The Guy Most Likely To...: Underneath It AllCan't Get You Out of My HeadA Moment Like This

by Leslie Kelly; Janelle Denison; Julie Leto

  He arched against her, high and hard, making her gasp as he filled her body, heart and soul. “Imagine the gossip we’ll start. You all glowing from recent sex, wearing a Playboy pendant around your neck.”

  She smiled, for once not minding that she’d be the center of speculation. Not when it meant she’d landed the greatest guy ever.

  * * * * *

  Julie Leto

  A Moment Like This

  To Janelle and Leslie.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  1

  Ten years ago…

  St. Aloysius High School

  “YOU’RE USING YOUR TONGUE wrong.”

  Erica Holt sat up straighter and adjusted her headphones. The computerized French instructor she’d been practicing with for the past hour spoke again, this time making no further reference to Erica’s tongue. But wait…how could the disembodied voice know if Erica was using her mouth correctly? The school’s Listening Lab computer program wasn’t that interactive.

  When she felt a tap on her shoulder, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “You’re using your tongue wrong,” the guy standing behind her repeated.

  Erica blinked, confused. No one was supposed to be in the school after four-thirty, least of all Scott Ripley. She was only there because she had a special pass from the headmaster. But of all the people who might have stumbled into the classroom specifically equipped for foreign language students to practice their pronunciations, she never expected to see him.

  Did he even go to class?

  The Class of 2002’s most notorious bad boy grabbed one of the St. Aloysius navy blue chairs and twirled it backward to sit. He was still talking to her—something she was pretty sure he’d never done in the four years they’d been in school together—but she couldn’t hear him because the female voice in her headphones was insisting she repeat something about taking a shower.

  Or maybe she was talking about bedtime. Erica wasn’t sure.

  She yanked off the headgear, taking with it the dark gold uniform headband she’d worn all day. Her hair was probably a mess. Not that it mattered. This was Rip Ripley. Her physical appearance made no difference to him. He didn’t waste his time with girls who didn’t put out…and if there was one thing Erica was known for in the hallowed halls of St. Aloysius, it was her sterling reputation.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” she said.

  “And you’re not supposed to pronounce your Rs as if you’ve never been kissed.”

  She shoved the headphones back on her head and turned back to her computer. She wasn’t going to let Rip be such a…such a guy…around her. Despite attending the same small private school for going on four years, they’d never exchanged more than a few words. Not even when his aunt and uncle—his guardians since his parents weren’t around for reasons that had spawned some of the most outrageous rumors ever spread around Chicago’s Oak Park neighborhood—had her family over to their estate for parties or fundraisers.

  By unspoken agreement, they ignored each other. She was, by nature, a very friendly girl. She liked socializing and didn’t really know anyone at St. Aloysius she hadn’t chatted with at one point or another. Even freshmen.

  Except for Rip.

  She decided not to change the rules now. Not when she had an oral French exam tomorrow and she was so close to failing. Only a promise to secure her teacher an invitation to an exclusive Matisse showing at the Art Institute had convinced him not to call her parents. But the event was in three weeks and her mom and dad would be there. She’d bought herself twenty-one short days to turn her low D into at least a B, or she’d be grounded for the rest of the semester.

  When Rip yanked her headphones off again, she squealed, not so much in surprise, but in frustration.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Trying to talk to you,” he answered. “You’re being rude.”

  “I’m being rude? You’re the one who snuck in here uninvited. It’s after four-thirty. No students are supposed to be in the school unless under the direct supervision of a coach, faculty member or approved staff.”

  “Wow,” he said, dropping back down onto his seat. His raven-dark hair swung over one eye, emphasizing the intense blue of the one still locked on her. “Do you purposefully memorize all the school rules or do you just have one of those photographic memories so you can’t help it?”

  She pressed her lips together tightly. “I’m student council president. It’s my job to know all the rules.”

  “Ah,” he said, leaning back so that his chair was balanced precariously on the chair’s hind legs. “But is it your job to enforce them?”

  “No.”

  “Then lighten up, Holt. I’m not here to destroy school property. Well, not now that I know you’re here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  His mouth crooked up at the corner into a half grin that made Erica understand why just about every girl in school was willing to shimmy out of her panties for him—and most of them had, if the rumors proved true.

  “It means this is your lucky day,” he said. “You averted the brilliant plan I had for, um, updating the Listening Lab computers so they repeated a series of translated limericks. As a reward, you get a free French lesson.”

  “You don’t speak French,” she sniped, then before he could counter her claim, she amended, “And voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir doesn’t count.”

  He combed his hair back, his blue eyes wide for a split second before he burst into laughter. “Do you even know what that means? Or what it would mean if you said it right?”

  Heat rose up from deep in Erica’s belly and shot straight to the apples of her cheeks. She’d made the stupid mistake of taking French 1 in her freshman year and putting off French 2 until she was a senior, but she’d seen Moulin Rouge!

  Six times.

  “Yes, I know what it means. I figured it was the one French phrase you would know. Intimately.”

