The Last First Kiss (Harlequin Special Edition)

by Ferrarella, Marie

  Lisa laughed. As if there was ever any real doubt, she thought. “Consider it done. I’ll call Melissa right now,” she said, ending their phone call.

  This was taking way too long. By all rights, it should have been a snap, Kara told herself as she took yet another outfit out of her closet and looked it over carefully.

  Ordinarily, she’d reach into her closet and throw just about anything on. Or, at the very least, she wouldn’t regard everything she’d taken out with such a critical eye.

  Why did how she looked matter so much? She upbraided herself.

  The problem was that she worked for a company that had no dress code—beyond requiring that their employees show up at work clothed. During the summer she went in wearing a tank top and shorts half the time. And since she hadn’t had a date since the Alex fiasco had burned her so badly, all of the things she might normally wear for any sort of actual occasion had been pushed to the back of her closet. Now, as she pulled them out, she kept finding something wrong with each outfit.

  What was the matter with her? This was just Davy she was going with. Comfortable, old stick-in-the-mud Davy. And this was all pretend, anyway. There was no need to fuss like this.

  “Damn it,” she said to her reflection in the wardrobe mirror. “It’s a kid’s party. A stained T-shirt and dirty jeans would probably blend right in.”

  Even so, she took out yet another garment, this time a light blue sundress with white piping along the edges of the skirt, spaghetti straps and bodice. Holding it up against herself, she decided that it was as good as anything she’d pulled out so far. Maybe a tad better than most. For one thing, the color brought out her eyes and the dress’s waistline brought out her own.

  Finally.

  Or maybe—

  Kara glanced at her watch. How had it gotten to be so late? This was supposed to take her only ten minutes, not an hour. The party was beginning in less than half an hour.

  “Sundress, it is,” she declared.

  She’d no sooner shed her tank top and shorts and put the sundress on than her doorbell rang.

  Now what? she wondered. She wasn’t expecting anyone.

  Maybe it was the new gaming system she’d ordered, Kara thought hopefully. It wasn’t scheduled to be delivered until next week, but you never knew. Once in a blue moon the mail actually arrived before it was supposed to.

  Leaving the dress unzipped in the back—she wasn’t planning on walking away from the mailman—Kara hurried to the door.

  “Coming!” she called out, hoping the mail carrier wouldn’t leave before she got there.

  She yanked the door open, and disappointment descended swiftly. “You’re not the mail carrier.”

  “Very observant,” Dave commented. “Were you expecting him?”

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting you,” she informed him crisply.

  Since she wasn’t inviting him in, Dave took hold of her shoulders, moved her slightly to one side and walked into the apartment on his own.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you the one who said we’re supposed to be ‘pretending’ to be on a date while attending Ryan’s birthday party?”

  God, but he irritated her, she thought. There was no reason to talk down to her like this. “Yes, but I thought we were meeting there—at Melissa’s house.”

  “It occurred to me while driving to the party that arriving in separate cars didn’t seem very datelike,” he pointed out. “Is that how all your dates go? Because if so, I might have the answer as to why you’re still unattached.”

  Maybe she should just kill him here now and be done with it. The idea had definite appeal.

  “You could have called and given me a warning. And never mind how my dates go,” Kara snapped, closing the door he’d left open. She frowned, then shrugged. “Well, since you’re here, I guess we can go to the birthday party together. But I’m not ready yet,” she informed him. When he raised a quizzical eyebrow she explained, “I don’t have my shoes on.”

  “I thought you looked shorter.” And then his mouth curved in a half-amused smile as she moved away. “You don’t exactly have your dress on yet, either.”

  She turned back and looked at him sharply. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  Rather than answer her, he turned her around and then zipped up her dress, his knuckles lightly skimming along her bare skin.

  Something warm and shivery shimmied up and down her spine, discharging tiny zaps of electricity as it went. Kara struggled not to let the tingling sensation get to her.

  “There,” Dave pronounced. “You’re decent. It’s a kid’s party. Ryan’s precocious for his age, but he’s a little too young to see his first half-naked woman, no matter how tempting the sight might be.”

  Her temper flared. “I’m not—” The rest of his statement suddenly hit. “Wait, did you say ‘tempting’?”

  That had been a careless slip on his part. He had to remember that Kara pounced on the least little thing. “Just a general observation,” he said mildly. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks, he deliberately moved away from her and looked around the room. “Nice place,” he commented. “A little claustrophobic for my taste, but nice.”

  She’d forgotten about that. Dave had been claustrophobic as a kid. The second she’d found out, she’d taken every opportunity to put him to the test. She herself was fearless and couldn’t fathom anyone breaking into a sweat just because they were confined to a tiny little space.

  “Thanks,” Kara responded.

  Preoccupied, she was still mulling over his “tempting” remark. Had that been a slip of the tongue or just a word he’d used carelessly? There was nothing in his tone or his facial expression that gave her the slightest clue.

