A Taste of Honey (19 page)

His thumbs dipped beneath the crewneck of her T-shirt, sweeping against her collarbone in slow, seductive strokes. “Why can’t you just accept the truth and leave me alone, Nick?” Her protest sounded feeble even to her own ears.

“Because I don’t think that is the truth, Kelly.” His hands slid down her arms to toy with her fingers that were clenched in tight fists at her sides. “The truth is that you still want me, but you’re afraid of something and you’re running away.”

Something inside of her snapped. He wanted the truth? Fine, she’d give him the truth. The one thing guaranteed to send him running so fast he’d leave skid marks on her carpet.

“Fine. You win,” she said. “I’m lying when I say I don’t want to see you.” She pulled her hands away from his, needing to put distance between them before she completely lost it. “The problem is that I’m falling in love with you, Nick. I thought I could do this, thought I could have fun, sleep with you, see what all the fuss was about.” She laughed weakly. “But every time I’m with you, it just gets harder and harder to pretend it doesn’t mean anything.”

The words hung in the air and Kelly collapsed on the couch, deflated. She felt the cushions shift next to her. To her surprise, instead of running, Nick settled in beside her and gathered her tense form against his chest.

Why wouldn’t he just leave? Typical Nick, she thought, always the nice guy, even when she wished, for once, he would just be a jerk and leave her to wallow.

She felt his arms close around her, felt the press of his lips against the crown of her head. She wrapped her arms around herself, cringing away as she felt her nose and eyes fill up again. She couldn’t take comfort from him, not now.

Nick let the wave of joy wash through him as he wrapped his arms around her resisting body. He buried his nose in her dark hair, inhaling deeply, unable to speak for several moments. “Kelly, look at me,” he whispered.

She shook her head, and Nick slid one hand to her jaw and forced the issue. Her blue eyes were red rimmed and puffy, her nose was bright red against her otherwise pale face, and her mouth had that soft blurred look that came from a hard crying jag.

“You are one of the most beautiful, amazing women I’ve ever known,” he said, struggling to keep his voice from shaking. He’d never been exceptionally emotional, but right now he was afraid he’d start bawling like a chick.

Kelly loved him. Holy shit! Kelly Sullivan loved a stupid idiot goon like him. He better not fuck it up.

“But—” she said weakly, sniffling and blinking back tears.

He smiled, his own eyes stinging. “No ‘but.’” He kissed her cheeks, her swollen damp eyes, her red nose. “I just never believed that a woman as great as you could ever love me back.”

“What?” Her head snapped back, dislodging his hands from her face. She grabbed them hard in her chilled fingers.

“I love you, Kelly.” This time he kissed her mouth, tasted the soft sob that escaped her chest. “But I didn’t want to move too fast because I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“I convinced myself that I could never be the right guy for you. I’m nothing like the braniacs you’re used to, and I was afraid after the sex got old, you’d get bored.”

She moaned and pulled him fiercely against her as though afraid he was going to slip away. “I think I’ve always been in love with you, Nick,” she whispered. Her soft hands framed his cheeks. “I thought I could just be casual, but being with you—” She kissed him again, her tongue sliding against his, seeking out his taste. “No one’s ever made me feel the way you do.”

“How is that?” He pulled her hair from its elastic band and watched it fall around her shoulders.

“Safe. Cared for,” she said, burrowing against his body as she slid one hand up the back of his shirt. “Like there’s more to me than just a big brain.” She paused to kiss his neck.

“That’s not the only big part of you.” Nick gazed meaningfully at her chest.

She laughed and swatted him on the shoulder, then hugged him hard. She sighed. “That’s what I mean. You make me feel normal. And happy. And sexy,” she purred, nestling those magnificent breasts against him.

He carried her to the bedroom and spent the next hour showing her just how sexy he found her.

“I’m sorry I doubted us,” he said later as they lay in the dark. Their legs twined together beneath the sheets, Kelly’s smooth thigh pressed against his groin.

“What do you mean?”

“I realized a week ago that I loved you, but I didn’t want to say anything, because I didn’t think there was any hope you’d feel the same way.” He shifted and threaded his fingers through her hair.

“You thought I would be like Ann,” she said simply.

Nick smiled in the darkness. That’s what he liked about smart girls. They caught on real fast. “It took me awhile to get over myself, to get past my insecurities that she helped reinforce. But I know you’re not like her. This is your hometown, and you’re not the type to put yourself above your roots.”

“No, but I don’t really fit in here,” she said uncertainly. “And I’m not sure what that means for us.”

He smoothed the tension from her back with the flat of his palm. “You fit in here fine, you just don’t see it.” He sensed her frown. “But even if you don’t want to stay here, we’ll figure a way to make it work.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know we’ll both do whatever it takes.”

