Unforgettable: Always 2 (3 page)

“Yeah, I’ve become a mule. I transport an experimental drug called Sunshine around the globe. The pay sucks, but at least no one can tell me to stick stuff where the sun don’t shine any more.”

I burst out laughing. The statement – slightly depraved – was thoroughly and utterly Amanda.

“Well, in that case,” I said, “consider yourself still on my
like
list.”

She grinned. Yes, I could tell there was still a guarded hesitancy to her, but I was prepared to roll with it. “Let’s go.”

We left the terminal walking side by side. The urge to take her hand overwhelmed me more than once. I resisted, just.

“So,” I said as we crossed the road outside the building, dodging speeding taxis and shuttle vans as we headed for Amanda’s car. “How goes your degree? Second last year, right? Have you had your first prac yet?”

As it had the last time I was in the States, I enjoyed the sense of being in a different country, breathing in different air, standing under a different sky. Southern California bore a similarity to the east coast of New South Wales, with its gum trees and warm, dry heat, but there’s no way it smelled the same. Walking toward the parking lot where Amanda’s car waited for us, I couldn’t stop myself drawing in a deep breath and studying the sky, marveling at how different it all was. Sometimes the simplest things moved me the most.

As a consequence, it took me a while to register Amanda hadn’t answered. I shot her an expectant look. “So?”

She shrugged a lop-sided, one-shoulder response. “Me and university didn’t take.”

My eyebrows shot up before I could stop them.

She laughed, a self-deprecating, playful chuckle that made me forget what I was doing for a moment.

“What? We can’t all be entrepreneurial world-changers like you, Osmond. You own your own personal trainer business yet?”

“Waiting for the thumbs up from the bank, as we speak,” I answered with a grin.

Amanda laughed again, bumping her shoulder to my arm as we walked. “Oh man, why am I not surprised? What’s it going to be called?
Buff R Us
?”

“
Buff R We
, thank you very much.”

“The perfect name.” For a wonderful moment, there was the faintest hint of shallow dimples in her cheeks and the Amanda Sinclair I knew in her delight.

It dawned on me then she’d very successfully sidestepped the issue of her teaching degree. I wanted to re-address it, but left it alone. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a bit of a high achiever, and Amanda – at least the Amanda I knew – was the same. Something in my gut told me the reason for my presence here in the US was connected to her incomplete studies and, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t ready to have that reason revealed to me yet.

If you’d told me I was a coward before Amanda stood in front of me again, I would have laughed in your face. But here I was,
not
asking about Amanda’s reasons for wanting me to come, and
not
asking about her reason for dropping out of uni.

The things you learn about yourself when your heart gets involved. It truly is a stupid damn organ at times.

“So,” I asked, “you seeing anyone?”

Apparently my brain was as stupid an organ as my heart.

Before I had the chance to process the pending idiocy of my question, Amanda burst out laughing. “No, I’m not. You ruined me for anyone else, Mr. Osmond. Couldn’t find anyone here with your atrocious sense of humor
and
impressive muscles.”

There’s a point in the life of every guy who spends time working out where something is said that makes him want to check out his own muscles. It’s a confirmation, as such, that the body he thinks he's achieved through an insane amount of hard work, dedication, denial and willpower is, in fact, the one he's walking around in.

That moment hit me then. For the first time, really. Sure, I’d flexed before to get a laugh (and I’m the proud owner of a tank top that reads on the front
I Flexed and the Sleeves Fell Off
) but I’d never before felt the need – like a physical pressure – to make sure the “impressive muscles” Amanda spoke of were actually there.

It was an insecure moment, and it threw me. As did the fact I felt my arm curling and my fist bunching, causing my right biceps to flex, before I realized what I was doing. Thankfully, Amanda stopped beside the driver’s passenger door of the most insane car I’ve ever seen and I forgot about my biceps.

“This is yours?” I asked, staring at the neon-purple Volvo station wagon before me. Along its dented side was painted an emerald green Chinese luck dragon, complete with stylized flames flaring from its nostrils. The wheels were the same green. On the top of the antennae was a long, crimson ribbon. It was startling to look at to say the least.

“It’s Chase’s,” Amanda answered with a grimace bordering on a grin as she unlocked the door and pulled it open to reveal purple leopard-print seat covers and neon-green fluffy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.