  Most likely, she decided, he was setting up a joke at her expense. There was no reason to believe just because he’d become a doctor who volunteered at a free clinic once a week that he’d suddenly become a noble specimen of manhood. At least, not as far as she was concerned, anyway.

  Getting her shoes, Kara stepped into them and then grabbed her purse from the coffee table before pausing to pick up a large shopping bag next to the sofa.

  With a toss of her head, she announced, “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Dave began to walk out. Noticing the shopping bag, he nodded at it. “What’s that?”

  “A present for Ryan. You didn’t expect me to go to this party empty-handed, did you?”

  When it came to Kara, he really didn’t know what to expect. He never had. The logic he cherished had no place in her life.

  “I thought ‘The Kalico Kid’ game was from both of us,” he admitted. “Reinforces this dating thing you’re trying to sell everyone on.”

  “Not everyone,” she corrected. “Just our mothers, remember? And as far as reinforcing anything, coming with one video game between the two of us only reinforces the idea that we’re cheap since I do work for a video game company.”

  “Ryan doesn’t know that,” he pointed out. “And I suggest that if you don’t want to find yourself under attack from a whole bunch of kids, you might think twice before making that little fact public knowledge at the party.”

  She looked at him in silence for a moment, then smiled. “If I didn’t know better, Davy, I’d say you were being thoughtful.”

  “I was being practical,” he corrected. “And I’ve asked you before, don’t call me Davy,” he added with feeling.

  They walked out the door, and he waited until she locked up, then led the way to his car. “So what are you giving him?”

  The company was releasing two new games at the beginning of the month. Senior engineers were allowed to get the first copies. She was passing hers on to Ryan but she didn’t want to say as much to Dave, so all she said was, “You
’ll see.”

  When they came to a stop before a gleaming red sports car in the guest parking, she looked at him incredulously. This did not go with his usual image. “This isn’t your car, is it?”

  He might have known she’d have some kind of crack about it. Admittedly, it was an indulgence. He’d just gotten rid of the secondhand car he’d been driving since his senior year of college. Since it had been so reliable, he hadn’t wanted to give it up until it wasn’t functioning anymore.

  Dave braced himself for a punch line. “Why wouldn’t this be mine?”

  “Because it’s sleek and powerful with a hell of a lot of horsepower.” And a damn beautiful vehicle, she added silently, then raised her eyes to his. “Everything you’re supposedly not.”

  “You have no idea what I am, Kara,” he informed her coolly. Hitting the security release on his keychain, he unlocked the car doors, then nodded toward the passenger side. “Get in.”

  Kara opened the car door and looked inside. There was still the faint new-car smell. The interior was utterly pristine. No junk, no crumbs, not a single thing to testify that anyone had even ridden in the car. Her own car looked as if she were living out of it. She was glad he hadn’t seen it. It would only give him added ammunition to make fun of her.

  Getting in and buckling her seat belt, she said, “You just had this detailed, didn’t you?”

  “Detailed?” he repeated as he did the same, his eyebrows drawing together over a nose that would make sculptors and plastic surgeons alike weak with envy. “What do you mean by ‘detailed’?”

  He watched as a smile unfurled on her lips. If it hadn’t been at his expense, he would have enjoyed the sight.

  “I forgot. You’re not a car person.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is fanatic. Car fanatic,” he said pointedly.

  She knew he was just saying that because he felt lacking in that department—and embarrassed about it. She doubted if the E.R. doctor knew very much beyond where the key went and where he put the gas. Still, she couldn’t help bristling at the put-down.

  “There’s nothing fanatical about knowing how a car works or where the dipstick goes,” she informed him haughtily.

  “I have a suggestion where to put the dipstick,” he muttered under his breath. “And if you really want to convince anyone that I’d actually voluntarily spend time with you, I suggest you stop being so damn antagonistic and taking apart everything I say.”

  Instantly, Kara felt her back go up. “I don’t—”

  She got no further. Inserting the key into the ignition, Dave gave her a look that said, “Yes, you do.” The awful part was that she knew she really couldn’t argue with him. She was being antagonistic, but only because she felt he was being condescending.

  The reason didn’t matter, she told herself. She had to work on her attitude, work on her delivery. Neither of their mothers were going to be taken in by this charade if they saw her with her hands wrapped around Dave’s throat, choking the life out of him.

  She paused to pull herself together before saying anything. Two deep breaths later, she finally murmured, “Sorry.” Another fortifying deep breath came and went before she added, “I’ll try to act like I think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

  “Don’t go overboard,” he cautioned. “Neither of our mothers is going to buy into that. If you ask me, they’re not even going to buy that we’re dating.”

  He was wrong there and she really wanted to say it that way, but she settled for a more diplomatic delivery. “They’ll buy into it because that’s what they were hoping for by sending me to you bearing a video game, remember?” She thought for a moment, searching for a plausible excuse as to why they initially got together. “We can tell them, if they ask why we’re seeing each other, that we’re catching up on the years since we last saw each other. Since that covers about eighteen years, it should take us a bit.”

