“Hey, pretty Gabby,” he’d said that night, edging his motorcycle right up to the break wall behind the country club.
Water slapped against the dock while he surveyed her, the rumble of his cycle throbbing between them in the humid spring night.
“What are you doing out here? The dance is inside.”
He motioned to the club behind them, with its faint bass beat and blaze of lights.
“I know.” She turned her head and swiped away angry tears.
“So, you going to tell me why the prettiest girl is out here all by her lonesome? Or you going to make me guess?”
Gabrielle knew she wasn’t the prettiest girl. She knew exactly who and what she was. She was the good girl, the one who chaired school committees, worked on the homecoming floats, went to church every Sunday. The girl everybody could count on. The girl who took everything too seriously.
Oh, she knew what she was. She wasn’t the prettiest girl, not by anybody’s definition, but she liked being precisely who she was, and now Joe Carpenter was teasing her, or making fun of her, or flirting with her. Whatever he was doing, she didn’t know how to respond, and she wanted him to stop.
But she wanted even more for him to keep talking to her in that deliciously husky voice that raised the hairs on her arms.
That deep voice vibrated inside her, creating a hunger so unfamiliar that she felt like someone else, not a bit like Gabrielle O’Shea.
Joe Carpenter made her feel—wild.
And curious.
So she drew up her knees under the pale chiffon of her slim skirt, tried not to sniff too loudly and stared out at the shimmer of moonlight on the water. Better to watch the glisten of the water than to think about what Joe Carpenter might mean, because good girls knew better than to be alone with Joe. Even if they wanted to.
Even when their bodies hummed to the tuning fork of Joe Carpenter’s voice.
Especially then, she decided, and wrapped herself tighter in her own arms.
He waited for a moment, but when she stayed silent, he kicked down the motorcycle stand, turned off the engine and walked over to her, his boots squeaking against the wet grass. “The prettiest girl should be inside, 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
