Kiss in the Dark (23 page)

“You have to let me do something for you,” she said. “You can’t do a thing like this—make this kind of sacrifice—and not let me thank you, Vance…offer some sort of service in return. There’s got to be something I can do for you. Please…I won’t be able to settle down or sleep or work well until you let me repay you somehow. I already owe you for the suckers.”

He frowned a little, inhaled a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. He reached up, scratching the short whiskers on his chin.

“Well, I suppose asking you to sleep with me would be out of the question,” he began.

“What?” Boston exclaimed. She thought of Danielle’s request that she “seduce” her brother, and all Boston’s deep-seated fears of there not being one moral man left on the face of the earth (even including Vance Nathaniel) washed over her like a natural disaster.

Vance shrugged. “I mean, obviously that’s the kind of guy you think I am…the kind of guy who would meet a skank at a cheesy motel and—”

“I said I was sorry for that,” Boston interrupted. She realized then he was teasing her—raking her over the coals as punishment for even daring to have one suspicious thought about his character. She admitted that she deserved it. Only fifteen minutes ago—after the conversation she’d had with Danielle—she was ready to nearly marry Vance on the spot. She deserved to be pestered for doubting him so quickly, for letting Steph’s and the world’s poisonous assumptions win her over so swiftly.

“And I wouldn’t want to disappoint you by letting you find out that I really am an okay guy…so I guess that’s it. You can sleep with me, and I’ll count it as your thank you.”

“Vance Nathaniel, you cannot be serious. I know you’re just being a brat.”

“So, as I was saying,” he continued, “you can either sleep with me…because I
am
a depraved, wanton degenerate with an insatiable appetite for women…or…it’s been a long time since I’ve had a really big, really good batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Danielle says you can bake like a bakery baker. So those are your options—sleep with me…or bake me cookies.”

He smiled, pure delight and mischief burning in his eyes. Boston sighed with relief in realizing he was totally teasing her. She giggled, suddenly all the more enchanted with his sense of humor.

“And just what would you do if I chose not to bake the cookies?” she flirted.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he chuckled.

“Well, I’ll bake your stupid cookies for you, Mr. Nathaniel,” Boston said, turning and unlocking the door. She had to leave—she wasn’t even certain why—but she felt that if she didn’t leave she might start thinking a little too much about how perfectly wonderful Vance Nathaniel was—how heroic. “But I’m still mad at you for lying to us…and I still won’t be able to sleep well as long as you’re here.”

“Don’t worry about it, Boston,” he said. “It really isn’t a big deal.”

She turned to find him looming before her, close to her—so close she could smell his warm, suntanned skin and the residue of Juicy Fruit gum on his breath.

“It is to me,” she whispered, gazing up into the deep green of his eyes. She made the mistake of letting her gaze fall to his lips—swallowed when the excess moisture of desire flooded her mouth. What was done was done—there was no changing it now. Vance was living in the motel; she was all moved in with Danielle. There was nothing left to do but to express her thanks—prove to him she was grateful for his chivalry.

Reaching over, she quickly flipped the light switch near the door. The room went black, and Boston stood on the tips of her toes, took Vance’s whiskery face between her hands, and kissed him squarely on the mouth. She hadn’t expected to suddenly find his hands at her waist, to find that he had kissed her after she’d kissed him, that they were now standing in the complete darkness of the shabby motel room kissing each other. She’d meant to kiss him once—to thank him for championing her. She’d turned off the light first because—as Vance himself had twice taught her—somehow it wasn’t so intimidating to kiss someone in the dark. Yet now that he’d kissed her in return—now that his mouth was coaxing hers into a deeper, more intimate exchange like they’d shared in Dempsey’s pantry—she began to tremble.

Passion erupted not so unlike Mount Vesuvius! Vance’s arms banded around Boston like steel restraints, and she didn’t care. The moments in the pantry were flinging themselves through her memory, causing her to thirst for more of them.

Again she was struck by his skill in kissing her, by the manner in which she feared she would never be able to leave him. It was even worse—or more wonderful, whichever way one viewed it—for now her mind and soul had decided to seduce Vance toward the light and away from whatever secret darkness imprisoned him. Therefore, in admitting to herself that she wanted him—wanted him forever—Boston realized the weakness he found in her, the desire he toyed with.

Boston blushed and shook her head. “No, you idiot. I just…I just want you to know that what you’ve done…that I appreciate it more than you can—”

“It’s no big thing, Boston,” he interrupted. He opened the door, took hold of her arm, and led her from the room. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your car so you can get home and fire up the oven.”

On the way to the car, however, Boston’s emotions began to get the better of her once more, and she brushed new tears from her eyes.

“Really, Vance,” she began, “you didn’t have to do this.”

“It’s fine, Boston,” he said. “Just bake me a big batch of chocolate chip cookies, and we’ll call it even.” She took her keys out of her pocket, and he put out his hand for them. She smiled and dropped her keys in his hand. He winked at her, unlocked her car door, and held it open.

“Admit it,” he began. “Let logic dictate the truth of the fact that it’s far less difficult for me to sleep here for a few nights than it would’ve been for you to deal with that psycho chick for one more day. Then just let it go and bake those cookies for me.”

Boston slid into the seat of her car, and Vance pushed the key into the ignition.

“You…um…you’re not gonna tell Danielle, are you?” he asked, his handsome brow puckering with concern.

