Leslie Kelly – The Guy Most Likely To...: Underneath It All / Can't Get You Out of My Head / A Moment Like This (страница 2)
Needing to know either way, she swung around to face him.
“Oh, hell, you
Had she said that out loud? Yikes, the way his brow shot up told her she had. “So you were hoping I’d be a total dog?”
“It would only have been fair for your looks to match your character.”
He winced. “Score one for Desantos.”
“I’m not keeping score,” she insisted.
She didn’t want to keep score with him, or to exchange zingers. She wanted to go on believing she was completely over him… Which was easier to do when she didn’t have to look at his unfairly handsome face.
The eighteen-year-old Seth had been super cute in the way young, lean guys are. The twenty-eight-year-old one ought to have one of those hazard labels, like the kind on the side of cigarette packages.
Because he was so very,
His hair was thick and dark, shorter now, but he had a few of those tiny finger-tempting curls at his nape. The dark green eyes were deep-set, heavily lashed, punctuated by light laugh lines on either side, and they still twinkled.
His face was a little scruffy, unshaven. No more smooth-cheeked youth, he had the kind of rough jaw a woman would want rubbing against her skin, leaving deliciously wicked red marks.
And his body…wow, the body had definitely matured. Seth had played football in high school, but he’d been the quarterback, so he’d been fast and lean, not bulky. Now he had muscles on top of his muscles. Every inch of him looked powerful, from the broad shoulders clad in a tight black T-shirt down to the massive chest, the rippled stomach with hair.
Only, she could. In her mind’s eye.
She suddenly realized he’d caught her staring. Heat rushed into her cheeks. Jeez, she hadn’t blushed since she was a teenager.
“So, do I pass inspection?”
“Not even close.”
“Why do I get the feeling you were wishing I’d be bald and covered with scars from a virulent case of shingles?”
“You’re too young for shingles. Chicken pox would have suited me fine,” she said with a smirk. “I bet you’d be a scratcher.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you were always ready to scratch your itch the minute it started to bug you,” she replied, remembering his rep as a player from when she’d first started school with him in their junior year.
“As I recall, I was kept unscratched and uncomfortable for a pretty long stretch there before graduation.”
She ignored the implication. “What would
“Touché. By the way, it’s nice to see you, too,” he said, his grin widening, fully aware she was angry about finding him every bit as sexy as she’d hoped, as hot as she’d prayed he
“
Ignoring her, he took a long second of his own to look her over, from top to bottom, and Lauren sent up a mental curse against the person who’d designed airplane seats to be tiny and clothes-rumpling, and their processed air to be hair-flattening and makeup-melting. Of course it hadn’t helped that a harried mommy and her way-too-big-to-be-a-lap-baby demon spawn had been seated beside her. The kid kept throwing tantrums and lollipops, one of which had landed in Lauren’s hair, which now probably had a sticky streak of red mixed in with the golden brown. And the little brute had been a kicker, so she had a bruise on the side of her arm.
Okay. Nix that.
He stared at her, as if he couldn’t look enough, and Lauren found herself shifting from foot to foot, like a nervous kid being inspected by the school principal.
Good grief, she so needed to get away from this reunion. She was degenerating back to high school mode, even in her thoughts! It didn’t help that she suddenly remembered the secret Senior Class Superlatives that had made their way around campus, outside of the safe, sanctioned ones in the yearbook. Seth had been voted “Most Likely to Score with the Prom Queen.” She’d forgotten all about it until right now…when she was face-to-throat with the potent male who was supposed to have been her first lover.
It was one more thing to be mad at him for. Because of Seth, she’d lost her virginity to a guy she didn’t even like much. Being abandoned by her first love had made her anxious to prove herself worthy of sexual desire, so she’d gone to bed with the first guy she’d dated in college.
He’d thought her clitoris was inside her belly button.
“What are you doing here, Seth?” she finally asked.
“Last time I checked, I was part of the class of ‘02.”
“You didn’t show up at graduation,” she reminded him again.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t get a diploma.”
Well, that was news to her.
“I got them to mail it to me,” he continued. “I had the grades, even without being there to take my finals.”
He’d definitely been smart enough, which had been part of his appeal. Handsome, athletic, sexy and supersmart. Could any girl have resisted him? Certainly none back in high school. He could have had anyone he wanted…but he’d sworn he only wanted her.
They had gone to an exclusive, pricey private school in Chicago. She’d been a scholarship commuter kid from a blue-collar neighborhood who took a city bus to and from classes every day. He’d been a golden boy, a blue blood, living in the Ivy League–priced dorms, occasionally mentioning a family estate outside the city, but mostly not talking about his parents, with whom he didn’t get along.
She and Seth had been as different as chocolate and sauerkraut…yet those ten months they’d been together, she’d believed there was nobody else on the planet as right for her.
“Did they mail your diploma to the dark side of the moon?” she asked with a sweet smile. “I mean, I assumed you were kidnapped by aliens, the way you disappeared.”
“You can’t know how badly I feel about that.”
“Save it.”
“It
“Yeah, well, believe me, if you’d been close and I’d had a weapon that night, I would have happily taken care of that killing thing for you.”
“Lauren…”
“Then, on Monday, when I found out you’d withdrawn from school, I stopped hating you long enough to be
But she had been concerned. Concerned enough to forgive him, enough to think something truly awful must have happened. Enough to decide to be there for him during whatever calamity must have befallen him. She’d waited for him to reach out to her to explain. And she’d waited.
Finally, she’d called—number disconnected.
She’d written—letter returned to sender.
Only the fact that his younger sister, a middle schooler, had also withdrawn the same day convinced her Seth hadn’t been murdered. That, and his second call. He’d phoned her house that autumn, saying he was okay, and he was sorry.
Lauren had already been living in Georgia with her aunt, having just started her freshman year of college, and her parents had refused to give Seth her number. When her mom called to give her the message, Lauren had only cried for about ten minutes before going back to her regularly scheduled plan of get-over-Seth-and-move-on. End of contact. Until today.
“Lauren, I…”
“Hey, look guys, it’s Seth and Lauren! The king and queen of the prom are finally together!”
“Oh, fuck my life,” she muttered under her breath.
Seth’s quick, short bark of laughter told her she hadn’t been quiet enough.
Never had Lauren so wished for a time machine—she’d get in it and go back ten minutes, to the moment when she’d pulled up her rental car in front of this overly lavish place. Instead of parking, she’d have kept on driving. Canada was nice this time of year. Or Mexico. The Sahara. Anywhere else.
Though, honestly, if she had a time machine, she’d be better off going back to warn her young, vulnerable self to never say yes to Seth Crowder in the first place. She could even take an extra minute during the trip to offer herself a stock tip:
“Pose for a picture guys—the one you never got on prom night!”
“Fat chance,” she snapped, turning quickly. They could take a picture of her butt as she walked away. “Lauren, we need to talk,” Seth said.
“No, we don’t.”
“Please!” He held out a hand and put it on her arm.