Addicted to Love (21 page)

Maybe, she told herself, maybe this could be just sex.

It was a lovely thought, but she had no idea how to create those boundaries. How to separate and compartmentalize love and sex. If she did, she wouldn’t be here.

Could she learn? Could Brody be her teacher?

She’d been so gullible for so long, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to overcome it. Especially with the man she’d had her first crush on. Her heart was so ready to get involved. She was a powder keg and he was a lit match. It was a stupid, stupid notion.

But here she was, seriously entertaining it.

Because who could resist lips like these? Her body burned wherever his mouth touched — her cheek, her chin, her forehead, her eyelids.

Unable to resist him, she just shut down her mind and let herself feel.

Blindly, without purposeful thought, Rachael lightly ran her tongue along the pounding pulse at the juncture of his throat and collarbone. He tasted salty. His rugged skin tightened beneath her mouth and a masculine groan escaped his lips.

Her mouth crept from his neck to his chest, her fingers working the buttons of his uniform, escalating the intimacy between them and sending her libido reeling into the stratosphere.

The air smelled of charged electrical ions rampant with sexual need.

She was acutely aware of something important shifting between them. But she didn’t know if the shift was a good thing or a bad thing. The question was, did she really want to find out?

He stared deeply into her eyes, with something akin to desperation on his face. Brody took her by the shoulders, pulled her back. “Don’t,” he said, closing his hand around the fingers working at his buttons. “Not here, not now, not like this.”

“Why not?”

“You deserve so much more. You deserve the true love you’ve spent your life looking for.” He looked her in the eyes, desperation etched on his face.

She felt it all at once.

Passion was like a tornado destroying everything in its path. Yearning hormones. Whirling desire. Neediness and loneliness. Appetites and melancholia and hope. Always, ridiculous hope. The emotions collapsed in on her, heavy and warm and overwhelming.

Here we go again.

His gaze was a maelstrom. An obliterating cyclone.

They both stood motionless, his shirt half-undone, her lips puffy from his kiss, hair tousled, heart thumping.

He traced a finger over her cheek, his eyes lasering into hers.

Rachael’s body stiffened. Wanting him, but terrified of where it would lead.

Heartbreak.

Brody dropped his hand, took two steps away from her.

Don’t go
, her treacherous heart whimpered.

Obliged by the same force that had caused her to make one romantic mistake after another, Rachael went after him.

“Your shirt,” she said by way of an excuse, and reached up with shaky fingers to twist closed the buttons that she’d undone.

He stood stony as a statue, unmoving, unblinking.

What did she want from him? Rachael swallowed, moistened her lips.

Please?

His eyes darkened, lips tightened. He was fighting his impulses. It was like watching an epic battle unfold. She could see the interplay between common sense and temptation in the way his expression changed. Full of desire one minute, closed off the next. Behind it all she spied something startling.

He was afraid of the way she made him feel.

Her blood surged, thick as the mounting tension stretching from him to her and back again.

The second kiss was wilder than she had ever dreamed it would be, hot and hard, a restless driving force to taste and smell and feel. To consume. An opportunity to conquer, to plunder, to possess. The demanding flick of his tongue against hers brought a famished response so intense, she felt weak, as if all her energy had been drained.

Brody groaned and locked his fingers in her hair. Kissed her harder, deeper, and wilder still.

The taste of him!

He tasted like power and peppermint and Valentine’s Day all rolled into one. Fanciful, romantic, idiotic.

But she could not stop. She inhaled him.

While the world shrank down into the minute width of mouths, she opened herself up to possibilities as yet undreamed. She was completely disarmed. With any other man the quick intimacy and astonishing sensuality would have appalled her, but with Brody everything was different.

Was it a difference she could trust? Or was it all an illusion of her own making?

Her lips shuddered against his mouth and her body molded to his. In Brody’s arms, she felt cherished.

The sensation scared her.

She could not let this happen. Not again. She could have sex with him, but not until she learned how to stop spinning these silly romantic fantasies.

But she wanted so badly to believe in the dream.

