She glanced back and up at him over her shoulder. “Earth to Paul, come in, Paul.”
“Huh? What—oh. Right.”
Stevie shook her head. “You know, maybe you’ve been working too hard. They say the mind is the first thing to go.”
“Yeah. Right.” No big deal. It was a zipper, for chrissakes. All he had to do was get it moving. He didn’t have to pull it all the way down and expose her naked back. He didn’t have to help her out of the damn dress. Just get the stupid zipper working again so she could go and put something on that he wouldn’t be thinking about getting her out of.
A chastity belt, maybe.
He grabbed the zipper, carefully keeping his fingers from brushing her skin. There was no point in torturing himself, right? But the damn thing was stuck good. He clenched his jaw and reminded himself that he was the man who came up with the programs to run distant satellites. Surely he could figure out a zipper.
“If it won’t come down,” Stevie said, “just rip it off me.”
“Right.” An image flashed in his brain and it was one that ordinarily he’d have squashed flat. In his mind, he saw himself pull that dress off of her in one quick magicianlike move, leaving her in only a bra and panties. Then he saw her turn to him. Look up at him and open her arms. He watched her rise up on her toes, bring her mouth close to his. He damn near felt the brush of her breath against his cheek.
Shit. Maybe coming here wasn’t such a good idea.
“Did you get it yet?” she asked, trying to turn around and look.
“No,” he muttered thickly, his throat knotted with a desire he’d gotten used to ignoring over the years. “Hold still, will ya?”
“Sorry,” she said, then gave a low whistle. “Cranky, aren’t we?”
“Just frustrated,” he murmured, yanking on the zipper again. Frustrated in more than one way, but she didn’t need to know that, did she? Hell, she’d never had a clue and now wasn’t the time to let her find out.
He slid his fingers beneath the fabric and forced himself to ignore the feel of her satiny, warm skin against his. And in a second or two, he had it. The zipper leaped free and he let her go, taking a quick step backward for good measure.
“Thanks.” She clutched the top of her strapless dress tight and turned around to look at him. Those big blue eyes of hers dazzled him as they did every time he looked into them. Her wide mouth was curved in a smile that was designed to bring men to their knees. Stevie’d never had any idea of the effect she had on men—him in particular. With her heart-shaped face, long, slender body, and a laugh that made a man think of midnight kisses and rumpled beds, she was a walking wet dream.
Yet somehow, she never seemed to get that.
Now, as he stared at her, Paul had to ask himself one very important question.
How was he supposed to get over his brother’s ex-girlfriend when every time he saw her, all he wanted to do was throw her onto her back and bury himself inside her?
CHAPTER TWO
TONY CANDELLANO TURNED A cop’s eye on the last few revelers at his sister’s wedding reception. Vince Halloran looked as though he’d hit the champagne one too many times, but Vince’s wife, Betsy, was stone-cold sober, so there wouldn’t be any trouble there. Well, Tony amended, Vince’s life wouldn’t be pretty come morning, but at least he wouldn’t be driving tonight, making everyone else in Chandler a target.
A fierce wind off the ocean whipped across the clearing and snatched at the strings of lights, making them dance and sway until they looked like clouds of fireflies. Candle flames in the centerpieces winked out and tall white wicker flower stands bursting with roses, carnations, and daisies toppled over, littering the ground with splotches of color.
His mother’s crocheted shawl flew off a nearby chair and Tony grabbed it before it could take flight. Wadding it up, he shoved it under his left arm and turned into the wind to look for his family. Squinting against the dirt and bits of twigs suddenly pelting him, he spotted his wife, Beth, and headed for her.
“Storm’s blowing in!” he shouted to be heard.
Beth looked up at him and pushed her dark auburn hair out of her eyes, only to have it slapped back across her face again. “No kidding?” She grinned up at him briefly, then reached down to pick up their daughter, Tina.
