Touch Me

by Christie Ridgway

  Randa was talking sweet about him now, and he shook his head when she spilled about the seed money he’d provided for her and Patrice to open their hair salon. But maybe it wasn’t so terrible for Rose to know, he decided. She’d dismiss their embrace or perhaps be insulted by it if she imagined the visiting pair were two more of his sexual partners.

  Except big mouth Randa was insisting on showing off her and Patrice’s matching wedding bands and extolling the benefits of monogamous matrimony.

  Oh, hell. No way did he want Rose to have her mind wandering in that direction in regards to him.

  Neither did Patrice, he found out.

  “Uh, we couldn’t miss that, um, hug you were exchanging with Payne,” she said, in her husky voice.

  “Oh, that?” Rose responded with nonchalance. “It was nothing.”

  An impulse. A minor itch. A fancy, passed.

  “That’s good to know,” Patrice responded. “You seem like a nice woman.”

  Much too nice for Payne.

  “He’s a commitment-phobe,” Randa offered.

  Exactly right.

  “Doesn’t ever kiss a woman on the lips, can you imagine?” She chuckled. “Not that I know from experience, mind you, but that’s the word.”

  A true one, though it wasn’t something he was aware before now that his bed partners had spilled. What the hell, he thought, shrugging. Just something else that would prevent Rose from getting the wrong idea about him.

  “And here’s why.” Patrice had lowered her voice, but the rest of the world went so quiet that he could hear each syllable perfectly.

  It was as if even the insects were stalled, wings frozen mid-flight.

  So was Payne, because he knew what was coming and couldn’t think of any way to stop it. After all, it was a lie he’d cultivated for years. A convenient fib. The easy excuse he’d used to deflect attachment and emotion.

  Now the sham was coming home to roost.

  “He’s still hung up on his ex,” Patrice continued.

  “She broke him. Made him unable to feel deeply for any woman after their break-up.”

  “Who?” Rose asked.

  Payne closed his eyes, imagining the polite inquiry on her face. The shock that would overtake it next.

  “Her name is Lily,” Randa said. “And he’s never gotten over her.”

  He hung his head. Fuck. He might not have wanted Rose to think too highly of him…but he’d never wanted her to think that he was hung up on anyone—especially her older sister.

  Rose perched on a stool drawn up to her sister’s kitchen island and watched Lily stir spaghetti sauce. Marcus half-dozed on a bouncy chair at her elbow and Rose toyed with his tiny fingers while replaying the conversation she’d had that afternoon with Payne’s friends.

  She’d practically fallen again—this time in surprise—when they told her he continued to hold feelings for her sister. The ensuing dismay still felt like a lead balloon in her belly.

  Could it be true? And if it was, in all the ensuing years since their break-up, why hadn’t the man pursued Lily?

  Maybe because he’d been that desperate to avoid the little sister who’d thrown herself at him once upon a time.

  That seemed crazy, along with the very notion that Payne himself had any kind of emotional staying power. Still… What if her ridiculous attempt to get his attention had somehow wrecked an epic romance in the making?

  “You’re happy, right?” she demanded of Lily.

  Her sister glanced over, her face flushed from the stove’s warmth. “About what?”

  Rose made a gesture to indicate the garlic-scented kitchen, the refrigerator covered in couple photos of Gavin and Lily, the snoozing baby.

  “Ecstatic,” Lily said, with a puzzled smile. “What’s this about? You? Because I’m so glad you’re here too. Away from Dad and that cold fish of an ex-boyfriend of yours.”

  Blowing out a breath, Rose tried releasing her disquiet. Her sister was more than content, she’d said so. Twelve years ago Rose’s actions hadn’t wrought some great tragedy…right?

  She rubbed at her forehead and contemplated the benefits of confession. “Lil…”

  Her sister set the wooden spoon across the top of the pot and turned down the heat. “All right,” she said, pinning Rose with that big sister-stare. “What’s the matter?”

