A Perfect Mistake (15 page)

I had to be honest
with myself. I longed to see him again. After what we’d shared
in the tub, after all that he had told me, I couldn’t seem to
get enough of him. Was I scared? Shitless. But I owed him at least a
partial explanation. It was the least I could do.

I could hear quite a
lot of noise coming out of his house. Music and clomping noises. I
knocked several times, but no one came to the door, so I tried the
handle. When it turned, I went inside.

It was earsplitting,
all that music and laughter and stomping.

They had pushed
Boone’s dining room table against the wall and rolled up the
beautiful area rug to reveal the dark mahogany floor beneath. Booker
was twirling and staccato-stomping around Boone’s dining room
while Braxton and Boone played what sounded to me like flamenco
music.

They were all
laughing like fools, but my eyes went directly to Boone. Booker did a
flourish with his heel that looked to me more like river dancing—that
Irish step dancing—than he did the lively Spanish dance. He had
chip clips pinned to his fingers, which I was sure were supposed to
be castanets. When he flung his arm, one of the chip clips flew off
and hit Braxton in the face.

Boone stopped
playing and doubled over, howling with laughter, then threw his head
back. When he did, he lost his balance and landed on his butt, but he
protected the guitar with his body. Booker danced around him, and
that’s when Braxton lost it, and there was nothing left but
their raucous laughter.

Booker spun around
and threw his hands in the air shouting
olé
.
And that’s when I lost it and started laughing right along with
them.

Boone popped up from
the floor, all laughter gone, Booker groaned, and Braxton laughed
even harder.

It didn’t take
long for Booker and Braxton to clear out. I still blushed a bit when
I met both of their eyes, but they were smiling at me as they left.

Boone set his
beautiful guitar back into its case and joined me where I stood
speechless in the middle of his living room.

“Do you want
to sit down?”

“How are you
doing?”

We spoke at the same
time, and I skipped the questions and stepped up to him to feel his
forehead and find out for myself. “You’re warm. You
shouldn’t have been fooling around like that.”

“Blame it on
my jackass brothers. They were trying to keep my mind off. . .um.”

“Me?”

“Taking the
fifth,” he said.

“So, you do
remember some of the stuff you blurted out in the tub?”

He looked away.
“Let’s not talk about that. I remember what you looked
like, and if I continue to talk about that, I’m going to get
another hard-on and then really get distracted.”

He had a point. I
got flustered thinking about him getting hard for me. If I thought
for even another minute about how Boone had looked in the tub, I
would get distracted, too. “That seems like a good idea.”

“Do you want
something to drink?” he offered.

“No, Boone. I
came to talk to you because it’s past time that I did.”

“That sounds
ominous.”

“Maybe we’d
better sit down.”

I met his blue eyes
and decided I would never get tired of being with Boone. Looking into
his eyes, studying every angle and plane of his face, breathing in
his gorgeous, unique scent. I was struck again how much the son I
delivered five months ago had looked like him. My heart lurched.

“The
graduation party,” he said.

“It always
comes back to that night, doesn’t it, Boone?”

“What
happened, Verity?” His eyes were worried, concerned and I felt
sorry that we had been interrupted and he’d had to wait for me
to explain what I had said. “I’m dying, here. You said it
wasn’t the first time you saw me naked. Did I streak or
something?”

Nervously wiping my
hands on my shorts, I screwed up my courage and looked him in the
eye. I said softly, “We had sex, Boone. In the bed of your
truck beneath a full moon. All night long.”

He blinked at my
words. There was an unnatural tension in every line of his body, and
a tormented look in his eyes as shock cleared.

I watched the subtle
play of emotions on his face, mostly anger and a whole lot of worry.
“Boone. Say something. Anything.”

“We had sex?”

I nodded.

“In the bed of
my truck?”

I nodded again and
closed my eyes.

“All fucking
night long.”

“Pretty much.”

He took a shuddering
breath. “Fuck!” He stared at me, the realization making
his eyes look even more tormented. Something electric passed between
us, and I couldn’t stand to see his pain. I experienced a rush
of compassion for him that overrode everything, and I simply reacted.

