FIRST KISS Page 2

  * * *

  Tom watched the last wisp of smoke drift upward, then gave a shake of his head. For a moment, he'd experienced something akin to déjà vu. Not the sense that he'd done this routine before, but something … different. Weird.

  But apparently no one else at the table thought anything odd had happened. Maggie was removing the candles from the cake, and Ross was pouring coffee. As for Holly, she was simply sitting there looking cool, composed, and beautiful, as always.

  And attainable.

  She'd made no secret of the fact that she was attracted to him. All she was waiting for was an invitation—a kiss, a touch, simple words. She would be more than willing, and he would be more than satisfied. But, although she was a gorgeous woman who preferred exactly the kind of no-strings relationship he liked, he'd never offered the invitation. He'd always had good reasons for it, but as he sat there beside her, he couldn't remember what they were.

  He could even pinpoint the exact moment he'd forgotten—when he'd blown out the candles. When the weird feeling had come over him. Despite Maggie's command to make a wish, he hadn't. He'd been thinking about the fact that a year ago, he'd set one reasonable goal for himself—get married—and made one frivolous wish—fall in love. He'd been wondering exactly how a person went about falling in love, if it wasn't something he could research or find reliable how-to instructions for, and he'd blown out the candles and…

  "What did you wish for?" Holly asked. Her voice was a little on the husky side, full of promise, blatantly sexy, overwhelmingly feminine. It was a voice a man could dream about.

  "Holly McBride!" Maggie admonished. "You know the rules. If he tells what he wished for, it won't come true"

  Rules? For wishing? That seemed to miss the whole point. Not that it mattered. He couldn't tell a wish he hadn't made.

  As they talked over cake and ice cream, he thought of all his birthdays past. The early ones had come and gone without parties, cakes, or gifts. The later ones had been marked by celebrations that hadn't meant anything to him. Like Deborah's party last night. It had been attended by a lot of people with money sucking up to others with more money.

  That wasn't the case tonight. Ross was the single person he considered a friend, and he and Maggie didn't care about money. And all Holly wanted from him was the temporary use of his could.

  Did she have any interest in getting to know him first? But why even wonder? When was the last time he'd let a woman see anything more than what was on the surface? When was the last time he'd trusted a woman, confided in her, cared about her? Never. And he liked it that way. He wasn't looking to change.

  It was nearly ten o'clock when the evening ended. He shook hands with Ross, accepted Maggie's kiss on the cheek, then walked out with Holly.

  "So … happy birthday," she said for the second time.

  "Thanks. And thanks for the cake. It's my favorite."

  "I know. Maggie told me. It probably doesn't compare to being utterly alone in China, but as birthday dinners go, this one wasn't so bad, was it?"

  "No, it wasn't," he admitted.

  They stepped off the curb between their cars, and she turned left. On impulse, so did he. "Want to get a drink somewhere?"

  She unlocked her door and tossed her bag inside before facing him, looking as surprised as he felt. They'd done a few things together—shared a meal or two, gone to a holiday party, even spent an afternoon at a carnival last summer—but always the invitations had come from Maggie and Ross. Tom had never suggested anything before tonight, and he honestly didn't know why he'd done it now.

  "Bethlehem doesn't have a good place for just a drink. But the inn keeps a well-stocked liquor cabinet for our guests, and there's always a quiet place to sit in the lobby."

  His suite was quiet, too, he thought about adding. He didn't, though. "I'll follow you."

  Actually, he followed the distant sight of her taillights as she drove fast and braked hard through the quiet neighborhood. By the time he turned into the long drive that led to McBride Inn, she was out of sight. By the time he walked through the double doors, she was behind the registration desk, her coat already off.

  "Either your insurance rates are sky-high, or you know all the cops around here."

  She flashed him a smile. "Know 'em? I dated all of 'em."

