All of You (5 page)

“Lucas?” Jessica’s voice called into the silence. Lucas tsked irritably and reached over to hit the stop button. “Fine. If you won’t pick up, I’m coming over.”

Their jerked gazes collided at the abrupt hang up.

“When was that?” Kyle asked.

They converged on the machine. Lucas hit the back button and the machine reported a seven fifty-five recording.

Lucas checked his watch. “It’s eight fifty.”

They both looked at the door. Even with miraculous amounts of traffic, it took no more than twenty minutes between Lucas’s and Jessica’s apartments.

Cautiously, Kyle stepped toward it and turned the knob. Standing there, color high on her cheeks, a cardboard box holding two steaming Styrofoam cups and a couple of donut bags in her hands, was Jessica. Her slack mouth looked shocked. Her pink cheeks looked embarrassed. Her blazing eyes looked pissed.

Shiiiiiiiiiit.

“Hi Jess,” he whispered, feeling his own cheeks start turning pink, holding on to a feeble smile because despite how bad he must look to her that second, she looked great. Those incredible legs were bare up to mid-thigh, where they met a pair of khaki shorts. She had a cream sweater tied around her waist and a simple, soft yellow polo shirt that complemented the reds in her hair. She looked fresh and sweet and soothing while he felt cramped and wrinkled and wrong. But it didn’t seem to matter in the slightest; his heart tripped all over itself trying to beat and jump at the same time, just because she was there.

The door was yanked from his hand and suddenly Lucas was next to him, looking her over as if to make sure Kyle had left her with all her arms and legs attached.

She gasped, seeing the two of them side by side, her eyes darting back and forth between them. Her trembling mouth moved a few times, but words didn’t come out. Kyle took a step forward, wanting to wrap her in his arms and comfort her, wanting to explain in a way that wouldn’t hurt her. Maybe, if he was lucky, not hurt him either. But he never got the chance.

Jessica shoved the cardboard box into his hands, unbalancing the hot coffee so it splashed all over his hands. With a howl Kyle dropped the box entirely, splashing more hot coffee on his bare feet and the floor mat while he hopped and swore.

“Maybe you two should make sure the door is soundproof before you start yelling at each other, you bastards,” Jessica finally said, then spun on her heel and moved like a speedwalker down the hall.

Kyle ran to the stairwell, leaving Lucas grumbling about the mess, not at all surprised to find Jessica already more than halfway down. He had to catch her. He had to explain. Somehow. “Jess, please, wait.”

“No!”

They skittered along, he gaining, she slipping every few steps with a squeak of shoe rubber. If he could just reach her, just touch her, maybe he’d find a way to tell her—

“Go away, Lu—” She had half-turned to yell at him, her eyes going wide when she cut off the name. Then she stumbled again, shifting sideways, her arms grasping wildly while she bumped against the wall, trying to grab for safety.

Kyle’s blood pressure skyrocketed like heated mercury before she caught herself and her footing three steps down. He froze, still about six steps above her, not wanting to spook her into falling again.

She held on to the banister, then looked up the stairs at him accusingly, her breath coming out in violated puffs. “I slept with you and I don’t even know your name.”

“Kyle.” He doubted she would appreciate his relief in finally telling her. “Kyle Wellem Lonnigan.” He came down another step, earning himself a suspicious glare. “I’m not going to chase you, I promise. You almost gave me a heart attack there. Are you all right?”

She waited a little before nodding grudgingly.

“I’ll wait until you’re at the bottom and break my own neck catching up, okay? Just, for God’s sake, promise you’ll go down slowly.”

She looked down the remaining flight and a half to ground level, nodding again. She didn’t loosen her grip on the banister, so Kyle risked a deeper rush of air and took the momentary pause for the opportunity it was.

“How much of that, exactly, did you hear?”

“Why?” she all but spat. “What could be more incriminating than hearing how you lied to me to get into my bed?”

Man, this wasn’t going to go well. “Come on, Jess, you know that’s not how it was.”

