Her Sexiest Mistake (5 page)

He peered into her face, so close now that she could see his eyes were more than light chocolate, but lined in dark as well, with specks of gold dancing in them. “Stop staring,” she said and lifted a hand to cover her brow.

He simply took her wrist in his hand and held it out. “You’re burned. What did you do, catch yourself with a whatcha-call-it, a curling iron?”

“It’s nothing.”

His other hand came up and gently probed at the sensitive skin, making her hiss. His eyes cut to hers. “Nothing, huh?”

Her belly quivered. Hunger, she decided, but, damn it, deep down she knew it was his touch. He was waking up her body again, making it remember how wonderful and amazing and shockingly perfect last night had been. Trying to cover this unwelcome reaction to him, she shoved his hand away. “Just a…work incident.” No big deal. She’d laughed it off countless times today with all the others at work, despite deep down remaining off balance about the “suspicious” incident.

But having this man look at her with concern darkening his eyes had an effect she couldn’t have possibly imagined: the odd urge to set her head down on someone’s shoulder, someone who cared about her, someone who would tell her she was going to be okay.

Only she’d never had the luxury of someone else’s shoulder in her entire life, and she wasn’t going to start now.

“A work incident?” That frown still marred his lips. “I thought you were some PR wizard.”

That almost made her smile. “Advertising.”

“You kick some ass today, Mia Appleby, advertising exec extraordinaire?”

“You know it.” She cocked her head and studied him, blackening eye, cut lip, and all. “You’re looking a little worse for wear yourself.”

“Nah.” He pulled a face, then swore and lifted a hand to his lip.
“Shit.”

“Uh huh. You need help cleaning that up?”

He was now gingerly touching the blooming bruise, licking his cut lip. “No, thanks. I’m still bleeding from our last encounter.”

“Suit yourself.” She began to back away but couldn’t resist running her gaze over his face one last time.
No, you can’t have him again.
“You might want to give yourself a break from basketball for a day or so.”

“Are you kidding?” His eyes lit. “We
won.
”

Her heart squeezed with competitive spirit. With lust. And more. She’d have to make sure to avoid the basketball courts. The entire street.

And especially his bedroom.

He touched his lip again, looked at the blood on his fingers, and shook his head. “I’m losing my touch.”

Now that he was most definitely
not
doing, but before her thoughts could take her there she firmly walked away.

“See ya,” he said, only slightly mockingly. “Or if you get your way, not.”

That’s right. They would not be seeing each other.
Keep walking.
She managed it, too, and only when she’d taken the turn on the path, did she glance back.

He was gone.

Good. Perfect. Mission accomplished. She’d distanced herself from him both physically and mentally.

Only, oddly enough, the surge of victory never came.

Hope couldn’t believe how insanely people drove in California, but finally she found Mia’s street. The block was nice, and there was not a trailer park within miles, she’d bet.

Mia’s place was Spanish style, with a ceramic-tile roof and stucco walls. It was barely dusk, but streetlights flickered on and so did some house lights around her. Even with the dark clouds overhead, the neighborhood felt warm and friendly. Pretty.

Classy, too.

There was an outdoor basketball court at the end of the street, and beyond that a small green area and tiny park with a set of swings and a slide and a few benches. And beyond that, woods, lots and lots of woods.

She got out of her car, and her heart knocking against her ribs again, she knocked.

Thunder cracked, making her jerk. She knocked again.

But no one answered, and as the sun began to dip into the sky her aloneness settled into her gut, along with the realization that she had no money and nowhere else to go.

Inside her house, Mia let out a long breath and moved through the wide space. Her own haven. In her bedroom she removed all her protective layers—her Michael Kors, her Prada, her makeup—and when she was stripped bare, she showered.

And then, not looking at her missing eyebrow or the angry red welt/burn above it, she wrapped herself in her French silk robe and padded barefoot through the living room to stand in front of her huge picture windows. The storm had moved in and rain slashed down with a soothing sound.

Her hair fell straight and wet to her shoulders, dripping into the silk and cooling her still-heated skin. Beneath her robe, her body seemed different.

