Destination Connelly (7 page)

Picking it up, I aim and let the spongy roundness roll off the tips of my fingers again.

Swish
.

My bum knee may have fucked up my college basketball scholarship, but after tens of thousands of hours practicing, I can still hit a three-pointer with consistent accuracy. Unless I’m having an off day, I always win when I challenge my brothers to a
friendly
game of HORSE. And since my off days with a ball in my hands are few and far between and my brothers can’t resist a bet any more than I can, I always rake in the dough. But with all of my brothers now paired off except for me, we don’t get to play as often as we once did.

Swish.

Swish.

As I sink basket after basket, I let myself bask in the first win in my not-so-elaborate game plan. A few more legal formalities and Steele Executive Recruiting will be mine. Very soon, Nora will be here in Chicago working for me and I will put the second portion of my plan into motion. The first part was the hard, messy one.

Swish.

The second one, folks, is the simple one: getting her into my bed and keeping her there. I excel at many things, but getting a woman to willingly open her legs? Piece o’ fucking cake. Nora was the one and only exception. But that was then and this is now. Regardless of the cold shoulder she gave me earlier, she's still very much attracted to me. I know once I have her between the four walls of my business, getting her between the thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets on my bed will be a breeze.

I've already begun tying a continuous, complex string of knots and loops that will be wound so tightly Nora won’t know where she begins and I end. Despite what I thought a few days ago, that I didn’t know what I’d do with her once I had her bound to me, after setting my starved eyes on her again, I know
exactly
what I’ll be doing with her. And I’ll be doing it repeatedly because I also know sampling Nora once will not be enough to sate the starvation that’s cramped and twisted my insides for years.

The need to ravage, claim, and strip her physically, emotionally, and spiritually raw so all she will know is me is too powerful to push away or ignore. For the first time in years, I want more than one meaningless night between the thighs of a woman whose name I won’t remember and sometimes don’t even bother to ask for.

Swish
.

Ten in a row.

Nora Cantres will be mine again, and there is nothing or no one that can possibly keep her from me.

Swish
.

Not even her.

N
ora

“
O
h my God
! It’s so good to see you, sweetie!” Kamryn Winthrop screeches in my ear as she squeezes the air from my lungs.

“You too, Kam. It’s been a long time.”

“Too long,” she whispers.

In the early summer before fifth grade, when my father accepted a research position at UCal’s San Diego branch, my family moved from the icy cold of the Northeast to sunny La Jolla, California. We lived in a fancy, gated community filled with old people and even older money.

I hated it.

Until I met the person who would become one of my best lifelong friends.

Kamryn Winthrop.

It was a hot summer day. I was practicing my golf swing in the front yard with a nine iron and Wiffle balls. Most ten-year-olds are riding their bikes or going to the pool or even still playing with dolls, but not me. My Uncle Carl had me on the greens at the age of four, telling me that every young woman should “never rely on a man for happiness, money, or carrying your ass on the golf course.”

I
swing
sure and swift only to watch my ball slice, missing the fake green I’d constructed in the middle of the grass by winding three jump ropes together. “You’re doing that wrong,” a squeaky voice yells from across the street.

“And how would you know?” I mumble, not giving that tiny squawk the time of day. I didn’t know one girl my age who even knew what golf was, let alone understood the mechanics of a proper swing.

I rear back, striking the small white globe again, watching it sail through the air to my right, once again missing the green.

Darn it.

“You’re pushing it,” miss know-it-all yells, a bit closer now.

Who the heck does this girl think she is anyway? I’ve been golfing for six years already. She probably doesn’t even know where the ball’s supposed to land, let alone what type of club I’m holding.

“You need to close your grip just a tad and follow through with your swing. And you’re not rotating your hips and shoulders all the way,” the disembodied small voice calls again; but this time, she’s practically right behind me.

I drop my club angrily and whirl around to meet the most striking set of blue eyes. They would hypnotize you if you stared too long. They’re attached to a tiny human being with hair so blonde it looks dipped in bleach and a face so beautiful she resembles what I imagine an angel would look like.

“And who are you? Greg Norman?”

“No.” She smiles like the cat that ate the canary. “Clearly I’m JoAnne Carner.”

T
hat was it
. That short exchange solidified our friendship for life. That little wisp of a girl and I bonded over a love of golf and hatred of absentee fathers.

Holding me at arm’s length, looking me up and down, Kam tells me, “You look fucking hot, woman.”

I’m sure my blush complements my hair. I hate how easily my skin flushes bright pink. It’s hard to hide a damn thing when your body visibly betrays you. “Thanks. I’ve gained a few pounds since college, but…”

“Girl, shut it. Any hot-blooded man would cut off his right nut at a chance to do you. Besides, you know my motto.”

