скачать книгу бесплатно
“So…what are you going to do tonight?” she asked him instead.
He glanced at her warily, as if he were somehow able to read her mind and knew what she really wanted to ask him.
“Your hair’s getting really long,” she interrupted him before he could even start to answer. “Do you ever wear it down?”
“Not too often,” he told her.
Say it. Just say it. “Not even in bed?”
He hesitated only briefly. “No, I usually sleep with it braided or at least pulled back. Otherwise it takes forever to untangle in the morning.”
She hadn’t meant while he slept. She knew from the way he wasn’t looking at her that he was well aware of what she had meant.
“I guess from your hair that you’re still doing the covert stuff, huh?” she asked. “Oops, sorry. Don’t answer that.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that you would.”
Bobby laughed. He had a great laugh, a low-pitched rumble that was always accompanied by the most gorgeous smile and extremely attractive laughter lines around his eyes. “I think it’s fine if I say yes,” he told her. “And you’re right—the long hair makes it kind of obvious, anyway.”
“So is Wes out on a training op or is it the real thing this time?” she asked.
“I don’t know that myself,” he admitted. “Really,” he added as she shot him a skeptical glance.
The traffic light was red, and she chewed her lip as she braked to a stop and stared at the taillights of the cars in front of them. “It worries me that he’s out there without you.”
When she looked at him again, he was watching her. And he actually held her gaze for the first time since they’d gotten into her car. “He’s good at what he does, Colleen,” he told her gently. She loved the way he said her name.
“I know. It’s just…Well, I don’t worry so much when he’s with you.” She forced a smile. “And I don’t worry so much about you when you’re with him.”
Bobby didn’t smile. He didn’t do much of anything but look into her eyes. No, when he looked at her like that, he wasn’t just looking into her eyes. He was looking into her mind, into her soul. Colleen found herself holding her breath, hypnotized, praying that he would like what he saw. Wishing that he would kiss her.
How could he look at her like that—and the way he’d looked at her in the church parking lot, too—and then not kiss her?
The car behind her honked, and she realized that the light had changed. The line of traffic had already moved. She fumbled with the stick shift, suddenly afraid she was making a huge fool of herself.
One of Wes’s recent e-mails had mentioned that Bobby had finally ended his on-again, off-again relationship with a woman he’d met in Arizona or New Mexico or someplace else equally unlikely, considering the man spent most of his waking hours in the ocean.
Of course, that so-called recent e-mail from her brother had arrived nearly two months ago. A lot might’ve happened in the past two months. Bobby could well have hooked up with someone new. Or gotten back together with what’s-her-name. Kyra Something.
“Wes told me you and Kyra called it quits.” There was absolutely no point in sitting here wondering. So what if she came across as obvious? She was tired of guessing. Did she have a chance here, or didn’t she? Inquiring minds wanted to know.
“Um,” Bobby said. “Yeah, well…She, uh, found someone who wasn’t gone all the time. She’s actually getting married in October.”
“Oh, yikes.” Colleen made a face at him. “The M word.” Wes always sounded as if he were on the verge of a panic attack when that word came up.
But Bobby just smiled. “Yeah, I think she called to tell me about it because she was looking for a counteroffer, but I just couldn’t do it. We had a lot of fun, but…” He shook his head. “I wasn’t about to leave the teams for her, you know, and that’s what she wanted.” He was quiet for a moment. “She deserved way more than I could give her, anyway.”
“And you deserve more than someone who’ll ask you to change your whole life for them,” Colleen countered.
He looked startled at that, as if he’d never considered such a thing, as if he’d viewed himself as the bad guy in the relationship—the primary reason for its failure.
Kyra Whomever was an idiot.
“How about you?” he asked. “Wes said you were dating some lawyer.”
Oh, my God. Was it possible that Bobby was doing a little fishing of his own?
“No,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Nope. That’s funny, but…Oh, I know what he was thinking. I told him I went to Connecticut with Charlie Johannsen. Wes must’ve thought…” She had to laugh. “Charlie’s longtime companion is an actor. He just got cast in a new musical at Goodspeed-at-Chester.”
“Ah,” Bobby said. “Wes will be relieved.”
