Crush on You (24 page)

One wild motion almost cold-cocked Gil, who sat on top of a table behind her, staring at the bride-to-be.

“Eek,” Alessandra said, expressing what she guessed they were all thinking. “The look on his face says . . .”

“Misery,” Stevie put in.

“Heartbreak,” Giuliana added.

Oh, crap, not Gil, too?
“He’s in love with her,” Alessandra pronounced, then groaned.

Unrequited love. It was wrenching to watch. It was painful to contemplate. It was all around her.

And then Penn was in her head again, just like he shouldn’t be. The damn man never stayed banished for long. She recalled the tension in his arm, the tick in his jaw, the trampy tart for whom he still carried a torch. Geez, but he had lousy taste in lovers. Present company excepted.

“What should we do?” Stevie asked.

Giuliana shrugged. “What can we do?”

“Just be there for him,” Alessandra mused. “Provide comfort, distraction . . .”
Sex.

Oops, there she went thinking about Penn again.

But the man hovered in her mind, even as presents were opened, appetizers eaten, a sugary cake consumed. He was still there as she played a few silly shower games, “winning” a plethora of gag gifts, including a pair of velvet handcuffs that she tried to pawn off on Gil, but somehow ended up back in her possession. As Stevie commented, quite the haul for the woman with the worst sex life in the county.

And who couldn’t put from her mind a man preoccupied by someone else.

Gil figured nothing short of a direct lightning strike would rouse Clare—a long shot since she was passed out in the back of Stevie’s limo. The driver met his gaze in the rearview mirror as she pulled in front of his half of the duplex they shared.

“Will you be all right with her?” she asked. “It might take me a while to get back . . .”

“Sure.” There were five other young women slumped in the passenger area under varying influences of alcohol, sugar, and risqué party games. Instead of making the duplex the last stop, however, they’d decided it should be first. If Clare came around during the miles of winding road ahead, the outcome might require a full interior detailing of Stevie’s fancy vehicle.

Better to get Clare stationary—and close to the facilities—sooner than later.

To that end, he took her up in his arms and carried her from the car to his front door. One of the departing young ladies managed an admiring—if drowsy—
yeehaw!
of admiration. Clare herself didn’t stir until he placed her gently on his couch. Then, just as he was drawing a blanket over her, she sat up, looking as bright-eyed as morning.

“Hey!” She glanced around, her expression puzzled. She pushed the woven fabric aside, revealing the red dress she was wearing. It had drawn his gaze all night, the color as sweet as a cherry Popsicle, the low cut and short skirt something that had made him sweat beneath his calm façade.

“Is the party over?” she asked.

In more ways than one
, he thought, dress going out of his head as he damned Jordan Wilson for his continued silence. When Clare broke it off with her fiancé after she heard the truth, she’d have yet another pre-wedding ritual to regret. “We popped the cork on the last bottle of champagne an hour ago,” Gil told her.

She pouted, an action so un-Clare that he couldn’t help but smile. “You had fun,” he said. It was hard to be angry about that.

“I like champagne.” Then she frowned, her fingers going to her head. “Is it the bubbles or the ugly truth? Did I really see R2-D2 and C-3PO in wedding wear?”

He dropped next to her, now grinning. “Alessandra said they were bride and groom wine bottle covers that she altered for tonight’s event.”

“Poor robots,” she said, but it was accompanied by a goofy smile.

He shook his head. “Poor Clare. You’re going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow.”

Her cheek landed on his shoulder. “But for now I feel sooo wonderful.”

Sliding a hand around her, he tried adjusting her position, which only led her boneless body to half-sprawl over him. That goofy smile lit up her face again as she gazed up. “You wanna hear a secret?”

No, and he didn’t want to tell one right now, either. This wasn’t the time. “First rule of over-imbibing: Do not drunk-dial, drunk-text, or drunk-tell.”

“I’m not drunk!”

Bombed, then. “Okay, baby, whatever you say.”

Her smile turned smug. “I love the way you call me baby.” She sang the phrase as a catchy little tune.

His heart jolted. “You do?”

“It’s from a Gap commercial.” Her eyes closed. “In my favorite ones, the people dance. In khakis, I think. You look scrumptious in khakis.”

“ ‘Scrumptious’?” He laughed, because it was a word he’d never imagined in Clare’s vocabulary. “You really are toasted.”

She jerked straight, then put her hand to her head as if it was spinning. “The toast! Your toast. I didn’t imagine that either, did I?”

He shifted on the cushions. “I don’t know what you mean. Yeah, I gave a toast. Someone told me I had to, being I’m the Man of Honor.” And even knowing everything he knew, he hadn’t been able to find a way out of it.

“Say it all again,” Clare demanded.

“No.” When she continued staring at him, he shook his head. “No. I don’t even remember—”

“I’ll help.” Her voice lowered in a terrible imitation of his own. “ ‘To the girl on the playground . . .’ ”

He groaned. “Clare . . .”

She grabbed one of his hands in both of hers. “Please. If you love me, you’ll say it again.”

He closed his eyes to savor her touch. “To the girl on the playground, to the girl at the prom. To my friend, to my fellow on this road, to the female in my life who makes me laugh and think and slay all her spiders.” Opening his eyes, he took a breath and then drew the back of his free hand against her warm cheek. “Be happy. Be healthy. And most of all, be yourself.”

