dancing the last dance. The one where they finally turn down the lights real low and everybody snuggles up and pretends all that touchin’ is accidental.”
Thinking about the kind of touching he meant, she shivered, and her barely there breasts tingled interestingly.
His voice burred with a kind of teasing she wasn’t able to return, and he stepped nearer. “You know what I mean, Gabby. The kissing dance. That’s what you’re missing. I bet Johnny Ray’s looking all over for you. He’d want to dance real slow, real close, and see if your hair smells as pretty as it looks.”
He flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the bay and took one more step closer, his thighs bumping her stockinged toes. “Because I’ve been wondering. Does it, Gabby? Does it smell like rain shine and night jasmine?” With the tip of his finger, he brushed the top of her head, and her toes curled hard against the cement break wall.
She didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. Not even when he ran one callused finger down her shoulder, slipping under the cap sleeve of her dress and tracing the veins of her inner arm. She didn’t speak even when he touched her wrist, gently, lightly, a butterfly touch that made her pulse skip and stutter. With a half smile she would wonder about for years, he lifted her arm, holding it up. Moonlight glinted on the thin band of her bracelet, on her skin, turning everything silver.
“Aw, what the hell,” he muttered. “Johnny Ray’s not here, but I am. Too bad for ol’ Johnny Ray,” he said, and tucked her arm around his neck. “Damned if I’m not going to find out for myself what rain shine smells and tastes like.” His gaze never leaving hers, he lifted one of the curls that had cost her thirty-five dollars at Sally Lynn’s salon and, shutting his eyes, stroked the curl against his mouth. “Delicious, that’s what,” he whispered, his dark eyes filling her sight. “Who could have guessed?”
And then the baddest of the bad boys kissed her, and she kissed him right back, a great big smooch of a kiss, tongues and lips and bodies touching in that silvery light Oh, Lord, the touching. All down the stretch of his tough, hard body, her fifteen-year-old self melted, and there had been touching.
She liked feeling wild and wicked and out of control. She liked the hum of her body against his, liked the powerful drumming of his heart against her hand.
But just when she felt like soda pop fizzing out of control, his breath buzzing into her ear and making her insides quiver, he’d murmured, “You may be jailbait, sweet pea, but I swear to God it would be worthwhile. Except—”
He pushed her away from him, leaving her skin cold and hot and aching all at the same time. Stepping away with a grin that promised heaven or hell—she’d never been able to decide—he straddled his cycle and left her in a squeal of tires against pavement while she tried to decide if she wanted to call her daddy to come and pick her up or steal the car keys from her football-hero, drunk-as-a-skunk prom date.
For the rest of that night, her mouth, her body, her skin—everything—had ached and burned with that cold heat, and for the next two years she’d dreamed about Joe Carpenter.
Of course, she hadn’t seen him again after that night.
He’d vanished, leaving Bayou Bend with its own kind of buzz as rumors floated, eddied and finally died away, leaving unexplained the mystery of nineteen-year-old Joe Carpenter’s disappearance one month shy of graduation.
Now, staring up the length of his legs and thighs, Gabrielle swallowed. Even in the darkness of this Christmas tree lot, eleven years later, her entire body flushed with that memory.
No wonder he’d been the town’s bad boy.
Well, she didn’t want those disturbing dreams haunting her again. It had taken too many sleepless nights, too many confused days for her to erase Joe Carpenter from her dreams, her memories.
“So how long has it been?” he asked, his voice low and rumbly, goading, baiting her. “Let me think if I can remember the last time I saw you, Gabby. It must have been—”
“A while,” she said grimly, struggling to her feet and catching one flat-heeled shoe on slippery needles and mud. “That’s how long. A while.” Her foot skidded forward and her arms windmilled crazily. Flailing, she saw her purse sail into the darkness.
“Whoa, sweet pea.” Joe’s warm hand closed around her elbow and braced her, his still-callused fingers sliding down her wrist as she balanced.
Even through the silk of her blouse, Gabrielle felt that warm, rough slide. His hand had been warm that night, too, warm against her bare skin. She shivered.
“Cold?” Amusement glittered in his eyes. Heat was in the depths, too, as he watched her.
He knew what he was doing, as he had eleven years ago, eleven years that had vanished like smoke with his touch. He knew, but she was darned if she’d give him the satisfaction of going all giddy and girlish.
She was twenty-six years old, too old for girlish. Giddy and girlish had never been her style, not even at fifteen. “It’s the damp. That’s all,” she muttered. “I’m not used to it anymore.”
“Sure that’s all it is?” His question, below the raucous rendition of the chipmunks and their version of “Jingle Bells,” tickled the edge of her cheek where he bent over her, still supporting her.
“Absolutely.”
“You moved away from Bayou Bend?” He clamped a hand under her elbow and steadied her.
“I’ve been living in Arizona. Same rattlesnakes. Less humid.” She dusted off her red velour skirt, shot Oliver a smile and a “so long” and slung her shoulder strap over her arm. “Nice to see you again, Joe. Merry Christmas to you and your son.”
She was almost safe. One second more, and she would have been up the walkway and gone, out to her car, away from the slamming of her heart against her chest, away from memory and the sizzle of his touch. One second. That’s all she needed.
Out of the darkness of the next aisle, Moon Tibo lumbered, bumping into her and pitching her straight into Joe Carpenter’s arms. “Okay, folks, let’s haul this tree up front and get you on your way. I mean, you only got twenty-four days to the big event. Y’all gonna want time to hang up them ornaments before this year’s over, right?”
“Right.” Joe’s laugh gusted against her ear, and Gabrielle felt her toes curl in memory. “Give me a minute, Moon. Got a damsel in distress here.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. How ya doin’, Gabrielle? Your dad feelin’ better?”
“Much.” She was all tied up with her purse strap and Joe’s arms, and she twisted, pushed, while Joe’s chest shook with laughter against her. Over its broad slope, she finally angled her face in Moon’s direction. “Dad’s cooking jambalaya tomorrow night, in fact. For after we decorate the tree. Come on over. He’d enjoy seeing you.”
Six foot five and built like a mountain, Moon gifted her with one of his rare smiles. “Might do that. Sure like your dad, I do.”
She tugged again at her strap, which had flicked over Joe’s head and bound them together. Mumbling under her breath to Joe, whose only help so far had been to keep her from landing face first in pine needles and mud, she said, “Give me a hand, will you? I can’t do this alone.”
“You got it, sweet pea. Lots of things aren’t any fun done alone. I like lending a helping hand.” His half smile could have lit up the town of Bayou Bend for a couple of blocks, and even Gabrielle’s forehead blazed with heat. Lifting the strap, he ducked under it, his thick hair brushing up against her mouth, and stepped back. “I’m ready to help out. When I can.” His palm was flat and firm against the hollow of her spine. “How’s that?”
“Peachy. Thanks.” Gabrielle untangled herself from Joe’s clasp and blushed back her hair. Joe Carpenter would flirt if he were wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy. “This has been—special.”
“Absolutely.”