He smiled, held out his hand, and led me back to the valet station. After a moment, a small foreign car with a shiny paintjob and a convertible top pulled up.
Blane helped me in and leaned down, feathering a soft kiss against my cheek. Then, he straightened and walked around the front. In seconds, we were off, zooming around curves, over hills and down straight-aways toward my apartment. He pulled up in front, and I glanced from my building to him.
I crinkled my brow, then offered a smile. “How do you know where I live?”
He shut off the ignition. “I made it my business to know about you.”
I couldn’t decide if that fell in the good or creepy category of potential boyfriends. I hoped for good and ignored the burning in the pit of my stomach that usually signaled something amiss. “Thanks for the ride, Blane.”
He nodded and shifted his weight to the elbow rest on the console. His face hovered close enough I smelled the wine on his breath. “Invite me in, Grace.” His lips grazed my cheek, moved down to my throat, and I tilted my head back.
I’d left home and everything I knew to turn over a new leaf, to change my wicked ways, but something about this guy plunged all my good intentions into a holding pattern. He claimed my mouth, used his tongue to part my lips and hand to cup the back of my neck, urging me closer.
“Blane, there’s a light on in my apartment. Will you come in and check it out?” Each word was punctuated with a kiss after. That morning, I’d switched a light on anticipating a late, and probably tipsy, return. It never occurred to me I would be bringing someone home.
He smiled against my lips. “Sure.” As he walked around the car to open my door, I breathed in slowly and exhaled in a whoosh of window-fogging air. His arm around my waist as we walked to my front door did nothing to calm my nerves. Instead, it sent a rush of shivers along my skin.
With trembling fingers, I fit the key in the lock and pushed the door open as Blane spun me in his arms and laid a breath-stealing kiss on me. My vision blurred and my knees weakened. His arms around me stopped me from melting to the floor in a full-on swoon. I backed in the door with his lips still attached to mine, heartbeat throbbing, hands groping the lapels of his tuxedo. Before the lock clicked into place, I pushed his jacket off his shoulders.
“Grace, you’re not alone.”
In a move inspired by too many viewings of Poltergeist, I spun my head toward the interrupting voice. “Hope! What the hell are you doing here?”
I held the front of my dress in place as Blane fumbled with the clasp of the halter top.
“I came to stay with you. I thought you might be homesick or lonely since you’re new in town. And I unpacked for you.” My youngest sister, at nineteen, took after our mother with her impetuous nature and sneak attack visits.
I glanced around the apartment. She hadn’t unpacked. Unpacking implied putting things away. She’d rooted through boxes and found whatever item she wanted to borrow, then left the boxes opened with the flaps in disarray. “Hope, you can’t stay here. What about school? Or work? What about Dad?”
“Quit school. I’ll get a job here, and Dad is killing me.” She frowned, puffed out her cheeks, lowered her voice and said, “What time will you be home? Who are you going out with? Where are you going?” She twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “He’s suffocating me. I’m almost twenty years old for God’s sake, and I wasn’t allowed to go to Mexico for spring break.”
“So you quit school? Way to show him.” I pumped a fist in the air before dropping it to my side, still clenched.
“Don’t send me back, Gracie. Please? I can’t live with him anymore.” When I looked at her, I didn’t see the almost adult woman she’d grown into, but the three-year-old who crawled into my bed every night as she cried for our mother.
“Does he know where you are?” The words squeaked out as Blane’s finger trailed down my spine. “I mean, go in my room and call him.”
She pasted on her most endearing smile and took a full inventory of Blane from shiny black shoes to loosened tie, to those sinful brown eyes. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”
“No. Go call Dad.”
“If you guys wanna have sex, you can have the bedroom.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. I wasn’t a prude by any means, but hauling a guy I just met into my bedroom while my baby sister occupied couch space in the next room landed in no-no territory. Even for me.
“Go. Call. Dad.” I love my sister. I repeated it over and over again until I could look at her without clenched fists and gritted teeth. She flounced down the hallway, and I turned to Blane.
He leaned his forehead against mine and smiled. “We could go to my place.”
Usually, when I went head to head with temptation, especially temptation dressed in Armani with a body like a superhero, temptation won. Images of peeling away his jacket, tossing his tie over my back, ripping the buttons off his shirt, and rolling around on a bed with him--no. “I can’t, Blane. I wish I could.” He leaned in for a kiss I cut short. “You’re not gonna make this easy, are you?”
“I live ten blocks away. We could be there in two minutes.”
Ten blocks? I blew out a sigh. “Rain check?”
He leaned down slow and brushed his lips across mine, then moved them to my ear. “I’m counting on it.” Everywhere south of his whisper caught on fire. “Can I see you tomorrow?”
I gulped in as much air as I could. At this rate, he would think I had lung problems. “Oh, yeah. I’m counting on it, Tex.”
With one last kiss, one that curled my toes and had me rethinking the entire concept of clothing, he turned and left. I watched him walked down the sidewalk. He leaned both arms against the roof of his car, looked up at me, and waved. As he pulled away, I shut the door and turned to find my sister close enough I could smell the pizza she’d ate for supper.
“Who’s that guy?”
“A friend.”
“Yeah.” She smirked. “Whatever.”
I stepped around her, shucking my shoes as I walked down the hallway to my room.
She followed like a shadow on a summer’s day. “Where did you meet him?”
“Eight-Eight-Eight-Buy-a-Date. Now go away.”
“He’s cute for somebody your age.” At nineteen, her tastes hit all ends of the spectrum. One week she dated a garage band guitar player. The next she loved a philosophy major who quoted Socrates and the Dalai Lama on the same breath he ordered a cheeseburger.
“Hope, I have to get up early tomorrow. I have a case to go over.”
Her smile faded to a frown. “Already? I thought we could hang out, do some shopping, maybe sightsee. You know, sister stuff.” She puffed out her lip and shot me the pout I’d perfected as a teenager. “We used to spend time together. I miss you, Gracie.”
Only she got away with calling me that. Ever. I shook my head, examining the fuzzy tan carpet under my toes. “If you get up early, maybe we can find somewhere to run, then we can shop for a little while.” I didn’t add the word grocery or I knew she’d sleep till noon. “But I need to get work done at some point.”
She grinned and threw her arms around me in a squishy hug that reminded me of her childhood. “Deal.”
* * * *
My dreams that night flashed images I’d run across that day and every horrible memory I had of myself--Blane in a mirror wearing a tuxedo, Deputy Wesley with his crooked shirt and ten gallon hat, a