Gravel crunched, and there was the Prius.
We could have walked, as it turned out. The McCloud mansion (and I mean that; it was a huge old Victorian with a tower, for Pete’s sake) was only a couple of blocks away. We whispered down a short slope under the house, where it looked like the garage had been scooped out of the hillside, and parked.
“Welcome to the family dump.” Callum took my hand and we climbed a flight of stairs, emerging in a kitchen that was smaller than the one in my mom’s Beverly Hills house, but that had the same kind of sweeping, wildly expensive view from the French doors. In Mom’s case, she could look to the left and see Johnny Depp’s place, and beyond that, the Chateau Marmont.
Callum opened one of the doors and I stepped out onto the terrace, gazing into the deepening twilight. “See that place that looks like a big lace doily?” He pointed to a house a few doors down. “Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid used to live there before they broke up.”
That was a long time ago. I wanted to know about his house. We went back inside and he led me through the place. High ceilings. Ancient, dark furniture. Rooms filled with sepia photographs of corseted women and gloomy men.
“This place looks like a movie set,” I breathed. It had probably survived the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. “Who’s your props manager?”
Callum snorted. “That would be Grandma. My mom’s mother.” He pointed to a nearly life-sized picture hung between two windows. It showed a woman in a fifties-era satin evening gown and fur wrap. A fox’s head hung down next to her cheek and she looked out at the world as though it were already wasting her time.
The kind of picture Hollywood starlets used to have done when they married really rich old guys. Creepy.
“C’mon. My suite’s upstairs.”
Two sets of upstairs. I bet his family was in good shape, rabbiting up and down three stories all day long. The scary interior dec stopped here. Callum had a wide loft all to himself, with huge windows that opened onto a balcony. A desk with a complete gaming setup, including a wide screen, sat in the top room of the tower.
His bedroom opened off the loft and had a balcony as well. And, yes, no matter what Gillian may have thought, I only stood in its doorway. The room was a mess, but he didn’t apologize for it, the way I would have. He just took my hand again and led me back to the loft, where a couple of squashy couches formed a right angle facing a plasma TV on the wall. A square glass table held sodas, water, and a pitcher of iced tea, along with a bowl of chips and salsa and a plate of—
“Are those petits fours?” I asked, eyeing the plate of tiny cakes with their fanciful icing, glistening with potential calories in the lamplight.
Callum nodded. “My mom has two weaknesses: speeding and pastry. I told our housekeeper we’d be doing her a favor by eating them, so she brought them up.”
I toasted him with one. “To the public good.”
I couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever been so happy and yet so full of nerves and anticipation all at once. Snuggling next to Callum on a comfortable couch, watching American Idol and hearing him laugh at me because he caught me singing along with one of the songs. Drinking iced tea, which I normally don’t do because it dries out my mouth, and finding it flavored with ginger and peaches. Breathing in the scent of old wood and furniture polish and the clean, warm cotton shirt he wore.
Could it get better than this?
And then he kissed me.
It could.
It absolutely, definitely could.
Three stories and a couple hundred years of scary family solidity just fell away, dissolving in that kiss. My jitters and nerves dissolved, too, as the joy of being in his arms poured over them like warm syrup. Again I had the feeling that time had stopped and there was no one in the universe except him and me. It was like God had just created us and hadn’t gotten around to the earth and stars yet.
Had it felt this way with Aidan? I didn’t think so. He’d been like a practice boyfriend. Someone who’d taught me what I didn’t want, so that by the time I saw Callum, I’d know what I did want.
With my face buried in Callum’s neck, breathing in the warmth of his skin, I finally forgave Aidan for what he’d done to me. It had been a favor, really. Can you imagine if I’d been tied to Aidan when Callum had started showing he was into me? Talk about torture.
“Hey, girl,” Callum murmured. “We’ve really got it going on.”
I smiled against his skin and nodded. “I bet Milsom doesn’t know anything about this kind of chemistry.”
