The Last First Kiss (Harlequin Special Edition) (8 page)

He would, if he knew where the hood release was. The fact that he didn’t just served to make him feel even more inept. Ordinarily his lack of experience in these matters didn’t bother him, but it did this time. Because this was Kara.

“Um…”

Kara realized what the problem was. She moved closer to the driver’s side, opened the door and leaned in to feel around the area beneath and to the left of the steering wheel. Per force she had to brush up against his leg. When she made contact, she flashed him a grin.

“I’m not getting fresh,” she told him innocently. “Your knee’s in the same area as the hood release.” Feeling around for the lever as Dave tried to shift his knee away from her, she finally located it. “Ah, here it is,” she declared with triumph.

She pulled the lever, then returned to the front of the car, where she lifted and secured the hood.

“Okay,” she called out. “Turn the key for me. Please.”

He did, and this time he thought he heard what sounded like a slight cough coming from his engine. Praying that it had caught, Dave began to pump the pedal, giving the engine what he thought it needed: more gas.

“Stop!” Kara cried. “You’ll flood the engine.” Peering around the side of the car, she asked him, “Do you have a flashlight in the glove compartment? I think I know the problem. If I’m right, we can be on the road in about fifteen minutes.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, his voice somewhat wooden. The moment was long gone. Just as well. He opened up his glove compartment and took out a small, sleek flashlight. Shifting, he leaned over in his seat and offered it to Kara.

“Okay, let’s see if I can get us rolling,” she murmured, getting down to business.

He knew he should be relieved, for a number of reasons, that they’d be parting ways soon.

But he wasn’t.

Chapter Eight

“W
here did you learn how to fix cars?”

Dave’s question surprised her as it broke the silence that had filled the interior of his car. She had all but given up hope that he’d utter a single word before dropping her off at her apartment, and she’d be damned if she was going to be the first one to say anything. It wasn’t her fault that she knew how to fix cars and he didn’t. It wasn’t in her nature to play the helpless female when she wasn’t any such thing.

“So you
can
talk.” Kara shifted in her seat to look at him. “I thought that maybe you’d suddenly been struck mute. To answer your question,” she continued, “my dad was a car enthusiast. He loved taking engines apart, restoring old cars. He was never happier than when he was fixing some kind of engine problem, getting it to run more efficiently,” she recalled fondly.

It seemed like a million years ago now. Neil Calhoun had been gone for thirteen years, succumbing to the disease that had ravaged him the summer she turned seventeen. She still missed him like crazy. Especially whenever she tinkered with a car.

“When my dad wasn’t at work, he was in the garage, working on a car. I wanted to spend time with him, so I pretended to be interested in cars.” Her mouth curved. “After a while, I didn’t have to pretend.”

Dave wondered if she was aware of the irony of what she’d just said—that she’d gone through the motions of a pretense until it no longer was a pretense.

Not wanting to get embroiled in a potential argument—he knew when he was outmatched—he decided not to bring it up. Instead, he focused on Kara’s initial glib comment regarding his silence.

“I wasn’t struck mute,” Dave informed her grudgingly. “It’s just that…” His voice trailed off as he realized that there was no ego-saving way to finish his sentence.

“Having me fix the car when you didn’t have a clue what was wrong made you feel less than a man?” Kara supplied.

Dave was prepared to go one round with her, expecting some sarcastic comment about his manhood or lack thereof, but again, just like with the kiss and with Gary at the free clinic, she surprised him. This time by not trying to humiliate him the way she would have done when they were kids. Reluctantly, he nodded.

“It shouldn’t have,” she said. He continued waiting for the punch line. There wasn’t any. “Lots of guys don’t know their way around a car. And everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. Yours is fixing people. Me, I can generally figure out what’s wrong with a car. In the grand scheme of things, yours is the more important skill.”

For a second, he was tempted to ask to see some identification. This was
not
the Kara Calhoun he’d known. That one would have filleted him with her razor-sharp tongue before he could even think of a way to defend himself.

Still not completely at ease, Dave did begin to relax just a little more. Enough to ask, “What’s your weakness?”

The question caught her off guard. Kara blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You just said that everyone’s got a weakness,” he reminded her. She had succeeded in arousing his curiosity. “So what’s yours?”

