It Takes a Hero

by Gina Wilkins

  He could almost picture himself breakfasting with her.

  “Thank you.” She pulled two mugs out of a cabinet. “Do you take anything in your coffee?”

  “No, just black. Do you like to cook?”

  “I rarely go to the trouble just for myself, but I enjoy hosting the occasional dinner party.”

  “What’s your specialty?”

  “Pasta dishes, mostly. They’re easy, healthy and very versatile.”

  “I love pasta, any way it’s prepared.”

  Kristin turned to lean back against the counter behind her while they waited for the coffee to brew. “Do you like to cook?”

  “I’ve never learned,” he admitted. “It’s something I’ve meant to try, but I never seem to find the time. I can scramble eggs, grill cheese and nuke a few things, but that’s pretty much the extent of my culinary repertoire.”

  “Cooking is really not that hard. It’s simply a matter of following written directions.”

  “Maybe you could help me cook something sometime.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed.

  Did he hear doubt in her voice? And if so, was it because she found it unlikely that they would share a cooking lesson—or that they would even see each other again?

  If she thought he was only making polite conversation, that he had no interest in seeing her again after this evening ended, then she was mistaken. He hadn’t come to Cutter’s Point to fulfill an obligation—not primarily, anyway. He’d come because he’d wanted to see Kristin again. And he already suspected he would want to see her again after tonight.

  He just wasn’t at all sure she felt the same way. And, again, he was struck by how unusual it was for him to be so uncertain about a woman’s interest.

  Perry wasn’t the type to hesitate for long. His see-the-hill, take-the-hill attitude had carried him a long way in his career and had occasionally spilled over into his personal life. He called on that determination now as he straightened away from the counter and took a step toward Kristin. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to do all evening.”

  It was obvious that she didn’t need to ask what he meant She held up a hand, palm toward him, a gesture of warning. “Perry...”

  “Kristin,” he cut in, moving relentlessly forward. “Have I mentioned that you have the cutest nose I’ve ever seen?”

  She blinked. “Er...my nose?”

  “Yeah. Cute as all-get-out, as my grandmother used to say.” He took the final step toward her. The hand she’d extended to stop him ended up resting against his chest.

  Kristin recovered very quickly from her momentary discomfiture. “Nevertheless...”

  He was amused by her wording. “I also have a thing for your mouth. That adorable almost-dimple at the right corner makes me just itch to taste it.”

  A wave of pink washed across her cheeks. She made a visible effort to speak firmly. “I know I said earlier that I didn’t mind a little flirtation, but...”

  He shook his head. “I was indulging in ‘a little flirtation’ at dinner. This is something different.”

  She hadn’t removed her hand from his chest. Her fingers flexed against the fabric of his shirt. “You’re confusing me again,” she complained.

  He smiled and lowered his head. “Good,” he murmured. And covered her mouth with his.

  His final coherent thought was that he was glad she hadn’t pushed him away—that she was, in fact, kissing him back. And then her lips parted softly beneath his and he couldn’t think at all.

  6

  PERRY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND what happened when he kissed Kristin Cole. He didn’t hear bells or music or fireworks—exactly. The ground didn’t shift beneath his feet, nor the world tilt on its axis. But there was definitely something different about her kisses. Something that could all too easily become addictive.

  After a long, very pleasant interlude, Kristin seemed to suddenly realize what she was doing. She pulled back with a gasp. “The, uh...the coffee’s ready,” she said, as if that announcement were supremely important

  “It can wait,” he replied, and pulled her back into his arms.

  With a little murmur of what might have been resignation, she wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted her face to his. Perry had to forcibly restrain himself from devouring her. Her lips were so soft, her mouth so sweet. She was warm and vibrant in his arms, her curves seemingly tailored to his hands. She made a muffled sound of pleasure when he stroked his palms from her shoulder blades to her hips.

  Maybe, he thought, she was beginning to like him after all.

  Lack of oxygen finally forced him to raise his head. “If you knew how often I’ve thought of kissing you during the past two weeks...” he murmured, then proceeded to do so again.

  It was Kristin who drew back the next time, taking a deep, shaky breath. “This really isn’t a good idea,” she said, her voice low and unsteady.

  He nuzzled against her temple. “Then why does it feel so good?”

  Her neck arched when his lips touched the soft spot just in front of her ear. She liked that, he thought with satisfaction.

  There was a new, husky edge to her voice when she spoke again. “We hardly know each other.”

  He kissed her ear again and smiled when a shiver betrayed her. “I think we’re getting to know each other pretty well.”

  “This is not the way I usually get to know someone.”

  He noticed that she didn’t remove her arms from around his neck. He lowered his head again and spoke against her lips. “Maybe, just this once, you could make an exception.”

  She murmured something incoherent into his mouth. He hoped she was agreeing with him. She certainly felt agreeable as she moved even more closely against him, her breasts pressing against his chest.

  Yielding to temptation, he slid his hand from her hip upward, his palm itching with impatience to feel her softness. And then his elbow bumped the shallow wicker basket he’d noticed earlier, the one filled with envelopes and papers. The basket tumbled off the counter, spilling its contents around their feet.