Rachael vacillated, ensnared between who she was and who she really wanted to be. She did not appreciate this emotional tug-of-war. For years, she’d been living in a daydream, buying into a fairy tale that did not exist, pretending that someday some man would sweep her off her feet and make her life perfect.

That was never going to happen. She’d learned that only she was in charge of her life. Only she could change the future. Only she could alter her world.

“I’m sorry. This was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that.” She splayed a hand against his chest and pushed him away.

“Me, either,” he said. “This was a bad idea.”

“Awful.”

“Terrible.”

“Illogical.”

“Irrational.”

“Insane.”

They stared at each other, both breathing hard.

One minute she was staring deep into his whirlpool brown eyes and the next second she was pressed against his chest again. His mouth closed in for a third kiss.

Third time charmed.

His tongue delivered thrills so hot Rachael feared she’d burst into flames. He sucked the oxygen right out of her lungs. Her head spun, the back of her knees wavered. If she died now, she’d have nothing to complain about.

Then he just let her go and stepped back.

Rachael stumbled against the podium.

“Good night, Rachael,” he murmured and walked out the door.

What was going on here? Was he taking himself out of the running for her heart because he was a nice guy?

K
ELVIN STOOD IN
his underwear eating cold fried chicken over the sink. He’d just gotten back from his Elks Lodge meeting and he couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d seen when he’d driven past the library.

Vehicles.

Lots of vehicles. So many cars and pickup trucks and SUVs that they couldn’t all fit in the parking lot. They were parked in the vacant lot next door and overfilled even that. They were parked along both sides of the street. Michael Henderson’s Porsche had been blocking the driveway, his fender sticking out into the road. And Brody Carlton’s Crown Vic had squatted up on the curb.

Among the conglomeration of vehicles, Kelvin had spotted Rex’s red Ford quarter-ton. What was up? If there had been a place to park, Kelvin would have gone in to see for himself.

He’d had dinner at the Elks Lodge, but curiosity dug into his belly like hunger pains and leftover Colonel Sanders made for a nice snack. But after he finished the chicken, he was still famished for information.

Kelvin tossed the thigh bone to Marianne, wiped the grease from his fingers on a paper towel, and picked the cordless phone from its base on the counter beside the microwave. Plopping down at the kitchen table, he propped his feet on the seat of the chair opposite him and punched in Rex’s number.

“Brownleigh,” he barked when Rex answered. “What the hell’s going on at the library?”

“Um . . . I don’t know what you mean,” Rex hedged.

“Don’t give me that crap. I saw your pickup in the parking lot.”

Rex cleared his throat. “It was a Romanceaholics Anonymous meeting.”

Kelvin was floored. How had the Henderson girl attracted a crowd that size? “That many people?”

“Standing room only. Over half the attendees came from another county.”

“No shit?”

“None, sir.”

“But how did people find out about it?”

“Viral video.”

“Viral video?” Kelvin repeated and pressed a palm to the back of his neck. “What’s that?”

“Rachael put a clip of her wedding video on the Web. Within two days it was the twentieth-most-downloaded video clip on YouTube.”

“YouTube?”

“Dude, seriously, you gotta get on your computer more.”

“I’m going to right now and you’re going to talk me through this thing.” Kelvin got up and headed for his study. Marianne plodded behind him.

“I’m in the middle of an IM session with a girl.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Kelvin said, turning on his computer. “If you’re trying to stop being romantic, should you be doing anything with a girl?”

“No.” Rex sounded sheepish.

“Then consider yourself saved. Hang up with her or do whatever you have to do to get out of an IM session and talk me through this. I’m getting on AOL right now.” He thought about bitching the boy out for being a traitor to his town and everything Valentine stood for by attending Rachael Henderson’s anti-romance twelve-step program, but for now, it suited his purpose to have Rex fixed on Kelvin’s needs.

Under Rex’s tutelage, he went to YouTube, found Rachael’s video, and watched it. The second it ended his stomach soured and his mouth went dry. “How many people do you think have seen this?”