His chest shook in a silent laugh. “I wish you could stay the night.”
Impossible, but nice to wish for. “Me, too.”
He lifted his head. “Yeah?”
“Sure. I could sleep with my head on your shoulder and serve you eggs over easy in the morning.”
“You’d have to fight Carmela for the kitchen.”
I laughed, getting into the fantasy. “I’d beat her to it, because of course we wouldn’t have had any sleep the night before.”
“Serious?”
What was he looking at me like that for? Like he’d just gotten five out of six lottery numbers.
“Right, Callum. Totally serious.” Not.
“Because I really want you to. We’re, like, spontaneous com-bustion. It could be great.”
“It could.” In my dreams. Because dreaming about an idyllic morning after was just that—a dream. The reality was that (a) his mom would come home eventually, and (b) the Bible was pretty darn clear on what God thought about having sex when you weren’t married.
Sometimes reality just stunk. Fantasies were so much more rewarding.
“How come you didn’t bring your stuff?”
“Huh?” I kissed him under the ear, where his skin was baby soft and sensitive.
“Your stuff. Clothes for tomorrow and stuff.”
Okay, weirdness setting in. “Callum. I’m not going to stay.”
“But you just said—”
“I said I wanted to. And I do. But I can’t.”
“Why not? Afraid your roommate will tell on you?” He grinned and smoothed my hair away from my face.
“No. It wouldn’t be right, that’s all.”
“Feels pretty right to me. Come on. Stay with me.”
Whoa.
Breathe. In. Out.
“Callum, I can’t. I made a promise”—to God—“to myself that I wouldn’t until I got married.” I touched his face. “You understand, right?” Christian or not, I could just fall into that fathomless gaze.
“You haven’t . . . done it . . . yet?”
I shook my head.
“Wow,” he breathed. “That takes guts.”
“It does right now, let me tell you. Sometimes I feel like I’ll explode when I’m with you.”
“Likewise.” He kissed me. “Well, there are ways around it.”
“Around what?”
“We can still get what we want without breaking your promise.”
“I don’t think so.”
That grin took on a wolfish edge that was really sexy, yet it made me nervous at the same time. “Come on, girl. You’ve been with other guys. Don’t tell me they didn’t show you the ropes.”
“Two guys, to be exact. One in seventh grade and one in sophomore year.”
“Well, okay, then. But it doesn’t look like either of them made you very happy, or you’d be with them, not me.”
“That pretty much sums it up.” I snuggled into the crook of his arm and tucked my feet under me.
He nuzzled my ear. “You can make me feel really good. I can make you feel the same way. And no loss of anything you want to keep, guaranteed.”
“You already do make me feel good,” I said softly.
“I didn’t mean that way. Let’s go in my room and I’ll show you.”
Oh. That kind of good.
“Um.” I swallowed carefully. “Maybe not tonight.”
“Why not? You want to.”
Did I ever. But there was that annoying list in Galatians 5 to consider—the one about the acts of the sinful nature. And guess what item number two is? With that in mind, I’d promised to stay pure. On the other hand, I hadn’t promised not to let anyone make me feel good, ever.
“Come on, Lissa,” he whispered. “You want to. I want to. We may not get to be alone again for days.” He ran his tongue along the rim of my ear, and I shivered. “And I promise you’ll love it.”
“I—I need some time,” I said on a rush of exhaled breath, fighting against the urge to give in. “We’ve only been going out for a week. We’re not in any hurry, are we?”
“Only that I can hardly control myself when you’re around. Like now.”
He looked pretty controlled to me, but what did I know? There was a world of difference in experience, in confidence, in sheer desirability between him and Aidan.
“I don’t know.” My voice trailed away. How to feel completely lame in one easy lesson.
“Hey.” He kissed me again. “Don’t stress. We’ll work up to it.” That grin. Why did it have this effect on me? “It’ll give us something to look forward to.”