Anticipatory. Hopeful. Tight and achy.

It made no sense. She’d gotten off just last night. And as Kevin knew what he was doing in that department, she’d have thought the effects would last her a while.

And yet, truthfully, it wasn’t mindless sex she yearned for…

But familiarity. Someone who knew her. Someone to smile at her and tell her she was fine.

Since that was a discomforting thought, she moved to her liquor cabinet and poured herself a glass of wine, trying not to think about Kevin at home right now, possibly also fresh from a shower, stretched out naked on his bed, big and lean and gorgeous. Sipping her drink, she moved through her living room, enjoying the smooth, shiny hardwood floors beneath her feet, the lovely silence.

The doorbell rang, shattering that silence, making her jump and nearly spill her wine. Then, before she could recover or even react, a heavy knock followed.

“Coming,” she muttered and moved toward the door. On tiptoes, she put her eye to the peephole, then went still.

Kevin stood there, his face very close to the opening as he waved.

She looked down at herself. Silk robe and nothing else. Bare feet. Wet hair.

No makeup.

She wished she’d taken a shot of whiskey instead of the glass of wine she still held, because her body wanted to let him in.
Everywhere.
Luckily, her brain held back.
Good, brain.
“I’m a little busy,” she said through the door.

“This isn’t about you, Mia. Open up. It’s raining like a mother.”

She took another peek. He’d stepped back a bit and was already drenched. He’d changed, too, into a pair of Levi’s and that leather jacket, and with the porch light glaring on his face, thrusting it into bold relief, she could see he had one hell of a shiner blooming along his right eye, and that that eye was no longer looking at her with heat and lust.

He’d been riding his bike.

He wasn’t alone, she saw now, but whoever was with him had their face averted.

In fact, it appeared that Kevin was gripping the back of that person’s jacket, holding them against their will.

What the hell?

She opened the door. Kevin was indeed holding on to the back of the person next to him, a small, thin teenage girl dressed in black from head to toe, with various studs and belts and chains. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing much,” he said, tightening his grip when the Goth girl tried to sidestep away. “Just catching snoopy intruders in my bedroom. Listen, next time you want to spy on me, do it yourself, all right? She’s just a damn kid.”

The “damn kid” raised her face, which was pale and streaked with anger, sullenness, and undeniable humiliation. “I wasn’t spying for her!”

Mia took in more details. The teen had jet-black hair, the color that could have come only from a bottle, and a cheap one at that. It was long, hanging in her pasty white face. Her makeup consisted of thick black eyeliner and black gloss, both of which had run in the rain. She wore a myriad of silver hoops up one ear and a brow piercing. “I don’t know what this is about,” Mia said. “But I’m busy.”

“You’re going to want to hear this.” Kevin gently but firmly pushed the teen inside past Mia, following uninvited into her foyer.

Kevin let go of the girl, who crossed her arms over herself and hunched her bony shoulders, the two of them dripping on her floor. “Tell her,” he said to the teen, who rolled her lips inward. “Oh, now you go mum. Great. Nice.” His lip was a little puffy, and there was that bruise beneath his eye, and he looked like maybe he’d come to the end of his patience. “You’re done screaming holy murder then?”

“You grabbed me!”

“You were in my house. In my bedroom. Searching my drawers!”

Mia shook her head. “She was breaking and entering? Why didn’t you call the cops?”

Kevin sent her a scathing look. Nope, he was
definitely
done lusting after her. “You ever been to juvy, Mia? Not a friendly place. I just want to get to the bottom of this, and I want to get there now.”

“But I have no idea…” Mia started, breaking off when the teen let out a harsh laugh that might have doubled as a sob.

The girl stood there, skinny and scrawny and maybe all of sixteen, quivering in her black lace-up boots as the sound escaped her lips again. Confused, Mia turned to Kevin, whose eyes were downright chilly.

“Are you really
that
self-absorbed,” he asked, “that you don’t recognize your own niece?”

M
ia stared at Kevin as the words sank in, then turned back to the girl.