“Oh, hundreds of thousands all over the world.”

“What!” Kelvin jumped up from his chair and almost dropped the phone. “That many people know about her and this romanceaholics mess?”

“She’s been bombarded with phone calls and e-mails. It’s amazing how many people out there are victims of romance.”

“Victims . . . victims . . . ” Kelvin sputtered. “I’m the victim here. Valentine is the victim. The Henderson girl is going to quash the Amusement Corp deal and Tyler is going to end up with my theme park. I have to shut her down.”

“What do you mean?” Rex asked.

“Never mind,” Kelvin said and hung up.

He tossed the cordless phone on the leather couch and paced the study. The pictures of his ancestors looked down on him. The replica of Valentine Land mocked him.

You just thought you had the town in a lock.

Rachael Henderson was on a campaign to stomp out romance. He had to find a way to stop her before she ruined everything.

B
Y THE TIME
she’d come home from the Romanceaholics meeting, her mother was already in bed.

Rachael had decided to take a calming hot bath but it wasn’t working. She sat slumped in Mrs. Potter’s claw-footed bathtub with pineapple-and-coconut-scented bath bead bubbles foaming up to her chin. Her stomach was in turmoil, still trying to digest what had happened at the library tonight.

Brody Carlton had kissed her.

Closing her eyes, Rachael leaned her head against the inflatable bath pillow and pulled in a slow, deep breath, trying to calm her racing mind.

She turned on the faucet with her foot, displacing the cooling waters with a fresh blast of hot liquid. She caught sight of her reflection in the shiny chrome fixtures. Her hair was disheveled, her mouth swollen from Brody’s kisses, her eyes murky with concern.

Who was she?

Rachael no longer recognized herself.

Who was she becoming?

On the outside, Rachael was putting on a good front, acting as if she’d conquered her belief in happily-ever- after, but inside, she was still a mess. Distorted by her long-held values and beliefs that resisted change, distorted by the filters life in Valentine had placed on her sense of identity.

What was she if she wasn’t part of a couple?

Where did she fit?

Who was she deep down inside?

Unable to answer these disturbing questions, Rachael blocked them out and submersed her head under water, trying to drown out the annoying voice in the back of her brain.

She held her breath as long as she could, listening to the sound of her own blood pounding against her eardrums, beating out a tune of deafening underwater silence. But no amount of breath holding could drown her disappointment. Finally, stripped of oxygen, she surfaced, gasping.

Demoralized, she climbed from the tub, wrapped her robe around her, blew her hair dry, and then climbed into bed. But her thoughts kept returning to Brody and what had happened at the library.

Impulsively, she picked up the cordless phone from its docking station, dialed information, got Brody’s number, and called him before she realized it was almost midnight.

“Hello?” His dusky voice, which held the same smooth bite as one-hundred-year-old scotch, filled her ear.

Rachael swallowed hard. If she weren’t fairly certain he had caller ID, she would have hung up.

“Hello?” he repeated, demanding that she respond.

Why had she called him?

Oh yeah, to tell him that his kiss had meant absolutely nothing to her. That she was totally immune to his charms. That she had no intention of falling off the wagon and into his arms.

“Rachael?”

Clearly, he did have caller ID.

“Um, yes.”

“What’s wrong? Why are you calling so late? Has something happened?”

She could just see him, immediately on alert, reaching for his gun, ready to do battle with bad guys.

“No, no, nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry to call so late. I just couldn’t sleep without clearing the air. Can you talk?”

“Hang on,” he said. “I left the bathwater running.”

“You take baths?” she asked. She’d never known a man who took baths.

“Helps me think. Hang on.”

What did he need to think about? Had their kiss impacted him as strongly as it had impacted her?

She heard him settle the phone against what sounded like a hard surface. His dresser maybe? She could imagine him standing in his bedroom. Was he dressed? In his underwear? Or maybe even naked? Her pulse rate stoked as her mind’s eye imprinted a daring picture of him. Bare-chested and bare-assed.

In a second, he was back. “What’s up?”