Addicted to Love (25 page)

She was doing it again. Falling for the wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong place. Following her reckless, unrestrained heart when she should be listening to her head. She knew the dangers of this headlong feeling. She’d been here before. Many times. And each and every time, she’d come away singed.

Pull away, run, get out of here while you still can.

But romance addict that she was, Rachael could not obey her own admonition.

His kiss was hot. A searing brand.

His lips made her body quiver.

She made a soft mewling sound. He pushed his inquisitive tongue past her teeth, wrapped his arms around her, and drew her up tight against the expanse of his chest.

Rachael was surprised by his equilibrium, but she shouldn’t have been. She already knew he was a steady, sturdy man. Built for endurance. Strong and reliable. Centered. Objective. Balanced.

In the past she’d been drawn to showy, charming men with unusual careers and big personalities. She’d been dazzled by flash and brash when what she’d really needed was substance. She’d never been with a man like him.

You’re not with him now. He’s not your boyfriend or your lover. He’s just the guy who lives across the street.

A guy who took her home with him so she wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail. A guy who brought her peaches when she was feeling down. A guy who seemed to understand her sometimes crazy, illogical behavior without judging her.

He threaded both hands through her hair, cradled her head in his palms. Holding her in place while he explored her mouth as if he was determined to unearth every secret she’d ever kept.

She melted. Just turned to butter right there in his backyard, beside the churning whirlpool. Melted and morphed and melded into him.

“Aw,” he murmured against her lips, “you taste like peaches.”

“Your peaches,” she whispered right back.

That made him chuckle as his mouth took possession of hers all over again.

Her pulse swirled. Light, airy, floaty. Swept away.

This second kiss was fiercer than the first. Demanding, urgent, skipping beyond subtleties to unveil the hungry animal lurking inside the controlled man. A beast yanking at its chain. This kiss told her Brody Carlton was not as restrained as he seemed.

The thought scared her.

And excited her even more.

The insistent probing of his tongue against hers conveyed an urgency she’d never guessed prowled inside him. The commanding pressure of his lips induced a helpless response from her so intense it felt as if time and space vanished and she was left dangling over a bottomless abyss by a thread as thin as a spider’s web.

He sucked the breath right out of her body, leaving her weak-kneed and giddy. Her mind spun ridiculous fantasies. She saw them standing at a wedding chapel, a preacher pronouncing them man and wife. She saw herself giving birth to his babies, watched him smile at her as if she’d given him the most prized gift in the world. She envisioned them growing old together, holding hands as they strolled along Valentine Lake every evening at sunset.

Brody kissed her harder and deeper, holding on to her as if he couldn’t get enough. He made her feel powerful and cherished and terrified.

Rachael teetered. Caught on the twin horns of hope and fear. Oh, this was crazy. Wishing for something that did not exist. Unable to separate fantasy from reality. Seeking, always seeking the refuge of romance when it had done nothing but rob her of her vision to see life clearly. To see men clearly.

Brody was not some brave, stalwart knight who could slay all her dragons. He had no magical powers to wipe away her troubles. She would not find the answers she needed in his kisses. Falling in love with him would not solve all her problems. He was just a decent guy, with his flaws and fears like anybody else.

She had to stop this and she had to stop it now. Rachael jerked back. Ending the kiss. Ending the daydream.

Immediately, he let her go. He did not try to hang on. He did not cling.

She spun away and, head down, ran for the back gate. She never looked behind her. She couldn’t bear looking behind her because she knew what she would see.

Dear, battle-scarred Brody, standing there on his one strong leg, looking hurt and confused and angry and sad and vulnerable. She couldn’t bear knowing that she had led him on, made reckless promises with her lips.

Promises she dared not keep.

Chapter Twelve

A
cross town, Giada Vito sat in her office reading the
Texas Monthly
article. A huge smile broke across her face and she realized she had an important ally she’d been overlooking.

With the article, Rachael Henderson had given her a helpful gift, considering that Kelvin’s recent standing in the polls had spiked with the addition of the bond election for Valentine Land.

Giada gritted her teeth.

