by Kara Lennox
But as fun and nice and pretty as Sherry was, there was someone else he would rather be dancing with.
“Why don’t you just ask her, instead of staring at her like a scolded puppy?” Sherry asked.
Cal groaned. “Is it that obvious?”
“Like an elephant having an allergy fit.”
“I can’t ask her. She would freeze me solid with one look.”
“You two have a history, I take it?”
Since Sherry was relatively new in town, she wouldn’t know all the ancient history. “We dated for almost four years, when she was still in high school.”
“Your first love.”
His only.
“What went wrong?” Sherry asked in her forthright way. Not nosy, just concerned. She was always trying to help people.
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you. It’s too embarrassing. But just ask around. Almost everybody knows about it.”
“Now I’m intrigued.”
Shoot, she was going to find out anyway. “Her parents caught us in, shall we say, a compromising position?”
He could tell Sherry was trying not to laugh. “And that’s why you broke up?”
“Believe me, it was no laughing matter. Her folks went ballistic. She was supposed to go off to college in the fall—Stanford. But after ‘the incident,’ as it was referred to, they didn’t let her go. They thought she would ‘go wild’ way out there in California.”
Sherry looked confused. “Did she need their permission?”
“She needed them to pay for it. Stanford’s not cheap. Willow didn’t have the funds to do it without their help. She had to live at home and go to junior college for a couple of years.”
The song ended, and by silent, mutual agreement Sherry and Cal headed for the refreshment table. “And that’s why you broke up?” Sherry asked as Cal filled a cup with punch for her.
“I ruined her life.”
“Oh, and I suppose she had nothing to do with it?” Sherry scoffed.
“Well.” This was the part Cal hated to admit. “It was my fault. I sort of pressured her into it. She wasn’t ready, but I was older and I’d waited all this time for her to grow up, and I was facing the prospect of her running off to California, half a country away—”
“And you wanted to bond with her more closely.”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t believe he was talking to his boss’s wife about sex, but Sherry was really easy to talk to.
Jonathan sauntered over, putting an end to the conversation. “You gonna monopolize my wife all night, Chandler?”
Sometimes, Cal couldn’t tell if Jonathan was kidding or not. He’d always been kind of serious, though Sherry’s freewheeling style had loosened him up quite a bit.
Sherry just punched Jonathan in the arm. “Why would you care? You don’t dance. And this young man…” She plucked the red carnation from Cal’s buttonhole. “…can dance.” Then she stuck the flower between her teeth and struck a flamenco dancer’s pose.
Jonathan grinned and took his wife’s arm. “Come on, Sherrita, I’ll show you some dancing.” As he dragged her off, Sherry looked at Cal and nodded toward Willow, as if to say, Ask her.
Well, hell, why not? What was the worst that could happen? Willow wouldn’t make a scene, not at her friend’s wedding.
WILLOW DRAINED the last of her punch from the glass and checked her watch. She was getting tired. Ever since her hospital stay, she had almost no stamina. But her grandmother was having a good time, dancing with the bride’s grandfather, and Willow didn’t want to be a wet blanket.
A shadow fell across the table. Willow looked up, and her breath caught in her throat. A handsome, tanned man with sun-streaked hair stood before her, somber-faced. Uh-oh, no woman to anchor him to. And he wore the ubiquitous gray suit, though his broad shoulders filled it out much better than the average man.
Momentarily panicked, her gaze darted to his lapel. Thank goodness, no red carnation. She’d thought she was in trouble there for a minute. Still, she had no clue who this man was—only that he made her palms damp and her mouth dry.
Whoa. Get a grip, there, Willomena.
He flashed a dazzling smile, and Willow’s heartbeat accelerated to hyperspeed. “Hi, Willow.”
“H-hello.” How could she not remember a guy as appealing as this? He had a rugged outdoorsy-ness about him that made her think of sunshine and fresh air—and a few less innocent thoughts, as well.
