Chapter 3
Cat
Ihear the bell ring from upstairs in my bedroom.
I spin around and look in the mirror one more time before I run downstairs to answer the door.
I decided to wear my yellow silk strapless blouse and skinny black pants that fit like a dream.
With the strappy three-inch heels, my legs look long and slender.
My hair is straight and shiny tonight. I decided to put it over one of my shoulders to lay on the swell of my breast next to my panther pendant.
My makeup’s good, so I grab my clutch purse and head downstairs.
Why’s Chris ringing the doorbell? Maybe he forgot his keys.
I yank open the door and freeze, shocked at who’s there.
“Nick?”
“Nick?”
What’s he doing here? I thought we were going to meet him and Kate at the restaurant.
I open the door and feel a tingling sensation in the pit of my stomach.
He looks good, like he stepped off the page of a men’s magazine.
As much as I don’t like to admit it, I do like a powerful man.
What woman doesn’t like a strong man with arms and abs of steel, with a body that’s made to protect?
“It’s nice to see you too, Cat. You look lovely as usual.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“Obviously.”
“I thought it was Chris; he’s supposed to pick me up.”
“Wouldn’t he use his key to let himself in?”
“I thought he forgot them, smart ass.” I smile at him and he gives me a perfectly sexy smile in return, relieving some of the tension between us.
“Chris called me and asked if I could give you a ride. He’s showing a client a new property, and it’s taking him longer than he planned. He said he’ll meet us there.”
“Where’s Kate, is she in the car?” I do not want to be in the car with them, and I don’t want to be alone with him. I could kill Chris for putting me in this awkward situation.
“No. She’s going to meet us there.”
“Okay, I’m ready, let me grab my coat.”
We walk to the car, and he walks in front of me and opens the door. “Wow, are you opening the car door for me? Things have changed.”
“I am nothing less than a gentleman. I will always open the door for a pretty lady.”
“Ha. I’ve seen you open the car door for women before, but you’ve never actually opened one for me or anyone that you’re dating, that I can remember.”
“That was the old me—the college years. I’ve learned a few things since then.”
“That’s a good thing; it’s nice to see that chivalry isn’t completely dead.
At least something has changed for the better.
” He closes my door, gets in the driver’s seat and puts on his seat belt.
He puts his left hand on the steering wheel, and I can’t help but stare at his hands.
In my mind I can see them touching me. I can still feel his hand against my cheek, gentle, yet rough at the same time.
I have to stop thinking like this; I’ve only been with him for ten minutes and I’m thinking about how his hands feel on me.
How am I going to spend two hours with him and my sister, the happy couple?
“Cat, are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“It looks like something’s on your mind. I think I know what it is—you want to talk about it now?”
“No.”
“I think we should. A lot of things happened last night and since you’ve been gone.”
I turn my head and look at him. “Clearly. Let’s not talk about it —not tonight. Let’s just try to make it through dinner.”
He puts the car in drive. I turn and stare out the window and try to clear my mind, putting my head against the headrest. The radio comes on and the DJ is talking about the big first milestones in a person’s life that takes them to adulthood, like your first kiss, first crush, first relationship, and the big first, the first time you had sex.
I can’t believe he’s taking calls about this shit, talking about this right at this moment.
Why! Why! Why! Why ME? I can’t catch a freaking break.
“So what was your first time like?”
My head whips around so fast I feel a pinch in my neck. “Excuse me?” I can’t believe he’s asking me about the first time I had sex.
“What was your first kiss like?”
Oh. I seriously need to relax. As if he doesn’t know what it was like. He looks at me, smiling with perfectly straight white teeth I know he needed to wear braces for a year to get.
“What did you think I was talking about?”
“I thought you said something else.” He knows what I thought he said.
“I’ll tell you what mine was like and with who.
I was ten, and in the fifth grade. It was at recess behind the school.
Lisa Shaw, cute blonde, big brown eyes. She was one of the most popular girls in school.
One day she walked up to me and asked me if I would help her find an earring she lost. I kind of thought it was weird that she was asking me to help her find her earring and not one of her friends, but what the hell, I got to be alone with her.
