Breathless Descent

Her eyes pierced his, her glare packed with challenge. “And you know what else isn’t working? You pretending that dumb ten-year-old kiss didn’t happen, and then looking at me like you want to kiss me again. It’s ticking me off.” She poked his chest again. “Bad.”

He wanted to drag her into his arms, every nerve ending in his body aware of her, aware of how long they’d wanted each other, how long they’d denied that need. “I’m not trying to piss you off, Shay.”

“Too late,” she declared, a tiny lift to her pointed chin, which indicated confrontation, but her hand uncurled beneath his hold and flattened against his. Her voice softened. “Sometimes I just think…maybe…we’re like the apple to Adam and Eve. It was just an apple, but the forbidden aspect made it tantalizing. Maybe if we kiss again, we’ll find that the first kiss has been blown into something bigger and better than it really was. Maybe then we can just move on.”

Whoa. She thought that kiss—the one that had kept him fantasizing for ten flipping years—wasn’t as good as they remembered? He must be insane, because the idea wasn’t half-bad. He wanted the kiss to be nothing. He wanted the torment of wanting the forbidden fruit to be gone. Then again, a part of him didn’t want it gone. It simply wanted her without recourse. Which was impossible.

“It won’t work,” he said, slipping away from her as if burned. Shay was leaning slightly in his direction, and the action caught her off guard. She swayed into him, her slender body melting against his. She gasped and caught herself with her hands, no doubt a result of her hips pressed against his. He was hard, thick and pulsing with ache. He had been from the moment he’d drawn that first breath of her scent.

His hands went to her shoulders, and Caleb’s eyes locked with hers. She wet her lips—nervously, not seductively—but the impact was no less alluring. No less tempting. Suddenly, the kiss held new appeal.

Caleb slid his hands over her shoulders toward her neck, and she shivered beneath his touch. It was the first time he’d ever allowed himself to touch her like a man touches a woman.

“Shay,” he said softly, lacing his fingers into the wild mane of blond, pool-tangled locks that framed her heart-shaped face.

She lifted on her toes, closing the distance between her petite five foot two inches and his six-foot frame, bringing their lips close, a breath apart. He could all but taste her. He was going to taste her. Again. Finally.

Until abruptly, a fist pounded on the door behind Caleb. “Shay?” Kent’s voice called. “Caleb? You in there? What happened to Rick?”

Caleb reined himself into control instantly, Kent’s voice a much-needed cold dose of reality.

Shay’s hands went to Caleb’s wrists. “No,” she whispered. “Not again.” She raised her voice. “Go away, Kent!”

“Not until I find out why Rick peeled out of the driveway and won’t answer his cell phone.”

“No,” she said to Caleb. “Not this time. Not until we finish this once and for all.”

“Finish what?” Kent demanded through the door.

Shay growled low in her throat, like only a sister can at her brother. “Fighting! We’re fighting.”

“If you don’t open the door,” Kent warned, “you can add me to the battleground.”

Any minute now, Kent was going to get impatient and reach for the doorknob, which wasn’t locked. Caleb reached for Shay and pressed his lips to her ear, trying not to think about her body next to his. “You aren’t going to wake up and find out I left tomorrow,” he promised. “I’m staying.” What that meant for Shay and him, he didn’t know, but whatever it was, they had to deal with it, once and for all. Just not now.

He set her back from him before she knew what he was doing and turned the doorknob, allowing Kent’s entry. Kent was inside in a heartbeat, and like the previous time ten years ago, Kent’s timing had been perfect. He’d once again saved Caleb from a grave mistake. Had Caleb kissed Shay again, he had no doubt it wouldn’t have stopped there. Not this time. He wanted her too badly, and Caleb was smart enough to know the line between lovers and enemies was too fine to walk with Shay.

No matter how good she felt, no matter how good she smelled, Shay wasn’t the woman for him…no matter how much she always seemed to be that and more.

4

“LET THE TALKING BEGIN,” Kent declared, taking up way too much space in Shay’s bedroom as far as she was concerned. “What the heck happened to Rick?” he demanded.

With her breath lodged in her throat, Shay’s eyes locked on Caleb’s face. Her skin was still hot from his touch. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was leaning against the wall, arms in front of his chest, focused on Kent.

“Rick had not only found his way into Shay’s bedroom,” Caleb said, “he was on her bed.”