  “Would you…” In their younger years, they’d never swapped stories of their romantic adventures and pitfalls. Then Lily had gone off to college and Rose had moved to Seattle. It was only after the twin blows brought on by their dad and Blake that she’d opened up to her older sibling about her dented heart.

  Not once had she ever pried about Lily’s high school boyfriend.

  The sound of glass against granite caught Rose’s attention. Lily slid a tumbler filled with iced tea nearer and then sipped from her own. “Would I…?”

  Rose pulled in a quick breath. “Would you tell me about your relationship with Payne? I mean, what happened?”

  On another sip of tea, Lily looked off into the distance. “I remember the first time I saw him. The fallen angel looks…so blond, and with those devilish blue eyes.” Her sidelong glance met Rose’s gaze. “Irresistible, huh?”

  She looked away, unsure if she should admit she’d wanted him then too.

  “Every girl had a crush on him,” Lily added.

  “But you got him,” Rose pointed out. Raising her glass, she breathed in the leafy aroma of the liquid. Goose bumps broke out as she remembered that same scent on Payne’s breath earlier that day as his mouth neared.

  To kiss her neck.

  Her jaw.

  But not her mouth.

  Doesn’t ever kiss a woman on the lips, can you imagine?

  Yes, he’d avoided hers, but the heat of him had riveted her anyway. His heavy body, the bulge of his sex, the clutch of his hands. Her fingers had wandered to the burning skin of his back and dared to slide beneath the waistband of his jeans.

  Discovering he’d gone commando, her own skin had flashed with fire.

  More proof he was uncivilized, uncontainable…unreachable for a woman like Rose who’d never been with a man who went naked beneath denim. Who’d only been with Blake and a couple of other men like him, who wore silky boxers instead of scars. Whose mouth-to-mouth kisses hadn’t been nearly as arousing as the wet touch of Payne’s tongue on her pulse.

  She set the tea on the island, pushed it away, and tried returning to her point. “You had him…but then you broke up.”

  Lily looked away. “That’s a little complicated. Bottom line, we weren’t suited. I think I just wanted a little walk on the wild side.”

  “He was your first?” Embarrassed by her own audacity, Rose’s face went hot.

  Lily’s eyes widened, then she laughed. “This conversation needs fashion magazines, mud packs, and lots of junk food.”

  “Sorry,” Rose mumbled. “It’s none of my business.”

  Swooping her baby out of his seat, Lily laughed again. “I’m not shy. I thought you were.”

  “Maybe I’m repressed,” she said glumly.

  Lily shook her head. “This from the woman who left here the other day in a risqué French maid’s costume.”

  “That was different. That was…” For Payne, who had always managed to draw the unexpected from Rose.

  At first, it was just a smile he coaxed out of her, by showing up at the house one afternoon, while she and Lily were alone, their mom and dad at work. In one hand he’d held a tall cup, filled with a healthy smoothie for Lily, full of protein acids, soy oils, and other nasty ingredients hidden in peach and mango slush. In the other, was the ice cream sundae he’d bought for Rose, complete with fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry. For a moment she’d felt five years old, until he’d handed over a long-handled spoon and she realized it had been made with two scoops of rocky road and one of mocha almond fudge—the very same order she’d requested at the ice cream counter a couple of weeks before.

  He’
d remembered.

  More than a handful of times that year he’d come across her walking home from the Canyon Country Store. There were no sidewalks on that stretch of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, but she’d had a short distance to go. Still, he’d pulled over and insisted she get into his vehicle. Riding shotgun in his low-slung sport scar—its lines incredibly sexy even to her untrained eye, despite being painted in nothing more than a matte-silver undercoat—she’d wished for the darkest of dark sunglasses and bee-stung lips and that she’d grow five inches in the blink of an eye to have supermodel legs that would draw Payne Colson’s bright, heaven-blue gaze.

  Finally, one day after school a boy her age was teasing her in the way boys of that maturity level were wont to do. He’d gotten hold of her backpack and was tossing it over her head to one of his buddies who would then lob it back. The keep-away game had started playful but began to feel mean. Frustrated tears were heating the back of her eyes when Payne arrived on the scene and snatched the pack out of mid-air. Without a word to her tormentors, he’d slung his arm around her shoulder and led her to his car. Riding shotgun again on the way to the ice cream place where he bought her favorite sundae once again, she’d lost her heart. There and then, she’d vowed to be everything to him.

