Knowing You (20 page)

*   *   *

A few minutes later, the phone rang and Paul groaned. Reluctantly rolling off of Stevie, he pulled her up close to his side as he reached for the cordless on the bedside table. She snuggled into him, pillowing her head on his shoulder.

That insistent ringing came again and the shrill tone invaded Paul's brain. He jabbed the
TALK
button. “What?”

“Hey, that's friendly.”

Nick
.

Paul tensed and wrapped his free arm even tighter around Stevie's naked shoulders, as if somehow defending her from prying eyes. “What's up?”

“Just something amazing, that's all,” Nick was saying, and now that the head rush Paul had experienced in Stevie's embrace was fading, he heard the excitement in his twin's voice. “I had to tell you.”

“I'm listening.” He glanced down at Stevie, but she wasn't paying attention to him. Good.

“I've got an interview,” Nick said, practically crowing into the phone. “CBS. I'd do color commentary for their football coverage.”

“That's great,” Paul said, and meant it. Though he damn sure wished Nick had found another time to call.

“Yeah, I know. I'd be perfect for this, Paul.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You sound weird,” Nick said, suspicion coming across the phone line clearly. Then a second or two later, he chuckled. “Oops. Called at a bad time, did I?”

“You could say that.” Paul winced as Stevie moved her head to look up at him.

“Who is she? Anyone I know?”

Damn it. He couldn't answer. Instead, he dodged and weaved, as if he were running a combat-training course, trying to avoid live weapons fire. “I've really gotta go,” Paul said, even as Stevie's eyes narrowed and she pulled as far away as she could get, considering Paul's tight grip on her.

“Right, right,” Nick said, but didn't hang up. “Before you do … you know where Stevie is? I've been calling her place and she's not home. I gotta tell her about this. She'll be so jazzed.”

Stevie elbow-jabbed Paul in the side and he let her go with a whoosh of air shooting from his lungs. Naked and furious, she sat straight up in his bed and glared at him.

Shit.

“No, Nick, I don't know where Stevie is.” The lie tripped off his tongue and he watched it slam into Stevie.

“Okay then, sorry to interrupt. I'll just hunt her down myself.” Nick laughed again and added, “Give my apologies to your ladyfriend, okay?”

“Right.” Paul heard the dial tone humming in his ear and he knew Nick had hung up. But the damage was already done.

His gaze locked with Stevie's. Her eyes darkened
with fury. He almost couldn't blame her. He'd lied to Nick about her while she was lying right there in his arms. And he knew the minute he hung up, this pleasant little afterglow was going to explode in his face.

CHAPTER TWELVE

N
ICK PUSHED THE END
button on the cordless black phone, but he didn't set it back into its cradle. Instead, he held on to it as if it were still a link to his brother. His family. To someone outside this chrome-and-mirrored nightmare that was his home.

He glanced around the room, his gaze drifting across the black leather couch, the glass coffee table, and the bizarre alienlike artificial flower arrangement the decorator had picked out. There wasn't a rounded corner or a soft spot in the whole place. Even his bed was a futuristic slab surrounded by tall silver spires.

And he hated it all.

Instantly a memory of Paul's comfortable home leaped into his mind. Funny, how he'd never noticed before just how well Paul had done. Before, Nick had always been too busy enjoying his own life to think about his twin's. Now that he didn't have a damn thing to think about, he had more than enough time to realize that Paul was doing way better than he was.

And this god-awful apartment just defined their differences.

Nick couldn't remember ever actually liking the place. But then, until recently, he hadn't spent much time here. And in the last few weeks he'd spent entirely too
much
time here.

Jumping to his feet, he tossed the phone onto the couch as he passed it on the way to the terrace. He stepped through the French doors and instantly squinted into the rising wind.

Three floors below his condo, cars streamed along the street; people strolled and talked and laughed. Restaurants shone brightly in the darkness, lamplight lying like scattered gold pebbles on the ground. The sounds of traffic were muffled three floors up, and the silence was empty.

