Dream of You (14 page)

             
Jordan waited out her long silent spell, trying to regulate his own heartbeat and get his raging hormones under control.

             
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said finally. “I’ve had too much to drink and I thought…”

             
“It’s okay.”

             
No it’s not
the watery look she shot him from beneath her bangs said. “I, um…” She got unsteadily to her feet. “Sorry I tried to force myself on you. I didn’t know that…” Again she let it hang, miserable embarrassment coloring her cheeks.

             
He’d avoided anything that so much as smelled complicated since he was eighteen. Ellie’s mini meltdown hinted at self-esteem and confidence issues, doubt, shame, and past trauma, and it reeked of complication.
You’re not this guy
, Jo kept telling him.
You’re not a player
. And maybe that was why, complication or no, he got to his feet and hovered over her while she stood braced against the front of the sink.

             
“Ellie.”

             
She wiped at her eyes and didn’t look at him.

             
“Hey.”

             
She swallowed and it was an audible gulp. “T-thanks for not being that ‘kind of guy,’ but please, just, let’s pretend this never happened.”

             
Jordan bit back a smile. “You sure? ‘Cause it makes for a pretty good story.”

             
Her head turned toward him finally, dark hair sliding over her shoulders, eyes red-rimmed and wet. She studied his face a moment and Jordan was impressed she found the humor he was trying to hide. Her voice sounded choked with tears, but she laughed. “I swear I’m not normally this much of an idiot.”

             
“Good to know.”

             
She tugged at her lower lip with her teeth. “You’re not going to try and have me pulled out of your class, are you?”

             
He grinned. “
That’s
what you’re worried about?”

             
“I - ”

             
The back door off the kitchen opened with a squeal of corroding hinges and both of them nearly leapt out of their skins. The roommate – the pink-haired, talkative nightmare who Jordan actually did want to pull out of his class – came clambering in wearing pink rainbow striped rain boots, arms loaded with shopping bags. A skinny guy in even skinnier jeans came in after her and closed the door with another squeal. He had shoulder-length, lank blonde hair and before he shuffled off mumbling about the TV, Jordan caught a glimpse of a whole lot of facial piercings.

             
Paige
, Jordan reminded himself of the roommate’s name as she dropped her bags amid the clutter of the table; Ellie had said it often enough that he’d finally managed to remember it.

             
“Coach Walker!” That shrill, high-pitched voice that he hated hearing in his classroom came hurtling across Ellie’s kitchen now. Paige shook off her last bag and turned a startled, enthusiastic smile toward him. Her goggle-wide, blue eyes swept to Ellie and then back to him, her smile becoming devious. “I didn’t know you did home tutoring.”

             
Ellie turned crimson as her friend sauntered over and slung an arm across her shoulders. “She’s a hopeless failure, you know,” Paige told him. “I’m so
glad
you’re helping her with her studies.”

             
“Paige.” Ellie shrugged her arm off, cheeks bright apples of mortification. “Do not.”

             
“What?” She feigned innocence. “I’m just
so happy
you have a capable teacher here to…” She waggled her brows. “
Teach
you.”

             
Ellie looked like she wanted to crawl under a rock.

             
“Actually, I was getting ready to leave,” Jordan said, and watched Ellie turn a glance up toward him that was both thankful, and disappointed. Paige groaned. “And Ellie was going to walk me out.”

             
“I was? Oh, yeah, I was.”

             
Jordan didn’t really mind the pink hair or elementary school fashion sense, not really, but Paige made him feel skeezy. Like some
To Catch a Predator
dude chasing underage tail. Eighteen was legal, but barely. When he was alone with Ellie, without witnesses, she didn’t feel eighteen. He wasn’t ensnaring some poor, unsuspecting victim; she was sharper and more discerning than girls his own age. But when Paige smiled at him like she had, he was slapped in the face with the reality of what he was doing.

             
As he stepped out onto the darkened sidewalk, tree limbs rustling overhead, Ellie’s bare feet making the softest of sounds over the concrete, some of that reality faded and he was just back in their one-on-one evening again. Alone with a girl who was clearly traumatized and who he probably should have been running away from.

             
“I’m sorry about Paige,” she said as she followed him down the front steps. “She tends to get overly excited about things.”

             
Jordan paused and waited for her until she was beside him, her skin looking alabaster in the moonlight that filtered through the swaying branches. “You’re apologizing an
awful
lot tonight,” he said with a chuckle he couldn’t suppress.

             
“I have a lot to apologize for,” she said with a sigh and started past him around the long bend of the walk that led down to the driveway. “I mauled my teacher for God’s sakes.”

             
“The mauling was good.”

             
She paused and threw him a glance over her shoulder. Through the shifting pockets of shadow, he saw her roll her eyes.

             
“It was,” he insisted as she picked up the pace and he lengthened his stride to keep up with her. “It was just…”

             
She reached his Jeep and turned, her back to the driver door, arms crossed beneath her breasts. “Just what?” Her tone was resigned. Like her personal shame had reached critical mass and she’d accepted it for what it was: irreversible.