  She arched a brow, just to make sure he understood that she was fully informed about his reputation as a player. From the way he chuckled, he clearly got the message.

  But when he grabbed her hand and tugged her toward him, she nearly lost her breath. His eyes locked with hers, and then he spoke in perfectly accented French that would have made her teacher weep. She only picked up a few words. The ones she was pretty much sure meant things like hidden, secret and forbidden.

  “I could help you,” he offered.

  It took a split second for Erica’s brain to register that he’d switched back to English.

  She pulled out of his grasp. “How do you speak so fluently?”

  He shrugged. “I have an ear for languages. Besides, Monsieur Bernard doesn’t take it so seriously when I show up a few minutes late for his class, so I actually go most of the time. I’m taking Advanced Conversational French 4.”

  “We don’t have that course here,” Erica said. She not only knew the student handbook back to front, she knew the course offerings.

  “It’s special study designed to ensure I show up for at least one class on a regular basis. And it gives me one more qualification for being your tutor.”

  “What’s the other qualification?” she asked.

  His gaze drifted to her mouth and when he licked his lips, she remembered what he’d said when he first spoke to her—about her using her tongue wrong. But despite the electric thrill that danced through her bloodstream unbidden and unappreciated, Erica knew better than to go down that road with Rip Ripley.

  She liked her good reputation. She banked on it. A girl could get far in life when people always expected her to do the right thing.

  She dropped the headphones into the bin. “No, thanks.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t
know, because you don’t usually speak to me, much less offer to teach me…”

  To teach her…what? French? Or French kissing?

  The prospect shot a second shiver through her system—one she’d deny until the day she died.

  “You don’t exactly talk to me, either,” he countered.

  “I talk to everyone,” she said. It was a point of pride for her. She’d even made small talk with the people she didn’t like, if the situation required it. Her real estate mogul father and socialite mother had always taught her to keep her friends close and her enemies closer.

  Problem was, Rip was neither friend nor foe. He existed in her universe, but only on the fringes. They saw each other. She included him in collective “hellos” whenever she passed him hanging out with his buddies in the hall, but otherwise, each pretty much pretended the other didn’t exist.

  “Yes, I know. You are the perfect little politician, wrapping everyone in this school around your efficient little finger so they’ll do your bidding on the prom committee or during food drives without complaint. Hey, I’m not judging,” he said when she opened her mouth to object. “I’m impressed. You’d think you’d have a few haters somewhere, but I’ve never found any.”

  She arched a brow. “You were looking?”

  He grinned, eliciting another simmering ripple through her body. “Not with as much energy as I put into figuring out how to reprogram the bell system so it lets us out a minute earlier every two days, but I keep my ear to the ground.”

  Erica shook her head, making a mental note to suggest that the headmaster have the bell system rechecked while she marveled at the fact that Rip Ripley thought about her enough to try and ferret out if she had any closeted enemies.

  “And what have you discovered?”

  He clucked his tongue as if wildly disappointed. “You’re kind of boring.”

  “Compared to you, Jack Black is boring.”

  “So you listen to gossip about me, too? Sweet.”

  “A girl would have to be deaf not to hear gossip about you. I used to think you started half of the rumors yourself.”

  “And now?”

  She thrust her hands onto her hips. “Now I think you take a lot of pleasure in making sure everything said about you is true.”

  He patted himself on the back. “Someone has to liven things up in this mausoleum. Look, as you so generously pointed out, I’m not exactly supposed to be hanging around here after hours. I may or may not have been warned by the headmaster that if he caught me breaking yet another of this prison’s stupid rules, I’d be assigned to lunch duty. And while I’m pretty sure I can figure out a way to rock a hairnet, I’d rather not cut into my social hour with duties best left to the lunch ladies. Do you want my help or not?”

  “I don’t understand why you’re offering.”

  “Neither do I, but it’s real and it’s your call. No one has to know that you’re letting the big, bad Rip Ripley into your bedroom at night.”

  She scowled, not angry that he’d make such a suggestion, but that her belly would flip-flop a little at the thought. “Neutral location. Somewhere no one will see us. I don’t need anyone thinking we’re, you know, together, or anything.”

  “No, you definitely don’t want anyone to think that. Should we work out a secret code to communicate with or will exchanging cell phone numbers be enough?”

  Erica took a deep breath. In her seventeen short years, she’d learned that making the right choice in difficult situations wasn’t all that hard. She just thought about what her father would do, or her mother, and she’d never been disappointed in the outcome.

  But she couldn’t rely on her parents for guidance this time. If they knew about her failing grade, they’d yank her straight out of her extracurricular activities. If she went to her teacher for more help than access to the Listening Lab, he might break his promise not to contact her parents until progress reports. She couldn’t even access her savings account to pay for a proper tutor without alerting her family—and if she asked any of her other friends for help, they’d gossip about how St. Aloysius’s “golden girl” was flunking French 2.

  She had no option but trust the one guy in school who had a reason to keep her secret. If anyone found out that Rip Ripley was hanging out with Erica Holt, his bad boy rep would be ruined for good.

