The Angel Tasted Temptation (2 page)

"Boston is just a little different from what I'm used to." Meredith shut her purse without answering the call. "But I'm still going to do what it takes to experience it all while I'm here."

"I can show you the Prudential and the Aquarium—"

"I didn't mean that kind of experience." Meredith started to lean back against the seat, remembered the germ quotient, and straightened. "I come from a town of three thousand people," she explained. "I haven't exactly lived yet. Heck, I've barely seen the "real world."

Maria laughed. "If you want the real world, you've come to the right place. It doesn't get any realer than this."

The train continued its rushing path along the tracks, the riders journeying along, looking as passive and unanimated as the ads for safe sex and language schools that decorated the metal walls. No one here looked real. Heck, they didn't even look alive.

"Good," Meredith said. "Because I want..." She glanced around, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "A man."

Maria blinked. "A... a man?"

"Yeah. I want to ... well, fill in the gaps in my education." She raised a brow to complete the meaning of her sentence. "Hopefully more than once."

Maria leaned back in her seat, a smile of appreciation on her lips. She thrust a hand out to Meredith.

"Welcome to Boston, Meredith Shordon. I'm
definitely
going to like working with you."

Meredith's phone vibrated again, as if her mother was sending a protest all the way from Indiana
: Don't think about sex. Doing it, watching it or even spelling it in a crossword.

Ignoring the call was cowardly, but it bought her some time. Time to figure out who she was, what she wanted and how the city of Boston could change Meredith Shordon.

For the better.

But
...

That little word grumbled inside her brain and sent an arrow of doubt through her hastily arranged plans.

If she'd found men playing bongos in their underwear here, what else did the city of Boston hold that Meredith hadn't expected ...

And wasn't prepared to handle?

Travis's Regrets-Can-Be-Drowned Hangover Remedy

1-1/2 ounces vodka

3 ounces tomato juice

1 dash lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

2 to 3 drops Tabasco sauce

Salt and pepper

1 celery stalk

It's been a hell of a night and an even worse morning. The best thing to do is forget both. Start by mixing the vodka, juices, Worcestershire and Tabasco. If you're a glutton for punishment, use a blender. Or if your head feels like it's been the bass drum in a rock concert, then use a spoon. Doesn't matter how you do it, long as you get the damned thing mixed and poured over ice.

Season with salt and pepper, that is, assuming your tongue doesn't feel like a leftover scrap of Berber and will even notice the taste.

Shove the celery stalk in there and call it breakfast.

While drinking, promise yourself you will never, ever end up in this situation again. At least not before Happy Hour starts tonight.

Travis Campbell reached for the Tylenol, shook out a couple, swallowed them dry and swore never again.

Never,
ever
again.

He was too old for this. Too old to be chasing skirts and drinking past dawn. It was time to start being responsible, time to act like the grown-up he really was.

His pounding head stammered out an agreement between pulses of pain.

'There's a girl at the front door, asking for you," Kenny, his roommate, said, stumbling into the bathroom and swiping at his face. "She might have been at the party last night. Might not have. I dunno. After a case of Bud, they all look the same to me."

"Tell her I died." Travis turned the bottle of Tylenol around, read the precautions about overdosing and shook out a couple more anyway.

"There's a party at Lou's beach house in Hull tonight. If we sleep all day, we'll be ready to go by nine." Kenny belched, splashed a little cold water on his stubble-ridden face, didn't see a towel and opted for his T-shirt instead.

Kenny Gerard was a whiz at work, a man who could make it through a twelve-hour day without looking or acting like he'd spent the previous twelve hours making his way through the alcohol in a bar like a starving man at the Ponderosa buffet.

In his job as the Assistant to the Director of New Product Development at Belly-Licious Beverages, Kenny was Travis's right hand man. And at a party, Kenny was the man who made sure Travis—and anyone within a five-foot radius—made good use of that right hand by always keeping it full of intoxicating drinks.

A friend, drinking buddy and conspirator to a life of depravity. Kenny was just the type of guy Travis had always liked having with him on a Saturday night.

Until now. Until the consequences of all those Saturday nights came swinging at him with what felt like a hell of a right hook.