What he missed was the sound of the ocean. The steady, rhythmic slap of waves on the shore, sounding like a heartbeat. Here in San Jose, the night sounds were so different from Chandler. Here the streets were lit up and people were out on the town half the night. In Chandler, there was … quiet. There was time to think—even when you didn't really want to be doing any thinking. And at home there was the ocean. Wild, untamed by docks and jetties and tourists on their Ski-Doos.

But he hadn't lived in Chandler in years. Why was it suddenly sounding so damn great again? Nick bent down, leaned his forearms on the iron railing, and told himself he was really slipping.

“What is wrong with this picture?” he asked himself, his own voice sounding way too loud in the stillness.
“Paul's in bed with some babe, Stevie's out on the town, and Nick Candellano is sitting home alone.”

Shaking his head, he straightened up, curled his fingers around the cold, damp iron, and tightened his grip. Stevie. Who was she seeing? Why did he care? It wasn't any of his business what Stevie did. Hell, she'd made it plain enough that they were in the past. He knew it as well as she did. But even after two years without her, he couldn't help wondering what his life would have been like if he hadn't fucked it up so badly.

And he wondered if whoever she was with realized what a lucky bastard he was.

*   *   *

“Okay,” Paul said, pushing himself up into a sitting position. “Before you say anything…”

She swung her hair back out of her eyes, sat straight up, and folded her arms beneath her breasts. Blue eyes narrowed on him, she said, “This sucks.”

He just looked at her. Hell, he'd been expecting a wild fury, judging by the daggers still shining in the depths of her eyes. “Huh?”

“This.” She unlocked her arms and held them out wide, encompassing his bedroom and them. “This whole thing just sucks.”

“Look, it was a little awkward when Nick called,” he said, knowing that didn't nearly cover it. Christ, he'd almost felt like the “other” man, hiding from a jealous husband. Which was ridiculous, since Stevie and Nick hadn't been an item in more than two years.

But old habits died hard. Paul had been looking out for Nick most of his life. And he couldn't just suddenly turn on a dime and say something he knew damn well
would puncture Nick's pride at a time when the man didn't have much pride left. Nick's whole life had tumbled down around him. He didn't have football anymore. He didn't have Stevie. He didn't have focus or a challenge or …
anything
, really. So now sure as hell wasn't the time for his twin brother to tell him that he'd been sleeping with Nick's ex-girlfriend.

“It's not just that,” she said, scooting to the edge of the mattress and swinging her legs to the floor.

“Then what?” Paul asked. “I mean, if you're pissed off because I didn't tell Nick you were here … I thought we agreed not to tell anybody what was going on.”

“Oh, we did.” She nodded at him as she paced, her bare feet smacking hard against the wood floor. “And that's part of the problem.”

His gaze followed her and he told himself to pay attention to what she was saying—not what she looked like. But hey, he was only human. Moonlight streamed in through the skylight over his bed and lit her up like a pale neon sign. Her lightly tanned skin shone with a golden light and her blond hair looked damn near silver.

Arguing with a naked woman took focus, damn it.

He tucked the sheet down over his lap, drew one knee up, and rested his forearm on top of it. “Okay, what's the whole problem, then?”

She stopped dead and stared at him. Planting her hands on her nicely rounded hips, she tilted her head to one side and said, “Jeez, where should I start?”

“Pick a spot.”

“Fine. How about this?” She took a step closer to the end of the bed. “I don't want to feel like I'm some
high school kid, hiding her sex life from Mommy and Daddy. I'm too old to play this game, Paul.”

“Who's playing?”

“We are. It's nuts.” She threw her hands wide and let them slap back down against her thighs. “We keep saying this has got to stop. But it doesn't. It just keeps happening. We're like two sets of hormones on overdrive, for God's sake.”

She waved one hand at him and the rumpled bedclothes. “Like tonight. I didn't come over here to get ‘lucky.' I came over here to see my friend.” She pulled in a deep breath. “I needed to talk to you about something huge in my life.”

