License to Thrill (17 page)

Charlee squirmed. She felt trapped and panicky and freaked out. She feared if he kissed her, really kissed her, the way he had back there in the truck stop parking lot, that every bit of rational self-control she possessed would fly right out the window and she’d turn into a quivering pile of estrogen Jell-O.

“I’m not moving until you give her a real kiss, Skeet Hammersmitz.” Edith Beth folded her arms over her chest and tapped her foot against the floor.

“You do and so help me God, you’ll pay for it,” Charlee murmured in his ear.

“Tit for tat, sweetheart,” he murmured back. “You started this back there at the diner.”

He had a point. She had no one to blame but herself. Oh, and the goons in the Malibu.

His eyes met Charlee’s and her stomach took the express elevator straight to her boots. Her heart pitter-pattered.

The last time she’d kissed a wealthy, brown-eyed, handsome man she’d gotten her heart shattered into a gazillion little pieces.

Buck up. You’re older now. Less gullible. You can handle this. It’s just a friggin’ kiss, Charlee.

He hesitated.

Edith Beth clapped her hands and got a rousing round of “Skeet, Skeet, Skeet, Skeet” going.

Charlee didn’t want him to kiss her against his will. She raised her voice to be heard over the chanting. “It’s okay, folks. Skeet doesn’t have to kiss me in front of everyone. I know he loves me.”

“Prove it,” someone from the back of the bus shouted.

“Kiss her, Skeet, kiss her, Skeet, kiss her, Skeet!”

“Oh, just go on and get it over with,” she snapped.

And then Mason was kissing her even more passionately than he’d kissed her in the diner parking lot and that kiss had been pretty darned passionate. He curled her into the crook of his arms, bringing her close to his warm, firm chest. She felt the heady lub-dubbing of his heart through the soft material of his shirt.

Don’t give in. Fight the feeling. It’s just lips.

Correction. Not just lips. Hot, moist, demanding lips. Lips that tasted of peppermint. Lips that glided like silk over hers. Lips that took her breath and refused to give it back.

Lips that belonged to a wealthy, long-legged, brown-eyed, handsome man with matinee-idol smiles and a day’s growth of beard stubble.

She was screwed and she knew it.

His kiss, his touch, his smell, all felt too good, too irresistible.

What the hell. She threw in the towel and succumbed to the moment.

Her eyes shuttered closed and she allowed herself to drift into uncharted waters, to fully experience the promise of his mouth. This was different than the rough, demanding way he’d kissed her before. This kiss was both hungry and tender. At once lazily languid and intensely urgent.

A hot, overwhelming rush of desire thundered through her. His tongue thrust past her lips and delved deeply into the warm recesses of her mouth.

Sensation stormed through her body. Waves of it, crashing one on top of each other in a blind, mad rush. Sweetness and heat and pressure. Moistness and pleasure and pure, honeyed desire.

“Woooooooo,” the whole bus chimed in unison.

Happy now, everyone?

“Okay,” Edith Beth interrupted. “You get a gold star, Skeet. Let’s move on. Your turn to recite the memory string.”

But Mason completely ignored Edith Beth, his focus—and his mouth—centered on Charlee.

“Ahem,” Edith Beth cleared her throat.

Charlee pried open one eye and saw him waving the tour director away. His own eyes were closed as he too savored the moment. Charlee’s belly tightened.

“Somebody hand me a water hose,” Edith Beth joked.

“A water hose was what got them into this,” Francie said with a giggle.

“How come you never kiss me like that,” Charlee heard one newly wed wife whisper to her husband.

Mason grinned against her mouth and she found herself grinning right back.

“All rightee then,” Edith Beth said, admitting defeat. “We’ll leave Skeet and Violet to it and get on with the game. Next!”

“What are you doing?” Charlee whispered into his mouth after Edith Beth had moved on but Mason continued to kiss her. “You can stop now.”

“I’m enjoying the benefits of being your husband. Believe me, there’s enough negatives in this relationship, I’m taking the good where I can.”

“You’re not really my husband and we don’t have a relationship.”

“You want to call Edith Beth back over here and explain that to her?”

“No. I guess you’ll just have to go on kissing me.”

