He sighed. "The minute I saw you, I knew you were trouble." And that gray cloud above him just continued to darken. Because, despite the danger of an explosion between them, he was going to beg a favor from her.
She retreated deeper into the closet, sucking on her lower lip. Sighing again, he ventured closer. The small area was well lit, and he could detect her fast, nervous breaths as her chest moved in and out beneath an embroidered denim shirt. She made a vague gesture that sent some of the clothes on the rack swaying. "I guess—I guess I should have talked with you first thing this morning."
Still enjoying her obvious discomfort with not a particle of guilt, he raised one brow and leaned his shoulder against the jamb of the closet door. "Yes?"
Her hand gestured again. "We should talk about that night."
Hmm. He hadn't really considered what her reaction would be after running away from him, but now he could see she was agitated. Nervous.
"I'm sorry," she said.
And sorry. He mulled the sentiment over. Sorry could work for him, perhaps even give him the upper hand with her, something he desperately needed. Especially because he needed her to agree to this favor. "What—"
Clattering and yelling from the hall outside the room interrupted him. Greg, Iris, Mrs. Mack, and God knew who else were running around this wing of the house, calling out the name of that cursed escape artist of a chinchilla.
Rory muttered under his breath and stepped inside the closet, half closing the door behind him to block out the search party's noise. "What exactly are you sorry about?"
Hesitating, she sucked on her bottom lip again, giving Rory time to examine today's selection of wacky vintage wear. The flared jeans were embroidered in a nature theme, and, he had to admit, quite spectacularly. Three decades ago some young woman with way too much time had hand-stitched vibrantly colored trees, flowers, and butterflies, almost completely covering the denim. Rory narrowed his eyes. Some young woman with way too much time and a sense of humor. A green-leafed tree grew up the left pant leg, and one of its branches stretched right across the front of the jeans. It was an apple tree.
And a juicy red piece of the fruit was embroidered to hang right over the bottom of the zipper placket, right over the vee of Jilly's thighs.
God.
"I shouldn't have let you do that," Jilly said suddenly.
His gaze jumped away from the apple to her face, which was a little red, too. He frowned. "Do what?"
"Kiss me." She hesitated again. "And, you know … against the wall."
"I agree." He couldn't stop his slow smile. "Against black satin sheets would have been a huge improvement."
Her eyes rounded. "What? No!" He could tell she was thinking about it, though. Her cheeks turned even redder. "Bl-black satin?"
She was made for black satin. He could see her pale skin and her dusting of gold freckles against the sleek darkness. "Honey, you need to find yourself a better class of lovers. Black satin is a definite yes."
She was silent for another moment, and then she shook her head, as if freeing herself from a fantasy. "No. You don't understand. I'm trying to tell you I don't want to do that type of thing at all. It's just not fair."
Not that he was so sure doing "that type" of thing with her again was wise either, but the "just not fair" roused his curiosity. "What are you talking about?"
Her mouth, that lush, sweet mouth, primmed. "Sister Bernadette—"
"We're not going to talk about your convent upbringing again, are we?" It gave birth to all sorts of unholy fantasies of his own, mostly centered around Jilly's luscious curves molded by a naughty corset and then covered by a gray school uniform.
She lowered her eyebrows and plodded on. "Sister Bernadette told us about … about men. Well, she told us about boys, but I'm certain the same thing applies."
This was getting curiouser and curiouser. Suddenly Rory found himself enthralled. He rocked back on his heels. "Go on," he prompted.
She shuffled her feet. She was still standing among some fallen clothing and he thought he saw one of the disarrayed piles shift strangely.
"The sister explained that when you let—" Taking a breath, Jilly began again. "The sister explained that when you let a boy, a male, touch your—"
"Kiss! Kiss!" Whistles, more calls, and little smacking sounds penetrated through the half-closed closet door as the chinchilla search party made another pass near by.
Determined not to be interrupted just when things were getting interesting, Rory leaned back against the closet door, closing it with a solid click. "Touch your what?" he asked innocently.