“It’s good to see you. I heard about your accident.”
“It’s nice to see you, too.” Whoever you are. “I’m fine now. Except for the black eye.” She reached up and touched her discolored eye self-consciously. Almost two weeks since the accident, the bright purple bruises had faded to green and yellow, which she’d mostly disguised with makeup. But her cover-up job wasn’t perfect.
“I think you look beautiful.”
Ohh, a flatterer. She’d better be careful with this one. She resisted the urge to flirt back. What if he was married? The husband of a good friend?
Could he be Jeff Hardison? Handsome, blond…
No matter who he was, she had no business entertaining ideas. She had work to do. Preparations to make. A brain to fix.
“Your grandmother told me you were recuperating at her house,” the man said.
“Nana is spoiling me rotten.” Just keep talking. Maybe she would figure it out.
“She always did. Do you…would you dance with me?”
The exhaustion Willow had felt moments earlier vanished like mist on a hot day. “Sure,” she heard herself say. Oh, why not? It was just a dance. No law said she couldn’t dance with a sexy guy at a wedding.
The song was an old number by Clint Black, and the man took Willow into his arms in an easy two-step. She didn’t consider herself much of a dancer, but her partner was easy to follow and soon they were gliding across the floor with little effort, a veritable Fred and Ginger.
“So, what are you up to these days?” Willow asked. This question had served her well all evening. Once someone started talking about themselves, she could usually figure out who they were.
The man shrugged his broad shoulders. “Same old stuff. Making a living. Trying to stay out of trouble.”
That was no help!
“I hear you’re off to med school in a few weeks,” he said.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You’ve worked pretty hard to get there. You must be proud.”
“Still a lot of work ahead.” More than anyone knew.
Willow didn’t want to talk about herself, and her dance partner wouldn’t talk about himself. So they danced in a highly charged silence, gliding across the floor in perfect harmony. The man’s hands were large, slightly rough from hard work and unusually warm. The one at her waist felt like it could burn a hole through her silk dress.
She avoided looking straight at him because something in his eyes made her want to squirm uncomfortably. It was almost as if he knew more about her than she knew herself, that he could see deep to her core and know her innermost secrets.
But how could that be? This man could not possibly be someone she knew well or she would have figured out his identity by now. Although his voice struck a slight chord of familiarity, she couldn’t place it. It was deep, a little bit hoarse and husky, as if he were just recovering from a cold or had been yelling too long and too loud at a baseball game.
The bouncy song came to a close, then immediately blended into a slow ballad, some dreamy old thing by Patsy Cline. Willow knew she should thank the man for the dance and sit down. A song like this was reserved for lovers, so they could hold each other close and murmur into each other’s ears and be intimate in a public place.
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Instead she nestled into the warm embrace of her mysterious stranger, where she seemed to fit perfectly. There wasn’t even a moment of awkwardness. His strong arms slid around her waist, hers went around his neck and she laid her head lightly on his shoulder. She could smell
traces of his aftershave, something old-fashioned like English Leather, or maybe just lime-scented shaving cream. She’d never been good at telling one smell apart from another, which was unfortunate, because smell was one of the main cues face-blind people used to distinguish friends…and lovers.
Mmm, she was sure she would remember this scent, though. Shampoo? Starch? Laundry detergent? Whatever it was, the blend was intoxicating.
Willow hoped no one was watching her. They might think it strange to see her so intimately wrapped up with—whom? Who could it be? Was she behaving inappropriately? Surely if the man was married he wouldn’t act like this in public. But men could certainly be cads.
Oh, shoot, she didn’t care. Anyway, the lights had been turned down so low, no one could see who was dancing with whom. An old-fashioned disco ball spun in the air above them, the tiny bits of mirrored glass casting glittering flecks of light over the dancers, creating a cocoon of surrealism.
