by Lori Foster
Her face went hot. “No.”
He’d never thought to see Ashley blush. “I refuse to believe it was your fault. Men have it easy when it comes to sex. For a woman it’s more complicated.” His voice dropped. “Pleasure isn’t something that can be rushed or taken for granted.”
“ Okay … This is way out of hand. I’m not going to talk about this.” She snatched up the menu and stared blankly at it.
“Come on, Ash, don’t do that. Don’t shut me out. And don’t judge me by other men.”
Through her teeth, and with her gaze still glued to the plastic menu, she growled, “I’m not.”
He caught the edge of the menu and lowered it so he could see her face. Her cheeks were pink, her gaze elusive. “If other men haven’t encouraged your dynamic personality, especially in bed, then they’re fools.”
She groaned, covered her face, but then spread her fingers to glare at him. “There weren’t any other men.”
He heard the words but they didn’t make sense. “Excuse me?”
“Jesus, Quinton. Hello!” Her palms slapped the booth. “Catch on, will you? There are no past lovers. No bad experiences and no good experiences. None. Nada. I’m a…” Her voice dropped like a stone off a cliff. Another groan, and she went back to hiding behind her hands.
Shock had a stranglehold on his throat. “You’re a…” He had as difficult a time saying it as she had. Finally he rasped, “ Virgin ?”
Her bravado burst to life right before him. Her head snapped up; her lip curled. “Yeah, so?” She actually jutted her chin toward him in defiance. “Don’t say it like it’s a dirty word.”
Quinton stared back. A virgin? With her mouthy comebacks and lack of discretion? Impossible.
Yet… In an absurd way, it sort of made sense. “You’re not ribbing me?”
“Horrible, huh?” Affecting an indolent attitude of unconcern, she slouched back. “I hear there’s an isolated island somewhere that houses other oddities like me.”
Doing his best to reconcile what he knew with what he’d just learned, he shook his head and stared some more.
She snapped her fingers in front of him. “Come alive, Quinton. Now’d be a good time for you to scramble out of here.”
“Scramble out?” He wished for something more intelligent to say, but he couldn’t manage it. He kept thinking of initiating her, being her first. That image obliterated everything else.
“Yeah. Virgins are scary things. What’s the stereotype? Oh yeah. Prudish and pining for marriage. You better get while the getting’s good.”
She was making verbal mincemeat out of him, and he was letting her. He gathered his wits. “No one would ever call you prudish, and I assume if you wanted to be married, you would be.”
The smugness of her grin raked along his nerves. “Haven’t you made enough assumptions to last a lifetime?”
A coffeepot-wielding waitress saved him from having to answer that. She apologized for the delay, and Quinton pulled himself together enough to accept the coffee and quickly peruse the menu.
Without looking at him, Ashley did the same. They both agreed on the “special” of ham, eggs, hashbrowns and toast. By the time the waitress departed with their orders, Quinton had himself back in full command of his senses.
Ashley still acted antagonistic, but now he didn’t mind. Things were starting to come together, at least in bits and pieces. He sipped at his coffee, watched her, and waited.
After several tense moments, she slapped her hand on the table and glared up at him. “Well? Let’s have it.”
“It?”
“You know you’re just dying to laugh.”
He slowly shook his head. “Oh no. Trust me, I’m a long way from humor. But I will tell you that you’ve sealed your fate.”
Her expression darkened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll be your first.” He gave in to a smile. “And honey, I can hardly wait.”
Chapter 3
Idiot, idiot, idiot . Quinton had been hot on her heels before, but now he looked ready to stand up and beat his chest in a primitive claiming. His reaction wouldn’t matter—if she didn’t want him just as much.
But she did.
She’d never survive this.
Through several minutes of silence, she all but squirmed in her seat. Quinton kept scrutinizing her, as if seeing her through new eyes. Or maybe he’d never seen a virgin before. From what she could tell, they were in short supply, especially in her age group.