  She'd "dated" virtually every single man in the county, according to rumor, just as he'd "dated" every drop-dead gorgeous blonde in Buffalo. He wondered what she was looking for that she hadn't found with all those men, wondered if he'd kept his distance because he didn't want to be one more man who couldn't give her what she wanted.

  But he'd disappointed dozens of women. What did one more matter?

  He signed in for his suite, then accepted the key.

  "Tell me your pleasure, take your bags upstairs, and meet me back here in five."

  Tell me your pleasure. Simple words in that husky voice—all it took to warm his could. All he needed to form an image of him and Holly naked, her skin pale in contrast to his, her face flushed, her breathing ragged. He reached up to loosen his tie, but he wasn't wearing one. Letting his hand fall back to his side, he cleared his throat, then hoarsely repeated, "My … pleasure?"

  "Your pleasure, your poison, your drink. Scotch, brandy, cognac, wine, beer. If it's not on the list, ask. It may be in the cabinet."

  The drink he'd asked her to have. It had completely slipped his mind. "How about coffee? Black."

  With a smile, she headed for the kitchen in back. He picked up his bags and went upstairs.

  The suite looked the same as it always did—perfectly done up, comfortable, but impersonal. Every little detail was perfectly matched to every other little detail. It was a space a thousand people would be happy in, like his apartment, designed to please all and to offend none.

  But this time there was one unmatched little detail—the package on the night table. His name was on the outside of the card. The message inside: Happy Birthday. Holly.

  At last night's party, there had been a table piled high with expensive gifts. Lots of crystal, silver, and gold, exotic leathers, gourmet chocolates, fine Havanas, and finer spirits. None of it suited him, because no one there knew him well enough to pick what he wanted. Not even Deborah.

  How much closer would Holly come to the target? He was reluctant to find out.

  He walked away from the package, then went back and picked it up. It was easy to tell through the paper that it was a book. If it had to do with business in any way, he could add it to the unwanted gifts at home. If it was something off-the-wall, something he might enjoy reading…

  He tore the paper open to reveal the dust jacket of a hardcover by a mystery author he'd read for years. Inside it was autographed by the author to him.

  How had she known he liked mysteries? Neither Maggie nor Ross did. His housekeeper was probably the only person in the world who knew, and that was because he paid her to dust his bookshelves.

  But Holly had known, or made a lucky guess. Either way…

  He read the inscription again, feeling… Hell, he didn't know. Vulnerable, when he'd worked too damn hard never to feel that way again. Turned on, because there was something erotic about receiving from a woman a gift that truly mattered. Threatened, because there was also something seriously dangerous about a woman who could choose a gift that truly mattered. Who the hell was Holly McBride to know him better than everyone else in his life?

  He could go downstairs and find out. She was waiting for him. The thought made his chest grow tight, edged his temperature up a notch or two.

  Or he could turn off the lights and crawl into bed. She would get the message when he didn't show. It was the coward's way out, and he'd taken it before when things threatened to get messy or emotional. It contributed to his reputation as a coldhearted bastard and led people to expect less of him.

  But all Holly had done was give him a gift he could appreciate. She deserved better than to be stood up in her own lobby.

  S
he deserved better… Those were words he should keep in mind.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

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  McBride Inn had been in Holly's family for more generations than she could remember late on a Saturday night, though not always as an inn. Some ancestor had carved a farm out of the woodland to pass down through generations of McBrides. They had always been fortunate and prospered even when times were hard elsewhere.

  Her grandfather had been the most prosperous of them all. He'd left a not-so-small fortune to his only child, Holly's father, Lewis, and Holly's mother had managed to run through much of it. Margery McBride had not been a happy woman. What good was a rich husband when he insisted on living in some drab little town where no one appreciated her? She'd required frequent trips to New York City, great sums of cash, and even greater reserves of alcohol to make her life bearable, while she'd made Holly's and her father's lives unbearable.

