A Summer to Remember

by Marilyn Pappano

  Fia glanced up at the sky. “The weather people predicted it for some time this weekend, but honestly, their educated predictions aren’t usually any more accurate than my uneducated guesses.”

  “I could live without thunderstorms, but I do like rain.”

  “And heat.”

  He nodded.

  “And cold. And sun. And snow. You just pretty much like everything, don’t you?”

  “I like to think I’m adaptable. Emily says I’m just too lazy to develop a preference.”

  At the pickup, Fia faced him. “You guys are really close, aren’t you?”

  He couldn’t think of anything flip to say. “Yeah. She’s two years older, and when we were kids, there was nothing too trivial for us to fight about, but she was always there for me. Usually pulling my hair or elbowing me in the ribs, saying, ‘I told you so,’ but she was there. I’d’ve loved her even if she wasn’t my sister.”

  “I wish I’d had that.”

  The wistfulness in her tone made him swallow hard. “Yeah,” he agreed hoarsely. “Everyone should have an Em in their life.”

  She opened the passenger door then, and he used her climbing into the truck as an excuse to touch her, to hold her lightly at the waist until she was safely inside. When he slid into the driver’s seat, he started the engine and rolled down the windows before asking, “What about Scott’s family?”

  She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and pondered the question for a moment as if it was a difficult one. “They weren’t close,” she said at last. “His mother and father divorced when he was ten, and each one seemed happy living pretty much in isolation. The only time I met his mother was at our wedding. His father came to both the wedding and the funeral, but I only know because he signed the guest book…Scott’s brother was twelve years older, never married, works from home, lives in his own little world.”

  Her face wrinkled into a frown. “They weren’t rude or hostile or anything. They seemed to be happy to hear from him, but they just didn’t think about family. They were very distant people. Birthdays and holidays meant nothing to them. But Scott and me, we celebrated everything—birthdays, monthly anniversaries, the summer solstice, the spring equinox. There was so much normalcy inside him that he needed to get out.”

  Scott sounded like an extraordinary guy, given his upbringing. And that was exactly what Fia had needed back then, given her upbringing. But she’d learned a lot, experienced a lot, since then. Enough that maybe now all she needed was an ordinary guy like Elliot, who could share his ordinary life and ordinary family with her.

  Raindrops splattered on the windshield as he backed out of the parking space. “You have any plans for this afternoon?”

  “Not a one.” Then she looked at him, all solemn and still. “Besides spending time with you.”

  Good.

  “You want to go to a movie? Browse through the antique stores downtown? Take a drive in the country?”

  She was silent a moment, waiting until he’d turned onto the highway that headed toward downtown Tallgrass, then quietly said, “I’d like to go back to your apartment, listen to you play your guitar, snuggle with Mouse a bit, and…” The way she drew out that last word offered promises of an intimate nature, and her shrug, stretching and rippling the thin fabric of her dress across her breasts, had a similar effect inside him.

  Damn, it had suddenly gotten hot. Elliot tugged at the neck of his shirt and saw his hand was unsteady, like he was an inexperienced kid and the head cheerleader had just asked him to go behind the bleachers with her. His school hadn’t had cheerleaders, but he’d been invited behind the bleachers at more than a few rodeos. Sometimes he’d gone. Sometimes he’d politely said no.

  At this moment, the word no had permanently disappeared from his vocabulary.

  She laid her hand on his on the console, and he turned it so they could lace fingers. The rain was falling hard enough that drops blew in the windows, splattering his arm and shoulder. He was surprised steam didn’t rise.

  Turning onto his street, he found one of the parking spaces out front unoccupied. He pulled in, only a few short yards from the entrance. When he jogged around to open Fia’s door, a sharp bark overhead drew his attention to Mouse, sitting on the second-floor windowsill.

  “She’s such a doll.”

  “She’s not supposed to be up there,” he said drily. “We had a talk about it last night.”

  “And she said she’d stay down? She’s such a smart puppy.”