"Touch your…" With her hands, Jilly gestured in the vicinity of her shirt. "You know."
Rory narrowed his eyes. That shirt was a piece of erotic suggestion, too. Clouds floated and robins flew in the shirt's sky-blue "air." The birds carried cherries in their embroidered beaks, and two of the succulent pieces of fruit appeared to be falling through the air, right over Jilly's nipples.
He shuffled himself now, shoving his hands in his pockets to ease the fit of his jeans. "Touch your cherries, you mean?" With his chin, he indicated her shirt.
Jilly looked down, blushed redder, looked quickly back up. "Yes," she said faintly.
Rory couldn't help himself. "But I didn't touch your cherries," he pointed out.
"Well, yes." She cleared her throat. "That's exactly right—"
"But I did touch your apple." So sue him, but this was getting fun. And paying her back with a little teasing was almost worth the discomfort he was causing himself. "Some might consider it even more intimate, by the way."
"My apple?" Jilly said blankly. Then she froze. After a moment she shifted her legs and looked down.
Rory looked, too, then had to bite back a half laugh, half groan. Because he saw something new. Crawling up the inside of Jilly's right thigh was an embroidered snake, its forked tongue and lascivious eyes focused on the apple just out of its reach.
"Oh, my," Jilly said, sounding faint again.
Rory's lips twitched. "What would Sister Bernadette say about that, do you suppose?"
Jilly took a deep breath, as if coming to terms with what she'd seen. "That I should look a little more carefully at what I put on in the morning."
Amen.
Then she crossed her arms over those cherries and glared at him. "Anyway, you did not touch my … my apple."
He looked back at her with mock outrage. "I most certainly did touch your apple! I had my thigh right against that very sweet, very juicy piece of fruit!"
Maybe he'd gone too far. Jilly just stared at him, her lips moving but no sound coming out.
A little guilt pierced him. And good sense. He couldn't make her so uncomfortable in his presence that she'd refuse to go along with the request he had to make. "But let's talk about something else."
She swallowed. "Not until you accept my apology for the, uh, state I left you in the other night. Are you okay now?"
Since the "state" he thought she referred to was something he'd been in and out of—mostly in—since the first moment her high heel had hit the Caidwater driveway, he wasn't sure why she was apologizing now. "Okay how?"
"How long does it take to subside?"
That depended on how long it took him to get his mind off her. "Isn't this a bit personal?"
She blinked those big kitten eyes. "Oh. You're right. I'm sorry. It's just that Sister Bernadette explained the whole thing about boys getting blue, uh, you knows, if you let them get too close to your, um … cherries." She sighed, as if glad to have gotten all that out.
Rory just stood there, hoping she wouldn't exhale too hard, because the slightest movement was bound to knock him flat. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Are you talking about blue balls? The nun told you boys got blue balls?"
Again she went as red as the apple. "Um. Yes. That's the term, I believe, though I think it was another student, not the sister, who actually used it."
Rory was seeing red
. Not only had some woman given out a bunch of misinformation to impressionable teenagers, but not one man Jilly had been with since then had bothered to straighten out the biological facts for her. He could see this little sexpot in her naughty high heels floating from Hollywood party to Hollywood party, making love to men she thought she owed because they'd gotten too close to her—fruit.
The idea made him sick. "Damn it all to hell!"
In response to his loud curse, the clothing at Jilly's feet exploded. Something gray and furry erupted. As the creature took scampering laps about the walk-in closet, Jilly backed herself into a corner. When Kiss finally disappeared on a shelf above one clothespole, Jilly nervously eyed the shelf and the stack of boxes on it that the chinchilla had dived behind.
"There's Kiss," she said unnecessarily. She also didn't need to tell him the animal still made her uneasy.
Rory shook his head. That damn chinchilla. It could spend the rest of its life in a shoebox, for all he cared. Laying out the truth for Jilly was more important. "Forget that stupid rodent. Listen to me, Jilly, and listen to me good. There's no such thing as blue balls."
