Careful What You Kiss For (6 page)

Her head jerked up. Tensley looked down at the cat rubbing against her leg.
Gemini.
Of course. The cat’s markings divided its face into two halves. She started to lower her fingers, but pulled them back. She wasn’t sneezing. Strange. A cat had never been this close to her before without her eyes tearing and her nose seizing up.

Maybe her allergy had fled her body, along with her clothes.

This time, she let her fingers make it the full distance to stroke the soft fur. “I get it. You’re like your name, aren’t you? Wanted to kill me a few minutes ago and now you want to be my best friend.”

An assenting meow.

And still no sneezing. She let her fingers remain in the cat’s fur, where they moved to rubbing behind the ears in a motion so familiar, she felt as though she’d done it a hundred times. Gemini accepted the attention, eyes closed and chin lifted.

Tensley had redeemed herself. For what, she wasn’t sure. But it felt good. Calming. She had a cat.

As soon as her eyes returned to the book’s pages, one passage leaped out at her. Possibly because it had been circled in red in what had to be her own scrawl. A circle with ends that crossed over each other, instead of closing. She’d never been able to draw one that closed properly. Taking a deep breath, she read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s prose:

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not to tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers — stern and wild ones — and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

Much amiss
.

Well, that was one way to put it.

• • •

The knocking sound became louder, stirring Tensley’s brain into a series of question marks.
What — ? Was that — ? Why … ?

When the knocking turned into a full-fledged pounding, she opened her eyes, wincing at the sunlight flooding through the windows. A dizzying disorientation overtook her when she saw a sofa, candles and lamps she didn’t recognize. Then came the pounding again. On the door. Of the apartment. She shoved herself to her feet, a book …
The Scarlet Letter
… falling to the floor with a thud.

Ow. Her legs were stiff. She’d fallen asleep. Not curled up and tucked in, but with her feet flat, her arms on the chair. Her arms were protesting, too.
Ouch
. Who was making all that noise?

Eyes still heavy with sleep, Tensley stumbled toward the door, every other step a trip-walk, at best. Gemini the cat ran in front of her and the toe of Tensley’s sneaker missed landing on the long tail by less than an inch. Gemini voiced high-pitched disapproval.

“Yeah, get in line,” Tensley muttered to the cat, ready to lay into whoever was on the other side of the door. As much as she could lay into someone, anyway, with her brain foggy, her stomach rumbling, her eyes half-closed and her cat ready to take her out.

She threw open the door.

Max lowered his hand from the knocking position, flexing his fingers. “Good morning.”

She leaned against the doorjamb and stared at him, trying to decide if he was in her dream, she was in his dream, or it was something in between. She hadn’t seen Max in fifteen years and four months and now she’d seen him twice in less than twenty-four hours.

What did she even say? Something brilliant and witty.

“How did you get into a secured building?” So much for brilliant and witty.

He lifted one shoulder. “I have my ways.” Then he extended the other hand forward.

In it he held — God help her — a Tupperware container. With its lid firmly on.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea … ” Her voice trailed off as soon as she realized her head was nodding, instead of shaking from side to side.

He smiled. An easy Max smile. The one that tucked in at the corners of his upturned mouth and made hummingbirds fly in her stomach, their wings beating a hundred times a second. Courtship speed.

“My neighbor made me muffins.” He pointed at the container. “Thought you might want to have breakfast with me.”

She couldn’t think exactly why, with her impaired brain and all, but Tensley was pretty sure that would be the stupidest idea in the world right now.

So she stepped aside to let him in. It made as much sense as everything else.

He walked past her, down the short entryway and into the living room. She followed him, watching as he looked around. “Nice place.”

“It is,” she acknowledged. Then just as quickly, she added, “I mean thanks.”

“Kitchen this way?”

She didn’t answer, instead letting him take the lead past the sofa and into a combined kitchen/dining area, where he set the container of muffins on a square table of rich dark wood. Tensley herself hadn’t made it this far last night. Suddenly, she wondered why and where the bathroom was, hoping she had a toothbrush in there.

