Lost Perfect Kiss: A Crown Creek Novel

by Theresa Leigh

  I grinned back at her, feeling strangely relieved myself. “Good. But I’m sorry you had to sit on the floor of my bedroom to finish it.”

  She shrugged and sat up. “I’ll clean up,” she said, starting to pack all her papers.

  “No, that’s not what I was talking about,” I said, waving my hand at her to stop. “I was wondering why your parents didn’t keep it down when you had to study. Did you tell them to—?”

  “Tell them to keep it down?” she supplied. “Doesn’t really work that way,” she said dryly.

  I narrowed my eyes. “They do know you’re going to school, right? Working your ass off? That whole thing?”

  Her smile was equal parts amused and frustrated. “I mean, I think they have a vague notion,” she said.

  Frustrated, I stared at her, all huddled on my floor doing her absolute best. It wasn’t right. “You need to get your own place,” I said, snapping the fingers of my good hand.

  “Yeah, no shit,” she said.

  “You’ve thought about it? It would make things a lot easier for you.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the advice,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s not like I’m rolling in money.”

  “There’re plenty of cheap places,” I said, which was a total lie. I had no idea if there were cheap places or not. Feeling like a tool, I shut my mouth.

  Everly just shook her head. “Only way I could do it is if I found a roommate, I think. I need to save all my money for classes. Plus my car is about to die any second.”

  I could hear the frustration in her voice and it pissed me off. This chick had everything going for her, but it was like she was swimming upstream. Unsupportive parents, shitty transportation, no place to even get peace and quiet so she could study. I hated the worry lines that creased her face, and I also hated that I knew how tired she was, and could only blame myself for part of it. “You can study right here from now on,” I told her. “It’s not like I’m going to be getting up and bothering you.”

  I expected her to smile, but she just turned and gave me a serious look. “I’ll make it up. You don’t have to pay me for tonight.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I growled. “You need a break, and I think it’s high time someone gave you a break, don’t you think?” I grinned at her. “Now come sit on the bed here. I want to make sure that you spend your time here well. Pop quiz.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Everly

  I perched at the side of his bed and settled my textbook on my lap. Gabe was watching me carefully, all his attention trained on me like a spotlight on the star of the show.

  I looked down and noticed my hand was crumpling the page. I hurriedly swiped at it to flatten the crumpled corners, and Gabe’s eyes followed the motion.

  He was making me jittery and nervous and I had no idea why.

  Yes I did.

  Was he remembering that night? In these past few weeks, I’d pushed it so far back in my brain that it seemed to circle back around to the forefront. The way he was looking at me right now, I almost believed he was remembering.

  He flicked his tongue out, wetting his lips. I held my breath, waiting for the revelation that he’d known all along.

  “You know everything in that book?” he asked, a little glint of mischief in his eyes.

  I blinked at the unexpected question but quickly recovered. “Of course,” I said, a touch more indignantly than I wanted. “My boards are in two days. I know it backwards and forwards.”

  His hand shot out a lot faster than I was expecting and the next thing I knew he was reading aloud. “A patient diagnosed with ulcerative colitis is admitted to the medical unit. When assessing the patient, which of these findings would be of the most concern?” He cleared his throat. “Rebound tenderness, Oral temperature of ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit,” he raised an eyebrow, “which is thirty-seven degrees Celsius but of course you knew that.”

  “Of course.” I nodded.

  “Let’s see…oh, jeez, I don’t even know how to say that so I hope it’s not the answer or...” he wrinkled his nose theatrically. “Or bloody diarrhea?”

  I grinned in triumph. “Rebound tenderness,” I said promptly.

  He closed the book with an emphatic thud. “I disagree.”

  “You disagree with the NCLEX?”

  “Bloody diarrhea is always a concern,” he said, looking thoroughly grossed out.

  “I had no idea you’d be such a priss, Gabe King. I guess that’s why I’m the nurse and you’re not.” I reached over and tugged my precious study materials from his hand.