“Okay. I can see that.” Amanda’s sister is … let’s go with
unique
. “How is she?”

“As snarky and prickly as ever.” Amanda tugged my gym bag and backpack from my shoulder and indicated with a twitch of her head for me to climb into the car. Her lips, I couldn’t help but notice, were also twitching. If nothing else, putting me in her sister’s Volvo was filling her with mirth.

She watched me fold myself into the front passenger seat before nodding in satisfaction and closing the door, trapping me inside the purple dragon-mobile with a thud. I wriggled my butt on the plush purple seat cover, knees up near my chest. The car smelled of roses, oil paint, and possibly weed. That last one I wasn’t sure of. Strangely, the whole package stirred fond memories of Chase in me. If Amanda was driving her sister’s car, I realized there was a good chance I’d be seeing her. There was no bad blood between Chase and me, but she didn’t pull punches with her opinion of anything. That was, of course, when she chose to talk at all. As I said, unique.

After Amanda deposited my bags in the back of the Volvo, she climbed in behind the steering wheel and slid the key into the ignition. “Chase is rebelling against her hearing aids at the moment,” she said, pausing for a second as the engine kicked over. I didn’t look behind me to see if an eruption of black exhaust smoke spewed from the back of the car. Even though Chase wasn’t there to witness my misgivings about her motor vehicle, I didn’t want to risk any bad vibes.

“In what way?” I asked. How does one rebel against hearing aids? Especially when one is severely deaf in one ear and moderately deaf in the other?

“She’s not wearing them.” Amanda steered the Volvo out of its parking space and headed for the exit. I’m not going to lie. The car turned heads. “Dad’s about ready to go ballistic on her ass.”

My heart skipped a weird little beat. I’d forgotten how sexy Amanda sounded saying something as American as
ass
.

“Mom’s at a loss what to do with her. She dropped out of college last week. Six months away from graduating with her art and marketing degree and she quits. No real reason. Just comes home one day and doesn’t go back.”

“Whoa.”

Amanda snorted. “
Whoa
is one way to describe it. When she started quoting Malcolm X at Dad – “just because you have colleges and universities, doesn’t mean you have education” – I had to intervene before their screaming match woke …” She stopped. Frowned. Flicked the indicator and turned into the flow of traffic rushing away from LAX. “Before things got out of hand. Dad’s not coping with … with it all.”

I studied her profile, suspecting another one of
those
moments had occurred. The ones connected to my reason for being here. And as before, I let it slide without comment. I was okay. I was good. I was gravy.

I was a coward.

“So,” I said with a dry chuckle, “business as usual, then?”

Another snort escaped Amanda. She didn’t look at me, her attention now fixed on the insane LA traffic heading southbound. It allowed me to take in her profile more so. There were little lines at the edges of her eyes I didn’t remember. Lines somehow out of place on her twenty-three-year-old face.

“Business as usual.” She grinned, flicking me a glance so fast our eyes didn’t connect. “She’ll be happy to see you.”

It was my turn to snort. “The Walking Deltoid from Down Under? Isn’t that what she called me?”

“That. And other things. I think my favorite was Ostentatious Osmond.”

“Oh, nice.”

Amanda chuckled. “And then there was Brendon the Benign.”

“Ouch.” I pulled a mock pout, shifting on the seat. Weren’t Volvos meant to be comfortable? “That one kind of hurts.”

My melodramatic protest earned another quick glance. “Her issue with you was directly proportional to the size of your biceps. Of course, given your arms are bigger than the last time she saw you, you’re screwed. You been bench-pressing trains or something?”

“Semi-trailers,” I smirked. “The axles make them easier to hold.”

“Oh, that’s good to know.”

She really did give me a look this time. Our eyes really did connect. A frisson of heat shot straight through me when they did, sinking into that place between my legs over which a guy has little control. My groin picked that moment to react to Amanda’s close proximity, to the delicate scent of her perfume, to the sound of her voice and its sexy American accent, to her eyes …

Clearing her throat, Amanda jerked her stare back to the busy freeway.

I wrapped my fingers around the handgrip above the window, repositioned myself as well as I could in the confined space, and swallowed. “How long will it take to get to San Diego?”

