The Last First Kiss (Harlequin Special Edition) (11 page)

That was simple enough to explain. “I remember everything I read or see, even just in passing. And as for having a rough time of it—” he got back to her initial question “—I didn’t. Living up to my father’s high standards helped me achieve as much as I did. There are easier things than getting through medical school,” he told her.

She was certain that it had been hard. But she was just as certain that he was capable of it. “You would have done that on your own. Don’t look so surprised. Just because I gave you a hard time when we were kids doesn’t mean I didn’t think you were smart or capable of making something of yourself. Young as I was, I always
knew
you’d be somebody when you grew up. Truth was, you made me feel a little inadequate. That was part of the reason I gave you such a hard time,” she confided.

“And what was the rest of the reason for giving me such a hard time? Why
did
you give me a such hard time, Kara?”

“I already told you,” she answered, looking back at the road. Glancing at the speedometer, she realized that she was pressing down too hard on the gas. The needle was nosing its way past the sixty mark. She eased back. The subject was getting her too agitated.
He
was getting her too agitated.

Dave did a quick mental review. No, he hadn’t missed anything. “No, you didn’t.”

“Well, okay, maybe not in so many words,” she allowed. Maybe the man didn’t take behaving “holier than thou” as a reason to get her back up. “Because you looked down on me.”

“No, I didn’t,” he protested. He’d thought of her as annoying, a brat and, at times, skillfully humiliating, especially for her age. But he’d never thought himself better than her. Just nicer.

She knew what she knew. “Yeah, you did. There was a two-year age difference between us, but it might as well have been twenty. Those two years made you act as if I were beneath you. Insignificant,” Kara added for good measure, vividly remembering those years and how it felt.

Dave stuck to his guns. “That’s not what I thought. You were so fearless, you made me feel self-conscious. And there was that incident with the snake,” he reminded her pointedly. “You didn’t exactly endear yourself to me with that.”

Handling snakes had never bothered her. But she knew it bothered him and she’d acted on it. “That only happened later. After you—” She sighed, stopping herself. “Never mind, there’s no point in rehashing all this old stuff. Just water under the bridge,” she told him.

She didn’t want to open up any old wounds and make them fresh. That could all be pushed into the background. She had a mother to ease into her place and so did he. That was far more important than renewing any old squabbles with him that she knew were not about to be won today.

Kara spared a glance in his direction. “Any fries left?”

He hadn’t realized that he’d been eating all this time. The fries were almost all gone. But there were still a few stragglers left.

Dave raised his brow. “Want one?”

“No, I’m taking inventory,” she answered sarcastically, then stopped herself. Maybe that sounded a little too sharp. She laughed a bit self-consciously. “Sorry, old habits die hard. Yes, I want one.”

Since her hands were on the wheel, he decided just to put a French fry in her mouth. Taking the largest one that was left, he held it up to her lips and said, “I know I’m going to regret saying this, but open your mouth.”

She turned her head slightly toward him. Even so, Dave saw that her eyes were laughing at him as she complied. When she closed her lips again, they brushed against his fingers.

Or perhaps his fingers brushed against her lips. In whatever order it happened, the effect was still the same. An electrical surge, quick and jolting, passed through both of them at the same time.

Chapter Eleven

K
ara’s skin felt hot and her heart suddenly leaped without warning, pounding madly like some impromptu marching-band drum soloist.

Belatedly, she shifted her eyes back to the road and realized she was about to go right through a red light. Alarmed, she slammed on the brakes.

Kara felt the back end of the vehicle fishtailing first to the right, then to the left as she attempted to compensate for the sickening lunge by turning the steering wheel quickly in the opposite direction.

The front tires had gone well over the intersection’s white line before she finally managed to get the car to stop. Fortunately for them, there was no through traffic.

Her heart was pounding so hard that it hurt. She told herself it was because of the near miss, but it had begun beating erratically before she ever had to slam on her brakes and she knew it.

Her heart was pounding because of him. How dumb was that? she asked herself.

Beside her, Dave had both of his hands braced against the dashboard, anticipating a traumatic collision at the very least.

When there wasn’t one, he blew out a breath and tried to relax. His neck and shoulders felt as stiff as if they’d suddenly been turned to iron.

“You charge extra for that?” he cracked, attempting to make light of the near-overwhelming moment.

Who
was
this man beside her? The Dave she remembered hadn’t had a sense of humor—possibly because she hadn’t really given him anything to laugh about, she thought now ruefully. But he would have definitely read her the riot act at being this careless—all but flying through a red light and then almost sending them both through the windshield in her attempt to stop the car.