She blinked.
"I wasn't in any more pain or under any more strain than you probably were Friday night. You don't have to go around thinking you're hurting a man if you say no. Got that?" He knew he sounded surly and mean, but, dammit, he felt surly and mean. Why had the men Jilly had taken to bed let her go on thinking this kind of crap?
"You're just being nice."
"I'm not being nice." He took a step closer to her, ignoring the ominous rustling from the boxes over his head, exasperation spurring him on. "Why would I be nice to you? You have a weird profession and weird friends. You make me talk about cherries instead of your breasts and apples instead of your p—" He found he couldn't say it. "Instead of your apple."
"I don't want you to think I used… I don't want to be a tease," she said.
Rory relaxed a little. "Oh, honey, I know you're not a tease. Honest to God, I know more about teases than you could ever dream of."
She looked doubtful.
Rory hesitated. But then he thought about the men who had shared Jilly's bed in the past, and then he thought about the men who would share Jilly's bed in the future. He'd been given this opportunity to have an influence on just the type of men they might be.
"Listen, Jilly, don't you ever let anyone say you teased them and so you have to pay up. You might have a great body and you might look undeniably enticing in anything you put on, but I've never met a woman who is less a tease. You wear your feelings on your sleeve and in your eyes and in the shade of rose your skin turns when you talk about anything to do with sex or men."
She didn't look like she believed him.
He made a rough, impatient gesture, and his hand met one of the hanging garments. Rory fisted the silk material and pulled the robe from its hanger. It still held the scent of his father, Daniel Kincaid. The scent of power and selfishness. He stared down at the paisley material, astonished that he was considering telling Jilly about that night. The Kincaids had paid big to keep it private.
But her safety was worth more than that price and his pride. "Let me tell you, honey, that after the lesson the man who wore this taught me, I know teases and I know users."
She swallowed. "Who does it belong to?"
"My father. He swears Hugh Hefner stole the smoking jacket look from him," he said, and laughed without real amusement. "Anyway, I introduced dear old Dad to the sweet young thing I'd met in line at the DMV. A nice, un-Hollywood, uncute meet, right? She lived in the Valley and wanted to become a day-care teacher, she said. I melted on the spot. Day-care teacher. Nice, normal. So damn wholesome. I asked her to marry me. She was the kind of woman who could give to our children all I didn't have growing up."
"You wanted children?" Jilly said softly.
"Oh, yeah. And with her. I gave her a big ol' ring and she gave me the big ol' Yes I wanted to hear more than anything."
"And then?"
"Like I said. I introduced her to the family. Grandfather, Dad. Had a real old-fashioned engagement party. And two days later I came home unexpectedly and found my father in bed with my sweet young thing. My fiancée. Only she was nastier than she looked. And she didn't really want to be a day-care teacher after all. She wanted to be an actress on the daytime soaps."
Jilly swallowed again. "I'm sorry," she said.
Rory released the silk in his fist and let the robe fall to the floor. "I didn't tell you that to get your pity, Jilly. I said it so you'd know I know you're not a woman like that. I've got a finely honed radar for those types. You're not a tease or a user, even though you might be a little weird and you might dress a little flakily."
"So I'm just flaky and weird. Thanks." She made a face. "I think."
Rory shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Now that he'd dumped that story on her, he wasn't quite sure what to say next. "Well, anyway…"
He cleared his throat. "I hope you're free next weekend." Better just tell her straight out. If she saw it as a choice, she might think she had a say in the matter.
She blinked at the sudden turn of conversation. "What?"
"We're going on a trip."
She repeated the order slowly, patent disbelief in her voice. "We're going on a trip."
He held firm. "Yes. I have to meet with some of the Blue Party people in San Francisco. The man who's sponsoring my Senate bid wants to be introduced to the woman I'm going to marry."