“Guess so.”

She knew they were using Edith Beth’s game as an excuse to capitalize on the sexual allure that had been simmering between them from the very moment they had met. She knew she was susceptible to the charms of rich, brown-eyed, handsome, long-legged men. She knew she was careening straight for Heartbreak Hotel. But no matter how hard she tried to pull away, once started, she simply could not stop kissing him.

He was like a horrible, horrible addiction and she couldn’t get enough, so she convinced herself there was nothing wrong with satisfying her physical craving as long as she didn’t get her mind or heart or soul involved. She could kiss and simply walk away. This didn’t have to mean anything more than sumptuous bodily pleasures.

Denial. The junkie’s tool in trade.

The bus traveled on into the night and long after Edith Beth’s game had ended, Mason and Charlee continued to kiss. They were like fourteen-year-olds sitting in the back row at the movies experimenting with their first flush of sexual desire. They slid down low and rested their heads against the back of the seat. Charlee was practically in his lap, her legs dangling over his knees.

Kissing was a heady, invigorating, and totally stupid thing to do.

They did it anyway.

Even when their lips started to chap they kept kissing.

Nothing was inside her head except the moment. She forgot about Maybelline and Elwood and Nolan. She forgot about the men in the Malibu. She forgot about the fact she had a terrible track record with men. She operated on pure animal instinct and indulged herself in the sensual pleasures of Mason’s mouth.

Soon enough, reality would intrude. For now, they were on a honeymoon bus bound for Hollywood and the
Newlywed Game.
It was a world removed from where they’d come and where they were headed.

When they finally opened their eyes and came up for air, they noticed everyone around them was kissing. Mason grinned. “Look what we started.”

“Forget the Love Boat. We’ve got the Love Bus.”

“Wonder if this was what it was like back in the free love era of the sixties.”

“Seems very decadent.”

“And very arousing.”

His brown eyes crinkled at the corners and he gave her a come-hither look that had her knees liquefying and her pulse leaping over tall buildings in a single hop.

You’re digging yourself a deep one, Charlee. Remember Gregory. Everything was all fun and games with him too, in the beginning.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.

“No,” he agreed. “We shouldn’t.”

And then he reached for her again.

Sometime around midnight, Mason woke with a start to find Charlee curled snugly against him, her head resting on his shoulder. His arm had gone to sleep and tingled with an achy numbness but he hated to disturb her slumber by moving.

The bus was silent except for the steady strumming of the tires rolling against the asphalt. Everyone around them was sacked out, cuddled together under sweaters or blankets. The sight was touching and darned romantic. For one brief moment he actually wished they were Skeet and Violet Hammersmitz on their way to compete in the
Newlywed Game.

He studied Charlee’s face in the light of moon glow slipping through the bus windows. She looked so relaxed, so peaceful. Her lips were parted slightly and her dark hair spilled over her shoulders in an inky cascade. He shifted, turning to relieve the numbness in his arm without waking her. Snuggling with her had its advantages and disadvantages.

It felt so right to have her tucked into him, to feel her soft, warm breath fanning the hairs on his forearm, to experience the comfort of her body heat.

“Mason,” she mumbled dreamily in her sleep and wrapped her arms around his waist.

Something tightened in his heart. An emotion he was afraid to name. Closing his eyes, he bit down on the inside of his cheek.

What was happening to him? He was a disciplined guy. He didn’t allow unwanted emotions to rule his life. That was one of the things he liked about his relationship with Daphne. She never made him feel wild or crazy or out of control.

Daphne.

Guilt as tall as Hoover Dam stacked his conscience. He had never done anything remotely dishonest and now he was sneaking around behind his girlfriend’s back kissing Charlee. He was being unfair to both women.

He had no excuse. He’d gotten caught up in the moment. All the old rules of order had been turned topsyturvy. Add to that the powerful pull of sexual attraction between him and Charlee and well…he’d been weak.

But his greatest fear was that his attraction to Charlee went far beyond the physical. He was scared to explore the thoughts, nervous about prodding the emotions growing inside him. Most of all, he was afraid to trust his feelings. Afraid to let go.

