She's Gotta Be Mine (11 page)

When she turned, he stood in her way. Her nose almost bumped his shoulder. His voice rumbled over her. “What is it you really want?”

Gosh, he was tall. And he smelled good, an indefinable
something
. A spicy, tingly aftershave maybe? Shampoo? Definitely eau de male of the good variety, not the bad.

“And the answer is?”

She’d been sniffing him and forgetting his question. Which, now that he reminded her, made her face burn, with a mixture of embarrassment and overactive sexual imagination.
Go ahead, Bobbie, ask for what you want
. Not yet. She had to make him realize how badly he wanted her first. “To make a new friend.”

Didn’t
that
sound totally lame. The best she could do on the spur of the moment when what she really wanted to do was climb his body until she could wrap her legs around his waist.

He looked down at her, his eyes narrowed, then he shook his head. He didn’t believe the
friends
thing either. He took her hand in his big, hot, and pleasantly rough one—which raised her temperature at least two degrees—then dragged her across the front hall and into his living room.

The drawn drapes turned the contents of the room into hideous shapes. He flipped a light, banishing the monsters. In their place stood a plaid couch, its fabric looking scratchy to the touch, and a vinyl recliner still imprinted with the shape of a man’s bottom. A very big bottom.

“Was your dad a big guy?”

Following the direction of her gaze, he dropped her hand, leaving her suddenly cold. “Yeah, a big guy. And he liked baseball. Never missed a game”—he pointed to the impression—“from that chair. In front of that TV.”

Impossible to tell what he felt from either his tone or his shuttered eyes. The TV wasn’t much newer than Mrs. Porter’s, but at least the screen was larger than a postage stamp. It was old enough to still have a VCR built into it. The beaten-down shag carpet might have been brown, then again, it might have been a dirty gold to match the kitchen appliances. Behind the TV, bookshelves lined the wall, filled with hardbacks, paperbacks, DVDs, and old videotapes.

A dazzling idea lit up her brain. “Do you have any of your own movies?”

“
My
movies?”

“You know, the P-O-R-N stuff.”

He dropped his head in his hands and proceeded to run his fingers through his hair. He groaned in disgust. The sound tripped along her spine like lust.

“It was
not
a porn film.”

“But I heard—”

He lifted his head. “You heard wrong. It started out as a regular movie with some hot sex scenes. But the director cut most of the dialogue and added someone else’s private parts in my scenes—” He snapped his mouth closed. Red tinged his cheeks.

Gosh, he was embarrassed. “It’s okay,” she said, as her mind flooded with images of
his
privates. “You can tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell. Are you done in here?” He pointed. “The front door’s that way.”

Oooh
, touchy subject. Hands clenched at his sides, jaw working, he was clearly pissed with himself for offering even
that
miniscule explanation.

“And there’s only one?” she persisted.

He kept his lips firmly together, probably to avoid risking any further juicy tidbits slipping out.

“Well, I knew there was more to the story than just the gossip. But why does everyone think you made a career out of it?”

His lips turned white with the effort at silence.

“Oh yeah, you don’t care what everyone thinks.” She angled her head and chewed her lower lip, giving the matter great thought. “I could tell them for you.”

Words finally burst out. “Keep your mouth shut.”

“You’re really determined to make sure they don’t like you.”

“They can all go fu—” He stopped and glared at her, his pupils dilated. “Screw them all.”

Why did he pretend he didn’t care when it was obvious he did? A great deal. Maybe she could spread the word unobtrusively, like telling Mavis and letting the news sift through Cottonmouth. By tomorrow, he’d have a whole new reputation.

“Don’t even think it.”

She raised innocent brows. “Think what?”

“Whatever. You’re scary when you think.”

It was kind of nice that he thought he knew her so well. She turned and gazed at the rows of movies. He’d told her to get out, but...he didn’t mean it.

With the dim lighting, she shouldn’t have been able to pick out the DVD. But the name on the spine was short, in white letters against black.

“Oh my God, you have
Laura
.” She rushed to the shelf, fell to her knees beside the DVD of her most favorite movie in the whole world. She turned to him. “1944. Best picture. Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews.”

He was silent a beat or two. “It’s amateurish.”

She gaped at him. “
Amateurish
? It’s Otto Preminger’s masterpiece. The dialogue is superb. Clifton Webb is sublimely urbane and sarcastic.” She traced the name with her finger, but restrained herself from hugging the movie to her chest. “It’s so utterly romantic.”

His gaze moved from her face to her finger stroking the case. His eyes seemed to get darker. “My dad must have bought it.”

Liar, liar pants on fire
. “What’s your favorite part?”

He held a breath, and she knew he was going to lie to her. She put her hand behind her back and crossed her fingers for
real
this time.

He shifted uncomfortably. “The part where he’s getting drunk and looking at her portrait.”

Oh my God. “And he knows she’s dead, and he’s falling in love with a fantasy he can never have.”

She could still remember the first time she’d seen the movie, on late night TV when she was sixteen. She’d been right up there on that precipice with Dana Andrews. Not knowing the truth yet. It was a sensation you could never recapture, only remember and savor.

Nick stared at her as if he’d fallen off the cliff, too.