"I'm not going to Lou's beach house." Travis slipped the Tylenol into the pocket of his shorts for later, leaving the bottle on the counter.

"Man, you're going to miss a killer party. I hear he's getting strippers." Kenny sauntered over to the toilet and sat down on the closed lid. He picked up last month's issue of
Playboy
and began flipping through the pages, pausing to drool over women he'd never have.

"I'm done, Kenny."

"Yeah, I'm pretty toasted myself, man. I am done. D-O"—
belch
— "N."

"E."

"E?" Kenny blinked at him, his brown eyes bleary. Spindly red lines crackled across the surface, like a map of the interstate highway system.

Travis shook his head. "Never mind. I'm done with parties. And women. And acting like I'm seventeen."

Kenny scratched his head, his sleep-styled dark brown hair flopping with the movement. "Why?"

"Because—"

"Travis Campbell, I am going to kill you!" The bathroom door burst open and in strode a redhead in high heels, a clingy white pantsuit with matching trench, and an oversized bright plum-colored purse.

He'd met her last night. Or was it last week? Damn. All those parties had started to run together, like a river of tequila and vodka.

Her name started with a T, that much he remembered. Tiffany. Maybe Tammy.

"I'm in the
bathroom
," Travis said to her, indicating the sink and Kenny on the toilet with his magazine. She stood on his linoleum, clearly not caring that she'd walked in on his morning ablutions. The bright blue shower curtain behind her looked like one of those TV blue screens, making Travis feel like the whole thing was surreal, unnatural.

Or maybe that was the leftover rum in his system talking.

"Listen," he said, rubbing his head, "can we talk about this later?"

She parked a fist on her hip, the purse swinging to the front. "You don't remember me, do you?"

"Of course I do."
Tawny. Terry
.

"Then what's my name?"

He swallowed. Beside him, he could see Kenny smirking. Damn. Why couldn't she have shown up
after
the Tylenol had had a chance to start working?

Tara. Tess. Tilda
.

Shit. He'd about run out of T names and not one had felt mentally right. He'd take his last resort then— turn the tables on
Thomasina-Thelma-Tasha
. "Listen, you clearly don't like me anymore. Wouldn't it be best if we forget about each other? Move on. Get a little closure?"

If he spouted enough Dr. Phil maybe she'd leave.

"Oh, I won't forget you," she said. "Or what you did to me."

"What I did to you?" Oh shit. What the hell did she mean by that? He'd been drunk, but not
that
drunk.

Had he?

"I-I-I—" She sniffled, shook her head, then directed her gaze at him again. "I thought you loved me."

Travis swallowed. Had he used
that
word? That alone was a sign he was drinking too much. That was it. The rest of the case of beer was going down the drain.

Wait. That might be too rash. Better just to put it in the bottom bin of the refrigerator. Outta sight, outta mind, outta mouth and outta trouble.

"How could you think that?" Travis asked. "I barely—" He caught himself before he said
remember you
, and reworded. "We barely dated."

"I felt a connection." She swiped at her eyes. "Right in the first few minutes, when we started talking on Brian's sofa."

Brian's sofa. Okay, he remembered a conversation with a redhead—
Tori, Trista, Trixie
—at Bri's party last night, but nothing that would have caused him to hear wedding bells ringing. "Uh, I'm sure we had a great conversation ..."

Toni. Tracy. Tricia.

"... but I think you got the wrong idea," he said.

"Oh, you do, do you?" She pursed her lips. "I only got the idea you gave me, Travis."

He put up his hands. "Hey, I'm not a commitment kind of guy. It was a pleasure meeting you last night, but—"

She cocked her head to the right and zeroed in on his gaze. "You don't remember me at all. Do you?"

"Well, I—" He finished on a self-deprecating half laugh that he hoped begged forgiveness and turned on whatever charm he had left after a night of drinking and making a fool out of himself. "I'm sorry—"

"Olivia Tate, you jerk!" And then she swung the massive purse right at his head.

He wasn't prepared for a pocketbook blow. He felt a slam—what'd she have in there? A watermelon?— then felt himself fall to the floor in a crumpled, hungover heap.

