The International Kissing Club

by Ivy Adams

  “Come here.” He snuggled her against him, one hand cupping the back of her head and pressing her face into the curve between his neck and shoulder while the other stroked her back soothingly.

  They lay there like that for a few minutes, not speaking, not kissing, not doing anything but breathing in the scent of each other. Feeling each other’s hearts beat. As Sebastian’s warmth seeped into her, Piper felt herself relax. It was okay. This was Sebastian. She could do this.

  She reached down, rubbed her fingers over his stomach.

  He stopped her, brought her hand back up to his chest. “Piper, we don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for,” he said.

  She leaned forward, kissed him. “It’s okay. I do—”

  He kissed her to shut her up, a soft, gentle brushing of his lips against hers. “I know you haven’t done this before, and maybe halfway around the world isn’t where it should happen for the first time.”

  His words confused her, since she couldn’t imagine being this close to anyone else. Ever. She’d thought he felt the same way. “But I thought you wanted—”

  He pulled her back down, rolled over on top of her so that she couldn’t hide. Couldn’t protect herself from the tenderness in his eyes. “I do want to.” He laughed. “Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean I want to push you into it.”

  “You’re not!”

  “Okay, then, that doesn’t mean I want to see you push yourself into it.” He kissed her again. “Let’s just relax, see what happens, okay?”

  She nodded as relief and love and happiness exploded inside her. The tension and worry she’d barely let herself acknowledge drained out of her, and she wrapped her arms around Sebastian, hugging him as tightly as she could. Back in Texas, the boys she knew would never have thought twice if they’d believed they could go all the way with a girl. That Sebastian cared enough about her, about what she wanted, not to pressure her, was awesome. Amazing. Wonderful. Was there any doubt why she was so crazy in love with him?

  He kissed her again, then rolled back onto his side. “So, tell me about this art project. What’s your teacher’s problem?”

  “It’s not her problem. It’s mine,” she said. “I can’t seem to get anything right.”

  “Can I see what you’re doing? Maybe I can help.”

  “What, now?” she asked.

  “Not right now,” he answered with a smile. “I don’t want to let you go yet.”

  She didn’t want to let him go, either. Not now. Maybe not ever. How could she, when he knew her so well? When he’d known—even before she had—that she wasn’t ready to make love with him yet, no matter how crazy she was about him.

  Instead, she wanted to study him, to learn everything about him. They talked and touched, kissed and cuddled. She told him about the pig incident and Germaine, and even about her mother. Things she’d never thought she could share with another person, at least not without feeling burning humiliation. But with Sebastian it was easy; he just accepted. And when it was his turn, he told her about why he loved to sculpt, about how he was afraid all his knowledge about art was just a substitute for real talent, that he was no more than a hack who’d never live up to the artists who came before him. After a while they got hungry. They went to the kitchen and ate crusty bread with cheese and some round, fat grapes that Sebastian insisted on feeding to her, one by one. Then they went back to his bedroom and cuddled some more, talked some more.

  It was the best day of her life, one she knew she was going to hold on to forever. She wanted to sketch what she was feeling, to create a memento of this day that couldn’t fade. When she was back in Texas she wanted to be able to pull out the memory and examine it over and over again, to wrap herself up in it so that when the stupid football players started in on her she wouldn’t care. Because she would know what it was like to have had this one, perfect moment. But to do that, she would have to move and she wasn’t yet ready to give up the warmth of Sebastian’s arms.

  Eventually Sebastian fell asleep—between school, his sculpting, and spending time with her, he hadn’t been getting more than four or five hours of sleep a night. For a while, she just watched him. Brushed his hair back from his forehead. Traced the strong lines of his face with soft fingertips. Trailed gentle kisses over his jaw.

  But eventually the need to sketch him grew overwhelming. She slid out from under his arm, grabbed a stray piece of paper and a pencil, and began to draw …

  The strong curve of his shoulder …

  The well-muscled line of his back …

  The heavy roundness of his bicep.

