Forget Me Not (21 page)

“You were in this spare bedroom already.” He opened a door and showed off a simple room decorated in dark cobalt-blue colors. “Every bedroom has its own bathroom and fireplace.”

“Is that something you insisted on when the house was built?” Janelle followed alongside him to the base of the stairs.

Gideon nodded. “I like making sure my family and friends are taken care of.”

“Yes, but who takes care of you?” Janelle watched his expression turn sullen before he broke his stare to look up the staircase.

“Come on. Let me show you upstairs and then we can eat.” He took her on a quick tour of the other spare bedrooms. “As you can see, if you decide to spend the night, I have plenty of rooms for you to stay in, including an apartment.” He started to go down the stairs.

“Wait.” Janelle stood at the top landing.

Before Gideon turned, she glanced over at a room to the left where the double doors had been left closed.

He took a couple of steps down before returning her gaze. “Yes?”

“Well?” She crossed her arms.

“What?”

His coy act started to grate on her nerves. That didn’t stop the man from looking damn sexy.

“After all that talk downstairs, you’re not going to show me your bedroom?”

He didn’t answer. He smiled as he stared at her. After a steamy silence, he said, “Maybe.”

During dinner, Gideon marveled at the fact that he and Janelle never stopped talking, never had an awkward silence…except when she’d asked him about his bedroom. He couldn’t show her. If he’d allowed her in his room, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from kissing her, touching her, making love to her. Every part of his being wanted that woman in his bed, especially after seeing her in her dress.

He hadn’t given Penny any directives on the clothes she would pick out for Janelle. He didn’t know what to expect. Until today, every time he’d seen Janelle, she’d outfitted herself in jeans, sneakers, a turtleneck, and a ratty, old sweater. Conversations with her matched her comfortable style.

“This food is delicious.” Janelle finished what she had on her plate, stood, and served herself some more.

“Good. I appreciate a woman with a great appetite.” He allowed his gaze to drop to her high, firm ass. A moan rattled in his throat before he covered the sound with a cough.

“Would you like some?” she asked.

When she turned around and looked at him quizzically, he realized her offer had nothing to do with her getting naked and riding him as dessert.

“No, thank you.” He wiped his mouth. “You enjoy as much as you want.” He watched her occupy her seat again as she dove into her tuna steak. “Looking at you, you would never guess that you eat the way you do.”

“Fast metabolism.” She smiled and wiped her mouth. “Did Queen teach you all how to cook?”

He nodded. “Among other things. Gunnar learned how to make spaghetti and that’s it. He didn’t want to clutter his mind on learning anything else.” He laughed as he remembered his brother’s frustration when their mother had tried teaching him how to make pancakes.

“I’ll eat toast,” Gunnar had proclaimed after burning batch after batch.

“Mom used to tell us a way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach. Then she said that women don’t eat as much as men do.”

Janelle laughed. “That sounds like something Queen would say.” She placed her napkin on the table and sat back.

Damn, Gideon wished she hadn’t done that. He fought hard not to look down at her chest. He had to crank up the heat because he saw her hard nipples through her shirt. After a while, and after buckets of sweat poured from his head, he realized that maybe her reaction had nothing to do with the chill. Maybe, instead, excitement ran through her body, sexual excitement.

“What happened with Thelma? That was the name of the woman who worked for you, right?” He pushed his plate to the side to give her all his attention.

“She quit.” Janelle kept her gaze down to the table. “That’s it.”

A tickle crept up the back of Gideon’s neck. He wouldn’t push her. He wanted tonight to go smoothly.

She brought her gaze up to meet his. “She was great. If she would come back, I would hire her all over again.” She kept her gaze down to her plate. “But I’ll be okay with her gone. Penny has been my best friend for years. It’s great to be able to work with
someone you know and trust.”

“Kind of like being on a football team.” With his third erection of the night now subsided, he stood and gathered the dishes. “You have to be able to trust that your teammates will have your back.”