Theme parks. Fantasy lands. Artifice. Bah!

A theme park might bring in jobs, but at what cost to the town? The last thing Giada wanted was to see her adopted hamlet turned into another Anaheim or Kissimmee with tons of traffic and congestion as tourism crowded out what was real and true and honest about Valentine.

According to
Texas Monthly,
Rachael wasn’t the only one who disdained misguided romanticism and oversold commercialism.

She had to talk to Rachael and convince her to join her campaign. It was going to take a lot of scraping to win against the man whose thumb was pressed firmly on the town’s jugular. And Rachael — with her contingency of recovering romanceaholics — could be her ace in the hole.

Deciding to skip her late-afternoon walk around Valentine Lake, Giada hopped into her Fiat, left the schoolgrounds, and headed for Rachael’s house. Five minutes later, she turned down the tree-shrouded street at the same time she saw Kelvin Wentworth’s Cadillac approaching from the opposite end of the block.

What was the irritating man doing here?

She parked at the curb to the left of Rachael’s home at the same time Kelvin pulled up on the right. Simultaneously, they hopped out of their cars. He had a copy of
Texas Monthly
rolled up like he was going to whack something with it. Giada’s copy was sticking out of the handbag she had slung across her shoulder.

“Vito,” Kelvin said in a tone that was half-sneer, half-amusement. The sneer she understood. The amusement part irritated her.

“Wentworth,” she countered, disdain in her voice. She hurried up the sidewalk, trying to get ahead of him, but she was wearing stilettos and Kelvin’s long legs ate up the ground until they were rushing shoulder to shoulder onto the front porch.

She rang the bell. Kelvin hammered on the wooden door.

“You oaf,” she said. “You’ll scare the poor woman to death with your clumsy pumping.”

“No one’s ever complained about my pumping before,” Kelvin said, a wolfish gleam in his eyes.

Giada frowned, and then she caught the sexual innuendo. She’d meant to say pounding, not pumping. Although she’d been raised from childhood with English as her second language, it was still a complicated and confusing tongue. And she’d left herself wide open to Wentworth’s smirk. She made a face at him and rang the bell again.

She tried not to notice how good he smelled. He wore a spicy-scented cologne that enticed her nose. Kelvin laughed; the sound was rich and deep. It sent strange prickles up her spine. Prickles she did not enjoy.

“You’re here to join forces with her,” Kelvin said flatly.

Giada didn’t answer. She didn’t owe him an explanation. The air was thick and laced with the fragrance of the rust-colored chrysanthemums flourishing in the flower box underneath the window. She poked the doorbell again. In spite of the pink Volkswagen sitting in the driveway, she was beginning to suspect Rachael wasn’t home.

Kelvin stepped closer, crowding her space.

The tiny hairs at the nape of her neck lifted.
Step aside. Move back.

And let him win?

No way.

She didn’t have to dither long. Kelvin was the first to move. He took her elbow, spun her around to face him.

A thrill of alarm buzzed through her. Her heart reeled recklessly against her rib cage. She turned her head, unable to meet his gaze, reaching for the doorbell again.
Please be home, Rachael. Answer the door.

But there was no salvation. No rescue.

Kelvin dropped the magazine he’d been holding. It hit the welcome mat with a soft plop and his arms went around her waist. Her breath left her body in one abrupt whoosh. Her knees turned to noodles as his big hands settled on her hips.

His body heat seeped through the fabric of her silk skirt, past the lace of her thong panties, and into her quivering flesh. Liquid heat rolled through her, licking like flames. He splayed his hands, covering her buttocks with his big fingers. The sensation spreading out through her nerve endings was more provocative than if he’d actually stroked her bare flesh.

He bent his head.

Giada’s heart lodged in her throat.
He’s going to kiss me.

What scared her most was that she didn’t even try to get away. Her mace lay forgotten in the bottom of her purse. Her good sense was addled by the fragrance of his cologne mingled with the scent of fall flowers. His warm breath feathered the fine hairs at her forehead. His hands were still splayed across her buttocks. He pulled her up flush against him.