About two minutes after we got back there she grabbed my hand and kissed me full on the lips.
She even slipped a little tongue in there. ”
I roll my eyes at him. “You must have been in heaven.”
“Yeah, I was, for the next ten minutes—until we got caught by a teacher.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
“Yes, we did, and it was worth every minute.”
“I bet it was.”
He’s grinning, and I can totally see him as a little boy behind the school smiling from ear to ear. Thick black hair and piercing eyes that change to a beautifully haunting shade of blue- gray when he’s caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“I told you about my first kiss…”
He takes a quick look at me, still smiling, before he looks at the road again. I turn my head and look straight ahead and start talking before he finishes.
“My first kiss was with some guy who wasn’t much of a looker, who I didn’t really like.
I was thirteen and he was about sixteen, I hardly remember it.
The one thing I do remember is that he was a bad kisser and his tongue was everywhere.
He basically assaulted my mouth.” The car stops at the red light, and I turn and look at him.
Looking back at me with one eyebrow raised with a smirk on his face, he bursts out,
“Bullshit!”
“What?” I laugh, giving him my best I’m-so-innocent look. “That’s how I remember it.”
“Like I said, bullshit. You and I both know I was your first kiss at thirteen, and that’s definitely not how I remember it.”
“How do you know you were my first kiss, you could have been guy number two.”
“Trust me when I say a guy knows when he’s the first anything with a girl. Come on, admit it, I was the first.”
“All right, fine you were my first kiss. So what do you remember about that kiss, was it as memorable as your kiss with Lisa Shaw?” I ask as the light changes to green and he looks straight ahead.
“I remember everything about it. I was in the living room at your house, your mother was upstairs, and I was waiting for Chris to get dressed so we could go to football practice. It was like eighty degrees outside, the sun was shining like a laser beam, and I went outside to wait for him. You had a yellow tank top and these little green shorts that could barely cover your assets. Your hair was loose, straight down to the middle of your back. Almost like it is now.”
He remembers my hair? Most guys wouldn’t. I remember those shorts—my parents never let me wear them outside of the house or if we had visitors at the house. I knew he was coming over that day so I purposely put them on. Ha! The mind of a thirteen-year-old girl.
“You were barefoot, and you were hosing down a lawn chair. Standing there watching you kind of opened my eyes—it made me think of you in a different way.”
“Is that why you kissed me?” I turn my head against the headrest to look at Nick’s profile. My God, he is a beautiful man from every angle, downright sexy as hell.
“That kiss wasn’t supposed to happen. You didn’t say anything, but I had the feeling you were upset with me. I wanted to find out if everything between us was cool.”
“You said, ‘man it’s hot out here!’”
“Then you asked me if I needed cooling off and turned the hose on me!”
I chuckled. “You started chasing me around the yard. When you finally caught me, you grabbed me by the waist and it was so slippery we fell on the grass and you landed on top of me —hard.”
He winces. “I was so scared I hurt you. I kept asking if you were okay and you weren’t saying anything, and then you laughed and said you were fine.
“You were smiling, and I really saw you for the first time and thought, wow, she really is pretty.”
“Oh, so I wasn’t pretty before?”
He turns his head, looks at me with a boyish grin, and turns back to the road.
“No, I didn’t say that. I saw a couple of things that day that I didn’t notice before.
It’s like I had shades on and someone pulled them up.
” The car stops and he looks at me with those stunningly beautiful eyes that make me forget how to breathe.
“I never knew the view was so beautiful. I could feel your heart beating against my chest. You put your lips against mine and I kissed you. You opened your mouth and that was it—I couldn’t think about anything else but the feel of your tongue against mine, soft and wet.
I was totally lost—until I heard Chris call my name. I’ve never moved so fast in my life.”
We both laugh at the memory, and he shakes his head.
“I knew if he saw me doing what we were doing, he would have kicked my ass. I would have let him. If I ever deserved my ass beaten, it was that day.”
“No, you didn’t, you weren’t forcing me to do anything I didn’t want to do. It was just a kiss.”