Three to Tango (16 page)

Thirteen

S
he stood so long on the doorstep she was certain he wouldn’t answer, but finally Brian, tousle haired and sleepy eyed, opened the door. Kerry didn’t wait for him to invite her inside. She kissed him, hoping against all reason he wouldn’t push her away.

He didn’t.

Brian’s kiss was like coming home. All those years she’d spent thinking about what it would be like, and now she knew. She didn’t want to give this up, not ever. Not for anything.

“I love you,” she said into his kiss, the words too muffled so she pulled away to say it again. “I love you, Brian Jordan.”

He didn’t ask her about Jeremy. Didn’t question the bag she tossed onto the living room floor. Brian just kicked the door closed behind her, picked her up, and walked with her to the bedroom without stopping her kiss. Not even to breathe, so by the time they got to the bedroom, both of them were gasping a little for air. Halfway to the bed, he tripped.

For one eternal moment, Kerry was sure they were both going to end up on the floor, possibly with a trip to the emergency room on top of it. But Brian caught his balance, holding her tight. He grinned.

“Not going to drop you,” he said.

Kerry, her arms tight around his neck, kissed him. “Promise?”

“Always,” Brian said.

And then they were stretched out on his big, soft bed with nothing and nobody between them anymore.

FLIPPING FOR CHELSEA

EMMA HOLLY

Shay

“
T
his sucks,” growled eighteen-year-old Seamus Cudahy, better known as Shay to his friends.

He bounced the back of his head on the sagging plaid couch cushion. He and his brother, Liam, had been lying on their stomachs on the carpet in Liam’s above-the-garage apartment, playing
Street Fighter II
on the PlayStation. Ten minutes into trying to massacre each other, they’d given up, sitting back with matching whoare-we-kidding looks. They did that sometimes—moved as if they had one body—though they didn’t share actual genes. This had been happening so long they didn’t notice it anymore.

Well, Shay noticed, but he kept that to himself mostly.

“Screw it,” Liam said, pushing up with a groan. Dressed in black jeans and a loose white T-shirt, he padded barefoot to his vintage dresser. The thing had cost him two bucks at a junk shop and two weekends fixing it up enough for the drawers to slide in and out, a project Shay had helped him with. Now his brother dug a halfsmoked blunt from his clean-sock stash. Their mom didn’t snoop, or not too much, and Liam and Shay were careful not to shove her nose in things she didn’t want to know anyway. Plus, Liam was twenty-one. Even living under her roof, for which he insisted on paying rent, there wasn’t all that much she could say. The worst she could complain about was him corrupting his younger brother. Considering Liam was better at keeping Shay out of trouble than anyone, that wouldn’t hold water. There was no one in the world Shay looked up to more.

With a shrug that said he had his own thoughts running through his head, Liam turned his boom box on. Hardly to Shay’s surprise, U’s
Achtung Baby
began to play.

It wasn’t chance that Chelsea’s favorite CD was in the drive.

Liam dropped back to the floor in front of the couch and gave Shay the hand-rolled to light. It was neat and perfect, like everything Liam made. For a guy who worked in construction—full-time now, and not just summers—who had more scars on his knuckles than Shay had hairs on his chest, he sure could work delicate. Shay wasn’t as good with his hands yet, though he liked making things. Taking his time and seeing them come out right satisfied him in a way he couldn’t explain.

Once Shay had the blunt going, he took a cautious draw and passed it to Liam. Shay liked hanging with his brother but didn’t really like being stoned. Letting go of his self-control made him uneasy. More comfortable with relaxing, Liam took a deeper pull, the tip flaring bright in the gathering dusk. His chest swelled to hold the smoke, then fell when he let it out. His hulking shoulder settled against Shay’s as he rested the hand that held the blunt on his knee.

Shay was no shrimp, but Liam was bigger than him all over—more muscles, more height, everything. Unless Shay had another growth spurt, he’d probably stay that way. Hell, Shay was probably lucky he’d made six feet.

Over on the boom box, Bono was swearing some girl was “the real thing,” no doubt bringing Liam back to the topic Shay had brought up.

“This sucks big time,” he belatedly agreed. “But it’s not like we can tell her not to go. A full ride to Dartmouth, man. That’s huge.”

Shay grunted, his legs stretched out and his ankles crossed in a leaner mirror image of Liam’s. Chelsea going all Ivy League
was
huge. Their best friend since childhood was such a smartass they sometimes forgot how plain old smart she was. Her gran was over the moon about her scholarship. Shay was proud of her, too, enough that his chest got hot when he thought about it. He couldn’t help it if he wasn’t looking forward to her being so far away. Though she was a year ahead of him, they often hung out together. Maybe it was laziness—friends in the ’hood, friends at school—or maybe it was because they’d both lost their parents and then found new ones. Whatever the reason, they’d always been easy with each other.