“’Bout an hour and a half. Little less if there’s no accidents on the freeway.”

“Excellent. Can you recommend a hotel?”

A long stretch of silence filled the Volvo, and then Amanda frowned. She didn’t take her eyes off the road, but I saw her chest rise and fall in a deep, slow breath. “I kinda thought you’d stay with me.”

“Okay.”

If she was surprised by my answer she didn’t show it. Strangely, I felt calmer than I had since buying the ticket for my flight here. I hadn’t planned on crashing at Amanda’s place, nor had I even considered the possibility she would offer, but the moment she did, I knew it was the right place to stay.

And for the record, I didn’t say yes to get into her bed. Even if she offered that – which I doubted she would – I was taking the couch. I’ve slept on plenty of couches. The experience is always an adventure … and a way of making sure I wake early to get in a morning run or a workout.

Feeling elated, I grinned at her profile. She was no longer frowning. She was now gnawing on her bottom lip. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Do you live near a gym?” I asked.

She laughed and shot me a smile. The open joy in her face, in her eyes, sent a lick of contented warmth straight through me. “You haven’t changed at all, Bren.”

My throat grew tight with a hot lump. I deal with compliments with ease, but Amanda’s statement …

I wanted to tell her not to be too nice to me. Not yet. Not until I knew why I was here. But I didn’t. Who was I kidding? I’d flown halfway around the world because she asked me to, without a word of explanation. It would take her confessing to be a serial killer or an exterminator of puppies and kittens to change my core feelings for her.

“I’ve changed,” I said instead with mock indignation. “I have at least three percent more body fat than I did the last time you saw me. But my strength is up, so it’s not all bad. And my biceps are fourteen percent bigger than what they were, and my quads are—”

She shut me up with a whack to the chest with the back of her hand and a laughing “Oh my God.”

I grinned and then rubbed my chest with a wounded pout. “You been working out yourself? I don’t recall you hitting me this hard before.”

The next ninety minutes flew past. Too fast. The interior of Chase’s Volvo proved to be a comfortable environment for Amanda and me to reconnect on a purely platonic level. We chatted about inane topics: our favorite movies we’d seen in the last year (mine, the latest entry in the
Fast and the Furious
franchise. Hey, I’m a Rock fan. Don’t judge me. Hers, the most recent
Avengers
sequel. She’s a geek through and through); what we thought was going to happen in
Game of Thrones
(both fans, as it turns out); the current state of the Australian political scene; the current state of the
American
political scene.

When I asked her if her mom and dad knew I was coming, if we were going to see them, she didn’t answer, complaining instead about the road-hogging behavior of the car in front.

Before I realized it, we were turning into a quiet, gum-tree-lined street, the high San Diego sun baking the air outside the car with a shimmering intensity that made me think of summer back home.

“We’re here,” Amanda said, killing the engine.

Here
was on the street in front of a four-story red-brick apartment building. All the windows facing the road were open. An elderly woman sat in one of them, studying us with squinted eyes through the smoke wafting up from the cigarette dangling from her lips.

I frowned. This was not how I’d pictured Amanda’s home. Sure, I hadn’t stepped inside yet, but the building looked … tired. Beaten. Not at all the apartment of the beloved daughter of an upper middle class professional family.

“It doesn’t look like much,” she said from behind the wheel, as if hearing my thoughts, “but it’s rent-controlled and the neighbors are friendly. Old Mrs. Garcia there watching us helps me out often when I can’t …”

She faded off.

I frowned at her, unsettled by the ambiguous tension once again back in her face.

“When I need it,” she finished, offering a smile and a wave to the woman in the window. “And her son keeps the scum away when the need arises.”

“Scum?”

She shrugged at my surprised question. “It’s not the Hilton. But it’s clean and safe, I promise. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

The mystery surrounding this new Amanda and the reason for my being in her life again welled through me once more, like a thick wave of heavy pressure. Unnerving pressure. What had happened to her, what had happened in her life, for her to be in this place, now? This was not the kind of apartment I could see her father approving of for his daughter to live.