“Do I? How do I know you didn’t play me into thinking the sex was all my idea? I have never…I mean, I just don’t—” She turned redder. “I don’t attack men like that,” she whispered, bowing her head. “I trusted you…him…oh, God, I’m going to be sick. I know Lucas. Do you get that? I know who he is and what he’s like, what he’ll say and who he’ll say it to. I know where he’s been.” All the blood left her face. “Oh, God, we didn’t even use a condom!”

“I’m healthy, Jess—”

“How am I supposed to believe you?” She covered her eyes with her hands. “I don’t know anything about you at all. I should never have asked you up to my apartment. Why didn’t I listen to my instincts? Why didn’t I just break up with you and go?”

He desperately wished he could come up with an argument. The only reason she was probably still standing there was because she didn’t know his past. If she knew what he was hoping for his future, she’d probably run screaming. So he went with the only argument he knew she couldn’t refute.

“Because you didn’t want Lucas.” If she had, he’d have left her apartment and never looked back. “You never wanted him.”

It took her a few moments before she shook her head. When she looked up again, her eyes so vulnerable and sharp at the same time, it made something in him crack to know he’d put such a look on her face. “My feelings didn’t seem to have mattered to you last night. All I feel now is used.”

“No, I didn’t use you. I swear.” He could see why she might think so, but it hurt to categorize their experience as some cheap thrill. “What happened last night was the most incredible experience of my life.”

She shook her head, seemingly stung. “Please, you’ve already been in my bed, you don’t have to get stupidly poetic now.”

“It’s not poetry.” He could see on her face that she’d already closed her mind to whatever he might have to say. Still, she deserved to know why. “I didn’t tell you the truth last night because I couldn’t. I wanted to, but you would’ve slapped my face and never given me the time of day.”

“At least you’d have been honest.”

“I should have been,” he agreed. He almost wished he had. “I should have let you slap me and then camped out in front of your office until you talked to me again. Then I’d have talked to you until you agreed to go out with me again. Then, maybe, I could have made love to you until we were both too tired to be anything but happy.”

She looked around nervously, looking for anyone who might be listening. He didn’t care who listened. Nothing mattered but her. What she believed. What she accepted.

“I didn’t, though, and I’m sorry. But you have to understand—all my life, I’ve had a plan before I did anything, and if I had planned this, it would have been perfect from step one. Meeting you blew every plan I’ve ever made completely out of the water. I didn’t know my left foot from my right after you smiled. There was no way I was going to be able to say no to you—or myself—last night. I was wrong, Jess. I admit it. I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you. Just don’t…don’t throw away what happened because I was an idiot.”

She studied her shoes. They were spotless white tennis shoes, tied neatly in a double knot, her equally spotless white socks folded evenly at her ankles. But he didn’t see any answers there. He had a feeling she couldn’t see any either.

“There has to be a way past this.”

She frowned at her shoes even harder. Then she shook her head. “There isn’t. Let’s just leave last night as what it was. Sex for sex’s sake.”

“Don’t say that, Jess.”

She straightened her shoulders and pulled away from the banister, pinning him with a glare that would have made his mother cringe. “That’s exactly what I meant it to be, remember? It was the only thing about last night that wasn’t a lie. And my name is Jessica.” With the bearing of a queen, she walked down the remaining steps and through the hall, out of the building. Out of his life.

Kyle told himself he let her go because he’d promised not to chase her down the stairs, but the truth was his legs couldn’t have carried him if he’d tried. Hurt swamped him. If she’d staked him with a javelin, it couldn’t have hurt more. So he sagged down on the top step to try and breathe. That didn’t go off so well, either. For some reason he couldn’t quite explain, but was sure he’d be thinking about a lot later, his heart didn’t seem to be beating. Inside, he was a silent, hollow mess.

For the first time in his life, that was a bad thing.

He kept staring where she’d been, replaying what she’d said, thinking about the pain in her eyes as she’d said it. She’d wavered. It might be the imaginings of a desperate man, but he was sure she’d wavered. Did she know, like he did, that they couldn’t just push last night out of their minds as if it had never happened?