From his vantage point, he watched a pair of black heels pivot and stomp out of his bathroom. Behind him, Kenny laughed so hard, Travis could hear the pages of
Playboy
fluttering like applause.

Her
last
name started with a T.
His
first name was the one that began with T. No wonder the Budweiser company was so wealthy. They'd sucked all his brain cells out and into the brown bottles he used to worship.

No more beer. No more parties. And no matter what, no more women.

Travis moaned and reached up, feeling along the counter for the Tylenol. He drew the bottle down to his level and flipped up the top with his thumb.

Empty.

Now that was poetic justice.

Momma’s All-You-Need-Is-This Tuna Casserole

12 ounces flat egg noodles, cooked and drained

2 7-ounce cans tuna, drained

1 cup mayonnaise

1 large onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 celery rib, chopped

1 teaspoon salt

Dash pepper

2 10-ounce cans cream of celery soup

1 cup milk

2 cups Velveeta cheese

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

1/2 cup French-fried onions

Nothing's wrong with you that a good home-cooked meal can't fix, that's for sure. You don't need that fancy city food. The basics will do you fine and get you right back to where you belong—at home, in the loving arms of your family, living out your destiny.

Start by preheating the oven to 375 degrees. Then mix the tuna, mayonnaise, onion, pepper, celery, salt and pepper in a bowl. No need to get pretty, just stir it all together.

Meanwhile, heat the soup, milk and Velveeta in a saucepan over low heat. Don't scorch it now, who knows what kind of cancer comes from burned food? Once it's all melted, mix it with the ingredients in the bowl, stir in the Parmesan, then dump the whole thing into a 3-quart casserole dish (now you know your Momma gave you a Pyrex set for your hope chest. She's still hoping, so you better get it out of the chest). Sprinkle with the onions, then bake it for 30 minutes.

That's plenty of time to think about a certain bad decision you made. And if you don't start doing some thinking quick, Momma's going to have to send out the cavalry to help you.

An hour later, the Motorola won. Meredith finally answered the twentieth—or maybe it was the twenty-first—call, before her phone could explode like a bottle of nitroglycerine that had been aggravated one too many times.

She'd barely had half a second to greet her cousin before her cell phone had started again. Meredith waved a quick apology to Rebecca, then slumped into an armchair and faced the consequences.

"I hope you at least brought protection, dear," her mother said, not even waiting for a hello.

Oh yeah, she'd brought protection. Not her mother's idea of it, though. In her purse was a thirty-six-pack box of Ultra Thin Lubricated Trojans. She doubted Walgreens would let her return them.

Nor did she intend to.

When she'd run away from Heavendale, Indiana, she'd done it without looking back. She had no intentions of returning home until she was different— very different.

She might be here to help her cousin. But most of all, she was here to shed the small-town Meredith Shordon, who was as common as rain in the spring and weeds in the garden. The first place to start was with a man.

"Meredith? Are you all right? I worry about you, dear."

"Momma, I'm alive. I'm breathing. Stop worrying."

"A girl can't be too careful, you know." In the background, Meredith could hear her father echoing agreement with a grunt. An Engelbert Humperdinck song played on the radio in her mother's sunflower wallpaper kitchen. "Especially in a city like that. You need all the help you can get."

Meredith raised her eyes heavenward and prayed she wouldn't be struck down in the La-Z-Boy for lying. "I packed it."

"
Both
economy-size containers of Purell I gave you?"

The instant hand sanitizer lotion was sitting in the back of her apartment closet in Indiana, but Meredith didn't say that. Her mother and Sam's Club were a dangerous combination. "Yep."

"
And
the Lysol?"

"Of course."

"Have you been ..." At this, her mother paused. From a thousand miles away, Meredith could picture Martha Shordon looking around for any listening ears. Little teapots, she called them, though neither Meredith nor her two older brothers had ever resembled beverage containers. Nor were any of them, now in their mid-to-late twenties, too young for whatever words her conservative, God-fearing mother might say. ".. . putting those paper covers on the toilet seats before you . .. well, you know. Number one, number two and all that."