Her partner had maneuvered her away from the main crowd on the floor, Willow realized. Spinning slowly through the song’s smoky tendrils, they’d angled toward some ivy-festooned, papier-mâché Roman columns, then into a shadowy alcove. And there, behind a screen of ivy leaves, he kissed her.
Chapter Two
It was an amazing kiss, Willow thought dazedly as she sank into it, her bones turning to mush. Amazing as the kiss was, it was even more astonishing that she let him kiss her. She didn’t offer even a token protest as his warm mouth closed over hers, tentatively at first, probably prepared for an objection. And when none came, his kiss became more sure as he took control of her mouth, as well as all her senses.
She’d never been kissed like this, as if the man were pouring his entire soul into one embrace. If his kiss was this intoxicating, what might it be like to actually—
She shut down that line of thought and dived headfirst into the kiss, living in the moment. That was something else she wasn’t very good at. She was always thinking forward, planning ahead, worrying about all contingencies. But for this moment, she didn’t worry. And it felt pretty darn good to just shed everything but the feel of the man’s arms around her, his hands in her hair, and his amazing mouth caressing hers with such strength and gentleness at the same time, playing her the way a master musician would play even a run-of-the-mill violin and make it sing.
His curious fingers found the stitched cut on the side of her head, which she’d artfully hidden by combing her hair just right. She took his hand and pulled it away from her injury, suddenly self-conscious about it.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “You’re probably still tender there.”
“It’s not that. I just don’t want you to know all my secrets.” She rubbed her cheek against the slight roughness of his. “I worked hard to hide those stitches.”
He slid his hand under her heavy hair around to the nape of her neck. “I want to know all your secrets.”
Now she was getting embarrassed. She could feel her face flushing. This was all so…not like her. She didn’t kiss strange men in public places.
“All I could think about, all night long, was kissing you,” he tried again. “I know it’s probably too much, too fast, but—”
She took his face between her hands, stood on her toes and kissed him again. She didn’t want to talk yet. She didn’t want mere words to pull her back into the real world.
He groaned low in his throat, wrapped his arms around her, as if sheltering her from prying eyes, and deepened the kiss for a few precious seconds before abruptly ending it.
He was breathing hard. Seemingly with some effort, he set her away from him. “Damn, darlin’, that’s some potent kiss you got there.”
“Likewise.” Willow wasn’t a hundred percent in control of herself, even now when she wasn’t wrapped in his arms.
“If we weren’t here in the middle of the VFW hall—”
Willow covered her face. “Don’t say it.” Though it was true and she knew it. If they were in private, he wouldn’t stop at a kiss. And she wouldn’t want him to.
Her brain injury must have been more extensive than she thought. She was completely insane, certifiably!
“Sorry.” He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, tucked it behind her ear. “I didn’t mean to overwhelm you. It’s just that I’ve pictured this moment for such a long time—”
“You have?”
“I think about you a lot. Probably too much to be good for me.”
Willow would have loved to be able to tell him she’d thought about him, too, that she’d noticed him, that she’d hoped he would ask her out or that she might be brave enough to ask him out.
But she hadn’t thought about any guy in that way for a long time. Not since her sophomore year at University of Texas, when she’d finally been out from under her parents’ control for the first time ever—and away from curious, small-town eyes. She’d gone a little bit wild, dating a whole slew of guys in some misguided effort to wipe memories of Cal Chandler out of her mind.
She’d been intrigued with some of them, and she’d tried her best to transform mild interest into wild attraction. But she’d never wanted any of them enough to sleep with them. Cal was the only one she’d ever loved enough to risk sex with, and look what a disaster that had turned into.
Then her class work had become more demanding, and she’d given up on guys altogether—with some relief. She was glad to not have to worry about sex anymore.
“This isn’t how I wanted to start things with us, Willow.”
She raised her eyebrows. “How did you want to start?”
“With a date. A nice, normal date. Could we do that? Could we start over?”