She felt… naked. She felt defensive. But she didn’t want to be the first to crack.
The waitress brought their food and departed with a friendly but curious smile. Quinton dug in. After several bites, he nodded. “You’re right. It’s delicious.”
Her breakfast could have been unseasoned oatmeal for all that she tasted.
He took his gaze off her long enough to glance around the interior of the diner. “Very quaint atmosphere.” His green eyes were bright with an unspoken dare. “I like the old black-and-white photos of the area.”
Ashley laid down her fork and put her hands together.
“I’ve never eaten in a place like this.” He opened a small packet of apple butter and spread it on his toast. “I like it that you can introduce me to… new things.”
His inexhaustible good humor wore her down. “Okay, I can’t take it.”
“Yes, you can.” He washed down the last of his toast with a drink of coffee.
Her hands were shaking! Her hands never shook, except maybe with exhaustion, but that didn’t apply right now. No, she shook because she was totally out of her element.
“I mean it, Quinton.” She looked up—and got caught in his mesmerizing gaze. “You’re going to have to stay away from me.”
He didn’t smile. “The hell I will.”
Strange how her heartbeat started racing at his refusal. “Look, Quinton, I’m not what you expected. You said so yourself.”
“You’re who I want. That’s all that matters.”
How in the world could he want a twenty-seven-year-old virgin? A virgin who antagonized almost everyone to avoid relationships, a virgin from the wrong side of the tracks. A virgin who, until meeting Quinton, had intended to stay a virgin. “You’re nuts.”
“That’d be your fault. I was perfectly sane before meeting you. An overdose of unrequited desire is what’s pushing me toward the loony bin.” He turned his wrist to see his watch, then laid his napkin on his empty plate. “When will you have some free time again?”
So she could show him new things? She lifted her chin. “I don’t know that I will.”
He groaned as if in pain, then half laughed. “All right, let’s add another notch toward insanity.”
“Quinton…” she warned.
“We can play it your way. But the day after the wedding, all bets are off.”
“Fine, whatever.” What was she saying? Her stomach knotted even as her heart started racing again. “But you agreed to mind your manners till then, and I’m holding you to it.” She needed some time to get used to the idea of opening herself to anyone other than her best friend, May.
“I’m a man of my word. Your little disclosure won’t change that.” He looked at her mouth. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Thank God. She needed to get his mind—and her own—on safer ground. “Like?”
“How is it you’ve never had sex?”
Well hell, his mind hadn’t traveled far at all. “I’ve come close.” Even to her own ears, she sounded aggressive.
“How close?”
Not very. She shrugged. “The typical, I guess.” Oh, how lame. She picked up her coffee cup and started to sip.
“Has any man given you a climax?”
The cup nearly fell out of her hands. She quickly thunked it down to the counter. “You want a blow-by-blow report? Well, forget it. I’m not going to sit here in a restaurant and spell things out for you. Get your jollies somewhere else.”
> “If you want privacy for this discussion, we could sit in my car.”
“Hell, no.” In private the topic would take on new proportions, she didn’t doubt.
His smile appeared again. “All right. Don’t get in a snit.”
Ashley narrowed her eyes. “Are you mocking me?”
This time he actually chuckled aloud. “I’m trying to understand you and the choices you’ve made. That’s all.”
“It wasn’t exactly a choice. More like something that just happened and I decided I didn’t care enough to change the situation.”
He gave her a chastising look. “Men are easy, honey. A glance, a smile—and they’re ready. Especially for someone as attractive as you. You’re definitely a virgin by choice. I just want to know why.”
“You want the nitty-gritty, huh? Fine.” She wasn’t the type who opened up easily, but with Quinton, she wanted to. “It’s tough to get laid when I’ve never even had a boyfriend.”
His surprise lasted one heartbeat “Another deliberate choice, I’m sure.”
