Kiss Me Twice (6 page)

"Bingo."

"I hope it was good," Kit said.

"It was...intense." Gushing warmth flooded her belly as she remembered just how intense it was. She wasn't about to divulge the details to Kit. Her stomach clenched at his last words.
You're still such a bitch.
"But he still thinks I'm scum, and I hate it." Her voice broke on a sob.

"Karen, honey." Kit's voice immediately softened. "We've talked about this. You have to come clean with him. It's eating you up inside."

Karen nodded, even though Kit couldn't see her. Kit was right, of course. Just as her therapist was right. She couldn't change the past. She could only control how she behaved going forward. But to move past it she needed to set the record straight and give the people she'd hurt the chance to forgive her.

"Here's the deal," Kit said. "Kelly's wedding is in two weeks. Mike will be there. You can talk to him then. And talk to Kelly while you're at it."

"I don't even know if she wants me there. She only invited me because it would look weird if she didn't," Karen said sullenly. She cursed as she picked another chunk of polish off her toenail. Now she’d have to redo her pedicure.

Kit sighed, and Karen could practically hear her roll her eyes. "Now that's a very evolved and enlightened attitude. And you're probably right. I bet Kelly doesn't give a shit if you show up or not."

"Don't pull any punches," Karen snapped.

"Karen, we both know the truth. But we also know that avoiding Kelly's wedding will not get you off to a good start if you want to salvage your relationship with her. Just like you're going to keep feeling like shit as long as you know that Mike is out there thinking you cheated on him."

"What if he doesn't believe me?"

"He may not. Just like Kelly might not accept your belated overtures of sisterly love. But you can't control that. You can only control what you do. Just be honest and direct and hope it works out."

"But what if it's not enough?"

"It has to be enough for you that you tried."

"Thanks, Dr. Phil," Karen said. "You're right. But old habits die hard."

"Yeah, but your old habits didn't bring you much happiness, did they?"

"This better not end up in your next column," Karen sniffed. In addition to her upcoming book, Kit wrote a sex and lifestyle advice column for Bella magazine, and she wasn't above looking to her own life for inspiration.

Kit laughed softly. "You and Jake are so paranoid!"

"Yeah, only because we appear like every other month."

"Don't worry. If I write about you, I'll be sure to make you completely unrecognizable."

Karen said good night and flopped back on the bed.

No, her old habits hadn't brought her much happiness. She’d learned to use her looks to get almost anything in life, but she never believed that anyone"except maybe Kit"ever really liked her. For a long time she hadn't even liked herself.

Mike—she thought—for a brief time, he had liked her. She was sure of it.

Two weeks, she thought, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking a little on the king-size bed. Two weeks to figure out how to apologize to Kelly for a lifetime of being a terrible sister. Two weeks to muster up the courage to tell Mike the truth about what happened that night. And pray that in that time she would grow a thick-enough hide to survive their likely rejection.

"Lauren, what the fuck are you doing here? You're supposed to be over at the Hillside place finishing the railing," Mike yelled as he got out of the truck. He slammed the door and stomped over to Lauren MacLean, the carpenter they'd hired after Nick moved to San Francisco.

Lauren froze, nail gun in hand, as she prepared to attach siding to the house Donovan Brothers was building in an exclusive gated community.

Mike glared down into Lauren's sweat-streaked face. "I told you we need to get that railing done by the end of the day today so we can start working on the deck!"

Before Lauren could answer, a big hand gripped hard on his right shoulder. "Mike, lay off her, okay?" Mike turned to meet his younger brother Tony's glare.

"Look, I told her to get over to Hillside and—“

"And I left you a message that the materials weren't going to be in until Monday so I called her over here."

Mike looked down at his cell phone. Sure enough, the screen indicated he had a new voice mail. Shit.

"I think you owe Lauren an apology," Tony said.

Tony's condescending tone set him off again. He thumped Tony hard with two fingers to the chest. "From now on, don't reassign people. You may be my brother but I'm the boss, and I decide how to prioritize our schedule."

