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“Colleen, come on. He’s my best friend. He’s worried about you.”
“And you don’t think I worry about him? Or you?” she countered hotly. “Do I come out to California to try to talk you out of risking your lives? Do I ever say, don’t be a SEAL? No! Because I respect you. I respect the choices and decisions you make.”
Father Timothy and Shantel emerged from the church kitchen with a huge thermos of lemonade and a stack of cups.
“Everything all right?” Father T. asked, eyeing Bobby apprehensively.
Bobby held out his hand. “I’m Bobby Taylor, a friend of Colleen’s,” he introduced himself.
“A friend of my brother, Wes’s,” she corrected him as the two men shook hands. “He’s here as a surrogate brother. Father, plug your ears. I’m about to be extremely rude to him.”
Timothy laughed. “I’ll see if the other children want lemonade.”
“Go away,” Colleen told Bobby. “Go home. I don’t want another big brother. I don’t need one. I’ve got plenty already.”
Bobby shook his head. “Wes asked me to—”
Damn Wes. “He probably also asked you to sift through my dresser drawers, too,” she countered, lowering her voice. “Although I’m not sure what you’re going to tell him when you find my collection of whips and chains, my black leather bustier and matching crotchless panties.”
Bobby looked at her, something unrecognizable on his face.
And as Colleen looked back at him, for a moment she spun out, losing herself in the outer-space darkness of his eyes. She’d never imagined outer space could be so very warm.
He looked away, clearly embarrassed, and she realized suddenly that her brother wasn’t here.
Wes wasn’t here.
Bobby was in town without Wes. And without Wes, if she played it right, the rules of this game they’d been playing for the past decade could change.
Radically.
Oh, my goodness.
“Look.” She cleared her throat. “You’re here, so…let’s make the best of this. When’s your return flight?”
He smiled ruefully. “I figured I’d need the full week to talk you out of going.”
He was here for a whole week. Thank you, Lord. “You’re not going to talk me out of anything, but you cling to that thought if it helps you,” she told him.
“I will.” He laughed. “It’s good to see you, Colleen.”
“It’s good to see you, too. Look, as long as there’s only one of you, I can probably make room in my apartment—”
He laughed again. “Thanks, but I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
“Why waste good money on a hotel room?” she asked. “After all, you’re practically my brother.”
“No,” Bobby said emphatically. “I’m not.”
There was something in his tone that made her bold. Colleen looked at him then in a way she’d never dared let herself look at him before. She let her gaze move down his broad chest, taking in the outline of his muscles, admiring the trim line of his waist and hips. She looked all the way down his long legs and then all the way back up again. She lingered a moment on his beautiful mouth, on his full, gracefully shaped lips, before gazing back into his eyes.
She’d shocked him with that obvious once-over. Well, good. It was the Skelly family motto: everyone needs a good shocking every now and then.
She gave him a decidedly nonsisterly smile. “Glad we got that established. About time, huh?”
He laughed, clearly nervous. “Um…”
“Grab a sponge,” she told him. “We’ve got some cars to wash.”
Chapter 2
Wes would kill him if he found out.
No doubt about it.
If Wes knew even half the thoughts that were steamrolling through Bobby’s head about his sister, Colleen, Bobby would be a dead man.
Lord have mercy on his soul, the woman was hot. She was also funny and smart. Smart enough to have figured out the ultimate way to get back at him for showing up here as her brother’s mouthpiece.
If she were planning to go anywhere besides Tulgeria, Bobby would have turned around. He would have headed for the airport and caught the next flight out of Boston.
Because Colleen was right. He and Wes had absolutely no business telling her what she should and shouldn’t do. She was twenty-three years old—old enough to make her own decisions.
Except both Bobby and Wes had been to Tulgeria, and Colleen hadn’t. No doubt she’d heard stories about the warring factions of terrorists that roamed the dirt-poor countryside. But she hadn’t heard Bobby and Wes’s stories. She didn’t know what they’d seen, with their own eyes.
At least not yet.
But she would before the week was out.
And he’d take the opportunity to find out what that run-in with the local chapter of the KKK had been about, too.
Apparently, like her brother, Wes, trouble followed Colleen Skelly around. And no doubt, also like Wes, when it didn’t follow her, she went out and flagged it down.
But as for right now, Bobby desperately needed to regroup. He had to go to his hotel and take an icy-cold shower. He had to lock himself in his room and away—far away—from Colleen.
Lord save him, somehow he’d given himself away. Somehow she’d figured out that the last thing that came to mind when he looked at her was brotherly love.
He could hear her laughter, rich and thick, from the far end of the parking lot, where she stood talking to a woman in a beat-up station wagon, who’d come to pick up the last of the junior-size car washers.
The late-afternoon sunlight made Colleen’s hair gleam. With the work done, she’d changed into a summer dress and taken down her ponytail, and her hair hung in shimmering red-gold waves around her face.
She was almost unbearably beautiful.
Some people might not agree. And taken individually, most of the features of her face were far from perfect. Her mouth was too wide, her cheeks too full, her nose too small, her face too round, her skin too freckled and prone to sunburn.
Put it all together, though, and the effect was amazing.
And add those heartstoppingly gorgeous eyes…
Colleen’s eyes were sometimes blue, sometimes green, and always dancing with light and life. When she smiled—which was most of the time—her eyes actually twinkled. It was corny but true. Being around Colleen Skelly was like being in the middle of a continuous, joyful, always-in-full-swing party.
And as for her body…
Ouch.
The woman was beyond hot. She wasn’t one of those anemic little bony anorexic girls who were plastered all over TV and magazines, looking more like malnourished 12-year-old boys. No, Colleen Skelly was a woman—with a capital W. She was the kind of woman that a real man could wrap his arms around and really get a grip on. She actually had hips and breasts—and not only was that the understatement of the century, but it was the thought that would send him to hell, directly to hell. ‘Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars,’ do not live another minute longer.