Tony tossed the shawl at Beth, then took the little girl from her. Wrapping a blanket around the child, who somehow managed to stay asleep despite the howling wind, he looked at his wife and said, “Grab your stuff. Where’s Mama?”
Beth picked up Tony’s tuxedo jacket, then her own purse and sweater. “She took some things to the car a few minutes ago. Reese and Abbey are with her.”
“Good,” he said. “We’ll meet ’em there.” He spared a quick glance heavenward. Clouds scuttled across the surface of the night sky, obliterating stars and swirling, crashing into one another as thunder roared in the distance. “Man, this blew up fast.” He cupped the back of his daughter’s head and held her close to his chest. Then he shifted his gaze back to Beth. “Have you seen Stevie? Or Paul and Nick?”
Clearly exasperated as the first cold, hard splats of rain smacked her, Beth said, “Jesus, Tony, can’t you take the night off? They’re adults. They know enough to get in out of the rain. Now how about we do?” Then she held her purse over her head, cradled her stuff in the crook of her arm, lifted the hem of her bridesmaid dress, and took off, sprinting toward the car.
“Right,” he muttered, tugging the blanket up high enough to cover Tina’s head. “Hell. She’s always right. Damn annoying.”
He made it to the car just before the skies opened up and the meadow was half-drowned in a wall of water.
* * *
Stevie hit the PAUSE button, and on the TV, the movie stopped dead. A hard driving rain pounded into the silence, crashing against the roof like thousands of tiny fists hammering to get in. Setting the remote and her ice-cream bowl down onto the coffee table, Stevie unfolded her long legs and pushed herself off the overstuffed sofa.
“Listen to that.” She walked toward the wide front window overlooking Main Street.
Rain slapped at the windowpane, blurring the outside world into a wash of street lamplight that smeared gold across the glass. Overhead, thunder rolled and lightning flashed, edging the clouds with a shimmer of white-hot light that dazzled briefly and was gone.
But Paul hardly noticed. Instead, his gaze was locked on Stevie. Her ponytail dangled temptingly and bounced with her every movement. She wore a pale blue tank top over—God help him—braless breasts and blue-and-white-striped drawstring cotton pants. She was barefoot and the pale pink polish on her toes looked incredibly sexy, damn it. When she half-turned to him and smiled, Paul sucked in a breath and held it for a long moment before slowly releasing it as he counted to ten. Then twenty.
“Isn’t it great?”
“Yeah,” he muttered, though he wasn’t entirely sure he was talking about the thunderstorm. She was great. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever known. And the one woman he couldn’t have.
Stupid.
But true. God knew, Stevie colored the way he looked at other women. He’d never had a hard time getting dates. The women in his life were successful, beautiful, and great to be with. He’d even had a couple of long-lasting relationships that might have led somewhere … eventually. Then inevitably he would start comparing those women to Stevie and they always came up short. His scientific mind chewed on that thought for a few seconds as he stared at her. There was just something about Stevie—something he hadn’t found in any other woman.
Now if he could just identify it and get over it, life would be good.
She cranked the old-fashioned window open wide and stuck one hand out into the rain. Smiling, she leaned out farther and tipped her face up to the clouds. Her right leg lifted, toes pointed, and the cotton fabric of her pajamas tightened across her bottom. Paul told himself he was an idiot.
When she pulled her head back inside, her face was dott
ed with raindrops, sparkling in the lamplight before she wiped them away with the backs of her hands. Shivering, she cranked the window shut again and turned to look at him.
Her nipples peaked against the thin material of her tank top, but Paul refused to look at them.
Much.
“God, it’s great outside. Cold,” she added with a grin. “But great.”
“You always did like storms,” he said gruffly, and congratulated himself on getting his voice to work.
“What’s not to like?” she asked, not really expecting an answer. “Loud noise, lots of rain, and bright lights.” Turning back to watch the storm, she frowned a little. “It’s really coming down, though, Paul. Maybe you should just camp out here tonight, huh?”