Oh, yeah. You could say that again.
The question was, just how far forward did I want to go?
Chapter 19
GILLIAN RELEASED THE SHEET, and the wind bellied the sails. We picked up speed and glided out into the harbor channel like a gull catching the updraft and soaring out into the blue. Today’s lesson was tacking, and I clutched the tiller and tried to remember what the points of sail and wind direction were so that we wouldn’t hit something and hurt it beyond repair.
The beautiful thing about sailing, though, was the way it gave you perfect privacy. Out there on the water that Friday morning, with the wind blowing and seagulls screeching and the odd motorboat trolling past at the harbor speed limit, no one could hear what Gillian and I were talking about.
“He thought you were serious?” Gillian asked, ropes in both hands and her attention totally not on trimming the boat. “He thought you were going to sleep with him?”
“Yeah. But he doesn’t now. I explained that I wasn’t going to do that with anyone except the guy I marry, and he’s okay with that.” I glanced around, but since we’d left the dock first, we were way out ahead of the rest of the class. “He even said it took guts to stick with what I believed in.”
“So we can assume that he isn’t a virgin, right?”
Right. I didn’t want to think about his past. Not when his present was all about me. “Uh, yeah. I guess you can’t look the way he does and not have half the girls in the school throwing themselves at you.”
“I don’t know if I’d like that,” she said, so low I could hardly hear her over the wind.
“He’s not a Christian, Gillian. It’s not fair to hold him to some kind of standard he doesn’t even know about.”
“I know, I know. Hey, this is where we’re supposed to tack. Tell me when you’re going to make the boom swing over.”
I tried to focus on what I was doing, and when we’d safely changed directions, she picked up where we’d left off.
“I guess that’s why I don’t hang out with guys who don’t believe. There’s so much stuff you have to explain.”
“I don’t know about that.” Was she judging me for going out with Callum? I thought she liked him. “Aidan, my boyfriend in Santa Barbara was supposedly a Christian and he was no different than the rest of the guys. I was always the one slowing things down.”
One of the reasons he’d dumped me, as it happened. The big hypocrite.
“Tack.” By now, the others were beginning to catch up to us. “Keep an eye on Vanessa and Dani.” Gillian changed position on the gunwale. “I don’t want to be the one in the ocean this time.”
“The thing is,” I said, “I don’t want to lose him by going all prudie on him, either.”
“If he dumps you because of that, good riddance.”
“Sheesh, could you be any more harsh?”
“Who wants a guy who only wants you for sex?” she asked. “That would be selling yourself way short.”
“He doesn’t. We have fun together. We talk. He likes some of the same movies I do. And he’s put himself in danger twice now, for me.”
“How do you figure?”
I waved at the dock in the distance. “Last week, when I fell in the water, and in Curzon’s office yesterday. He took big risks for me. That’s proof that he likes me for me, not . . . anything else.”
“But how far do you go, is the question.”
“Exactly. He said—” I stopped. This was my roommate, my friend. But some things should be kept private, shouldn’t they? On the other hand, I couldn’t get an opinion from someone I was coming to trust if I couldn’t share, now, could I?
“What?” Her eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses, but her head turned toward me.
“Cone of silence?”
“What kind of friend do you think I am? Come about and go back the other way.”
She loosened the sheet, the boom swung, and we jibed into the wind to turn around. Hey, I was getting pretty good at this. Vanessa and Dani’s boat was coming up on us fast, though, and I needed to say this quickly.
“He said there were lots of things we could do without me breaking my promise to God. I was kind of afraid he was about to give me a demonstration, so I left a little while after that.”
“If he’s okay about not having sex, then that’s that. If the ‘lots of things’ are what I think he means, I don’t think you want to go there.”
“It’s like he wants to have sex without having sex, you know? And what am I—”
“Hey, Lissa!” Vanessa and Dani had swooped up on us like a big old albatross and passed on the right, waving like it was a race. “Come by my room after,” Vanessa called from where she sat at the tiller. “We need to talk.”
