Never Been Kissed

by Linda Turner

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said breathlessly.

  Caught up in the images that teased him, he jerked back to awareness to find her standing right in front of him. With no effort whatsoever, he discovered, he could have reached for her. “That’s okay,” he said, shaken. “You’re just in time.” Noting the way people in the crowd were staring at her, he said wryly, “You’ve caused quite a stir. I didn’t recognize you at first.”

  Self-consciously, she touched the nape of her neck and the much shorter strands of her hair. “One of the patients at the nursing home wanted to cut my hair, and I thought she was just going to trim it. Everything just sort of got out of hand.”

  As unsure of herself as a sixteen-year-old who’d just appeared in public wearing lipstick for the first time, she couldn’t quite look him in the eye. Why, she’s shy! he realized, shocked, and found that incredibly appealing. “I think you look great,” he said sincerely, trying to reassure her. “That hairstyle’s perfect for you.”

  He would have said more, but they abruptly ran out of time when the town clock on the corner of the square struck seven and the crowd let out a cheer. All the booths opened, people surged through the narrow streets fronting the square, and the festival began.

  His grin rueful, he raised his voice over the throng of kids that suddenly rushed the booth, demanding water pistols. “Looks like it’s time to get to work!”

  “C’mon, Johnny, you can do it,” Janey coaxed when Johnny Thompson, the son of one of her family’s ranch hands, hesitated when it was his turn to try for a prize. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll show you.”

  Stepping out from behind the front counter of the booth, she found a box for the five-year-old to stand on, then guided the barrel of his water pistol at the paper bull’s-eye at the far end of the booth. Her chin all but propped on his shoulder, she grinned and said softly in his ear, “All right, you’re all set, tiger. Just squeeze the trigger, and I’ll bet you can win a teddy bear.”

  Concentrating, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, he tried squeezing the trigger, but it was stiff, and he had little hands. Quickly moving to help him, Janey molded her hand around his, pulled the trigger and sent a stream of water shooting straight at the target.

  “All right!” she cheered. “That kind of straight shooting deserves a teddy bear.”

  Handing him a stuffed bear that was nearly as big as he was, Janey couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such a good time. The crowd waiting to get in on the game was a big one that had kept her and Reilly hustling all evening, and they’d hardly had time to exchange more than a few words, but she wouldn’t have traded that time with him for anything. The booth was small and they kept brushing shoulders, but she’d laughed more tonight than she had in years. The night itself seemed to sparkle. She told herself she couldn’t stop smiling because she was feeling good about herself and the spirit of Christmas was in the air, but she knew there was more to it than that.

  And so did Reilly. Watching her with Johnny, he, too, felt the magic in the air, but he knew the cause of it had nothing to do with Christmas and everything to do with Janey herself. She was the one who made people smile, the one who made them feel special, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He liked her new look, but he’d liked her before. There was no pretension to her, and he didn’t think she had a clue how special that made her. He liked her, dammit, as a person, as a woman, and that was tearing him apart.

  He wasn’t supposed to be enjoying himself this much so soon after Victoria’s death, especially with another woman. But how could he not? He’d never known anyone quite like her. She had to be thirty-seven or thirty-eight, yet she was blooming right before his eyes. Watching her was fascinating. Over the course of the evening, her brothers and their wives, friends and extended family all came over to their booth to hug her and tell her how incredible she looked, and he couldn’t think of a better person for it to happen to. She had to feel like Cinderella.

  Given the chance, he could have stayed there all night with her, but the evening just seemed to fly by. All too soon the crowd began to thin and before he was ready for it, it was time to shut down everything and go home. Disappointed, he didn’t want to let her go, but once they cleaned their booth, there was no longer any reason to prolong leaving.

  “Come on,” he said gruffly. “I’ll walk you to your car. Where’d you park?”

  “Behind Myrtle Henderson’s antique store,” she said, falling into step beside him. “And I was lucky to find that. The streets were so packed I thought I was going to have to park at the nursing home and walk over.”

  Her car was just where she’d left it and sat all alone in the dark behind Myrtle’s shop. Taking her keys from her, he unlocked the driver’s door for her and opened it for her, but he still couldn’t bring himself to let her go. Before she could slip behind the wheel, he stopped her simply by catching her hand in his.

  It was the wrong thing to do—he knew that the second his fingers closed around hers. Even in the darkness he saw the surprise in her eyes and felt the sparks that jumped between them whenever they got within touching distance. Suddenly, in spite of the coldness of the night, the air around them was hushed and intimate and warm with expectation.

  A smart man would have released her immediately and stepped back to clear his head. Reilly couldn’t bring himself to do that. Not yet. Not when her hand was in his and she was this close and so pretty in the starlight. He just needed a few more minutes with her, he told himself, and tightened his hand around hers. “I really had a good time tonight.”

  “Me, too,” she said huskily. “I can’t remember the festival ever being this much fun before. There was just something in the air….”

  “I know,” he murmured, moving closer with a single step. “It’s still there. Feel it?”