"Is that so? Last time I looked the name was Donovan Brothers--"

Mike pushed Tony's shoulder, hard. "Don't start with me, Tony""

Tony pushed him back, sending Mike back a couple of steps. “You don't want me to start? Don't come out here yelling at Lauren like she doesn't know her ass from her hammer""

That was it. Mike charged Tony. The tension, the fury that had been boiling in his gut finally erupted. He'd been wanting to pound his fists into someone for two weeks, and now he had his chance.

They grappled like Greco-Roman wrestlers, staggering around the work site as each tried to knock the other down and get the upper hand.

Suddenly Mike felt something"or someone"attach to his back, accompanied by a harsh female voice blasting in his right ear.

"CUT IT OUT." Arms wrapped around his neck, a feminine hand splayed against Tony's face, and a foot lodged against his chest as Lauren tried to pry them apart. "Stop it right now, you two."

Tony broke free first and stepped back. But his stance was still poised, aggressive, as though ready to charge at the first provocation.

"You can get off me, Lauren," Mike said. Or rather croaked, as Lauren's strong forearm was still clamped across his throat.

"Not until you promise to ease off."

"I will if he will." Mike indicated Tony with his chin.

Tony threw up his hands. "I will if he stops being an asshole."

Lauren slid off Mike's back and came around to stand between them. "I don't know what's up with you two lately. You," she whirled on Mike, "have been acting like you never got over the hangover from Nick's bachelor party."

"Yeah," Tony said. "You've been acting like a dick."

"And you," Lauren said, a virago in a tank top and jeans as she turned on Tony, "have been baiting him at every opportunity. Now I know it's hard for you, being men and all," she said with a derisive sneer, "but why don't you two work this out like adults so the rest of us can get some work done."

She picked up her nail gun and went back to work. Thankfully, the rest of the crew followed her example.

"She's right," Tony spoke first. "You've been totally wacked ever since Nick's bachelor party, and that's just not like you."

Mike looked sheepishly at Tony. He'd been an unreasonable prick ever since that night with Karen. No question, they had a lot to get done as this was the busiest part of the year. But that didn't excuse how hard he'd been riding Tony, Lauren, and the rest of his crew.

He, who prided himself on being unemotional, who always kept his cool and rarely let anything get to him, was a tangled mess inside for the second time in his life.

And once again it was because of Karen Sullivan.

If he could have beaten the crap out of himself, he would have. That was how pissed he was for not just walking out of that bar and running like a vampire from garlic.

He couldn't get her out of his head. Her scent. Her taste. How it felt to be buried to the hilt inside her slick, tight pussy. The sounds she made when she came, shuddering and completely out of control.

He wanted to scrub his mind clean of her.

He wanted to savor every vivid memory.

He was as shaken now as he'd been that night when he'd left her with nothing but harsh words and a harsher kiss.

She was driving him crazy. Again.

"Come on, man, why don't you tell me what's going on?" Tony said in a much calmer tone. That was Tony. Quick on the trigger but equally quick to calm down.

Mike and Tony walked back to his truck and Mike pulled two sodas out of the cooler he kept in the cab.

Mike unlatched the tailgate so they could sit. "You know that night at Caesar's?"

"When you went AWOL?"

"Yeah." Mike paused, took a sip. "I ran into Karen Sullivan on the way back to the club."

"You didn’t—"

Mike nodded, mouth set in a tight line.

Tony shook his head as though trying to make it not so. "Oh man. She is bad news."

Like he needed Tony to tell him that. Mike was silent, staring off into the grove of redwoods that abutted the property. "I don't know what it is about her," he said finally. "It's like I get close to her and I can't control myself."

"She always led guys around by their dicks," Tony pointed out, "even back when you dated her."

"Yeah, I know. But I fooled myself into thinking I was different."

He shook his head ruefully.

"Why would you ever think that?" Tony scoffed.

"She was different around me. She had a really warm, funny side she didn't show much. And in spite of all the rumors, she was a virgin when we started dating." He couldn't believe he was defending her.

Tony's eyes opened wide in surprise.

"I know, I was shocked too." He still remembered that first night.

