O’Connell. We met last—”
“Cullen.” The sleep-roughened voice took on a purr. “I’d started to think you weren’t going to phone.”
“I had things to clear up. You know how it is.”
“No,” she said, and gave a soft laugh, “I don’t know how it is. I guess you’ll just have to show me.”
Cullen felt the tension drain away. “My pleasure,” he said, imagining her as she must look right then, sleep-tousled and sexy. “How about tonight? I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“I already have a date for tonight.”
“Break it.”
She laughed again and this time the sound was so full of promise that he felt a heaviness in his groin.
“Are you always this sure of yourself?”
He thought of Marissa, of how she’d slipped from his bed, how she’d ignored his phone calls…
“Eight o’clock,” he repeated.
“You’re an arrogant SOB, Mr. O’Connell. Luckily for you, that’s a trait I like in a man.”
“Eight,” Cullen said, and disconnected.
He put away his cell phone, sat back and thought about the evening ahead. Dinner at that French place. Drinks and dancing at the new club in SoHo. And then he’d take the blonde home, take her to bed, and exorcise the ghost of Marissa Perez forever.
CHAPTER TWO
September: Boston, Massachusetts
THE end of summer always came faster than seemed possible.
One minute the city was sweltering in the heat and the Red Sox were packing in the ever-faithful at Fenway Park. Next thing you knew, gray snow was piled on the curbs, the World Series was only a memory and the Sox hadn’t even made it to the playoffs.
Cullen stepped out of the shower, toweled off and pulled on a pair of old denim shorts.
Not that any of that had happened yet.
It was Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer with the real start of fall still almost three weeks away. Cold weather was in the future, and so was the possibility, however remote, that Boston could rise from the ashes and at least win the division championship.
Cullen strolled into the kitchen and turned on the TV in time to catch the tail end of the local news. The Sox had lost a tight game yesterday; nobody had much hope they’d do any better today, said the dour-faced sportscaster.
“Wonderful,” Cullen muttered as he opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of water and uncapped it.
The sports guy gave way to the weatherman. Hot and humid, the weatherman said, with his usual in-your-face good cheer. Saturday, 10:00 a.m. and the sun was blazing from a cloudless sky, the temperature was pushing ninety with no break in sight from now through Monday.
“A perfect holiday weekend,” the weather guru said as if he’d personally arranged it.
Cullen scowled and hit the off button on the remote.
“What’s so perfect about it?” he growled. It was just another weekend, longer than most, hotter than most. Long, hot, and…
And, what was he doing here?
Nobody, but nobody, stayed in town Labor Day weekend. Driving home from his office yesterday, traffic going out of the city had been bumper to bumper. He’d felt like the only person not heading off for one last taste of summer.
He should have been among them. He’d intended to be.
Cullen lifted the bottle to his lips and drank some water. He’d certainly had enough choices.
Las Vegas, for the usual O’Connell end of summer blast. Connecticut, for the barbecue Keir and Cassie were throwing because Cassie was too pregnant for the long flight to Vegas. He had invitations to house parties in the Hamptons, on the Cape, on Martha’s Vineyard and half a dozen other places, and there was always the lure of three days at Nantucket.
Instead, he was here in hot and muggy Boston for no good reason except he wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere.
Well, except, maybe Berkeley…
Berkeley? Spend Labor Day weekend on one of the campuses of the University of California?
Cullen snorted, finished off the water and dumped the empty bottle in the sink.
Back to square one. Wasn’t that the same insane thought he’d had flying home from Fallon’s wedding in July? It made no more sense now then it had made then. You thought about the West Coast, you thought about San Francisco. Or Malibu. Maybe a couple of days at Big Sur.
But Berkeley? What for? Nothing but college kids and grad students, protesters and protests, do-gooders and doomsayers. Maybe that vitality was part of why he’d loved the place as a law student, but those years were a decade behind him. He was older. He’d changed. His idea of a great party involved more than take-out pizza and jugs of cheap wine. And, except for a couple of his law school profs, he didn’t have friends there anymore.
Okay. There was Marissa Perez. But he could hardly call her a friend. An acquaintance, was what she’d been. Truth was, he didn’t “know” her at all, except in the biblical sense of the word, and even if his sisters sometimes gleefully teased him about being a male chauvinist, he had to admit that sleeping with a woman wasn’t the same as knowing her.
Especially if she crept out of your bed before dawn and left you feeling as if you were the only one who’d just spent a night you’d never forget.
Damn it, this was crazy. Why waste time thinking about a woman he’d seen once and would probably never see again? He was starting to behave like one of the attorneys at his firm. Jack was a dedicated fisherman, always talking about the big one that had gotten away. That’s what this was starting to sound like. The sad story of Cullen O’Connell and The Woman Who Got Away.
Cullen opened the fridge again. It was empty except for another couple of bottles of water, a half-full container of orange juice and a lump of something that he figured had once been cheese. He made a face, picked up the lump with two fingers and dumped it into the trash.
So much for having breakfast in.
Maybe that was just as well. He’d pull on a T-shirt, put on sneakers, go down to the deli on the corner and get himself something to eat. Solve two problems at once, so to speak; silence his growling belly and do something useful, something that would end all this pointless rehashing of the weekend he’d spent with the Perez woman.
Yeah. He’d do that. Later.
Cullen opened the terrace door and stepped into the morning heat. The little garden below was quiet. Even the birds seemed to have gone elsewhere.
First he’d try thinking about that weekend in detail, concentrating not just on what had happened in bed but on all of it. A dose of cool logic
