The Colors of Love (33 page)

She opened her mouth with no idea what she planned to say, then the waiter delivered a massive plate of nachos covered with melted cheese and poured her a second glass of wine she hadn't ordered.

"Back in our senior year, it seemed every time I saw you, you had your arms around a girl."

"I've slowed down in the last fifteen years."

"And haven't married? I used to think you and Lydia would marry."

"Lydia went to Europe, a graduation present from her parents. She married a Swiss ski instructor, and I soon had more important things on my mind than marriage."

"What things?"

"My mother and stepfather died in a private plane crash in '98. I came back from UW to be with my brother and sisters."

"I'm sorry." She hadn't known he had siblings. Hadn't known his mother had remarried, that he'd gone to college. She supposed she'd pictured him perpetually nineteen, romancing Lydia.

She really knew nothing of this man.

"It was a long time ago." He covered her hand with his, warm fingers curled over hers. "Claire, what can I do to persuade you to help Jake?"

She hadn't enough breath. Fifteen years—wasn't that long enough to get rid of a stupid, adolescent crush? She didn't know him, had never known him. It was just hormones, perhaps pheromones.

"Blake, I can't—"

"What can it hurt? A couple of hours with a surly kid, then you can go back to Arizona knowing you did your bit for troubled youth."

She wanted to clear her throat, and knew she should pull her hand away. She stared at their linked hands, addressed her words to them. "I'm not good with kids."

"Maybe you need practice." His voice was as sober as hers, though she thought she saw amusement in the shadows around his eyes.

"You're doing this for Jake. Bringing me here, spending your time. He must mean a lot to you."

"Jake matters, but it's not a hardship sitting across the table enjoying those impossible eyes of yours."

She pulled her hand away. "You're flirting."

"It's not a crime, Claire."

"No." She felt so inept, so ridiculously uncomfortable sitting across from him with her imagination feeding fantasies she'd thought long dead while she stared at a darkening eastern sky tinged with the pink of reflected sun.

"You said you were hungry. You should eat those nachos." She thought her voice would come out strangled, but it sounded husky to her own ears. The man was dangerous.

Flirting with her. Did that mean that if she...

He separated one of the nachos from the heap and held it out to her. She told herself not to, but her lips parted and she bit into the salty treat, her lips closing over the tang of melted cheese.

Find the town bad boy and have a flaming affair.

She picked up her wine and lifted it to her mouth. Of course she wasn't tempted, but...
a flaming affair.
Kevin, her only lover, had been tame, certainly not dangerous. But Blake...

He'd taken on the magnitude of an archetype in her teenage world. The tempting boy who would never want
her
because she didn't belong to the world of groping in back seats and back corners. She'd been a serious student, a good girl.

"Will you think about Jake, Claire?"

She lifted the glass again, deliberately this time. She needed a long, cool sip of the wine, and then she needed a heavy dose of fresh air, courage for the words.

"Can we go for a walk?" she asked.

Seeing Stars

by

Vanessa Grant

available at your favorite ebook Retailer

~~

Page forward for an excerpt

from Vanessa Grant's next title

If You Loved Me

Excerpt from

If You Loved Me

by

Vanessa Grant

Prologue

He left her alone in the car, ten miles outside town with darkness all around. She was seventeen years old and it was the first time in her life she'd ever been alone, no walls around her and not a building in sight.

"There's a light up there," he said. "A house. I'll phone for help."

After he'd gone, Emma sat in the car and shivered. She wished she had insisted on going with him, but he'd been so impatient.

"You think your dad will kill you for being late?" he'd asked. "Mine's going to flip when he learns I've blown up the damned car."

After he left, she realized how lonely it was out here. She fought off fantasies of all the things that could happen to a girl alone in a car.

She wished she could turn on the lights, but Paul had warned her not to, muttering that he didn't need a dead battery on top of everything else. So she sat in the dark, feeling the way she had when she'd been lying alone in a hospital bed the night before surgery. When she heard a sound from outside, she rummaged in her purse for her glasses, and then put them on so she could see the shadows better.

