Unbuttoned (3 page)

“Where did I . . . are you kidding me? Do you forget about them all too?”

“All who?”

“The brunette against the barn, who was getting a bit more than a kiss. The woman you were making out with at Christmas the same year. Then there was your little spring fling. Every time I saw you that year it was someone new.”

A rash of heat broke out over his skin. Embarrassment. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt embarrassed, but he sure as hell did now. The thought of eighteen-year-old Carly catching him . . . Well, he knew exactly what she was talking about now. There had been a lot of someones, but not so many that he couldn’t remember an encounter that was that specific.

Things had gotten a little hot and heavy in a public place, but it had ended at second base. Still, he wasn’t thrilled that Carly had seen it. He couldn’t even really explain why it bothered him so much.

“Carly . . . I’m sorry you saw that. That’s . . . well”—the embarrassment was just starting to piss him off now—“look, it was on my property, I can do what I want on my own property. It wasn’t intended for your . . . viewing pleasure.”

Her lip curled. “It wasn’t a pleasure, trust me. And I get that men have relationships, but there’s a difference between relationships and constant flings. Men who get involved in that . . . It doesn’t stop, Lucas, I know that for a fact.”

There was something in her voice—anger, disgust, but that was easily identified. It was the other emotion, vibrating beneath her words, that’s what was pulling him up.

Hurt. It had hurt her.

The realization hit him hard in the gut. “I’m sorry it hurt you.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Hurt me?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that’s funny. Why would it hurt me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, then . . . why would you say that?”

“Why would you still be so bothered by it?”

“Why aren’t you? I can’t be the only person who thinks you’re . . . you’re a . . . a man-whore.”

He shrugged. “Why would I care about that?”

“Because. Because it should matter what people think.”

“News flash, Carly, I don’t care what people think.” Maybe that’s why she was so mad. Because he didn’t care. And she did. So much she was crippled by it. “You should try it sometime. Let your hair down. Get your back up against a barn wall.”

She stood up quickly, slamming her laptop shut. “This has been lovely,” she said. “But I’m going to go and do something more enjoyable. Like maybe stick barbed wire under my fingernails. I’ve got lunch.” She stuck a twenty on the table and turned and walked out of the diner.

Lucas took the twenty and crumpled it in his hand. Then he pulled his wallet out and replaced her cash with his. He’d return hers to her later. Maybe by mail. Or he could always deliver it in person. Picturing the look on her face, the one of pure annoyance, that she would get if he did it, did a little something to reduce the knot in his gut.

But only a little.

Chapter Four

Carly settled into the couch, her legs tucked up underneath her. She tightened her hold on her cereal bowl and took a bite. It wasn’t grown-up cereal. It was the sugary kind, with marshmallows.

They’d never had it growing up. Not because her mom liked to feed them healthy food, but because she often forgot to go grocery shopping. They’d always had eggs from the chickens though, so there had been breakfast.

But keeping a variety of cereals stocked was one of Carly’s indulgences. One she’d started the minute she’d gotten her own place. And one of her other private indulgences was eating that cereal for dinner, which she was doing now.

And it had nothing to do with Lucas’s parting shot at the restaurant. No, it did not.

Though she was starting to wonder if it was true. If part of her was so angry at him because he just didn’t care. He was impervious to what people thought. And she . . . she was crippled by it. Because in school, everyone had known, always, what was going on in her home, because her parents had made their fights so ugly. So public. Because their parents would gossip about the fact that Dan and Holly Denton had been screaming at each other outside the bar again.

No one had ever let their kids come over. Not that she could blame them. But it had meant no sleepovers for her. Very few friends. The only outside presence in the house had been Lucas, and part of that was because he’d been just as much of a misfit.

He hadn’t cared then. He didn’t care now.

Why didn’t he care? She did. So much she felt frozen with it sometimes. She wanted to change the way people saw her. And it wasn’t enough to just move away and start over, because people back in Silver Creek would still think the things they did.

But she’d gone to school, and she’d come back and proven that she’d succeeded. And then she’d gotten elected to the city council. She was the youngest person to serve on the council in the town’s history.

She and Mac were making a new story for the Denton family and she was proud of that. She worked hard to protect that.

There was a knock on her door and she set her cereal bowl on the table, her hand going straight to the ponytail she’d done haphazardly after her shower. She was in her sweats, she didn’t have makeup on, and she was a mess. So not the time for company.

“Who is it?” she called, heading to the door.

“Lucas.”