“Caleb, damn it!” she exclaimed. He was trying to draw attention away from the two of them by turning the heat on Rick.

“What?” Kent said, whipping around to Shay. “I thought Rick had more class than that. I might have to kill Rick. And you, Shay. Do you know how upset Mom and Dad would have been if they’d found you in here with him?”

“Oh, good grief,” she said, cutting Caleb a hard look. “You two talk this out. I’m going to gather everyone for gifts and cake.”

“You come back here!” Kent yelled.

Shay kept walking, but she still heard Kent mumble, “When I told Rick there was no time like the present, I didn’t know he was going to try right here and now.”

That drew Shay to a halt. She wasn’t going to let Rick’s friendship with Kent suffer because of her and Caleb. She started to turn, when she heard Caleb say, “It wasn’t like that. Shay was just getting Rick a shirt, but I sent him home before I knew what was going on.”

Despite her frustration, which was part emotional, part sexual, Shay felt her lips lift ever so slightly. There was a reason her family had taken Caleb in. He was a man of honor, a born gentleman. She sighed heavily, her breath shuddering from her lungs. Being with her would defy everything he believed in, everything he felt was right. To him, she really was that damned forbidden apple. She didn’t want to lose the garden for the fruit any more than he did, but just when he was back—to stay this time—it seemed so was the temptation to see if they could have both.

AN HOUR LATER, filled with cake and cheer, a good twenty-five guests—family, friends and neighbors—gathered poolside as Sharon and Bob opened gifts.

All too aware of Caleb sitting not far away in an outdoor chair with a beer in hand he’d hardly touched, Shay stood behind her parents, gathering wrapping paper as it was ripped away and organizing packages.

Shay chuckled as her father, a UT Longhorns season-ticket holder, unwrapped his-and-hers Texas Aggie shirts from a former coworker. The principal of the school where her mother had taught for twenty years gave Shay’s father a huge supply of coffee. Knowing how cranky Sharon was without her morning caffeine, it was a gift meant to ensure another happy forty years.

One of the final packages was a large envelope from Caleb. Shay stared at it curiously and, unable to stop herself, cast him a questioning look. He simply smiled and sipped his beer.

“From Caleb,” Shay said, handing it to her parents, and looked over her mother’s shoulder as the envelope was unsealed. Shay gasped at the same moment her mother did…at the airline tickets and hotel vouchers for a second honeymoon.

“Italy?” Shay silently mouthed to Caleb.

“It’s a trip to Italy!” Sharon said to the crowd, who gasped, oohed and aahed. “I’ve always wanted to go to Italy.”

“I remember you saying that every time we went to Olive Garden,” Caleb teased.

Everyone laughed. Sharon blushed. “It’s because they send their chefs to Italy to train. It’s so exciting. The idea of being sent to school in Italy. It makes me want a second career as a chef.”

“You can take a class while you’re there,” Caleb suggested.

Sharon’s eyes lit up before she shook her head. “We can’t accept this, Caleb. No. It’s too extravagant. What about that business you started, the Hotzone?”

“I took several lump-sum, reenlistment bonuses and bought some lucky stock. Enough to leave the Army when the time was right to open the Hotzone. And I set the money aside for your fortieth anniversary years ago.”

Kent eyed a brochure for the villa Caleb had rented for his parents. “What the heck kind of stock did you buy, man, and can I get some?”

Caleb leaned back in his chair and set his beer on the ground. “Apple before the Mac craze,” he said nonchalantly, as if it weren’t a big deal. “I bought in at the right time and stayed in.”

“No way,” Kent and Bob said in unison. Kent quickly added, “That kind of stuff never happens to me. How much did you net?”

“Kent,” Sharon reprimanded sharply, “that’s rude. We have company.”

“Right,” Kent said, elbowing Caleb. “Tell me later.”

Caleb laughed and slipped one arm up on the back of his chair, his focus on Sharon and Bob. “This trip is the least I can do to thank you guys, considering you put up with me for so many years.”

Shay’s heart squeezed at the sweetness of the words that she knew reached deep beyond the gift, into Caleb’s soul. She’d never wanted him more than in that moment. And she’d never known just how wrong it was to pursue her interest in him, either. The idea that she’d kept Caleb away from all of this was hard to swallow. But when they were together, things like what happened in that bedroom always happened. The crackling intensity between them had gradually become more like firecrackers than sparklers.