  He was so beautiful, so unbelievably beautiful, that she wanted to capture every nuance of him.

  As she sketched, she marveled at the strange familiarity of the moment. She’d sketched tons of people in her life, some aware of what she was doing, some unaware, but never before had it felt like this. So personal, so emotional, so intimate. More intimate, she imagined, than even having sex with him would have been. This watching him while he slept, trying to use her talent to record on paper not just what he looked like but how she felt about him as well.

  At first, she hadn’t been sure she was good enough to express all that. But as Piper worked, she realized that whatever funk had been bugging her in art class didn’t extend to her time with Sebastian. Drawing him was easy.

  Smiling, she shaded the angle of his jaw before moving on to the curve of his ear and the pronounced sharpness of his cheekbone. He stirred but didn’t wake up, so she kept sketching.

  She worked for a long time, until her hand ached and her fingers cramped. She knew it was time to stop—past time—but she couldn’t make herself put the pencil down. Her time in France—her time with Sebastian—was finite. Limited. With each moment that passed, it was slowly leaking away.

  Sebastian stirred eventually, ran his hand over the spot next to him on the bed. When he didn’t find Piper, his eyes popped open and he searched the room for her. Their eyes met and he smiled, a sweet, sleepy curve of his lips that arrowed right through her. He held out a hand and Piper took it, climbing onto the bed beside him and running her fingers lightly down his back.

  As she settled next to him, Piper felt her eyes start to close. She fought sleep as long as she could, made herself a promise as she lay there listening to Sebastian breathe. She had four weeks left in Paris—to explore her art, the city, her feelings for Sebastian, and this place that had taught her so much about herself. She wasn’t going to waste a second of it.

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  Messages

  Between Piper and Cassidy:

  Piper

  OMG!!! Who knew sculptors were so good with their hands!

  Cassidy

  I don’t even want to know what that means.

  Piper

  All I’m saying is OMG!!!

  Chapter 18

  Cassidy

  The boat moored at the end of the marina’s wooden dock was huge and sleek. Its hull gleamed fire-engine red in the sun, the mahogany stained wood on its deck polished to brilliance.

  “You said your parents owned a sailboat, Lucas.” Cassidy came to a full stop on the dock. She reached up and ripped off the motion sickness patch behind her ear. She wasn’t going to need it—this thing was the size of a freaking yacht.

  “What? It’s a sailboat. There’s the sail and everything.” He pointed to the gleaming white sail that towered into the wide blue sky above them.

  “I thought your dad was a banker and your mom stays at home.”

  “My mom does stay at home, when she’s not hosting charity events.”

  “And your dad?” Lucas looked everywhere but her eyes while Cass waited for him to answer.

  He sighed before finally speaking. “Technically, he is a banker—he just also owns the bank.”

  “Owns the bank? Which
bank? Because the family who owns the local bank in Paris doesn’t have a hundred-foot sailboat.”

  “It’s more like twenty-three meters, which is about—”

  “Stop avoiding the question, Lucas.”

  “NSW Bank.”

  “You mean that bank?” she asked, pointing to the skyscraper on the other side of the harbor with the letters NSW emblazoned across the top. “So when you were telling me that your dad wants you to work with him, it never occurred to you once in the past six weeks to mention that it would be as chairman of the board.”

  “Why are you upset, Cass?”

  “Because you’re rich. Very rich.”

  “No, my parents are rich,” Lucas stated matter-of-factly. She shot him a you-know-what-I-mean look.

  Cassidy’s already frayed nerves unraveled as the wide chasm between their backgrounds expanded to Grand Canyon widths underneath her Payless sandals. All those golden-god quips didn’t seem so funny now that she knew he really was made of gold.

  “Cass, it doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s because you’re the one with the money. It matters a whole lot to me.”