“Senior year is going to blow without her.”

Liam punched Shay’s arm, the gesture gruffly reassuring. “You’ll do okay. And I’ll still be around.”

“I know you’ve saved enough to move out.”

Rather than answer right off, Liam drew another toke. The fading twilight silhouetted his sharp profile. Shay had once listened to a girl go on for ten minutes about his aquiline nose. She’d have melted into a puddle if she’d seen Liam’s sensual lips purse to blow out a stream of smoke.

“I told you,” he said, his voice slightly fuzzed. “If you decide not to do the college thing, we’ll get a place together.”

“You don’t have to do that. I can take care of myself.”

Liam turned his soft green gaze Shay’s way. His wavy brown bangs, which their mother had been bugging him to cut, cast a shadow over his eyes. “You’re mine to look out for as much as you are Mom and Dad’s.”

He stated this calm and firm, like saying the earth was round. Shay was his; not open to debate. Shay’s gut tightened down low, in a way he tried to ignore. He liked girls—man, did he like them. This twisty feeling, whatever it was, no matter how often he felt it, was nothing to worry about.

“I’m not fresh off the plane anymore.”

Liam broke into an unexpected grin. “You were so green,” he snickered. “Like, shamrock green.”

“I was six.”

“You’d never seen a stoplight before. You thought every black guy we met wanted to play hoops with you.”

“I was
six
.”

More than youth had been behind Shay’s greenness. He’d been born in a tiny fishing village in Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland. When he was five and a half, his parents had taken a second honeymoon in Dublin, where they’d been the incidental victims of an IRA bombing. Liam’s father had been Shay’s dad’s best friend growing up. Though Patrick O’Brien had emigrated, he was Shay’s godfather. Despite the tie, six months of red tape had required cutting before Shay could come to the States. He’d been cared for, of course, by his parents’ other friends in the village, but that hadn’t been the same as having a family to belong to. Liam’s folks had given him that the moment Mrs. O swept him into her arms at the gate at LaGuardia.

Poor little tyke,
she’d said, squeezing him to her breast.
Don’t you worry. We’ve got you now.

She’d meant that
we
, too, never letting then nine-year-old Liam treat him as anything but a brother he was lucky to have, an edict made easier by the fact that the O’Briens had so much love to give both their boys. Aside from the occasional outbreak of competition, he and Liam hardly ever fought. The only reason he wasn’t Shay O’Brien was that Mr. O hadn’t wanted his old friend’s surname to disappear.
Your ours,
he’d said when Shay asked about it,
but you’ll always be a Cudahy.

“Sap,” Liam teased, seeing the sheen rising in his eyes at the memories.

“Ef you,” Shay returned, pulling the blunt from his lax fingers.

Liam didn’t protest, only dropped his head back and sighed. “Don’t let me smoke anymore. I’ve got to be up at five to drive Chelsea to New Hampshire.”

“Not a problem,” Shay assured him. He debated pinching out the smoke. He was buzzed enough, his muscles relaxing as the weed kicked in. It was almost possible to let his depression go, to believe this was a night like any other in the Bronx’s “Little Ireland.” The windows above the garage were open, and the sound of lawn mowers trimming stingy squares of grass drifted in on the warm end-of-summer air. Being house-proud was the rule in Woodlawn. Shay had always liked that. He thought people should care about where they lived, no matter how big or small it was.

“So this is how it’s going to be,” said a voice from the shadows at the head of the narrow stairs. “I go to college, and you two sit in the dark missing me.”

Shay’s temperature spiked at Chelsea’s appearance, his johnson punching out in a hard-on so full it stung. The instant boner made him glad his camouflage pants were baggy, though he still had to pull his knees up to hide the hump.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing his shins for good measure. “We thought you were spending tonight with your gran.”

“Gran kicked me out. Said if I was going to pace, I ought to wear out your carpet.”

Chelsea and her gran loved each other, so this was said fondly. She crossed to the hand-me-down floor lamp next to the old plaid couch, switching it on with a briskness that was as familiar as the rest of her. The three of them had been inseparable since the day she’d showed up next door at the age of ten. Seeing her in that pool of light, nearly all grown up, was a punch Shay’s eighteen-year-old hormones hadn’t asked for. Chelsea wore a pair of farmer-style knee-length shortalls, with bright-white slouch socks and orange Keds. The combination would have been tomboyish but for the skintight cartoon logo T-shirt that hugged her underneath.

Shay doubted Bart Simpson had ever done so much for a pair of breasts.