She cursed fluidly under her breath and opened the door, pasting a smile to her face. She wasn’t going to act bothered. No. He would like that too much. “Lucas,” she said, far too brightly, blocking the doorway, “what brings you here?”

Her held his hand up, a twenty dollar bill folded between his fingers. “You forgot this.”

“I paid,” she said.

“Nope. I did.”

“Oh, of all the macho . . .” she started to say, then took the money. “Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll see you . . . later.” Hopefully much later.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The words stopped her cold. “You’re what?”

“Sorry. For what I said earlier.”

“I . . . thank you.” She dropped her hand from the door frame and took a step back. “It’s . . . it takes a lot to admit when you’re wrong.”

Lucas seemed to take her movement as an invitation to enter the house. He walked past her and into the living room. “Oh, I wasn’t wrong. But I’m sorry I said what I said the way I said it.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”

“You’re wound up tight, sugar, no mistake. I wasn’t wrong about that. But I shouldn’t have picked a fight with you, not over something so sensitive, and not in public.”

“I’m not . . . sensitive. And I didn’t invite you in.”

“Family friend, remember? I’m allowed to come in.”

“Why are you so dead set on driving me crazy this week?”

He paused. “A good question. And I could ask you the same thing.”

“What? I thought you were going out with my brother tonight, anyway.”

“Blew him off.”

“Why? I thought you were going to go hook-up, or whatever you guys call it.”

“Not interested.” His dark eyes clashed with hers and her stomach tightened. “At least, not with some random girl from the bar.”

She swallowed hard, her stomach so tight it was painful. “I don’t . . . I . . . and what do you mean you could ask me the same thing?”

“Why are you so dead set on driving me crazy this week?” he asked.

“I’m . . . I’m not. I haven’t done anything to you. Everywhere I’ve been, work, my brother’s house, my house”—she made a sweeping gesture with her arm—“you are. That’s not me doing anything to you. That’s all you.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean then?”

“You don’t know what’s been going on in my head, sugar.”

“No. No, I don’t. And I probably want to keep it that way, so maybe you should . . .” He took a step toward her and brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. “You keep doing that,” she said, his thumb still touching her skin.

“I know,” he said, “and when I’m not doing about it, I’m thinking about doing it. I don’t think I ever should have touched you.”

Her heart started pounding hard. “What do you . . .”

He raised his other hand and placed it on her cheek, shifting so that both palms were cradling her face, his dark eyes intent on hers. “This was also a bad idea,” he said, his voice rough.

“What was?” she asked.

“Well, touching you more. That little bit was bad idea enough. This . . . this is even worse.”

Carly couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at her like Lucas was looking at her now. Like he was starving and she was the answer to the hunger inside of him.

The reason she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been looked at like that was because she never had been. And she was very aware of it in this moment. Aware that she was on the verge of something that was well outside her experience.

The strangest thing was that right now, she wanted it. She knew, somewhere in the dim, hazy corners of her mind, that she might regret it later. No, that she would. But right now, for some reason, she didn’t care. Not even a little bit.

Because all she could focus on was Lucas. His eyes, his lips. Lord, but he had beautiful lips for a man. It had been years since she’d let herself notice them. She had before, though.

There had been a time when this moment, the possibility of it, had been her dearest fantasy. And it was something she didn’t even let herself remember now. There had been a time when she’d dared to want.

His words from earlier rang in her ears.

Live dangerously.

Just a little. Just a taste. It wouldn’t be so wrong. Not any worse than one french fry.

She leaned in, her lips brushing his. Her breath caught in her throat and held, electricity shooting through her veins, immobilizing her.

But Lucas wasn’t immobile. Far from it. He dropped his hands from her face and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against his hard, muscular body.

She whimpered and he deepened the kiss, his tongue sweeping the inside of her mouth. The wet friction stole every thought from her head, made it impossible for her to do anything but feel. She was lost, completely, in his touch. In a whole world of new desire and need.

She’d thought she’d known what attraction was. Had thought she’d known, intellectually, how she would handle it. But she’d never felt anything like this. She hadn’t known. Not at all.

She pressed her hands to his chest, curling her fingers around his shirt fabric, clinging to him as he kissed her, long and deep.

“Kiss me back, Carly,” he growled against her lips.

And she obeyed. She couldn’t do anything else. She wanted him, so much she was drowning in it. She tasted him, her tongue tracing the seam of his lips, delving inside his mouth.