What he didn't say was that it had been merely a casual mention. He could easily have made excuses, but for some reason, Rory had liked the idea of having her with him.
But Jilly was shaking her head. "I agreed to let you say we're engaged. I never said I'd play your fiancée."
"Too bad," he answered. "Unfortunately, some additional footage of us showed up on television over the weekend. You kissing me at the gallery opening. So the tabloids and the talk shows have heated up again on the subject of us. The leaders of the Blue Party want to meet you."
All true. And the prospect of hours-long meetings had seemed so much more palatable with Jilly nearby.
"Grrr."
He lifted his hands. "Hey, what can I say? It's not my idea."
She narrowed her eyes. "That's right. I'm certain you wouldn't choose to travel with, let alone marry, a woman with 'a weird profession and weird friends'."
Rory set his jaw in response to her stubbornness. "Yeah, well, at this point we're both out of choices. I have this meeting up in San Francisco, and you are going there with me."
"Over my flakily dressed body."
"Listen, Jilly, the senator wants to meet you. You need to help me out."
"I don't need to do any such thing."
Gritting his teeth instead of throttling her stubborn neck, Rory admitted to himself they weren't getting anywhere. "Never mind. I'll give you the details later," he said, retreating toward the closed closet door.
"I'm not going to change my mind," she answered, bristling.
He ground his molars. Damn it. San Francisco was for her own good and for his peace of mind. "Later. For now, I'll just—" He turned the knob.
Nothing happened.
He turned it again, shoving with his shoulder at the same time.
Still nothing happened.
"What's wrong?"
He couldn't face her. "The door is locked or jammed, or something."
She groaned. "Mrs. Mack warned me that some of the doors will do that."
Great. Now he was locked inside a closet with a woman who looked like a sex goddess and who was acting like an irritable donkey. "Well, you could have warned me."
"How did I know you were going to shut the door?"
He swung around, pissed because she was right, and pissed because, as usual, disaster continued to dog him whenever she was near. Fighting his frustration, and losing, he gazed at her and her garish, Garden of Eden outfit. "For God's sake. You should have known when you started talking a
bout your stupid cherries and apples!" Desperate to get out of her vicinity now, he kicked the uncooperative door with his foot.
The useless thump unleashed sudden chaos.
With frightened squeals, Kiss jumped up from his latest hiding place, sending boxes tumbling onto Rory's head. Jilly laughed, the sound cut short when the creature dived from the now-cleared shelf to the floor, where he scuffled over and around Jilly's feet. She gasped, then jumped away from the critter, bumping against Rory's chest. He automatically put his arms around her, twisting so that her back was against the door and he could shield her from the chinchilla's frantic dashing.
The rodent circled the closet once. Twice. There was another mad scrambling pass, and then the animal suddenly quieted, having nestled away in another hidden location.
Rory's arms still encircling Jilly, they both froze, holding their breath against another violent chinchilla scurry.
After a moment, Rory let out his air. "I think we're safe."
Jilly didn't immediately move out of his arms, and he didn't let go. She felt warm again, too warm, and her breath smelled sweet. "Maybe we should just stay put for a while," he said.
She took him seriously. "You don't think we should bang on the door and call out to someone?"
Inwardly smiling, he shook his head with an almost imperceptible movement. "I think they've moved their search to another wing. They'll be back here eventually, but I don't want to give Kiss another rodent panic attack."
She tensed again, her eyes widening. "No. Let's not do that."
"Anyway," Rory said softly, "it'll give us another chance to talk about this weekend."
"No." She said it automatically.
"C'mon. Say yes."
"No."
He smiled down at her. "If you don't, I'll kiss you again."
"No!"
"I'll touch those cherries."
"No." She studied him through suspicious green eyes. "Anyway, you wouldn't do anything I didn't want you to."
He smiled again. "But after I kiss you, you'll want me to."
She tried to jerk away, but he tightened his hold. "Easy, easy. Remember the crazed chinchilla."
THIS PERFECT KISS Page 15
