The First Night (7 page)

Not her…his Kayla.

Gannon’s skin went hot with anger at the thought of someone else touching her, and all he wanted to do was rush over and knock the hell out of the guy. How would Kayla react though? After all, he never called.

His past self, the raging asshole, never thought about consequences. He always acted, or rather reacted, defeating any obstacle in his path to get what he wanted. With her though, he had to think, had to prepare, and he was certain the cost of showing his ass would be more than he could handle. He imagined she would be the type to never speak to him again.

Staying in the background and giving her a chance to find out what kind of person Vic was on her own was the best way to deal with the situation. It wouldn’t take long.

Hopefully.

Even so, he’d waited to be with her for years. What was one more night? Or week?

He dropped his shoulders and sighed. “Just that much longer,” he muttered under his breath, but when Kayla’s hand went to Vic’s chest and his arm wrapped around her, Gannon couldn’t stop himself.

* * * *

Kayla washed her hands and caught her image in the mirror. She scowled at her hair, smoothed it, and put on more lip gloss. Preparing to meet Vic, she schemed a little on how she would walk back to the table with him. She tossed around looping her arm through his or leaning on him and maybe even placing her hand on his chest. She caught herself laughing at the ridiculous ideas. Vic
was
hot, but the fact he and Missy were together gave her reservations, even though it was clear the couple was into more than each other. She took a deep breath and pushed on the door.

Vic was gone.

Gannon stood propped against the wall across from her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, meeting his dark eyes and wishing she hadn’t.

“I own the place.”

“I don’t mean here…I mean
here
.” She gestured at the space with her hands.

“I don’t trust that guy.”

“So you sent him away?”

“Maybe.” Gannon crossed his arms over his chest.

“It wasn’t your decision to do that.” She took a few steps by him then stopped and turned around to face him. “Or my yard. I never hired you. Not officially. What if I didn’t want white or lavender flowers? We never discussed colors, and now I guess you expect me to pay you.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“Then what do you want, Gannon?” Her arms at her sides, she balled her hands into fists.

“I want you.” He spoke with a matter-of-fact tone, but the look on his face told her he was worried about her reaction to his statement.

She chuckled without humor. “I’m not fucking stupid.”

“I’m sorry. I should’ve called.”

“No shit,” she said calmly. “But I didn’t really expect you to, not after what I’ve heard. And you know, that’s fine. I never wanted anything from you—”

Before she could finish the sentence Gannon rushed at her, pressing his mouth to hers. His hands moved through her hair, gripping the back of her head.

“Gannon,” she gasped, her fingers knotting in his shirt, tugging his body to hers, refusing to let go. Her mind became jumbled, erasing any doubt she’d previously had about him. In that instant, all she wanted was him. Fastened together, they moved past the restrooms and through a door at the end of the hall.

He kicked it closed behind them. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said as his mouth found her neck, both of them frantically shedding clothes. “The desk,” he said moving her backward, hands cupping her breasts, mouth locked to hers. “I want inside you,” he groaned.

Breathless, she nodded and turned around, leaning over the desk. He nudged her ankles with his foot, and she spread her legs, desperate to feel his girth stretch her opening. A shudder rippled under her skin at the sound of a tearing wrapper, knowing what she craved was mere seconds away. She moaned with pleasure as he grabbed her shoulders and thrust inside her. His strong hands moved to her hips and guided her body, placing it in the exact spot it needed to be with each stroke.

He slammed into her, filling her completely. Her back arched and she cried out as pleasure jolted through her body. His cock pulsated, carrying her through the orgasm, and as he released she went limp against the desk.

Gannon’s arm slid around her, lifting her from the desk. She turned to face him, locking her hands behind his neck, meeting his eyes. His ragged breath filled her ears, and she found herself wishing she could hear that exact noise everyday. Despite the bliss she was feeling over every inch of her body, she allowed sanity to overcome the temporary glaze of concealment masking how pissed and hurt she was about not hearing from him after what seemed to be an obvious connection between them. She dropped her hands and went around him to claim her scattered clothes.

