don’t know how much I wish I was going to do this out of pity.” He crowded closer to the counter, getting closer to her.
That flush was running up her neck again, past her mouth, over her cheeks. Her chin lifted. “Why is it then?” she hissed. “Don’t tell me. I can guess. It’s—”
“Don’t.” It was his turn to say the word. “You’re in the kissing booth and I’m buying one kiss. Hell, Elena. Let’s just leave it at that.”
He bent his head. He hadn’t kissed her in eleven years, since she was sixteen and he was eighteen. He hesitated now, because the memory of those kisses wasn’t something he was quite ready to relinquish. The reality of kissing Elena couldn’t be as good as he remembered.
Her body was trembling again and her eyes were snapping blue fire, but she wasn’t trying to get away and he knew he couldn’t get away with retreating from this kiss. Hell, it had been leading to this for the past few months, ever since they had met again. It was probably plain good sense to get it over with.
He covered her lips with his.
She inhaled sharply at the contact and he froze. Her body shook, and he dropped her wrist to cup her shoulders with his palms. He slid his tongue between her lips. Not into her mouth, just between her soft, full, how-could-he-have-forgotten-their-decadent-taste? lips.
She inhaled sharply again, unwittingly drawing in his tongue, and Logan’s senses, instead of whirling like the dervishes he expected, heightened. Focused.
From her throat came the tiniest of moans, the sound vibrating against his tongue. Her flower-scent bloomed around them and he tasted her desire in the heat of her mouth and in the way her tongue slid against his, as if she had to know its texture, too.
All his muscles tensed, every one, everywhere, going rock-solid. He pressed her mouth harder, took the kiss deeper, and even though he felt his blood rush through his body and his heartbeat jump to unprecedented speed, his mind remained crystal-clear, as if to sear this new kiss in his memory.
His eyes opened, and he saw hers as languid slits of blue, like pieces of hot summer sky. He saw it all in them: the attraction, the arousal and then he saw something else.
Vulnerability.
Oh, hell.
Blood pounding and every nerve howling in protest, Logan broke the kiss, slowly but surely easing Elena away. He knew she was staring at him, but he refused to meet her eyes. Instead, he concentrated on getting his breathing back to normal, while one hand slid into his pocket.
Just that morning he’d met a friend and traded his Beemer for a well-worn pickup and some big-billed cash. He pulled the wad of bills out now and looked at them, the numbers on the corners making as little sense to him as the advanced calculus formulas had in college. Blinking, he focused harder, found the one he wanted, pulled it free.
Still without looking at her, he dropped it in the fishbowl. Grover Cleveland’s face fluttered to the bottom.
He turned to go.
“Wait.”
Reluctantly he swung back and looked at Elena. She was completely recovered, he was relieved to see, except for the slightly swollen appearance of her lips. Her blue eyes were back to their usual cool and the one brow she raised was just as confident and saucy as always.
“The senior prom committee thanks you,” she said.
Logan released a silent sigh, immediately understanding the remark’s significance. It wasn’t Elena who thanked him, but the prom committee. Whew. He nodded, and found he was recovered enough himself to touch his forehead in a casual, two-fingered salute.
He turned and ambled away, feeling as if he’d just dodged a deadly bullet. Some sixth sense had warned him against letting that kiss go any further. He knew that if he’d made Elena helpless in his arms, she would never have forgiven him. And he knew he would never have been able to forget Elena.
Chapter Two
Her shift in the kissing booth over, Elena O’Brien pushed through the crowd in the direction she’d seen Logan take after he’d left her. Her fingers touched the folded bill stuffed in her pocket. It was the only thing that kept her going after him.
She’d rather be running in the opposite direction.
There was only one man who could make her feel adolescent-awkward. Only one man who could make her feel a half-shy, half-wild sixteen again, her shoes sliding off her heels because her abuela—grandmother—always bought them big for a growing girl. At sixteen she remembered her lips throbbing too, scrubbed clean at Nana’s insistence of the scarlet lipstick Elena wanted so badly to wear.
Only girls that were payo—trashy—painted their mouths. Girls who did such a thing—and in such a color!—got the wrong kind of attention from boys.
Her abuela, God rest her soul, had been right about that.
Now, all these years later, Elena didn’t have time for men and any kind of attention they might give her. Not when there was Gabby to think of and all the money that it would require to put her through college and then medical school. Elena was working two jobs already and, she thought with a sigh, she might have to pick up a third to pay for the damage the recent earthquake had done to the home she and Gabby had inherited from their grandmother.
Anyway, the truth was that Elena had lousy luck when it came to men. It wasn’t much hardship to sacrifice them so that her sister could achieve their dream.
Catching sight of broad shoulders and a dark golden head amongst those gathering around a small stage on her right, Elena’s feet paused of their own accord, her heart twitching in that stupid, childish way again. Despite the fact that Logan Chase was her best friend’s brother-in-law, she gave serious second thoughts to letting him live with his own mistake. She didn’t want another confrontation with him.
But she steeled her spine and headed his way, because she refused to be ruled by her ridiculous reactions to him. Pride demanded it. Anyway, he was never going to know how he affected her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
She excused herself through the knot of people until she stood directly behind him. “Logan.” When he didn’t immediately turn, she touched his back.
Something jolted through her fingers, shooting up her arm. Logan jerked around.
“You,” he said, his brown eyes wide.
Elena stared. The word had briefly formed his mouth into a kiss and her lips started throbbing again. Not because he made her recall those lipstick scrubbings as she’d tried to tell herself before, but because not twenty minutes ago he’d pressed that mouth against hers. The kiss had spun her away from the kissing booth, from Strawberry Bay, even—unbelievably—from her worries and responsibilities.
Biting down on her betraying bottom lip, she shoved her hands in her pockets. The bill crackled against her fingers, reminding her she’d had a purpose beyond reliving that kiss to seek him out.
“You made a mistake,” she said, drawing out the thousand-dollar bill.
He glanced at the money, then back at her face. “Who’s in the kissing booth?”