Max was taking the lid off the plastic container, releasing the smell of freshly baked muffins. Yummm. Blueberry. Her favorite. Her stomach rumbled again, right on cue.

He grinned. “I know. I have great timing.”

“Why does your neighbor make you muffins?”

“She just likes to look out for me. You know, me being a single guy and all. My idea of a fancy breakfast is a McMuffin.”

Her heart leaped unreasonably at the news he was single at the same time she conjured up a mental picture of the neighbor. Probably blonde, model-perfect, dead sexy. Hoping she could feed her way into Max’s heart. Tensley still hadn’t learned to cook. It had been a repeat item on her checklist forever, even though she had yet to check it off.

She fixed her gaze on the muffins, cursing the obvious talent of the baker. “Nice to have someone so concerned about you.”

Max leaned down, intercepting her fix on the perfectly rounded muffin tops. “She’s a widow in her eighties. All of her family’s gone, so she’s sort of adopted me.” Again with that smile. God help her, the man was gorgeous. He wore a crisp striped shirt today over jeans that fit him perfectly. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone, just enough for her to see the tanned skin of his neck and upper chest.

She could feel each one of her internal defenses look at each other and shrug, ready to lay down their weapons. “Oh.” She felt heat rise in her cheeks. “Would you … uh … excuse me for a moment?”
While I either crawl out of a window or transform myself into a woman who will make you forget all about stupid muffins in favor of ravishing me in my bed, wherever that might be.

“Sure. Where are your plates?”

She blinked, mentally dressing him again. “Over there. Somewhere.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the cupboards, doing everything she could not to press her hands to her now-even-hotter cheeks.

“I’ll find them. Want me to make some coffee?”

“Oh, yes. Please.” It seemed like forever ago that she’d been to the mother ship, Starbucks. For all she knew, it might have been forever ago.
Please, please, please let him find a coffeemaker in there somewhere.
Just her luck, she’d discover that she didn’t indulge in caffeine in this new life.

Some things didn’t even bear thinking about.

She glanced behind her, spotting what looked like it might be a bathroom door, on the other side of the living room. “I’ll be, you know, right back.”

“Take your time.”

“Don’t start without me.” The casual chuckle she’d intended sounded a little hysterical and the index finger she pointed at him shook. The sexy wink never happened because her eye flat out refused to operate independently. She ended up scrunching her face and shutting both eyes. Twice. “Ha, ha.” She backed out of the room, hands gripped tight in front of her, only to let out a yelp as she stepped on the tail of Gemini, who screeched at the injustice.

Through it all, Max watched her, his head tipped, his expression quizzical. Actually, he looked as though he was trying not to laugh.

“Drama queen,” Tensley shot under her breath to the cat. Then she turned and bolted for the bathroom, where she closed the door behind her and sank against it to the floor.

After a minute, she opened her eyes, only to meet the scrutinizing gaze of the cat. “You followed me in. Really. We’re that close.”

A blink of gray eyes. Apparently she and the cat
were
that close and Tensley was the only one who didn’t know it.

Through the door, she could hear the muffled sounds of cupboards opening and shutting in the kitchen. Then a rattle of dishes.

“Found ’em,” she heard Max call.

“What am I going to do?” she whispered to Gemini. “This can’t be good to have him here. Can it?”

The cat responded by nuzzling against her and burying its head in her stomach. A second later, Gemini’s head had moved to behind her back and Tensley found herself nudged upward. Hard.

“Okay, okay.” Tensley grabbed hold of the edge of the sink and pulled herself to her feet. “You don’t have to be so bossy.”

Oh no.
One look in the mirror told her that, even if she’d been imagining an extended sexual feast with a muscled Max, he could have only been thinking about the possibility of her being mistaken for a homeless person.

Her hair fell around her shoulders in a tangled mess, while the crumpled Seahawks T-shirt she wore was big enough to hide a couple of linemen in. Bare of makeup, her green eyes looked naked. And startled.