Oh, yeah, there’s an idea.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll see how the storm goes.” With any luck, it would dry up fast. Hell, there was only so much a man could take. Staring at the television, he felt her take a seat at the end of the couch again. But even if the sofa hadn’t moved beneath her, he would have known she was close. Her perfume reached him, drifting on the chill air and teasing him into drawing several deep breaths just so he could pull that scent down inside him.
She grabbed her ice cream, wriggled around, getting comfortable, and when she was finally settled again, he picked up the remote, hit PLAY, and tried to distract his brain from her by saying, “By the way. The movie? You tricked me.”
“No way,” Stevie said, and licked the last drop of fudge sauce from her spoon. She sighed a little, eyed Paul’s half-eaten ice cream and thought about finishing it off, then gave up the idea. Even she had her limits. “I promised you guns and bombs. Hello?” She pointed at the TV screen just as a car burst into flames.
“Yeah,” Paul agreed with a wry smile. “Cars, guns, Arnold. Also a love story.”
Stevie glumly stared at her empty ice-cream dish, then reached out and reluctantly set her bowl onto the coffee table before leaning back into the cushions of the sofa. Curling one leg up under her, she stretched out her other leg and playfully nudged Paul’s thigh with her foot. “So we both win a little.” She shifted her gaze from Paul’s strong profile to the television and added, “Besides, Michael Biehn is one hell of a kisser.”
“You know this on a personal level, of course.” One dark eyebrow lifted.
She wished. Heck, the only kissing she’d had in the last couple of years was on her way too short Caribbean vacation last month. And even then, it had been nothing special.
“You think I watch this movie for the explosions?” she asked.
Hey, she was willing to give her friend the manly flick full of destruction and mayhem. But who was to say she couldn’t get a little something out of this, too? Almost every woman she knew owned a copy of The Terminator. Romance and bloodlust. The perfect blend.
“Just look at him,” she said on a sigh, and tapped Paul’s thigh with her foot again. “The way he takes her face in his hands…”
“Stage direction.” He grabbed her foot and held it still. She hadn’t even realized how cold her foot was until his large, warm hand curled around it.
“How he looks deeply into her eyes…”
“He’s an actor.” Paul snorted and shook his head.
She ignored him. Men never appreciated stuff like this, anyway.
“And that line: ‘I came across time for you, Sarah.’” Stevie slapped one hand to her chest and sighed dramatically.
“The script,” Paul said, his hand tightening around her foot.
“God, you’re as romantic as cold broccoli.”
He slanted her a slow look and dug his thumb into her arch. She tried to pull free, but Paul’s grip was firm. “Hey, I don’t need a writer to make my moves for me.”
Stevie chuckled. “Excuse me, I’ve seen your moves.”
One dark eyebrow lifted again. “Is that an insult?”
“An observation.” She shrugged and smiled at him, and this time when she pulled her foot free, he let her go.
“Based on…”
“Personal experience,” she countered, and scooted closer to him, forgetting about the movie for the chance to tease Paul. He looked so … upstanding, sitting there in his starched white shirt. The collar lay open at his throat and the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms with a deeper tan than anyone would expect a computer genius to have. His right foot rested on his left knee, and as she watched, he reached up and stabbed his fingers through his habitually too-long hair. His expression was tight and his eyes wary as she continued.
“Remember? The summer your Nana came to visit for a whole month?”
“I remember.”
She could tell by his expression that he did, but that didn’t stop her from talking about it. What were friends for if not to torture from time to time?
Outside, the rain pummeled Chandler with an unrelenting assault. But here, in the loft, they were warm and dry and Stevie was really enjoying herself. “You and I went down to the docks to get fresh fish for your mother, and—”
“I said I remember,” he ground out tightly.
She ignored his attempt at stopping the flow of memory. “And on the way home—”
He nodded abruptly. “I kissed you.”
“Uh-huh.” She grinned at him. “And it was…” Stevie paused, rolled her eyes, and made a production out of trying to find the right word. She sensed his impatience and had to hide a smile. It wasn’t often a person could push Paul out of his “Mr. Reasonable” mode. So on those rare occasions, it was something to savor.
