Fireside (34 page)

Yet an extraordinary thing was happening to her. Something she’d never expected or felt before, ever. It wasn’t mere lust but something else, a sense of comfort and safety, which made no sense at all. The feeling persisted even when he lay back and pulled her into the curve of his body so that they fit together as precisely as pieces of a 3-D puzzle.

He touched his lips to her temple. “This is nice.”

“Mmm, it is,” she agreed.

“Today was nice,” he added. “Even though I nearly broke every bone in my body, I kind of like snowboarding.”

She was enjoying the vibration of his deep voice as she rested her cheek on his chest. “After all that whining, you liked it?”

“I liked trying something new with AJ,” he said. “And with you. I like you. A lot.”

She sighed, smiling as she closed her eyes. She lay still for a few minutes, riding the gentle rise and fall of his chest and listening to the settling sounds of the old house at night. A warm breath of heat blew gently from the furnace register.

“You probably hear this stuff all the time,” he said.

“I swear, no one’s ever told me my eyes are like green Jelly Bellies.”

“You know what I mean.”

She did. And she knew if she lived to be a hundred, she would never feel this way again. It was a curious thing to know, considering she wasn’t all that old, yet she deeply felt the truth of it in a hidden place inside her. The thought made her sad, because she wanted so much more than a fling with him. She wanted forever, and they couldn’t have that.

“I like you, too,” she confessed, her voice an intimate whisper in the darkness. “That came as a surprise to me. I mean, I didn’t expect to like you. I thought you’d be like so many of my former clients, self-absorbed and well, frankly, a jerk. And instead, you turned out to be sort of a good guy. I think. You’re kind, and you are trying hard with AJ. You make me laugh and…” She paused, weighing her words, wondering if she should own up to this. He was so quiet, such a good listener. “I like the way you kiss me,” she confided. “No, that’s a lie. I actually love the way you kiss me. I think—against my better judgment—I might have a crush on you.”

She was grateful for the darkness and for the deep silence of the night, hiding her blush and cushioning her whisper. It made the heartfelt admission come easier. She was amazed at what she heard herself revealing to him, yet now that she’d started down that road, she couldn’t stop herself.

“I’m supposed to be training you to deal with your career, and here you are teaching me something. Or at least reminding me of something. Namely, that not every single guy I meet is an insensitive jerk.”

She smiled in the dark, the beat of his heart strong and deep against her cheek. He smelled so good, and knew just how to hold her to make her feel safe and cherished. Everything about him felt good.

“You’re an amazingly good listener,” she added. “I hope I’m not making you too uncomfortable, baring my soul like this.”

He kept quiet, except for his gentle breathing and the steady pulse of his heart. Kim bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, Lord. He was giving her the silent treatment. She’d said too much. She’d been too honest. And clearly, it was freaking him out. He was speechless. Perhaps speechless with horror.

“I’ve said too much, too soon,” she admitted. “It’s probably too much information, and it just might be the schnapps. Okay?”

Silence.

“Bo?”

More silence.

Reluctant though she was to shift from her position of warm comfort, she braced herself on one arm and half sat up. “Bo? Did you even hear a word I said?”

Amber light from a streetlamp slanted through the window. Kim could just make out his features.

He was sound asleep.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered. “That was the best conversation I’ve ever had with a man, and you’ve been dead asleep. No wonder you’re so easy to talk to.”

He didn’t react. In sleep, his face looked completely relaxed and unguarded. Boyish and vulnerable. The crush she had on him didn’t go away. It intensified.

Very gently, she laid her head back down on his chest. “I am in such trouble,” she whispered, drawing the quilt up over them both.

Bo dreamed he’d had his arm amputated. His left arm. His pitching arm. And in the dream, it just wasn’t that big a deal. So this was not some athlete-losing-his-gift dream. It was something else. What, he wasn’t sure.

He awakened slowly, hugging his soft pillow closer as though to keep himself in the grip of an incredibly relaxing moment. No bed had ever felt so warm or soft or—

A breathy female sigh drifted from the pillow, snuffing out the amputated-arm dream. A moment later, he was wide-eyed, fully awake.