  Slick move, Goodman, he thought in disgust as Kristin pushed away from him. Why was it that things always went wrong when he was around Kristin?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, kneeling to help her gather the contents of the fallen basket. ”I’m not usually quite so clumsy.”

  “I’m sure you’re not,” she said, sounding amused as she reached for a twenty-cents-off coupon for grape jelly.

  Perry pulled a scrap of paper from beneath the dishwasher, his mouth twisting as he recognized Kristin’s illegible shorthand. For all he knew, it was a note about what a geek he was.

  An envelope had fallen behind him, its contents spread around it. Photographs, he noticed as he gathered them up. Kristin was in most of them, and she looked so pretty he couldn’t help but stop and admire them. She’d been wearing denim shorts that showed her legs to their best advantage, and a sleeveless top that made the most of her curves. Her hair was down to her shoulders and gleamed in the sunlight. The photos seemed to have been taken at an amusement park. In several of them, Kristin was shown with a towheaded little girl of perhaps seven or eight. In others, she stood by a good-looking, sandy-haired guy who usually had an arm around her.

  They looked, Perry thought grimly, like a very happy family.

  Kristin reached for the photos. “I’ll put those back in the envelope.”

  “Looks like you were having a good time,” he commented, wondering how to ask who the man and child were and what they meant to Kristin.

  “My mother took those last summer. We were at an amusement park with some...friends.” Her expression was pensive as she looked down at a picture of herself standing between the man and the child, all of them laughing, their arms entwined.

  Perry wondered what had happened to make her so sad when she looked at the photographs. It was all he could do not to ask all the questions swirling in his head. There were so many things he wanted to know about Kristin—every
thing, actually. Not the least of which was what it would be like when they finally made love. He deliberately used the word when rather than if, hoping positive thinking would pay off.

  He looked back down at his feet, finding one remaining photograph facedown on the floor. He picked it up and turned it over. The image made him scowl. Kristin and the man from the other pictures had been captured in an embrace, her arms around his neck, their faces very close together, obviously the prelude to a kiss. And Perry found himself fighting an unexpected surge of sheer masculine possessiveness, an uncharacteristic impulse to bash the guy’s teeth in.

  “Here‘s another,” he said, extending it toward Kristin.

  She took it without looking at him. She gave only a glance to the photograph before stuffing it into the envelope with the others. “That looks like everything,” she said, straightening to set the basket back on the counter.

  Perry rose to his feet. “Kristin—”

  Still refusing to meet his eyes, she stepped far out of his reach. “It’s getting late,” she said with a meaningful look at the wall clock. “Do you still want your coffee before you go?”

  That had been about as subtle as a sledgehammer. She’d offered coffee, so she would give him coffee. But then she would show him the door.

  Something told him there would be little he could do or say to change her mind tonight. The mood had been broken and her defenses were firmly back in place. And he’d have to be an idiot not to know that it had something to do with the man in those photographs.

  He needed to think about this. To decide what his next step should be—and to try to figure out whether he truly wanted to take that step. “It is getting late,” he said, looking automatically at his watch. “Maybe I’d better skip the coffee tonight.”

  She seemed concerned that she’d broken some rule of etiquette. “You’re sure you won’t have a cup before you go?”

  “Thanks, but I’m sure.” He knew if he didn’t leave now, he was only going to try to kiss her again. Or more. Unless he wanted to lose whatever headway he’d made with her, it would be better if he removed himself from temptation.

  She walked him to the door. “Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

  “I’m staying in a hotel close to the airport in Raleigh. I have an early flight tomorrow. I have to be in D.C. for a luncheon.”

  It would have been nice if she’d looked just a little disappointed that he was leaving town. But she only nodded. “Have a safe trip.”

  He turned to her at the door. “There’s just one thing I need to know before I leave.”

  She looked at him a bit doubtfully. “What is it?”

  He kept his eyes focused intently on her face as he asked, “Are you still in love with him?”

  For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. And then she shook her head. “No.”

  The certainty of the single-word response encouraged him. Gave him the courage to lean down and brush a kiss across her cheek. “Then you’ll be hearing from me.”

  She stood very still as he opened the door and stepped outside. He was almost to his car when she called after him. “Perry?”

  He turned to find her standing in her doorway, wringing her hands. “Yes?”

  “My new book...it isn’t going very well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” He waited, knowing there would be more.

  “And I really don’t like politics. I’m afraid it bores me.”

  He wasn’t particularly surprised by that revelation. And since this was hardly the time to go into a dissertation about why every citizen should be interested in politics, he merely nodded and said, “Okay.”

  He didn’t seem to be reacting the way she expected him to. She continued doggedly. “Perry, this is a really bad time for me. And even if it wasn’t, you and I really don’t have much in common.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. We’ll compare notes next time and see how many things we both like.”

  “Next time? I just told you...”