The words he’d spoken resonated with him and brought up memories of his last game. If he truly trusted his team, why hadn’t he thrown the pass to Dennis? Hell, he would hate to admit to Dennis that he’d been right.

He pushed the thoughts from his mind and piled the dirty dishes next to the sink. When he looked back to the dining room, he found Janelle had moved to one of the kitchen barstools. When she sat, the flap of her dress dropped open, exposing the top of her black stockings.

Before he could think about all of the scintillating ways he could touch her thighs while she kept the stockings on, he turned back to the sink and started rinsing each plate to load into the dishwasher.

“I can understand why you weren’t eager to give anything else up that day.” Gideon kept his back to Janelle now that his lower half had started to rise again.

Down, boy. Let’s get through the night.

“Yeah, that was a bummer. But there’s more.”

He stopped loading the dishwasher and returned his attention to her.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” She gave him a mischievous smile.

“What are you talking about?” He wiped his hands and moved to the bar directly across from her.

“At least I think it was you.” She looked down, snickered
,
and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I will.” She stared him in the eyes before saying, “I think you gave me my first kiss when I was seventeen.”

Gideon cocked his head but said nothing. He didn’t have the love-’em-and-leave-’em style like Thane, but he hadn’t kept his heart and hormones tied up with one woman like Gunnar either. In the few dates he did have in high school, he didn’t remember ever dating Janelle. He hadn’t even heard of her name until his mother had given him Janelle’s card.

“I was a huge nerd back in high school, bigger now than back then.” Janelle rested her hands on the bar as she spoke. “I was raised by my maternal grandmother until she passed away when I hit about sixteen. Then I moved in with my mother. My mother, who is the complete opposite of me, kept telling me I needed to get out and meet people. I told her that I wanted to stay home to study. You would think a mother would love hearing that from their child.” She shook her head. “Not ol’ Ida Gold. She had me at fifteen. I guess she must have thought I was a late bloomer.”

Gideon blinked at Janelle’s candor but said nothing. He had similar negative thoughts about his biological mother. He would never voice that opinion out loud. He trusted Janelle, but he needed to know her more before he could let the wall come down completely.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to get heavy back there. Anyway, we lived near the Oceanfront Community Center. They would do these youth dances from time to time. She forced me to go to one. I epitomized a wall flower. I found a spot against the wall and stayed there. When they dimmed the lights in the big gym, I thought God had granted me my wish. I moved to a quiet corner next to the bleachers. I was content to hide there for the rest of
the night. Then something happened.”

Gideon’s heart started to pound as he made a slow trek around the bar.

Janelle continued. “I looked up and there was a tall boy standing in front of me. In the darkened corner, I couldn’t tell who it was. All I remember is him saying something about lips before he kissed me.” She touched her lips as though recalling that moment. “It was the best and most surprising kiss I have ever had…until you kissed me behind my shop. You kissed me in the same way he did so many years ago. After that kiss, something happened in the gym and he ran off. I took that moment to run out of the gym. I walked all the way home, but I have never forgotten about that kiss.” She peered up. “So when I saw you in my store the first time, I had in my head that you were the one who had kissed me before. When you didn’t remember me, that pissed me off. Again, you didn’t deserve that. It was me being—”

Gideon didn’t give her a chance to finish her statement. He framed her face in his hands again. “Lips.” Then he pressed his lips against hers.

Everything came back to him in that one moment. No wonder she seemed so familiar. He had been the one to kiss her.

He pulled back from her. “After all these years, I can’t believe that was you.”

Janelle put her hands on his arms and brought them down. “It really was you? You kissed me that night? Why? How?”

“My mother chaperoned those dances. She would make me and my brothers go with her and, like your mother, she would force us to mingle. She wanted us to dance with girls who hadn’t come with dates. She would tell us every girl deserves to be treated like a princess.”

Janelle stopped smiling. “Oh, so you felt sorry for me?”