             
In the dappled play of moonlight and shadow, she looked timeless. She could have been a medieval princess, a pinup, or a ghost. Jordan knew what he should tell her…and what he wanted to tell her. Want won out.

             
He took the last long step that separated them, saw the whites of her eyes flash as she tilted her head back against the Jeep’s window. He put his hands on the glass on either side of her. “It’s just that,” he repeated, “
next time
, I hope you won’t be so afraid of me.”

             
She gasped before he kissed her; just a quick, startled snatch of air. She went statue-still when his lips touched hers, and for half a heartbeat, Jordan thought he’d ruined whatever he’d been cultivating.

             
But then her mouth opened and she kissed him back.

             
She had full, sweet, clinging lips, generous in the way they yielded against his. She tasted like pizza and beer. The soft, wet
smack
of pulling away from her was delicious.

             
He tried to search her face in the dark, but her lashes threw long, spiky black shadows across her cheeks. “You alright?” he asked, again in that throaty voice he didn’t recognize.

             
Her answer was the tentative stroke of her hands against his chest. He could feel her leaning into him, her hips and breasts and flat stomach. She put a torch to all the logical parts of his brain.

             
“You can touch me,” he said, just to see if she would.

             
Her nails raked lightly all the way down to the hem of his t-shirt, and then she was pushing beneath it, cool, smooth palms flattening across his skin. She stroked across his abs, his muscles leaping at the contact, and up his ribs, stretching on her tiptoes. “Kiss me,” she whispered against the underside of his jaw, and took away the last of his self-control.

             
He buried both his hands in her chocolate hair, cradled the back of her head and found her mouth again.

             
A thousand possibilities went tumbling through his mind, all of them centered around her mostly naked up against the side of his Jeep. But he finally broke for air and pushed himself off her, hands on the window again. He was panting, and so was she, the competing rhythms of their breath filling the space between them. Her eyes were ivory and quicksilver in the moonlight, wide with wonder and latched onto his face.

             
“There’s a next time?” she asked, breathless, like she was afraid it might not be true. Her fingers twitched against the bare skin of his shoulder blades.

             
Jordan leaned in again.
One last time
, he told himself, smiling as his lips hovered over hers. “I think there’s gonna have to be.”

**

              Long after she’d watched his taillights slip around the corner at the top of the street, after she’d locked herself back in the house and canned the porch lights, Ellie stood with her back to the door, quivering fingertips pressed to her smiling lips. She wasn’t sure which would give out first, her knees or her pounding heart.

             
She’d made an absolute fool of herself that night. After Kyle, she’d stopped believing in sincerity. She’d realized that men were nothing of the novels; they had internal checklists, physical and behavioral criteria for their women. They detested baggage, shyness, cellulite and body hair of any kind. A woman had to be a striptease and an athlete, a gourmet chef, a twig and a free spirit to snag a guy’s attention these days. So she’d known Jordan Walker – older, more experienced, more cynical – would only play with her so long as she stepped up her game.

             
Instead he’d pushed her away and told her no. Had admitted to wanting her. Had kissed her until her brain ceased working and she was a boneless, quivering damsel against the side of his Jeep.

             
She asked herself if he was truly, honest to God human, a real man and not a checklist automaton, and she didn’t know the answer. All she knew was that her pulse was an insistent, hot thumping beneath every inch of her skin.

             
Paige found her like that on her way in to the living room later. “Um, El, how much did you have to drink?”

             
Ellie shook her head. “I’m in such trouble.”

             
“Why?”

             
“I am so hot for teacher.”

12

             
T
he most interesting thing had occurred after the disastrous Ireland trip of a year ago – Michael, forever worried about what everyone else thought of him, had finally decided to conduct a long overdue analysis of his life and the people in it. He’d let some of his acquaintances fade into the background and had launched a concerted effort to make Tam feel like the best friend he was.

             
Jo watched it, little heart happy to see other people love her boy and his damaged soul, but she still marveled at the oddness of double date night. She and her middle brother had never been close, but suddenly, she found herself in his company in this new capacity as Tam’s wife. And Delta was no longer just her sister-in-law, but the wife of her husband’s best bud. It was an arrangement that was slowly becoming more normal.

             
Tonight it was bowling, and every pin crashing against the lane floors was like a sonic boom that punched her in the stomach and somehow made her nausea worse. The long, noisy dark hall with all its flickering neon lights stank of hot dogs, Velveeta nachos and feet, and the smells tunneled up her nose with relentless ferocity. Jo’s morning had begun with Sprite therapy. By noon, she’d been too queasy for lunch. Now, she’d already been to the restroom once to toss up half of her dinner, and she was so fatigued and shaky she thought she might swoon. And how embarrassing would that be. Her hands were quivering so badly, her knotted stomach and rolling nausea affecting the rest of her body now, that she’d pulled them inside the sleeves of her hoodie. Tam and Mike were rolling strike after strike, laughing and enjoying each other’s company like they were little boys again; she didn’t want to ruin their night because of her stomach.

             
“Jo, did you hear me?”

             
She was sitting in a hard plastic chair, all her concentration focused on not throwing up, and no, she hadn’t heard Delta. “No, sorry.” Just the effort of talking made her sick.