“Actually, it wasn’t. You see, my family was poor. Not poor as in, new shoes were hard to come by. Poor as in, we relied on the church and neighbors for clothes and food. Mom and Dad could have worked, but they didn’t. And whenever they did get money, they blew it on things that in no way changed our circumstances.”
“They couldn’t find jobs?”
Ashley toyed with her coffee cup. She hadn’t seen her folks in ages. Sadly, she didn’t miss them at all. “They could’ve if they’d wanted them, but they enjoyed their leisure time too much. I mean, what’s better than sitting on the couch all day with a cold beer, a cigarette, and the soaps?” She laughed, remembering how, even as a little kid, she’d known they weren’t good people. “Dad had been a truck driver, but after he got laid off, he spent all his time bitching about the company instead of looking for new work. He wanted everyone to feel sorry for him.”
“How long was he off work?”
“From the time I was ten until I skipped out at seventeen. After that I don’t know. I haven’t been back.”
“You left your home at seventeen?”
“Yeah. I was a real crusader, out to prove something. I’ve forgotten what.” But she didn’t want to talk about that. The memories sucked big-time, and rehashing them wouldn’t change a thing. “Trust me, leaving was the best decision I ever made.”
He grew very solemn. “Then home must have been pretty tough.”
She mustered a heavy dose of sarcasm. “Mostly it was an embarrassment. I had a self-proclaimed ’stay at home’ mom, who was determined that I’d be different. I wasn’t allowed to do… anything—but that was mostly because anything I might have done would have required her involvement. Our house was a dump. Our yard was a jungle, housing a bad septic system that could be seen and smelled for blocks. It seemed everyone who looked at me did so with pity.”
“Jesus.” He reached for her hand, but she didn’t want sympathy any more now than she had as a child.
She slid into the corner of the booth and affected a casual slouch. “Yeah, well obviously if I’d had any friends, which I didn’t, I wouldn’t have brought them home with me. I didn’t like being at my house, so subjecting anyone else to it was out of the question.”
“You had no friends at all?”
She didn’t tell him that other kids had ridiculed her. “They didn’t want me around, and I didn’t want to be around them.”
“I’m sorry.”
Through a haze of remembered humiliation and learned aggression, she saw the compassion in Quinton’s eyes. It made her stomach churn. She considered making a run for it, but that felt too cowardly.
Instead, she resorted to more sarcasm. Staring him straight in his sexy green eyes, totally deadpan, she said, “And then my dog died.”
So much horror filled his gaze that she half laughed and took pity on him. “Ah, buck up, Buttercup. I was just funnin’ you.”
“Funning me?”
“I didn’t have a dog, Quinton. In fact, I’ve never had any pet. One kid was more trouble than my parents wanted. No way in hell would they have put up with an animal too.”
Irritation overrode his earlier emotions. “It’s hardly a joking matter.”
“You were getting all sappy on me. I thought you were about to cry.”
He grumbled under his breath, which only made her chuckle again. “It wasn’t all that bad, seriously. I made friends with May, and when you meet her, you’ll see that one friend like May is worth a million others.”
“A friend is not the same as family.”
But in this case it was. She shook her head, not about to share that thought aloud. “If you knew my family, you’d know that May is much, much better.”
He still appeared disgruntled with her, but he let it go to say, “I look forward to making her acquaintance.”
“So.” She spread her arms out, then let her hands drop onto the table. “You wanted to know why I hadn’t gotten involved with anyone. Now I’ve told you. End of story.”
While thinking through what she had told him, he toyed with his coffee cup. “That had to have been eight or nine years ago.”
“Ten. I’m twenty-seven now.”
His gaze swept up to capture hers. “A long time to hang on to your virginity.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me that in all that time, not a single guy has interested you?”
“I’ve had a date here and there over the years. But other things took precedence.”
“Like?”
Survival. She shook her head, not about to share that with him. “I keep telling you, I’ve been too busy—”
“So there you are.”
