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Swallowing hard, she let her voice rise from her gut, deep and hoarse and packed with emotion. “I don’t need a big brother, Adam. I’m fine, Lia’s fine, we’re both fine.”
It was a rejection of everything he had to offer. Adam’s jaw flexed as he studied her. “You make it damn hard to be your friend. Why, Annabelle?” In the silence of the large house, the question seemed intimate and probing. His green eyes compelled her not to look away. “Everyone needs a friend, don’t they?”
Her heart thumped in her throat. “No,” she whispered.
Adam stared at her a long hard moment. “No?”
She shook her head. “I know you promised Lia you’d stay,” she said, forcing herself to speak calmly, “but really…I’d like to be alone.”
She saw anger flare briefly in his eyes. He masked it quickly with a wry smile and stood. “It seems to me we’ve played this scene before, so I won’t ask you if you’re sure. Just tell Lia I’m available if she needs anything and that I meant what I said about taking her to dinner to celebrate before I leave.” He waited for Annabelle’s nod. “So long, Belle.”
Annabelle stood as stiff as a statue, listening to Adam’s uneven gait as he walked down the hall. She heard the front door open and close and managed to work up a moment’s fierce satisfaction. The only reason he was staying in town was his broken foot; as soon as that healed he’d be off diving in Fiji or some-where, taping the mating rituals of stingrays.
At least now he got the picture. She didn’t need anyone walking in and out of her life. This was good. Very good. She was starting with a clean slate.
She picked up the tuna sandwich and took a bite, deciding her appetite had come back. In no time at all now, without so many bothersome personal distractions, she would get her business back on track. She would make sure Lia could attend the school of her dreams. And then she would attend to her own life. Maybe she would get herself some new friends. Good friends. The kind you could ring up to have coffee or share recipes with. Friends who would never ever make her feel like the world stopped spinning when they walked out the door.
Making an effort to swallow, she returned the sendwich to the plate.
Tuna and tears were a rotten combination.
Chapter Three (#ulink_fccc0f10-a8e6-50d1-b188-89672efe9731)
Adam shoved the key into the back-door dead bolt lock with little enthusiasm for returning home.
He flicked on the kitchen light, crossed the Spanish-tiled floor and took a long swig from the plastic jug of springwater he kept on top of the refrigerator. Restless and moody, he headed to the living room, stood irresolute, then opened his front door and stepped onto the porch.
The early afternoon was cool and gray, with the sun content to play chorus to the clouds. Adam leaned against the porch rail, staring at the soft milky sky and at the strip of ocean he could see from his house. Spring could be the most romantic or the loneliest time of year at the beach. It all depended on your situation. Or your outlook.
At one time this rustic wooden porch had seemed like a lovers’ haven. And he’d been one of the lovers.
He crossed to the cushioned wooden swing that had been here as long as he could remember, since before his parents had bought the place. They’d made a number of changes over the years, but they’d kept the swing.
Running a finger along the heavy chain that suspended the wooden bench from the sturdy overhang, he gave it a push that sent it into motion, seating himself as the unit rocked gently.
Adam shook his head. Back in the days when his hormones had outrun his brain, he’d gotten a lot of use out of this old swing. Those teenage kissing marathons—conducted while his parents were out of the house—had been fun, but they weren’t the first, or the best, memory that flooded his mind when he sat on this porch and looked back…
“Celebrate with me, Adam!”
Delicate and blond, Annabelle held a bottle of pink champagne high in the air, a radiant triumphant smile spread across her face.
Adam took one look at her and thought, Yes, I’ll celebrate with you. Anytime, anyplace.
Annabelle stood below him, barefoot on his front lawn while he sat on the porch swing, listening to the squeaky chirp of the crickets.
He’d been out here for two hours, or maybe it was longer; he rarely wore a watch, and the mood he was in tended to make time blur.
Glancing at the dark sky, he saw that the moon was high and full.
“What are you doing out this late?” His voice was mellow, lazy, his smile for her, indulgent.
“Looking for someone to celebrate with.” He could see the sparkle of her eyes even in the dim illumination of the porch light. “Lia’s in bed already. She was exhausted.”
He grinned. “It went well,” he said. It was an affirmation, not a question. Adam knew she had been working like a dog to make her new business, Wedding Belles, a success. Annabelle had staged her first wedding tonight. He wished like hell he’d been there to lend a hand or just some moral support, but since his father’s last heart attack he had spent most of his time at his family’s dry-cleaning business.