T
he smell of fried fish hung heavily in the air. Sullivan’s was packed with the usual Wednesday night crowd.

Nick took a swig of his Harp’s and tucked Kelly’s hand in his, pausing to run his thumb over the two-carat solitaire he’d recently placed there.

She squeezed his hand but didn’t turn to him since his mom was sitting next to her and talking her ear off.

“I can’t believe you’re really moving, man.” Mike shook his head. “First Jake, now you. What the hell is happening to us?”

Nick couldn’t believe it himself. After living in this town for his entire life, it was hard to imagine living anywhere else. This would be his last Wednesday at Sully’s for a good, long time.

But Kelly was at Stanford Hospital, and Nick was sick of the long-distance thing they’d been doing for the past few months. Besides, he was going to take a few business classes while he looked for work, and depending on how that went, he might enroll full time in the fall. As happy as he’d been here, he hadn’t realized how much he’d limited himself before he was with Kelly. He’d miss his home, miss his family, but at the same time he felt like a whole new world had opened up to him.

He and his brothers had talked about eventually opening an office of Donovan Brothers in the Bay Area, and he and Kelly hadn’t ruled out moving back here when they had kids.

“It’s only four hours away,” he heard Kelly say to his mother. He shook his head. As far as his mother was concerned, her baby boy was leaving and never coming back, and no reassurances could soothe her.

“At least she hasn’t decided to blame Kelly for stealing you away,” Tony said.

“She knows better than to alienate her this soon,” his dad chuckled. “Besides, she’s thrilled you’re getting married.”

Mike and Tony both squirmed in their seats. They knew that with both Nick and Jake engaged, their mother would redouble her efforts to marry them off.

“Lucky for us, you ran off with the best this town has to offer,” Mike said, winking at Kelly across the table.

“You never know who’s gonna walk through that door,” Nick said. “Mark my words, you two are next.”

K
aren Sullivan slid onto a seat at the bar of Cleo’s Lounge. The martini bar sported a decent crowd, but the bartender noticed her right away.

“What will you have?”

She crossed her leg so the slit up the side of her white mini slid open along her right leg, no doubt offering a nice glimpse of thigh, and she shifted her leg so it wasn’t pressed too tightly against the vinyl, ensuring the flesh stayed smooth. It sucked that even the leanest thigh could look lumpy and cottage cheesy if the flesh was pressed too tight.

Karen smiled up at him through her lashes, leaning forward so he could appreciate the draped neckline of her coral and white flower-print sleeveless top. “How about a lemon drop. With extra sugar.”

The bartender cast an appreciative smile. “Coming right up.”

He made a big show of pouring the vodka, flipping the bottle and swirling it as he poured. Lemon juice and ice followed it into a shaker, which he shook with a vigor that would have done a paint mixer proud. He poured it into a sugar-rimmed martini glass with a flourish and set her drink in front of her.

“How is it?” he said, eyes riveted on her mouth.

Karen raised the glass and deliberately swiped her tongue along the rim and took a generous swig. “Delicious.”

The bartender’s eyes glazed over, and his mouth went slightly slack.

“Hey, dude, can we get some beers over here?” a deep voice boomed.

“I think you have some other customers,” she said, gesturing her glass in the man’s direction as she idly stroked her collarbone.

“Uh, right.” He reluctantly backed away.

Karen rolled her eyes. Men. They were so freakin’ easy. Another ten seconds and she would be drinking for free all night.

Mentally she scolded herself. Hadn’t she vowed to stop using her looks to attract guys with no potential? Even if the guy was a potential source of free alcohol. Or, at the very least, focus her attentions on good men with good relationship potential instead of assholes who wanted nothing more than a hot piece of ass.

Not that her strategy had gotten her very far tonight. Here she was, drinking alone on a Saturday night in a lame club in Caesar’s Lake Tahoe. Staying in her room definitely would have been the wiser choice, but she couldn’t stand her own company. And call her shallow, but the admiring glances she’d received from the male patrons were a superficial balm for her badly bruised ego.

It could be worse. Caesar’s definitely had its cheese factor, but it was a hell of a lot better than Circus Circus, where Brad had taken her.

Brad. What a dick. It should have been a tip-off when he’d planned their weekend trip around gambling in Reno. He’d said he wanted to do something fun that was close to Sacramento, so she’d given him the benefit of the doubt.

At the end of the day, Brad had chosen the hotel because it had the cheapest rooms and a complimentary prime rib buffet.

Which wouldn’t have been such a big deal if he’d been a typically clueless man and had honestly tried to plan a nice weekend for them.

But just like every man in her past, all he wanted was to get laid.

She took another gulp of her lemon drop, surprised to see it was already nearly gone. But the liquor did little to cool her fury as her conversation with Brad echoed through her head.