There was too much feeling tied up between them. It was supposed to be sex. Sex. Once. Nothing more. Her frustration, she knew, was not at him. She was frustrated with herself at the emotion she somehow allowed herself with him. Kayla knew the only way to keep from getting more involved was to end it…completely.

“I can’t do this,” she said after pulling up her pants and slipping her top on. Kayla shot her eyes to Gannon—no shirt, no shoes, and the jeans hanging low on his waist had yet to be buttoned. He seemed to freeze at her statement.

“It shouldn’t be this way.”

“You said that on Saturday. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kayla took a seat on the edge of a leather wing-back chair sitting across from the desk and put on her shoes. She didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want to stop fucking him. She didn’t want to guess about the next time she would see him. Also, she didn’t want him in her head, not in the way he’d taken over her thoughts the last few days. “You know what, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does though.” Gannon’s voice was sincere. He bent over and picked up his shirt off of the floor.

“No, it doesn’t.” Kayla stood, walked to the door, and turned around to face him. She met his eyes, holding them hostage with hers. “This…” She motioned her hands to him and back to her. “I don’t need this.” And then she walked out of the room.

She moved swiftly through the club with her head down. Even though she heard him call her name, she didn’t look up. Not seeing him was the only chance she had to erase everything about him from her mind.

* * * *

Gannon stood at the doorway of the bar and watched her drive away, everything he’d wanted for the last nine years. He wondered for the thousandth time why he hadn’t been able to bring himself to call her. He shook his head. It didn’t matter now. She’d said it. Two minutes ago, she’d said
I don’t need this
.

“It’s pretty obvious,” a woman’s voice said from behind him. Gannon turned around. Sharon. She reached past him and flicked the butt of a cigarette out of the open door.

“What’s obvious?” Gannon stepped outside and propped against the wall. Sharon followed.

“How you feel about her. I saw the way you looked at her on Friday when she walked up to the bar. At first I thought it was pure lust. I’ve heard the wild college stories about you from my brother.”

Gannon opened his mouth to defend himself, but Sharon held up a hand to stop him. He clamped his jaw shut and stared at a flickering streetlight that was threatening to go out. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to escape up the stairs to his apartment and close himself in, hoping everything about Kayla would fade away.

Sharon lit another cigarette and continued, “When I figured out what happened between the two of you, it was set in my head you would toss her aside like you have all the others, but when I saw how you two were in the hallway…when you kissed…the look…it wasn’t just in your eyes.
Both
of your entire bodies were eaten up with raw passion. That right there.” She poked on his chest. “It’s something you shouldn’t let go.”

He gazed down the road in the direction Kayla had gone. “She doesn’t want it.”

Sharon poked his chest again. “And
you
are a complete moron.”

Chapter 6

In her sweatpants and tank top, Kayla rocked back on her knees and sighed at the scattered metal pieces across the floor. The night before, after a long day at work, the most she could manage was dragging the home-gym boxes from the garage to the spare bedroom. On Saturday morning, this was the last thing she wanted to do, but she’d made a promise to her morning coffee to have it assembled and be working out on it by noon. She had three hours left and was staring failure in the eye.

She also realized the lone bookshelf in the room would have to go in order to make room for the completed project, and she could’ve kicked her own ass for not moving it before unloading all the parts to the gym. She looked around the small room, hoping for a way
not
to have to rearrange the area, but it had to be done. “Gah!”

She reached up, grabbing the straggles of hair that had fallen from her messy bun, retied it, and got busy clearing the shelves, placing the literature in one of the equipment boxes…fiction, non-fiction, high school yearbooks…her senior yearbook. She smiled. It had been so long since she’d opened the cover, probably the summer since she’d graduated. She picked up the book and held it to her chest as she went to the kitchen for more coffee. She filled her cup, cleared a small stack of books from the table, and set her senior memories down, allowing the pages to fall open at random.