When it came to fathers, Charles Sinclair was up there with the best of them for being doting. Some would say over-protective. Especially when it came to who his daughters dated. When he first met me, he’d ran a contemplative look over me, sniffed at my “G’day, Mr. Sinclair”, and spent the next thirty minutes talking loudly about the importance of a solid education of the mind to provide security and safety for the future.

Secure
and
safe
were hardly the words I’d use to describe Amanda’s apartment building. What was going on here? Charles never really thought I was good enough for her. Was she rebelling against him? And if so, was I here to help her with that?

Surely not. Amanda wasn’t that kind of girl. Vindictiveness was not her style. At least, it hadn’t been …

I opened my mouth to speak, but Amanda climbed out of the Volvo before I could say a word.

Which was probably for the best. When it comes down to it, sitting inside a purple station wagon on a suburban street, watched closely by a woman who looked older than God, wasn’t the ideal setting for what was likely to be a significant moment in my life.

Climbing from the passenger side, I drew in a deep breath. It was hard
not
to remember what I’d felt like the last time I breathed San Diego air. The day Amanda told me – in her parents’ backyard – that we were over. I’d been confused. Shell-shocked. Numb.

Was I going to be experiencing that all over again this time?

No. I wasn’t. I refused to. For starters, as blind as I was to why Amanda had called me, my heart wasn’t in her hands. Sure, my body had reacted when I saw her, and it had got a little … hmmm, excited by her kiss, but my heart? Nope. Not hers. Not any more. Didn’t matter how great it was to talk to her on the drive here, how natural it was to be in her company again – what came after I walked through the door of her apartment wasn’t going to leave me reeling, confused or numb.

It wasn’t.

We walked together to the main door of the apartment building, Amanda giving me the rundown of her neighbors as we did so. Part of me wondered if it was a sales pitch – see how wonderful everyone is here? Wouldn’t you like neighbors like these? – the rest of me gave myself a mental slap down for being so egocentric.

Amanda was
not
going to ask me to
live
with her.

As we crossed the threshold into the grimy, hot and stuffy foyer, Mrs. Garcia called out something from above us, in Spanish I assumed.

Amanda burst out laughing. “
Sí, sí
,” she called back, waving her hand above her head as she flicked me a sideways smirk, “
es muy grandé
.”

I raised my eyebrows. In response, Amanda nudged my arm with her shoulder and winked. That was all.

Four sets of stairs later – with interruptions from Mr. Bradshaw, an off-duty firefighter in 1C, Miss Cox (who couldn’t have been a day under eight-six) in 2B, and Mrs. Murdoch, an out-of-work stuntwoman in 4A – we arrived at Amanda’s door.

She slid the key in the lock and then paused. “Oh God,” she said, without looking at me, “I don’t remember if I tidied up before I came and got you.”

Without hesitation I threaded my fingers through the hair at the back of Amanda’s head and turned her face to mine. I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t think; I just did it. “Hey,” I murmured, smiling down into her eyes, “I’ll take you as I find you any day.”

A soft moan sounded in her throat. Her eyes fluttered closed. “Bren, you don’t know what—”

I kissed her silent. Nothing aggressive or ridiculously macho, just a simple brushing of my lips against hers. Ah, but man, did it shake me to my core.

“C’mon,” I said, pulling back, trying like hell to gain some semblance of control over myself. “Let’s get inside. I need a shower.”

For the time it took my heart to beat twice, Amanda searched my eyes for something. And then she nodded, the lips I’d only just kissed curling into a small smile. “You do.”

“Hey.”

Laughing at my mock indignation, she unlocked the door and we both entered her home. It wasn’t as messy as Amanda feared. Books and magazines were scattered across the living area and the two sofas. Surprisingly, the magazines were all cooking ones, and the books had titles like
The Fault in Our Stars
and
My Sister’s Keeper
. I had no idea what they were about – the “Stars” one sounded familiar, but they weren’t the kind of books I remember Amanda reading when we were together. Back then she was devouring titles like
Horns
and
Pet Sematary
, and the covers didn’t involve smiling people.

She had a lot of colorful cushions, all of them actually
on
the sofas, which was a hell of a lot better than
my
cushions, which were, I’m pretty certain, on the floor of my apartment.

The dining table was free of clutter—again, I couldn’t say the same about mine—as was the small kitchen. When I spied a jar of Vegemite on the counter among the more traditional American spreads like marshmallow crème and peanut butter, I couldn’t help but smile.