The last thing he wanted was to hurt either her or Daphne. But the fact that he could feel something so intense for a woman he’d known less than two days told him what he’d already begun to suspect. He simply could not ask Daphne to marry him as he had planned.

And as for Charlee?

He owed her an apology. A big one.

Plus, he needed to keep his hands and his mouth to himself for the remainder of their trip. Easier said than done when her body was entangled with his.

“Charlee,” he whispered and gently shook her shoulder.

“Hmmph.”

“Could you let me out? I need to visit the facilities.”

She sat up blinking and he felt weirdly sad once the weight of her was gone from his body. She stretched her hands over her head, giving him a delightful view of the soft curve of her upper arms. In spite of himself, he stared.

God, but she was compelling. Her hair was tousled and her eyes narrowed into a cute little squint. She splayed a palm over her mouth to suppress a yawn.

He climbed over her knees, his shins brushing against her jeans in the process. Sudden heat hit him like an explosion.

What was it about her that commanded such a spontaneous response in his unruly body? Perplexed, Mason rotated his numb shoulder, trying to shake out the pins and needles.

He stumbled toward the back of the jostling bus in the darkness and scrambled for a handhold when they smacked into a pothole. He missed the back of a seat he grabbed for and found himself propelled forward onto his knees.

His face made contact with the back window glass. The bus leveled out and he pulled himself to his feet but what he saw out the back window shoved his stomach right into his throat.

There. In the darkness. On a long, lonely stretch of arid desert highway, the bus was being followed.

By a white Chevy Malibu.

They arrived in Los Angeles a couple of hours later. Even at two-thirty in the morning, the indomitable Edith Beth was perky. If he’d had a gun, Mason would cheerfully have shot her.

“Good morning, everyone,” she chirped over her microphone as Gus turned on the interior lights. “Welcome to the City of Angels.”

Everyone squinted and grumbled.

“Wakey, wakey!” She clapped her hands like a seal on uppers. “We’ll be at the studio lot soon. And I know it’s the middle of the night, but we’ve got to get you sorted out into your bungalows where you can finish up your naps, shower, and change clothes before the welcome breakfast at seven-thirty.”

“Will there be lots of coffee?” Jerry asked.

“Oh, six or seven different flavors.” Edith Beth beamed. “You’re our stars. Twilight Studios has done an all-out media blitz promoting the contest and our
New Millennium Newlywed Game
contestants. We’re expecting a huge media turnout because reporters from all around the country are already in Hollywood for the Academy Awards on Sunday night.”

“Ah,” Charlee whispered to Mason. “So we’re the warm-up act for the Oscars.”

“Looks like it.”

Mason craned his neck toward the back of the bus to see if he could spot the Malibu, but their seats were too far away from the back window and if he made another trip to the bathroom Charlee was going to start thinking he had a bladder problem. Sooner or later, he would have to tell her they’d been tailed from Nowhere Junction.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look jittery. Nervous about being on the
Newlywed Game?”

“We’re not actually going on the game show, Charlee. Soon as we hit the studio lot we’re getting a taxi out of there. ASAP.”

“At two-thirty in the morning? Why can’t we sleep at the bungalow for a little while first?”

“Because we don’t have time.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” She narrowed her eyes at him.

He sighed. No pulling one over on her. She didn’t miss a single thing. How was a guy supposed to protect a woman like that? So much for his vain attempt at handling the matter on his own.

“The Malibu is behind us.” He jerked a finger at the back of the bus.

“They figured out we got on the bus.”

“Well, I can’t imagine it was that hard to put two and two together. Smashed Bentley, only couple at the truck stop, and then we disappear at the same time the tour bus does.”

“I’ve got half a mind to walk right up to them and ask them who the hell they are and what they want.”

“Don’t you dare,” he growled, but kept his voice low so the other passengers wouldn’t overhear them. “They’re armed and dangerous.”

“You were all for tackling them when you realized they were the ones who stole your wallet.”

“That was me, not you.”

“Oooh, Gentry, you’re getting all protective on me.” She lightly traced a finger over his bicep. “That is sooo sexy.”

“Knock off the teasing, Charlee. I’m serious.”

“Me too.” She gave him an impish grin.