Careful What You Kiss For (7 page)

He swept the broken plate and muffin into the dustpan with a vengeance, the pieces of china clanking together. The cat leaped onto a chair outside the danger zone.

“Hey!” Tensley was in front of him, her hand on his wrist. “Stop. Put it down.”

Even the way she moved through a room had changed. In high school hallways, she’d done her best to blend in with the background. Now she’d covered the distance between them in a few long strides that said she was here to be seen.

He put the dustpan down. Slowly.
Get a grip, Hunter. You can do this.

She released her hold on him, but didn’t move away. The damn cat jumped off the chair to pad between the two of them, choosing Max’s calf to rub up against.

“She … or I mean, he … ” Tensley cleared her throat. “This cat likes to be in the middle of things.”

So she felt it, too. This electricity between them. It wasn’t just him. She was so close. The scent of just-washed cotton and flowers drifted to his nostrils and wrapped itself around him. He felt the warmth radiating from her body; watched the faintest jump of her pulse. The breasts he’d ached to touch in the strip club were only a couple of inches from his chest.

Centerfold Slash Miss Apple Pie, meet your willing victim.

Before he knew it, his hands were on her waist, his fingers sending jubilant distress signals to a brain that couldn’t think clearly. He pulled her closer. When her breasts met his chest, his dick made its presence known, rock hard and ready.

Years melted away and he was back in high school. Holding the girl he could never get enough of. A girl who had grown into one hell of a fantasy-inducing woman.

Somewhere in his scrambled thoughts, he registered her hands closing on him, curving around his belt to his back. Each one of her fingers pressed in on him with an urgency that matched his.

He’d thought about this moment a hundred times over the last fifteen years, four months and sixteen days, but a thousand times more about what came after it. When they were skin to skin, sin to sin.

He tipped his head and bent to kiss her as everything around them slowed and he succumbed to a tsunami of raw lust. He didn’t want to think anymore. Didn’t want to come up for air. They had a lot to make up for —

Right before his mouth met hers, he felt her fingers still, her body stiffen.

“What the hell is that?” She dropped her hands.

He swam through the tidal wave that had flooded his senses, clawing his way to the surface. “I — what — ?”

“You have a gun.” She stepped away from him, face tight, and fired off questions that made his head spin. “Why, Max? Why a gun? Normal people don’t carry guns.” Her voice climbed several octaves. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

“Hold on.” Max put a hand to his forehead, trying to block out the sound of his dick screaming for mercy. “What’s the big deal?” He hadn’t intended for her to find out this way.

“The big deal,” she said, emphasizing each word, “is that you show up here after letting yourself into a building that’s supposed to be secure, with muffins in your hand and a gun hidden under your shirt. The surprise visit and the muffins I can live with, but I want to know about the gun.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I think it means you’re in trouble.”

Nothing about this woman made sense. Most strippers would correctly think “cop” and go into survival mode. “I’m not. Trust me.”
Can we get back to where we were?

“Trust. You.” She dragged the two words out until they took on several syllables and left them to swirl in the air between them.

His temper rose. “I came back for you as soon as I could last night.”

“You cheated on me with Rhonda the Skank.”

Max exhaled. Somehow he’d managed to forget Tensley’s nickname for Rhonda. “That’s a little harsh.”

“So you weren’t cheating on me with her.”

“No. I meant — ” He’d been kidding himself to think there weren’t buried explosives in this reunion. “I told you. Things weren’t supposed to go down the way they did.”

“Because I wasn’t supposed to find out about you and Rhonda.”

“You were supposed to find out about me and Rhonda.”
Hold on. That didn’t come out right.
“There wasn’t anything going on.” He raked his hand through his hair and stared up at the ceiling. No help there. He didn’t like being on this side of an interrogation. “You were just supposed to think there was.”

This time, she shook her head. “I know what I saw.” All of a sudden, though, she didn’t sound so sure.

“Think about it, Tensley.” Max was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a cheater. It still cut to the bone that she’d been so willing to believe he was. Even though, at the time, he’d hoped she would.