He was perfection. He tasted like temptation, like an invitation to a kind of wildness, a kind of freedom, she’d never even dared to imagine.

She wanted to drown in it. In him. She’d never felt restricted by her life. Never felt like she was missing anything. But right now she felt like she was suffocating. Like she was being tied down, bound in the strictures of her life. Strictures she’d set out for herself.

She wanted to tear them off. And tear his clothes off with them. And her clothes. And she’d never, ever wanted anything like this ever. And it should scare her. But in that moment, it just didn’t.

Because her senses were filled with Lucas and nothing else seemed quite as important.

A growl vibrated through Lucas’s chest and he slid his hands down to her backside, cupping her, drawing her even more tightly against him, against the firm length of his erection.

And that, right there, jolted her back to reality in a very big way.

She pulled away from him, gasping for air, her head spinning. She felt like she’d just broken through the surface of the water. The haze and silence fading. Now everything seemed too clear, harsh, cold and loud. Their fractured breathing a very potent, and embarrassing, reminder of everything that had just passed between them.

What was wrong with her? What the
hell
was wrong with her?

“Oh . . .” She put her hands on her lips. They felt as hot and swollen to the touch as she feared they looked. “What just happened?”

“Something that’s been on a slow burn for a while now just combusted,” he said, his voice strangled.

“It has not been on a slow burn,” she said. “There’s no slow burn.”

“Oh, darlin’, there’s a slow burn. Or there was.”

“No, no there isn’t.”

“Why do you think we fight so much?”

“Uh . . . because we don’t like each other?”

“Verbal foreplay.”

“No.”

“Remember what I said, Carly? Either you treat me like you do because you don’t like me, or . . .” He let the thought trail off.

“I’m not doing playground politics with you, Lucas,” she said, even as she questioned the truth of the statement. “I treat you like I do because I don’t have the patience to put up with a guy who . . . who . . .”

“Who what?”

“Who makes me want so many things I can’t have,” she exploded, the words unexpected and not at all what she planned. “Who makes me wish that I could . . . do something more with myself. That I could find a way to just give the world the middle finger and go on with life, like you do. But I can’t. I just can’t, okay? I have to . . . to be this way. I have to keep it all locked up, because if I don’t . . . what will happen? What will people think?”

“Who gives a damn what people think?” he bit out.

“I do,” she yelled, fighting tears now. “I do. Because do you . . . do you see what happens when you don’t? When you just quit caring?”

“Your mother,” he said.

“And my dad. And your dad. They just didn’t care anymore, and what they felt like doing, what they
feel
like doing is more important than the right thing, or the thing that at least looks right, and our childhoods were . . . a disaster because of it. And I don’t want my life to be a disaster anymore.”

“What? So you push down all of your desires, blame me, and try to keep me out of your space so you aren’t jealous? Because regardless of what you say, Carly, you are jealous.”

“No.”

“Change the way you do things if you aren’t happy, Carly, but don’t make it my problem.”

“I’m not unhappy with how I do things when you aren’t around.”

He chuckled, a sound that held no humor. “You make choices, Carly, every day. No one is forcing you to behave this way, and the ‘my childhood sucked’ excuse only holds for so long. So figure out what you want, and do it. But don’t turn your problems into mine.”

“Get out, Lucas.”

“You’re dismissing me now?”

“Yes. You can’t just come into my house and kiss me and then . . . yell at me. Now go away.”

He nodded his head. “Fine. See you later.”

He turned and walked out the front door, slamming it behind him. Carly uncurled her fist and saw that the twenty was all balled up in her hand.

She growled and threw it across the room, not caring that it was a stupid thing to do. Right now, she hated Lucas Miller. She hated his smug smile. She hated how he’d just . . . pulled her up against him and kissed her. Hated the way electricity was still sparking through her body.

Most of all, she hated just how right he was about her.

She was a coward. A damned, unhappy coward who was a prisoner in her own life. Who was afraid to take hold of anything she felt overly passionate about for fear she’d lose her grip on her tightly held control.

For fear people might see inside of her and find her lacking somehow. Find her weak. Her mother wore everything out in the open, all there for people to judge, and judge they did. Carly had never wanted that. Had never wanted to expose herself in that way.

She stalked back to the couch and picked up her bowl. She took another bite of her defiant breakfast-for-dinner. She grimaced. It was soggy.

And she really didn’t feel all that triumphant either. She felt alone. And turned on. And fixated on Lucas Miller. And too scared to do anything about any of it.