Clare let go of his hand and fell back against the cushions in a mock swoon. “You’re amazing. Every woman in the room must have fallen to her knees following that little speech. I can’t believe it didn’t get you laid tonight.”

“Maybe I still have hopes.”

She froze.

Damn! Hell! Crap! What had made him say that, and say it in the voice he usually saved for when he had something by Marvin Gaye oozing through the air or his favorite seduction song of all time, “Cyprus Avenue.”

Her gaze drifted to one of the silent speakers in the corner of the room. “What? No Van Morrison?”

He laughed.
Whew.
“We’ve been friends too long if you know all my moves. You find them humdrum.”

She rolled her head on the cushion to look at him, her blue eyes a little sleepy now. “I don’t know about that. When I was considering who could be my last single girl fling, the only one who came to mind was you.”

It was his turn to freeze. “Come again?”

“Last. Single. Girl. Fling.” A pause. “You.”

Reserved, quiet Clare wouldn’t dream of a last single girl fling. But if she did, wouldn’t she wish for a fling with . . .

Her best friend. The Man of Honor.

Of course she would.

He was the one whose refusal she counted upon. His Clare could be daring if she had that safety net in place. She’d insisted on climbing a tree knowing he’d do it for her. Her decision to go camping came with the full expectation that he’d never make her face the wild beasts of the night alone. Yep, her safety net. That’s all he was to her. That’s how she saw him.

And it was starting to piss him off.

He’d smiled, sacrificed, stayed silent for so effing long. There’d been dozens of women in his life—the Italian Stallion loved women—but this one, this particular woman thought she had him pegged.

Clare presumed she could thrill herself by throwing out the word
fling
because it wasn’t dangerous. Not when her best bud would let her play with matches without ever letting a single one catch fire.

Bullshit.

“It’s that damn red dress,” he murmured, then he reached out and hauled her against him. A squeak of surprise came from her mouth, but he muffled any further sounds with his lips. Hers opened beneath his, and then his tongue stroked into her mouth, and he could taste the tart bubbles of the night’s champagne . . . and the strawberry lip gloss of her teenage years, the chocolate of their hundreds of shared Milky Ways—her half always larger—even the graham crackers and milk that were a kindergarten snack.

One of her hands landed on his thigh and it was his brain revolving in a drunken spin. He slanted his mouth to take the kiss deeper, his heart slamming like a piston. His inner works needed a mechanic, he thought, pulling Clare into his lap, and she was here, the fix he craved.

Her free arm curled around his neck and he stilled, just reveling in the feel of her light weight against his groin, the side of her breast against the wall of his chest. She squirmed, her ass against his hard-on, and he groaned at the goodness of it, and slid his hand up her thigh, over her belly, to cup the mound of her breast.

They both shuddered.

“Clare,” he breathed, breaking the kiss, only to run his mouth along the line of her jaw to her ear. He slid his cheek against the skin of hers, knowing his beard was already heavy enough to mark her, but that’s what he wanted.

Her hand left his thigh and went to the buttons of his shirt. He stiffened, agonized by the slow flick of each unfastening. Clare was undressing him. Clare was pushing the plackets to the side. Clare was running her small, warm palm over his belly, up toward his throat, down to caress one pectoral.

He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe as the edge of her thumb caught the hard point of his nipple. Groaning, he dropped his head back and she took the opportunity to draw a line along his throat with the tip of her tongue. Her touch was tortured pleasure, the now-tight fit of his pants was exquisite anguish, the couch was much too narrow for how he wanted to ease all this distress.

“Clare. Baby.” Somehow he had to get them from the living room to his bed. But he didn’t want to break the beautiful flow. He slid his hand down her spine and she turned in to him, her mouth now on his chest. His arm was long enough to reach the end of that short skirt, which he brushed aside in order to write messages on the skin of her upper thigh.

Sweet. At last. Finally.

His fingers checked, his heart arrested, his brain iced over. Was that what this was to her? Was that what Jordan was doing with Tori Merrick and because of this, Clare would be all right with that?

With the truth out, would there be no broken engagement . . . only Gil’s broken heart?

He slid out from under her, setting her on the cushions beside him and instantly putting distance between himself and further temptation by rising to his feet. His hands tore through his hair.

“Clare . . .” Shit. He couldn’t look at her. “Clare—”

Knocks sounded on his door. He knew who it was, and he found himself so damn glad for the interruption. Stevie stood on his small porch, her gaze immediately going past him to find the bachelorette. “How’s she doing?” she asked. “Can she walk over to my place?”

It was just next door. “Yeah.”

When he turned back, however, it was to see her passed out again. It meant he’d have to carry her once more. She didn’t rouse until he placed her flat on Stevie’s couch. Her drowsy voice called his name as he opened the door to leave.

“Yeah?” he asked. From the look of her, he wouldn’t be surprised if by morning she didn’t remember a thing that had happened from mid-party on.

“Why?” she croaked.

He thought he knew what she was asking, and his mouth twisted. “Why stop?”

She was already shaking her head. “Why start?”

“A good question to ask yourself,” he advised, then slipped out and shut the door.