Crush on You (17 page)

And just like that, her skin flamed with lust.

Which ignited her temper, too. A single look from him could set her simmering, a feeling she was wholly unprepared to handle, particularly since he hadn’t been breaking down her door to get his share of the heat. As a matter of fact, yesterday he’d practically raced out of her office.

“Build me up!” a woman yelled from somewhere at the core of the crowd. A teeny tank top was thrown high into the air.

From the throng, another roar. She saw Penn’s attention shift away from Alessandra and a devilish grin take over his mouth. A kid ran to the dunking booth, tossed Penn one of the TV show’s promotional T-shirts, and he balled it between his hands, all the while obviously appreciating the charms of some half-naked bimbo out of Alessandra’s view. Some half-naked bimbo who given the opportunity would, not unlike her, beg him for just what he’d delivered in Alessandra’s office.

Mortified all over again, Alessandra retreated down Fir, leaving Kohl behind. She and Penn were better off staying apart, something his absence said he’d decided, too. She wasn’t going to succumb to his appeal again.

Dusk was falling, and she wandered, not yet ready to go back to the Tanti Baci booth. Deep breaths of still warm air and the familiar streets brought her some comfort, just as the semidarkness gave her anonymity. It was going to be all right, she told herself. The Three Mouseketeers had poured wine together today, just as her father had always wanted. They’d find a way to keep Tanti Baci going. They had to.

Minutes slipped by and she only felt more certain that they would pull it off. Tanti Baci would survive and that would be happy ending enough for Alessandra.

Old-fashioned street lights blinked on, their low wattage lending only ambience, not true illumination. She sighed, feeling like she’d stepped back in time. Not centuries, just a few short years ago. Any minute now she’d turn a corner and Tommy would be there.

Her smile died, her buoyant mood sank as she turned onto Cedar—and then walked straight into the arms of a tall, hard, man. Her mind short-circuited. Her will fled.

She clung to him.

He held her tight.

As their mouths met, she realized he was still wet. And, now, so was she.

Bad little sister, indeed. Because she just couldn’t keep her promises about steering clear. And particularly because if anyone saw the carnal manner in which her arms and mouth were clinging to Penn Bennett, her saintly image would be shot to hell.

Gil fingered the ten dollar bill in his pocket as he waited for Clare on a bench in the Edenville town square. It was Market Day, and downtown at dusk was crowded, but he refused to use that as an excuse to put off coming clean with her. Though they had reservations for four at a nearby bistro in sixty minutes’ time, he’d phoned and asked that she meet him alone first.

The number one item on his agenda was giving her the ten bucks he owed her. The shock—horror?—that had overtaken her face when he’d suggested a kiss as payment made clear what she thought about being mouth-to-mouth with him. Then, he’d backpedaled like crazy, laughing like it was a big joke. Now, he was going to give her the money and also give her the truth: he hadn’t been kidding.

Not only that, he was also going to tell her there was no other woman he was seeing, no woman he wanted to date. Not when he was in love with her.

With the lies between them out of the way, she’d understand exactly why he needed distance from her. She’d free him from his Man of Honor promise; he’d be free to be miserable from across town on the day of her wedding.

“Hey!” Suddenly she was there in front of him, standing out in the near-dark in a short lacy skirt and a top that had small fabric roses edging the neckline. Both ivory-colored, making her look bridal again.

His chest hurt.

A little kid riding a toddler-sized two-wheeler wobbled behind her. Every Edenvillian took their training wheels off in the square for the first time, and just like all before, this rider took a tumble. Clare spun, her skirt rising, and bent to rescue the bicyclist. The floating hem kept moving upward, affording Gil a brief glance at the curves of her bare bottom, revealed by a blue thong.

His cock hurt.

Maybe he groaned, because she spun back, her hands clamping the skirt at her sides. “You didn’t see anything, did you?”

Incapable of speech, he shook his head. Clare’s butt had started this whole thing. His geek girl, his buddy-of-the-female-persuasion, hadn’t been on his radar as a woman until the fateful trip to visit her friend. Then, a little drunk in Daphne’s living room, they’d decided there was no reason to play rochambeau for the hard floor. He should have insisted on rock-paper-scissors anyway, though, because nothing was harder, he discovered, than his cock the moment that Clare snuggled her little ass into the curve of his groin.

Murmuring some bullshit about back pain, he’d put a tiny throw pillow between them, but it had been no help. For the rest of that night—and the next and the next—he’d been both tortured and pleasured by the closeness of his BFF’s slender body.

On their long trip home, when she’d asked him if he thought she was ready for marriage, he’d said yes, but that was before he’d considered whether
he
was actually willing to marry her.

Not soon after, he’d decided the answer to that second question was no. And so he’d said nothing about his feelings when she engaged herself to Jordan Wilson.

She eyed him now, suspicion bringing her brows together. “Are you sure I didn’t flash you?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “No flash.” It would only embarrass her otherwise and . . . God, he was going back on his promise to himself already. But wait, it hadn’t been a “flash” had it? His feelings for Clare had snuck up on him instead, after years of companionship and a camaraderie that his other friends never understood but that he hadn’t examined in any depth until she’d snuggled up beside him.

As close as she was now, he thought, when she plopped next to him on the bench. “What’s up?”

“I . . .” Her thigh was pressed to his, setting his brain to Spin again. Jumping to his feet, he didn’t even risk a glance at her. “Let’s walk.”

“Okay,” she agreed, even as he took off at a quick stride. Then he felt her small hand at the crook of his elbow. “Hold on. Wait up.”

Neither was acceptable. He wanted to hold on to her and their friendship so damn bad, but Clare Knowles as Mrs. Jordan Wilson would cut at him if he stayed too close. As for “waiting up,” it had taken him months to get this far. He could no longer put off the truth.