“Fuck ducks who cluck,” we both laugh in unison.

Kamryn has always been drop-dead gorgeous, even when she was just a kid. Classic natural blonde beauty with striking eyes and curves in all the right places. But the thing I’ve always admired most about her is how she embraces who she is, flaws and all. While so many of us incessantly focus on our imperfections, she has a take-me-as-I-am-middle-finger-to-the-world attitude that I envy. I care too much what people think about sometimes.

“Thanks for meeting me for breakfast.”

“My pleasure. I would have been upset if you hadn’t called. So, you excited about your move to Chi-town?” Kam asks after we put in our breakfast order.

Last week, the acquisition between Steele Executive Recruiting and Wynn was finalized, and all my hopes that this deal would fall through went up in a plume of black smoke. Carl signed, GRASCO held a special board meeting, and a few simple swipes of the pen later, SER became a wholly owned subsidiary of GRASCO Holdings. So I’m now in Chicago for a couple of days for a planning meeting at Wynn that starts at one this afternoon and doesn’t finish until tomorrow at five.

I haven’t seen an agenda, but I have no doubt I’ll have to spend the next thirty-six hours trying to keep my libido in check, because as involved as he’s been to date, I also can’t imagine that Connelly doesn’t have his hands all over this meeting.

“Uh…”

“Hmm, there’s a story there. Spill.”

“Still golfing?” I divert, squirming a bit in my chair. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Kam, judging by the wag of her perfectly sculpted eyebrows, but she doesn’t press. Yet. It’s coming, I’m sure.

“Not as much as I’d like. Too busy with the job. We just secured a new exclusive spring line at Macy’s,” she announces as I longingly watch her bite into a flakey croissant that was delivered moments ago.

Damn, I wish carbs didn’t have a nonstop express line right to my thighs and ass.

“Wow, Kam. Just…wow. That’s incredible.” In addition to being extraordinarily beautiful and a junior league LPGA champion two years in a row, Kam has an uncanny eye for fashion. I have no doubt she could have gone on to be a JoAnne Carner, one of the most famous and successful LPGA players of all time, but her interests lay elsewhere. When she opened her own fashion design company at the young age of twenty-one, I also had no doubt she’d be wildly successful.

“Thanks. Now, back to you and your evasion tactics.”

“I’m not evading.” I shift my eyes and feel the warmth rise, heating first my cheeks, then my ears.

Kam laughs boisterously. “God, my friends are all terrible liars. Have I taught you nothing?”

“It wasn’t for lack of trying,” I reply, laughing myself, remembering how much trouble we got into for the four years we were neighbors.

“Do you remember that time we snuck out when you were in the eighth grade and rode our bikes down to Brantley Bennington’s house for that teen dreams concert they were having in their basement?” Kam asks, wiping buttery crumbs of goodness from the corner of her mouth.

“The Kiss concert where they made drums out of ice cream buckets and aluminum foil and played tennis racket guitars?”

“The one and only.” Kam’s laughing so hard now she can barely speak. “And do you remember how Ricky Hamilton serenaded you with
Beth
and how his tongue was almost as long as Gene Simmons’s and how he tried to stick it down your throat in the bathroom?”

“How could I forget? He slobbered more than a Basset hound. It took me days to get the taste of beef jerky, Dr. Pepper, and mint out of my mouth. To this day, I won’t eat or chew anything wintermint.”

I got into so much trouble that night. When I tried to sneak back in the house, I found my window locked up tight so I had to use the front door to get back inside. I practically ran into my mother, who had moved a wingback chair right inside the door so there was no way I could sneak around her.

Grounded for an entire month.

But it was
so
worth it.

“God, we were bad.”

“That we were. I swore my dad took that job in Maryland to get me away from you.”

“Me?” she shrieks. “You were just as bad, Lucy.”

“I beg to differ, Ethel.”

We giggle loudly at our childhood nicknames, mine being ever so obvious. We’re drawing the attention of the entire little café Kam chose for breakfast, but I don’t mind. I’ve never had a girlfriend like Kamryn and I didn’t realize how much I missed her.

Maybe moving to Chicago won’t be so bad after all. I just have to find a way to stay far away from Connelly.

“So, you’ll be working for Conn Colloway then?” Kam asks, eyeing me with keen interest.

Surprised, I look up from the scrambled eggs I’m pushing around on my plate. I’ve told Kam very little about my move. Just that Wynn Consulting had purchased the company I work for and that it required me to move to Chicago. “How did you know that?”

She shrugs her shoulders like it’s no big deal. “I know him.”

“You know who?”

“Connelly.”

See…this is exactly why I wish I had a better poker face and a different heritage than half-Irish, half-German, which makes for a mighty explosive combo, by the way. My temper is always balanced on the edge of a blade.

I have a lot of cuts.

