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Cullen looked at his brother. Yes, he thought. I want totalk about why in hell I should still be thinking about a woman I slept with one time, weeks and weeks ago…
“You bet,” he said, with a quick smile. “Let’s talk about how you snagged this ale, and what it’ll take to get us two more bottles.”
Sean laughed, as Cullen had hoped he would. The conversation turned to other things, like how weird it was to see Keir hovering over his pregnant wife.
“Who’d have believed it?” Sean said. “Big brother, talking about babies…Is that what happens when a man marries? He turns into somebody else?”
“If he marries, you mean. Hell, how’d we end up on such a depressing topic? Marriage. Children.” Cullen shuddered. “Let’s go see about the ale,” he said, and just that easily, Marissa Perez went back to being nothing more important than a memory.
HOURS later, in a jet halfway over the Atlantic, Cullen looked at the flight attendant hovering over him in the darkened comfort of the first-class cabin.
“No coffee for me, thanks,” he told her.
“No supper? No dessert? Would you like something else, Mr. O’Connell?”
Cullen shook his head. “I spent the weekend at a wedding in Sicily.”
The flight attendant grinned. “Ah. That explains it. How about some ice water?”
“That would be perfect.”
Truth was, he didn’t want the water, either, but she meant well and he had the feeling saying “yes” to something was the only way he’d convince her to leave him alone. She brought the glass, he took a perfunctory sip, then put it aside, switched off the overhead light, put his seat all the way back and closed his eyes.
Whatever had been bothering him had faded away. Talking to Sean had done it, or maybe all that goofing around in the garden. Everyone except Keir and Cassie, their mother and stepfather had ended up in the pool again. Well, Stefano and Fallon hadn’t been there, either, but nobody had expected them to be. After that, they’d all changed to dry clothes, the mood had mellowed and they’d sat around in the encroaching darkness, talking quietly, reminiscing about the past.
One by one, the O’Connells had finally drifted off to bed. All but Cullen, who, it turned out, was the only one of them who’d made arrangements to fly home that night instead of the next day.
On the way to the airport, he’d thought about the ideas that had floated through his mind earlier. Going to Nantucket instead of straight home, or to Colorado, or someplace in Europe…
Why would he do that?
Whatever had been bugging him was long gone. He’d climbed out of the back seat of Stefano’s limousine feeling relaxed and lazy, gone to the first-class check-in line, had time for a coffee prior to boarding.
He still felt relaxed. He liked flying at night. The black sky outside the cabin, the gray shadows inside, the sense that you were in a cocoon halfway between the stars and the earth.
That was how he’d felt that night after he’d taken Marissa to bed. Holding her in his arms, feeling her warm and soft against him until she’d suddenly stiffened, started to pull away.
“I have to go,” she’d said, but he’d drawn her close again, kissed her, touched her until she moaned his name and then he’d been moving above her, inside her, holding back, not letting go because she wasn’t letting go, because he had the feeling she’d never flown free before and the first time it happened, it was damn well going to be with him…
“Damn,” he said softly.
Cullen’s eyes flew open. He put his seat up, folded his arms and glowered into the darkness.
So much for feeling nice and relaxed.
This was stupid. Worse than stupid. It was senseless. Why was Marissa in his head? He hadn’t seen her since that night. She’d left his bed while he was sleeping, hadn’t shown up to take him to the airport, hadn’t answered her phone when he called. Not that morning, not any of the times he’d tried to reach her after he was home again.
He always got her answering machine.
You’ve reached Marissa Perez. Please leave a brief message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
His last message had been brief, all right, even curt.
“It’s Cullen O’Connell,” he’d said. “You want to talk to me, you have my number.”
She’d hadn’t phoned. Not once. Her silence spoke for itself. They’d slept together, it had been fun, and that was that. No return visits, no instant replays. End of story.
Fine with him. The trouble with most women was that you couldn’t get rid of them even after you explained, politely, that it was over.
Cullen? It’s Amy. I know what you said, but I was thinking…
Cullen? It’s Jill. About what we decided the other night…
Marissa Perez took an admirable approach to sex. A man’s approach. She took what she wanted and shut the door on what she didn’t. That didn’t bother him. It didn’t bother him at all.
Why would it?
For all he gave a damn, she could have slept with a dozen men since that night with him. After all, he’d had several women in his life since that weekend. Okay, he hadn’t taken any of them to bed, but so what? He’d been working his tail off. Besides, a short break from sex was a good thing. It only heightened the pleasure in the future.