He stopped on the sidewalk, noticing where they were. The “far” side of town, which was only four blocks from the center. Small frame bungalows with tiny lawns marched down both sides of the street, while around the corner were metal buildings housing more commercial enterprises like a mom-and-pop flooring center and an upholstery business.

They were alone, except for the people he could see moving behind the lit windows of the little houses. He inhaled a deep breath.

“I told a whopper today,” Clare said, before his own confession could formulate on his tongue.

He blinked. “What . . . ?”

“I’m feeling really bad, but I didn’t want to get into it with Jordan’s grandmother.”

“Clare . . .”

She rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead, exactly as she had when she was nine years old and the fourteens times table wouldn’t stay put in her memory. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this wedding stuff.”

He frowned. Surely she didn’t mean what he wanted her to mean? “That could be a problem, considering that at the end of the month you’re—”

“Oh, nothing will get in the way of the ‘I-dos,’ Mom would kill me if I put any kind of hitch in her plans—even if it’s merely changing the color of the ink in the guest book pen.”

She looked so frustrated that Gil had to smile. He let himself run a hand over her hair. “Kid,” he said, to keep it all light and easy, “you need to stand up to your mother.”

“As soon as I figure out a way to bring my brother back to life,” Clare said with a sigh.

He let himself caress her hair one last time. She caught his fingers before his hand could fall back to his side. “Absolve me, please, for the lie I told today.”

Shaking his head, he tried to retrieve his hand but she wasn’t letting go. “So what exact lie was it?”

“You know Jordan’s very stuffy, very upright grandmother.”

Gil winced just at the mention of the woman. Old San Francisco society, she wore pastel suits and diamond earrings as big as lug nuts. At the engagement party, she’d told him that he reminded her of the Italians she used to know, the ones who “barely made a living, yet made a lot of fat babies.”

“I hope you told her you were planning on a huge family of rug rats, all of whom plan to squeak by working with their hands.”

“And break the Wilson tradition of surgeons, stockbrokers, and CEOs?” Clare shuddered. “She asked me if we were planning on serving any alcohol at our afternoon reception. Apparently she finds it gauche at events scheduled before five o’clock.”

He stared. “Did you explain this is
Napa
? That you’re holding your wedding at a
winery
?” As for him, he planned on starting with the hard stuff first thing in the morning on her big day.

“I told her of course we wouldn’t be gauche, even though I know darn well that we’re having an open bar and planning on toasting with the Tanti Baci wedding wine. What’s she going to think?”

“Let Jordan handle it,” Gil advised. “It’s his wedding, too.”

“Not that you’d know it,” she mumbled. “I already brought it up and he said it was my fib and that I should deal with the fallout.”

Gil’s free hand curled into a fist. Even if Jordan wasn’t marrying Clare, Gil thought he’d hate the guy. Didn’t he know the smallest thing about his bride? The sweet girl geek detested confrontation and she needed backup in a situation like this one. That’s what a partner did. That’s how good relationships worked. When it came to facing down new small business regulations, say, he could always count on Clare to help him through the details. In turn, he handled all her minor building repairs.

Give and take. Take and give.

Without thinking, he lifted her hand and kissed the back of her knuckles. “Thanks, buddy.” He didn’t say what for. He didn’t know if he needed to.

She looked away. “You know all I thought of during the conversation with Grandmère?”

“That she chose a pretentious, stupid-ass nickname for her grandkids to call her?”

She laughed, and he could feel a little of her tension seep away. “No. I thought of that
Star Trek
episode, the one where Spock tells Bones that Vulcans don’t feel the ‘dubious’ effects of alcohol.”

Gil’s chest ached again. His Trekkie girl geek. “And then the good doctor says something like ‘Now I understand why they were conquered.’ ”

She laughed again. “You love that episode, too.”

No. He didn’t actually enjoy that episode or love anything about the please-why-so-long series except that Clare had a passion for it. So he knew about tribbles and Red Shirts and Vulcan psychology, God help him.

He pressed a kiss to her knuckles a second time. “Yeah. Love that episode, too.” Only this time he didn’t feel bad about lying again. He was fast losing his resolve to be the bearer of bad news.

She started chattering about yet another booze-related Bones and Spock moment and he was listening, really he was, until his gaze caught on the big picture window of a bungalow behind Clare’s back. A pair was embracing, indulging in a hell of a kiss. It made him envious, damn it, to see this other couple indulging in what he wanted to share with Clare.

Then the man broke away from the woman, and Gil recognized them both.

Jordan Wilson. Jesus. Jesus Christ.

The woman was Tori Merrick, who’d gone to high school with him and Clare. Ah. No doubt the source of the girl geek and her bodyguard comment. If he remembered right, Tori poured at one of the several tasting rooms set up in Edenville’s downtown.

And she was having an affair with Clare’s groom-to-be, that was obvious, as Gil watched her reel the other man in for another sloppy, intimate kiss. Cold washed over him as he shifted his gaze from the clandestine couple to Clare’s animated face.

It was going to kill her. It was going to suck any joy right out of her, and if he told her about his feelings now, he wouldn’t be there to help her pick up the pieces. “Clare . . .”

She stopped in mid-Trek monologue. “What?” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the matter?”

With all the fervency he had in him, he willed her to turn her head. But she didn’t. She just kept on looking at him. “Gil? What
is
it?”

He opened his mouth. “Nothing,” came out of it. “Except we should probably get to the restaurant. Did I mention my date couldn’t make it?” he continued as he hurried her in the opposite direction of the two people in the window using their tongues and wandering hands to say their prolonged good-byes.