There were a zillion reasons for her to say no, starting with the fact she didn’t know who he was. She had to get ready for her move to Dallas. She had to unscramble her brains.
But there was one, overriding reason to say yes. That kiss. She’d never experienced anything like it. Not even Cal’s kisses, much as she’d loved him, had made her want to rip off her clothes and offer herself like some pagan sacrifice. What if this was the sort of chemistry that happened only once in a lifetime? Could she just walk away from that?
“I’m moving to Dallas in five weeks,” she said. “You do understand that, right?”
“Willow. You don’t always have to think about what happens five weeks from now. Or even one week from now. How about just thinking through tomorrow? Going out to dinner with me. Just a simple date.”
Well, when he put it that way… “Okay,” she heard herself saying.
“I’ll pick you up at your grandmother’s at seven. We’ll go to the Party Barge.”
“Sounds fun.” Willow suppressed the giddy laughter that threatened. The Party Barge. It was a big barge that cruised Town Lake on weekends. Patrons dressed up, ate prime rib and danced to live big-band music. When she’d been in high school, she and Cal had talked about going there for her twenty-first birthday, when she could legally order a cocktail. It had seemed an impossibly sophisticated and expensive evening out for a couple of dreamy kids.
Well, her twenty-first birthday had come and gone a long time ago, and she’d never been to the Party Barge.
Suddenly, Willow realized she was standing behind the ivy curtain all alone. Her mystery man had vanished while she’d been momentarily lost in her adolescent fantasy. That’s what she got for thinking about Cal when she’d had a flesh-and-blood man within reach.
She checked to be sure her clothes were in order—that she’d ripped them off only in her imagination—then slipped out of the sheltered alcove. No one seemed to be paying her any mind, thank heavens. She made a beeline for the bathroom, where she straightened her hair and wiped off her smeared lipstick. Her face was still flushed, her eyes a little brighter than usual, but probably no one would notice that.
Suddenly, her fatigue caught up with her again. She’d definitely overdone it today. This was her first real outing since coming home from the hospital. The surge of ad
renaline brought on by the dance and kiss had dwindled, leaving her feeling a bit washed-out.
She would find Nana and go home, where she could sit quietly and think about her date tomorrow. She was pretty sure that was all she would be able to think about.
Nana was sitting at their table, fanning herself with a paper fan she kept folded in her purse. She looked up when Willow approached.
“Oh, there you are. I wondered where you’d got to. Are you about ready to go?”
“I was just going to ask you the same thing.” Willow picked up her purse and tucked her cheat sheet index cards inside. She would throw them away when she got home. Once everyone changed clothes, they would be useless and she would have to start over.
“Oh, dear, you’re feeling all right, aren’t you?” Nana asked, concern wrinkling her brow. “You look a little flushed.”
Leave it to Nana, with her eagle eyes, to notice. “I’m fine. It’s a little warm in here. Um, Nana, did you happen to notice who I was dancing with a little while ago?”
Nana’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “No. Who was it?”
Willow groaned. “I was hoping you’d tell me. Are you sure you didn’t see? We were dancing to Patsy Cline.”
“A slow song, huh?” Nana was clearly amused.
“This isn’t funny. I told him I’d go out with him, and then I…” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I kissed him. And I don’t know who he is.”
Nana shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I was doing a bit of dancing myself and I guess I just lost track of you. So you’re going on a date with him? When? Where’s he taking you?”
“Tomorrow, the Party Barge. Oh, Nana, what if he’s someone totally inappropriate? Someone I’d never in a million years go out with? What if he’s married or dating one of my friends?”
“Then he would try to see you on the sly. He wouldn’t take you out on a date and certainly not to such a public place.”
Nana had a point.
“You’re worrying for nothing.” Nana patted Willow’s arm as they headed for the exit. The bride and groom had already left for their honeymoon. Willow supposed there were people she should say goodnight to, but she would have to summon up names again and she really didn’t have the energy. So she just waved at anyone who made eye contact.