  Pulling Fia close, he trotted across the sidewalk and up the stairs, letting go and shaking his hair under the protective cover of the roof. Fia did the same, leaving her hair rumpled and curled. With her skin damp, her eyes sparkling, and her smile dazzling, she looked young and pretty and as if she wasn’t thinking for one second about the tough breaks life had given her.

  He was about to open the door when she stepped in front of him, laid her palms against his face, and kissed him. Her lips found his automatically, so soft and sweet and, damn, enough to make a man weak. Luckily, there was a wall of brick behind him, solid enough to keep his feet on the ground, to support them both when he wrapped his arms around her middle and lifted her against him to deepen the kiss.

  The sky darkened, the rain pounded, and rumbling came from somewhere far away, vibrating through him, jarring every nerve, every muscle, every instinct he had. He cupped his hands to the slight curve of her bottom, feeling muscle and heat. Lord, he loved a strong woman.

  A gust of wind blew rain straight in beneath the roof, dousing both of them. Fia shrieked and danced away, pulling at her dress where it clung to her skin. “Ooh, that rain is cold!”

  “My apartment’s warm. So am I. I’ve even got a shirt you can borrow until your dress dries.”

  For an instant, no more than a few breaths, it was clear she was considering her options. Uncertainty passed through her eyes, followed by vulnerability, then determination. He would bet he was going to be the first man she’d been with since Scott, and man, that had to be tough for her. He wouldn’t push her. He wanted it to be entirely her decision. She was the one recovering from a broken heart. He was just facing the possibility of one.

  She took his hand, her fingers delicate in his, and they went inside the building. Their steps echoed in the stairwell, the only sound they made besides the occasional swish of her dress and drop of water splatting to the floor. As he fitted his key in the lock, she tiptoed, pressed a kiss to his cheek, then went inside as soon as the door swung open.

  Mouse was waiting at the door, ignoring the books she’d knocked from the windowsill. She barked her sharp gotta-go bark, spinning in circles while Elliot got the leash. “I’ll take her out real quick. You can change into something dry while we’re gone.” He pointed at the laundry baskets, and she nodded. She didn’t move, though. When he closed the door behind him and Mouse, she was still standing in the same place.

  “You’re not gonna like what you find outside,” he warned the dog. “And when we come back in, I know we haven’t discussed how you’re supposed to behave when the grown-ups get busy, but stay off the bed. She came here to see me, not you.”

  He opened the door, and Mouse walked out about four steps before suddenly reversing back inside. The look she gave Elliot could too easily be read as betrayal, like he’d somehow tricked her into getting wet. Weren’t they going to have fun when he had to bathe her for the first time?

  “C’mon, Mouse, you gotta go.”

  She sat down just inside the door. When he tried to pull her a few feet, she lay down so the threshold stopped her from sliding out.

  “Elliot?”

  He glanced around, then realized Fia’s voice came from the front window up above. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t forget the umbrella’s in the truck. You don’t want the baby to get wet.”

  “No, of course I don’t.” He looped the leash over the doorknob, ran through sheets of rain to the truck, grabbed the umbrella, and ran back. As soon
as he popped it open, Mouse came out, tail wagging and happy to go.

  Fortunately, the umbrella couldn’t keep her feet from getting wet, and she had enough of toes squishing in grass as soon as it started. They ran back to the door, she trotted up the steps dragging her leash, and he shook out the umbrella before following her.

  When he reached the landing, his door was open, and Fia was sitting on the floor, using his biggest, snuggliest bath towel to dry Mouse’s feet. She’d left another smaller towel on the counter for him.

  “Maybe she did come to see you,” he muttered as he wiped his face, pulled the band from his hair, and squeezed out streams of water.

  “What was that?”

  He startled. “Oh, uh, I’m glad you found a shirt to wear.” It was a red button-down, with cuffs reaching to the tips of her fingers and tails covering everything that was modest and a bit that wasn’t. It was too big, of course, and concealed all her womanly parts, but that would only make taking it off even more fun.

