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“I don’t believe you,” she snapped. “What you did might not have meant anything to you, but it did to me.”
“A momentary lapse in judgment.”
Shaking her head, she exhaled loudly. “Would it really be so bad?”
“What?”
“Would it really be so bad to let people know that under your rebellious, tough-guy exterior, deep down inside you’re actually a nice, decent human being?”
His heart swelled at her words—but it only reminded him of another body part that tended to swell around her. Not sure how much more hero worship he could take, he purposely lightened the mood.
He reached over and chucked her gently on the chin. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jess. Deep down inside, I’m just like I am on the outside.”
She stiffened. “I don’t believe you. You wanted people to think you’re despicable, but you weren’t.”
“Despicable?” He laughed. “Honey, villains with big mustaches in old silent movies are despicable.”
The irritation flashed in her eyes again but quickly disappeared. However, it wasn’t as easy to hide the blush his teasing had brought to her cheeks. She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Okay. So not despicable.”
Sensing he was close to having her exactly where he wanted her, he pressed his advantage. “No. Not despicable.” And because he just couldn’t resist touching her, he reached for her hand. Instead of taking it in his, he flipped it over, exposing her palm to his touch. “I’m much worse than despicable. You know what I was thinking about the whole way home?” She shook her head. “I was thinking about how I wanted to kiss you.”
“But—”
He didn’t let her finish. “There you were thinking I was some kind of a hero and all I could think about was how to get in your pants.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t take his eyes away from her palm, which he couldn’t seem to stop touching. It was so incredibly soft and warm under his fingertips. “I would have nailed you in a minute if you’d given me the chance.”
She pulled her hand away. “I don’t believe you.”
This time he couldn’t stop himself from meeting her gaze. He studied her face, but for once found it almost impossible to read her expression.
“As you pointed out,” she said. “There I was, thinking you were a hero. If all you’d wanted was to—”
When she hesitated, he supplied the words for her. “Nail you.”
She nodded. “If that was really what you wanted from me, you could have had it then.”
At her near-whispered words, blood surged through his groin, nearly destroying the last of his control. But her calm and steady gaze assured him of her seriousness. He laughed ruefully. “It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know that then.”
Now she was the one to laugh, clearly embarrassed. “And here all this time, I assumed you did know and just weren’t interested.” He shot her a questioning look and she shrugged sheepishly. “I looked for you all that next week at school, but every time I saw you, you were with friends. Or that girlfriend of yours. What was her name?”
Alex had to search his memory. Funny, he’d dated “that girlfriend of his” for months, but he could barely remember her name, let alone picture her. Yet he still remembered the expression on Jessica’s face when she’d put her hand into his. And the color of the shirt she’d been wearing. And the way she’d smelled. And—
“Sandra,” he finally supplied.
“Right. Sandra. Every time I saw you that week, you were with her. At first, I thought you were avoiding me on purpose.”
“I was. It wouldn’t have been in either of our best interests if people thought there was something going on between us.”
He’d known even then how impossible a relationship with her would be. Even a friendship would have caused problems. She was the a straight-A student and the daughter of the county judge. He was the son of a migrant farm worker, already a grade behind in school, in and out of more trouble than she could imagine, his police record already burgeoning. None of that had kept him from wanting her, but it had damn well kept him from acting on it.
He’d avoided her so effectively that she’d eventually resorted to slipping a note in his locker. Three simple lines thanking him for coming to her rescue, in neat, cursive writing on pale pink paper.
“I thought that you knew I’d developed a crush on you and were trying to discourage me,” she said now.
“I was.”
Her gaze darted to his, her eyes a vivid blue that he seemed to have no defenses against. “Then why did you write me back?”
Because he’d just plain been unable to resist.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
His response, slipped through the vent of her locker during fifth period, had started a flurry of notes. She wrote him every day, often more than once, about things both wonderful and absurdly out of the realm of his experience—a low score on a chemistry exam, the shoes her mother had had dyed to match for some party dress, the fight she’d had with her parents over whether or not she’d go to tennis camp over the summer.
He’d written her less often, but with almost unbearable attention to detail. He’d penned his notes to her in the library, hunched over the dictionary, carefully checking his spelling, scouring the thesaurus for words he thought would make him look smart. Words like “supposition” and “eradicate.”
Those three weeks that they’d exchanged notes had been some of the happiest of his young life. Then one day he’d received a note from her asking if he wanted to take her to the prom.
He’d known he couldn’t do it, but God how he’d wanted to. And he hadn’t had the heart to say no. So he’d just stopped writing to her.
“I know you thought I was just some annoying kid,” she said now. “But I loved getting those notes from you. I’d pretend, just for a little while, that I was your girlfriend, instead of Sandra.” She paused for a heartbeat, lost in some long-ago memory. “It was like you couldn’t keep your hands off her. Did you know, I even saw you kissing her once?”
He did know. He remembered the moment vividly. He’d been avoiding Jessica all week, but she hadn’t taken the hint when he’d stopped answering her notes. Every time he’d turned around, there she’d be. His patience and his willpower had started to wear thin. She hadn’t ever caught him alone, but he’d been sure she eventually would. He’d been sure she’d look up at him with those impossibly blue eyes and that when she did he wouldn’t be able to resist doing something incredibly stupid, like kiss her.
So he’d done something he was sure would scare her off. He’d kissed Sandra in front of her. Not an innocent little peck on the mouth, either, but a full-bodied, open-mouthed, I-can’t-wait-to-get-your-body-naked kiss.
“I’d never seen anyone kiss like that,” Jessica admitted with a little laugh. “Not in real life anyway. That kiss…it was like something out of movie. And I remember thinking, ‘So that’s passion.’ I’d never been kissed like that.” She laughed nervously, the pink returning to her cheeks. “I still haven’t.”