“What?” he demanded, and shifted position on the sofa, turning to face her, forgetting all about the movie, where Arnold was even now headed for the motel where the hero and heroine were—well, they weren’t thinking about the Terminator.
She looked at him and grinned. “Yucky.”
Actually, that kiss had been hurried and unexpected and sort of sweet, as she recalled it now, through that cottony haze of memory that made every embarrassing moment of your life a little easier to swallow than it had been at the time. It was summer then and the sun was hot, blasting down out of a startlingly blue sky. Tourists had invaded Chandler and the screeching laughter of the crowds on the docks had vied with the cawing of the gulls wheeling in the air over the fishing boats.
Chandler hadn’t changed much over the years, though it had seemed a lot bigger when she was thirteen. She’d loved this town even then. She’d been so happy to belong. To finally have a home where people knew her, knew her father. After living like a gypsy, trailing after her mother for years, coming here and finding a home had meant more to Stevie than anything. The Candellanos had been icing on the cake, so to speak.
Even summer seemed longer, hotter, back then than it did now. Then her only worry was how to get the darkest tan possible before school started. Well, that and avoiding going to visit her mother wherever the woman happened to be living at the time.
Still, Stevie remembered that summer more clearly than any other. Because it was the last summer she’d been completely alone. The summer before she’d found love.
Paul grabbed her foot and scraped the tip of one finger along her arch just to get her attention.
It worked.
Stevie jumped, yelped, and pulled her foot out of his grasp. “Hey, tickling is not fair.”
“All’s fair, like they say. Besides, I resent the word yucky.”
“Yeah, well, that’s how I remember it.” She rubbed her foot, then curled it under her just to be on the safe side. Smiling, she looked up at him. “You bit me, remember?”
He scowled at her. “You moved.”
She blew out a breath. “Didn’t know you required statuary for your best work.”
“A little interest, maybe.”
“You caught me off guard.”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing.”
“Ah … so you needed warm-up time,” she said, remembering now how quickly tha
t kiss had ended. And just how quickly Paul had walked away from her, leaving her standing on the boardwalk at the docks, watching him go as she rubbed the taste of him into her mouth. A young girl was allowed to romanticize her first kiss.
Paul muttered something she didn’t quite catch, then said, “You know, you weren’t exactly a great kisser yourself.”
Okay, fair’s fair, but let’s be realistic. “Hey, I was a kid.”
Yeah, she had been, Paul thought. But even then he’d been nuts about her. Back then, he’d considered himself light-years older than his little sister’s best friend. But that hadn’t meant he could avoid dreaming about sun-kissed fair skin, big blue eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles across a tiny nose.
He just hadn’t admitted those dreams to anyone.
Not even Nick, his twin.
Though many times over the years, he’d wondered what might have happened if Nick had known that Paul was interested in Stevie. Would it have changed anything?
“So,” she said, bringing him back to the moment at hand, “how do you get all of these dates with women like the Amazing Sandy? It’s your brain they’re after, right? Can’t be your kissing abilities.”
He gave her a tight smile. “I’ve improved a little over the years.”
“Sure you have,” she said in a deliberately placating tone.
He stared into those incredible eyes of hers and felt his blood pump expectantly as he promised, “I could curl your toes.”
“Uh-huh.” Her gaze drifted toward the television again, where the hero and heroine were tangling together on the bed, finding satisfaction and peace for a few wild, heartbreaking moments before running from their enemy again.
“You think I can’t?” he asked, irritation coloring his tone.
“Hmm?” Stevie said, only half-listening as Michael Biehn threaded his fingers through Linda Hamilton’s and took her on a slow ride toward heaven.
Stevie’s body burned and she shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. A slow, sweet ache settled low in her body. Oh, wow, she’d been manless way too long. And maybe watching this movie hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
Knowing You Page 2