“I should have said everybody
but
me.” She could feel him waiting for her to give a real answer. After a moment, she shrugged. Still looking out through the front windshield, she said, “I can’t cook.”

“I can.” It would have been difficult, growing up in an Italian home, not picking up a few pointers. His mother, perhaps because he was an only child and she had no daughter to share things with, had made sure he knew all the basics when it came to finding his way around the kitchen.

She heard him laugh shortly to himself. “What?”

“Nothing.” But then he went on to say, “It’s just that I’d say we complement each other.”

“Not without some severe arm twisting,” Kara countered. But her mouth was soft as she said it, giving way to a smile at the end.

He spared her a look just as he made a right turn and approached her apartment complex. She’d changed, he thought. She had never smiled like that when she was younger. It was a warm, inviting smile. Made a man let his guard down.

“Maybe not so severe,” he commented.

She wanted to deny his assumption, but she couldn’t manage to do it. Lost for a retort, she fell back on another shrug.

“Anyway,” she began, shifting topics, “I think we pulled off the first leg of our plan pretty well. Both your mother and mine looked as if they bought into our fledgling romance.”

For a moment back there, under the streetlamp, so had he. The power of suggestion was a dangerous, scary thing, Dave thought.

“First leg,” he repeated, turning his car into her complex. He headed for guest parking. Kara really had put a lot of planning into this, he thought. “Are we talking about a two-legged creature, a four-legged one, an octopus or a centipede?”

Knowing it was going to take more than just one more shot, she went with the second choice. “The four-legged kind,” she said.

Okay, he supposed that sounded reasonable. He’d been worried that she’d want to go on with this charade for several months. “And the second leg is?”

“Just letting our mothers see us out and about.” They were going to have to be noticeable, but not obvious, which was tricky. Too obvious and her mother would definitely see through the plan, ruining everything. Not obvious enough and what was the point? “I’ll see about coming up with a list of places and activities where one or both of the dynamic duo would be sure to see us.”

“‘Dynamic duo’?” he repeated, confused. “What do Batman and Robin have to do with all this?”

“Nothing.” She saw the confusion on his face. Kara sighed. “I forgot how literal you could be.”

How the hell else was he supposed to take her comment? “And I forgot how you hardly ever made any sense.”

“To
you,
” she emphasized. “Nobody else ever has trouble getting my meaning.”

He highly doubted that. “Do you visit an alternate universe often?”

“A joke.” Kara splayed her hand across her chest, as if to press back a heart attack brought on by shock. “Wow, maybe there is hope for you yet,” she said with an easy smile. “And for the record, the dynamic duo in this case refers to—”

“—our mothers, yes. I get it.”

She patted him on the shoulder, a teacher proud of her slow but determined student.

“Doesn’t matter how slow your mind works, Dave, as long as it eventually comes through.” She was surprised when he started to get out on his side. “Where are you going?” she asked with just the slightest hint of wariness in her voice.

Slight or not, Dave picked up on it and it changed all the ground rules. She’d looked flustered for that one unguarded second. She was afraid, he realized. Afraid that he was inviting himself over. It wasn’t hard to figure out what she was thinking after that. That, once inside her apartment, he’d try to press his advantage.

The thought placed the ball back in his court, making him far less leery and a great deal more relaxed. “Your father taught you how to work on cars, mine taught me that you always walk a lady to her door after a date.” A smile played along his lips. “I guess that would apply to you, too.”

“Very funny,” she answered. “So about our next ‘date,’ I think I’ve got the perfect place. Our mothers have a standing date for the Orange County fair each year—the first Saturday the fair’s open. That’s this coming Saturday.” Her grin was wide. “I thought we’d join them.” Then it faded a little as she said, “It’ll require lots of hand holding. Are you up to it?”

He wasn’t twelve anymore. There was no stigma attached to holding a girl’s hand. Even hers.

“If I have to, I have to,” he replied, trying to sound convincingly put out.

But the parameters had changed suddenly and drastically with that experimental “first-kiss syndrome” she’d sprung on him. He knew now that he never should have proposed “getting it out of the way.” It was far better to be attracted to her and wonder if there was anything to the attraction than to actually go through the steps and find out.