Not believing what she was seeing, Kayla blinked hard at the photograph in front of her. On the “Who’s Who” page, directly above the word
shyest
sat a teenage boy and girl. Her stomach jerked and twisted, and her grip on the coffee cup was making her hand cramp. The longer she stared at the picture, the more faded the girl became.

She found herself not breathing and sucked in air, at the same time, reading the name under the caption.
Luke G. Knight
…Gannon…his teenage self stared back at her from the page. She sipped her coffee and glanced at the clock. Thirty-six hours. It had been approximately thirty-six hours since she allowed her thoughts to settle on him and there he was, a sixteen-year-old kid ruining every bit of the progress she thought she’d made.

That boy, the one who cooked her pancakes every morning in home economics class…his eyes…his smile…the one she had looked for in the halls every day during her senior year. The one guy she kept in the back of her mind, sometimes bringing him to the forefront and asking herself ‘what if?’ He was Gannon?
No.

She flipped to the autograph pages in the back, remembering she’d asked him to sign it. Had she read his words afterward? She wasn’t sure, she couldn’t recall as she scanned the scribbled mementos from her classmates. At the bottom right corner of the very last page, she found the message, her breath halting deep in her chest as she read it aloud. “Kayla, I will never forget you. Luke
.
” Simple, yet complicated. She sighed and read the words again. The innocent statement that somehow seemed more like a promise hammered over and over in her mind.

Slamming the book closed, she propped her elbows on the table and let her head fall into her hands, splaying her fingers across her forehead and to the edge of her hairline. How could she not have known? It was as obvious as the golden beams of sun shining through her windows. She could see it
now
. Gannon and Luke, the sweet boy from the picture, were the same. But did it make a difference? No!

Okay, maybe. But it didn’t matter. She’d let him please her again and then she’d stormed out of his bar, ignoring him as he yelled out for her to stop. Kayla shook her head and dropped her hands to land on the book cover.

Her front yard, she needed to see the white and lilac flowers he’d planted. She wanted to see the grass he’d cut and the hedges he’d trimmed. She should have thanked him. Instead she threatened to not pay him. She scooped up the book, tucked it under her arm, and went to the living room window, but it wasn’t her yard that caught her attention. A huge basket of red tulips sat in the center of her front porch. She stared at it for a minute, knowing it wasn’t there the night before. Beyond the flowers, something else that wasn’t there the night before—Gannon.

A step back—she needed to take a step back. She needed time to process and weigh the options between what she wanted and what she needed. She knew opening the door would bring on something she was trying to avoid…complications. But in the past week,
not
being with him was bringing on another type of obstacle. One she was afraid she couldn’t beat. She knew that now.

Kayla watched through the window as Gannon’s shoulders slumped, his hands jammed deep in to the front pockets of his jeans, and he moved toward his truck.
He’s leaving. He’s leaving! He won’t be back.
Her heart wrenched. No! Kayla tossed the book on the sofa, ran to the front door, and jerked it open. “Luke!”

He turned at the sound of his old name. For several seconds, they both stood there facing each other, neither one certain what to say.

“Thank you,” she said, stepping out of the doorway and on to the front porch, “for the flowers.”

“You called me Luke.”

Kayla nodded slowly. “Will you come in?”

“I didn’t plan on you seeing me.”

“But I did.”

“I think it’s better if I leave.”

“Better for who?”

“You,” he answered, bringing his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes from the morning sun. “You were right before. You don’t need this.”

“Will you come inside?” she asked again, clasping her hands to her chest, her best effort to keep her heart from bursting out. “Please?”

A few long seconds ticked by as he considered her request. He was refusing her, and she felt her eyes begging for him not to.

He stepped toward her, and relief rushed through her. She walked through the door. Gannon followed, closing the door behind him. Kayla sat on the couch next to the yearbook and watched as he took a seat in the reading chair across from her. She picked up the book, resting it in her lap. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”