  That she’d give him anything he’d take from her.

  As he’d braked in front of her house, she’d clung to her adoration and the cardboard cup of ice cream, thinking how to communicate all that was running through her head.

  Maybe he’d let her wash his car.

  Copy over his Calculus homework in her neat hand.

  Mend his favorite shirt.

  Maybe it would have been a purely mental adoration. But when she’d invited him in, he’d muttered something about Lily still being mad at him and then he’d cupped one side of her face in his big hand, the look in his eyes warm.

  Brotherly.

  “Get going, kid,” he’d said, then briefly pressed the pad of his thumb against the fattest part of her bottom lip.

  With that one touch, she’d awakened. Her scalp went hot and the warmth rolled over her head toward her feet. Tingles spread from her middle outward.

  For the first time in her life she’d gone wet between her thighs.

  The Rose who’d climbed into the car a girl climbed out a sexually conscious being, her devotion to Payne no longer cerebral.

  She shivered now, remembering the overwhelming but bewildering excitement that had run through her then.

  “Where’d you go, Rose?”

  Starting at the sound of Lily’s voice, she looked up. Her sister was patting the baby’s back, a line between her arched brows.

  Rose waved a hand. “To the past.”

  Lily looked even more fierce, her mouth turning down in a frown. “If this is about that bastard Blake—”

  “Maybe it wasn’t all his fault,” she said quickly, thinking that topic was safer than the man on her mind. “I’m sure it didn’t help that I added up columns of numbers when we were together in bed.”

  “I take it you mean not when it came time to count sheep.”

  “Nuh-uh.” She ran a fingertip along a vein in the granite. “Sometimes I practiced my times tables. The sixteens.”

  “Rose.” Lily looked on her with pity. “That’s just…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said.

  “You should have known he wasn’t the right guy before you moved in together,” her sister said.

  “Oh, it was the same with my first, too. Jerry Dyrtle.”

  Lily tried burying her snort of laughter in the blanket swaddling Marcus. “Jerry Dyrtle?”

  “He couldn’t help his name. It was spring semester freshman year. I met him in Intro to Accounting.”

  “You did times tables with him too?”

  “Ran through financial glossary terms,” Rose admitted on a sigh.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I had this one very hot guy for one night junior year. But…”

  Lily was biting back her smile. “Do tell.”

  “I was a little drunk. I believe I spent most of those hours cursing whoever thought it was a good idea to combine cheap white wine and orange sherbet and trying not to puke.”

  “And then…”

  Rose shook her head. “Blake. Sixteen times thirteen is two hundred and eight.”

  It made Lily laugh again, though she tried to hold it back until it released in a snorting sort of cough.

  “Oh, go ahead and let it out. Though I don’t think it’s quite fair since you had the advantage of being initiated by Payne Colson.” Over the years, Rose had tried hard not to think too much about that.

  Lily’s eyes were still bright but her laughter stopped. “I never slept with Payne.”

  Rose jerked back. “No?”

  “No.” She glanced down at her son. “I’m not sure I feel comfortable confessing this in front of Marcus.”

  “Of course.” Rose waved both hands. “We don’t have to—”

  “I’m teasing.” She lifted the baby and bussed his tiny nose. “He’s good at keeping secrets.”

  “Lil—”

  “It’s was Gavin. It’s always, and only, been Gavin.”

  “Your husband?”

  “That’s the one.” Mischief tilted her smile. “And I’ve never done times tables, I promise you.”

  “Or Payne,” Rose murmured, wondering about that all over again.

  “Or Payne. There were reasons.”

  Was one of them her and her impetuous, desperate attempt to give herself to him? Rose flushed with guilt.

  “He didn’t push,” Lily said.

  Rose took a deep breath. “Uh…here’s the thing. I might have pushed him.”