Tomorrow, he’d phone the blonde he’d met at that cocktail party last week. Or the attorney from Dunham and Busch with the red hair and the big smile. She’d come on to him like crazy.
Definitely, he’d celebrate his homecoming with a woman who’d be happy to take his calls and happy to see him. And he’d sleep with her, make love until crazy thoughts about Marissa Perez were purged from his mind. Surely, his memories of that night were skewed.
Cullen muttered a couple of raw words under his breath as he sat up and switched on his overhead light. To hell with what time it was in New York. The blonde from last week was a party animal. This hour of the night, she was probably just coming in the door.
He dug his address book and his cell phone from his pocket, tapped in her number. She answered after two rings, her voice husky with sleep.
“H’lo,” she said. “Whoever you are, you’d better be somebody I really want to talk to.”
He smiled, turned his face to the window and the night sky. “It’s Cullen O’Connell. We met last—”
“Cullen.” The sleep-roughened voice took on a purr. “I’d started to think you weren’t going to phone.”
“I had things to clear up. You know how it is.”
“No,” she said, and gave a soft laugh, “I don’t know how it is. I guess you’ll just have to show me.”
Cullen felt the tension drain away. “My pleasure,” he said, imagining her as she must look right then, sleep-tousled and sexy. “How about tonight? I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“I already have a date for tonight.”
“Break it.”
She laughed again and this time the sound was so full of promise that he felt a heaviness in his groin.
“Are you always this sure of yourself?”
He thought of Marissa, of how she’d slipped from his bed, how she’d ignored his phone calls…
“Eight o’clock,” he repeated.
“You’re an arrogant SOB, Mr. O’Connell. Luckily for you, that’s a trait I like in a man.”
“Eight,” Cullen said, and disconnected.
He put away his cell phone, sat back and thought about the evening ahead. Dinner at that French place. Drinks and dancing at the new club in SoHo. And then he’d take the blonde home, take her to bed, and exorcise the ghost of Marissa Perez forever.
CHAPTER TWO
September: Boston, Massachusetts
THE end of summer always came faster than seemed possible.
One minute the city was sweltering in the heat and the Red Sox were packing in the ever-faithful at Fenway Park. Next thing you knew, gray snow was piled on the curbs, the World Series was only a memory and the Sox hadn’t even made it to the playoffs.
Cullen stepped out of the shower, toweled off and pulled on a pair of old denim shorts.
Not that any of that had happened yet.
It was Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer with the real start of fall still almost three weeks away. Cold weather was in the future, and so was the possibility, however remote, that Boston could rise from the ashes and at least win the division championship.
Cullen strolled into the kitchen and turned on the TV in time to catch the tail end of the local news. The Sox had lost a tight game yesterday; nobody had much hope they’d do any better today, said the dour-faced sportscaster.
“Wonderful,” Cullen muttered as he opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of water and uncapped it.
The sports guy gave way to the weatherman. Hot and humid, the weatherman said, with his usual in-your-face good cheer. Saturday, 10:00 a.m. and the sun was blazing from a cloudless sky, the temperature was pushing ninety with no break in sight from now through Monday.
“A perfect holiday weekend,” the weather guru said as if he’d personally arranged it.
Cullen scowled and hit the off button on the remote.
“What’s so perfect about it?” he growled. It was just another weekend, longer than most, hotter than most. Long, hot, and…
And, what was he doing here?
Nobody, but nobody, stayed in town Labor Day weekend. Driving home from his office yesterday, traffic going out of the city had been bumper to bumper. He’d felt like the only person not heading off for one last taste of summer.
He should have been among them. He’d intended to be.
Cullen lifted the bottle to his lips and drank some water. He’d certainly had enough choices.
Las Vegas, for the usual O’Connell end of summer blast. Connecticut, for the barbecue Keir and Cassie were throwing because Cassie was too pregnant for the long flight to Vegas. He had invitations to house parties in the Hamptons, on the Cape, on Martha’s Vineyard and half a dozen other places, and there was always the lure of three days at Nantucket.
Instead, he was here in hot and muggy Boston for no good reason except he wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere.
Well, except, maybe Berkeley…
Berkeley? Spend Labor Day weekend on one of the campuses of the University of California?
Cullen snorted, finished off the water and dumped the empty bottle in the sink.