“You know
Connelly
?” I ask carefully, trying for nonchalant. I know by the squeak in my voice, though, I just ended up in a virtual sidewalk face-plant instead.

Her mouth turns up. “Seeing green, are we?”

I open and close my mouth a few times, trying to gather my wits before responding, because she’s absolutely right. The shades I’m seeing are getting progressively darker with each second that ticks by.

I’ve never seen a picture of Connelly with Kamryn, not that I’ve scoured each and every one of them, mind you, but she fits his type perfectly. Blonde, beautiful, and buxom. And if I had, I have to admit, I’m not sure I could be sitting here now, knowing that one of my best friends has been intimate with the man I’ve never been able to forget, the man I’m foolishly and hopelessly still in love with after all this time.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I manage to push the lie that feels as heavy as a two-ton boulder off my tongue. I’m sweating from the effort.

“You know,” she starts, leaning back in her chair before crossing her long, lean legs, “I remember when I got a phone call from a very distraught Nora soon after she moved to Baltimore. Something about the guy she’d fallen in love with in Detroit was…what was it?” She taps her temple a few times. “Oh yes…a ‘two-timing, cheating, lying son-of-a-bitch fucker who I wish I’d never met.’ That sound about right?”

The other thing I forgot to mention about Kamryn is that she has a memory like a steel trap. If she says that’s what I said, then that’s what I said. Word for word.

Damn her.

“I don’t see what that has to do with Connelly Colloway.”

“It has to do with Conn because
he
was the two-timing, cheating, lying son-of-a-bitch fucker.”

Now I’m starting to panic for a whole host of different reasons.

“And how would you jump to that conclusion, Kam? I never told you his name.” It was hard to keep in touch in high school, so Kam and I only talked every few months. She knew there was a boy I was crushing on, but that was about it. And the last thing I wanted to do when I unloaded on her about my failed whirlwind romance was to remember Connelly’s name, let alone speak it.

Her perceptive smile pisses me off. “You never told me his whole name, but you did tell me his first name. Maybe you don’t remember during your little blubbering rant, but that’s a pretty unique name. And do you know how many Connellys I’ve met in my lifetime?”

I say nothing. Instead, I’m twisting my fingers together under the table, internally freaking the fuck out.

“Two. The other was a Scottish actor with horse breath and an Albert Einstein haircut. Don’t ask.” She puts up her hand just as I open my mouth.

“And do you know which one lived in Detroit about the same time as you and had a redheaded girlfriend in high school who’s considered ‘the one that got away’?” she continues.

My fingers fall lax. “The one that got away?” Why does that statement simultaneously excite me and piss me off?

“That’s the story
I
heard.”

“From who?”

“His twin brother’s wife, Alyse.”

“Asher is married?”

“Oh, yes. All the Colloway brothers have dropped like flies within the last year. Except Conn, that is. He’s still making the rounds, pining away after the long-lost redhead.” She shoots me a grin before taking a sip of her now-cooled coffee.

“Pining away?” I parrot incredulously. “Now, you’re just making shit up, Kamryn.”

“I’m not. I heard this redheaded beauty broke his heart.”

“Broke
his
heart? Are you serious? Well, someone apparently doesn’t have all the facts. I’m not sure how
I
could have broken
his
heart since I found him in bed with another girl not two weeks after he professed his undying love to me.”

Her mouth turns down slightly. I hate the sympathy I see staring back. “I don’t know, Nora. I’m just telling you what I heard.”

“Well, you heard wrong,” I say through gritted teeth, no longer stewing because she knows about my connection with Connelly but mad as hell he would lead people to believe
I’m
the one who broke
his
heart.

It pisses me off I am being blamed for our breakup. True, I may not have confronted Connelly about his cheating ways when I broke it off, but I was gutted from the inside out after what I’d witnessed. I couldn’t stomach listening to excuses and groveling, so I lied instead. Cut us off at the knees by telling him there was someone else. It was easier to let him think it was me than have him banging down my door begging forgiveness. And I knew he would. He was tenacious like that.

It was a horrible time in my life. I went into a deep depression. I unenrolled in college and spent months in bed reliving a torturous night I wasn’t even supposed to be a part of. I had come back to Detroit to surprise him for his birthday, but the surprise was on me when I found him with a naked woman sprawled all over his equally naked body. I have never felt more betrayed by anyone than I did in the moment I heard her moaning his name.

Once a player, always a player and everything I’ve been able to find on him throughout the years has only reinforced my initial perceptions of him, reminding me why I kept my distance then. Why I need to keep it now.

Then why do you feel so damn guilty, Nora?

“Oh, and in case you were wondering, I haven’t let him dip his wick in my pond.”

My eyes widen as they snap to hers. My pulse starts to race. “Haven’t
let
him? Did he ask?”