“Maybe next week we could have a barbecue and I could meet some of your family,” she’d said. They’d been sitting on the lumpy love seat in their room. Brad had leaned in to kiss her, the smell of prime rib laced with beer almost enough to knock her over.

He had jerked back at her words. “Why would we want to do that?”

“We’ve been dating for over a month, and I just thought it would be good to meet your family since you spend so much time with them.”

Warning bells had gone off in her head at the uncomfortable expression that crossed his face.

“Karen, come on, we’re not exactly at the parent-meeting stage. It’s not as though this is all that serious…” That last word had trailed off as he’d realized her elevated expectations.

“What do you mean?” She had a sinking feeling she already knew the answer.

“Well, you’re, you—” he’d stammered.

“I’m what?”

“You’re a, ah, a woman a guy has fun with, you know—”

“A slut?” She stood before him, hands on her hips. “Fast? Loose? Trashy?” All terms she had heard applied to her since high school.

Brad had held his hands up as if to ward off the anger radiating from every pore of her body. “No, not that. Just not…” He’d paused, hands dropping limply in his lap and head drooping forward. “Just not the kind of woman I could imagine bringing home to my mother.”

“So you’ve just been biding your time for the last month and a half, wanting to fuck me for a while before you settle down with a nice girl?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he had replied, his tone belligerent. “What do you expect? The way you dress, the way you act? We have mutual friends, Karen. I hear things. I know you’re not exactly Snow White.”

It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell him flat out that she hadn’t been with a guy for almost two years, ever since she realized that she was never going to be happy if she didn’t stop sleeping with guys who didn’t even like her. But she’d be damned if she’d give Brad the satisfaction of knowing she’d chosen him as the best candidate to end her dry spell.

She snapped back to reality as the bartender whisked her empty glass away, replacing it with a full drink in one move. “This one’s on me,” he said with a wink.

He was sort of cute, she mused, in an overgrown, beefy frat boy sort of way. A little young for her, but she probably would have given him a toss a few years ago. If she hadn’t had anything—or anyone—better to do.

But not now, she reminded herself firmly. Brad, the bartender, they were all the same.

Was it too much to ask for a guy who actually
liked
her for who she was and not just because she gave a good blow job?

So what if she dressed provocatively, used her beauty to get things she wanted? There was more to her than that. She wasn’t Mother Teresa, but deep down she was a good person.

A fact she’d been trying to convince herself of for the past two years and was pretty close to believing.

She’d actually thought Brad was the guy who saw beyond the surface and really liked her.

What an idiot.
She finished her second drink with an unladylike slurp. Apparently she was so out of practice looking for nice guys she was no longer capable of identifying one.

Not that she’d
ever
been able to find one. The last time she’d thought she’d managed to snag a good, upstanding guy, he ended up worse than all the rest. And she’d been paying for it ever since.

Mike Donovan wound his way through the casino on his way back to Club Nero. The cavernous, smoky room echoed with the ringing of slot machines, groans of disappointment, and hoots of victory as patrons won or lost.

Too bad he hated gambling. A few hands at the blackjack table would be the perfect excuse to delay rejoining Day 2 of his brother’s bachelor party in full swing at the biggest nightclub Caesar’s Lake Tahoe had to offer.

Mike politely brushed off a cocktail waitress dressed in a mini-toga and continued across the casino floor. As much as he dreaded going back to the noisy club full of drunken, sweaty bodies, he knew he couldn’t avoid it. His baby brother was marrying Kelly Sullivan in two weeks. Pretending to enjoy the celebration of Nick’s last few days of freedom was the least he could do.

As he passed the bars and restaurants on his way to the club, he heard the remarkably pleasant sound of a blues band spilling out of the hotel’s martini bar. Mike paused and poked his head inside. Unlike at Club Nero, the crowd here was big but not overwhelming. The band played at a level that provided a nice backdrop but didn’t eliminate all possibility of intelligible conversation.

And, he noticed as he looked at bottles lining the shelves of the back bar, he bet he could get a decent glass of cabernet here.

It was unlikely his brothers would miss him for one drink, he decided. When he’d left, Tony had been flirting with a stacked redhead and Jake was helping the groom-to-be fend off the advances of all the women Tony sent over to harass him.

Mike scanned the room. Though the crowd wasn’t huge, all the tables were taken. The only empty seat was at the bar, next to a petite blonde.

Even though Mike tended to go for brunettes, he couldn’t deny that, from what he could see, she was a hot piece of ass.

Her dark gold hair was tousled into one of those styles that was supposed to make a woman look like she just rolled out of bed, but it probably took an hour to achieve. He raked an admiring glance down the rest of her. Her body was sleek, tight, showcased nicely by her sleeveless top and a skirt so short it could be a belt. Long, tan legs begged him to trail his fingers up to where that slit ended to see if her skin could possibly feel as silky as it looked.