  He frowned. “It’s not that I was hiding it from you.” He faced her and put his hands on her hips to pull her to him. “It’s that”—he bent and kissed her earlobe—“I had other things”—then he traced the curve of her jaw—“on my mind.”

  No. She refused to respond to such blatant attempts to distract her. She was angry. How had it slipped his mind to tell her, someone he’d seen and talked to every day for the past month, that his family was on the other side of well-off? That he was a friggin’ mogul. Or at least the heir to one.

  “Don’t be mad, Cass. It’s nothing, I promise. My family has money. That shouldn’t change anything between us, right?” He brushed her lips, and she leaned into him, but caught herself at the last moment and stiffened.

  “No, it doesn’t. But you should have told me.”

  “I’m sorry. And I promise, I wasn’t trying to hide it—it just really isn’t a big deal. So, are we good?”

  Finally she nodded and begrudgingly said, “Okay.”

  Lucas smiled. “Good. Then kiss me.” That she was happy to do. Too happy.

  “Come on, I want you to meet my family,” he said, and led her to the end of the long wooden dock. “Hello!” He helped her step down onto the deck.

  A beautiful blond woman popped her head up from below. Ah, this must be the cruise director, Cassidy thought.

  “Hello, my darling boy,” she called out. She wore a pink polo top and white linen pants with silver sandals, and had a figure that would make even Piper’s mom green. She crossed the deck to them and wrapped her arms around Lucas before leaving a smudge of lipstick on his cheek.

  “Mum, this is Cassidy. Cassidy, this is my mum, Shanna.”

  “Cassidy.” She smiled and before Cassidy could do anything about it, Lucas’s mom embraced her as well. “I’m delighted you could join us today. Lucas has told me so much about you already.”

  Cassidy shifted on her feet, a bit overwhelmed by the welcome. “Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. McCann.” Lucas must have sensed her awkwardness, because he slipped his hand in hers and gave it a little squeeze.

  Two other girls climbed up top. “Hey, li’l man,” said the first, her long pale-blond hair swinging down her back. Lucas caught her up in a hug as well.

  “Cassidy, this is my older sister, Kara,” he said before pausing to hug the other girl. Her hair was darker than her sister’s and cut into a stylish bob swept to the side of her face, a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “And this is my oldest sister, Julie.”

  He was so tall and solid, it was tough for Cassidy to imagine Lucas as the baby in his family. But the way all the McCann women fussed over him, she could see he reveled in the position.

  “Where’ve you been? We’ve waited hours for you, Lucas.” Julie flicked him affectionately on the ear.

  He ducked. “Am I the only one in this family who likes to sleep past dawn?”

  “Past dawn, no; past noon, yes.” His mother smoothed down the collar of his green shirt. “You know your father. He was ready to cast off when day broke. If he had his way, we’d live on this boat.”

  “We will live on this boat,” came a booming voice behind them. Cassidy looked over Shanna’s shoulder to see an older version of Lucas coming toward them. Tan and fit, in a pair of khaki pants and a wind jacket, with only a hint of silver in his sand-colored hair, Mr. McCann was a striking man. “Just a few more years, and I plan to circumnavigate the globe with her.” He held out his hand to shake Lucas’s. “Hello, Son,” he said.

  After the loving exuberance of Lucas’s mom and sisters, Cassidy couldn’t help but notice the distant formality that existed between Lucas and his father. “Hello, Dad. This is Cassidy.”

  Cassidy shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. McCann.” The whole family was so stupidly attractive, she almost began to tremble with the thought of her imperfections. The refrain from the Sesame Street song “One of These Things Is Not Like the Others” kept replaying in the back of her mind.

  “Please, when I’m not at the office, I prefer Charles. Have you been sailing before, Cassidy?”

  She stifled a snort. Unless you counted paddling a canoe in the stock tank on Izzy’s ranch, then no.