I wrapped my arms
around his neck and buried my face in his throat. “Boone, it
wasn’t your fault. It was me. I initiated it. I seduced you.
You even protested, saying that you couldn’t. That I was off
limits. I didn’t understand at the time, and now I know why you
said that, but I was under the influence of the X, and I just took
what I wanted.”

He moved me back,
and I thought he was pushing me away, but he cupped my cheeks, his
face intense, his eyes haunted. His voice broke when he said, “Did
I hurt you?”

I shook my head,
tears gathering even as I fought them. I didn’t want to make it
worse by crying. Boone was already distressed enough. “That
would be the first question you would ask me.”

“What the
fuck? Of course it is. I know you were a virgin. You had to have
been. Fuck, your first time and I was wasted. Geezus.”

This time I cupped
his face. “Listen to me. You were amazing. It was like you knew
exactly how to make it wonderful for me. There was barely any pain,
Boone. You tried everything you could think of to stop me, but when I
got my hands on you, you kinda lost it.”

He groaned. “Do
you know how pissed I am right now?”

“I can
imagine. I wish I had talked to you about this sooner.”

“No, not that.
I fucking missed it. I missed having the memory of being with you for
the first time. That really pisses me off.”

My heart just
suspended in my chest. All the romantic notions that I had about
Boone Outlaw when I first crawled across his body in the bed of that
truck couldn’t begin to measure up to what he had just said.
His sincerity…in this moment in time, so far away from that
other monumental experience, when I had not only taken him into my
body because I wanted to, but had conceived a child with him?…my
earlier notions of his integrity and sincerity simply paled in
comparison.

He made it so
difficult to not just blurt out the rest of it, but I still didn’t
know what I was going to do. I had a life that I’d built in New
York City with Minnie and her Tattersall brand. Right before I came
back, she had said she wanted to talk to me about a business
opportunity, but thought I should take care of all this Suttontowne
stuff first.

For a split second I
wished I had just told my parents that I wasn’t coming back
home and had simply remained in New York City, taking Minnie up on
her business opportunity. But it was too late for that, and I was
going to get the dream that I had dreamed while I was still in high
school in spite of all my mistakes. In fact, the irony was that if I
hadn’t been given that X and gotten pregnant, I might never
have found the kinds opportunities that were now mine to explore.

Could that pregnancy
have been the best thing that ever happened to me instead of the
worst?

Rather than trying
to work it out right now, I simply leaned in and kissed him, brushed
his soft, enticing mouth with mine. He leaned slightly back to look
at me, his eyes dark and intense, mesmerizing. When our lips met
again, his kiss was unhurried, just the way Boone did everything.
Then he settled his mouth more firmly over mine, and thought ceased.
My eyes drifted shut. My hands burrowed into the fabric of his shirt.
Boone pulled me close, slanting his mouth across mine, taking
possession of it. At the feel of his tongue I gasped, and he slipped
into my mouth, thrusting slowly, deeply.

I hadn’t ever
kissed anyone like I kissed Boone. It was as if my whole being
participated. It’s what I remembered from our union in his
truck bed. I couldn’t help it. I really didn’t want to. I
wanted to experience him every way I could to make sure that I
wouldn’t be leaving something behind that could become…more.

He cradled me
against him like I was as fragile, as delicate as a glass figurine.
His fingers went into my hair, sliding through it slowly, only to
pull out and slide in again, then cup the back of my head. He
deepened the kiss, a soft groan that traveled through me like a soft
hush in a dark room.

The pain and agony
and loss butted up against all the sensations that Boone evoked. He
was the father of my child. I wanted to know him. I wanted to see who
he was, and I missed my little boy. That longing was like a black,
sucking hole. I wanted comfort from Boone, and he gave me that and
more.

A year ago I had
been a virgin, uptight, just as Stacy had said. I was determined back
then that my first sex would be with Boone, because I wanted to know
if I could be something more than just the preacher’s uptight
daughter.