At the sound of that cantankerous voice, Ashley jerked around and found Denny Zip looming over her.
She groaned. “Great. Just freaking great.” As an ex-military man, ex-fighter and trainer, and overall bossy forty-seven-year-old hard-ass, Denny made a most impressive sight with impeccable timing. His appearance kept her from saying something maudlin that would make her feel foolish.
Tall, muscular, and with an air of complete control, Denny turned heads in the diner. He wore a snug tan T-shirt and brown trousers. Through his thinning brown hair, a mean tattoo showed.
But for Ashley he was a pussycat. A pseudo father, big brother, and knight in shining armor all rolled into one. His best friend, Jude, was marrying her best friend, May. She supposed that accounted for Denny’s weird loyalty and mile-wide protective streak toward her.
But then Denny’s protectiveness went beyond her. Despite the rough exterior, he was a genuinely nice guy who wanted to take care of anyone smaller, weaker, younger, or older than he was. Ashley adored him, but she’d never told him so. He enjoyed their antagonistic banter too much for her to steal his fun.
“Excuse me?” Quinton rose out of his seat, his tone courteous but his expression suspicious, bordering on hostile.
Ashley didn’t know if he intended to challenge Denny, which would be a mistake, or introduce himself.
Denny defused the motive, whatever it might be, by waving Quinton back down. “Save it, boy. It’s too early for a pissing contest.” And then to her, “Scoot over, girl. I have a bone to pick with you.”
Scrambling fast so he didn’t end up on her lap, Ashley said, “Gee, Denny, why don’t you join us?”
“I intend to.” He took her coffee cup and drained it, then, with covetous intent, stared toward her mostly full plate. “You going to eat that?”
She shoved it toward him. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks. I’m starving but haven’t had time to eat.”
Quinton cleared his throat, reminding Ashley that money wasn’t the only thing she lacked. Social niceties had never been her forte, either.
“Now where have my manners gone?” she asked.
Around a bite of cold eggs, Denny snorted. “Like you ever had any?” He tipped an imaginary hat toward Quinton. “I’m Denny, a good friend, so d
on’t let her tell you otherwise.”
Sweetly, Ashley said, “Now, Denny, what else would I ever call you?”
His robust laugh showed off a silver tooth before he gave his attention back to a befuddled Quinton. “She calls me a lot of things, but I know she doesn’t mean any of them. It’s her way of showing affection.”
“So you two are… affectionate?”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “What are you doing here, Denny?”
Pointing at Ashley with the fork, he frowned. “When you didn’t show up at your apartment, I started to worry.” To Quinton he added, “Believe me, I can worry with the best of the old biddies. Luckily, I know the places Ash frequents, and her yellow Civic is easy to spot.”
An affronted breath stuck in Ashley’s throat. “I knew I was being followed.”
Denny’s interest in the food disappeared, and his teasing fell silent beneath thick menace. Expression volatile, he laid the fork beside the plate and swiveled to face her. “Someone’s been following you?”
Damn, she had a big mouth. “You,” Ashley reminded him with hope.
“No.” Food forgotten, he swiped the paper napkin over his mouth and shoved the plate out of his way. “I was at your apartment this morning because it’s possible Elton Pascal was spotted in the area.”
Oh shit. Elton Pascal. Her skin crawled with the possibilities of that bomb-crazed maniac on the loose. “I figured that nutcase was long gone.”
Quinton asked, “Who is this?”
They both ignored him. “I figured he was, too. With the Feds onto him, as well as state and local officials, a smart fellow would’ve hightailed it outta town. But we already know Elton’s not the brightest bulb around.”
Quinton looked between them. “Who’s Elton?”
“God.” Ashley dropped her forehead into her hands. “May must be frantic.”
“May is safe in Jude’s house, which is where you should be if you weren’t such a stubborn cuss. Besides, she was mostly fretting about you. I promised to make sure you’re okay. But I never followed you. By the time I got the news, you were already gone from work.”