Slowly, Annabelle shook her head. “No, it didn’t. It went great!” Laughing, she held the bottle of champagne aloft, like a smug Statue of Liberty. “I’m bursting with energy. I couldn’t sleep a wink if some-one hit me over the head.” She lowered the bottle. “I just had to tell someone, so I thought I’d see if you were in a festive mood.” He saw her squint doubtfully and watched her enthusiasm falter a bit. “Are you?”
“Am I?” he repeated softly. “What? In a festive mood?”
She nodded.
Adam almost sighed.
Festive? No, he wasn’t that. But sitting alone on his porch, brooding about the future, certainly wasn’t helping.
The smile he gave her was wry and lopsided, a bit like his mood. He nodded toward the fat bottle she held by the neck. “Did you bring glasses?”
Annabelle’s smile dropped so quickly her expression was almost comical. “I forgot. And I have plenty. I ordered way too many of them. I can run back home—”
“No.” Now that she was here, now that he’d decided to let her into his night, Adam didn’t want to let her go. She was spirit and life. She was exactly what he needed.
Annabelle. They’d grown closer than ever over the year since her parents’ death. Sometimes he thought their friendship was the only thing keeping him sane right now. Most of their contemporaries were still in college or still partying. Adam wasn’t interested in college or a frenetic social life, but he had dreams, dreams that would never be realized working twelve to fourteen hours a day in a damned dry cleaners.
His grandfather had started the business and his father had made it bigger. They owned two stores now and had plans to open a third—if Adam would straighten up and cooperate. Three generations of dry cleaners. It was his father’s dream—and Adam’s nightmare.
With Annabelle, he could relax, talk about his interests without feeling judged or foolish. It felt good, too, to return the favor, giving her a shoulder to cry on when she needed it. Yeah, he was damned grateful for their friendship, so he’d celebrate with her tonight even though he wasn’t in a celebratory mood, and he’d mean every toast, because if anybody deserved happiness, it was Annabelle.
“Come on up here.” He indicated the space next to him on the cushioned bench.
With a curve of lips that was almost shy, Annabelle padded up the steps and onto the painted wooden porch. The sheer flowered skirt of her sundress flirted with her calves as she moved.
Adam was sitting toward the middle of the swing. He could have slid over when she started to sit down, he should have slid over—but he didn’t.
Her thigh brushed his as she sat.
“What’re we going to drink out of?” Annabelle’s dulcet voice was lilting and sweet. It became a part of the night music.
Plucking the bottle from her slender fingers, he smiled. She had what he thought of as tea-drinker’s fingers, delicate and ladylike, the kind of fingers that would look just right looped through the handle of a bone-china cup.
He wondered if her hands were cool. If their touch would soothe a fever or ignite one.
The thought came swiftly and without warning, surprising him.
Lowering his head, he applied himself to the task of removing the foil wrap that covered the cork. Annabelle was an attractive woman, but she was his friend, not a date. Her parents had been kind to him. It had made him feel good, even honorable through the years to think he was returning the favor by watching out for their daughter’s welfare. So far in his life, honor had not been one of his strong suits.
Not so for Annabelle. He’d never met anyone more loving or committed. She had come home from college to care for her sister with a devotion that awed and impressed and sometimes almost shamed him. He could not acquiesce as unresistingly to his own family’s needs. He’d graduated from high school five years ago, had been working with his father full-time—overtime—ever since, and lately he felt like he was suffocating.
Uncoiling the wire secured around the champagne cork, he pointed the bottle away from them, placed both thumbs under the plastic top and pressed. A nice echoing thwup accompanied the popping of the cork. The bubbles whispered seductively.
Turning to the lovely young woman at his side, he took a moment to breathe in the clean flowery scent of her. Raising the bottle, he offered a toast.
“To your success, Annabelle. No one deserves it more than you.”
Her eyes locked with his. Her lips were slightly parted, and Adam found he could not pull his gaze away from their softness.
Raising the champagne to formally complete his tribute, he took a long slow swallow.
Her lips parted a bit more as she watched him. When he held the champagne out to her, she tucked her lower lip shyly between her teeth and accepted it.
The first sip made her place her hand on the base of her throat. A little giggle escaped her, and the delicate hand moved to her lips.
“It certainly is effervescent.” She grinned.
Adam nodded. So are you.
He didn’t realize he’d spoken the words out loud until he saw her expression change. She looked first surprised, then pleased, then bashful.
Silently, they passed the bottle back and forth for several minutes, listening to the night sounds and feeling the subtle excitement of sitting so close to each other.
Finally Adam realized that Annabelle had some-thing to say, but wasn’t sure whether she should speak or not. Her lowered gaze intrigued him.