  “Good night, Kristin. You’ll be hearing from me.” He climbed quickly into his car before she could say something he really didn’t want to hear. She was still standing in her doorway when he drove away.

  SOMETIMES WHEN KRISTIN had trouble being creative at the computer, she took a thick pad of unlined paper, a brand new rollerball pen and a glass of iced tea out to her deck. There she could watch the birds and squirrels playing in the trees, and enjoy the small slice of glittering blue lake she could see from her place—as close to lakefront property as she’d been able to afford when she’d bought her house. She would sit in one of her wrought-iron spring rockers, her feet propped in front of her, and the words would often just seem to flow onto the paper.

  After sitting on the deck for more than an hour on this particular afternoon, there were only two words on the paper in front of her. Perry Goodman.

  She ripped the page from the pad and, crumpling it into a ball, threw it to the other side of the deck. “This,” she said aloud, startling a sparrow that had been exploring the deck rail, “is ridiculous.”

  It had been two days since Perry’s visit, and Kristin had been spending entirely too much time since then thinking about him and wondering when she would hear from him again. Not if, but when. He’d made it quite clear that he would be calling again.

  She’d tried not to encourage him to expect anything to happen between them. She was honest enough to acknowledge that a certain chemistry existed between them—okay, there was a lot of chemistry between them, as evidenced by the volatile reactions every time they kissed. She had little doubt that they could have a brief, blazing affair. But brief affairs, blazing or otherwise, were not her style, as she’d tried to tell him before he’d left. She couldn’t imagine anything more developing between them.

  Was it her lack of encouragement that seemed to make him even more determined to pursue her? Was that such a rarity for him that it piqued his male ego, presenting him with a challenge he couldn’t resist?

  Why was she spending so much time worrying about this? All she had to do was say no when he called to ask her out. Or send him away if he showed up on her doorstep again. She had, on occasion, dealt with unwanted male attentions before. Maybe what worried her most was that Perry’s attentions weren’t entirely unwanted.

  “Or maybe,” she said out loud again, “you’re just using Perry as a diversion to keep you from writing.”

  “Who are you talking to, Kristin?”

  Kristin jumped so violently that her pad fell from her lap. “Mother, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” she scolded, one hand on her pounding chest. “I didn’t hear you arrive.”

  Wearing a colorful, flowing ensemble that made her resemble a walking rainbow, Sophie strolled to a chair near Kristin’s and nodded toward the tea pitcher. “That looks good.”

  Kristin leaned forward to nudge her glass toward her mother. “Take this one. I haven’t touched it yet. I’ll get another glass for myself.”

  It took her only a few moments to go into the kitchen for another glass. She used that brief time to compose herself and prepare for a session of maternal grilling. When she returned to the deck, she found her mother sipping her tea and studying the blank pages of Kristin’s writing pad.

  “Apparently, I arrived just as you were getting started,” she commented, tossing the pad on the table. “I’m sorry, dear. I hope I didn’t break your train of thought.”

  “Don’t worry. That train derailed long before you got here,” Kristin said, taking her seat and trying to look unconcerned.

  Sophie lifted an eyebrow. “The writing’s not going well?”

  “No, not today. I’m sort of stuck.”

  Sophie smiled. “I’ve heard that before. Somewhere around the middle of every book, I think.”

  Kristin laughed lightly. “You know me, Mom. Gotta follow the same ol’ routines.”

  Sophie’s smile faded as she studied her daughter’s face. “I do know you. What�
��s wrong, Kristin?”

  Kristin shrugged and made a production of pouring her tea. “Oh, I just have the blues, I guess. What brings you here today, Mom? I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I know. I just had an urge to see my little girl today.”

  Something in her mother’s voice made Kristin look back up with narrowed eyes. “What’s going on?”

  Sophie had never quite mastered an innocent expression. “Why, nothing. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I know you. There’s a reason you decided to drop by today. What is it?”

  Sophie sighed and shook her head. “Actually, there is something I want to discuss with you, but it really isn’t a big deal.”

  Which meant, of course, that it was a big deal. “What is it?”

  “Jack asked me to go to Australia with him. He’s leaving in a few days.”

  Kristin felt her jaw drop. “Australia?”

  Sophie nodded, her cheeks suspiciously pink. “He’s going for a three-week visit to several areas of interest there. It sounds like a fascinating vacation.”

  “And you’re going with him?”

  “I think so. You know how I’ve always wanted to see Australia. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the chance.”

  Kristin shook her head slowly. “I know you’ve always wanted to go there, but are you sure you want to go with Jack? You’re talking about a vacation that will last longer than you’ve actually known the guy.”

  “I’m aware of that. But I like Jack very much. We’ve had a great time together. And I don’t want to miss out on this wonderful opportunity.”

  Kristin was accustomed to her mother’s impulsiveness, but this was a bit different than usual. This time Sophie was talking about going halfway around the world for nearly a month with a man she hardly knew. “I don’t know, Mom. This doesn’t sound like such a good idea to me.”

  Sophie’s left eyebrow rose. “Did I give you the impression I was asking for your permission?”