His Adam’s apple slid along his throat. Three steps closer, he towered over her. She was still on her knees. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak.

Beneath the porn star/serial killer facade lurked a closet sentimentalist.

She would have thrown herself at him.

If the darn doorbell hadn’t rung right at that very moment.

Chapter Five

His ears were ringing. Nick slapped his hand to the side of his head to make it stop. It didn’t work.

“Aren’t you going to answer the door?”

Bobbie was still on her knees in front of him. His head reeled with images of the things she could do to him in that position. The last thing on his mind was answering the door.

All he said was, “No one ever comes to my door.”

“I did.”

Shell-shocked, light-headed, he could barely recall the movie she was so entranced with. Celluloid figures flavored scenes with a hint of mystery, of the impossible, the unattainable. But Bobbie herself had made the hairs along his arms rise to attention. The zealous light in her eyes beguiled him. Her unquenchable faith in him, despite all the stories, seduced him.

He could tell her anything; she would believe. It was a heady power he held in his hands. Beyond sex. Beyond mere physical desire. Beyond the feel of her skin, the firmness of her breasts, and the gasp of her breath.

She was the fantasy portrait he could fall headlong for.

Shit. He didn’t indulge in romantic fantasies. He preferred wet dreams, down and dirty, totally emotionless. With none of the mystical, idyllic stuff of her favorite movie. Or his own paintings.

What he wanted from her was sex. Plain and simple.

The ringing started in his ears again. It
was
the doorbell.

“You want me to get it?”

“I’ll get it.” Probably a Jehovah’s Witness. Mind-blowing, body-morphing, sinful thoughts scrambling his brain, his only desire was to get rid of whoever it was as fast as possible. One glance at the too-snug fit of his jeans, they’d be running for the nearest sanctuary before he even told them to get lost.

He yanked the door open, putting a screw-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on scowl on his face.

Kent English took a big step back, holding his hands up in surrender. Then his gaze swept past Nick’s shoulder.

Shit. Bobbie hadn’t stayed where he told her to.

“What do you want?” The statement sounded like a growl even to him.

Kent shook his head. “Just a friendly call, buddy. Why don’t you introduce me to your friend back there?”

He spoke without turning. “Bobbie Jones, Kent English.”
Now get the hell out of here
.

Like a predator, he scented her beside him. A hint of cinnamon and mocha. The mouth-watering zest of something citrus. Edible smells surrounded her as if she were a man’s sustenance.

With a wolfish grin, Kent extended his hand. Nick had known Kent since grade school,
buddied
around with him during high school, and since the prodigal’s return, Kent was one of the few who didn’t cross to the other side of the street when Nick sauntered down the boulevard.

But right now, Nick resented the hell out of him.

“I’m just on my way out,” Bobbie said as she dropped Kent’s hand, then slipped past Nick through the doorway, her fingers skimming his arm above the elbow. Sparks set his skin alight.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Kent said.

“
Gotta
run,” she answered over her shoulder as she skipped down the porch steps, sprinted across the road, and through the tangle of flowers in Mrs. Porter’s yard.

“Hot,” Kent said, watching her backside. “She the new girl?”

Nick cracked his knuckles. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

“Sorry I ran her off.” Kent turned, his brown eyes saved from a whipped-puppy look by a lascivious glint.

“I was trying to get rid of her anyway.” Liar. “She keeps turning up uninvited on my doorstep.”

Where had his brain been, telling her all that crap about his art, his dad, his kitchen, his one big movie? Oh yeah, in the middle of her cleavage. A second more and he would have told her he’d been doing a favor for a friend, only to have the director dupe him. There’s a sucker born every minute, and that had definitely been his minute. Still, he’d thought the video would die a natural death. He’d never expected his mother to find out about it. Christ.

“Bobbie Jones doesn’t waste time,” Kent mused.

Nick shrugged off the memories. “Grass will never grow under that woman’s feet.”

“So. You doing her?”

Nick snorted as he moved back inside, Kent following. “She’s in a messy divorce. I don’t like messes.”

“She trailed her husband here. You know that?” Kent crossed the living room and plopped down in his father’s old recliner, the springs protesting. Nick hadn’t used it since he’d been back.

“So I’ve heard. All over town.”

“How is it I never get to scoop you, Nick, when no one else even talks to you? Got a beer?”

Nick returned, two beers in hand. Slouching down into the ancient plaid sofa, he propped his feet on the coffee table and popped his can. Christ, that made him imagine Bobbie, on her knees, making
him
pop.

Kent knocked back a slug, then wiped his lips. “You betting she’ll whack him first or he’ll whack her?”

He didn’t want to think about Bobbie and her husband in any respect. The man had to be a loser to let her get away. God, he needed to stop thinking about her entirely.

Nick’s lack of conversational participation didn’t faze Kent. “I’m betting the
husband’ll
whack her. Heard he showed up at The Cooked Goose—you know she’s working there?—and the man’s eyes damn near bulged out. He was practically hyperventilating. Something tells me she didn’t used to wear short skirts and tight little sweaters back home.” His lips curved in a leer. “So spill, does she like thigh-high stockings and
crotchless
panties?”