But the X had
changed that. Or had it? Had it, instead, merely released me from
bindings that I’d worn for so long I didn’t even notice
them anymore? Or was it because I had fallen from grace at the mercy
of hot blue eyes, a supple and delicious mouth, a deep, sultry voice
and broad shoulders that knew how to shelter and hold a woman? And a
body that was sculpted in thick muscle, designed to give a woman the
kind of pleasure that she wouldn’t soon forget? Boone knew what
to do with what he had and what he had—criminy, it was
beautiful.

And then I wondered
if it was because of the compassion that I could swear I saw in those
hauntingly blue eyes. Did it underlie everything he did? I wanted to
know that, too. How I had misjudged him. I wanted to make it up to
him, too. Kissing him was just the first step in the journey of him.

I always thought of
Boone as the heart of the Outlaws. Booker with his intellect and
Braxton with his physicality made up the whole of the threesome.

What was that
Star
Trek
Borg mantra?
Resistance
is futile?
…resistance
to Boone was simply beyond me.

He broke the kiss,
nestling his warm face into the hollow of my neck, his chest working
against me. “What was that for? More research?”

“Yes. It’s
the only way to gather data. Don’t play with me. I know you’ve
been told you’re irresistible.”

“Hardly,”
he said, “You know I never went in for that science stuff. Much
more interested in music, but now I’ve learned that there’s
something to be said for ah…gathering data.”

He raised his head
and met my eyes. “So, our first encounter after we lusted after
each other in high school, and I fucking barely remember a thing.
What are we going to do about that, Verity?”

“What do you
want to do about it?”

“You never
said whether you’d take me up on my offer for a date.”

“Sitting in a
cold tub with you while you were out of it doesn’t count as a
first date?”

He looked down, his
thick lashes shadowing his thoughts. “Fuck, no.” He
chuckled. “Not even close.”

“I’m on
the fence about it,” I said truthfully.

“Why? Is it
because I’m an Outlaw?”

I shook my head.
“No, I never cared about that.”

“Then why are
you hesitating?”

“I’m
worried that if I go out with you and spend time with you that I
won’t want to leave Suttontowne in the fall. I won’t want
to leave you, Boone.”

His breath hitched
and his face softened. He bit his bottom lip with those white teeth,
looking rumpled and sexy. “You might miss something good.”

“That’s
why I’m on the fence.”

“Self-preservation
before exploration. You’re the one who started this research
thing. Now I’m hooked.” He nodded and let me go, stepping
away from me. “Okay, no coercion, even though I want to.”

“You want me
to make the decision right now.”

“Do you like
torturing sick people who have nothing better to do than sit around
and think?”

I knew it was time
for me to get back home. I was again supposed to help Lindsay with
the kids for the lunch hour.

“No, I don’t
enjoy torturing you, Boone. You know, unless you piss me off.”

He chuckled. “I
never took you for a tough peach pit.”

“A what?”

“You know, a
peach pit. The tough center surrounded with all that delicious
softness. Did I mention that I really love peaches?”

“You said no
coercion, and yet you just dropped your sexy voice an octave and made
a sexual innuendo.”

“That’s
because I’m bad, Verity. Hadn’t you heard? Those bad, bad
Outlaw boys. Trouble with a capital T.”

“I heard that,
Boone. Okay, first date. You choose.”

“No pressure.”

I smiled. “Oh,
there’s pressure, bad boy. Come up with something good.”

He tilted his head
and gave me that knee-melting, Boone-swoon, Outlaw-patented grin.
Could a woman’s knees buckle permanently?

“Count on it,
darlin’.”

Boone

The next day, as I
drove to the rectory, the gazebo sketch and the dimensions I had
worked out while I was sick lying next to me on the passenger seat, I
was still pissed about the bomb that Verity had dropped on me. We’d
had sex.
Sex.
In
the bed of my truck.
Fuck
.
That was not where I would have wanted to make love to Verity.

I took a deep
breath.