  Mr. McCann sailed the boat (named Charlie’s Angels—a cheeky reference to Shanna, Julie, and Kara) through the harbor, past the iconic landmarks, and out to the Tasman Sea, heading south along the coast. Lucas sat by her side the whole time, pointing out the sights and laughing with her while they watched dolphins surf in the boat’s wake.

  It was all so overwhelmingly perfect. And she’d never felt more out of place.

  His family was wonderful, of course. He and his sisters poked and ribbed each other like they were all still children, not grown adults, and his mother, smiling and laughing with her kids, taking everything they did and said in stride. They brought Cassidy into their circle and teased her as if she was one of their own.

  Cassidy, on the other hand, kept waiting for Mr. McCann to pull her aside and try to bribe her to stay away from his son like what happened on the soap operas her Memaw watched. But instead, Charles—as he kept insisting she call him—stood at the wheel all day, except when they’d anchored for lunch in the sheltered cove of a lush green national park. Even then he talked about sailing and the boat—which he loved, the passion for it glittering in his eyes.

  The tension was unmistakable, however, between father and son, though neither acknowledged it. Not even when Lucas mentioned over lunch that he would be competing next week at North Narrabeen Point.

  Charles had stayed quiet, returning to his position behind the wheel to sail them back to Sydney.

  “Can I come watch?” Kara asked her brother. “You won’t embarrass me by wiping out on a puny wave or anything, right? ’Cause I only claim you as my li’l brother when you win.”

  “Can’t wipe out—all the big companies will be there to see me. Want to come, too, Mum?”

  Shanna shook her head vigorously. “No, sweetheart. You know I can’t watch you do that stuff. It’s too dangerous.”

  Later, when his mother and sisters had gone below deck, Lucas sat next to Cass, legs dangling over the side, their arms against the rail. “Will you come watch me compete?”

  “I’d love to,” she answered. He put his arm around her shoulder and she leaned against him. “You know you’re not all that different from your dad,” she said. “Look at him.” They glanced to where Charles stood. “He feels the same about sailing as you do about surfing.”

  Lucas shrugged. “Maybe, but he doesn’t see it that way. He thinks I’m betting my future on a long shot. Julie, she’s an attorney. Kara is studying medicine at university. He wants me to fall in line. But I have to know I gave my dream everything I had before I give up on it.”

  “He’s only like that because he loves you, Lucas. He wan
ts the best for you. You’re lucky. Trust me, having a dad that’s a pain in the ass is better than not having one around at all.”

  “When did your parents divorce?” he asked. Cassidy hesitated. It made her uncomfortable to talk about her whole messed-up family situation when his was so completely opposite. But somehow she knew he wouldn’t judge her, wouldn’t think less of her for something she’d had no control over. Lucas was nothing like the small-minded people from back home. She took a breath and dove in.

  “My parents were never married. My mom got pregnant when she was eighteen and my dad … my dad wanted other things. So he left.”

  “Sounds like a whacker.”

  Cass snorted. She wasn’t quite sure what a “whacker” was, but she could guess at the meaning. “Yeah, I think so, too.”

  “D’ya ever see him?”

  “Not really,” she answered, “though he did pay for me to come on this trip, so I have to give him a little credit.”

  Cassidy was glad Lucas didn’t say something comforting or try to make her feel better about the situation with a sympathetic gesture. That wasn’t why she’d told him about her dad. She’d told him because it was such a huge part of what made her who she was and she’d wanted him to know. They were quiet for a while after that, watching the whitecaps crest and roll.

  “If you don’t get your scholarship, are you going to stay in Paris forever?” Lucas finally asked, breaking the silence between them.

  “God, I hope not. Piper says I can come live with her in Austin when she goes to college, at least until I can afford tuition or get a loan.”

  “You could come back here for university. Maybe I could help you with tuition.”

  For a split second everything in Cassidy’s body came to a complete stop. He couldn’t be serious. There was no way he was serious. She snorted. “Right—I’m going to move to Australia so you can pay for me to go to college. Ha. Very funny.”