What was she doing? This was a small town and she had no doubt that at least one nosy neighbor was peeping from behind mini-blind slats.

His mouth covered hers and the first thing she thought was,
He tastes just like licorice.

Licorice had been her father’s favorite flavor of chewing gum. He’d always carried a pack in his front pocket. When she was particularly successful — bringing home good grades, coming in first at dance recital, winning first place in the science fair — he’d reward her with a stick of gum. Giada associated licorice with reward.

Kelvin’s kiss sucked all the air from her body. Sucked common sense right out of her head. She would never have guessed a man like Kelvin Wentworth — born and reared in a small town that he’d never left — could kiss like this!

He kissed as if the sun rose and fell on her lips. As if the earth spun on its axis because of her. His kiss was dizzying and demented and utterly unforgettable.

What shocked Giada most of all was her uninhibited response.

She’d often thought he was egotistical and opinionated and thickheaded. A Neanderthal who’d once ran a football so fast and far that he’d bamboozled the town for all eternity.

But she wasn’t thinking those things now.

What she thought now was a lyrical throwback to her Italian girlhood. She remembered a story her grand-mother had told her about the magic of a kiss and the power of true love. Her father had pooh-poohed the stories from her mother’s side of the family. Romance, he’d taught her, would lead her down the wrong path. If she wanted to make it in the world, she needed a solid grounding in math and science and a firm, sensible head on her shoulders.

Instinct urged her to wrap her arms around Kelvin’s neck, pull his head down closer, deepen their connection, extend the kiss.

And if Rachael Henderson hadn’t chosen exactly that moment to come barreling up the sidewalk, Giada had little doubt that’s exactly what she would have done.

Kelvin broke the kiss, stepped away from her. In unison, they turned to see Rachael standing on the bottom step, eyes wide, breathing heavy. Her lips looked swollen. Giada pressed the back of her hand against her own mouth, still moist from Kelvin’s.

“What do you want?” Rachael cried, the panicky note in her voice out of step with any misgivings she might have felt by finding the mayor kissing the high school principal on her doorstep. Something else was going on with her. “Why are you here?”

She and Kelvin both spoke at once, drowning each other out.

Rachael raised a hand, climbed up the steps. “Please,” she said. “Get out of my way. I have no desire to speak to either one of you.” Shouldering them aside, she pushed into the house and slammed the door behind her.

Kelvin turned to Giada. He gave a shrug. “I guess we caught her at a bad time.”

“It appears that is the case.”

“I’ll just come back later,” he said.

“Me also.”

Neither one of them made a move to leave.

“What you’re doing is a mistake,” he said.

“What is? Trying to stop you from turning this town into a theme park?” Giada asked.

“It’s the only thing that’s going to save Valentine.”

“Says you.”

“Yeah,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Says me.”

“The town should be allowed to hear both sides, to make an informed decision. It’s time you stopped treating Valentine as if it’s your child and you’re Big Daddy who knows best.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Spoken like a foreigner who came strolling into town without any sense of history, determined to muck things up and ruin our traditions with dangerous ideas.”

Giada sank her hands onto her hips, her mouth burning with regret. She’d been an idiot to let him kiss her. If she’d had some Scope, she’d gargle and spit right here. “I am a United States citizen. I have lived in this town for fifteen years and in this country for twenty. I belong in Valentine just as much as you do.”

Kelvin snorted.

Giada’s blood boiled.

She spun on her heels and scurried down the stairs, her knees stiff with anger, her movements jerky. Egotistical bastard.

It wasn’t until she was speeding away in her Fiat that she realized he’d won. He’d chased her off.

She stopped at the red light in front of the Dairy Queen and slapped the steering wheel with both hands, imagining just how pumped up and pleased with himself he was feeling right now. Giada glowered at her reflection in the rearview mirror. Kelvin might have won that little skirmish, but she was determined to win the war.

L
EG QUIVERING
, B
RODY
plopped down into the lawn chair, his skin suddenly slick with sweat. He saw the hem of Rachael’s skirt swish as she jerked the tall wooden gate closed behind her. He heard the latch click firmly in the lock.