His gaze moved down to take in dainty feet encased in white stiletto sandals. Little white fuck-me shoes on her tiny little feet. Mike felt an immediate and surprising tightening in his groin as he imagined those feet, in those shoes, propped up on his shoulders.

I might be longer than one drink getting back to the party,
he thought with a grin as he slid onto the stool beside her.

Mike leaned forward onto the bar and waved to get the bartender’s attention. “Can I get a glass of that, please?” Mike said, indicating very good Sonoma Valley cabernet displayed on the wine shelf.

“You have great taste,” the woman next to him said. Jesus, even her voice was sexy. Low and slightly raspy, like she had just woken up after a night of hard loving.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling as he turned to face her fully. The smile morphed into a baring of teeth when he recognized the woman next to him.

Karen Sullivan.

For a split second, her expression mirrored his shock, but she recovered quickly. Her deceptively angelic blue eyes widened, then crinkled at the corners as her full, pink lips slid into a smile. Jesus, no wonder he’d gotten so turned on so quickly. He tried to ignore the surge of heat that shot through him as she placed a hand on his forearm, bare where he’d rolled up the sleeve of his button-front shirt.

“Mike, how funny seeing you here,” she said. Though her tone was friendly he detected a slight strain underneath. Good. He made her nervous. Small payback for the way she’d twisted him into knots and tossed him away eleven years ago.

“Funny’s one word you could use,” he said as he accepted his glass of wine, his cool tone in direct contrast to the heat coursing through his veins. What the hell was it about this woman? One whiff and he was like a dog after a bitch in heat, any shred of common sense overcome by the need to rut until his dick was limp and his balls wrung dry.

She must have picked up on his tension, because her tone was more mocking than teasing as she said, “Wine? Isn’t that a sissy drink for a big, macho man like you?”

His eyes narrowed to slits and his lips tightened in a feral smile. “You, of all people, should know how much of a sissy I’m not.”

She sat back a little and leaned one elbow on the bar as she twisted on her seat to fully face him. Her index finger traced the rim of her martini glass, and her lips tilted up in a sly half smile.

She appeared unfazed and unruffled by his simmering hostility. But Mike detected her pulse beating frantically against the fragile skin of her throat and knew she felt the throbbing, seething tension that coiled and hissed around them.

She had her game face on, no doubt. But Mike knew all of her games, and he knew better than to play.
Which was why he should just get up and walk away right now.

Instead he took a sip of his drink, savoring the rich flavor of the wine as it washed over his tongue. Leaning his right elbow on the bar in a mimic of Karen’s pseudocasual pose, he said, “You look good, Karen.”

She looked a little surprised at the compliment, as though fully prepared for a barb. It was true though. She looked fantastic, as always. Sure, she looked a little older than when he’d last seen her at her mother’s funeral. A few tiny smile lines decorated the corners of her eyes. But the blond hair suited her as well as her own natural chestnut brown shade had, giving her a sassy, party girl look. Her body was no longer girlishly slim, but tightly toned in the manner of a woman who worked very hard at maintaining her appearance.

“Thanks, you do too,” she said, deliberately sliding her gaze down his chest, lingering for a moment in his lap before sliding back up again.

Mike’s hand tightened around the stem of his glass. Some things, however, hadn’t changed. Karen was still the seductive little bitch who used her considerable assets to turn men into slobbering idiots who would do whatever she wanted. He held it as a point of pride that he had never completely fallen under her spell, though he’d come frighteningly close. Then again, when they had gone out, Karen had only been eighteen. Still an amateur. Now she was clearly a pro.

He pitied the poor schmuck who was dangling on her line. “What are you doing here, Karen?”

“I could ask you the same. This doesn’t seem like your kind of place, Mike.”

“You’re right. I’m here with my brothers and some friends. Nick’s bachelor party.”

Her brow knit into a frown. “Oh yes, the wedding.”

“What, not happy for your baby sister?” he mocked. Karen’s long-standing resentment of her sister was well known by anyone who had gone to high school with the Sullivan girls.

“Sure I am. She’s marrying a great guy.”

Though her voice lacked enthusiasm, Mike was surprised that she wasn’t insincere. “Yep, he’s the best.”

“Kelly did always get everything,” Karen said, sounding like a sullen thirteen-year-old. That was more like it.

“What about you?” he asked.

She shifted uncomfortably on her stool. “A little fight with my boyfriend. I decided I’d be better off on my own tonight.”

“So now you’re going to fuck some poor unsuspecting schmuck to get revenge on him?” He’d meant the comment to be casually mocking, but eleven years’ worth of resentment underscored his words.