  He took shorts and a T-shirt into the bathroom and stripped. With Fia’s clothes already hanging over the shower curtain rod, there was—

  He paused, fingering the fabric of her dress, looking at but not touching the hot pink bra that was covered with butterflies or the pink panties that matched. Fia was naked in his apartment. Naked. Damn, that knowledge was gonna make getting his wet jeans off harder than usual, but finally he was stripped, dried, and dressed again.

  Why dress again?

  “In case she changes her mind,” he said quietly as he faced himself in the mirror, rubbing his hair again. “I don’t want to pressure her. I want this to be her choice. And call me Captain Obvious, but I think going out there naked with a raging hard-on is pretty much the definition of pressuring her.”

  * * *

  Bold. That was what Scott used to call Fia, and she’d always taken it as a compliment. This was her first bold move in a long time, and it made her stomach turn somersaults. She was too skinny these days, and she didn’t know what triggered her attacks. Fatigue, sometimes. Too much stress. What about a screaming-good let-me-die-now orgasm, the only kind she could imagine any woman having with Elliot? Could that make her brain go haywire, her muscles seize, her head start hurting?

  She was going to find out. She hoped. If he hadn’t rethought this while he was in the bathroom changing. What if she hadn’t been bold enough? What if he thought that kiss downstairs had just been a kiss and now they would cuddle with Mouse and he’d play the guitar and they’d talk the way they always did? What if—

  If, if, if. Any moment, any instance, life could change course. It could go her way this moment, turn against her the next. On that night long ago, if she hadn’t walked out onto the dance floor of that particular club at that particular moment, she wouldn’t have met Scott. If she hadn’t had a good day and gone against advice and driven herself to the pharmacy, if the pharmacist had been a little quicker or a little slower, she wouldn’t have met Elliot. If his holding an umbrella for Mouse hadn’t tickled her, she wouldn’t have spoken to him. Life was filled with ifs, good and bad and in between, and the only if that mattered to her at that very moment was the one Elliot offered when he came out of the bathroom. She was sure she would know—by the look in his eyes, the expression on his face, the come here or this is a bad idea or we need more time.

  And then he came back into the room, and the expression on his face was stark and hungry, and the look in his eyes was smoky and tender, and…Her gaze skimmed down his body, reaching his groin and one serious erection, and her insecurities disappeared, boom, like they’d never existed.

  He walked straight to her, slow and easy, every tiny part of every gesture fluid and sensual and sending a shiver of pleasure through her. Sexual grace was a thing of beauty, so delicate and strong and purely male. It drew a primal response from her, a powerfully intense, demanding need that caught her breath and made her tremble.

  He stopped a foot in front of her, helped her to her feet, and held her gaze a long time. “How’d I get so lucky?”

  “I was wondering the same thing.” She touched her fingertips to his arm, half expecting them to sizzle. “You didn’t need to put a shirt on.”

  “I thought you might like to take it off.”

  Her mouth quivered in half a smile. “You want me to take your shirt off?”

  When he nodded, she raised her trembling hands to her throat and undid the button half an inch above her breasts. He pulled her hands back, as she’d known he would, and pressed a kiss to each palm. “I want you to take this shirt off. I get to do that one.”

  Her feet moved her a step closer without prompting, and she curled her fingertips in the hem of the soft cotton. Taking it off filled her with anticipation, like unwrapping a gift to see what special treat was hidden inside. She already knew this special treat: an expanse of smooth, muscular, golden brown skin, soft and silky, warm enough to start a blaze. And the other special treat that was wrapped up not in the shirt but in the man himself: anticipation.

  So many months without a man’s touch, kiss, quick embrace. Without exploring a male body and getting the same tactile pleasure in response. So much emptiness and loneliness and yearning and longing and, for the past eighteen months, so much betrayal. Her body, her limbs, her nerves, her muscles, had turned on her, making her grateful for the tiniest acts she could still perform and leaving her to only dream of the pure, sweet, intimate acts between a woman and a man. Her dream was coming true today, and she was quivering inside and out at the prospect.

