Her Last Temptation

When his answer came, she couldn’t help feeling a sharp stab of disappointment. Because a faraway look of longing and hunger accompanied his words. “I wrote it for a girl I was crazy about a long, long time ago.”

HE’D WRITTEN the song for her.

Staring at Cat, Dylan focused on those vivid green eyes of hers—those catlike green eyes. He silently willed her to read the truth that screamed loudly in his brain but didn’t cross his lips. It was you. It was always you.

The girl in the song, with moonlight shining on her hair, had been Cat Sheehan bathed in the glow of an enormous bonfire the night of a homecoming game many years ago. If he closed his eyes, he could still see her there, standing completely alone, staring at the flames. She’d been lost in thought, seeming separate and distinct from the rowdy teenagers all around her.

It was so easy even now to remember the way her eyes had glittered and her skin had taken on the golden sheen of the fire. Her hair had positively come alive, as brilliant and dazzling as the flames that leaped and crackled against the star-filled night sky. And even from several feet away, he’d seen the way her lips had moved, as if she were whispering something for her ears alone.

He’d wanted to be the one she whispered to.

Wondering why she looked so sad, so serious and so lonely, he’d even moved closer. He’d been driven to understand why she stood there by herself, as if a curtain had descended between her and everyone else. Everyone except him.

Then someone had taken her arm and she’d rejoined the living, laughter on her lips, as always.

And, as always, she hadn’t even noticed him standing there in the shadows. Apparently, she’d never really noticed him. Certainly not enough to make an impression. Because judging by tonight, Cat had absolutely no idea that they’d been classmates at Kendall High a mere nine years ago.

It wasn’t her fault. Cat had never shunned him; he’d just been too intimidated to make her notice him. Not intimidated by her…but by the intensity of his own feelings, which had simply overwhelmed him, particularly after the night of the bonfire.

Because that had been the night he’d realized there was so much more depth to the beautiful, vivacious Cat than she ever let the world see. The night he’d realized the two of them had something very deep and intrinsic in common.

Their solitude.

Things had changed, though. Because now, she definitely noticed him. For the past ten minutes, during her adorable, fumbling conversation—which was so unlike the self-assured Cat he remembered—she’d been staring at him with intensity, interest and pure, physical want.

He knew the look. Tonight, he almost certainly mirrored it.

Then again, if she’d ever really looked at him, she would have seen that look on his face throughout the entire year they’d gone to school together.

Not meeting his eyes as she rubbed the surface of the bar with a damp rag, Cat said, “You have a lot of talent.”

“Thanks. Music’s my passion.”

“Your only passion?”

“Not only. There’s also video games.”

One of her delicate brows lifted. “Rock and roll and video games. So are you just a mature-looking fifteen-year-old?”

“Smart-ass.” He didn’t elaborate on the video game thing, thinking she probably wasn’t ready to hear that he didn’t merely play them. He created and developed them. Very successfully.

“Goes with the territory,” she said with a shrug.

“Being a smart-ass?”

She looked past him, nodded at someone, then got busy making a couple of scotch and sodas. “Yeah. Can’t take things too seriously when perfect strangers are talking to you like they’re your best friend night after night. Telling you their troubles. It’d be too damned depressing, especially for someone like me.”

He hadn’t thought of it that way. Then, curious, he asked, “Someone like you?”

Cat shrugged, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “I mean, well, anyone who gets riled up a bit too easily, like I used to do.”

Riled up easily? Oh, yeah, Cat Sheehan had had a reputation for that. He didn’t know if the Kendall High football team had ever gotten over being told they were a bunch of spiteful, fatheaded kindergartners with big egos and little dicks.

She’d done it during a pep rally.

Over a loudspeaker.

In front of the whole school.

Cat had gotten suspended. She’d also earned the never-ending devotion of all the freshmen who’d been used as walking punching bags by some of the bullying members of the football team.

“So you still get riled up too easily?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not me. Miss Reasonable, Miss Calm, Cool and Collected, that’s me these days. I can handle anything.”

She tried to meet his eye, tried to maintain a sincere expression, but didn’t quite manage it. Dylan couldn’t help it. He started to laugh.

She shot him a dirty look, then dissolved into helpless laughter, too. “Okay, so maybe you are getting to know me. And the answer is yes, I probably do take things too personally and get myself in trouble on occasion. But I have handled things pretty well all on my own for a long time now. Despite what anyone in my family might say. And I’m determined to stay out of trouble, in spite of some of the things I’d really like to do.”

He wanted to ask if she’d told off any dumb jocks lately but didn’t want to tip his hand too soon. “For instance?”

Her smile faded, that tension returning to her slim body. “I fantasize about driving one of those bulldozers outside right onto the lawn of the courthouse and leaving a big Porta-John on the front steps. It’d have a big Welcome Home sign for the city officials who voted me out of business.”

Cat’s words gave him the opening he’d been waiting for…a chance to try to find out why she appeared so tense. “So, are you really closing the bar?”

Her mouth tightened. “End of the month. Demolition ball swings in July. Gotta make way for progress…how could we ever live without four lanes?”

“That blows.”

She nodded, blinking rapidly, and Dylan recognized her anguish. He now understood the slump in Cat’s shoulders, the unhappiness that had likely caused those dark circles under her beautiful eyes.

Cat was hurting.

Sure, she was playing tough girl—hadn’t she always? But the pain beneath the surface would be obvious to a blind man.

“Is there anything I can do?” He figured there wasn’t, but needed to ask, anyway.

“Just keep rocking the walls down this weekend so we can go out firmly in the black…and so I’ll have a little money to live on while I figure out what I want to be when I grow up.”

“I can’t picture you being unsure of yourself for long, Cat Sheehan,” he murmured, hearing the intensity in his voice.

She apparently heard it, too. Her eyes narrowed in skepticism. “You think you know me already, huh?”

Oh, yeah. He knew her. He’d known her for years. He’d watched her with simple devotion when he’d been a young, geeky kid to whom she’d never have given a second look. And he’d seen her in his dreams in the years that had followed.

“Yeah. I think I do know you.”

But not as well as he planned to.