  Lily’s expression didn’t look angry, just surprised. “What are you talking about?”

  So Rose tried to explain. Ice cream, car rides, a rescue from jerks. Her intense crush. “And then you two were, um, fighting.”

  Lily seated herself on one of the stools, Marcus still cradled against her. “I remember.”

  “So one night I was staying over at Amalie Irwin’s house and she had hidden a bottle of peppermint liqueur in her closet…”

  “And she lived not far from the Velvet Lemons compound.”

  “So after a few swallows of the stuff, I snuck over there. The gates were open and I had Payne’s number, so I called him. He found me before I’d made it very far onto the grounds.” She recalled his puzzled expression, his concern that something was wrong.

  “I sort of launched myself on him,” she confessed. “With my previous kissing experience a few experiments the summer before with that boy I met on the lake during vacation…well, I was enthusiastic, but not very practiced.”

  Lily appeared bemused. “What did Payne do?”

  “Pushed me away, and pretty quickly at that.” She remembered the thunderous expression on his face. “Humiliated, I ran off, though he followed me all the way back to Amalie’s—I guess to make sure I was safe. Before I slipped back into her house he told me to never touch him again.”

  “Oh, poor Rose.” Lily reached out and stroked her hair.

  “You shouldn’t be nice to me. I broke one of the basic rules of sisterhood.” She glanced up at her sister. “Will you forgive me anyway?”

  “Of course. That was ages ago, you were just a kid, and it’s probably the only rule you’ve ever broken in your life.”

  Rose’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, well, look how great it turned out.”

  Lily gently put a sleeping Marcus back into the chair, then perched on the neighboring stool. “You’ve been agonizing over this for a long time.”

  “I think I have.” Rose met her sister’s gaze. “There’s something else you should know. I just heard he’s still hung up on you.”

  Instead of expressing concern or consternation, her sister went off into laughter again.

  Rose stared. “It’s funny?”

  Lily shook her head. “It’s B.S. I’ve heard it befo
re and it’s not the least bit true. I’m his excuse and someday I’ll get back at him for that.”

  “Excuse?”

  “He uses my name to push women away. I think he pulled the idea out of his ass one day and he’s stuck to it because the ploy must work.”

  At Lily’s certainty, Rose felt suddenly light. She could take full breaths again. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.” Then her sister studied Rose’s face. “Just as I’m sure you’re still crushing on that man.”

  Embarrassed, she looked down at her hands. “That would be silly.”

  “Hmm…” Lily tapped her fingertips on the granite, seeming to consider a new thought. “You know, ignoring this perfect opportunity would be silly.”

  Rose lifted her head. “Perfect opportunity?”

  “For a catharsis.” Leaning forward, Lily placed her palms over her son’s little ears. “I think you should go to bed with Payne.”

  Rose’s spine snapped straight. “Huh?” Her voice sounded faint.

  “Sex,” her sister said, with a waggle of her brows. “If reports hold true, he’s great at it.”

  His kiss was great, Rose remembered. The tantalizing caress of his goatee had caused her center to soften and her nipples to harden. “I… He’s a player.”

  “Which is why you won’t count on him for anything but pleasure. Rule-busting pleasure.”

  “R-rule-busting?”

  Lily squeezed Rose’s shoulders. “Breathe.”

  Not when a thousand half-formed fantasies were racing through her brain. “Rule-busting?” she repeated.

  “I think it’s exactly what you need to shake up your life.”

  Her insides were shaking just contemplating the idea. But the classes she’d been taking recently in self-defense, flower-arranging, and now knitting hadn’t given her the jolt this notion did. “He wasn’t interested before. Maybe it’s the same now.”

  Her sister cocked a brow.

  And Rose thought of his mouth on her throat, the blazing blue of his eyes as he looked down at her. The brush of his hard erection against her belly. “Did you say catharsis?”

  Lily nodded.

  “Catharsis,” Rose whispered to herself. Liberation. From her adolescent fixation that had lasted for far too long. From her mathematical inclination during intimacy.