“We talked.”

“Yeah. Then we came up here and—”

He pushed one hand through his hair. Guilt roared up and bit him hard. “Yeah, I know.” Hell, he hadn't planned on this, either. But it seemed that whenever he was in the same room as Stevie, nature took over and to hell with everything else.

“Look,” she said after a long minute of silence had ticked past. “I know this is going to sound a little less than credible, considering that I'm saying it while naked, but I'm not going to do this with you anymore. I can't. I won't.”

“Why the hell not?” Jesus. Did he just say that? Where had that come from? Scrambling off the bed, he faced her on his own two feet and tried not to look below her eyes. It was hard enough to concentrate as it was.

“Are you serious?” she demanded.

“Yeah.…” Hell, that sounded real decisive. But it was as good as he could come up with at the moment.
All he knew was, he didn't want this—whatever it was they had—to end.

“There's lots of reasons why not and you know them as well as I do.”

“Name one.”

“Well…” She groped for it, waving both hands in the air, and Paul realized that she'd spent so much time with his very Italian family, she even
thought
with her hands, like the rest of them.

“We don't even have a relationship,” she blurted.

“Sure we do,” he countered. “We're friends and we have great sex.”

“And that's enough? That's good for you?”

He snorted a laugh. “Are you really asking if it's good for me?”

“Very funny.” She acknowledged that jab with a nod. “I know it's good
for
you. I'm not an idiot. I want to know if it's good
enough
for you.”

“Why do we have to analyze it?” Man, even he couldn't believe what he was saying. He was the
king
of analyzing. Give him any problem at all and he would take it down to the very smallest possible denominator. And now here he stood, arguing to
not
think? What the hell was going on?

He reached for her before his brain exploded, and the instant his hands came down on her arms, he knew damn well he didn't want to stop touching her. Didn't want to stop sleeping with her. Didn't even want to think about never making love to her again.

So there went his whole “Get over Stevie” plan, up in smoke.

“Don't you get it?” she demanded. “I'm risking too much here. I can't do it.”

“What's being risked, Stevie? What's so damn sacred?”

“Your family,” she countered, and impatiently swiped one stray tear from her cheek. “Your mother.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” His insides twisted, and worry crowded the pit of his stomach.

“About the fact that your mother is important to me.”

“What's my mother got to do with what's between us?”

“I was with Nick, remember?”

“Not likely to forget.”

“When Nick and I broke up, things got weird.”

His gaze narrowed on her. “How?”

“Mama was …
different
. Less warm. Less—just
less
, okay?” God, it was hard even thinking of those first tenuous weeks after her breakup with Nick. Stevie hadn't felt comfortable going to the Candellano house. She'd stopped attending the Sunday dinners—and hadn't gone back until Carla had dragged her. She couldn't go through that again. Because this time, she knew that another breakup with one of Mama's boys would be the proverbial straw to Mama's camel.

“You're crazy,” Paul said with a snort of derision. “You're a part of the family. Always have been.”

“Yeah, but it's different. I'm adopted into the family. I can be cut off.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Maybe. Sure feels like it sometimes.”

“Mama
loves
you.”

Stevie sighed and felt a heaviness settle in her heart. “I know. And that's what I can't risk.”

Before he could say anything, she tried to shrug out from beneath his hands. “If you touch me, I can't think,” she muttered.

“Me, neither,” he admitted, then added, “Thinking: bad. Feeling: good.”

His thumbs moved on her skin and Stevie felt the flash fire erupt inside her and start to spread. Another second or two and she'd be on her back in the middle of that bed and every notion of leaving would have evaporated.

“Damn it, Paul, cut it out.”

Instantly he let her go and the sudden lack of warmth pooled into a hard knot of ice in the pit of her stomach.

He inhaled sharply and blew it out in a rush of frustration that she felt as well as heard. “My family has nothing to do with what's going on between us.”