“You’ve been such a wonderful friend, Adam.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.
“I wish I’d been able to help you more with the plans for tonight—”
“No, no,” she protested. “Everything was fine. Perfect, in fact. And you’ve been busy, I know.” The smile she turned to him was understanding. “But I’ve hardly seen you the past couple of months.”
He felt bad about that, but he’d been devoting the little free time he had lately at a nearby dock, refurbishing the small sloop that was his pride and joy— and part of his dream to sail around the world.
“I was going to stop by tomorrow to ask if you need anything.” He studied her seriously. “Anything at all, Belle.”
“No,” she murmured, but her gaze grew far away.
“How are your finances?” It was too important a topic to beat around the bush. And while he was away, he wouldn’t be able to keep tabs on her.
“Annabelle,” he tried again when she didn’t answer, knowing from past experience that she didn’t like to talk about her financial affairs.
From what he had gleaned, her parents had left her the house, a 1979 Chevy station wagon and a modest bank account. Annabelle was determined to handle on her own whatever financial woes she experienced. He was just as determined to help her.
“I have some money saved.” It was money to fund his trip, but if Annabelle needed it…“If you need anything at all…” He wondered if she was listening.
The domed bottom of the bottle rested on her thigh. She turned it in slow circles while her legs swung back and forth.
“Let’s not even call it a loan—” he began again, but Annabelle interrupted him with a question he couldn’t have anticipated.
“Do you have a girlfriend right now?”
He stared at her profile a good thirty seconds before answering. “No. I don’t.” Even as he told himself that the question was casual—and the answer immaterial—his heart began to pump with interest. “Why?”
She shrugged as if it was of no consequence really, but under the porch light he could see her blush. “Well, because I haven’t seen you much, I was curious. I just wondered. I…” Her legs stopped swinging. Giving the chilled bottle one last rotation, she looked up at Adam and completed her thought. “I’m glad.”
Adam knew he should speak, make light of what she said, change the topic, but he couldn’t, any more than he could drag his thoughts from what that rosebud mouth would taste like.
So he didn’t bother to speak. And he didn’t try to stop wondering.
Annabelle straightened her bare legs, crossed at the ankle, and pointed her toes. Adam was treated to a lingering glimpse of her shapely calves.
The impulse to close the distance between them, to touch her temple or her cheek or her neck, was almost too much to resist.
“Belle…” His voice sounded rusty.
She was twenty; he was two years older. They’d known each other for years, and always they’d been friends, nothing more. But lately…lately…
She looked at him. The hopeful tentative expression in her blue eyes sent a jolt of surprise sizzling through him.
Her smile was shy, but meant to encourage.
Slowly and with a sense of unreality, as if he was watching somebody else do it, Adam raised his hand to Annabelle’s face. He meant to touch her upper lip, the sweet bow that looked like the top half of a heart.
It’s wrong, a voice inside him cautioned, and he ceased all movement abruptly. How could he do this, change their relationship, when he knew that if all went well, in a few weeks he would no longer be here?
Frustration and desire made his hand shake. Annabelle must have misinterpreted his hesitation as a request for permission, because she took the moment into her own hands.
“I want you to touch me, Adam.” Her voice was a whisper, low and breathy and sweet.
Any control Adam retained snapped then.
With an incomprehensible utterance, he closed the space between them, burying his hand in the blond hair that swung around her neck.
He pulled her toward him, and the scent of the wine mingled with the unexpected heat of their need.
Their kiss was long and hard and deep. Adam’s fingers threaded through her silky hair, his palm cupped the back of her head. That left one hand free, and he had no trouble deciding where to put it.
At the first touch of his palm against the side of her breast, something broke free in both of them. She seemed to swell in his hand, and he…
Adam groaned against her lips. The strength of his desire shocked him.
They were playing with fire. He should have stopped. He would have, he told himself, but when Annabelle’s lips parted, he wanted more, and he started to take it.
Annabelle…Annabelle…It occurred to him then that he’d wondered for years what this would be like.
When the kiss finally ended, he pulled back enough to see that she was clutching the champagne bottle in a choke-grip that turned her knuckles white.
Reaching down, he pulled the bottle from her fingers, took a sip, swallowed, then set the bottle on the porch, reaching for Annabelle again, pressing his lips to hers so she could taste the wine while he tasted her.
Freed, her hands moved tentatively at first, then more surely. One slid around his waist and up his back. The other rested lightly along his jaw.
He discovered then what he’d wondered earlier: her hands were cool, yes, but they fanned the flame inside him.