Dang. He’d fallen asleep. How the hell had that happened? He finally got Kimberly van Dorn in bed with him, and he’d fallen asleep immediately. He couldn’t even blame it on the drinking, not this time. They’d each had a glass of schnapps, not a sip more.

His left arm—his pitching arm—was leaden, completely numb.

He gently lifted his head from the pillow and saw the reason. Kim lay sleeping in the crook of his arm, her cheek against his chest and her hand splayed over the flat of his stomach.

Well now, he thought. This was a first for him. He’d never slept with a woman without
sleeping
with her.

Now here was Kimberly, fast asleep in his arms. She’d been thoroughly kissed by him, but that was all. Not a damned thing more.

He couldn’t believe it. That was just purely wrong. No way around it. She’d given him his chance, and he’d—good Lord almighty—fallen asleep. And with Kimberly, of all people. The one woman he wanted to stick around. Generally, the women in his life were temporary wayfarers. There would usually be wine, a few laughs and the sex, of course. But inevitably, they would figure some things out about him. And then, of course, they would leave. He hadn’t blown a chance like this since…

He found himself remembering a certain day in April when he was fourteen years old. He had been home alone as usual that day. His mom was at her job—that year she was selling Mary Kay cosmetics, and she traveled around the suburbs with a tackle box of samples in the trunk of her car. Stoney had been off somewhere with his latest sugar mama. That was what Stoney called the women he dated who were older than him, women who cheerfully gave him money and let him drive their Cadillacs or HumVees anytime he wanted.

That long-ago April day, his mom’s friend, Shasta Jamison, stopped by, the way she sometimes did. Shasta and Trudy went way back, or so they said, but when Bo asked what that meant, they just said, “We’ve known each other forever.”

Shasta was pretty in a weary, too-many-cigarettes way, with yellow hair and a good figure. She always seemed a little sad to Bo. A little lonely. She sometimes had a suspicious-looking bruise on her face, and maybe she moved slowly because her ribs were sore. She was a fool for love, that was the way Bo’s mother put it. She tended to go out with guys who roughed her up.

That day she had on a long-sleeved sweatshirt even though it was hot and muggy outside. The skintight sweatshirt was unzipped to show off a red bikini top stretched taut across her amazing boobs. They glowed softly with a suntan, creating a deep cleavage that made his mouth water.

Reminding himself not to stare, he turned down the music and said, “My mom’s not here. I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

“Oh. I got time,” Shasta said. “I’ll just wait for her.”

“Um, okay. It might be a while.”

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “Just go on with what you were doing.”

Right, like he could do that. He’d been reading a book on sports psychology about Nolan Ryan and listening to the Talking Heads turned up loud. It would be rude to do that with Shasta around.

“I wasn’t doing anything.” His gaze slipped, and he quickly corrected himself, hoping she hadn’t noticed.

She noticed. She slid the zipper of her sweatshirt down another inch or two. “It’s okay for you to look,” she said, taking a step closer to him. “I don’t mind.”

She was trouble. He didn’t have to be a genius to realize that. Even so, he couldn’t keep himself from staring at her. She liked it, too, letting him know by trailing her hand down her arm and then back up, briefly touching her lower lip.

“It’s okay to touch, too.” She moved in even closer.

“Ma’am, I—”

“Don’t
ma’am
me. It makes me feel old. I don’t like feeling old.”

“Yes, m—yes, okay.” His voice was husky, yet due to nerves, it squeaked on the ends of his words.

She smiled and rested her hand on his chest, then went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He caught the cindery scent of cigarettes smoked hours ago, mingling with the flavor of a more recent breath mint. The smell of her, combined with the feathery action of her lips moving across his cheek, was so sexy his knees almost buckled.

“So tall,” she murmured. “You’ve grown so tall.”

As though she could read his mind, she chuckled and gave him a gentle shove toward his bedroom. It was small but he kept his side neat because he hated losing stuff. He had his Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson posters on the wall, and his Little League trophies lined up on a shelf over the bed.