“Jess—”
Her hands were clasped tightly together and she was staring pointedly down at them. “All my life and I’ve never been kissed like that. Never felt that kind of passion. Or had anyone feel that kind of passion about me.”
The sheer yearning in her voice finally wore him down and he reached out and put his hand over hers. “Jess,” he said again.
This time she looked up at him. Her eyes held none of the emotion he’d expected to see. Just a glimmer of resignation. Nothing more.
But she pulled her hand out from under his. Then she turned, hitching her purse strap up on her shoulder as she made to leave. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t,” he protested. “But if you think no man’s ever felt passion for you, I think you may be seriously underestimating the effect you have on men.”
Her gaze narrowed and she shook her head dismissively “I don’t need your pity. And I certainly don’t need you to massage my ego. I only brought it up because I didn’t want you to think that yesterday was just—what was that phrase you used?—me wanting to screw around with the hired help. I don’t think of you that way. I never have.”
She continued down his driveway toward the street, but only made it a few feet before he stopped her. “Then what was it?”
“I guess I just wanted someone to feel that kind of passion for me.” This time, when she turned to leave, he just let her go.
Because if she stayed any longer, he might break down and tell her the truth. That he did feel that way about her. That he’d wanted her badly even back then. That, apparently, he still wanted her now.
And that she had inspired the kind of passion she’d spoken of.
That day back in high school, when she’d seen him kiss Sandra, it wasn’t Sandra he’d been kissing. Oh, it had been Sandra’s body pressed to his and Sandra’s mouth under his lips. But when he’d closed his eyes, it had been Jessica’s face he’d seen. And Jessica’s scent he’d smelled. It had been Jessica he’d wanted to kiss.
He’d known then he couldn’t have her, but that hadn’t kept him from wanting her. And it didn’t now.
3
“SO WHAT YOU and I need to do,” Patricia said as she pulled Jessica through her front door a week later, “is find you another man to have a wild fling with.”
As she was dragged toward Patricia’s bedroom, Jessica tried to protest. “I don’t want to find another guy.”
Patricia paused to prop her hands on her hips like a drill sergeant. “You want to do all the things on The List, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“There’s no ‘yes, but’ about it. If you want to complete the list, you need another guy. Which is why you and I are going clubbing.”
“Clubbing?” She narrowed her gaze suspiciously. “I thought you said we were just going to hang out.”
“We are just going to hang out. At a club.”
“Do we have to?”
“Yes, we have to. If we don’t go out, you can’t meet men.” Patricia ticked off her points on her fingers as she spoke. “If you don’t meet men, you’ll never be able to do all the things on that list.” Her voice dropped to a low growl. “You’re not giving up on The List are you? Are you?”
Feeling even more like a young recruit at boot camp, Jessica snapped to attention. “Sir, no, sir!”
Patricia eyed her shrewdly for a second before cracking a smile. “That’s more like it.” She clapped her hands together. “Now we just have to find something for you to wear.”
Jessica looked down at her clothes. “I can’t wear this?”
“Um…no. You look like you’re going to an English tea party.”
“But—”
“Trust me when I tell you that where we’re going, you’ll look out of place.” With that, Patricia disappeared into her closet. A few minutes later she peered around the door. “Do you trust me?”
Uh, oh. This didn’t sound good.
Jessica hesitated, but then she thought of The List and nodded firmly. “I trust you.”
“Great!” Patricia emerged, her arms laden with clothes, the fingers of one hand clutching a pair of knee-high, black patent-leather boots. They looked like something a superhero would wear along with a bright red spandex outfit.
Jessica eyed the boots warily. “Seriously?”
“You trust me, right?” Patricia’s lips curved in a mischievous smile. “You said you did.”
“Maybe.”
“The boots go with the outfit.” Patricia tossed the boots onto the bed and began sorting through the clothes. “You’re not weird about wearing other people’s shoes, are you?”
Other people’s shoes? Maybe a little weird. Other people’s superhero boots? That was a whole ’nother bag of Skittles.
“I’m not sure we wear the same size,” she pointed out.
Patricia planted her foot on the floor beside Jessica’s. “Close enough. Besides, they’re big on me. They should be perfect on you.”
Eyeing the boots with trepidation, she murmured, “Great.”
Patricia snorted with laughter. “Here, put this on.”
She tossed a tank top at Jessica, who caught it automatically then let it dangle by the straps from her fingers. “This? You want me to wear this?” She was a good four inches taller than Patricia. “This won’t fit me.”
“Yes, it will. It’s stretchy.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
Next, she tossed Jessica a skirt. A very tiny skirt.
“No. No way.”
“You said you trusted me.”
“I lied.”
“You’ll look hot. Besides, it’s leather.”
“So?”
“Wasn’t one of the things on The List something about wearing leather?”
Yes, but Jessica chose to ignore the question. “I can’t wear this. I’ll look ridiculous.”
Patricia thrust out her hand in a I-don’t-want-to-hear-it gesture. “When was the last time you went to a club?”
“Last weekend.”
“Not the country club. An actual club.”
“College,” she admitted.
“Okay, so you haven’t been to a club in ten years—”
“Seven.”
“Whatever.” Patricia waved her hand in exasperation, then rolled her eyes, in case the hand-waving wasn’t enough. “Think about why you’re doing the things on this list. You don’t want to settle for being plain, boring ol’ Jessica Sumners anymore, right? You want to be saucy. Like the magazine. Then be Saucy.”
“Okay. Be Saucy,” she repeated resolutely as she tugged on the clothes. The tank top fit better than she would have thought. The neck draped loosely, skimming the tops of her breasts. The hem just reached the low-slung skirt, teasing but not revealing.
She picked up one of the boots and studied it speculatively. “With a miniskirt? Really?”