  Her eyes dark and fathomless and her fingers clinging to his, she stared up at him and nodded soundlessly, and any chance Reilly had of resisting the need she stirred in him was lost. With a quiet groan he pulled her closer and kissed her softly parted lips the way he’d been dying to for days.

  Chapter 8

  At the first touch of his mouth against hers, everything inside Janey went still—even her heart. Her thoughts reeling, she told herself she was dreaming. She had to be. This type of thing just didn’t happen to her. Even in the privacy of her dreams, she didn’t dare let herself imagine attracting a man like Reilly. He might enjoy talking to her, she told herself, but that was as far as it went. He would never actually be interested in her as a woman. Would he?

  Then why is he kissing you, Janey?

  Confused, her heart starting to slam against her ribs, she drew in the spicy scent of him, felt his mouth hot on hers and was forced to admit this was no dream. A sob rising in her throat, she could have given anything to melt into his arms and kiss him back with all her heart. But she didn’t know how!

  And that mortified her. She was thirty-seven years old, for God’s sake! She’d only had two blind dates in her life, and both of those had ended with handshakes and sighs of relief all the way around that the evening had finally been over. She hadn’t cared then that she hadn’t known how to kiss those men—she hadn’t liked them any more than they’d liked her.

  But Reilly was different. She liked him. And there was something about him that stirred a longing in her soul that she’d never known before. A longing, she admitted with a hastily swallowed sob, that she didn’t have a clue how to deal with.

  And he had to know that.

  Embarrassed, hurt that she felt so inept as a woman, she pulled back to look up at him with searching eyes. She knew she was feeding her own insecurities, but she couldn’t help wondering if this new desire to kiss her had anything to do with her makeover. “Why did you do that?” she asked huskily.

  His blood hot and his head not quite clear, he frowned. “Do what? Kiss you?”

  When she nodded, Reilly would have thought the answer was obvious, but he was learning wi
th Janey not to take anything for granted. Every time he thought he knew who she was, she surprised him. “I like you,” he said with a shrug. “We had fun tonight, and I had a sudden urge to kiss you, so I did. Is that a problem? Because if it is, you’d better tell me now. Because I’d like to take you to dinner tomorrow night, and if I get another chance tonight, I thought I might kiss you again.”

  His tone was teasing, but Janey only had to see the gleam in his eye to know he meant every word. Her heart suddenly thundering, she threw up a quick hand against his chest when he would have reached for her again. “Wait!” she cried, panicking. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  She expected him to step back. He didn’t. Instead he laid his hand over hers on his chest with a tenderness that was almost her undoing. “So speak.”

  The rough timbre of his voice was like a slow, intimate caress across her nerve endings and sent a shiver of awareness rippling across her skin. Shaken, she tugged at her hand. “Please,” she said faintly. “We need to talk, and I can’t do that while you’re touching me.”

  A more sophisticated woman would never have made such a remark and given herself away so easily, but Janey couldn’t worry about that. Not when she was out of her league and couldn’t fake experience she didn’t have.

  Something of her desperation must have gotten through to him. Studying her for a long moment in the faint light from the streetlight on the corner, he abruptly released her and frowned in concern. “What is it?”

  How, she wondered wildly, was she going to tell him? Heat climbing in her cheeks, she turned away, searching for words, but they weren’t easy to find. When she finally faced him again, she still wasn’t sure what she was going to say until she opened her mouth.

  “I’m not like other women you know,” she said quietly. “I’m not like other women I know. I didn’t date in high school or college. That’s a part of adolescence that I missed out on. While other kids were going steady and learning how to kiss, I was staying home on Friday nights and reading. You need to know that before this goes any further.”

  Studying her, Reilly could see the admission wasn’t easy for her to make. But it was what she didn’t say that had him staring at her warily. “You said you didn’t date in school. What about afterward?”

  Lifting her chin, she met his searching gaze head-on. “I’ve had two blind dates since college. They were both disasters.”

  Stunned, Reilly didn’t pretend to misunderstand what she was saying. There’d never been anyone in her life. Ever. No boyfriends when she was in high school or college, no men when she returned to Liberty Hill and began working at the nursing home. She’d never had a boyfriend to teach her how to kiss or make out…or make love.

  Dear God, she was a virgin!

  Janey saw the shock he couldn’t quite manage to hide, and if he’d only found a way to joke about the situation, everything might have been okay. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a sense of humor about her condition. She knew there weren’t many thirty-seven-year-old virgins walking around, but she certainly wasn’t the last of the dinosaurs.

  If his expression was anything to go by, though, Reilly didn’t find the situation the least bit amusing. And Janey didn’t have to have experience with a man to know why. If he was going to have a woman in his life, he had no use for a virgin. Which meant he had no use for her.

  Up until then the evening had been the most magical of her life, but suddenly she had more doubts about herself than she could stand. Tears stung her eyes, and it was all she could do to keep her voice steady as she said quietly, “If you’d like to withdraw your invitation to dinner tomorrow night, I’ll understand.”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “You didn’t have to.” Keeping her head high and her tears at bay, she made a move to step past him. “It’s late. I need to go home. Good night.”