Much of the teen’s bravado had faded away. With the heavy black of her eyeliner and mascara smudged beneath her eyes and all that stringy black hair in her face, she looked like an Addams Family reunion reject. She was nibbling on a chipped black fingernail, already chewed to the nub.

“What’s your name?” Mia asked hoarsely.

The girl shrugged, and though she looked like a drowned rat, it did nothing to dispel the obvious fact that she had a major attitude.

Kevin divided a look between them, then turned to the teen. “So she didn’t know? She had no idea you were in my place?”

“Of course I didn’t—” Mia started, stopping in shock when he held up a hand in her face.

“I was talking to the kid,” he said.

Yeah, and he’d be talking to her fist, except…She stared at the girl. “Your name?”

Once again the girl pressed her lips together.

“Tell her,” Kevin said, nudging her, though doing so with a clear gentleness. He seemed so tall and big next to her, almost formidable, a definite contrast to the sexy lover and basketball player Mia had already seen.

The girl looked up at him, silently imploring.

“Tell her,” Kevin said again in that same infinitely patient but inexorable tone.

He had a voice on him—Mia would give him that—the kind that could coax the most saintly to sin, the law-abiding to throw caution to the wind, and a woman to forget her inhibitions. She thought of him teaching, talking to teenagers, and she had to admit, he could probably sell the most boring textbook ever written.

It certainly had sold her last night. One naughty, wicked word from those lips to her ears and she’d been gone.

The girl reacted by sidling slightly closer to him as she looked at Mia. “Hope,” she whispered.

Mia leaned in. “You hope what?”

A glare was her only answer.

“Her name is Hope,” Kevin clarified.

And Mia froze. “Hope…
Appleby
?”

Her answer was the universal gaze teenagers all over the country had perfected, the one which said
Fuck off and die, but before you do, please take care of me.

Oh, my God.
Hope.

Sugar’s daughter.

To Mia’s shame, she’d never met her. Sugar had gotten pregnant the night of that long ago BBQ, and since Mia had never been back…

Another shame, but though she hadn’t planted herself there physically, she had done her best with letters and phone calls, not that that was enough.

Still, Mia had tried, sending checks, too, money that had surely gone toward barbeque wardrobes and tacky furnishings for the trailer, at least until her mother had died five years ago in a car accident.

After that, Mia still sent money, but Sugar hadn’t been as easy to keep in touch with. As she wasn’t much of a letter writer, either—and let’s face it, there hadn’t ever been much love between them—years had gone by without a word or thank-you. The only way Mia even knew Sugar received the money Mia sent was that the checks had always been immediately cashed.

Mia had done her best not to care, sending cards and checks directly to Hope as well, even though she’d never received an acknowledgement.

If asked, Mia would have said she hadn’t needed or wanted one. But to see the kid here, without warning…“My God. What’s going on?”

Another jerk of the shoulder.

Lost, Mia looked at Kevin. He shrugged, too.

Damn, she wished she’d downed her wine. She wanted to now but felt a little self-conscious doing so in front of a minor. “Hope.” Mia struggled with the words. Funny, that. She was known for being good in an emergency, for always knowing what to do or say, but for the first time in her life she felt clueless. “What are you doing here?”

Hope kicked the toe of her black-soled boot against the hardwood floor, leaving a dark scuff mark. With the smoothness of one well used to covering her tracks, she stepped on it. “I thought I’d, you know, come see LA.” Her voice was soft, and thick with a Southern drawl.

Mia did not so much as glance at Kevin. She’d told no one where she was from, not even Tess, and that wouldn’t change now. “Is Sugar with you?”

“No.”

“Did you fly?”

“No.”

“Did you take the train?”

“No.”

Kevin sighed and nudged Hope again. “Listen, you got lucky. You could have pulled your little B&E session on a cop’s house. Or one with a guy who might have been extremely happy to find a young girl in his bedroom. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah. You don’t want to do me.”

Kevin pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m a teacher,” he said. “A high school teacher. That means that I supposedly have a boatload of patience, but that’s a complete crock. What I have, Hope, is an unfortunate understanding of how your mind works. We’re not the bad guys here.”