“Damn it,” Amanda said beside me. “I knew you’d see that.”

I grinned at her. She’d proclaimed loudly and proudly while in Australia that she thought anyone who liked Vegemite needed their head read.

“It’s small,” she said, as she moved past me, deeper into the apartment, “but it’s home.” Trailing her fingertips along the back of the largest sofa, she ran her gaze over everything around her. “It’s not like in the movies, I promise. There’s no train right next door to rattle our teeth every hour, and we’re not under any flight path. The walls are soundproof and the plumbing works.” She looked back at me, a smile I could only describe as hopeful on her face. “It’s home.” Her voice cracked on the word.

“It looks good,” I said honestly. And it did. It spoke of the Amanda I knew. Even with the slight chaos of books, magazines and a few jackets, shoes and hats strewn about the place, it was Amanda. On the walls were framed posters of famous art works (my high school art teacher would be very impressed with the fact I remembered what a Mondrian and a Klimt looked like), and framed posters for the movies
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
,
The King’s Speech
and
The 40 Year-Old Virgin
.

The whole interior was a mishmash of eclectic taste, and looking at it, taking it all in, filled me with a warmth in my chest I should have found unnerving. Dangerously close to my heart, that warmth was. Dangerously close.

“The shower is through that door,” Amanda said, pointing to a closed door on the far side of the apartment. “The water hardly ever runs cold, so you can take all the time you need in there to decompress.”

Hitching my gym bag farther up my shoulder, I gave her a wide smile. “Be out in five.”

“Ah, that’s right,” she rolled her eyes. “The austerity of the Aussie shower. Get in, get clean, get out. I still remember that backpacker’s hostel we stayed in Queensland with the timed showers. The one that cut off my water when I still had shampoo in my hair.”

I chuckled. “And I remember you demanding you join me in my …” I stopped talking. Just like that. Snapped my mouth shut and kind of froze. Crap. The last thing I needed was to be thinking about Amanda in the shower with me. That kind of thinking would lead to certain
things
coming up that really needed to, well,
not
.

“That door,” Amanda said, pointing again to the other side of the apartment, her expression unreadable.

“That door,” I echoed. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. There are clean towels on the rack. You can use them.”

I nodded.

Before I could say anything else, she turned and made for the kitchen. “I’ll make you a cup of tea. Green still your tea of choice?”

“Yep.”

She didn’t look back at me. I didn’t let myself watch her move about in the kitchen. The air was charged with a tension I couldn’t describe, like sandpaper scraping exposed nerve endings. I hurried to the bathroom and closed the door behind me, my pulse pounding in my throat. Were we both suddenly aware of the fact I was going to be naked in her home? Or was Amanda unsettled by my blundering reminder of one of the many times we shared a shower? Or was it all in my head? Was I reading too much into it? Maybe it was me, hyped up on zero sleep and the scent of her in every breath I took?

I ran the cold water. It was either have a cold shower, or take care of the, umm … situation with my hand, and if the thought of being naked in Amanda’s home was messing with my head and body, the thought of masturbating in it …

Fifteen seconds later, I stood naked under water nowhere near as cold as I wanted it to be, with my head bowed, my eyes closed and my hands rammed flat to the tiled wall.

Crap. This was harder than I thought, and I wasn’t just referring to my—

The shower curtain slid open. Amanda stood on the other side, still completely dressed, her eyes wide and enigmatic as she looked up at me. “Bren …” she whispered.

Without a word or hesitation, I reached out, cupped my wet hand at the back of her head and drew her into the shower with me. She came without resistance, pressed her body to my eager one, tangled her fingers in my wet hair and met my hungry mouth with her own.

We kissed for a lifetime. Reacquainted ourselves with each other’s mouths and tongues. The water streamed over us, drenching Amanda’s shorts and shirt.

I needed to fix that problem. And yet, I couldn’t drag my mouth from hers. So I resorted to undressing her without breaking the kiss. That meant tearing her shirt open – for some reason I couldn’t find the patience to undo its tiny buttons. Amanda didn’t seem to mind. She moaned as I did, and again as I pulled the clinging wet shirt over her shoulders.