The look of surprised delight on her face when she came all over his hand. How hot and impossibly tight she'd felt around him, and the sharp cry of pain he couldn't mistake. "It's okay," she'd whispered against his lips as he'd frozen, mid-thrust, his shock palpable. "I want this, I want it with you."

"I managed to convince myself that the bitch goddess seductress thing was just an act."

"I guess the bitch goddess was the real thing. After all, she did cheat on you with your best friend."

Even after all this time, the memory of that speared him straight in the gut.

He'd fallen hard, convinced himself he knew the real Karen. The sweet, surprisingly smart, wickedly funny girl he spent two blissful months with. Not the manipulative, flashy sexpot the rest of the world saw.

He'd loved her so much it had scared the shit out of him. So much so that when she told him she loved him, he'd never let himself say it back. Never in his life had he thought himself a coward, but he'd been one with her. At twenty-one, he hadn't been prepared for love, for what it meant. He hadn't been ready to commit to one person for the rest of his life. Shit, at the beginning of that summer, before he and Karen had hooked up, he hadn't been ready to commit to someone for more than a couple of weeks. As much as he'd loved her, he hadn't been able to override the fear that drove him to push her away.

Mingled with the fear had been unease. As much as he had loved her, Mike wasn't one to be ruled by his heart or his dick, and he'd known Karen had a reputation. She may have been a virgin, but she'd known her way around a guy's body. He'd seen how she worked, seen how she had tried to work him. Even though he knew it was insecurity that drove her, it was so ingrained it had become instinct. And Mike hated to be manipulated.

His friend, Jeremy, had summed up Mike's fears perfectly that night at the bar in Truckee. "Mike, when you get back to school, you’re going to have pussy coming out of your pockets. Do you really want to give that up for someone like her? No offense, man, but as soon as you’re gone, she'll be on someone else faster than shit through a goose."

Jeremy. The bastard had decided to prove his own point later that night by going off to a bedroom and fucking Karen. Images and emotions from that night assaulted him. The joy he'd felt when he saw her across the room, followed almost immediately by the panic he'd come to feel every time he looked into her gorgeous blue eyes so full of love and expectations he wasn't sure he was ready to meet.

Then anger when she'd started to flirt with Jeremy. Mike had refused to take the bait, knowing she just wanted to make him jealous. She'd been insecure about him, and she'd had every right to be, given his distant behavior. He'd vowed to take her out the next day, really talk to her for the first time in what felt like weeks, straighten everything out.

Despite what Jeremy said, despite his own fear, he hadn't wanted to lose Karen. He'd loved her. And scared shitless or not, he'd known he needed to stop running from it.

But then he'd gone to get a beer, and when he came back, both Karen and Jeremy were gone. When he asked, he was told they went upstairs.

"I still can't believe they did that," Mike said, trying to force the distasteful images from his mind. Tony laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. His stomach clenched, just as it had then as he'd walked down the hall. He'd heard the unmistakable sounds—bedsprings creaking, muted grunts—coming through the slightly ajar door to one of the bedrooms. He’d peeked through the cracks. All he'd seen was Jeremy's torso, a woman’s long, tan legs spread under him. Tiny feet with the ridiculous platform shoes he'd teased Karen about that very afternoon.

The rest of that night was a blur. He remembered Jeremy's face, smug and self-congratulatory. Karen's a mask of guilt as she grabbed his arm and begged him to listen. As though she could possibly explain.

"At least you beat the crap out of him," Tony said. "Did he ever manage to get his teeth fixed?"

Mike smiled grimly. He could still remember the satisfaction of Jeremy's face crunching under his fist, the primal pleasure he'd received at Jeremy's new snaggle-toothed smile. "I think so. I didn't keep in touch after that."

He smashed his empty soda can. "I can't believe she still gets to me like she does," he ground out, slamming his fist against the tailgate.

"You'd think after all this time I would be over it. Goddamn her, she’s still fucking with my head after eleven years."

Tony was quiet, knowing that Mike's tirade didn't require commentary. Mike didn't often lose his cool, and his brothers had long ago learned to listen quietly as he got it all out. After several moments Tony said, "You know she's probably going to be at the wedding tomorrow. What are you going to do?"