  “Sounds reasonable enough, I guess,” he conceded. “But to make that work, you realize we’re actually going to have to exchange some information.”

  He sounded as if he was putting her on notice, she thought. She had nothing to hide. Her only problem was going to be staying awake to listen to eighteen years of his life.

  “I’m game,” she told him.

  Dave pressed down on the accelerator, making it through the light at the crosswalk just before it turned red.

  “Okay, what have you been doing these last eighteen years—in fifty words or less?” he qualified as she opened her mouth.

  This, Kara thought darkly, was definitely not going to be a walk in the park. Why in heaven’s name would her mother think she would ever want to become romantically involved with this man? Other than his looks and maybe his selflessness, he had nothing going for him.

  She reminded herself that this was to teach her mother a lesson. Eventually, it would all be worth it. If she survived.

  Chapter Five

  “I take it your cousin likes balloons,” Kara observed, an amused smile curving her lips.

  There’d been three balloons, one blue, one white, one yellow, attached to the sign right outside his cousin’s residential development along with an arrow pointing the way to the party. Another three balloons, comprised of the same colors, and another arrow were on the street sign at the first corner. Three more balloons again at the next turn and so on until they had reached the block—a cul-de-sac—where the party was taking place and, if parked cars and noise level were any indication, was currently in full swing.

  She could see that the mailbox of a two-story house in the center of the block had not just three but six balloons, again comprised of the same three colors, indicating journey’s end. As if that were actually necessary.

  “Melissa just didn’t want to take the chance that anyone would go the wrong way,” Dave told her as they entered the cul-de-sac.

  He pulled up into the first available parking space he saw. It was also the last available parking space on either side of the street. A convention of SUVs hugged every available inch of curb space not only along both sides of the block, but trickling down toward the next block, as well.

  Dave unbuckled his seat belt. But as he started to get out, Kara put her hand on his wrist, stopping him. Puzzled, he looked at her. “Change your mind?”

  Having gotten him to play along, there was no way she was going to abandon her plan now. That was the whole point.

  “No, I just want to remind you that we’re supposed to be into each other. That means you’re going to have to hold my hand and not look at me as if you’d really rather be attending my vivisection.”

  He deliberately looked intrigued. “You’re having a vivisection?”

  “Don’t get cute. You know what I mean. Just act as if you actually like me.”

  He shook his head, a dubious expression on his face. “That’s an awful lot of acting you’re asking for,” he cracked. “I don’t know if I’m up to it.

  Her eyes held his, trying to determine if he was being flippant or if there was more than a small vein of truth to his words. Maybe it was time to have it out in the open.

  “You hate me that much?” she wanted to know.

  He thought he heard a hint of vulnerability in her voice. Probably just his imagination. He really doubted that Kara had had a vulnerable moment in her life. But on the outside chance that her question was actually serious—and that his answer mattered—he told her the truth.

  “I never hated you—well, almost never,” he amended, remembering a couple of incidents that involved purple paint and a great many showers afterward. He’d lost count just how many it had taken to get the hue off his skin the second time. “It was more that I was very leery of you. I never knew what you were going to pull next.”

 
Okay, maybe she had been a little hard on him, but it wasn’t as if he was an innocent in all this. “Maybe if you hadn’t treated me like I was contagious, stupid and beneath you, I wouldn’t have pulled anything.” He looked at her for a long moment without saying a word. But she could read his expression. “Okay,” she relented, amending her initial statement. “Maybe a few things, but you would have never had to submit yourself to being scrubbed down with nail polish remover.”

  He’d forgotten about that. The distance of time allowed him to laugh at the memory. “I guess I should count myself lucky that I even survived my childhood with you around.”

  “That goes double for me,” she countered.

  He looked at her incredulously. Was she kidding? Or did she think he had amnesia? There were times she’d made his life a living hell.

  “You? Ha!”

  “What do you mean, ‘ha’?” she challenged, ready to go a few rounds with him right now, the party and her mother notwithstanding.

  “You were Kara Calhoun. You were invincible. As invincible,” he recalled, “as the comic-book heroine your dad named you after.”

  He’d thought that? Somehow, she found it difficult to believe. But then, if he didn’t believe it, why had he just said it? Agreeing to her fallibility would have been more in keeping with his regular behavior, at least as it applied to her.

  Something to puzzle over later, Kara told herself. Right now, they had mothers to fool.

  “All water under the bridge,” she said with a shrug, getting out of his car.

  Rising, he closed the door on his side. “Gee, that’s a clever saying. Mind if I use it sometime?”

  “And we’re back,” she commented. But rather than being cryptic, she coupled the comment with a grin that she flashed at him.

  A grin, Dave thought, that was oddly and perversely appealing. Which only meant that he needed to get in out of the sun before his brain was completely fried, he decided as he rounded the back of his vehicle and stepped onto the sidewalk next to Kara.