  He relinquished them easily. “I’m thinking this gig you have right now is a lot easier than what you’d normally have to deal with, huh?”

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “The gig itself is a cakewalk. It’s the patient that’s difficult.”

  “Aw, whaddya mean? I’m super easy.” His eyes fell to my lips in a way that didn’t seem at all accidental. “Haven’t even asked you for a sponge bath yet.”

  My heart stilled a moment. I raised the other eyebrow at him.

  His smile was completely innocent. Too innocent when he said, “To be honest, since I fell, I haven’t exactly felt safe in the bathroom.”

  I stared at him. That was certainly a valid concern, especially with the weakness in his ankles. But why did it seem like his eyes were gleaming? “Do you have a fever?” I blurted.

  “I’m definitely feeling warm,” he said. Again with the innocent smile.

  I pressed my hand to his forehead. He closed his eyes. “You look flushed,” I said, noting the heat rising from his skin. I swallowed. “Have you taken your ibuprofen?”

  He opened his eyes. “You look a little flushed too, Everly.”

  “I’m fine.” I was decidedly not fine. Because helping him bathe was definitely on my list of tasks I was expected to do. Unbidden my mind forced me to relive the moments of seeing him sprawled naked on the ground. His...his... I blushed furiously and turned away. “I’ll run you a bath.”

  I practically fled from his room. Once in the bathroom, I ran the tap for a second, then splashed the cold water on my face. I was cracking up. The pressure of the boards. I had only kissed Gabe that night because he was Jonah’s brother. It was the closest I could get to the man I’d been yearning for half my life. And when he hadn’t remembered, hadn’t said anything, I thought I was safe. Just a bad decision chalked up to one too many rum and Cokes. Wasn’t that something all normal girls had in their past? A rum-and-Coke fueled mistake? I’d kissed the wrong guy at a bar and then disappeared. Surely that wasn’t a crime? No one was hurt. It should just be something I put behind me.

  So why was I thinking about doing it again?

  It wasn’t because I’d seen him naked. No. I wasn’t that type of girl. I didn’t go to pieces at the thought of a hot guy.

  I stared at myself in the mirror, wide-eyed. Since when had I ever thought of Gabe as hot?

  I turned and purposefully cranked the faucet in the bathtub. Then I closed my eyes and tried not to remember the way he had looked. I wasn’t remembering those muscles and scars and tattoos and, oh, god, did he want me to wash him? Why did this feel like something I shouldn’t be asked to do? Why did this feel like something I really wanted to do?

  When the tub was near to full, I turned it off and tested the temperature with my elbow. I would assist him in getting into the tub. And then...and then I’d supervise. He’d regained enough mobility in his arm to wash himself. There was no need for me to run a cloth over his naked torso or let the cloth dip lower and...

  Now I was fleeing the bathroom too. At least I was getting my cardio in today.

  When I returned to his bedroom, I saw that he was sitting up on his own.

  Clad only in his boxers.

  The long scar on the left side of his ribcage still made me wince to see it, but it was completely closed now, a deep purple river winding its way around his chest. For a single moment, I could envision how it would fee
l under my lips, the knotted skin warm and alive as I traced it with my tongue. It was so clear and detailed that I startled back from him before I realized I hadn’t moved at all.

  “You all right there, Nurse?”

  “You need to be wearing your boots,” I barked.

  He grinned as if my hardass-nurse routine didn’t fool him at all. “Kristyn said I can have them off as much as I can stand these days.” This time his eyes lingered on my lips for much longer than a heartbeat. “And if you’re there to make sure I don’t fall then I think I’m okay.”

  Slowly he stood up. When he winced, I caught my breath, but then he smiled again. “I’m okay.” He stretched out his arm to me. “Gonna need you right here though.”