Back to square one. Wasn’t that the same insane thought he’d had flying home from Fallon’s wedding in July? It made no more sense now then it had made then. You thought about the West Coast, you thought about San Francisco. Or Malibu. Maybe a couple of days at Big Sur.
But Berkeley? What for? Nothing but college kids and grad students, protesters and protests, do-gooders and doomsayers. Maybe that vitality was part of why he’d loved the place as a law student, but those years were a decade behind him. He was older. He’d changed. His idea of a great party involved more than take-out pizza and jugs of cheap wine. And, except for a couple of his law school profs, he didn’t have friends there anymore.
Okay. There was Marissa Perez. But he could hardly call her a friend. An acquaintance, was what she’d been. Truth was, he didn’t “know” her at all, except in the biblical sense of the word, and even if his sisters sometimes gleefully teased him about being a male chauvinist, he had to admit that sleeping with a woman wasn’t the same as knowing her.
Especially if she crept out of your bed before dawn and left you feeling as if you were the only one who’d just spent a night you’d never forget.
Damn it, this was crazy. Why waste time thinking about a woman he’d seen once and would probably never see again? He was starting to behave like one of the attorneys at his firm. Jack was a dedicated fisherman, always talking about the big one that had gotten away. That’s what this was starting to sound like. The sad story of Cullen O’Connell and The Woman Who Got Away.
Cullen opened the fridge again. It was empty except for another couple of bottles of water, a half-full container of orange juice and a lump of something that he figured had once been cheese. He made a face, picked up the lump with two fingers and dumped it into the trash.
So much for having breakfast in.
Maybe that was just as well. He’d pull on a T-shirt, put on sneakers, go down to the deli on the corner and get himself something to eat. Solve two problems at once, so to speak; silence his growling belly and do something useful, something that would end all this pointless rehashing of the weekend he’d spent with the Perez woman.
Yeah. He’d do that. Later.
Cullen opened the terrace door and stepped into the morning heat. The little garden below was quiet. Even the birds seemed to have gone elsewhere.
First he’d try thinking about that weekend in detail, concentrating not just on what had happened in bed but on all of it. A dose of cool logic would surely put an end to this nonsense. Sighing, he sank down in a canvas sling back chair, closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun.
His old Tort Law prof, Ian Hutchins, had invited him to fly out and speak to the Law Students’ Association. Cullen hadn’t much wanted to do it; he had a full caseload and what little free time he could scrounge, he’d been spending on Nantucket, working on his boat. But he liked Hutchins a lot, respected him, so he’d accepted.
A week before Speaker’s Weekend, Hutchins had phoned to make last-minute updates to their arrangements.
“I’ve asked my best student to be your liaison while you’re here,” he’d said. “Shuttle you around, answer questions—well, you remember how that works, Cullen. You were liaison for us several times while you were a student here.”
Cullen remembered it clearly. People called it a plum assignment and, in some ways, it was. The liaison networked with the speaker and drove him or her around in a car owned by the university, which invariably meant it was in a lot better shape than the student’s.
Still, it was almost always a pain-in-the-ass job. Pick up the speaker at the airport, drive him or her here, then there, laugh at inane jokes about what it had been like when the speaker was a student on campus. When Ian added that Cullen’s liaison would be a woman, he almost groaned.
“Her name,” Ian said, “is Marissa Perez. She’s a straight-A scholarship student with a brilliant mind. I’m sure you’ll enjoy her company.”
“I’m sure I will,” Cullen had said politely.
What else could he say? Not the truth, that he’d met enough brilliant female scholarship students to know what to expect. Perez would be tall and skinny with a mass of unkempt hair and thick glasses. She’d wear a shapeless black suit and clunky black shoes. And she’d either be so determined to impress him that she’d never shut up or she’d be so awestruck at being in his presence that she’d be tongue-tied.
Wrong on all counts.
The woman standing at the arrivals gate that Friday evening, holding a discreet sign with his name printed on it, was nothing like the woman he’d anticipated. Tall, yes. Lots of hair, yes. And yes, she was wearing a black suit and black shoes.
That was where the resemblance ended.
The mass of hair was a gleaming mass of ebony waves. She’d pinned it up, or tried to, but strands kept escaping, framing a face that was classically beautiful. Gray eyes, chiseled cheekbones, a lush mouth.
Perfect. And when his gaze dropped lower, the package only got better.