“You think I
haven’t
thought about it?” She moved into the living room, pacing across the wooden floor in her bare feet. “Tupperware didn’t work, file folders, a damn metal safe. Nothing.”

What the hell was she talking about?

She turned to pace in the other direction. “Other men didn’t help. Gorgeous men. One of them, Bryan-with-a-y-not-an-i — ”

At what point had he lost control of this conversation?

“ — could talk dirty in French. Which is a whole lot sexier than it is in English. And believe me, it was a huge turn-on.”

So he’d learn fucking French.

Another turn. Still pacing. Her red painted toenails caught his attention. Fiery, but delicate. She’d always had the sexiest toes.

She was still talking. “Great job, things going good. Beautiful condo. My mother and I getting along for once. Even working together — ”

Hell, no. She did not just say her mother was working as a stripper. With a shudder, he recalled the uptight, wealthy bitch who’d warned him to keep away from her daughter. If that woman was stripping, total darkness and a whip had to be involved. Or — hold on. Working together could mean something else entirely. Something this cop would be interested in knowing about.

“And still, I can’t forget about you.”

Things were taking a turn for the better. Max opened his mouth, but she wasn’t letting him get a word in.

“Why Rhonda? Why cheat with her when you and I were so good together? When we had something everybody wants but hardly ever gets?”

The first stab to his heart came from remembering how much he’d loved the girl who had seen in him things other people hadn’t bothered to look for. The second was the realization that after all this time, she still hadn’t figured out why he’d done it.

For every A she’d made in high school, she’d earned a D in street sense.

She stopped pacing back and forth and stared at him, hands on her hips. Even the cat was glaring at him, switching its tail in accusation. “You were kissing her.” Her voice wobbled. “Like you kissed me.”

Not even close.
He closed the distance between them. “What would you have done if you hadn’t found me with her?”

She pulled her mouth in tight and refused to meet his eyes.

“Tell me.”

“I wouldn’t have left.”

“Exactly. You wouldn’t have left.”

The words echoed off each wall, making the silence that followed that much more deafening.

“You were supposed to go to college,” he said at last. “But you said you were going to stay with me.”

She dropped her hands from her hips, looking to the window, and back to him. He saw a tremble in her mouth. “I could have gone to college later.”

“I wasn’t even going to graduate from high school. What do you think we would have lived on?”

Her chin lifted. “Money isn’t everything.”

“It is when you can’t afford a place to live.”

Just as he’d expected, she didn’t have an answer for that. He’d only had one answer himself, at the time.

“So it was a setup.”

He jerked his chin in assent, watching her. For some reason, she kept flexing her hand, making a fist and then releasing it.

The punch replayed in his mind in slow motion. Tensley’s fury. Rhonda’s scream. His disbelief. If he’d had the training then that he had now, he could have blocked the blow. Things would have been different.

But “could-a/would-a” didn’t matter for shit. Max had screwed things up but good.

Her eyes met his. “A pretty lame-ass plan.”

He lifted a shoulder. “All I had at the time.”

“Sounds like your intentions weren’t … bad.” She swiped at one eye with the back of her hand and shook her head, staring out the window again. “Better than mine, I guess.”

He would let her blame him, but not herself. And he’d never been able to handle seeing her cry, so that wasn’t going to work out well. “I’m a cop. That’s why I have the gun.”

She turned back. Her eyes widened and she made a little snort. The sound sent a tingle of memory through him. “A cop. If that’s your idea of a joke, it’s not funny, Max.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“The police in this town would never have allowed that. You were number one on their most-hated list.”

“I left after you did. Went to California. Finished high school, joined a police force and got a degree in criminal justice. Came back here. They offered me a job. I took it.”

She considered that, her eyes narrowing. “You’re kidding. You?”

He put a hand to his heart. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I didn’t mean — ” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, staring at the floor. “It’s just that, of all the things I thought you would become, a cop never entered my mind.”

“Right.” He smiled, for the first time in what felt like years. “You thought maybe a car thief.” He had shown her how to start a car without a key.