He swallowed, his mouth gone dry, as she grinned at him. Chelsea’s body had really turned into something these past few years. Rounded but tight, with sexy little muscles she’d earned helping her gran fix things around their old house. Her dirty-blonde curls exploded from the messy ponytail she’d scraped together behind her neck. Her eyes were a dreamy blue under faint, straight brows, her lips full and rosy in her soft oval face. Only her chin told the tale of how stubborn she could be.

The boys at Dartmouth had no idea what they were in for.

“Hey, Chelsea,” Liam slurred. The back of his head was still on the couch as he turned it toward her. He was smiling a bit goofily. Shay knew his brother had the hots for Chelsea—and had been turned on by her for a while. He also knew he’d held back from asking her out because she was younger. Tonight, though, he didn’t seem to be hiding his attraction. When Shay glanced at Chelsea, she was smiling goofily, too.

Just once Shay wished she’d look at him that way.

A second later it struck him that Chelsea wasn’t as surprised by Liam’s expression as she should have been. She’d been starry-eyed over him forever, though her chosen prince tended to treat her like a well-loved pest. With a pang he couldn’t control, Shay saw he must have missed some developments in their relationship.

Unaware of Shay’s constricted chest, Liam made a purring noise and rolled sideways onto his hip. His gaze traveled warmly up and down their friend. “You look good, college girl.”

“And you sound stoned.” Chelsea flushed with pleasure even as she planted her fists on her curvy hips. “I could smell it from the garage. If your mother catches a whiff, she’s going to be praying for both of you at St. Barnabas’s tomorrow.”

“Shit,” Shay said, stabbing out the stub on a dented metal beer coaster. Knowing that wouldn’t be enough, he jumped up to set the whirring box fan facing out on the windowsill. The metal rattled on the uneven wood, but it would clear the air.

“Turn up the music,” Liam said sleepily, clearly too mellow to share Shay’s fit of guilt. “Then come sit down with me.”

Chelsea humphed at him, but she went. The twangy guitars that gave “Mysterious Ways” its groove swelled louder. She returned to Liam but, rather than sit in the spot Shay had left, she stood over him and looked down. Maybe she guessed why Liam picked the album. Her little smile was knowing, her confidence something Shay hadn’t seen before—at least not in regard to Liam. Blood throbbed like a mariachi band in his groin, this situation doing something
extra
to the lust she’d been the first girl to stir in him.

“Dance with me,” she said to Liam, her hand held out like a dare.

Liam snorted, but his lips had fallen open, his gaze locked helplessly on hers. His cheeks were flushed, maybe from the weed but probably just from her.

“Come on,” she coaxed, her voice gone husky enough to have sweat prickling in Shay’s armpits. “Last chance before those Dartmouth boys get ahold of me.”

Shay only realized he’d stopped breathing when Liam rose. His movements were stiff, and Shay saw what Chelsea wasn’t bold enough to look for: Liam was as hard as he was. The front of his black jeans looked like a fist had been shoved in there.

For a moment, Liam seemed afraid to touch her. Whatever new flirtation they’d been sharing lately, Shay suspected they must not have slow danced before.

“Here,” Chelsea said, placing both his hands lightly on her hips. “I’m pretty sure this is how it goes.”

Liam looked down at her and wet his lips. “Chelsea …”

“Coward,” she taunted, her voice verging on a laugh.

“Squirt,” Liam returned. Then, like a saint surrendering to temptation, he pulled her slowly against him. His eyes closed as her body met his, as her head settled on his chest. He murmured her name again, nearly groaning it. Chelsea wound her arms more snugly around his waist.

Throat tight, Shay watched them sway to the music from his post by the dark window. They acted like they’d forgotten him, their shuffling circle growing ever smaller, their hands smoothing up and down each other’s backs. Chelsea turned her face from side to side on Liam’s white T-shirt, a move so tender and carnal it hurt to see. Liam looked like he hurt, too. His big hands drifted lower on Chelsea’s body, finally palming her butt to lift her to what had to be an agonizing erection.

As he squeezed her to it, Chelsea and Shay made the same soft sound.

Liam’s eyes opened like they’d had weights on them. He was facing Shay, and Chelsea wasn’t tall enough to block his view. He must have seen Shay’s unguarded yearning, because something that could have been regret flicked like a whip through his expression. He let Chelsea go and stepped back from her. When she gaped at him in confusion, he let out a nervous laugh.

“I think you’d better give Shay a good-bye dance, too.”

“Shay,”
she repeated in a tone that said she thought Liam was being dense.

“I’ll start the CD again,” Liam said, moving to do it.

He knows,
Shay thought.
He’s figured out how I feel about her.
Was
this
why Liam had never made a move on Chelsea, and not just the age difference?

His cheeks flamed with a confusing combination of embarrassment and lust. He felt suspended, unable to decide precisely what he wanted or how he should respond. Chelsea turned her head to him, her expression unsure as well.