Letting out a long, shaky breath, she shook her head in response to his question. “The first one’s on the house,” she told him.

Dave looked at the traffic light and then back at her. She wasn’t moving.

“Light’s green,” he prompted and then leaned forward, peering closer at her. “And so are you,” he observed.

“There’s a reason for that,” she murmured, moving her foot back to the gas pedal. Her stomach had tied itself up in a knot.

She wasn’t used to doing stupid things like that. Granted, there were times when she drove fast, maybe a wee bit faster than the speed limit, but she was
never
reckless or preoccupied.

Until just this moment.

Once is all it takes,
Kara reminded herself ruefully.

“You want to pull over for a minute?” Dave suggested. “We could switch places and I could take over. After all, it is my car and I’ve finished eating,” he added.

She didn’t want to surrender the driver’s seat. If she did, she knew that she’d never hear the end of it from him. As it was, she probably wouldn’t anyway, Kara thought.

Never hear the end of it? Listen to yourself,
the little voice in her head silently mocked.
Like you’re going to keep seeing him or running into him once this charade is over? C’mon, Kara. This is all temporary. You know that. What’s wrong with you?

She had no answer to that, no idea why she was behaving the way she was. She felt restless and unsettled, as if she was waiting for something to happen without really knowing what—or why.

“Kara, are you okay?” Dave was asking her. When she looked in his direction, she saw concern in his eyes.

“I’m fine,” she snapped out a little too forcefully, ashamed of herself the moment she did. “Just can’t seem to be able to eat and drive at the same time,” she added a bit stiffly.

“Yeah, that must be it,” he agreed for the sake of peace. But he didn’t believe it for a second. Kara could easily do five things at once and keep track of each; she always had. Something else was going on here. Most likely, he judged, the same “something” he’d felt himself.

“Sorry if I scared you,” she said in a smaller voice that sounded completely unlike her usual one.

“Ditto.”

It felt as if every single nerve she possessed had gone on red alert and no matter how she tried to talk herself out of it, they all refused to stand down.

She spared him a glance now and even though part of her understood what he was saying—that he’d sensed her reaction to him, to being fed by him—she asked sharply, “Excuse me?”

He knew that telling her to relax would only fall on deaf ears. Kara was the most contrary person he’d ever known, always ready to do the exact opposite of whatever she was told. The only way out of the situation—and an argument—was to make this about him, as well. It would keep this from escalating or becoming some kind of battle of wits, neither of which he wanted. And, he suspected, if really pressed for an honest answer, neither did she.

“I felt it, too,” he told her quietly.

He might as well have shouted it. She could feel every vein in her body pulsing, making her grow extremely hot in the space of what felt like a nanosecond.

Still, being Kara, she felt compelled to deny the obvious. So she feigned ignorance. “Felt what?”

He wasn’t exactly certain how to describe it. “That electrical spark,” he finally said. “You know, when your lips brushed against my fingers.”

Her back went up almost instantly. “You mean when
your
fingers brushed against
my
lips.”

“Really?” he asked, his voice as quiet as hers was intense. “You’re going to break this down into who did what to whom first? You really want to go that route?”

He didn’t say it, but his tone indicated that she was being juvenile. And she supposed she was. But that was only because this reaction she’d just experienced—desire? Longing?—was very, very new to her. She supposed it was something that teens went through, but she’d never felt connected like this to anyone before, never felt herself growing hot with anticipation before. Imagined it, maybe, wondered about it, sure, but never actually experienced it. Not until just this moment.

“No,” she answered with what she could only hope looked like a careless shrug. “Um, what was it that you think you felt?”

He knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted him to say it first. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” he guessed. With a laugh couched in disbelief, he shook his head. “Okay, I’ll go first.” He looked at her profile as they drove. Damn but it was near perfect, he thought. Why, after all this time, especially with their history, was she getting to him like this? “God help me, I felt something. And—” he took a breath, as if to fortify himself before continuing “—not for the first time.”

Kara gripped the steering wheel harder. Her chin went up in unconscious defense. “This isn’t my first time, either.”

He realized that she’d misunderstood him. “I meant with you. Not my first time
with you,
” he emphasized, trying to get his feelings across.

With her?

That completely threw her. Her eyes darted toward Dave quickly. Her heart decided to relocate back up into her throat, possibly permanently this time.

“Really?” Did that sound as breathless and tinny to him as it did to her? Her nerves were all over the place and she damned herself for it.

This is Dave, damn it. Nothing-special Dave. Don’t act stupid.

“Really,” Dave said. “Face it, Kara,” he went on. “For whatever reason, there’s an attraction between us.”