  She pulled the shirt over his hard muscles, slid her hands underneath to lift it higher, up to the shadows of his throat, and took her time pressing kisses randomly across his chest. She tried to push it over his head but tangled his arms and left it there awhile so she could touch him, kiss him everywhere. “It’s a shame to cover this chest all the time.”

  “Yeah, but working in a kitchen without clothes isn’t as fun as it sounds.” He sounded raspy, then his breath caught when she drew her fingers across his nipples. Ducking her head, she laved one with her tongue, then took the tiniest nip. His breath caught again, and his erection strained even harder against his shorts.

  She’d lost her virginity on her fifteenth birthday, fueled by too much booze, too little food, and that angry rebellion that had driven her for as long as she could remember. She’d hardly known the guy, a classmate at the school she attended when she had nothing better to do, and her only lasting memory was of disappointment. That was it—the big deal her friends bragged about?

  But she was no teenage girl, and Elliot was damn sure no teenage boy. There was magic all around him, in his eyes, his smile, his touch, his voice, in the soft warm pleasure of his body. Just touching him was enough to make her tremble, to heat her skin and her blood and to wake up her libido from its long enforced dormancy.

  His fingers wrapped around her arms, drawing her so close she had no choice but to lift her head, and his mouth claimed hers with an intensity she hadn’t felt in so long. She’d forgotten how kisses and touches and lovemaking could make her feel alive, but he’d jogged her memory with a vengeance. Her skin was tingling, her nipples swelling, her intimately private places growing damp in anticipation.

  After that soul-jarring kiss, he gazed down at her. “You are…”

  “In desperate need.” Grasping his hands, she began backing toward the bed, pulling him along. “I haven’t—”

  “I know.”

  “In so long—”

  The mattress bumped her calves, and she climbed onto the bed, kneeling, pushing frenziedly at his shorts. He caught her hands, pressed kisses to her palms, then gently forced her onto her back, onto the mattress. The shirt that had seemed so adequate when she was standing now left her feeling vulnerable as it stretched the length of her body, leaving far more exposed, it seemed, than it covered. Elliot didn’t mind—she could see that in the shadows of his eyes and hear it in the shallow raspy breaths.

  He slid
down onto the bed beside her, not face to face where she could pull him over on top, but halfway down the bed. His breath was warm against her thigh as he unfastened the bottom button of her shirt. He was leaning on his elbows, his leg pressed tight against hers, and his fingertips brushed her skin repeatedly, creating little shivers of need inside her, each stronger than the last. After an inordinate time, he moved to the second button. This time the shivers came in anticipation of his touch, tight and sharp, and her breath caught as heat moved through her, white-hot, slow, leaving her helpless to do much more than whimper, shift restlessly, reach in vain to pull him closer.

  “El?” she whispered, her throat raw.

  “I know, babe.” He gave her a wicked grin, promising her every pleasure, every fantasy, every dream, and with a smile of complete trust, she let her eyes flutter shut while he went to work on the next button.

  “I get to return the favor…if I survive.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  By the time he undid the final button, she was a quaking mess of sensations, of wonder, of need. His naked body—he’d shucked his shorts at some point—was pressed against her solidly. His erection throbbed, hot and hard, nestled between her thighs, and his hands rested on the mattress on either side of her head. His stare was intense, blue fire, and his hunger was fierce. “Are you sure?”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged him so close that her lips brushed his with each word. “More sure than I’ve ever been.” Then she repeated the sentiment with a kiss, letting her lips and tongue drive the point home.

  When they were both breathless from the kiss, when her body was trembling and prickling, when his muscles strained with effort, she pressed her mouth to his ear. “Let’s dance this dance, cowboy.”

  Without leaving her, he leaned across to the night table and pulled out a packet. In seconds, the condom was in place, and so was he, sinking deep inside her, stretching, filling her, a sensation so sweet and familiar that her heart broke with the pure pleasure of it.