, feeling on top of the world that she hadn’t disputed his admission of jealousy this time. “I’m just a wolf around you.”

  “And a bull,” Joy bantered, letting the playfulness between them carry her.

  Nick groaned prankishly.

  She moved out from the light hold of his embrace before she said, “I’m going to bed now.”

  “Sure,” Nick quipped. “Now that you’ve killed my night’s sleep. Will you at least think about me before you nod off?”

  “Maybe,” Joy parried. Could she think of anything else?

  “Joy.”

  His voice stopped her. “Yes?”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Nick whispered.

  “I still say the second house we went to is the one you should rent,” Diana insisted, as they all sat around the kitchen table. They’d returned from house

  hunting and dinner at the caterer’s restaurant an hour ago.

  “I liked the third house we saw best,” Joy refuted.

  “The owner didn’t do a thing to that house.” Diana made a face. “How can you compare that to a house where the kitchen and bathrooms have been redone?”

  “They should have been done in keeping with the Victorian charm of the house,” Joy countered. “Nick can always have the bathrooms and kitchen redone if he decides to buy later on.”

  Diana turned her head to Kevin. “Have Nick show you both houses. I can see the one I’m talking about all decorated in my mind.”

  “Sweetheart,” Kevin said with a smile, “let’s go back to talking over the wedding menu and let Nick figure out which house he wants for himself.”

  “You’re right, sweetheart,” Diana answered distractedly. “But let’s just settle this first. Nick, which house did you like better? The second one or the third one?”

  “Nick might want to see a few more houses before he decides,” Emily Mackey broke in diplomatically.

  “I probably should see a few more,” Nick responded absently. He was more concerned with the discomfort he was feeling in his stomach than which home he’d preferred.

  “My vote is still on the lemon-mustard chicken,” Kevin said, redirecting the flow of the conversation to the array of food they’d so recently sampled. “And I’m adding the cracked crab in butter sauce. Put those both on the buffet and I’m happy.”

  “The black mushroom tomato sauce with sausages,” Joy said. “I don’t know how I missed trying that before. You tasted it and liked it, too, didn’t you, Nick?”

  “Uh-huh.” He had liked the dish when he’d tasted it but he wasn’t so sure now.

  “I still say Swedish meatballs go a long way.” Emily Mackey spoke with the voice of wisdom.

  “Mom is right,” Diana smiled. “The Swedish meatballs, for sure. Nick, what did you think of the cold shrimp with ‘green’ mayonnaise?”

  Nick felt himself turning as green as the shrimp dish he’d had. “I hate to break this to you. But you’d better get another caterer. I think I may have gotten food poisoning.” Nick put a hand to his stomach.

  “Kevin, he’s doing it again!” came Diana’s hysterical outpour. “How can you have food poisoning when none of us are having a problem? I’m not sick. Kevin, are you sick? Joy? Mom?”

  “I am not trying to ruin your wedding,” Nick insisted, getting as angry as he could, considering there was a steamroller riding over his guts.

  “It could be something else,” Joy said frantically. “Your appendix…Oh, my gosh!”

  “His appendix came out when he was ten years old,” Kevin said, looking torn between Diana and Nick.

  Nick could just imagine the doubt plaguing Joy’s mind. Where the hell was his luck? How could he be the only one to get sick? “It’s the food. Joy, you’ve got to believe me. I won’t eat at the wedding. Will that settle it?”

  “No, that won’t settle it,” Diana stormed. “Nick, if you’re faking this, I’m going to kill you. And I’m going to have Kevin kill you!”

  “Diana,” Emily Mackey reprimanded severely. “Stop it right now.”

  “I’m taking him to the hospital,” Joy said decisively, already on her feet.

  “We’ll all go,” Diana said.

  Half an hour later they had their answer.

  “He’s had a reaction to shellfish,” the doctor explained to the party of four in the Emergency waiting room. “I’ve given him a shot and a prescription he can fill tomorrow. Give him a couple of minutes for the shot to take and he can leave.”

  “Can I go see him?” Joy asked, her heart finally returning to its normal pace.

  “Just give him a minute,” the doctor responded, already stepping away.

  “I feel terrible,” Diana said, sinking back down into a couch. “Hold it a second…Does he know he gets a reaction to shellfish?”

  “Sweetheart,” Kevin said patiently. “Nick would not make himself intentionally sick.”

  “You’re right,” Diana acquiesced as Joy took off for the treatment area.

  “Nick Tremain?” Joy asked, inquiring directions at the nurses’ station beyond the waiting room.

  “The fourth door down.” One of two nurses behind the desk pointed the way.

  “Bet he’s married,” Joy heard behind her back.

  “The gorgeous ones always are,” the other nurse concluded.

  “You’ve made a hit with the nurses,” Joy said, walking into the room where Nick was resting, his hands behind his head, his chest bare. The white shirt he’d worn to dinner was tossed onto a chair.

  “Come here.” Nick took one hand out from behind his head to pat the side of the bed.

  Joy sat where he’d indicated. She wanted to run her hands across his chest and tell him she loved him.

  “Diana’s sorry,” she said.

  He wanted to ask her if she was positive in her mind that he hadn’t tried to put a chink in the wedding. “So you liked the third house we saw?” he asked instead.

  “Yes,” Joy answered.

  Nick smiled. “My choice, too.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Lie down with me,” Nick coaxed. “Please.”

  It was a few days after Nick’s bad reaction to shell-fish and Joy had agreed to accompany him on his furniture
shopping spree. But she wasn’t about to agree to his proposition. “No,” Joy answered resolutely, glancing again at the bed on the display room floor.

  “You are difficult.” He eyed her with a rapscallion grin.

  “Nick…” Joy squealed in shock as Nick lifted her off her feet. “Will you put me down? Everyone in the store is looking at us!”

  “I’m not buying a bed without testing it out.” Nick tumbled Joy onto the bed and quickly stretched out next to her. “Bounce a little. No, bounce a lot.”

  “I am not going to bounce a little—or a lot,” Joy said upbraiding him, but she was laughing.

  “How are we going to know if these springs are going to hold up?”

  “Will you behave yourself!” Joy went to sit up, but Nick’s arm came down over her shoulders, keeping her pinned in place and giggling.

  A bespectacled salesman in his late fifties approached. “Can I be of any help?”

  Nick gave a theatrical performance of a guy harassed. “She is a handful. Sees a bed and she doesn’t care where we are.”

  Joy sprang to her feet as Nick released her. “This man accosted me in the store. I don’t even know him.” Joy’s eyes mirthfully flashed to Nick as they stood opposite each other with the king-size bed between them.

  “Will you tell the nice man you’re lying, before you get me arrested.” Nick smiled. “See that little tick by her eye. She always gets it when she’s lying. And sometimes after I’ve kissed her.”

  “I do not get a tick,” Joy stated, but she felt around her eyes to be sure.

  “You had a tick by your eye the first time I kissed you.”

  “I did not,” Joy said, though she did remember trembling.

  “Yes, you did.” Nick stood his ground.

  The salesman was following along, his head going back and forth between Joy and Nick as if he were watching a tennis match.

  “That tick of yours is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Is it?” Joy’s cheeks got pink.

  The salesman cleared his throat. “If you decide on something, just call me over.”

  “We’ve decided,” Nick said, before the man got away. “This is the set she likes best. I’ll take it.” He’d also chosen the house she’d liked best. It was the third house they’d seen the day they’d gone looking with Diana.