  If it was obvious how quickly I moved to his side, he at least had the good grace not to say anything about it. His arm settled as a heavy, pleasant weight over my shoulders. Without thinking, I inhaled deeply. “I wouldn’t do that,” he chuckled.

  “You smell good,” I said automatically, then paused when I realized what I’d said. With his arm across my shoulder, I was supposed to be supporting him, but I felt very much like he was in control. Like he was the one who was holding on to me.

  “Okay,” he said. “Here we go.”

  He stepped slowly and carefully, not rushing or overdoing it for once. But we still reached the bathroom far too soon. When his arm was off me I sighed a little.

  “Hope the water’s nice and hot,” he said.

  “I mean, it was. It’s probably cooled down by now.” There was something about being so close to him in this tiny space that was making my breath come faster.

  “Can you heat things up for me?”

  I blinked when I realized I was staring at how green his eyes looked instead of answering his question. “What?” Then I realized what his question actually was. “What?” I repeated, a little more loudly now.

  He ran his tongue along his top teeth, making his smile look almost predatory. “I mean, I can’t bend over and turn on the hot water. I’m afraid I’ll lose my balance.” He paused. “So can you heat it up for me?”

  “Oh.” I hoped the steam was a good enough excuse for why I was flushed.

  “What did you think I meant?” he prodded.

  “Nothing.” I bent over, let some of the now-cooled water out, and ran the hot water again. As I was bent over, I was acutely aware of the position I was in, how the two of us were aligned. I scooted all the way against the wall and straightened back up again. I stepped behind him without looking him in the eye. Doing so felt very dangerous.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  And then he pulled down his boxers.

  Goddamn this man and his complete nonchalance about nudity. I looked away from him and then, remembering that this was my job and nothing more, I forced myself to stare straight ahead. But even with my eyes trained at a point on the wall, I still caught a glimpse of his smooth, muscled back and the strong, round heft of his ass. I’d never been one to ogle men’s butts but I was suddenly a devout ass-woman.

  “Kettlebell,” Gabe said out of nowhere.

  “Huh?” I continued staring straight ahead.

  “You’re wondering how to get an ass like mine, I can tell. I’ll tell you the secret. A big mean guy named Carlos yelled at me until I could do squats with a kettlebell.”

  “I wasn’t wondering anything of the sort.”

  “Why else were you staring at my ass, Nurse?”

  “Checking your balance,” I said, sounding almost convincing. “His name is Carlos, huh? And he was mean to you?”

  “Not as mean as you, but close.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed aloud. The biggest, freest laugh I had laughed all day long. Gabe grinned at me as I shook my head.

  “You think I’m mean, huh?”

  “Nah. I think you’re pretty sweet, actually.”

  I swallowed. A sharp retort sprang to my lips and then died there unsaid. No one had ever called me sweet before. No one had ever called me cute, or adorable, but Gabe sure acted like I was both. And I looked forward to it. I looked forward to the way he looked at me without getting distracted by anything else. It felt heady, almost addicting. I wanted his attention on me. Even though the rain had been pouring down for weeks, when I was with Gabe I felt like the sun was shining full on my face.

  “Here,” I said, kneeling down and unstrapping his boot. “You need to get these off.” As I knelt I could feel the heat off his leg. I was very close to him. Very very close to his nakedness. I tugged at the Velcro. “Just step out of them now, I’ve got you,” I said as I straightened up. “Lean on me now, I’ve got you.”

  “I know you do,” he murmured, barely audible. I wasn’t sure I was even supposed to hear it, but I had, and it made something strange and new swell in my chest.

  Chapter Twelve

  Everly

  I dragged my hand across my notepaper and suddenly it was Gabe’s skin again.

  For the fifteenth time since class started, warmth was spreading through my body, an insistent heat that pooled in my belly and made my nipples tighten. I sat up in my seat, crossed and recrossed my legs and tried like hell to pay attention to the last review before the boards tomorrow.

