Not Another Bad Date

She knew the feeling and pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it on her twin bed. She reached for him, but his hand on her bare stomach stopped her. His gaze lowered from hers, down her chin and throat to her breasts cupped in a sheer white nylon bra. Her nipples made hard points in the center of each cup. He stared for so long she raised her palms to cover herself, but he grabbed ahold of her wrists. He looked at her as if he’d never seen a naked girl before, but she was certain he’d seen more than his fair share of breasts.

“Zach. You’re making me self-conscious.”

“Why?” He glanced up into her face, then back down again.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

He chuckled, low in his throat. “I’m thinking that you’re a beautiful girl, and I’m a lucky guy. I’m thinking that after all this time, I’m really looking at you.” A sexy smile curved the corner of his mouth. “At least that’s the cleaned-up version of what I’m thinking.” Then he kissed her, working his way down her throat until his hot wet mouth covered her nipple through the sheer nylon. His hands moved to the hooks at her back, and the bra fell to the floor. He whispered something unintelligible as he sucked her naked flesh.

They’d never gone that far before, and this time he’d been the one to stop it. He hadn’t wanted her first time to be in a dorm room with thin walls or in a house filled with football players. The next day, he rented a room at the La Quinta and made it so good, she’d fallen even harder. He’d been the one with all the experience, and he’d taught her what to do and where to touch him. He’d taught her what good sex felt like. Later, she would learn that sometimes there was a difference between hot sex and making love. Zach had given her both. She would learn that hot sex without strings could be very satisfying, but that the best heart-pumping, mind-numbing, rock-you-like-a- hurricane sex, involved both.

She would also learn that if something burned too hot, it burned out too fast. But even if it hadn’t been for Devon, Adele doubted her relationship with Zach would have lasted past graduation. It had all been too much. He’d been too much. Sooner or later he would have broken her heart.

With Zach, it had been sooner rather than later. Her one true love, the guy who she’d thought was it for her, left her after two months. The night he’d told her that Devon was ten weeks pregnant, Adele had been devastated beyond words. He’d ripped her heart from her chest and made a mess of her life. She’d loved him with every aching cell of her body, and getting over him had taken her years.

It’s going to happen, Adele, he’d said earlier. If not now, another time.

Adele stood and turned back toward Sherilyn’s condo. She was only in Texas for a few months, but even if she lost her mind and moved back for good, the last thing she was ever going to do was get involved with Zach Zemaitis.

Chapter 7

Monday morning Adele worked on the outline for her latest futuristic series. She’d worked out the plot lines for the first three books, but the fourth and fifth weren’t so clear. She wasn’t too worried about it though. By the time she sat down to write those books, she’d know the direction each was meant to take. Hopefully.

After lunch she e-mailed her friends in Boise. Writing in a room by yourself was solitary and often lonely, and she needed contact with the outside world. Within an hour they returned her e-mails, and she learned that Lucy was diligently writing and that she and her husband, Quinn, were busily working on having a baby. Clare was leaving to travel with her freelance journalist husband, Sebastian, to Russia. Maddie had just inked a deal with Hollywood to have her latest book made into a film, and she was planning her wedding.

Adele looked around the small bedroom where she worked in Sherilyn’s home and sighed. While her friends were happily living their lives, making a baby, traveling, and planning a wedding, she was stuck in Cedar Creek. She was cursed with bad dates, vexed with a former boyfriend who gave her hot little tingles despite her desire to feel nothing, and annoyed with playing her sister’s gofer.

On the small desk next to her laptop lay a notebook filled with Sherilyn’s notes and to-do list. Adele looked forward to the day when Sherilyn was home and able to take care of herself and her children, but each time she thought about that day and looked forward to it, she felt guilty. It wasn’t her sister’s fault that she was in the hospital. If anything, Sherilyn hated not working her to-do list and playing gofer more than Adele hated working it. Still, each time Sherilyn added yet one more thing to the list, Adele fought an urge to grab the pencil and snap it like a dry twig. And that made her feel guilty and selfish.

Adele closed her laptop for the day and glanced about at the boxes of baby furniture and bags of baby clothes and diapers and baby…stuff littering the room. Number five on Sherilyn’s growing to-do list was: Paint and set up the baby’s room. Adele figured she had a few more months to get it done and was busy concentrating on the everyday wants and needs of a thirteen-year-old. Although really, she wasn’t sure what those wants and needs were because they seemed to change day by day. Sometimes minute by minute.

Just yesterday morning Adele had made Eggos for breakfast. Kendra had looked up from her plate as if she’d been served freshly toasted crap and had insisted that she hated Eggos and only wanted Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Then just this morning she’d thrown a fit because she got up too late to have an Eggo.

“I thought you hated Eggos?” Adele had reminded her.

Kendra frowned and shook her head. “No. I love Eggos.”

A pain had stabbed Adele’s forehead as she’d stared across at the niece who looked like a regular girl but was obviously an alien pod person who’d been sent from another world to drive Adele crazy.

You think you’re cursed, she reminded herself. Okay, crazier! She scrubbed her face with her hands and let out a deep breath. She was out of her element. She and Kendra weren’t all that much closer now than they had been the day Sherilyn had picked her up at the airport, and Adele didn’t have a real clear idea of how to rectify the situation. She supposed she could ask her sister, but she didn’t want Sherilyn to stress out about her and Kendra. Besides, it wasn’t as if they didn’t get along. They did; it was more like they were two people living in the same house who didn’t talk about anything important. Adele would like to know Kendra better before she left, and she could think of only one way to make that happen.

A month ago when she’d packed her suitcase, she’d anticipated a trip of no more than two weeks. As a result, she hadn’t packed all that many clothes and was getting really sick of the things she had packed. She needed to do some serious shopping, and she’d thought that maybe she and Kendra could do a little retail girl time. All teenage girls liked to shop, didn’t they? Maybe she and Kendra could bond at Dillard’s in the new mall downtown.

Adele stood and walked into Sherilyn’s bedroom, where she had moved her things. With Sherilyn in the hospital until she had her baby, Adele didn’t see any reason to sleep on the hide-abed sofa. The queen-size bed was covered in a simple red duvet made of cotton. On her bed at home, Adele had a puffy silver silk quilt with real silver threads woven into it. Adele didn’t consider herself materialistic, but she did love good bedding.

She gathered up the laundry and was again amazed at how much wash a teenager generated in one week. At three, she left to pick up her niece from school. As she pulled the Toyota to a stop in her usual place, Kendra and Tiffany walked toward the car.

“Can you give Tiffany a ride home?” Kendra asked as she opened the door and stuck her head inside. “Her daddy can’t get away from his football practice over at the high school.”

“Sure,” Adele answered, and both girls climbed into the car. As she pulled away from the curb, Tiffany buckled herself in and asked from the backseat, “Would you mind taking me home the rest of the week? My daddy is really busy, and I don’t want to get stuck waiting around for him.”

Adele looked in the rearview mirror. With Zach at football practice, it wasn’t likely that she would run into him. “I don’t mind.”

“And maybe next week too? It just depends on if the Cougars win their game Friday night.” Tiffany zipped up her hooded sweater and rearranged her backpack. “I don’t want to ask any of those stupid moms to take me.”

Adele suspected there was more to the story, and after they dropped Tiffany at home, Kendra filled her in. “She doesn’t like some of the girls’ mommas.”