She didn’t want to face it. Didn’t want to admit it or lower her defenses. She was actually
afraid
to lower her defenses. The only way to take the edge off this was to be flippant. So Dave would think that this was business as usual for her instead of completely uncharted territory.

“You probably have some kind of a scientific name for all this,” Kara said.

Why in heaven’s name would she think that? But then, the way her mind worked had always been a huge mystery to him and, he suspected, most likely to anyone else dealing with her.

“No,” he told her simply.

He wasn’t helping, Kara thought. If she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself slipping into a vortex, one from which she didn’t think she would ever emerge.

“Okay,” she said gamely, “how about if we call it ‘Albert’?”

It was official, he thought. He really hadn’t a clue what went on in that head of hers. “‘Albert’?” he questioned.

“Yes, Albert. As in Albert Einstein.” Kara didn’t have to look at him to know that he was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had, but this tiny tidbit actually did make sense. “According to one of the latest biographers, it seems that Albert Einstein had one heck of a raging libido.”

That might or might not be true, he didn’t know. But there was one thing he did know. “You’re driving past your development,” he told her.

Kara did a double take.

Damn it, he was right. She
was
driving past the entrance to her development. Pressing her lips together, she refrained from saying anything as she made her way to the next light that, fortunately, allowed for U-turns.

“I guess the conversation with you is so scintillating,” she cracked dryly, “I didn’t notice the entrance.”

“I like you better without the sarcasm,” Dave told her quietly.

Kara was grateful that they were inside his car so he couldn’t tell she was blushing. Because of her fair skin, she was probably an embarrassing shade of pink right now.

Why his comment should do that to her was something she didn’t completely grasp and refused to explore at the moment. The less she thought about him—or “them”—the better, she decided.

“I’ll make a note of that when I get a chance,” she promised flippantly.

“Right.” He reminded himself that Kara
had
brought his car to him and that she had brought him something to eat, as well. She was under no obligation to do either, so beneath the bravado, there really was a very decent, kind person.

One who, for some unknown reason that pointed to the fact that God
had
to have a sense of humor, stirred him the way he really had never been stirred before.

Every single woman he had ever been out with—women he felt were close to perfect in temperament, women who’d matched his own personality and intellect—almost immediately left him restless, eager to be on his way. Bored. Every woman he thought he should be attracted to, he really wasn’t.

And the one woman he would have bet his soul that he
wasn’t
attracted to, he was. How was that for a cosmic joke at his expense? Dave thought darkly.

Kara drove into her development, but rather than take the first available space in guest parking, she continued driving until she came to a second set of guest parking spaces. He hadn’t even noticed them when he came to pick her up.

She finally picked a space, parking in the last empty one that was closest to her apartment.

“Less distance to walk,” she explained when she saw him looking at her quizzically.

Taking a breath, as if bracing herself, Kara unbuckled her seat belt and opened the driver’s-side door, then got out.

Dave quickly followed suit on his side, emerging from the vehicle at the same time she did.

Time to beat a hasty retreat,
she thought nervously, feeling disgusted with herself at the same time for her reaction. Just what was it that she was afraid of? She’d always been so fearless around Dave, had always enjoyed being able to tease him. Since when did she subscribe to the better-safe-than-sorry school of thought? And exactly what was she being “safe” from?

Still, she heard herself saying, “Well, I’ll give you a call when I figure out the next phase of Operation Meddling Mothers.”

To her surprise, rather than agree or just say goodbye the way she expected him to, Dave looked at her over the hood of his car and said, “The world won’t end if you invite me in, you know.”

Stunned, she was certain she hadn’t heard him correctly. And if she had, then he needed to explain why he’d just said what he had. “What?”

His eyes held hers as he began to repeat his statement. “The world won’t—”

“No, I heard you. I heard you,” she cried, holding up her hand to stop him from going on. “And you’re wrong,” she told him. There went her pulse again. What was
wrong
with her, anyway? “It just might. Why throw the whole universe off just to continue with an experiment named Albert—?”

It was the last thing she said.

Dave had rounded the back of his car while she was talking and, right when she’d started to voice her last question, he’d framed her face with his hands, drew her to him and kissed her.

He kissed her not as if it were some sort of an experiment, but as if he’d been restraining himself from reaching over while they were still on the road and kissing her right then and there.

There was enough energy and passion within the kiss to completely take her breath away—as well as, in her opinion, to supply enough electricity to light up Las Vegas for a week.

Part of her, for just a split second, wanted to flee. To run and save herself before it was too late. But that survival instinct died quickly. Survival was the last thing on her mind. Enjoyment coupled with eagerness and excitement took center stage, wiping everything else from her brain cells.