“Wes never wants me to have any fun,” she countered. “How about you?” She used Bobby’s own words. “Are you seeing someone new?”
“Nope. And Wes isn’t, either.”
Okay. She would talk about Wes. She’d gotten the info she’d wanted.
“Is he still carrying the torch for—” What was her name? “Laura?”
Bobby shook his head. “You’ll have to ask him about that.”
Yeah, like Wes would talk to her about this. “Lana,” she remembered. “He once wrote me this really long e-mail all about her. I think he was drunk when he wrote it.”
“I’m sure he was.” Bobby shook his head. “When you talk to him, Colleen, it’s probably better not to mention her.”
“Oh, my God, is she dead?”
“No. Do you mind if we talk about something else?”
He was the one who’d brought up Wes in the first place. “Not at all.”
Silence.
Colleen waited for him to start a new topic of conversation—anything that wasn’t about Wes—but he just sat there, distracted by the sight of the river out the window.
“Do you want to go see a movie later?” she finally asked. “Or we could rent a video. I’ve got an appointment at six-thirty with a guy who wants to buy my car. If everything goes right, I’ll be done by seven-thirty, easy.”
That got his attention, just the way she knew it would. “You’re selling your car? This car?”
When she was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, this Mustang was all she could talk about. But people’s priorities changed. It wasn’t going to be easy to sell it, but she refused to let it be the end of her world—a world that was so much wider now, extending all the way to Tulgeria and beyond.
She made herself smile at him. “I am. Law school’s expensive.”
“Colleen, if you need a loan—”
“I’ve got a loan. Believe me I’ve got many loans. I’ve got loans to pay off loans. I’ve got—”
“It took you five years to rebuild this car. To find authentic parts and—”
“And now someone’s going to pay top dollar for a very shiny, very well-maintained vintage Mustang that handles remarkably badly in the snow. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I don’t need a car—especially not one that skids if you so much as whisper the word ice. My apartment’s two minutes from the T, and frankly, I have better things to spend my money on than parking tickets and gasoline.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I have an idea. I’ve got some money saved. I’ll lend you what you need—interest free—and we can take the next week and drive this car back to your parents’ house in Oklahoma, garage it there. Then in a few years when you graduate—”
“Nice try,” Colleen told him. “But my travel itinerary has me going to Tulgeria next Thursday. Oklahoma’s not exactly in the flight path.”
“Think about it this way—if you don’t go to Tulgeria, you get to keep your car and have an interest-free loan.”
She took advantage of another red light to turn and look at him. “Are you attempting to bribe me?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely.”
She had to laugh. “You really want me to stay home? It’s gonna cost you. A million dollars, babe. I’ll accept nothing less.”
He rolled his eyes. “Colleen—”
“Put up or shut up.”
“Seriously, Colleen, I’ve been to Tulgeria and—”
“I’m dead serious, Robert. And if you want to lecture me about the dangers of Tulgeria, you’ve got to buy me dinner. But first you’ve got to come with me while I sell my car—make sure the buyer’s really a buyer and not some psycho killer who answers vintage car ads in the Boston Globe.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Of course I’ll come with you.”
Jackpot. “Great,” Colleen said. “We’ll go take care of business, then drop your stuff at your hotel before we grab some dinner. Is that a plan?”
He looked at her. “I never really stood a chance here, did I?”
She smiled at him happily. “Nope.”
Bobby nodded, then turned to look out the window. He murmured something that Colleen wasn’t quite sure she caught, but it sounded an awful lot like, “I’m a dead man.”
Chapter 3
Dark, cool and mysterious.
Somehow, despite his best intentions, Bobby had ended up sitting across from Colleen in a restaurant that was decidedly dark, cool and mysterious.
The food was great. Colleen had been right about that, too.
Although she didn’t seem to be eating too much.
The meeting with the buyer had gone well. The man had accepted her price for the car—no haggling.
It turned out that that meeting had been held in the well-lit office of a reputable escrow agent, complete with security guard. Colleen had known damn well there was absolutely no danger from psycho killers or anyone else.
Still, Bobby had been glad that he was there while the buyer handed over a certified check and she handed over the title and keys to the Mustang.