It had happened and it changed everything.

That had been happening to him a lot lately. It needed doing, but change was hard. You had to face a lot of things about yourself you didn’t want to face. He winced. It was being polite to call himself shallow. He enjoyed fine things, fine women and fine living, preferably in a constantly rotating order. Sure, he worked hard as an investment banker but for all the years it took to get himself to that position, he’d never let it interfere with his good time.

Until six months ago.

That was when it had truly started, the subtle dissatisfaction with his life. His beautiful, meaningless, responsibility-free life. Somehow, in that creeping, pervasive way of things one never saw coming, he became glaringly aware that something in him was missing. Something important. Something significant. But he had no idea what and it began to drive him crazy. Then came Belinda’s family reunion, when he made the tactical error of holding one of the endless supply of babies and bam! There went the neighborhood.

His first impression was panic. People never handed him children. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even touched one. But the baby turned out to be a soft, wriggling weight, fitting into the crook of his arm with no fuss at all; just a toothless grin and a splash of drool.

Something about her smelled sweet and powdery. She was wearing a little white bonnet on her head, shading bright blue eyes that glittered at him, completely devoid of anything but genuine interest. She’d slapped his cheek a few times, trying to get a hold of his face, and he’d laughed as she smiled, obviously proud of herself.

Then it happened.

There was no sound, no pain, no anything to signal that his life had broken in half. Just a baby smile, a baby smell, and a sense that this was what he’d been looking for. The thing he wanted for his own.

After that he started noticing kids everywhere he went. Not an easy thing, given his lifestyle. No one brought their children to an investment bank, but they kept pictures on their desks. Little girls with missing front teeth. Boys wearing baseball caps, holding bats over their shoulders and grinning as if they knew the next pitch was a homerun. Quick runs to the grocery store put more of them in his path. Jogs he always took in the morning found a whole host of kids walking to bus stops he’d never noticed before. The world was, apparently, utterly full of children.

The bigger revelation was discovering he was dating them.

He’d never cared about women’s ages before. Why would he? His only concern was enjoying their company and having some fun together. He cared how pretty they were. How good they looked next to him. How long it took to get out of their apartments. His last date fondly remembering her prom—from the previous weekend—proved the final straw. His other dates weren’t much better. The oldest so far was a mind-boggling twenty-four, considering retirement from modeling because her cynicism was starting to show in her pictures.

For the first time, he started asking questions and, to his dismay, they answered him. Did they like children? Know any children? Ever want any?

On the whole, no, no and no way.

That was the end of most dates. A few times he got to ask where they saw themselves in ten years. One thought it was a marriage proposal. Thankfully, the maître d’ knew the Heimlich or that would have been the end of a lot of things.

He knew there was no shaking the oncoming change when he had a nightmare about dating one of Belinda’s other nieces. The two-year-old. She was smoking a cigarette, wore enough eyeliner to draw her own cartoon and was telling him that he might want to look into Botox before he started showing his age. It apparently took imagining someone whose age mathematically rounded down to zero to make him admit he had to do something about his life. Immediately.

So, he’d come to Lucas’s apartment to see if his brother could help him make sense of his sick, deranged, impossible desire for a family of his own.

Lucas’s response—after the suggested lobotomy—had been to suggest a date swap, no doubt to slap some sense into him.

So Kyle met Jessica.

And now he was trapped in a moment again. In a change. Because everything he wanted had just walked away from him without a backward glance.

Kyle forced himself to get to his feet. Nothing gets done sitting on your ass. One step at a time, he trudged back up the stairs, willing his brain to think of an idea. Any idea to get her to take a chance on him. To see past the mistake. All he needed was a chance…and a plan.

“You’re not the Loser,” an amused, smoke-stained voice noted as Kyle knocked for the third time on Jessica’s closed office door in the intimidatingly prestigious firm of Goesler & Groom. It was early morning and he knew Jessica was in because she’d taken what looked like a lot of pleasure in slamming her door in his face. He didn’t have a lot of time at this part of the day, but he’d hoped she’d see him if he just kept knocking. Instead, he found himself turning to greet a thin old woman with a blue-hair rinse and an over-interested gaze glued to his ass. Her arms were loaded with manila folders and she stood at the doorway to the outer office like she owned the place. “But I bet you ain’t getting many complaints.”