Shasta kissed him full on the mouth, her tongue startling in its quickness as it darted invitingly past his lips. Bo caught on fire, every nerve ending flaring up with a need he’d never felt before. Light-fingered, her hands traced the shape of his shoulders and headed downward, circling the waistband of his jeans, undoing the top button. Sirens went off in his head, drowning out everything. His hands, clumsy with excitement, tried to figure out what to do. He found the front zipper of her sweatshirt and oh-so-slowly coaxed it downward until the shirt fell open, exposing the low-cut top.

Bo had spent many an hour picturing what it would be like the first time. This was nothing like the experience he’d conjured up in his imagination. This was…overwhelming, the biggest thing that had ever happened to him and that included catching a home-run ball at the Astrodome when he was twelve. He couldn’t believe she was going to let him do it. She was an angel, a goddess, a dream come true.

His hands shook as he slipped them around her and up to her shoulders, feeling her impossibly soft skin. He was close to losing it and making a fool of himself, and he clutched her upper arms to steady himself. She gasped and winced—with pain, not pleasure.

Misgivings sloshed over him like a bucket of ice water. He took a step back, breathing hard. “Aw, jeez, did I hurt you?”

“What?” She regarded him through half-lidded eyes. “No, honey, it’s nothing.”

As gently as he could, he took hold of her hand, angled her arm toward the light slanting in through a gap in the drapes. On the softest part of her upper arm was a stark bruise in the shape of a very large hand.

“Who hurt you?” Bo asked her.

She offered a short, dismissive laugh. “It’s not important. Let’s just get back to what we were doing.”

There was a part of Bo—a very specific, out-of-control part that wanted to do exactly that. But something had quieted the sirens in his head and turned his brain back on.

“Ma’am,” he said, “we can’t be doing this.”

She stared at him. To his horror, tears pooled in her eyes, threatening to spill over. Suddenly she looked old to him, and tired, and just so sad and desperate, needing something from him, not just sex but comfort and understanding and a hundred other things he didn’t have it in him to give.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked. “You know you want to do it. You’re dying to do it. I haven’t felt a hard-on like that since I was in high school.”

His face and ears caught fire. “Ms. Jamison, you and I both know this is wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong with two people sharing a little something,” she said. “Don’t you know that? Don’t you understand?”

He felt scared of her desperation. “Not wrong in that way. I mean wrong because it’s not going to fix that.” He indicated the bruise on her arm.

“You stupid little shit,” she burst out. “What the hell do you know about anything?” Her tone was harsh, cutting like a knife.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I don’t mean any disrespect—”

“Then shut your mouth right now.” She snatched her shirt off the bed, stuffed her bruised arms into the sleeves. She was crying openly now, her face contorted. “You’re an idiot, you know that? You blew off a perfectly nice afternoon. And believe me, I won’t offer again, ever.”

He didn’t know what else to say. He was an idiot; every horny cell in his body was telling him so. He couldn’t, though, he just couldn’t have sex with Ms. Jamison, not with her being so sad and hurt. It wouldn’t be right, no matter what she said.

Bo learned something that day. He learned that, incredible as it seemed, having sex was not the answer to every problem. Which was totally weird because it was all he thought about. Listening to her car door slam, then the angry revving of the engine, he felt sorry for her. He knew he couldn’t help her, and that depressed him.

Feeling the woman curled against him now, he still wondered what he’d taken from that day. What if he’d done something different? Taken what she’d offered? Given her…what? He’d been a fourteen-year-old with a boner. He didn’t have anything to give her.

That had been half a lifetime ago, but sometimes—like now—he wondered if he’d learned anything at all about women. Did he have anything to offer Kimberly? Or should he get out now, before it was too late?

It was dark still. A digital clock across the room read 5:47 a.m., its green digits floating unanchored in the darkness. AJ would still be asleep. Bo could sneak into his own bed where he belonged.

Except it felt so damn good right where he was. He lay unmoving for a few minutes, loath to awaken her and reluctant to disturb the nest of warmth created by their comfortably entwined bodies. She was so soft, and she smelled so good…The temptation to start kissing her again, to finish what he’d started last night, burned through him like a forest fire.

AJ, he reminded himself. He didn’t want the kid to wake up and find him gone. Bo shifted slowly and carefully, drawing his chest and shoulders out from under Kim, attempting to replace them with pillows. Inevitably, she stirred, then woke up.