  But the second my hand moved again, it was as if it was holding a washcloth and running against smooth, tanned skin, the texture of sparse golden hairs running like silk against my fingertips. The instructor’s voice faded to mere static in the background.

  I licked my lips and stretched my fingers out. There had been nothing erotic about the bath. Nothing except his naked body, nothing except the way his eyes closed when he sank into the water. There had been nothing sensuous except the soft moan that fell from his lips when I let the cloth brush across his shoulder. He was my patient and I was providing a level of care that justified my high weekly rate. That was all. There was nothing forbidden about the way his eyes fluttered open and he looked at me with that grin playing about his lips and said, “Thanks Nurse.”

  There was nothing strange about how he was wearing no clothes at all but I was the one who felt naked.

  A sudden burst of noise around me jolted me out of my reverie. I looked around and to my horror everyone was packing up already.

  Class was over and I had spent my entire review thinking about Gabe King’s naked body.

  I’d missed my final review.

  I stood up and started packing up my unused laptop, trying not to pay attention to the low thrum of panic that was now humming through my ears. But my fingers betrayed me, becoming useless and shaking with the tips nothing but pins and needles.

  I held my breath. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, although it had been a while. My sister Abby had called this fun little party trick of mind “floppy hands.” It came on when I was stressed or not getting enough sleep.

  I sat down and rested my traitorous hands on my knees while I waited for them to stop shaking. It would pass. It always passed. I breathed out and tried not to think about what the doc on my clinical had said when I’d nonchalantly asked him about it, pretending it was a question for the boards. “Oh, you mean like an essential tremor? Yeah, you’d definitely want to get that looked at.”

  My hands had randomly shaken my whole life, but I only just learned it was a problem this semester.

  As I sat in my desk chair, I watched Professor Dorrington scrolling across her laptop screen with a pursed-lip look of concentration on her face. “Nurse Foster?” she called out to me.

  Startled, I tried to press my hands into my thighs, but they still flopped around in my lap like fish out of water. “Yes?” I said, wondering what on earth had led her to notice me on today of all days.

  She glanced up, seemingly miffed that I was still in my seat. “I was just checking through my grading. Were you planning on handing in your unit test sometime soon?”

  It was like someone had poured a bucket of icewater over my head. I froze to the spot, and then started shaking right alon
g with my hands. An anxiety attack. I was seconds away from a full-blown anxiety attack.

  I was a nurse. I knew what to do. But knowing what to do and being able to do it were two separate things. As Professor Dorrington looked over the top of her half-moon glasses to peer critically at me, I desperately tried to get air into my lungs, but it felt like someone was squeezing my chest too tight. “I...” I gulped. “Did?”

  “I beg to differ,” she called from way down below me. This was ridiculous, the two of us shouting across the empty lecture hall, but I couldn’t move. I wasn’t sure I could put one foot in front of another without collapsing. And her pride wouldn’t allow her to come to me. She raised her voice a little louder. “Every day that it’s late it gets marked down twenty percent.”

  Panic squirted a bright hot metallic taste in my mouth. It’d been a day already and I needed to keep my grade up as high as I could. “I sent it in,” I said as clearly as I could around the thickness of my tongue. In the bright hot glare of the impending panic attack, the harder she looked at me, the more I felt like I was lying. Shaking my head, I tore my eyes away from hers, and pulled out my phone, holding it tight in violently shaking hands. “I’m looking right here, in my sent folder,” I said. “The timestamp is 7:48 PM.”

  A heavy silence fell over us as she turned back to her computer. I felt like I couldn’t move, pinned down by the weight of her implied accusation. My hands shook so hard that even sitting on them wasn’t enough. My whole body was slicked down in perspiration and I was gasping like a marathon runner as Professor Dorrington silently and judgmentally scrolled through her inbox. It was right then, in the middle of my silent breakdown, that the door to the lecture hall banged open and the same French-braided girl from before stood there with the heavy yellow cart.

  And for some reason, I was able to catch my breath.