She said nothing, but scuffed the wood again with another kick of her foot.

Mia winced and eyed her perfect wood floor.

“Talk to us, Hope,” Kevin said.

“I didn’t mean to break into your house.” She spoke directly to her boots. “And I wasn’t stealing nothing, I swear it.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Kevin said. “I said you were snooping.”

“I was looking around. I wanted to see her stuff.”

“Whose? Mia’s?” He asked this in a much more patient tone than Mia could have come up with. She wanted answers, and she wanted them now, but Kevin wasn’t rushing anything. In his eyes was an understanding of Hope, one that said he’d been there.

Hope nodded. Yes, she’d thought she was looking at Mia’s stuff.

Mia straightened, momentarily forgetting she stood there in nothing but her robe, gripping a glass of wine. “So why were you in
Kevin’s
house?”

“Because I mixed up the address.”

“Keep talking,” Kevin said.

“I didn’t know anything about her, okay?” Hope lifted her face, bright now with embarrassment. “I wanted to see what she was like, see if I was going to want to stay, and I messed up the two and five of the address.”

“So you’ve never been to your aunt’s place?”

Mia’s stomach tightened as Hope shook her head.

Kevin was nodding as if he understood this crazy situation perfectly. “So you were looking in my drawers, thinking you had Mia’s things in front of you?”

“Yes.” Again she rolled her lips together, as if fighting with herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words seeming to cost her. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.”

“I got that.”

Hope looked at him. Her face was still mostly covered with her long, streaky black hair, but she actually made eye contact.

He smiled approvingly.

She didn’t smile back, but she kept her head up.

“Now tell us what you’re doing here all alone.”

She kicked at the wood floor again, and Mia did her best to not yell
Stop!

“I wanted to come to LA like Aunt Apple did,” Hope said. “I wanted to get rich and live like this.”

“Aunt Apple,” Kevin repeated pointedly and looked at Mia, who suddenly wished she’d downed the entire
bottle
of wine.

“Yeah. I mean, look at this place,” Hope said, gesturing with a jerk of her shoulder at the foyer into the large, clean, beautifully decorated living room.

Mia knew exactly what it looked like to her: a mansion.

“I want to live like this,” Hope whispered in awe.

Mia went to say that it took a hell of a lot more than want, but Kevin shot her a warning glance and she slowly closed her mouth. She hated that he was running this show but admitted to herself she was so far out of her league she couldn’t even
see
her league.

“How did you get here?” Kevin asked Hope.

“For my sixteenth birthday a couple months ago, she sent me money. Five hundred dollars.”

Kevin let out a low whistle. “Score.”

“I bought a car. An eighty-nine Dodge Diplomat. I drove out here using the return address from the card she sent, but the ink got smeared when I got pulled over and spilled a Coke—”

“You got pulled over?” Mia asked, horrified.

“Only once,” she said defensively. “I was speeding by accident.”

“Oh, my God.”

Kevin shot her another zip-it look. Mia just shook her head, feeling sick. The kid had driven across the country, by herself. Good God, what if it had been her
street
name that got smeared? Hope might have gotten lost entirely, and then been at someone else’s mercy, someone possibly not as kind or understanding as Kevin had been to find her prowling through his things.

“I think my car died in front of your house,” Hope said morosely. “It was on its last legs anyway.”

Mia let out a choked laugh. The implications of it—of a young girl on her own, and all the inherent dangers she must have faced—made her nauseous. Anything could have gone wrong, and for a moment, thinking about it, she could hardly speak. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I dunno.” Another kick of the wood. “You’ve never called me.”

Over Hope’s head, Kevin looked at Mia. “Never?” he repeated in an even tone that didn’t need any recrimination in it because it was all in his eyes.

“Never,” Hope said.

Kevin’s eyes were cool now. “Huh.”

Oh, yeah, he was done wanting her. She opened her mouth to defend herself, to try to explain the complicated reasons for the lack of physical contact and that she and Sugar had never been close.

It sounded like a cop-out.