She’d smiled and even laughed, but it was brittle, and he’d wanted to touch her. But he hadn’t. He knew that he couldn’t. Even just a hand on her shoulder would have been too intimate. And if she’d leaned back into him, he would have put his arms around her. And if he’d done that there in the office, he would have done it again, later, when they were alone, and there was no telling where that might lead.
No, strike that. Bobby knew damn well it would lead to him kissing her. And that could and would lead to a full meltdown, a complete and utter dissolving of his defenses and resolve.
It made him feel like a total skeeve. What kind of friend could he be to Colleen if he couldn’t even offer her the most basic form of comfort as a hand on her shoulder? Was he really so weak that he couldn’t control himself around her?
Yes.
The answer was a resounding, unchallenged yes.
No doubt about it—he was scum.
After leaving the escrow office, they’d taken the T into Harvard Square. Colleen had kept up a fairly steady stream of conversation. About law school. About her roommate—a woman named Ashley who’d gone back to Scarsdale for the summer to work in her father’s law office, but who still sent monthly checks for her share of the rent, who didn’t have the nerve to tell her father that, like Colleen, she’d far rather be a public defender and a pro bono civil litigant than a highly paid corporate tax attorney.
Bobby had checked into his hotel and given his bag and a tip to the bellhop. He didn’t dare take it up to his room himself—not with Colleen trailing behind, no way. That transaction only took a few minutes, and then they were back out in the warm summer night.
The restaurant was only a short walk into Harvard Square. As he sat down across from Colleen, as he gazed at her pretty face in the dim candlelight, he’d ordered a cola. He was dying for a beer, but there was no way he’d trust himself to have even one. If he was going to survive this, he needed all of his wits about him.
They talked about the menu, about food—a nice safe topic—for a while. And then their order came, and Bobby ate while Colleen pushed the food around on her plate.
She was quiet by then, too. It was unusual to be around a Skelly who wasn’t constantly talking.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She looked up at him, and he realized that there were tears in her eyes. She shook her head. But then she forced a smile. “I’m just being stupid,” she said before the smile wavered and disappeared. “I’m sorry.”
She pushed herself out of the booth and would have rushed past him, toward the rest rooms at the back of the restaurant, if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed her hand. He slid out of the bench seat, too, still holding on to her. It took him only a second to pull more than enough dollars to cover the bill out of his pocket and toss it onto the table.
This place had a rear exit. He’d automatically noted it when they’d first came in—years of practice in preparing an escape route—and he led her to it now, pushing open the door.
They had to go up a few steps, but then they were outside, on a side street. It was just a stone’s throw to Brattle Street, but they were still far enough from the circus-like atmosphere of Harvard Square on a summer night to have a sense of distance and seclusion from the crowds.
“I’m sorry,” Colleen said again, trying to wipe away her tears before they even fell. “I’m stupid—it’s just a stupid car.”
Bobby had something very close to an out-of-body experience. He saw himself standing there, in the shadows, next to her. Helplessly, with a sense of total doom, he watched himself reach for her, pull her close and enfold her in his arms.
Oh, dear Lord, she was so soft. And she held him tightly, her arms around his waist, her face buried in his shoulder as she quietly tried not to cry.
Don’t do this. Get away from her. You’re asking for trouble.
He must’ve made some kind of awful strangled sound because Colleen lifted her head and looked up at him. “Oh, no, am I hurting you?”
“No,” he said. No, she was killing him. And count on Colleen to worry about someone else during a moment when most people wouldn’t have been thinking of anyone but themselves.
Tears glistened on her cheeks and sparkled in her eyelashes, and the tip of her nose was red. Bozo the Clown, he and Wes had teased her whenever she’d cried back when she was thirteen.
She wasn’t thirteen anymore.
Don’t kiss her. Don’t do it.
Bobby clenched his teeth and thought about Wes. He pictured the look on his best friend’s face as he tried to explain. See, she was right there, man, in my arms, and her mouth looked so soft and beautiful, and her body was so warm and lush and…
She put her head back against his shoulder with a sigh, and Bobby realized he was running his fingers through the silk of her hair. She had hair like a baby’s, soft and fine.