“She’ll find out sooner or later,” Boston warned. “But…but I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to.” The thought drifted through her mind that Vance and Danielle harbored a lot of secrets—even from each other.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t,” he said. “If she finds out, then she finds out…but I’d rather she didn’t. She worries a lot about me…especially since…she just worries a lot. You know how she does. I won’t ask you to lie if she flat out asks you. There’s no reason to drag you to hell for lying too. But just don’t offer the information for no reason. Okay?”

“Okay,” Boston said. She smiled at the lethally handsome man standing half-naked outside her car in the parking lot of a shady motel. “This will be our little secret.”

Boston giggled, reached over to the glove compartment, and retrieved a chocolate Tootsie Pop. She quickly removed the wrapper and popped it in her mouth. She twisted the key and started her car.

Just before Vance closed her door, however, he reached out and pulled the sucker from her mouth, popping it into his own mouth and saying, “You’re gonna rot your teeth out with these things.” He closed the car door then and nodded at her, an indication he would wait for her to drive off before returning to his hovel.

Boston waved at him, and he nodded again as she drove away.

After retrieving a fresh Tootsie Pop from the glove compartment, Boston sighed and smiled. There was something rather intimate about the way he took her suckers out of her mouth and pressed them into his own without hesitation. She liked it! Her delight was quickly squelched, however, by the remembered knowledge that Vance would be spending the next however many nights in a nasty motel. Still, it was heroic in the true sense! Maybe guys didn’t wear armor anymore and ride white steeds and slay dragons for a girl, but lying about his house, staying in a dive like that one—Boston figured it pretty much evened the field.

Chapter Eleven

“So,” Danielle began, “how’d you manage to get a double batch of Boston’s best chocolate chippers?”

Vance sat sprawled on Danielle’s couch, watching
COPS
—a large rattan basket heaping with chocolate chip cookies sitting in his lap.

Danielle sighed and shook her head. “Vance Nathaniel, you are so bad! Quit being so naughty all the time. Boston will think you’re a…a…”

Boston giggled, and Danielle rolled her eyes again. Still, Danielle leaned forward and whispered, “Cookies…a great seduction tool! Good idea!”

Boston leaned forward to meet Danielle’s conspiratorial stance. “He said you told him I can bake like a bakery baker…and I wanted to prove to him that I could,” she explained. It wasn’t really a lie—both statements were true. So she didn’t tell Danielle that her brother was living in a dive. So she didn’t tell her that he’d lied to them about moving into his house. It was still true that Danielle had told Vance Boston was a good baker, and she did want to prove it to him.

Danielle shook her head. “I knew when I’d told him that he’d eventually figure out a way to weasel cookies out of you. If there’s one certainty in life…it’s that Vance loves chocolate chip cookies.” Danielle picked a cookie up from the plate on the table. Boston never made cookies to give away without making sure there were some left for friends.

“He’s a piece of work, my brother,” Danielle sighed, smiling.

“Oh, yeah,” Boston agreed. “He sure is.”

Boston looked past Danielle to the couch where Vance was sitting. Her stomach was suddenly attacked by wave after wave of butterflies. He was the one she wanted—and she’d started the journey of finding out if he could even want her.

She’d lain awake half the night, thinking over what had erupted between them in the pantry and then at his lousy motel room. Once she’d started to look at the situation from the viewpoint of the real Boston Rhodes instead of the Steph-tainted Boston, she could see a little clearer. She and Vance did gravitate to one another as Danielle had implied. He did smile at her, wink at her often. He went out of his way to please her, like bringing home the barrel of Tootsie Pops—not to mention his current living conditions. Surely he wouldn’t have forced himself into such undesirable living circumstances for just anybody.

Thus, Boston had lain awake half the night mulling over the possibilities with Vance—and the other half of the night feeling simply mortified at what Danielle had revealed to her about the depth of her pain that first summer they’d met. All in all, Boston figured she’d left for work that morning on maybe two hours combined sleep at best.

Still, even for feeling so fatigued at work, she’d been happy, hopeful, and motivated. She felt more like herself than she had in a really long time—since moving in with Steph, in fact. She began to remember that Boston Rhodes was an optimist and liked to help people to feel better about life and living it. In short, the true Boston Rhodes—the one Steph had tried so hard to poison (and actually succeeded in poisoning to a point)—in her soul Boston Rhodes believed in sprinkling joy and sunshine through the world. In short, she preferred sifting sugar to spreading manure. Perhaps it was the baker in her that thought of the sifting idea. She had a vision of a little gingerbread town she and her mother had once made together when she was little. She remembered how her mother had put sugar in an old metal sifter and then let Boston sift it out over the tiny little gingerbread rooftops of the town to look like frost-kissed snow. What a vision it was in her mind—what a beautiful memory, a memory that caused her to feel warm and sweet and hopeful and happy inside. It was even how she’d finally managed to get to sleep—by closing her eyes and hearing “Silent Night” waft through her imagination as she laid in her comfortable bed remembering how beautiful the sifted sugar looked sprinkled over the little gingerbread town so long ago.

Vance sighed, stretched, and rose from his lounging position on the sofa. He picked up the remote and pressed the off button.

“Thanks for letting me hang out, girls,” he said. He tucked the large basket Boston had filled with chocolate chip cookies under his arm and sauntered toward them. He set the basket on the table as he took a seat next to Boston. Frowning with an expression of sincere intent, he proceeded to pick through the basket of cookies until he appeared to find just the one he wanted.