  Holly gazed at the family portrait that hung in a lobby alcove. She was sixteen when the photograph had been taken, standing between parents who rarely spoke to each other and hadn't shared a bedroom in years. Margery had been tipsy, and Lewis had been his usual long-suffering self, and they had all pretended to be one happy family.

  Rolling her eyes, she murmured with some scorn, "Can we say 'dysfunctional'?"

  "Yes, and we can spell it, too."

  She schooled herself not to startle at the realization that Tom had finally joined her. She'd first waited in one of two wing chairs in a dimly lit corner, then, too restless to sit any longer, she'd prowled the lobby, reflecting on family history to avoid thinking of what she feared was becoming obvious—that she'd been stood up.

  But there was Tom at last. She'd thought he had regretted his impulsive invitation to have a drink, or maybe it had been the gift that changed his mind. Maybe she'd been right earlier, about it being too small. Or maybe he'd feared it meant more than it really did.

  But whatever arguments he'd made in favor of standing her up, the arguments to show had won. She was glad.

  He gestured toward the portrait. He had to have seen it before, but he'd never acknowledged it until now. "Mom and Dad, huh? And sweet, innocent Holly."

  "No more than you at that age."

  "You're still more innocent than I was at that age," he lazily disagreed. A moment later, he commented, "You look like your mother."

  "You think so?" she asked dryly.

  "Obviously you're not blond, but you've got her features and that sort of delicate look."

  She studied Margery's face but couldn't find a hint of the resemblance he was talking about. But that didn't mean it wasn't there. She'd never wanted to see anything of her mother in her, and her mother had felt the same.

  "Do they live around here?"

  She wasn't surprised he didn't know. After all these months of coming to Bethlehem regularly, he still made no effort to get to know anyone, including her. She, on the other hand, had pumped Maggie for every last bit of information about him.

  She gestured toward the wing chairs. The coffee she'd brought him, now lukewarm, sat on the mahogany table that separated them. "My father died a few weeks before I graduated from college, and my mother immediately returned from exile to New York City, where she was from."

  "Do you see her?"

  "No more than I can help." She sat down, crossed her legs, and watched nervously as he picked up his cup. Not that she had anything to be nervous about. Simple conversation—that was all he expected from her.

  "So your father died and your mother moved away, leaving you the family home. What made you turn it into an inn, or was it already one?"

  "It was just an old farmhouse, less than half the size it is now." She gazed across the gleaming wood floors into the darkened dining room, one of the additions she'd made. "When my father died, he left the money to Margery and the property to me. He knew she hated it here. She would have sold it to the first person who came along. So she took the cash and split, and I got this great old house and a hundred acres of woods and farmland, but no means to take care of it."

  "Why not sell it? You don't strike me as the sentimental type."

  She'd spent a lot of years convincing people she wasn't the least bit sentimental about anything—not the family she both loved and hated, the teenage boys who'd broken her heart, the grown men who'd done it, too. Then one day she'd realized she was no longer persuading them to believe a lie. She really wasn't sentimental. She'd lost tender feelings somewhere along the way. She had become every bit as cynical as she'd pretended to be.

  But sometime in the last few years, that trend had started to reverse. Despite her best efforts, she was developing a streak of sentimentality—but not about the men in her life.

  "The place had potential," she replied with a shrug. "Bethlehem always draws tourists in the summer and crowds for the holidays, and it's not far from the best skiing the area has to offer. The only thing it was lacking was a place for all those people to stay. I was living by myself in a house with eight bedrooms. An inn seemed the only logical choice."

  He looked as if he didn't quite appreciate her logic. Of course she'd had other options. She could have subdivided the house into apartments. Or she could have sold the timber, then put the land on the market. But neither would have left the property intact and still in the possession of a McBride. Back when she'd still been sentimental, an inn had been the only logical choice. Five years ago, she might have made a different choice. Five years from now, who knew?

  "Obviously you're an only child."