Because now there was no room for doubt. He
was
attracted to her. A great deal.

And that, he knew, was definitely going to be a problem, at least for one of them.

“I’ll get my shots,” he said as they came to a stop before her front door.

“You do that,” she told him. Getting her key out, she paused before putting it into the lock. “You don’t want to come inside, do you?”

Actually, he did. Very much so. Which was why he couldn’t.

“I’d better be getting back,” he told her evasively, not answering outright. “I’ve got an early shift tomorrow,” he tacked on for good measure.

She nodded. Relieved.

And yet…

There is no “yet,”
Kara silently argued. If she was feeling anything, it was just her, throwing herself into this part. There was nothing between them and there wasn’t going to be. If she was lucky, she would get through this charade intact without giving in to the temptation of killing the man. She knew it was just a matter of time before the desire to put him out of her misery returned to tempt her mercilessly.

“Okay, then, I’ll be in touch.” She saw the look of surprise on his face. “About the fair,” she prompted. Had he forgotten already?

“Oh, right. Okay.”

It was time for him to get moving, Dave told himself. Time to point his feet toward his car and start walking back to guest parking. Why he felt as if he’d just stepped into glue that was holding him fast was something he didn’t quite understand. It couldn’t be because he wanted to remain in her company for a couple more minutes, that would be too ridiculous for words.

So why was there no other part of him moving except for his lips? “Um, thanks again for getting that game for Ryan.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” she told him, and she meant it. Then, before Dave could respond, she added, “The look on Ryan’s face was thanks enough.”

Goose bumps were beginning to claim her flesh, traveling up and down the length of her bare arms. She blamed it on the night air, although it really wasn’t all that cool.

“See you,” she said cheerfully, then launched herself into her apartment and shut the door behind her before she did something stupid, like pull him in after her. Or kiss him again.

Dave stood there on her doorstep, looking at the closed door for several moments. For a split second, he contemplated knocking and asking to come in under some pretext or other. But then decided against it.

He’d been up too long and sleep deprivation was making his mind wander into strange, incomprehensible areas, tempting him to go against his own better instincts. Never mind that while in medical school and then during residency, he’d pulled back-to-back-to-back shifts that would have worn out the average robot. This was his excuse and he was sticking to it.

“See you around,” he said to the door and then turned and walked away.

Kara had remained on the other side of the door, torn. Listening. Aware that he hadn’t walked away and struggling with the very strong temptation of opening the door and pulling him in. Only the realization that it would have been a very huge mistake kept her from doing it.

The future, from where she stood, looked a little rocky. Of course, she could just decide to abandon this whole charade, but she knew that her mother was not about to give up now that she’d gotten her toes wet in matchmaking waters.

She
might not be aware of any biological clock ticking, but apparently her mother, somehow newly equipped with super-hearing, was. And if her mother wasn’t stopped in her tracks now, who knew who the next candidate she came up with might be? Better to nip this in the bud now.

All of this angst would be moot if only kissing Dave had been like rubbing her lips along a dead fish. Then all her problems would have been solved and she wouldn’t be feeling as attracted to him as she was.

“Oh well, like the flu, this too shall pass,” she told herself out loud.

For the time being, though, she forced herself to put it out of her mind.

“So it’s working,” Lisa declared.

The minute she’d walked into her house, the phone had started ringing. It was no surprise that Paulette was on the other end of the line. Paulette always did have timing down to a science, and this time she was calling, Lisa assumed, to crow about how successful her plan to get their children together had turned out.

“Of course it’s working,” Paulette answered with no small display of confidence. “I knew it would. Kara wants to teach me a lesson. I mean, teach
us
a lesson.”

This, Lisa thought, had to be the fastest that Paulette had ever lost her. “Excuse me?”

Paulette laughed and proceeded to explain. “I know my daughter. She has this radar that puts her on the alert if something is a little off. In this case, the request for that game tipped her off.”

“But Ryan really wanted it,” Lisa pointed out. That hadn’t been a ruse. “You saw his reaction at the party when he unwrapped it. He was overjoyed.”

“Yes, but you have to admit that my coming out and asking Kara to deliver the game to Dave at the clinic because it was closer for her than for me was rather obvious.”