“Didn’t realize it was this bad,” she said to Gemini, who responded with a simpering gaze that said the level of badness was precisely the reason the cat had made Tensley stand up and look in a mirror.

“Oh, be quiet. If you know so much, you wouldn’t have let me answer the door in the first place, looking like this.”

From across the apartment, she heard the unmistakable whirring of a grinder. “Thank God,” she breathed. “At least there will be coffee.”

No time to linger on a full transformation. She’d have to work some sort of miracle in the space of a few minutes. Never let it be said that Tensley Tanner-Starbrook wasn’t up for a challenge.

She opened the opposite door in the small bathroom, hoping it led to her bedroom and breathing a sigh of relief when she was right.

A few seconds later, she’d located the master bathroom and peeled her clothes off to step into the shower, not waiting long enough for the water to get warm.
Get in. And out.
She was only temporarily derailed when the bar of soap skittered off the bigger boobs she forgot she had and landed on the shower floor.

She refused to give herself even one second to think about the fact that she was naked and wet, while Max was … just a couple of rooms away. Well, maybe one second. Or ten. But no longer.

Lightning fast, she dried off, putting on a thong and bra she’d found in a drawer and identified immediately as being from the newest Victoria’s Secret collection. At least she still had good taste in underwear.

She rummaged around in bathroom drawers until she located mascara and blush and then brushed her hair until it shone. She had new highlights. Red ones that brought out the auburn in her hair. Nice. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of doing that before.

“Coffee’s ready,” she heard Max call.

“Coming!” Not in the way she would have liked, but first things first. She brushed her teeth, wiped off her mouth and headed for the closet.

It was neatly organized, as she would have expected. To the left, costumes and slips of fabric corralled on hangers. To the right, normal clothes. Jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, pretty dresses. Even a long, beautifully beaded dress. She wondered where she’d worn it.

The aroma of fresh coffee, with its sweet siren call, drifted into the bedroom.

Tensley grabbed a pair of skinny jeans and pulled them on. Then she selected a sleeveless print top, in a flowy fabric that both hugged her body and shimmered away from it. A pair of long earrings and a swipe of pearly pink lip gloss and she was ready.

For what, she wasn’t sure exactly, but whatever it was, it would be on her terms.

“Do I look okay?” she asked Gemini, losing the battle to not let her anxiety show.

The cat stared at her for a second and then padded to the door.

“I’ll take that as a maybe,” Tensley said as she followed.

She walked through the apartment, in bare feet this time, until she reached the kitchen. The cat had better not be steering her wrong. Maybe she shouldn’t have rushed through her cleanup. Or maybe she should have found something else to wear. Something less clingy.

“One blueberry muffin, coming up — ” Max spun around, extending a plate. Then his mouth opened and his jaw dropped. So did the plate, crashing to the floor in a frenzy of china and crumbs.

Great. She’d either really screwed this up.

Or she hadn’t.

Max’s best-laid plans shattered like the plate as it hit the floor.

This was going to be a whole hell of a lot harder than he’d thought.

He’d told himself he could deal with Stripper Tensley. And that he could shove aside the memories of Teenage Tensley.

But this woman, the one who stood before him now, was someone different. Someone who brought to life every “Playmate-meets-wholesome-beauty-queen-next-door” fantasy he’d ever had. She’d caught him so off guard, he’d lost control of the fingers that had earned him a coveted sharpshooter trophy five years running.

“Sorry,” he said to the plate, because he couldn’t let the woman see the confusion raging through his brain. The last thing he needed was for her to see she could mess with him even more than she had years ago.

The cat sauntered over to lick up the crumbs.

“Max, are you okay?”

The concern in her voice pissed him off. “I’m fine,” he shot back at her. “Where’s your broom?”

When she didn’t answer, he started moving through the kitchen until he found a broom and dustpan stashed in a corner. Never let it be said he didn’t clean up his messes. Except —
shit
. When it came to Tensley. Must be some kind of karmic payback that she had to be working at one of the clubs he’d been assigned to investigate.