“I haven’t heard anything about Angelina,” I called back.
“Not about that.” She pointed down the channel, where Callum was marooned as he waited patiently for Emily to figure out points of sail. “There are things you should know.”
“That sounds promising,” Gillian muttered.
“See you then,” I called. Vanessa waved again, then turned to concentrate on her tack.
I glanced at Gillian. “What?”
“I think she heard us.”
I instant-replayed the last minute. “No way. They were moving too fast, and there was too much wind.”
“Yeah, blowing your voice right to them.”
“I don’t think so. She’s been friends with Callum since grade school. She probably wants to tell me about the time he kissed some girl in kindergarten.”
“You’ll be lucky if that’s all it is. I don’t trust her, even if she does think you’re her new best friend.”
By this time we were coming up on the dock, where we were supposed to change places and let the other person steer for the second half of the class. So I kept it short.
“I’m finally getting along with her. I’m not going to do anything to rock the boat. I’ll be as nice as I know how until I have a reason to do otherwise. How come you’re so negative all of a sudden?”
“Negative?” she repeated, her voice going up. The boat bumped the dock and we changed places, doing our best not to make the thing wobble and tip us both off balance. “I wouldn’t call it negative. I’d call it real.”
EOvertonShe’s a VIRGIN?????
VTalbotStraight from CMcC. But we already knew that.
EOvertonHe’ll dump her, don’t worry.
VTalbotWho’s worried?
VTalbotI bet she learns a thing or two first though.
EOvertonDoes he really like her?
VTalbotSome people like milk and white bread too.
EOvertonNot if they have Godiva and Courvoisier.
VTalbotYou’re sweet. And you spelled it right.
EOvertonIt’s sitting in front of me, that’s w
hy.
VTalbotYour mom’s a Christian right?
DGearyYou got it, baby. Glide Memorial all the way.
VTalbotWhat’s the deal?
VTalbotWith Christians I mean. What are they about?
DGearyBelieving in Jesus, like He’s the Son of God.
VTalbotI know that. I mean like life.
VTalbotThey don’t have sex, right?
DGearyHow do you think I got here?
VTalbotV. funny.
DGearyNot before the wedding.
VTalbotEver?
DGearyI guess some do. But they don’t tell.
DGearyOr they’re nasty virgins.
VTalbot?
DGearyThey do everything but.
VTalbotGot it. Tx.
DGearyYou getting saved, girl?
VTalbotOkay bye.
DLavigneIt’ll never work. Even you can’t be that convincing.
VTalbotWatch and learn, girlfriend.
DLavigneTell all afterward.
VTalbotDon’t I always?
Vanessa’s room was just like ours, minus the silk, instruments, and Johnny Depp posters and plus a flat screen, several huge pillows, and a massive wall mirror. What does that tell you?
She called, “Come in,” at my knock and waved me onto a pillow, where I leaned against a bed.
“Drink?” She tossed me a soda from a mini fridge under the desk and wrapped her French terry dressing gown around herself.
“Thanks.” I sipped, wondering what to say. “So, Vanessa, tell me about my boyfriend” seemed kind of abrupt. Not to mention weird.
She sat on the opposite bed and tucked cotton balls between her toes. “I’ve got a pedi scheduled Monday, but I couldn’t stand this color another second.” She’d already removed the offending shade and a bottle of Scarlet Seduction stood ready beside her foot. “Want to come with us later?”
“Where to?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like clubbing, so probably we’ll just find a restaurant on Fillmore and have dessert, then maybe catch a movie at the vintage theater.”
“That sounds fun.”
She glanced at me slyly as she began painting her toes with the skill of a pro. “No date tonight?”
That pointed glance punctured the balloon of my self-confidence, even though I had a valid reason to be a wallflower on a Friday night.
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