  "Obviously?" She stretched out a leg. "Need I mention that my Sophie Garels leave impressive bruises when applied to an unprotected shin?"

  His chuckle was low, amused, warm. He rarely laughed and smiled only on occasion. He was a very serious man, but that was all right. She wasn't interested in his sense of humor.

  "I imagine you leave all kinds of bruises on the unsuspecting men who come into contact with you."

  "Just as you do with all those unsuspecting women."

  He grimaced. "Not one of the women who deliberately seek out contact with me is unsuspecting. They know what they want, and they understand from the beginning what they'll get."

  Like her. She wanted sex, pure and simple, and she believed that eventually she would get it. What happened after was anyone's guess. She had a tendency to remain friends with her former lovers, which was fortunate, since she saw many of them every time she went into town. Tom, on the other hand, tended to make enemies of his exes. If things between them ever degenerated to the point that he no longer was willing to be a guest at the inn, she had no doubt he would buy a house of his own, or build an inn of his own, or make her an offer she couldn't refuse. He wouldn't exile himself from Bethlehem. Exile would mean defeat, and Tom Flynn never admitted defeat.

  But neither did Holly McBride.

  Redirecting her thoughts, she also redirected the conversation. "Yes, I'm an only child. Does it show in my independent nature? My incredible maturity? My self-sufficiency?"

  "Your belief that you have a God-given right to always get what you want?"

  "If I'd always gotten what I wanted, I wouldn't be an only child. From the time I was little until I turned twelve, I wanted a brother or sister more than anything in the world."

  "What happened when you turned twelve?"

  God, what had made her bring that up? She hadn't even thought of it in years—the party she'd begged to not have, the elaborate tiered cake, the classmates she never would have brought into her home by choice, her mother too drunk to be on her feet, much less supervising a children's party. The embarrassment, the humiliation, the handprint on her cheek. And the tears.

  What had happened when she'd turned twelve? "I grew up," she said shortly. Suddenly uneasy, she clasped her hands together, steadied her voice, and asked flat out, "Are you going to invite me to your room tonight? Because if you're not, then I'm going to bed."

  He studied her for a moment, his
features impassive, then gave a shake of his head. "Not tonight. Sorry."

  She'd been rejected enough that at first it didn't bother her. But as she got to her feet, the smile that touched her mouth felt forced, and she had to dig deep to find the good-natured teasing she was looking for. "Sure you don't want to change your mind? It's going to be a long, cold night, and there are far better ways to stay warm than relying on blankets and furnaces. Trust me, you'll regret it."

  "I probably will."

  "But you're not changing your mind." Her sigh was soft, pouty, and totally put-on. "Why?"

  "I have my reasons. Maybe I'll tell you once I remember them."

  Sounding as natural as if this were one of their countless other friendly goodbyes, she said, "Then I'm heading off. I'll see you in the morning." She was already several feet away when he spoke.

  "Holly? Thanks for the gift."

  She turned back to see him looking awkward, almost shy, though surely that was impossible. Suddenly her smile wasn't so forced. "You're welcome. He's one of my favorite authors. I'd seen you with a book a time or two, so when he was a guest here last month, I thought you might like him, too."

  "I do. Thank you."

  She walked a few more feet, then turned back to tell him good night. He was already halfway up the stairs. Going to bed alone. Like her.

  But one of these nights he wouldn't turn her down, because she'd made a wish. One of these nights he would invite her to his room, and they would do incredibly wicked things the whole night through.

  And then the game would be over.

  Her smile faded as the ultimate result of her wish slipped into her mind. In effect, she'd wished for the game to end. For her fascination with Tom to disappear. For his presence in her life also to come to an end.

  And sometimes wishes did come true.

  * * *

  You'll regret it, Holly had warned, and Tom had to admit she'd been right. Having her join him would have been a hell of a way to cap off his birthday—and a hell of a better way to stay warm than blankets and furnaces.