If Wes ever found out that Bobby spent any amount of time at all thinking about Colleen’s breasts, well, that would be it. The end. Game over.
But right now Wes—being more than three thousand miles away—wasn’t Bobby’s problem.
No, Bobby’s problem was that somehow Colleen had realized that he was spending far too much time thinking about her breasts.
She’d figured out that he was completely and mindlessly in lust with her.
And Wesley wasn’t around to save him. Or beat him senseless.
Of course, it was possible that she was just toying with him, just messing with his mind. Look at what you can’t have, you big loser.
After all, she was dating some lawyer. Wasn’t that what Wes had said? And these days, wasn’t dating just a euphemism for in a relationship with? And that was really just a polite way of saying that they were sleeping together, lucky son of a bitch.
Colleen glanced up from her conversation with the station-wagon mom and caught him looking at her butt.
Help.
He’d known that this was going to be a mistake back in California—the second the plea for help had left Wes’s lips. Bobby should have admitted it, right there and then. Don’t send me to Boston, man. I’ve got a crippling jones for your sister. The temptation may be too much for me to handle, and then you’ll kill me.
“I’ve gotta go,” Bobby heard Colleen say as she straightened up. “I’ve got a million things to do before I leave.” She waved to the kids in the back. “Thanks again, guys. You did a terrific job today. I probably won’t see you until I get back, so…”
There was an outcry from the back seat, something Bobby couldn’t make out, but Colleen laughed.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I’ll deliver your letters to Analena and the other kids. And I’ll bring my camera and take pictures. I promise.”
She waved as the station wagon drove away, and then she was walking toward him. As she approached, as she gazed at him, there was a funny little smile on her face.
Bobby was familiar with the full arsenal of devious Skelly smiles, and it was all he could do not to back away from this one.
“I have an errand to run, but after, we could get dinner. Are you hungry?” she asked.
No, he was terrified. He sidled back a bit, but she came right up to him, close enough for him to put his arms around. Close enough to pull her in for a kiss.
He couldn’t kiss her. Don’t you dare, he ordered himself.
He’d wanted to kiss her for years.
“I know this great Chinese place,” she continued, twinkling her eyes at him. “Great food, great atmosphere, too. Very dark and cool and mysterious.”
Oh, no. No, no. Atmosphere was the dead-last thing he wanted or needed. Standing here on the blazing-hot asphalt in broad daylight was bad enough. He had to clench his fists to keep from reaching for her. No way was he trusting himself around Colleen Skelly someplace dark and cool and mysterious.
She touched him, reaching up to brush something off his sleeve, and he jumped about a mile straight up.
Colleen laughed. “Whoa. What’s with you?”
I want to sink back with you on your brightly colored bedspread, undress you with my teeth and lose myself in your laughter, your eyes and the sweet heat of your body.
Not necessarily in that order.
Bobby shrugged, forced a smile. “Sorry.”
“So how ’bout it? You want to get Chinese?”
“Oh,” he said, stepping back a bit and shifting around to pick up his seabag and swing it over his shoulder, glad he had something with which to occupy his hands. “I don’t know. I should probably go try to find my hotel. It’s the Sheraton, just outside of Harvard Square?”
“You’re sure I can’t talk you into spending the night with me?”
It was possible that she had no idea how suggestive it was when she asked a question like that, combined with a smile like that.
On the other hand, she probably knew damn well what she was doing to him. She was, after all, a Skelly.
He laughed. It was either that or cry. Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu. “Why don’t we just plan to have lunch tomorrow?”
Lunch was good. Lunch was safe. It was businesslike and well lit.
“Hmm. I’m working straight through lunch tomorrow,” she told him. “I’m going to be driving the truck all day, picking up donations to take to Tulgeria. But I’d love to have breakfast with you.”
This time it wasn’t so much the words but the way she said it, lowering her voice and smiling slightly.
Bobby could picture her at breakfast—still in bed, her hair sexily mussed, her gorgeous eyes heavy-lidded. Her mouth curving up into a sleepy smile, her breasts soft and full against the almost-transparent cotton of that innocent little nightgown he’d once seen hanging in her bathroom….
Everything about her body language was screaming for him to kiss her. Unless he was seriously mistaken, everything she was saying and doing was one great big, giant green light.
God help him, why did she have to be Wes Skelly’s little sister?
Traffic was heavy through the Back Bay and out toward Cambridge.
For once, Colleen didn’t mind. This was probably the last time for a while that she’d make this drive up Comm. Ave. and over the BU bridge. It was certainly the last time she’d do it in this car.
She refused to feel remorse, refused even to acknowledge the twinge of regret that tightened her throat every time she thought about signing over the title. She’d done too much pro bono work this past year. It was her fault entirely, and the only way to make ends meet now was to sell her car. It was a shame, but she had to do it.
At least this final ride was a memorable one.
She glanced at Bobby Taylor, sitting there beside her, looking like the perfect accessory for a lipstick-red 1969 Ford Mustang, with his long hair and exotic cheekbones and those melted-chocolate eyes.
Yeah, he was another very solid reason why she didn’t mind at all about the traffic.
For the first time she could remember, she had Bobby Taylor alone in her car, and the longer it took to reach Harvard Square, the better. She needed all the time she could to figure out a way to keep him from getting out when they arrived at his hotel.
She’d been pretty obvious so far, and she wondered just how blatant she was going to have to be. She laughed aloud as she imagined herself laying it all on the table, bringing it down to the barest bottom line, asking him if he wanted to get with her, using the rudest, least-elegant language she knew.