“Gambler.” She also cracked a smile.

He’d almost forgotten. He’d also shown her how to play poker. “Con artist.”

“Writer.”

“Are you kidding me?” He would have laughed if her words hadn’t sent such an unexpected thrill through him. She didn’t know about the half-written murder mystery buried in his desk. No one did. “I had enough trouble graduating from high school.”

“This is me, remember? You loved books. Words. You wrote me poetry. And it was good.”

They needed to get off this subject. Fast. “Come on. Gangbanger. That’s what you thought.”

She hesitated.

“Don’t lie,” he said. “It entered your mind.”

Her eyes met his, clear and steady. “I knew you’d end up fine.”

“Not just now when you found the gun.”

“I couldn’t — think of a good reason you’d have one.”

He screwed up his mouth. “Guess that’s fair. I wasn’t headed for anything good when you knew me.”

“I never thought of it that way.” Tensley turned away. She dropped into the chair and the cat jumped up to take what looked like a familiar position on her lap. She began stroking his fur. “So much has happened. I wish I could tell you.” Her voice trailed off. “Things you wouldn’t believe.”

Unfortunately, he was pretty sure he would. He took a seat opposite her, on the sofa. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She seemed to consider it for a moment and then make up her mind. “No. I want to know about you and this whole cop thing. Do you like it?”

“I do. And I’m good at it.”

Tensley’s smile was wistful. “I’ll bet. They probably have you deal with the teenagers just like you.”

They had in his first job. “Sometimes.”

“So an old lady bakes you muffins because you’re single. Have you ever been married?”

Careful, Max.
“Once. For about a minute.”

“Any kids?”

“No. You?”

An odd expression, as though she had to think about it. “Not that I know of.”

At least she hadn’t lost her sense of humor.

Then she raised her head, fixing her gaze on him. “Why were you there last night?”

He leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him.

Tensley sat up straighter, dislodging the cat.

Max switched into his best no-bullshit cop voice. “We need to talk about that.”

“I was working last night,” Max said. “But I’m sure you figured that out.”

Tensley ignored Gemini the cat, who had leaped from the chair after losing his spot and was now attempting to sear his disapproval into her brain. “No. I didn’t.” Here’s where Max would say he knew she didn’t belong in that place. That a real stripper would be able to spot a cop the minute she laid eyes on him.

She leaned forward. Waiting. Hoping.

“First time I’d been to that club. Just got assigned.” He hesitated, staring down at his hands. “I knew you worked there, though. Saw the flyer.”

Right. How could she have forgotten the flyer? Lila Friggin’ Delightful. Her heart sank. So much for her not belonging there. She leaned into the back of the chair, shoulders slumping.

“You must have been surprised to see me.”

“You could say that.” Tensley clasped her hands together so tight, her fingertips went red and her knuckles white.

“Or maybe not. Given the fact that you remember me as number one on the cops’ most-hated list.”

Oh dear God, his smile made her knees go weak. She hoped she didn’t have to use them any time soon because, if he kept smiling, she was pretty sure her knees would wobble. She loosened her fingers, as numbness began to set in, and shifted her gaze to the cat. “What?” she asked Gemini, who turned and left the room with an annoyed switch of his tail.

Tensley braved another look at Max. Her fingers, now that they had regained feeling, longed to touch the curl of dark hair below his ears. She remembered how it used to wrap perfectly around her index finger.

“You know, though, I have to say, Ten. When I saw you … ” He leaned back against the sofa, drumming his fingers on one jeans-clad leg.

Her inner roller coaster ride began another steep ascent of hope as a clock she hadn’t noticed ticked off the seconds. Loud seconds.
Keep talking, Max.
What had happened when he saw her? He’d realized what he’d thrown away, that he’d never stopped loving her? Or maybe he’d thanked his lucky stars for a narrow escape when he saw what he thought she’d become.
Okay, don’t talk.

A sharp rap on the apartment door jolted Tensley from ticking off the possibilities. She jumped, looking at the door and then back at Max.