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  “Okay,” he repeated, his eyes flashing with an emotion Erica couldn’t identify for sure—but if she hadn’t known better, she might have thought it was…anticipation.

  Present day

  SCOTT RIPLEY TUGGED his duffel out of his saddlebag, grunting at the weight. He should have left some of his crap at his aunt and uncle’s house, where he’d stopped right after hitting town, but as he’d shown up in the middle of their bridge club, he’d opted to keep his visit short.

  He had, however, promised to return for Sunday dinner. The prospect yanked a reluctant smile out of him. For years, he’d hated everything about his teen years—including the family that had taken him in after his father’s arrest and his mother’s overdose. He’d certainly made himself the bane of his aunt and uncle’s existence, though he always stopped short of anything too serious—just enough to make him a serious pain in the ass and cost his uncle a fortune.

  The man had spent hundreds—no, thousands—paying off business owners and school officials so that Rip’s infractions didn’t permanently scar his future. Now he was back in town with his proverbial hat in his hand, not to collect cover-up money, but to find funding for his foundation’s newest program. He wasn’t about to ask his uncle for a dime, but his wealthy classmates were another story.

  In retrospect, high school hadn’t been a total waste of time. He’d learned some things, made some friends. He hadn’t been anxious to attend his reunion, but he’d make the best of it—a prospect that brightened when he heard the rumble of a well-made American hog coming up behind him.

  So far, his was the only bike parked in the motorcycle lot of the Celebrations Resort. The closer the Harley got, the louder his blood pounded in his ears. For those formative teenage years, hopping onto the back of his ride and tearing through the neighborhoods of suburban Chicago on his way to meaner, more familiar streets had been the only thing that had saved his sanity. He loved the machines with a passion that skirted perilously close to obsession.

  The hungry growl of the approaching Twin Cam 103™ engine was only foreplay. When he caught sight of the rider—a wet dream from the cut of her boots to the curves of her body—his prospects for the weekend ratcheted up to fantasy fulfillment.

  She rolled to a stop in front of him, but didn’t power down.

  “Get on,” she said.

  The undeniably sultry, unmistakably feminine voice was barely audible over the engine, but even with her face shield down on her helmet, he knew she was hot. Clue one? Glossy red lips. Clue two? Flawless skin on her jaw, neck and cleavage. Clue three? The confident way she sat on her Harley-Davidson Softail Deluxe.

  Oh, yeah. Hot as hell.

  “Do I know you?” he asked, lowering his sunglasses.

  “Not as well as you should,” she replied, turning her helmeted head toward the tight space behind her. “But if you get on, you can change that.”

  He put his glasses back on. Things like this didn’t happen to him every day—but he couldn’t say it hadn’t happened before. But this wasn’t the Greased Handlebar out in Bakersfield or Sam’s Slaughterhouse on the South Side. This was a five-star resort and this woman, despite the leather and denim gift wrap, was no ordinary back warmer.

  At first glance, she looked entirely suited for the sleek machine between her legs. Her denim jeans were ripped at strategic intervals just beneath her knee and at midthigh. Her leather vest clung to curves that filled the supple hide with just the right amount of feminine flesh. And her boots—black-heeled and scuffed—could kick a man squarely in his family jewels the second he got out of line.

  “As enticing
as your offer is, I don’t ride with bikers I don’t know,” he replied.

  “Who says you don’t know me?”

  Rip narrowed his gaze, wondering who this vixen could possibly be. In the ten years since he’d fulfilled his classmates’ senior superlative by being the “Guy Most Likely to Ride out of Town on a Harley”—an award they’d created just for him when a drug-dealing classmate had beat him to “Mostly Likely to Spend Time in Prison”—he’d never once imagined that any of the debutantes from St. Aloysius High School would use their trust funds to buy a hog.

  But people changed. If this chick knew him—and he was certain she did—somewhere underneath the tanned and dyed cowhide of her vest and ripped-up jeans was a prep school sweetheart in new, improved packaging.

  The question was, which one?

  “What are you afraid of?” she asked, curling her hands and revving her engines, making it harder to ignore her challenge—or identify her voice.

  “The only thing I’m afraid of is you mishandling that machine,” he replied.

  Her crimson lips curled into a cocky grin. “Trust me, Rip. I can handle a hell of a lot more than you can imagine.”

  Rip stuffed his duffel into the saddlebag and locked his bike.

  As he strapped on his helmet, she wiggled a little farther up the leather seat, drawing his eyes to her sweet little backside. He tried to imagine the curve of her ass in the pleated plaid of St. Aloysius High School’s school uniform, but why go back to the past when the present was so much better? Though he’d spent a good portion of his school days concentrating on the sassy swing of his schoolmates’ backsides rather than his books, he hadn’t memorized them. Like the elements on the periodic table, there were just too many to remember. But this one felt pert and tight against his inner thighs and her waist barely required one arm to wrap around.

  “Where’re we going?” he asked as she eased the bike around a curve that led to the parking lot exit.