  He didn’t try to stop her, and Janey was thankful for that. Because if he’d said so much as a single word to her, she would have horrified them both by crying. And that was something she was determined not to do. So she slipped into her Jeep and never looked at him as she backed out of her parking space and turned her car toward home. It wasn’t until she’d left Reilly far behind that the tears began to fall.

  Long after Janey drove away, Reilly stood in the darkness behind Myrtle Henderson’s store and cursed himself for a jackass. To say that he’d handled the situation badly was the height of understatement. What the hell had he been thinking of? She was a virgin, dammit, not some kind of monster from outer space, which is how he’d treated her. No wonder she’d run for home. After this he’d be lucky if she ever spoke to him again.

  Go after her, a voice urged in his head. Talk to her and explain that she just caught you flat-footed.

  He should have. It was the right thing to do. Not only was he attracted to her, but they’d become good friends, and he needed to make her understand that his feelings for her weren’t going to change just because she was a virgin. One had nothing to do with the other.

  He knew that, accepted it…and couldn’t have gone after her if his life had depended on it. Not when he was still reeling from the punch of an innocent kiss. She hadn’t even known what she was doing and she’d still managed to turn him inside out. And that scared the hell out of him.

  So instead of heading for the McBride ranch, he went home and settled in front of the fire with Victoria’s picture, just as he had every night since she’d died. But tonight when he stared down into her laughing green eyes, she wasn’t the one he saw. Instead it was Janey who pushed her way into his thoughts. If he lived to be a hundred, he didn’t think he’d ever forget that moment when she’d realized he thought she was pretty. She’d looked like a young girl discovering her womanhood for the first time, and just watching her realize how attractive she was had been incredibly seductive.

  He wasn’t the only one who’d been fascinated by the change in her. He’d seen the way the local cowboys had eyed her tonight, and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that they were going to be coming after her the first chance they got. They’d rush her and probably scare her, and just the thought of anyone doing that to her infuriated him.

  She was so special, dammit, and the first man in her life needed to be just as special. She needed someone who was patient and gentle, someone who would give her the time to discover her sensuality at her own pace, not his. Someone who wouldn’t push her into giving more of herself than she wanted to give. Someone who would care about her and be willing to let her experiment and grow without trying to bind her to him with emotions. Because like all first boyfriends, he would eventually get left behind, and he had to know how to let her go.

  None of the men he’d seen watching her tonight had had that kind of sensitivity. Rough and macho, they’d all been the caveman type, and just the thought of her getting mixed up with someone like that when she was so much more vulnerable than she realized sickened him. She could get hurt if she wasn’t very, very careful.

  So what’s wrong with you? the voice in his head demanded in a rough growl. Why can’t you be her first boyfriend?

  Caught off guard by the question, he just sat there, stunned that he was actually considering the suggestion. Why not? he thought with a frown. He cared about her and had to admit that the idea appealed to him. After all, it wasn’t as if there was any chance of him getting hurt. Victoria was the only woman he would ever love. And because of that, he could protect Janey and guide her, and then when she was ready to fly and leave her first boyfriend behind, he could let her go. And still remain friends with her. He hoped.

  Just that easily the decision was made. Satisfied that he had everything worked out in his head, he put Victoria’s picture back on the mantel and went to bed. Five minutes later he was asleep, but it wasn’t Victoria he dreamed of. It was Janey and her beautiful shy smile as she’d first approached him earlier that evening and he hadn’t recognized her. Only this time, in his dreams, she walked straight into his
arms.

  Tears streaming down her face, Janey didn’t have a clue how she made it home without running off the road. She crossed over the centerline several times, but she had the road to herself, thankfully, and she could only assume her angels were watching out for her. If they’d been watching out for her just as diligently when Reilly came to town, her heart wouldn’t be breaking now.

  Swallowing a sob, she parked in her usual spot in the drive and told herself she wasn’t going to think about him. Not after the way he had hurt her. If he let something like virginity scare him away, then he wasn’t the man she thought he was and she didn’t need or want him in her life.

  That didn’t, however, make the hurt any less. Pain squeezing her heart, she wiped at the tears that welled in her eyes and was relieved to see that the house was dark except for the light her mother had left on in the foyer for her. She knew Sara and Dan would both want to know all about the festival and everyone’s reaction to her new look, but she didn’t think she could bear it if she had to face them tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough for that.

  How she made her way upstairs without waking her mother or Dan she never knew. What little control she had over her emotions seemed to vanish as she climbed the stairs, and try though she might, she couldn’t stop crying. By the time she reached her room, she was shaking with silent sobs, and with a muffled cry she threw herself on her bed and buried her face in her pillow. Within moments, it was soaked from her tears.

  Later she couldn’t have said how long she cried. It seemed like forever. Eventually she cried herself to sleep, but the release didn’t help. An hour later she woke again. The second she remembered those moments in Reilly’s arms and his face when she’d told him she was a virgin, the tears were back, more painful than before.