“Excuse me?”

She lifted her gaze to his face, finally—why did he sense he was blushing?—and shrugged. “Those you probably have plenty of.” She winked, moving forward with her paperwork clamped to her chest with one arm. “Must have been good if she’s not speaking to you.”

Would Jessica have confided in her secretary? Somehow, he doubted it. Still, stranger things had happened. He turned fully, lowering his bouquet of flowers and taking the few steps to meet her halfway. He extended his hand. “I’m Kyle.”

She eyed his hand briefly before reaching her still graceful—if slightly spotted—one for a surprisingly strong shake. “Dory Pierson. You’re either a Lonnigan or it’s a hell of a resemblance. I’d never have known the difference if you weren’t missing the stick in your ass.”

Kyle inwardly cringed, quickly figuring out who the Loser must be and wondering how bad of an impression Lucas had made on this strange woman. Was it one he could get over? “Lucas is my twin.”

Thin gray eyebrows rose and not in remorse. “I’m sensing a good story here.”

“More of a misunderstanding.”

“Sure, gorgeous.” She chuckled, walking around him with a little too much hip to carry off the grandma look her clothes were projecting. The look-over this time nearly had him covering his genitals and calling for Security. “I’ll just bet it was. Kind of like the Cuban Missile Crisis was a misunderstanding.”

A surprised burst of laughter escaped him. Not many people brought up Castro these days. “Maybe, if you take out the Cubans.”

“Now I know it’s a good story.” She abandoned her paperwork entirely. “Let me see if I have the basics. You like Jessica. For at least five minutes—” She must have heard his ego squishing because she caught herself with a mock gasp. “Oh, a ten-minute man, are we? Fine, for at least ten minutes, she liked you back enough to forget all her dumb rules. What’d you do to her attention, throw your brother under a bus?”

“Not yet.” But he should, if only for not mentioning Dory when Kyle had dragged the name of Jessica’s law firm out of him.

She shrugged, unimpressed. “As long as he’s out of the picture. You’ll get nowhere with Jessica if she has to pick between you.”

Considering she’d been about to break up with Lucas, Kyle figured blurting out “Why not?” wasn’t too big of a tactical error.

“Because my girl isn’t one to take risks. She knows your brother is about as interested in her as he is in getting the clap.” Blue eyes skimmed him from his haircut to his manicure. “You have that desperately clingy look to you. Even I wouldn’t touch you.”

Kyle felt his jaw drop. Clingy? Him? He’d never been desperate for a woman in his life. Well, okay, except for when Jessica ran away from him. Or maybe when he stayed up half the night trying to think of a way to get her to change her mind. But that wasn’t really desperation.

It took a few hours, but it’d finally hit him around three a.m. that he’d already laid out a plan there on the stairs. What Lucas generally referred to as Kyle’s Demand and Destroy maneuver—basically, relentlessly drive a person nuts until they give in. It had worked with petitions, with sales, with debate. Never taking no for an answer had always been his strength. But how much chance would he have with it if he couldn’t get past her door?

“You’re going to need help,” Dory said suddenly, reminding Kyle he wasn’t alone in the outer office. “By the look of you, a lot of help.”

He stared down at himself, wondering what the hell she kept looking at. “What do you mean a lot of help? Jess and I got along fine before—”

“The Misunderstanding?” Dory blinked too knowingly. “You have smooth player written all over you, kiddo. Probably never met a woman you couldn’t talk into bed other than your mother.”

He’d never thought of it as talking them into anything.

“If I know Jessica—and I do—about the only thing she misunderstood was that you’d want more than a quickie.”

Well, hell, she had sized him up right.

Dory’s eyes narrowed. “You poor sad sap. I can tell just looking at you that there’s no talking you out of this, but you’re cute, so I have to warn you—boy, did you ever pick the wrong girl.”