It
was
a cop-out.

“Does your family know where you are?” Kevin asked.

Hope shook her head. “It’s just my mom. She probably thinks I’m at a friend’s house.”

“For days?”

“It’s only been three, but yeah.” Beneath the makeup, she went red. “I—we’ve had some…problems.”

“Like?”

“Um…” Another kick of those black boots on her wood floor. “It’s complicated.”

“Did it involve the police?”

“Sorta.”

Oh, that was it. Mia tossed back the wine.

“All right, my little snooper,” Kevin said. “Wait here.” He cocked his head at Mia and offered a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Mia? A minute?”

Both Hope and Kevin looked at her, seeing her wet hair, her lack of clothes, her tightfisted clench on the now empty wineglass.

And she’d never felt more naked, more vulnerable in her life.

Kevin’s eyes didn’t zero in on her body, as she’d have liked, but stayed on her face, his mouth grim. Just last night he’d had his hands and mouth and body all over hers in wild, hot, reckless abandon.

Now this. Under different circumstances, she might have relished making him feel an inch tall, but without her armor she felt helpless.

Finally, taking matters into his own hands, Kevin smiled reassuringly at Hope and pulled Mia by the arm into the kitchen.

Yanking free, Mia went directly to the counter and poured herself another glass of wine. “I can handle it from here.”

He cocked a brow as he leaned his hips back against her table. An insolent, know-it-all pose. “Can you now?
Apple?
”

She looked right into his eyes wanting to kill him with one glance, but at the last minute she held back, knowing damn well if she let him know how much it bothered her, he’d love it.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Cat got your tongue,
Apple
?”

“Call me that again and you’ll be walking funny tomorrow.”

He let out a slow grin, even as she silently kicked her own ass for revealing her hand. “I can handle it from here,” she repeated.

“She’s a runaway. A niece you don’t even know, apparently.”

“Oh, and you know all of
your
family?”

“You bet your sweet ass I do. They’re family,” he said simply.

Yeah, he was the kind of guy who attached and attached deeply. A man who liked his family, faults and all, a man who knew kids and cared about them. He’d probably give a stranger the shirt off his back, even when the economy was decent and any bum sitting on a corner begging could get a job flipping burgers if he wanted. “Look, Hope’s momma and I…we had our problems. We’re not close.”

“Lots of families aren’t close. They don’t go sixteen years without seeing each other.”

“Well, my family does.”

“Where does Hope come from?” he asked. “The accent is…what? Alabama?”

She was already feeling stripped bare, and it had nothing to do with being nearly naked. To hell if she was going to give him
that
information.

“You know what?” he said, tossing up his hands. “Fine, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me anything.” He strode toward the door, then at the last minute turned back. “Just don’t sweep this one under the carpet, Mia.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that this isn’t like last night. You can’t just get into this for the fun and the heat and then jump back out when it suits you. This time when someone gets hurt, it’s going to be a kid.”

“Who got hurt last night?”

He stared at her, then shook his head, mouth tight, eyes unfathomable. “Forget it. But that’s one mixed-up kid out there. She’s fragile. Needy.”

“Are you kidding me? She’s tough as nails. And she needs no one.”

He just shook his head and muttered something that sounded a lot like
How can someone so smart be so stupid?

After the day she’d had, this made her see red. “Get out.”

“Yeah, I figured that one was coming.” But he didn’t move. “Listen, I’m going to do something I told myself I wouldn’t.”

“What, stop dragging your knuckles?”

“I’m trying to help.”

“Well, don’t.”

Shaking his head, he put his hand on the door, but then once again turned back. “I realize you probably don’t hear these words very often, Ms. On Top of Her World, but trust me on this one. You
are
wrong.”

“I can handle this.”

“This? Jesus.” He shook his head. “It’s not a business deal, Mia. Or a guy you’re stomping the shit out of. It’s not a ‘this’ at all. It’s a girl.”

“And what do you know about girls?”

She knew her mistake the minute he flashed her a quick grin, showing a glimpse of the laid-back, bad-ass biker she’d slept with last night. “I know enough.”