She was reciting a long soliloquy from Shakespeare when she saw car lights up ahead—maybe someone going to the dance she and Paul had left half an hour ago. Or maybe Paul, returning with help. Or—

The headlights swung away into the trees as the car crossed to her side of the road, spreading a halo of light. Wheels crunched on the gravel road, then the driver's door opened.

A man got out. A big man.

Someone else got out the passenger side of the car and Emma rolled down the window a couple of inches.

"Paul? Is that you?"

"Stay in the car, Emma."

It
was
Paul. She let out a sigh of relief.

"In the trunk," said the stranger, his voice was deep and gravelly. "I'll get them."

Emma pushed open the door and stumbled out onto the gravel shoulder. She couldn't see the man with Paul, just his shape standing in front of the headlights, all glare and shadows and broad shoulders.

"Why don't you get into my car and stay warm?" the stranger said. "My heater's on."

"I have to get home." She hugged herself as a breeze penetrated her thin dress. "I'm already late."

"For Pete's sake, Emma!" Paul's long shadow swam out of the darkness. "What the hell do you expect me to do? The car's trashed. You'll get home when you get there."

"I'll get tools," the stranger said.

She followed his shadow with her eyes until it disappeared behind the other car. A trunk opened, then closed. Shadows shifted around the two cars. Emma hugged herself tighter and wondered why she hadn't had the sense to bring a jacket.

The stranger lifted Paul's hood. From their conversation, she decided he knew about engines.

"So that's that," Paul said in a truculent voice.

She cleared her throat. "If I'm late, my dad's likely to call the police."

"Emma, give it a rest!"

"I could give you a ride," said the stranger.

As she pushed her long hair behind one ear, the light from his headlights in her eyes.

The stranger said, "I'll leave the tools and the work light with you, Paul, then drop your girlfriend off and come back. I'll pick up some oil while I'm gone."

Emma was swallowed by sensation, as if she were already alone in a car with the stranger. Being alone with Paul had never felt intimate. Exciting, yes, because it was new having a boyfriend when she was seventeen and had only recently been permitted to date. But this, the thought of a car surrounding two people and shutting out the world, looking across the length of the front seat and finding him staring back at her...

She didn't even know what he looked like, only his shape with the light behind, and his deep, take-charge voice.

"Let's go," he said. "I'm taking you home."

"Who are you?"

Paul made an impatient sound. "For God's sake, Emma! You wanted to go!"

"I'm Gray MacKenzie."

So this was Paul's best friend, the one who had spent the summer prospecting up north in Canada. She pushed her glasses up on her nose.

"I'm Emma Jennings."

"I know."

* * *

It was quiet inside his Chevy. She studied Gray's broad jaw, frowning mouth, and wavy brushed-back hair that looked as dark as the forest outside. As he drove, his heavy brows cast shadows where his eyes should be. He didn't speak until they arrived at the junction with the highway.

"Where do you live?"

"Oak Street." She twisted strands of her hair around one uneasy finger. "Across from Connaught School. I—thanks for driving me home."

He turned and looked at her. She stared back. From Paul, she knew Graham MacKenzie was in his second year at the community college, taking science courses for transfer to the University of Washington next year. She also knew he shared an apartment with a father who spent most of his time prospecting for gold up north.

You had to be determined to do what Graham MacKenzie had done. He'd won scholarships to pay his way through two years at the local college, was heading for university next year with nothing behind him but brains and determination—because according to Paul, Graham MacKenzie's father was perpetually broke.

When he broke their locked gazes and pulled his car out on the highway, she felt the shock of withdrawal.

"You're not what I expected," she announced in a husky voice.

"Has Paul been giving me bad press?"

"No."

When he laughed, she stole another look. Gray's shoulders made her feel crowded even though they weren't touching. She had only a hazy idea what prospecting might be like. Paul had talked as if it were a game, but hard muscles flexed in Gray's forearms as he turned the wheel to take a sharp corner.

"Paul's jealous of you."

He laughed as if he didn't believe her. "What time were you expected home?"

"Ten o'clock."

"Will you be in trouble?"

When she grimaced, it turned into a laugh that he shared. He threw her another one of those quick glances, assessing her in fast snapshots. When he looked away, she realized her heart was pounding uncomfortably.

"My dad's pretty strict. He worries."