Funny, she could tell everything about him except the fact that he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Jessica Saunders does not do happily ever after. I’m pretty sure Jessica doesn’t do happy, unless she’s getting promoted. I keep telling her, either get a better boyfriend or get a better vibrator, because there’s no way she’ll let me talk her into getting a life.” Dory sighed and moved around her desk to plop into her plush-looking leather chair. “So if you’re serious about wanting to see her again, do yourself a favor. Don’t tell her.”

A shiver went up his spine at her shrewd gaze. “Don’t tell her what?”

Her smile could have passed for the Sphinx’s, but was it because she could tell she was making him sweat or because she just enjoyed being cryptic? “You probably fool a lot of people with that innocent look. Maybe even yourself from time to time, but you can’t fool old women and you certainly aren’t getting one over me. But I tell you what. You do exactly what I tell you from this point on, I’ll help get her to give you a chance.”

Instinct told him to play this very carefully. Jessica wasn’t going to be happy if she found out her secretary was helping him out. “Why would you do that?”

“Honey, I’ve been around too many years and lived through too many things to see someone with as much to live for as Jessica go around wasting herself. If she has her way, she’ll be partner in the next ten years and won’t have a thing to show for it but money and loneliness. I like her too much to let something like that happen to her.”

“But why are you willing to let someone like me happen to her?”

“Because every girl should have someone like you happen to her.”

On the other hand, he wasn’t getting anywhere by himself, was he? He held out the bouquet to Dory, whose eyes lit up. “Lead the way, Mistress.”

“Oh honey, if you were ten years younger, I probably would.” She breathed in the blooms and smiled. Then, squaring her shoulders and blowing out a breath, her eyes took on a gleam of utter mayhem. “Here’s what you do…”

Kyle Lonnigan is a few sandwiches short of a lunchbox.

He had to be. Any other man on Earth would be thrilled to have a night of wild sexual abandon and never see the woman again. But no, Jessica had to find the one guy on the planet who thought a good round of nipple tweaking meant undying devotion. For the last three days, he’d done everything humanly possible to get her to talk to him, to forgive him, and so far, all he’d achieved was to drive her nuts.

He’d come to her office at nine the morning after their stairwell debacle, knocking on the door as if she were really going to give him the time of day. Afterwards, Dory spent the whole day wagging her eyebrows to indicate she knew something interesting had happened. Jessica refused to see him and especially refused to explain to the blue-haired sex fiend demanding details. She figured Kyle, at least, would pick up on the not-so-subtle clue.

He didn’t.

It didn’t take long to discover why not, either. He’d made friends with Dory—the traitor sold her out in less than an hour for a bushel of roses and a sexy smile. He sent restaurant deliveries of her favorite dishes, helped along, no doubt, by his new secretarial best friend, who also most likely clued him into her lunch and dinner schedule. The man she could ignore. Fresh manicotti from Santori’s she could not. But she didn’t send him any thank-you notes. In fact, she made it a point to thank Dory instead.

“My pleasure,” the older woman replied without missing a beat in her filing. “God knows I’d have paid for dinner twice just to get that brick out of your ass.”

“I had nothing of any kind in my ass, thank you very much.” Jessica said stiffly, hoping to God no one else had heard anything through the outer door, which was closed for once.

Dory only raised an eyebrow, the demonic glitter back in her eye. “You could if you’d talk to the man.”

That officially ended any expectation of support from Dory.

The second day, as soon as the doors opened to the public, the first plant arrived. In a wide round pot, it was probably some kind of bush with flowers, beautiful sprays of purple petals on long green stems growing to waist height. It’d be hideous if it weren’t strangely appealing. A few hours later, some kind of cactus arrived, this one with a note the delivery guy was instructed to ensure she read.

For The Collector Of Pretty Things.