He shook his head. “No. I didn’t even see you until I looked through the bleachers. I could barely see you in that dark corner. I remember that one of the strobe lights shined across a part of your face.” He smoothed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “Your lips. I couldn’t resist you, or at least your lips. I was going to ask you to dance, but I couldn’t stop staring at your lips. I took that opportunity to kiss you.” He chuckled. “Truth be told, you were my first kiss.”

That bit of news brought a smile to her face. “So what happened? You ran from me.”

“A fight had broken out. My brother had gotten into it with some other kid. I went to break it up. By the time I came back to you to introduce myself and apologize for kissing you without permission, you were gone.”

“You are still kissing me without permission.” She screwed up her lips to keep from laughing.

“Wait a minute. I asked for your permission for my last kiss. But if you don’t remember, I’ll ask again.” He moved in closer to her, his lips mere inches from hers. “Is it okay if I kiss you now? Would you like that?”

Her breathing increased. He felt her breath feathering over his lips.

Janelle nodded. “Yes.”

“Maybe it’ll happen again.” He backed away from her and went back to the dishwasher.

She growled. “You are an evil, evil man.”

“But I made you dinner.”

“Which was wonderful.”

“And got you over a hundred roses. Would another man do that for you?” When Gideon didn’t hear a response, he gazed up and saw Janelle sauntering toward him.

“No.” She licked her lips.

“My God. What idiot let you go?” Gideon enjoyed talking to her, discussing plants, and kissing her. He found her charming, funny, and beautiful. What man wouldn’t want her?

“Let’s not talk about that jerk unless you want to talk about yours.”

Gideon added cleanser to the dishwasher, closed the door, which got rid of the barrier between the two of them, and started the cycle.

“Nothing to say really. Our schedules didn’t mesh. I live on the East Coast. She lives on the West. Neither of us wanted to move. We were doomed.” He approached Janelle. In a lowered voice, he said, “Thank God.” He put his arm around her shoulders and led her to his den.

“Oh.”

He brought her to a brown, overstuffed couch and encouraged her to take a seat. “I thought we could watch movies or play some board games.” He leaned over her body. “You aren’t the only nerd here.”

That admission made her laugh. “Okay, testing your nerd levels. If we watch a movie, will it be black and white?”

Gideon picked up a remote and called up his movie library
on his large-screened TV. “Comedy, drama, or romance? I’m also a bit of a sci-fi junkie.”

“Man of my dreams. I’m thinking
Blade
Runner
. What do you think?”

Gideon brought up the movie and started it. “I’m thinking this is the best Valentine’s Day ever.”

He sat down next to her, turned off the lights, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her in next to him. Without missing a beat, she wrapped one arm around his waist and she rested her other hand on his chest. She removed her shoes and curled her long legs on the couch.

“By the way, my last serious boyfriend left me after I graduated college. We had spent a night at the Cavalier Hotel as a gift to ourselves. The next morning, he said I didn’t fit into his plans.” She exhaled like she’d been holding on to that secret for years.

Gideon tightened his hold around her shoulders. “Asshole. Pardon my language.”

Janelle settled onto his chest. “No apology necessary.”

He propped the leg with his bum knee up on an ottoman.

She gazed up to his face. “Are you okay? I mean your leg and all. Will you be able to—”

He silenced her with a kiss on her forehead. “Let’s just watch the movie.” He looked down at her. “It’ll be fine.” If only he believed that.

At the end of the movie, Gideon found Janelle asleep against him. Without jostling her too much, he turned off the TV. Mustering as much strength as he could, he picked her up in his arms. He felt a sharp pain shooting up from his knee to the top of his head. He gritted his teeth for a moment and breathed through the pain. Once it subsided, he took his guest up the stairs to a bedroom far from his room.

He’d thought about putting her in the bedroom downstairs or even in the suite. If she woke up before he did, he didn’t want her feeling so far removed from him.

At the top of the landing, he went to a spare bedroom and turned on the overhead
light by brushing his elbow against the light switch on the wall. As carefully as he could, he pulled the comforter and sheet down and placed Janelle on the bed.