The man handed her a thick horticultural picture dictionary. Only after Dory hummed her way out for the day did Jessica allow herself to creak open the book and look at the glossy pictures inside. She felt like a felon, but she looked. She nearly jumped out of her seat when a flat flash of orange slipped out of the middle. Picking it up, she saw the tiny flower had been carefully pressed so that the petals folded back on one side, keeping the life of the bloom preserved. There were three other flowers in the center, along with a small note: Honeysuckle. These reminded me of you.

Jessica closed the book and stuffed it under the cushion of the small loveseat she never used. But she couldn’t stop looking at it.

More strange plants arrived the third day, a name written in Latin on their tags, invoking guilty treks to the couch cushion, just so she’d stop wondering what the names meant. But it wasn’t as if she needed either the plants or the meals or even Dory’s innuendos to keep the man on her mind. Kyle Lonnigan was proving impossible to forget all on his own.

How could she have gone so long without sex, yet after one night decide she couldn’t live without it? It was as if he’d slipped her some kind of permanent aphrodisiac. Sleep had all but disappeared from her radar and in its place was a constant craving for more of his touch, his taste. Her body stayed tense, sensitized. As if instead of sating her, he’d simply whetted her appetite, leaving her with an unrelenting need that grew with each thought of him. And she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Every time she dressed, the slide of silk over her skin reminded her of his palms gliding over her breasts before firmly squeezing and taking the aching tips into his mouth. The whisper of fabric reminded her of the slide of her sheets beneath their overheating bodies. Worse, her bedroom felt too big, too empty, too quiet, since he’d gone, though he’d been there only an hour.

She’d stripped her bed, but she could still smell his cologne on her pillows. She took a sleep aid only to discover her dreams were all about him. Wanting him. Having him. Toying with him. Her subconscious never replayed what had actually happened between them. No, her imagination opted to consider all the things she’d wanted to do with him. The things she’d been deprived of when she woke up alone in a tangle of sheets and confusion.

Even now, angry as she was, her mouth watered at the thought. Wrapping her fist around his cock, pumping him toward her open lips, letting him think she would lick, but missing her tongue by just…that…much. Then, when he least expected it, wrapping her mouth around the head and swallowing him whole, sucking him down over and over again until he gave her what she wanted. And when those fantasies ended, she moved on to the things he could have been doing to her…

Every morning since, she’d woken up with her fingers deep in her sex, straining close to orgasm, her clit straining for a wet kiss it was never going to get.

For that alone, she wanted to kill him.

Almost as much as she wanted to drag him into her office and demand he finish what he started.

The fourth morning was peculiarly quiet, which explained—she supposed—why she answered the phone while Dory was out to lunch. The caller ID left no question who was on the other side of the line. But if she had to be brutally honest with herself, the truth was she just wanted to hear him again.

“I’m getting to you, aren’t I?” he asked without preamble.

“Not really,” she replied in her firmest voice, staring at the crooked cushion across from her desk, wishing she could squish it further down. Along with every instinct screaming at her to see exactly how far he was willing to go for forgiveness.

“Yes, I am. I can tell.”

Smug schmuck. “Get to a lot of people, do you?”

His laugh nearly curved her own lips, sending millions of little sparks of pleasure through her. Sparks she didn’t want. “If considering harassment charges means you’re getting to me, then yes, Kyle, you’re getting to me.”

“You feel harassed?”

Why did he sound so surprised? She longed to be a better liar. Since she wasn’t, she dodged. “I feel exhausted. I have hours of work to do. I don’t have time for your games.”

“This isn’t a game for me, Jess.”

She also hated how her whole body continued to preen at the hated nickname. From anyone else, it brought back memories she’d rather not rehash. From him… No, not thinking about it. “It isn’t a game for me either. It’s my life and you’re ruining it. Why can’t you just let what happened be a mistake?”

He gave her the benefit of mulling over his answer. “Because I could never consider meeting someone like you a mistake.”

Then, very quietly, without any kind of goodbye, he hung up.

Which meant he was smart enough to quit when he was ahead.

She put the handset down, staring at it for far too long before she took her hand away. He might be shy a few sandwiches, but if he kept saying things like that, she was going to have to start worrying that her own lunchbox was just as empty.